Note: Fireball is a contest this week. We’ll post a review after the submission period closes.
Zhouqin Burnikel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Just Ignore It”—Jim’s review
As the title instructs, we’re to ignore the letters IT in the theme entries. But these theme entries don’t just appear in the Across direction, we get them going Down as well.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Just Ignore It” · Zhouqin Burnikel · Thu., 4.24.25
- 16a. [___ ape (tailless monkey of Gibraltar)] BARBARITY. Barbary.
- 24a. [Swank with two Oscars] HILARITY. Hilary.
- 37a. [Drag to court] SUITE. Sue.
- 51a. [Glare blockers in cars] VISITORS. Visors.
- 62a. [Took testimony from] DEPOSITED. Deposed.
- 3d. [Canyon pack animals] BURRITOS. Burros.
- 11d. [Tennis great Sampras] PETITE. Pete.
- 34d. [Good-but-not-great grade] BIT. B. Quite possible the shortest theme answer ever.
- 39d. [Nuanced] SUBTITLE. Subtle.
- 46d. [Works with a shovel] DIGITS. Digs.
Nice. The Down entries caught me by surprise. Usually we’d have fewer but longer Across entries featuring the theme. This felt like a nice change of pace since it spread the theme out all over the grid and made you hunt for it (though yes, everything is still symmetrical). I enjoyed sussing each one out.
Since the theme is just about everywhere, there’s little room for long sparkly fill, especially with theme answers crossing each other as they do. But we get solid fill throughout with little gems like PRESTO and ISOGON. I’m never a fan of SST especially crossing awkwardly plural TAUS, but what can you do? VETCH [Leguminous plant] is new to me, so that’s your vocab word of the day.
Clue of note: 2d. [Punt, e.g.]. BOAT. If you ever find yourself in Cambridge, England, you’re almost required to go “punting on the Cam”. You can have one of the local college kids pole you along (usually the safer choice since they’re experienced), or you can do it yourself.
Good puzzle. 3.75 stars.
Kathleen Duncan’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Average (9m41s)
Kathleen Duncan’s New York Times crossword, 4/24/25, 0424
Today’s theme: GENR /E/ BENDING (Mixing thematic elements and tropes … or a feature of this puzzle?)
- DARK /F/ ANTASY
- MOCKUME /N/ TARY
- COMING /O/ F AGE
- COZY /M/ YSTERY
- PERIOD /P/ IECE
Played harder for me for a number of reasons: 1) I’ve heard of “gender bending”, but not GENRE BENDING (is this a winky derivative?), 2) I swore MOCKUMENTARY was spelled without the K for some reason, and 3) I am unfamiliar with COZY MYSTERYs (are they Murder, She Wrote-adjacent?)
Cracking: not the least OBEISAN(ce) made he, not a minute stopped or stayed he, but with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Slacking: CEN
Sidetracking: ED KOCH
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1777 “A DJ At The Races” — Eric’s Review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1777 “A DJ at the Races” (co-constructed with Francis Heaney) — 4/24/25
Here’s Brendan’s intro to the puzzle: “[T]oday’s is a rerun of a classic I made with Francis Heaney for the AVCX way back when.” (The original publication date appears to be December 13, 2013.)
In honor of Saturday being Record Store Day, we get a music-filled grid with a circle of circled letters in the middle. Overall, a solid puzzle with a few blemishes.
I’m often not a fan of circled letters in a grid. Especially when solving on my iPad, once I have a letter in a circle, it’s difficult to see what it is. But today, I realized that the bigger circle, reading clockwise from square 39, contained BONUS TRACK as the circled letters. Filling in the last part of that pseudo-meta helped me in the trickiest part of the grid, the center-left portion.
I’m fond of music, so a few of the answers were gimmes:
- 1A [With 132-Across, tartan-wearing teen idols of the ’70s]/132A BAY CITY/ROLLERS “Tartan-wearing” gave it away; they hailed from Edinburgh.
- 74A [Neil Young’s backup band] CRAZY HORSE
- 114A [Conor Oberst’s label] SADDLE CREEK
- 15D [Hart of Rogers and Hart] LORENZ
But a lot of other musical answers required a few letters to be apparent:
- 23A [The Who song that was the first to be played twice on MTV] YOU BETTER YOU BET The Who were the first band I saw live, in 1977, when drummer Keith Moon was still alive. I didn’t know this factoid, though.
- 28A [Pixies spinoff that’s way better than the Pixies (to our ears)] THE BREEDERS I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t know either band’s music very well.
- 45A [Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Ted “Theodore” Logan’s band] WYLD STALLYNS From the 1989 comedy Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which I’ve never seen. I assumed the answer had to do with the movie, but given the creative spelling of the band, it was hard to fill in from letter patterns.
- 71A [Metal band whose mascot is Eddie] IRON MAIDEN
- 87A [“Let It Be” song recorded on a rooftop] DIG A PONY I thought all of the Beatles’ Let It Be was recorded on a rooftop in London. It’s been so long since I’ve heard the album that I have no idea how this song goes.
- 122A [Titan of Jamaican dub production] LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY
Some other things that I noted:
- 108A [Talk Like a Pirate Day interjection of indeterminate meaning] YAR/103D [Sites for French summers?] LYCÉES I ended up revealing that Y because I have usually seen the pirate’s interjection as “AAR” or “ARR.” I’ve seen the moderately-annoying “summer” as “one who sums” clue enough that it shouldn’t have surprised me that the answer was the French equivalent of our “high schools.”
- 16D [Machine at a dry cleaner, perhaps] SHIRT IRONER I suppose this is a thing and not green paint; I stopped taking dress shirts to the cleaners a long time ago.
- 59D [One laying down the law?] DECREER I try not to let random answers in crossword puzzles bother me; every word a constructor takes out of their wordlist makes it a little harder to fill a grid. But I really dislike verb+ER constructions that no one ever uses outside of a crossword puzzle.
- 73D [National monument near the California border] OREGON CAVES I had trouble parsing this because I was thinking of the California/Mexico border.
- 107D [Year of Charles V’s reign] MDLII About the only thing more annoying in a grid than words like DECREER are random Roman numerals.
Zachary Edward-Brown’s USA Today Crossword, “Split the Pole” — Emily’s write-up
Summer is around the corner—I can feel it!
USA Today, April 24, 2025, “Split the Pole” by Zachary Edward-Brown
Theme: each themer in contained within PO—LE (or a “split pole”)
Themers:
- 17a. [Buoyant, pasta-shaped toy], POOLNOODLE
- 36a. [Duo such a sTaylor Swift and Travis Kelce], POWERCOUPLE
- 58a. [Place to play Omaha Hold ‘em], POKERTABLE
What a themer set today! Along with my weather here today, I feel like it’s time for a swanky summer poolside party with POOLNOODLE, POWERCOUPLE, and POKERTABLE.
Favorite fill: EDUCATORS, YOGAMAT, HASTO, and IMNEW
Stumpers: YAP (“gab” and “jaw” came to mind first), OHIO (new to me), and HIPPOS (thought about “rhinos” so needed a few crossings)
First, I love this grid design! It has such a nice flow and I enjoyed the fresh fill, along with some great lengthy bonus fill. Some of the cluing was a bit challenging but it was a good level for me today that took me a good amount of time. A fun solve that’s put me in a summer mood!
4.0 stars
~Emily
Zachary Schiff’s LA Times Crossword, Gareth’s theme summary
Apr 24 2025
Today’s puzzle by Zachary Schiff features things named after US cities. Funnily enough, most US cities have things named for them…
- [Boston, e.g.], CLASSICROCKBAND. See also, Chicago.
- [Tacoma, e.g.], PICKUPTRUCK. See also, Tucson.
- [Philadelphia, e.g.], CREAMCHEESE.
- [Manhattan, e.g.], BOURBONCOCKTAIL
Today I learnt… [Yankee ___], SWAP is apparently a Christmas tradition in parts of the US? Today I forgot… [Flour for roti or naan] is ATTA; I never remember that.
Gareth
NYT: Clever. But this was so hard for me, with an abundance of pop culture and vague clues that I had a lot of trouble answering, that overwhelmingly this solve was not fun for me.
I also do not find [Dollop] a good clue for DAB: a dollop is large and a dab is small. In 48D [“Downton Abbey” and “Shogun”], the “and” implies that the answer is plural, but PERIOD PIECE is singular. Similarly, the word “selection” in 23D {Selection at the butcher’s] strongly suggests that the answer is plural, though LOIN is not. Never heard of ANYA Taylor-Joy or ZAYN or Dave STIEB, or for that matter either Georgia State U. (GSU) or ACC (which leaves me with no idea what what might be “strange” about ACC). Also, it seems inconsistent that DARK FANTASY, MOCKUMENTARY, and PERIOD PIECE are all nouns or noun phrases, but COMING-OF-AGE is an adjective.
I don’t follow college athletics at all, but crossword puzzles have taught me that ACC stands for the Atlantic Coast Conference, so it’s theoretically “strange” that U.C. Berkeley and Stanford are in it. In reality, it’s not that strange, since conference membership is pretty much all about the money.
I’m surprised that ANYA Taylor-Joy doesn’t sound familiar. Her performance in “The Queen’s Gambit” was well received, and the unusual spelling of her name has made her a relatively frequent guest in crosswords.
I hadn’t heard of COZY MYSTERY before and had TARRY before TIZZY, so the whole left center section was difficult for me. Without ETTA James and Ms Taylor-Joy, I would probably still be working on it.
Cozy Mystery is a distinct sub-genre, which probably starts with Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple character, and certainly includes Murder She Wrote.
The inclusion of two west-coast schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference is, to me, definitely strange. OTOH, I still haven’t gotten used to the two Los Angeles universities being in the 18-member “Big 10”.
There was a brief period when the Big Ten had twelve members and the Big XII had ten
Cal and Stanford had find another place to call home when Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington decided to abandon 100 years of history to make more bucks. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Math nerd friend of my suggests that the conference should add a subscript “18” to that “10” to indicate that they now use an octodecimal brand.
I’ve never seen an episode of “The Queen’s Gambit”, but ANYA has almost become crosswordese on the order of ETTA and ENYA in recent years. It’s been clued using this actress’s name 13 times in the NYT puzzle since February 2021 and in many other puzzles as well. That’s the only way that I know it.
All those things were guesses or gaps for me, which I didn’t appreciate. I had ANN, waiting for a crossing that never came to decide between Anne and Anna. But oops! But the whole puzzle is a crash course in cultural names I may never see again. No wonder the preponderance of below 3 star ratings here is surely a record.
For whatever reason, this one didn’t give me any trouble, but I agree that the lack of parallelism in the themed answers felt off. And I also was bugged by the plural clue / singular answer disagreement in most, if not all, of the themed elements. I think the intent was that the clues gave examples that would be categorized in those genres. But I still found it annoying.
However, I didn’t have an issue with the singular LOIN, as I interpreted the “selection” to refer to what a butcher’s customer might select, as opposed to the array of offerings that a butcher might have available for selection.
Took me over an hour but love this puzzle.
NYT: Lots of cheating required! A lot of intersecting things of similar types, which made it hard to work around.
GENRE BENDING was not familiar enough to pull it together for me. But I’m glad to know the expression.
Had MAYHAP for MAYEST. Loved the clue for NICKNAME!
Agree re the NICKNAME clue! Cute.
And I enjoyed seeing MAYEST and OBEISANT – those are some Golden Oldies right there.
But this was a slow Thursday for me. A worthy theme concept, but just too many movies I haven’t seen, and names I didn’t know. ZAYN who?
Thursday NYT puzzles have become more tedious than clever. I used to look forward to them but now I approach them more with apprehension.
11D: Like some socks and chess players. MATED. Are the players mated or is it the game or the king?
WSJ- The “down” theme answers were much more difficult for me to see than the “across” themers. 34D, BIT was brilliant. I stared at for 5 minutes before I realized that I needed to “Just Ignore It.” Pretty fun!
NYT: Not saying this is bad, more of an observation: the square where the bend takes place is only clued once, not double clued (one across clue and one down clue). It’s often (but not always) the first letter of a new word. That may have contributed to solving times. It did for me. PERIOD PIECE, which bent at the P in PIECE, took me a while because I got PERIOD fairly easily but had trouble with the PIECE part. I couldn’t get any help from the second clue for the P because there isn’t one.
Perhaps that wasn’t done because there’s no way to clue NTARY or EBENDING?
I got my own “Bonus Track” in the BEQ. I remembered that the Fillmore and CBGB were both downtown, but I couldn’t remember exactly where. I also couldn’t remember Neil Young’s band – I tried hard to picture the album covers in the milk crate in my room in high school but all I could see was the CSNY cover of “Deja Vu”, and “Delaney and Bonnie & Friends”, which wasn’t Young at all. So I decided to look up the Fillmore to see the address. On the first page of the Google search, there was a picture of the marquee in front of the Fillmore that said, “6&7 – NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE; MILES DAVIS”. I figured that was the one I was supposed to know, so I got the Fillmore/CBGB answer from the crossings.
Sweet!
WSJ: I’m calling foul on the editor for the clue on 29D. “Cross-shaped letters” and the answer is “Taus”. He goofed by not including a qualifier, such as “Greek cross-shaped letters”.
Otherwise, this was a brilliant puzzle by Zhouquin Burnikel.
The album was of course recorded in the studio, but the band gave a rooftop concert documented in the film Let It Be (and also the Peter Jackson rework/expansion, Get Back), which was eventually broken up by the police. “Dig a Pony” is one of the ten or so songs the band performed up there.
Thanks.