Thursday, September 4, 2025

BEQ 10:12 (Eric) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) [3.50 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
LAT tk (Gareth) [3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:30 (ZDL) [3.12 avg; 13 ratings] rate it
Universal 6:24 (Eric) [3.19 avg; 8 ratings] rate it
USA Today 10:15 (Emily) [2.17 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
WSJ 7:09 (Jim Q) [3.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it

Peter Gordon’s Fireball Crossword, “Themeless 181” – Jenni’s write-up

Must be unofficial autumn. The Fireball is back from its summer hiatus. This one was fairly challenging for me – there was one crossing that was nearly a Natick. I persevered!

Some highlights:

• I always look at the NW and SE of Peter’s themelesses to see if he’s tossed in something entertaining. Sure enough: 14a [Even a little] is ONE IOTA and 62a [Most populous city in New York’s Otsego County] is ONEONTA.
• 16a [Moses, e.g.] is HURDLER. Edwin, not Moshe Rabbeinu.
• Rocks for Jocks showed up in another puzzle I did today. In that one it was part of the answer; this time it was part of the clue. 18a [“Rocks for Jocks” subject] is GEOLOGY.
• 21d [“___ will attend” and “___ will not attend” might appear on it] is REPLY CARD. I raised an eyebrow at this because I think of them as RSVP cards. Ngram Viewer does not agree with me. REPLY CARD was far more common for years and now both have died out, which makes sense because nobody RSVPs anymore.
• Things I learned from “Chopped” include 61a [Jamón ___(pork delicacy)]. It’s IBERICO.

What I did not know before I did this puzzle: the near-Natick was the crossing of 33a [Liquid acetaminophen brand] and 27d [Female: distaff:; male: ___]. The answers are PAINQUIL and SPEAR, respectively.

Freddy Cheng’s Universal Crossword “Do Me a Flavor” — Eric’s Review

A punny theme, with four phrases that incorporate the classic basic taste sensations, plus a revealer:

• 19A [Nanny’s scheduling clash?] SITTER CONFLICT Bitter
• 26A [Beer-soaked frank?] MALTY DOG Salty That answer amuses me a bit.
• 33A [Post nightmares in 2022, say?] TWEET DREAMS Sweet Maybe it’s just that I’m really tired, but I read “post” as the opposite of “pre” and didn’t recognize it as a verb until just now.
• 41A [Gloomy kitty?] DOUR PUSS Sour This one doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve always understood that “dour” rhymes with “tour,” not “hour.” But apparently so many people mispronounced it that the hour-rhyming pronunciation is considered acceptable. That’s how languages evolve, much as it might exasperate us.
• 51A [Evolving preferences, and a clue to the starts of 19-, 26-, 33- and 41-Across] CHANGING TASTES That’s a nice repurposing of that phrase.

It would have been interesting to see the fifth basic taste, umami, worked into this grid. Since there don’t seem to be any words that would have worked, I’m OK without it.

Other stuff:

• 31A [IX – VI] III I saw that clue and tuned out, never realizing the first number was larger than the second and that there was a minus sign in the middle. Simple arithmetic in Roman numerals.
• 40A [Toronto Raptors’ org.] NBA I know they’re a basketball team, but I had them playing hockey anyway.
• 62A [Mean smile] SNEER I’d always thought of a sneer as an expression in a category of its own, but my dictionary says it’s a smile.
• 9D [Many a note recipient?] SELF Too, too true, in my case.
• 10D [Rules for government duties?] TAX CODES That’s a mildly cute clue, playing on two meanings of “duties.” As a former legislative lawyer, though, I have to say there are few things that will cure insomnia faster than a tax code.
• 20D [Dedicatee of a Beethoven piano piece] ELISE At first, I couldn’t remember the name of Beethoven’s most famous bagatelle — a piece I’ve heard many times — and then I somehow mistyped it.

Colin Ernst’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Difficulty: Easy (7m30s)

Today’s theme: DOES IT SCALE (Investor’s question for a start-up, to which 3-, 8-, 35- and 49-/7-Down reply “Yes!”‘)

• REBMILC KCOR
• NAMREDIPS
• REHSAW WODNIW
• ENIV EPARG

Got (SPIDER MAN) in short order, after a moment of confusion wherein I wondered whether Stan Lee was rehashing some old chestnut by Benjamin Franklin — but figured we were working in reverse, jumped to the revealer, and (after years of idly watching Shark Tank), plugged in DOES IT SCALE.  Yes they do, works for me!

Cracking: The clue on BABE RUTH (Baseball great who said “If I’d just tried for them dinky singles I could’ve batted around .600”)

Slacking: BATIK, I’ve always hated how this looks and have never heard someone say this word aloud (ba-TEEK? BAH-tick?)

Sidetracking: “With great power…”

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1815 “Why Can’t Both Sides Be True?” — Eric’s Review

Surely I’m not the only experienced crossword solver who finishes a themed puzzle, looks at the theme answers, and wonders what the fuck is going on. It’s one thing to see a theme that’s not helpful to your solving, but it’s another to see one that doesn’t make any sense even when the grid is correctly filled. This theme fell into the latter category, but in the course of writing this, I’ve mostly figured it out.

Here’s today’s wacky theme answers:

• 17A [Most unexciting Hawkeye State?] TAMEST IOWA If you don’t know the sobriquet “Hawkeye State,” you haven’t done enough crossword puzzles. The same is true if you don’t know the fine city of Ames, home to Iowa State University. (Maybe I do know what’s going on here?) 
• 28A [Heartburn medicine that works in tiny spaces only?] TAGAMET OF INCHES A game of inches A minute’s worth of internet research tells me this phrase refers to any kind of sportsball, where a small increment can make a big difference. I’ll buy that, and attribute my ignorance to the fact that I hardly ever watch any sports.
• 44A [With 57-Across, service just a little further along this street?]/57A [See 44-Across] TEA SET ON DOWN THE/ROAD Once I had that answer, it was obviously a play on the song “Ease on Down the Road” from the musical The Wiz. That didn’t help me until I figured out the first two theme answers. Now I see that it’s entirely consistent with those two.
• 58A [Post “9:00” and “5:00” on X?] TWEET HOURS Wee hours Maybe some day, I will read “X” in a clue and think of Twitter. I didn’t pay any attention to that social networking system before Elon Musk bought it, and I pay even less attention to it now. (I was somewhat surprised to learn just now that X is headquartered in Bastrop, Texas. When I moved to Austin in 1977, Bastrop was a sleepy little town on the way to Houston. Now it’s essentially suburban Austin, which is another reason that I no longer live there.)

So now that I understand the theme — take out the letter T to get common words and phrases — do I really need to understand the title? No. But if you have an idea of what it means, please share it.

It’s a theme. It’s consistent. It’s wacky.

Other stuff:

• 1A [Intro to Greek?] HARD G Not the answer I expected, but as often as I’ve seen these phonetic clues, I rarely get them quickly.
• 16D [Battle of Endor critter] EWOK That overly-long, overly-cute battle scene was the nadir of a trilogy that peaked with The Empire Strikes Back.
• 19A [“___ Is On My Side” (Rolling Stones hit)] TIME Pure gimme and a pretty good song, though I really prefer the Mick Taylor years.
• 40A [Funny smell] ODOR Not FUNK. The crossing 32D HADN’T fixed that. In honor of my colleague pannonica, I am obliged to observe that ODOR is a neutral term for a smell.
• 48A [Singer-songwriter Kershaw] NIK I’m familiar with Doug Kershaw and Sammy Kershaw, but NIK is new to me. He’s been around for a long time, but none of the songs listed in the intro to his Wikipedia entry evoke any tunes in my head. (Love the mullet, Nik.)

• 49A [Like some U-boat-targeted weapons] ANTI-SUB Wouldn’t all weapons aimed at a U-boat be “anti-sub”? (If you’re ever in Chicago, a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry, which has the captured German sub U-505, is worth a few hours.)
• 53A [Cologne cooler] EIS Clueing foul! That ought to be Köln (but then, no one would have thought of fragrances).
• 8D [Mid-Atlantic convenience store chain] WAWA I knew this was the answer, but blanked on the name. We lived in one of the Philadelphia Main Line suburbs when I was in the eighth grade, but I don’t remember seeing any Wawa stores where we lived.
• 9D [“F1” star] BRAD PITT There’s an FI track between Austin and Bastrop. That’s another reason I moved away.
• 18D [Laundry room brand] TIDE We’ve been using Tide detergent for several years. Just the other day, I was thinking of the number of household brands such as Tide that you would have found in my childhood home. Anyone else buy stuff because that’s what your mom used?
• 27D [Radio personality Martinez nicknamed “The Voice of New York”] ANGIE Not ANGEL. OK, she’s been around a long time, and has national exposure for her other talents, but regional radio hosts?
• 28D [Actress Davis] GEENA Line ’em up in terms of talent: BETTE, VIOLA, GEENA.
• 31D [Area of personal growth?] FIELD I’m not sure I really understand this clue, which contributed to my slow performance in the middle of the grid.
• 39A [Persian backdoors] CAT BUTTS Thanks, Brendan, for that lovely image.

As an aside: Solving puzzles in The New York Times Games app has spoiled me. AcrossLite  folks, please add highlighting to answers that cross-reference each other. Thanks.

Beth Rubin & Will Nediger’s USA Today Crossword, “D3 Swimming Finals” — Emily’s write-up

Suit up!

Theme: the last word (aka “final”) of each themer is a swimming term

Themers:

• 20a. [Bowlful made with hearts], ARTICHOKEDIP
• 36a. [Impressive basketball shot that requires a high vertical jump], ONEHANDEDDUNK
• 54a. [Salvage waste], DUMPSTERDIVE

What a variety of themers in this set today. ARTICHOKEDIP took me much longer to get, though the cluing is spot on once filled in. ONEHANDEDDUNK was tricky since sports knowledge isn’t a strong topic for me. I was misdirected by the great cluing for DUMPSTERDIVE, focusing on an object instead of an action. With the theme, we get DIP, DUNK, and DIVE. Each start with a “D” as well, per the title hint. Also, they are progressive too, with slowly going deeper with each one as the themers proceed down then grid as well. Nicely done!

Favorite fill: REUBEN, DRIPDRY, SNOOTS, and AIRPLAY

Stumpers: DUOS (needed crossings but excellent cluing), ATP (new to me), and AAS (also needed crossings)

A fun puzzle with cluing that was a bit challenging for me. Overall, fresh fill with fair crossings. I enjoyed the grid design as well.

4.0 stars

~Emily

Thomas van Geel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “That’s a Wrap” — Jim Q’s write-up

THEME: The right side should connect with the left side for entries to make sense. Imagine it as a “tube” if you will.

THEME ANSWERS:

• 15A: [Squandered, as youth] MISS / PENT (from the left side) = MISSPENT
• 19A [Bucolic] PAST / ORAL = PASTORAL
• 33A [Junco’s cousin] SPAR / ROW = SPARROW
• 41A [She duetted with Whitney on “It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be”] ARE / THA = ARETHA
• 46A [Park gathering] PIG / EONS = PIGEONS
• 62A [Snap cuffs on, say] REST / RAIN = RESTRAIN
• 66A [Like some ink] ERAS / ABLE = ERASABLE
• 7D [With 45-Down, “Radical, dude!” (and a hint to this puzzle’s shape)] TOTALLY TUBULAR!

A revealer so ridiculous in both it’s dated nature and the overall concept that it’s fantastic.

Apologies for the late write-up. I’m back to school and I totally forgot. 20 years teaching and it’s still a complete whirlwind, which is how it will be until next June.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I saw the revealer clue early and knew that the puzzle had a “shape” so I was on guard.  Having entered LYRIC rather than HIGH C [Singer’s challenge] I wrote in LIT ON instead of HIT ON and PETTY instead of GETTY, which caused a mess… and that mess I chalked up to a theme I would figure out later, fully confident that LIPHC must be correct in the 5D position. In my defense, the clue [Singer’s challenge] is more universally true to recall a lyric than to hit a HIGH C. I know more than few singers who can hit that C no prob. If it said [Alto’s challenge] then I’d agree.

Didn’t stymie enjoyment though. Clever puzzle. The fact that there’s not just a [dash] for the second half is nice, and the first half is still a valid crossword entry even though that’s not the word being clued.

NEW TO ME: 

• [Luxury cashmere company] TSE. Not just half of a dangerous fly anymore.
• [Massenet opera] THAIS. It’s in the doldrums of my brain somewhere. Hard to recall what vowel belonged in the I’s place.
• [Limited support?] RAILS. I don’t get this one.

Clever I DO clue today! [Answer after two rings?] Nice to see something fresh for that common entry!

Nicely done. 4 stars. Fun solve.