Thursday, August 7, 2025

BEQ 6:50 (Eric) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 5:16 (Gareth) rate it
NYT 10:53 (ZDL) [3.13 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
Universal 5:00-something (Eric) [3.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today 10:09 (Emily) [3.38 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
WSJ 13:02 (Jim Q) [3.13 avg; 4 ratings] rate it

The Fireball is on vacation until September.

Ricky Sirois’ Universal Crossword “Take Your Positions!” — Eric’s Review

Player positions from four sports are used to clue non-sports answers such that the overall combination is a bit punny:

• 17A [Point guard?] SUIT OF ARMOR Basketball I get the “guard” part of the clue, but I’m not sure how the “point” fits in.
• 34A [Goalkeeper?] VISION BOARD Soccer or hockey I like this one, maybe because it’s the best pun of the bunch. Maybe it’s that I don’t remember ever seeing that answer in a puzzle before. Or maybe it just that it conjures up a vision of a corporate environment that I fortunately never had to work in (though the state agency I worked for did eventually adopt a mission statement).
• 41A [Linebacker?] UNION MEMBER Football I also like this one, though I find it depressing that union membership in the United States now is less than half of what it was when I was born.
• 

  % of employed US workers with union membership. Source: OECD Data, Trade Union Dataset

  60A [Shortstop?] COFFEE BREAK Baseball

These are all fine answers, but once again, the theme didn’t help me solve the puzzle. A few crosses here and there and the theme answers were obvious from the letter patterns. (There was at least one theme answer clue I didn’t read until I was finished.)

The rest of the grid is well-filled, with some nice stuff, some very common stuff, and nothing too offensive. Highlights and mid-lights:

• 1A [Williams who won an Oscar for “Good Will Hunting”] ROBIN I’m never too proud to take a gimme as the first answer.
• 14A [Many a science-fiction character] ROBOT Not ALIEN.
• 52A [Family name on “Bluey”] HEELER I had no idea on this one, but (1) I am not a preschooler and (2) I haven’t spent much time with preschoolers since my little sister was one (and Monday would have been her 60th birthday).
• 64A [Islamic sacred text: Var.] KORAN The “Var.” threw me for a bit because KORAN is the transliteration of ٱلْقُرْآن‎ that I grew up with. But apparently QURAN or QU’RAN is more common now.
• 3D [Cheese or peanut butter, in a mousetrap] BAIT We lived in our previous house for 20 years before rats moved into the attic. We kept a jar of peanut butter around specifically for baiting traps. I don’t miss dealing with that.
• 10D [Genius] BRILLIANCE I lost a little time because I thought the clue wanted a person, not a quality.
• 25D [Zhuzh] LIVEN I picked up “zhuzh” a few years ago, but was interested to learn just now where it comes from. My dictionary says it’s from the 1960s, probably from “Polari,” which it defines as “a form of slang incorporating Italianate words, rhyming slang, and Romani, used originally as a kind of secret language in England by people in theatres, fairgrounds, markets, etc. and adopted by some gay people in the 20th century.” Crosswords are so educational sometimes!
• 28D [French pastry shop] PATISSERIE There’s a nice one where we live now, run by an actual Frenchman.
• 42D [Home entryway used for removing shoes] MUDROOM I lived much of my childhood in Vermont. Our house there had a laundry room just off the door from the garage that had lots of space for wet boots and winter coats. Very convenient. I wish I had one now.

Ben Zimmer’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Difficulty: Average (10m53s)

Today’s theme: FRUITLESSLY (In vain … or how to read the answers to 17-, 25-, 49- and 58-Across)

• TOP EARNERS, minus the PEAR
• IMPEACHED, minus the PEACH
• ROMAN GODS, minus the MANGO
• PROBLEM ONE, minus the LEMON

Struggled a little in the lower middle, as I had DREGS and STOAT (and then STOLE) before finally settling on DROSS and SABLE.  Also had SELF CONTROL before COMMAND, I WANT IT before I NEED IT, etc.  Understandable miscues everywhere!

Cracking: SOOTHSAYERS

Slacking: GAMIN | GRAVER

Sidetracking: any excuse to remember VLAD swinging at (and hitting!!) a ball that bounced in front of the plate

Simeon Seigel & Rich Proulx’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Long Gone” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: Phrases can be imagined wackily if you replace their short vowel sounds with long ones

THEME ANSWER:

• 16A [Subway’s destiny > Booster of bad cholesterol] TRANS FAT… which could’ve been TRAIN’S FATE
• 20A [Pursues pinnipeds > Classic ad maxim] SEX SELLS… not SEEKS SEALS
• 32A [Web designer’s concern > Stop fidgeting] SIT STILL… from SITE STYLE, of course
• 42A [Gray-brown memos > Man buns] TOP KNOTS… instead of the ever-so-common TAUPE NOTES
• 51A [Condemn Skywalker > Random chance] DUMB LUCK… let’s not DOOM LUKE today
• 59A [Grew sentimental, or what the vowels did in answers to the paired clues] WENT SOFT

Very cool wordplay today with an excellent AHA revealer, which for me turned every themer into its own little AHA moment. Six themers in this grid with only 74 words and filled quite nicely with lots of interesting answers and clues. Super impressive.

It’s a bit odd to have the “straight answer” making the appearance in the puzzle rather than having the “wackified answer.” We’re asked to imagine not the base phrase, but the phrase that undergoes wackification. Seems backwards, but that’s the only way the theme will work. Otherwise the vowel patterns don’t really make sense, and of course neither does the revealer.

Huge bonus points for the themers making changes to A E I O U in that order.

TOP KNOTS was (I think?) new for me as a reference to a hair bun, and TAUPE NOTES feels a bit more forced than the others, but I’ll take it. The other ones are fantastic.

NEW TO ME / THINGS I FORGOT / TOUGH STUFF

• [Meeting with lots of pointers?] BLAME STORM. New to me to the point that I thought this might be a theme answer.
• [Anti-corporate creative movement POPAGANDA. Never heard of this either.
• [Gossip] for LOOSE TALK – not a phrase I’ve heard either. I’ve heard of LOOSE LIPS (those ship sinkers…) but not LOOSE TALK. Bizarre to have three long (interesting!) fill pieces that are new to me!
• CAL Raleigh. If it’s not ELI Manning, chances of me retaining sports names are close to nothing.
• [The largest collection of them is found in Paris’s Musée Marmottan] MONETS. Fun fact!
• [Recon unit] PATROLS. I was thinking along the lines of INTEL or SECRET, etc.
• [Go fast, briefly] SPRINT. I don’t understand the “briefly” part of this clue.
• [It’s needed when up past nine] TENS PLACE. I’m giving side-eye to this clue/answer pair. I’m not sure why, but I am.

I really struggled with the SW / NE corners, the latter taking me considerably longer. Once I finally sussed out INHERIT for [Come into] rather than some kind of ENTER variation, that helped considerably. PATROL was tricky and between TIFF, RIFT, and SPAT I had no clue which 4-letter quibble we were looking for. MOHAIR was not easy for me either.

It was perfect bite for a Thursday though. This was extremely well crafted imo. 4.75 Stars. Loved it.

Fantastic title too!

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1807 “No Skips” — Eric’s Review

I’ve mentioned several times lately that I’m not fond of themes that don’t really contribute to my solving experience. This was one of those themes, but I sort of liked it anyway. (Who said I have to be consistent?)

To make the theme answers fit the clues, we have to “skip” the NO in some common phrases:

• 17A [Smelly bad habit] RANK NOVICE
• 24A [Draw a conclusion at Studio 54?] DISCO INFERNO If you don’t recognize this song title from 1976, it was a hit Number One hit for the Trammps. But possibly, Brendan was thinking of a 50 Cent song from 2006. Or a professional wrestler who used that as his stage name. Take your pick. I’m not too crazy about DISCO INFER, which doesn’t sound like English to me.
• 40A [Team leader whose time expires every 60 minutes?] HONORARY CAPTAIN I wasn’t familiar with that phrase, but it looks like the most common use is in sports, when a player is named captain in the absence of the actual captain’s absence from the field or court. I also think it’s the weakest theme answer, but maybe that’s just sour grapes because I also didn’t know the word HORARY (“relating to hours as measurements of time”).
• 51A [Team leader whose time expires every 60 minutes?] SNOWING UNDER
• 64A [What pianist Amos’s kids’ kids call her?] GRAN TORINO Wikipedia tells me that Tori Amos has been married to a sound engineer named Mark Hawley for over 25 years and that they have one daughter born in 2000. No mention of grandkids, though.

Other stuff:

• 14A [Author Huxley] ALDOUS It always irks me to skip a gimme because I’m jumping around the grid, which is what I did here. I read Huxley’s Brave New World decades ago and don’t remember much about it other than the drug “soma.”
• 20A [“That’s a ___!”] BIG IF Thirty second lost to BIG NO.
• 32A [Actress Mindy] COHN One of those where I had no idea until I saw the answer and thought, “Yeah, I’ve heard of her.” Though she has a long career, I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything.
• 50A [___ Jazz Masters] NEA It’s an award, not a band, one that I hadn’t heard of.  I’m not a huge jazz fan, but the list of honorees is impressive.
• 4D [Writing that repurposes established characters] FAN FIC I’m amused by the idea that there’s a whole subgenre of homoerotic fan fiction — stuff like Star Trek‘s Kirk and Spock as lovers. But I expect most of the writing is pretty bad.
• 5D [Chess rating letters] ELO Created by a Hungarian chess master and physicist, Arpad Elo, probably in the 1940s (the internet is not helping me out here). I used to play online Scrabble and had an Elo rating for that game; it was fun seeing it go up.
• 7D [___-disant] SOI French for “self-styled.” I like it! I’m going to start calling myself a “soi-disant crossword critic.”
• 8D [Stanley of the “Hunger Games” movies] TUCCI I’m not sure I knew he was in those movies, but he was great in Big Night, The Devil Wears Prada, It Could Happen to You and lots of other things I have seen.
• 10D [Swearing-off phrase] NEVER AGAIN
• 12D [Muse depicted wearing a wreath of myrtle] ERATO Hands up if you see “muse” in a clue and automatically enter ERATO.
• 55D [Play with robots?] R.U.R. A stage play from 1920 by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. If it’s not in your crossword vocabulary, it should be.

Joe Marangell’s LA Times Crossword – Gareth’s theme summary

Today features five long answers ending in a noun meaning, roughly, a study session. Each one is tied by the first part to a specific discipline. So:

• [Biology course content?], LIFELESSON
• [Aviation course…], PILOTSTUDY
• [Basic training…], PRIVATEPRACTICE
• [Government…], POWERDRILL
• [Sports management], COACHCLASS

Gareth

Dena R. Verkuil’s USA Today Crossword, “Job Openings” — Emily’s write-up

You’re hired! When can you start?

Theme: the first word (aka “opening) of each themer can be succeeded with –JOB to form a new phrase

Themers:

• 20a. [Personal affairs, preferably kept private], DIRTYLAUNDRY
• 39a. [Storytelling technique that may consist of a fantasy or vision], DREAMSEQUENCE
• 58a. [Analog planner], DESKCALENDAR

A mix of themers today with DIRTYLAUNDRY, DREAMSEQUENCE, and DESKCALENDAR. With the theme, we get DIRTY JOB, DREAM JOB, AND DESK JOB. Also a fun bonus that they all begin with D–!

Favorite fill: SORRRYIASKED, TIG, and PSEUDO

Stumpers: HASSLE (misdirected by cluing), ALOOF (needed crossings today), and APED (new to me)

Trickier cluing that usual for me. How about for you all? None of the entries were difficult, once filled in, but for some reason many of the clues just weren’t clicking for me today. Overall still a pretty smooth flow and a fun grid too!

3.5 stars

~Emily