Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Ee-Aw” — some donkey noises, completed. – Erin’s write-up
Jonesin’ solution 4/30/25
Hello lovelies! This week’s Jonesin’ involves adding an AH sound after a long E sound in each of the theme entries.
- 17a. [Property purchased with Qatari currency?] RIYAL ESTATE (real estate)
- 26a. [Shared billing for Etta and Celine?] JAMES DION (James Dean)
- 39a. [Performed in front of a pharaoh?] PLAYED FOR CHEOPS (played for keeps). Cheops (kee-ops) is the Greek version of the Egyptian Khufu.
- 51a. [A pleased 500e, maybe?] HAPPY FIAT (happy feet)
- 63a. [Food served up for some rock Kings?] LEON CUISINE (Lean Cuisine)
Other things:
- 33a. [Extremely successful, in Variety] SOCKO. The term SOCKO (or just “sock”) is part of Variety’s “slanguage,” or the slang dictionary it’s developed since its start in 1905.
- 10d. [Crash, for one] BANDICOOT. Crash Bandicoot is a mutant marsupial from a 1996 Sony video game.
Until next week!
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Companion Pieces”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar names and phrases whose last few letters spell out synonyms of “friend.” The revealer is FRIENDS TO THE END (58a, [True buds, and a hint to the last three or four letters of each starred answer]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Companion Pieces” · Mike Shenk · Tue., 4.29.25
- 17a. [*Like X’s position in the alphabet] ANTEPENULTIMATE.
- 26a. [*Vivid red-orange gemstone] FIRE OPAL.
- 37a. [*Robert whom Roger Ebert called “the soul of film noir”] MITCHUM.
- 45a. [*Spirited school event] PEP RALLY.
Fairly straightforward and with good choices of theme answers. The only nit I’d pick is that the “to” in the revealer indicates movement, as if the friend words were moved to the end. But that’s a much different puzzle that I assume would be a lot harder to make.
CHEST PAIN and DUMP SITES are the most interesting bits of long fill, though neither is exactly a pleasant thing to think about. I wanted OH RATS or AW RATS before AH RATS which sounds like someone relieved to find the rodents in their home.
3.25 stars.
Matt Forest’s Universal Crossword “Listen Here, Pal!” — Eric’s Review
It’s always fun to see a Fiend reviewer’s byline — especially when the puzzle is good!
Matt Forest gives us a theme based on a repeated three-letter string, with a centrally-located revealer that makes chums of those strings:
- 39A [Airpods, e.g. … or what can be found in the starred clues’ answers?] EARBUDS
- 17A [*Extremely precious] NEAR AND DEAR
- 24A [*Town crier’s call for attention] HEAR YE HEAR YE
- 51A [*Meaningful conversation] HEART TO HEART
- 63A [*Damage from routine use] WEAR AND TEAR
Although the theme didn’t strongly help (or hinder) my solving experience, I like it as a theme for an early week puzzle. The four phrases are all commonly known. And there’s a bit of variation, with only two having the “X and Y” structure and only the first two having the long E sound of “ear.”
The four long Down slots created by the grid design hold answers that are fairly fun, with a ho-hum exception:
- 4D [Creature known as the “unicorn of the sea”] NARWHAL
- 11D [Bold executive attire] POWER SUITS
- 29D [“I’ll be out late … you can go to sleep without me”] DON’T WAIT UP I lost a half-minute or so by initially putting DON’T STAY UP. The actual answer is much more “in the language.”
- 47A [All together] IN TOTAL Yawn.
There’s little here to throw an inexperienced solver, with gentle crosses abounding.
Things that caught my eye:
- 20A [Annual festival in Austin, TX] SXSW I lived in Austin when SXSW started and watched as it gradually ballooned into something that took over downtown for a week and a half and made living near there a pain. But in 2020, I knew the just-beginning COVID pandemic was serious when the mayor of Austin canceled that year’s festival.
- 27A [Pair on a bicycle] PEDALS Wheels and cranks would also fit.
- 2D [___erican ___press (credit card company)] AMEX Some clues are so easy they just beg to have the answer filled in for you. Did we really need the parenthetical?
- 8D [“Blue is the Warmest Colour” actress Exarchopoulos] ADELE This being Tuesday, it’s a bit surprising to see an art-house movie actress instead of the mononymous English singer. But this is where those easy crosses come in.
Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 726), “Word Search!”—Ade’s take
Crossword Nation puzzle solution, Week 726: “Word Search!”
Hello there, everyone! Here is hoping you are doing well as we quickly approach the merry merry month of May.
What’s the word in today’s puzzle? Well, it’s … word. The five theme answers are all two-word entries in which the second word also happens to be one that could come before the word “word.” That’s the word. Word up. Word is bond. Oh my word!
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- PINKY SWEAR (17A: [“Digitized” promise])
- DELETE KEY (24A: [Text remover])
- PROMO CODE (35A: [Online coupon])
- BUDDY PASS (48A: [Travel discount ticket for a friend])
- COFFEE BUZZ (56A: [Overcaffeinated feeling])
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Definitely was not aware of Eva’s maiden name, so was hoping it was a fairly common Spanish surname after putting in a few letters, and DUARTE did come to me pretty quickly after getting a few crosses (36D: [Eva Perón, née ___]). Initially put “intake” for INGEST in my customary momentary lapse anytime I solve (30A: [Consume, as food]). Seeing TRADE (5A: [Profession]), when thinking about in an economics context, and MISRULE definitely feels super timely given the current state of affairs (41D: [Preside over a kakistocracy]). Trying my very, very, very best to not have Olivia Newton John’s voice creep into my brain when gazing upon XANADU, but it’s not working at the moment (40A: [Idyllic place]).
A million lights are dancing and there you are! A shooting star! … UGH!!! Make it stop!
“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: KNOX (27D: [Kentucky fort]) – One of the great coaches in the NFL during the 1970s and 1980s is one who, surprisingly, is still not enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Chuck Knox. Knox won AP NFL Coach of the Year three times, winning it once with each of the three teams he helmed (Los Angeles Rams, Buffalo Bills, Seattle Seahawks). He ended his coaching career — and second stint as Rams head coach — after the 1994 season. finishing with a 186-147-1 record. Those 186 wins placed him sixth all-time at the time of his retirement, and has the third-most wins of any coach currently eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame who is not enshrined, trailing Marty Schottenheimer and Dan Reeves.
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
Gene Louise De Vera’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s Review
Gene Louise De Vera’s New York Times Crossword — 4/29/25
Congratulations to Gene Louise De Vera for a NYT debut that I found a little crunchier than the typical Tuesday. There were at least three or four places where my first guess was wrong, which doesn’t usually happen to me this early in the week.
This grid has vertical symmetry and some shaded squares at the bottom of four of the Down answers. Even more unusual is the placement of the revealer close to the top, which explains that shading:
- 21A [Early struggles for a new enterprise … or a hint to the shaded squares] GROWING PAINS
- 28D [“You had your chance”] TOO LATE NOW
- 29D [Go berserk] HIT THE ROOF
- 32D [Instruction to improve posture] DON’T SLOUCH
- 34D [Cameraperson’s session] PHOTO SHOOT
The shaded squares are all things one might say if one is in pain. (If I’m in pain, particularly from a sudden, unexpected impact, I’m likely to say something that’s generally not printable in The New York Times.)
As is frequently the case, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the theme as I was solving. If I had, it might have helped with PHOTO SHOOT. I had PHOTO but for some reason couldn’t come up with the ending.
But the shaded squares make the theme obvious to newer solvers, none of the answers containing them is at all forced, and this seems like a good way for beginners to learn that the theme isn’t always contained in the Across answers.
Spots that slowed me down:
- 18A [“Game of Thrones” co-star Headey] LENA I’ve never watched Game of Thrones. Now that I see the answer, the name is definitely familiar, but when I was solving, I needed three letters before I could guess at the fourth. IMDb tells me I’ve seen her at least once, in the 2005 Terry Gilliam movie Brothers Grimm, but it seems to have been a minor role.
- 26A [“Attack!”] GET ‘EM I went for SIC ‘EM first, until 27D [T.S. ___, winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature] was obviously ELIOT.
- 29A [Went in haste] HIED I started filling in the correct answer and then decided that was a bit archaic for a Tuesday puzzle.
- 43A [Early 2000s rating site with a rhyming name] HOT OR NOT The concept behind that website offends me.
- 53A [Figures that are straight approximations of curves, in geometry] TANGENT LINES Geometry class was a long time ago. I know what TANGENT means, but I don’t remember this term.
- 56A [Pageant prize] SCEPTER OK, I guess. The last time I watched a beauty pageant, the winner got a tiara, a sash and probably a big bouquet.
- 31D [Way off course] ERRANT Fittingly, I had ASTRAY until 38A [Proper-sounding spring flower] PRIMROSE became apparent.
Other stuff:
- 61A [Sharpen] HONE In my last few years working for the Texas Legislature, I reviewed probably hundreds of applications for attorney positions at my agency. Every one of those candidates claimed to have honed their writing skills in one way or another. (Spoiler alert: They often hadn’t.)
- 35D [Buddy ___, Jed Clampett portrayer on “The Beverly Hillbillies”] EBSEN I never know what “classic TV” might be familiar to younger solvers. I assume The Beverly Hillbillies (a staple of my childhood) is out there on the internet; does anyone watch it?
Susan Gelfand’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up
I haven’t crunched the numbers so this may be inaccurate…it feels to me like we are seeing more women’s names in the LAT byline since Patti Varol became the editor. Representation matters. This was a fun puzzle that played a little harder than a typical Tuesday for me. Even though I caused some of that by putting in a wrong answer and sticking with it too long, I still think it was a bit more challenging than expected. Just me?
No revealer today so the theme answers have to stand on their own. They are up to the challenge! We have four punny answers to the question every writer hates: “Where do you get your ideas?”
Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2025, Susan Gelfand, solution grid
- 20a [Journalist’s go-to place for getting scoops?] is the ICE CREAM STAND. Anyone want to go to Rita’s for a water ice?
- 31a [Novelist’s go-to place for spinning yarns?] is the CRAFT STORE.
- 40a [Screenwriter’s go-to place for envisioning stories?] is a SKYSCRAPER. This one took me a minute to understand. There are indeed lots of stories in the Empire State Building.
- 52a [Business writer’s go-to place for establishing accounts?] is a BROKERAGE FIRM.
Fun theme! Revealers are often a lot of fun. I also like it when the constructor trusts me to figure out what’s going on.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: never heard of ERICA Hill from CNN.
Patrick Berry’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up
New Yorker • 4/29/25 • Tue • Berry • solution • 20250429
Pretty smooth, this one.
- 1a [Pledge-seeking group] FRAT. I was thinking money here.
- 5a [Sources of bitterness] HOPS. I genuinely thought it might be HOPE.
- 16a [Casserole tidbit] EGG NOODLE. Seems more substantial than that?
- 18a [Publication’s paper version, facetiously] DEAD TREE EDITION. Nice grid spanner; its complement is at 46a: [“Please stay calm—everything’s fine”] NO CAUSE FOR ALARM, also good.
- 21a [Where Copernicus was born] POLAND. Wikipedia sez: “Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Toruń (Thorn), in the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, to German-speaking parents.”
- 26a [Titan punished by Zeus] ATLAS. The clue doesn’t exactly narrow the field, does it?
- 29a [Comes down hard, in a way] HAILS.
- 31a [Fan’s sound] WHIR, 30a [Fan’s sound] RAH. 5d [“What fantastic news!”] HOORAY.
- 40a [Wood used for cricket bats] WILLOW.
- 49a [Alexander the Great’s kingdom] MACEDONIA.
- 51a [She acted opposite Will Smith in “Hitch” and Will Ferrell in “The Other Guys”] EVA MENDES. Rare full-name sighting.
- 4d [Makes things neat for happy hour?] TENDS BAR. I want to like this clue more than I do, I really do. 15d [Pours poorly, perhaps] SPILLS. Not so neat.
- 8d [Somnifacients, more familiarly] SLEEP AIDS. Gettin’ fancy.
- 11d [Calls a bunch of names, say] AUTODIALS. This one I genuinely like. As a clue, not a practice.
- 23d [Stock offerings?] WARES. Simpler than I expected, which made it harder.
- 27d [Abandoned, as a lover] THREW OVER. Like a wet something-or-other?
- 28d [“Not sure why you’d bother to tell me”] LIKE I CARE. Ouch!
- 32d [Some handheld breakfast fare] TACOS. I believe burritos are more commonly breakfast items than TACOS? In fact, I’ve never heard of breakfast TACOS.
- 41d [Cowboy’s neckline?] LASSO. Hmm.
- 42d [Technique used to animate video-game characters, briefly] MOCAP, motion-capture. You know what it is: someone wearing a green or black bodysuit with little dots all over it.
Guess I went a little overboard with the musics today; hope no one minds.
NYT: I have never seen STARVE used to mean [Long (for), as attention]and I suspect this is just an outright error. Sure, someone can be “starved for attention” or whatnot. But this does not suggest that the word “starve” means long (for).
And ERRANT does imply “off course”, but not particularly “way off course”. E.g., here are American Heritage dictionary’s definitions (Def. 3):
a. Moving from the proper course or established limits: errant lambs.
b. Aimless or irregular in motion: an errant afternoon breeze.
c. Missing an intended target or recipient: an errant shot.
I was going to say the same thing. I can’t think of a context where those terms are equivalent.
John longs for attention.
*John starves for attention.
John is starved for attention.
*John is longed for attention.
I suspect that because starvation is not a cheerful topic, someone wanted to avoid the connection to dying from hunger. You and Ethan are right; you can’t really substitute “starve” for “long” in that context.
The dictionary says “starve” means “suffer from deprivation.” That seems close enough to “long for” for a crossword clue. It’s a clue, not a definition. I think it might be easier to accept later in the week, though. When looking for substitutability, the “for” is important. “Starved for attention” vis-a-vis “longed for attention.” Not that bad.
Missing the bullseye by a bit is not errant. Missing the entire target is. I suspect the “way” was meant to make the clue a bit easier for a Tuesday.
Martin, are you by any chance a defense attorney in your day job? It seems like most of your comments are defenses against criticisms of the NYT editing team.
I incorporated “for” in my substitutability test and the sentences still don’t work. When someone is starved for attention, the verb is passive. When someone longs for attention the verb is active. If it were just that the words aren’t quite synonymous, then you could call it a nitpick. It’s that the words require completely different syntactic contexts. When I tried to substitute one for the other, the result wasn’t even a valid English sentence.
I don’t think you’re paying attention. Martin may, indeed, be defending the NYT editing team. Why not? He has a stake in that. But he’s also a endless font of trivia and arcane knowledge. I always look forward to his comments.
I didn’t like the clue for STARVE either. I don’t find Martin’s justification compelling.
The clue for TANGENTLINES is not great either, but it would be hard to do much better in a concise clue.
I think it does pass the Substitution Test: “Wow, that puppy is starving for attention” or “She talks to him about politics and religion and never sees that he’s just starving for affection.”
You needed to use the gerund to make it work, but we have the bare form of the verb in the clue.
Bottom line, the clue doesn’t work. If the NYT team couldn’t find a clue for STARVE that wasn’t a downer or insensitive to food-insecure people, it could have been easily changed to SWERVE or many other things.
I’m with Martin. I just can’t imagine someone (or some puppy) being starved for attention and not actually wanting attention. It sounds nonsensical.
I did have a gut dislike of TANGENT LINES, because “tangents” is already a known and tangents are lines. But I can’t say here how others teach or speak. Maybe it colored my objection that I also don’t think of them as make-do approximations to a curve, the way a Mercator or stereographic projection is a way of dealing with the earth’s not being flat after all, but rather precise measures of the curve’s rate of change at a given point. In addition, it’s only a decent approximation cl0se to the point at hand.
Long day. I have a couple of comments, which I suspect most folks here have heard before.
When I offer a “defense,” my aim is not to convince anyone to change their mind, nor to negate the objection. Nobody’s opinion is wrong. I merely state why I was ok with the clue or entry. If you don’t agree with me, I’m fine with it. Really.
As to why I don’t object as often as others, there’s a simple reason. Again, as many here know, I’ve been honored to be a test-solver, going on 35 years. I object to a couple of clues a month, on average. If I’m persuasive, you’ll never get to see (and object to) those clues. If Will and his super-talented staff don’t see it my way, I will either accept the error of my ways or become resigned to the clue and its (usually reasonable) justification.
I have never been shy about complaining about clues. In fact, it was my being a pain in the ass in the very first New York Times Crossword Forum, in the early days of the internet, that got me invited into the tent.
But the most important point is my earlier one: I never mean to tell you why you should like a clue — only why I’m okay with it.
Thanks for the post, Martin. I’m sorry my phrasing towards you was a little snide. I always appreciate the discussion.
NYT: Clever idea with a nice layout … but does anyone sat SHOOT when they’re in pain?
My mother used to when she was still pretending that she never cursed. That lasted until I was 19.
Hot or Not? That’s what you want in your puzzle? Zero stars from me.
WSJ: Antepenultimate is so much more fun to say than “third-to-last.” I don’t think I had ever heard it, but I’m glad it’s now in my vernacular.
I did not care for the revealer. I’ve only heard “friends ’til the end.” A Google search seems to agree with me that “friends to the end” is very uncommon.
There’s also preantepenultimate.
TNY: Straightforward puzzle, but kinda dull, I thought. Maybe my expectations have been perverted by the weird stuff that comes in Natan Last’s and (to a lesser extent) Erik Agard’s offerings…
Re: weird stuff… I’ll grant you there are often some pretty out-there entries in non-Berry New Yorker puzzles. But so far I’ve encountered nothing as bizarre as pannonica announcing she’s never heard of breakfast tacos! 😮 Where I live, that would be akin to asking, “What is a bagel?”
All jests aside, I love your reviews, pannonica! Your observations and eclectic musical offerings add so much to this site. Now hie thee to the nearest taqueria and find out what you’ve been missing!
Thanks! And really, I’ve never heard of breakfast tacos! Are they typically hard or soft, or either?
Always soft, typically egg-based, but there are endless variations. Google and select images for an overview, but be warned, it’ll probably make you salivate…
Has never heard of breakfast tacos but knows the word preantepenultimate!?!? I love this community.
pannonica — Add me to the list of people surprised that you haven’t heard of breakfast tacos. When I worked for the Texas Legislature, there was a weekend in late February when all the attorneys and editors were expected to be in the office on Saturday. We (the senior managers) bribed them by buying breakfast tacos for 70 or 80 people. Try them!
Nice musical selections, as always. We’re listening to the Stanley Turrentine right now. Sad to say that I don’t know much about his music, but I’m enjoying this.
It’s a really lovely album. I listen to it often at night. But I recommend the original version rather than the expanded edition containing the additonal session material.
There are some albums like that, where—after hearing latter-day ‘complete’ rereleases—you can really appreciate the wisdom of the original producers, editors, engineers.
I know what you mean. Sometimes, the outtakes should have stayed in the vaults.
But then you listen to something like Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series and there are versions of songs you know with significantly different lyrics or tempos. I find that kind of stuff really interesting.
Another example that comes to mind is the Allman Brothers Band, Fillmore East. After having heard the ‘complete’ edition, the original choices and edits turn out to be the best versions.
Ditto on the praise for her reviews, and thanks for the introduction to Stanley Turrentine’s recording. (My favorite version of “Willow Weeps for Me” going back to college had been one by Oscar Peterson solo, as opposed to his versions with Louis Armstrong or his own trio. It had unpredictable shifts in tempo that had me simply amazed.)
I thought we weren’t getting easy but rather, since after all it’s Patrick Berry rather than Last, we’re getting a halfway decent construction. (It felt a little easy for Tuesday to me, but it also grew hard for me in the SE.) FWIW, I know what antepenult means and have seen no end of storefronts offering breakfast tacos (although I’ve also thus far declined to order one). But then my knowledge base is a little eccentric for this forum. I knew the title of Adorno’s book yesterday, dreadful as the puzzle was.
As you can see from the votes, yesterday’s New Yorker crossword was pretty unpopular, but several people enjoyed it, like me. By the way, happy to have a Berry crossword today, without a lot of complaints that it was too easy for a Tuesday.
The word OOF for a theme answer does not rise to a NYT xword level. Sorry.
My goodness, for such an innocuous little word it really appears to offend your sensibilities. Perhaps you can take up the issue with the ghost of former NYT crossword editor Margaret Farrar, who, according to xwordinfo.com, first ran OOF as a stand-alone answer in a 1963 puzzle. (Clue: Impatient exclamation.)
Half of a century is a long way back to find the last use. That proves my point.
Though common sense is also applicable.
That was the first use in the New York Times crossword.
It’s subsequently appeared 70 more times.