Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “A Sporting Chance” — Olympic sports, one letter off. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 4/22/25

Hello lovelies! This week Matt has provided us will some silly sports, each one letter off from an Olympic event.

• 17a. [Not-quite-Olympic sport that takes forever to go downhill?] SLOWBOARD (SNOWBOARD)
• 24a. [Not-quite-Olympic sport to get telephone poles and trees airborne?] HEIGHTLIFTING (WEIGHTLIFTING)
• 37a. [Not-quite-Olympic sport that still involves beams?] SMILING (SAILING)
• 49a. [Not-quite-Olympic sport with lines like “That’s an oval” and “It’s a hexagon”?] FIGURE STATING (FIGURE SKATING)
• 59a. [Not-quite-Olympic sport where you can sample a bunch of events?] TRYATHLON (TRIATHLON)

Other things:

• 65a. [Manuscript enclosures, for short] SASES. Does anyone mail self-addressed stamped envelopes anymore? Or manuscripts? Do these get delivered by anything other than PDF these days?
• 56a. [Oasis lead guitarist Gallagher] NOEL. Let’s end this with an awful joke: At a concert, the singer plays the opening chords of “Wonderwall” for the fifth time. The crowd starts to boo and someone yells, “You swore you wouldn’t play that again!” The singer then replies, “I said maybe…”

Until next week!

Zachary David Levy’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Going Solo”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are statements from certain professionals using apt wordplay to describe a singer’s performance.

Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Going Solo” · Zachary David Levy · Tue., 4.22.25

• 17a. [The massage therapist left the opera in awe, remarking: “___” ] “SUCH FEELING!”
• 23a. [The butcher agreed: “___”] “PERFECT CHOPS!”
• 37a. [The plumber was overwhelmed: “___”] “WHAT A SET OF PIPES!”
• 48a. [The mountain climber concurred: “___”] “…AND THAT RANGE!”
• 58a. [The general, wiping away tears, summed up the performance: “___”] “IT’S A TRIUMPH!”

A lively theme set, and I like the wordplay. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I did want these statements to all be common colloquial sayings. These just felt a little too random to me. And the cluing on the last one felt off as well. Sure, a general wants to win a battle, but there’s just not a tight enough connection between the job and the word “triumph.” I would have liked the entry better if it came from a motorcycle salesperson.

I liked seeing some old school VIDEO TAPES, and IN A BAD SPOT is evocative as well. Not so keen on old school AGLET and ETO, though.

Clue of note: 15a. [“Plant of immortality,” to the ancient Egyptians]. ALOE. Interesting tidbit. I wonder how that worked out for them.

3.25 stars.

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 725), “Veggie-Mania!”—Ade’s take

Crossword Nation puzzle solution, Week 725: “Veggie-Mania!”

Hello there, everyone! Hoping all of you are doing well today! 

Our fearless leader almost certainly ignored instructions from her parents at the dinner table when she was young when being told to not play with her food! I say that because the four theme answers in today’s grid are puns created when one of the nouns in a common phrase/proper noun is altered by replacing it with a rhyming word that also happens to be a type of vegetable. Also, love the title of the grid given the fact that World Wide Entertainment’s crown jewel event, WrestleMania, took place over the weekend in Las Vegas.

• • • • GREAT LEEKS (17A: [Might North American quintet of vichyssoise ingredients?]) – Great Lakes
      • ONION ORGANIZER (27A: [Teamster’s favorite storage solution for Vidalias?]) – Union organizer
      • STEPFORD CHIVES (46A: [Robotically-compliant baked potato garnishes?]) – Stepford Wives
      • SHALLOT BOX (61A: [Poling place receptacle for bulbs?]) – Ballot box

A whole lot of fun non-themed fill in this grid, starting with me having memories of (and being scared while watching) the EXORCIST (10D: [Linda Blair horror classic, with “The”]). As far as things engendering better memories, there’s OAK TAG and doing so many cool projects involving glue and stencils in art class when the teachers brought that paper out (8D: [Poster paper]). A grid that has four X’s and also has EXES as an entry is a pretty cool quirk (59D: [Spouses no more]). Given my old-soul persona, I’m definitely going to be saying WOWIE ZOWIE more after coming across this today, guaranteed (11D: [Rhyming cry of glee]).

“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: STEWS  (67A: [Hearty crockpot meals]) – Sports talk radio has been a staple of sports media for over 30 years, and it has given birth to the sports opinion shoes that dominate the sports television landscape today (for better or worse). One of the pioneering sports talk shows of the early part of this century was “2 Live Stews,” an all-Black on-air and production that was hosted by real life brothers Doug and Ryan Stewart out of Atlanta. Both played football in college, and Ryan was an All-American at Georgia Tech who eventually played for the Detroit Lions. Starting in 2001, 2 Live Stews became a syndicated show when they reached a deal with ESPN for their shows to be simulcast on the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” in 2005.

Thank you so much for the time, everybody! Have a wonderful and safe rest of your day and, as always, keep solving!

Take care!

Ade/AOK

Alex Eaton-Salners’ Tuesday 4-22-25 NYT Puzzle — Evan M’s Review

This Tuesday’s NYT puzzle takes the names of four famous bands and interprets them in a rather literal way.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers become CAROLINA REAPERS, a notoriously spicy pepper. Green Day is used to describe SAINT PATRICKS, which took me a minute to get because of the open-ended nature of St. Patrick’s (Cathedral? Harp? Oh, the holiday). Earth, Wind & Fire becomes GREEK ELEMENTS – are they prescriptively Greek though? I suppose the ancient Greeks did name them as classical elements. They Might Be Giants, a rather confusing but inventive band name, actually becomes more understandable when translated as BASEBALL PLAYERS. I liked the pepper angle a lot, and the Giants one a decent amount. The other two I could take or leave.

In general, I felt the solving of this puzzle was breezy and fun, just what a Tuesday should be. I was able to finish a bit faster than my usual five minutes. Four point tew-five starz for Alex’s fun lil puzz!

Catherine Cetta’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

This was a fun, breezy Tuesday outing. Nothing really slowed me down either from difficulty or annoyance.

Each theme answer contains a word. Once I realized what was going on, it helped me solve.

Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2025, Catherine Cetta, solution grid

• 17a [“Everyone knows that!”] is IT‘S NO SECRET. IT’S NO SECRET that I love this kind of conversational clue.
• 22a [Mountain hiker’s protection] is BEAR SPRAY. Or you can do what my father-in-law did once: run toward the bear on all fours barking like a dog. Do not try this at home. Or in the woods.
• 38a [“I haven’t decided”] is MAYBE YES,MAYBE NO.
• 49a [TV episodes that are mostly flashback scenes] are CLIP SHOWS.

And the revealer: 58a [Smirking, scowling, or smiling, and what the sets of circled letters in the puzzle are doing?] is MAKING A FACE. NOSE, EARS, EYES, LIPS. I don’t care that they’re slightly out of order and I really like the 15-letter entry smack in the middle of the puzzle.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: the years JACOB deGrom won the Cy Young award. I knew he won it twice.

Wyna Liu’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 4/22/25 • Tue • Liu • solution • 20250422

Don’t know if it’s me or the puzzle, but today’s offering seemed just right for a ‘moderately challenging’ crossword.

When I saw the triple-ten stack in the upper left, I immediately skipped to the northeast section and built my solution from there. Worked out fine in general, but I did need to desultorily skip ahead as my grid conquest expanded.

• 15a [What Queen Elizabeth I replaced “I” with?] THE ROYAL WE. This would’ve been trickier had I not already had some crossing letters in place.
• 20a [Part of some computer directions] ARROW KEY. So glad I have a full keyboard with separate ARROW KEYs and number pad.
• 22a [“I asked, and they said we can’t”] is a perfect clue for IT’S A NO, but I’d glossed its first pronoun and put in I TRIED.
• 37a [{Hey, you!}] PSST. 7d [“__ is for horses” (parental retort)] HAY.
• 43a [Sculptor’s metal frame] ARMATURE. etymology (m-w.com): Middle English, “armor, armed force,” borrowed from Latin armātūra “armament, troop” (Medieval Latin, “suit of armor, defensive equipment of an animal”), from armātus, past participle of armāre “to ARM entry 2, equip” + -ūra -URE
• 45a [Digital services, briefly?] PEDIS. The question mark telegraphed the wordplay, but I made the mistake of thinking only about fingers rather than toes.
• 48a [Organ connected to a cord] PLACENTA. Just needed to pause for a few beats to think of the correct item.
• 53a [Its inventors won an Ig Nobel prize “for diverting millions of person-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets”] TAMAGOTCHI. All right, but weren’t most of those involved children? In Japanese it means ‘egg watch’, which isn’t so difficult to remember if you know—say from sushi restaurants—that tamago is ‘egg’.
• 3d [Booking, informally] REServation.
• 4d [Flair] ARTISTRY. 5d [Foot movements used to keep a beat] TOE TAPS.
  
• 10d [Cannes can] DERRIERE. I was expecting a verb. 30d [Between, in Benin] ENTRE.
• 11d [Inspiring path] AIRWAY. Saw through the clue right away, but it’s a lovely one nonetheless.
• 12d [Device that inevitably goes off during a play?] CHEKHOV’S GUN. (1) I was thinking of a sports play rather than a theatrical play, (2) the central letters I’d gotten via crossings did not look promising, (3) bang! it finally hit me.
  
• 23d [It’s on a roll] TOILET PAPER. 17a [Times past] YESTERYEAR.
  
• 22d [“My hands were tied!”] I HAD TO. “I was just following orders!” 56d [“__ never do that to us!”] HE’D. (Yes he would.)
• 26d [Word from the Turkish for “skewer”] SHISH. I trust this wasn’t too difficult for most solvers. Possibly one would have had to eliminate KEBAB/KABOB?
• 36d [Tear down the middle] RIP IN TWO. Feeling lucky that I guessed correctly from just the initial R.
• 37d [Rhyming follower of cutie] PATOOTIE. I’m unclear on whether this is slang for DERRIERE.
• 44d [Skimpy] MEAGER, not MEASLY (which I did not try). I recall seeing in Manhattan a ‘healthy’ dessert establishment called Skimpy Treat. Oops.