Saturday, April 26, 2025

Sarah Sinclair & Rafael Musa’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 4/26/25 – no. 0426

This is one of those puzzles where I had nothing but AYO in the upper left quadrant till the end. I should have looked at the Down clues starting at 1d, because EDWIN Drood, GRAVY boat, and a GENIE in a gravy boat (right? the genie’s lamp is basically a gravy boat) would have opened up that whole corner a lot faster. In my defense, I’m tired! I almost dozed off during the finale of The Residence.

Fave fill: AIR SIGN, SECRET ADMIRER, STAGE-DIVE, SLEEP MASK (not wild about “sleeping” being in the clue for DREAM YOGA), Lake SUPERIOR (here’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”), HOME TURF, DOT-TO-DOT puzzles, DEEP FAKE, HAIL MARY, the WEST END. On the “meh” side: ERSE, SEISMS.

New to me:

• 13D. [Short product overview, in business lingo], ONE-PAGER. Not my kind of business.
• 15A. [Tantric meditation practiced while in a sleeping state], DREAM YOGA. Did not know that was a thing. I practice dream gymnastics and I am phenomenal.

3.8 stars from me.

Marshal Herrmann’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 4/26/25 by Marshal Herrmann

I really liked this puzzle! The four 15s that anchor the grid — STATEMENT PIECES, HONEYMOON PERIOD, STAND-UP ROUTINES, and UNCONSCIOUS BIAS — are all smart and fun, and there’s also some very fine cluing in the shorter entries going on.

• 1A [Opening remark?] is IT’S A START. Great clue, and IDK whether the constructor seeded the puzzle with this, but it’s pretty awesome that the entry is the first one in the puzzle.
• 22A [Subs] is FILLS IN, but can easily be FILL-INS as clued, which adds a little extra Saturday-worthy difficulty.
• 31A [Twisted part of an Impala?] is GAS CAP. LOL. I knew from the capital I that a Chevy Impala was meant, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what part was meant until I got all the crossings. (Be nice to me, I haven’t owned a car in 24 years.) Good one.
• 35A [Lap top covers] for NAPKINS is also very clever.
• 54A [Fights before the big fight] is UNDERCARD. TIL this word.
• 56A [Exams that require passing] is ROAD TESTS. I didn’t see this clever clue at all while solving, but I’m glad I took a look after I was done.
• 30D [High points of a trip to Asia] is HIMALAYAS.
• 34D [When I was one?] is ROMAN ERA. My favorite clue in the puzzle. Get it? Roman numeral I?! So good!

Michael Priestley’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Indigenous Menu” — pannonica’s write-up

WSJ • 4/26/25 • Sat • “Indigenous Menu” • Priestley • solution • 20250426

Kind of an odd idea for a theme, but hey. It’s the type of wordplay sometimes called ‘before and after’. Several letters from the end of the first word are the same as those at the beginning of the second word, and the whole shebang is telescoped down so those letters aren’t repeated.

But in this case the stipulation is that the first words are Native American tribes or nations, and the second word is a type of food.

Perhaps it was inspired by Sean Sherman, himself punnily dubbed the Sioux Chef, who has an acclaimed restaurant and cookbook?

• 23a. [Lunch item for Wyoming natives?] ARAPAHOAGIE.
• 29a. [Noodle dish for Southwest natives] PUEBLO MEIN.
• 40a. [Pasta dish for Badlands natives?] OGLALASAGNA.
• 60a. [Comfort food for Nova Scotia natives?] MICMAC AND CHEESE.
• 80a. [Salad for Great Plains natives?] DAKOTABOULI.
• 94a. [Breakfast order for Great Lakes natives?] OJIBWAFFLE.
• 102a. [Spicy stew for northern Plains natives?] ARIKARAGOUT.

Makes for some odd-looking fill!

• 1d [Mouth, informally] TRAP. 33a [Mouths, informally] KISSERS.
• 4d [One pull-up, say] REP. Not much of one, though.
• 13d [Flock babies] LAMBKINS. They are, as you might guess, little lambs specifically. Also a term of endearment, especially for children.
• 14d [Opera great __ Patti] ADELINA.
  
  (close enough)
• 15d [Heads for the bar?] FOAMS. I don’t feel this one works well enough.
• 24d [Groucho’s silent brother] HARPO. 60d [Acted out] MIMED.
• 30d [Brazilian airline until 2006] VARIG. New one on me.
• 36d [“I can’t __ satisfaction”] GET NO.
  
• 37d [Big purchase of 1867] ALASKA. Home to, among others: Yupik, Aleut, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian.
• 43d [Cree craft] CANOE. Theme-adjacent.
• 48d [Multicolored cats] CALICOS. Named after the textile originally from the Indian city Calicut, or Kozhikode.
• 53a [Ice, or diamonds] ROCKS. And also ice is slang for diamonds, so it’s kind of incestuous here.
• 73d [Anserine] GOOSE-LIKE. Pretty sure that has a Latin root, as does anatine, meaning duck-like. And columbine, dove-like (see below).
• 84d [Member of the board?] PAWN. Li’l tricky.
• 15a [Charity event] FÊTE. Not always (rarely even?), but that isn’t required of crossword clues.
• 31a [Higher on Santa’s list, maybe] NICER. I’ve never encountered the notion that the list might be so ranked.
• 52a [Children’s game of old] RING-A-ROSY. Not a name version I’ve seen, nor one reported in Wikipedia.
• 56a [Kung __ chicken] PAO. Not part of the theme. Nor is 59a [Classic Milanese dish] RISOTTO.
• 71a [Southwestern poplars] ALAMOS. Nice to see the botanical origin recognized.
• 

  “Twittering Machine” (1922)

  93a [“Twittering Machine” artist] KLEE.

• 101a [Columbine, e.g.] PERENNIAL. etymology (m-w.com): Middle English columbyne, calombin, calobyn, borrowed from Anglo-French & Medieval Latin; Anglo-French columbine, borrowed from Medieval Latin columbīna (perhaps originally as modifying herba “small plant, herb”), noun derivative from feminine of Latin columbīnus “of a dove or pigeon, dove-colored,” from columba “dove, pigeon” + -īnus -INE entry 1; columba akin to Old Church Slavic golǫbĭ “dove, pigeon,” Russian gólubʼ, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian gȍlūb, Greek kólymbos, kolymbás, kolymbís “the little grebe (Tachybaptus ruficollis),” all perhaps of substratal origin.
  There is also a substantial note after this.

Ben Zimmer’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up

Newsday • 4/26/25 • Saturday Stumper • Zimmer • solution • 20250426

Ben’s Stumper offerings are typically very smooth and I tend to register shorter solve times on them. This one was no exception.

No solving route report, because I kind of filled it in all over all at once.

• 1a [On a leash, perhaps] AT BAY. Gettable after a few crossings were in place. Was surprised that 1d [Tort of a sort] turned out to be ARSON, which I think is a more severe offense. On the other hand, 2d [Pidgin English speaker of Westerns] TONTO was a gimme and my first entered answer.
• 10a [Face lift?] T-BAR. Glad I got this via crossings, because that’s a tough clue.
  
• 14a [Virginia bridegroom of 1614] John ROLFE, marrying Pocahontas.
• 15a [Director of Meryl as Julia and Meg as Sally] NORA Ephron. Streep, Child; Ryan, Albright. Only the very last is a fictional person.
• 16a [Head down] WANE. Oblique, Stumperish clue. Again I’m grateful to crossings.
• 23a [Metaphorical retaliation] TIT, for tat. Strangely, the exchange rate is always one-to-one (though the component quantities are, I guess, variable).
• 24a [What the Sioux once were] NOMADIC. Did not know this. Colonists and settlers made so many impositions—to put it lightly—against the indigenous peoples here.
• 26a [Ran most of a square path] TRIPLED. Didn’t fool me at all.
• 30a [“Placid” prename] SERENA. I suspect prename in the clue was intended to make it easier, but it addled me somewhat.
• Aha, the marquee section: offset triple-stack of 13-letter entries, all good: 31a [Made in the shade] SITTING PRETTY, 33a [Custodial concern] BEST INTERESTS, 34a [They need body work] TATTOO ARTISTS (the first of these that I got).
• 49a [Woman of drinking age] INGA. Did not understand this at all while solving, but now it’s obvious that it’s the nowaday de rigueur cryptic-style clue of the puzzle, a hidden word.
• 50a [Concise concurrence] AS AM I. Basically my only mis-fill in the grid, where I first had SO AM I. 5d [Concise concurrence] YES.
• 51a [They have millions of bits] MEGS. Megabytes. Unrelated to MEG Ryan in the clue for 15-across.
• 54a [First name related to the first place] EDNA. Oh wait, I had mis-fills here too. ADAM, then EDEN, before finally seeing the right answer via crossings.
• 56a [Funk producers] ODORS.
  
• 4d [Crossroads of Central and South Asia] AFGHANISTAN. “Graveyard of Empires”.
• 6d [Sinophobic] ANTI-CHINA. 11d [It first included Rowling in 2003] BARTLETT’S Book of Famous Quotations. Ben has informed me that reference to JKR was not in his original clue. Her poor-quality and derivative oeuvre is a travesty on its own, but add in hateful stereotypes characteristic of the Harry Potter books such as the anti-Asian undercurrents and—most dangerously—her extreme animosity toward and political machinations against transgender people, and no one with a conscience should be giving her any oxygen, much less gratuitously.
• 9d [Daughters of the Greek “Old Man of the Sea”] WATER SPRITES. Was stymied when NYMPHS wouldn’t fit. The sobriquet of the clue is for the shapeshifting god Proteus.
• 10d [Note redone for 1976] TWO dollar bill.
• 21d [“Making them is “dull work,” per Samuel Johnson] DICTIONARIES. Hah, some irony from Zimmer here.
• 22a [Pronunciation aids] DIERESES. Lookalikes to umlauts, and which they are often mistaken for.
• 25d [Oral repetition] DITTOING. I was unfamiliar with this usage. Or maybe severely under-familiar.
• 29d [“__ guillemets [sideways double-chevrons]” (French for “quote-unquote”)] ENTRE. Impossible for me to see that word and not think of the AUK relatives guillemots. Note that the Wikipedia page has a section titled ‘Bounciness in chicks’.
• 34d [Liable] TO BLAME.
  
• 38d [Minor assistance] NANNY. Nice.
• 40d [“Copacetic!”] NEAT-O. Both are outdated exclamations; if used nowadays it’s typically ironic.
• 48d [Frisky bunch?] TSA. Hands off!