BEQ 7:29 (Eric) 
[2.50 avg; 2 ratings] rate it
Fireball untimed (Jenni) 
[3.33 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 5:21 (Gareth) [2.50 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
NYT 7:46 (ZDL) 
[3.02 avg; 23 ratings] rate it
Universal 6:36 (Eric) [3.00 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
USA Today 11:03 (Emily) [2.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
WSJ untimed (Jim Q) 
[2.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it
Joseph Avdek’s Universal Crossword “Getting Full” — Eric’s Review
Congratulations to Joseph Avdek for what appears to be his debut puzzle in a publication covered by Diary of a Crossword Fiend! I noticed the two pairs of circled letters in each theme answer, but didn’t register what letters went into those squares. I’m not sure that mattered at all, as this was easy to solve as a themeless puzzle:
- 20A [Accepts one’s fate] FACES THE MUSIC
- 25A [Move in the wrong direction] FALSE STEP
- 45A [Self-serving option for many people] FAMILY STYLE Hmm. I’m not sure that’s the term I’d use for the self-serving option being exercised at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
- 58A [Morning presentation? … or a theme hint] BREAKFAST SPREAD The “theme hint” comes from reading BREAKFAST as BREAK FAST; the circled letters pair FA and ST with several letters between each pair. I have to say, though, that an array of breakfast foods is not what I picture when I think of “morning presentation.”
It’s a commonly-seen theme, but it works well here, as the first three theme answers are fun to see in a grid. I’m not particularly fond of grids with vertical symmetry; those L-shapes on the sides of the fourth, fifth and six rows look like arms to me, making the whole grid look a bit like an insect.
Other stuff:
- 1A [Design detail, for short] SPEC/5A [What a perspective drawing creates the illusion of] DEPTH I’m not sure why 5A took me a bit to get. I majored in architecture for a while and learned how to write up specifications for a project and draft perspective drawings. The latter skill wasn’t too relevant when I ended up in law school a few years later.
- 19A [Kapoor of “Slumdog Millionaire”] ANIL If you’ve never seen that 2008 Best Picture Oscar winner, it’s pretty funny. Or at least it was back then.
- 29A [Drag events] RACES I started entering that answer, then took it out because it could have been BALLS. Sometimes, your first instinct is right.
- 50A [Be short with] SNAP AT I do this more than I would like.
- 64A [February 17, 2026, in Vietnam] TET I’m embarrassed to admit that I reached my 40s thinking that “Tet” was a place in Vietnam. I may have learned the truth from solving a crossword.
- 4D [Places for calicoes and cappuccinos] CAT CAFÉS I’d have done better to read the whole clue here. I saw “cappuccinos” and immediately put COFFEE in, having never noticed the felines.
- 42D [Shoot a smug look] SMIRK That’s just one of my many talents.
- 43D [Junction between neurons] SYNAPSE I feel like I don’t see this often in grids, and I wonder why. The letters look fairly easy to grid around.
51D [Something to remember from history class] ALAMO I suppose it could have been MAINE (which sounds even weirder without the definite article than ALAMO does). I lived in Texas for almost 50 years and the closest I ever got to the Misión San Antonio de Valero in what’s now downtown San Antonio was the plaza in front of it. I suppose I should be ashamed of that, but I’m not.- 56D [Vet’s condition, maybe] PTSD I’m beginning to tire of this kind of clue. People other than veterans may have post-traumatic stress disorder, such as assault victims or survivors of motor vehicles collisions.
Howard Neuthaler’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Easy (7m46s)
Howard Neuthaler’s New York Times crossword, 10/30/25, 1030
Today’s theme: DEFYING / GRAVITY (With 68-Across, “Wicked” song suggested by the answers to the seven starred clues (and whose singer is spelled by the circled letters reading from left to right))
- E/L/P/H/A/B/A from the theme entries, rising to the top
Probably in the minority of people (having never seen Wicked in any format) so the score is a total mystery to me, but I know enough to recognize the green-skinned E/L/P/H/A/B/A circles are DEFYING GRAVITY (so to speak.)
Cracking: TAHOE a.k.a. Xanadu
Slacking: RESTAFF, what? That’s what Gandalf does when he breaks his walking stick. Runner up goes to the way that NOONEON looks in the grid. NEON?! NOO!! NOO NEON!!
Sidetracking: a TOAST
Peter Gordon’s Fireball Crossword “Themeless 183” – Jenni’s write-up
This time the first and last entries rhyme. It wasn’t the hardest FB themeless – still gave me a bit of a workout!
Fireball, October 29, 2024, Peter Gordon, “Themeless 183,” solution grid
- 1a [Singer with the album “YHLQMDLG”] is BAD BUNNY.
- 59a [CNBC show hosted by Jim Cramer] is MAD MONEY. I’d bet that’s the first time those two were paired.
- 5d [Chimney currents] are UPDRAFTS. We might light the first fire of the season today.
- 38a [Heat thrower] is a FASTBALLER. I really wanted to connect this to Trey Yesavage who dominated the Dodgers last night in Game 5 of the World Series. My quick dive into the stats suggests that Yesavage’s out pitch is his overhead split, not his fastball. Oh, well.
- 26a [Compulsive eating of ice] is PAGOPHAGIA. That word was residing somewhere in the depths of my memory of medical school. I do remember that PAGOPHAGIA is a symptom of iron deficiency.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: as usual for a Peter Gordon themeless, that category could be its own blog post. I’d never heard of that BAD BUNNY or the actor Alison PILL. Since I’m not the one in the family who memorized the periodic table for fun, I also didn’t know that SAMARIUM is a member of the lanthanide series.
Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Spirited Away” — Jim Q’s write-up
THEME: Words that mean “story” are “missing” from the grid (the crossing downs only make sense if you imagine the “story” words aren’t there)
THEME ANSWERS:
- SMART ALECK
- PLAYS A GAME
- EDDY ARNOLD
WSJ • 10/30/25 • Thur • “Spirited Away” • Mike Shenk • solution • 202510230 **WITH COMPLETELY FILLED GRID**
- [Campfire entertainment, and a hint to some vanishing in the Down answers] GHOST STORY.
Spooky season has hit CrossWorld with full force this week! Mike Shenk brings us this spine-chilling grid chock full of Halloween-y clues and some conspicuously missing letters in the grid. Specifically TALE, SAGA, YARN, and STORY from the longer thematic entries. The downs seem to ignore their ghostly existence and only make sense if those letters are not there. So instead of ABLE for [Prez #16], the answer is ABE– ignoring the L altogether.
We’ve seen this idea before, though I’d rather not bring up the last time I remember seeing it in the WSJ puzzle. Comparatively, this is much more palatable, playful and fun. It’s above the typical word count with 80, but that’s understandable given that the affected down crossings need to make sense with or without the missing letter.
HICCUPS / NEW-TO-ME THINGS / MUSINGS
- [Coffin contents] BODY. Oddly morbid by crossword standards.
-
WSJ • 10/30/25 • Thur • “Spirited Away” • Mike Shenk • solution • 202510230 **WITH STORY WORDS MISSING**
[Haunt] OBSESS. Fun clue, given the theme.
- [Cold front?] CEE. CEE is at the “front” of the word “COLD“
- [Protagonist of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Water Dancer”] HIRAM. I know what “Protagonist” means… but that’s about the only thing in this clue.
- [Lucasf ilm’s effects co.] ILM. New to me.
- [Astronomer Carl] SAGAN. Bizarre that this is right below the missing SAGA.
- [Singer with over 140 songs on the Billboard country music charts] EDDY ARNOLD. Based on the clue, you’d think I’d know something about EDDY. I do not.
4 stars from me!
Adam Simpson’s USA Today Crossword, “Paranormal Sightings” — Emily’s write-up
A spooky puzzle for Halloween Eve.
USA Today, October 29, 2025, “Paranormal Sightings” by Adam Simpson
Theme: the first word of each themer is a synonym for a specter
Themers:
- 20a. [Digital display?], SPIRITFINGERS
- 37a. [2017 Daniel Day-Lewis period drama about a dressmaker], PHANTOMTHREAD
- 56a. [Food service businesses that only deliver], GHOSTKITCHENS
SPIRITFINGERS, PHANTOMTHREAD, and GHOSTKITCHENS.
Favorite fill: PAYSCASH, AFOOT, and SLEW
Stumpers: HAMS (misdirected–thought of a type not a descriptor), ANTISMOG (needed crossings), and NONET (new to me)
Loved the grid, theme and themer set, though I found the cluing tougher today. Everything was fairly crossed so even though some spots took me a while, I was still able to complete the puzzle. Still a fun solve! How’d you all do?
4.0 stars
~Emily
Betsy Ochester & Andrew Gutelle’s LA Times Crossword – Gareth’s summary
Today’s puzzle is sponsored by the folks at Kellogg’s… It’s a clue/answer reversing theme, with the first three long acrosses basically unclued except for a note saying to look at 51A. As it happens, SIMPLEFASTENER, FIREPLACESOUND and GRAMMYCATEGORY describe SNAPCRACKLEPOP. It’d be ideal to have a non-sound meaning of CRACKLE, but maybe nothing fit?
Gareth
Brendan Emmett’s Quigley’s Crossword #1831 “Spirited” — Eric’s Review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1832 “Spirited” — 10/30/25
When a crossword constructor’s website photo shows him drinking a beer, and when that constructor’s website formerly touted a collection of puzzles called something like “Drunk Puzzles,” it’s easy to assume that a puzzle titled “Spirited” has something to do with alcohol.
But no, instead, we get some punny answers on synonyms for a supernatural being:
- 17A [What a spirit wants in the divorce?] SOUL CUSTODY Sole . . . A real groaner.
- 27A [Spirit moving above everybody else?] GHOST TO THE TOP Goes . . . Meh.
- 44A [Spirit who starred in “Schindler’s List?”] WRAITH FIENNES Ralph . . . This is my favorite because (1) it helps if the solver knows how Brits pronounce the name “Ralph”; (2) it helps if the solver is a least a little familiar with one of Steven Spielberg’s best movies; and (3) it’s the most amusing. I had a few letters of the last name and immediately knew it was the actor who rose to prominence playing the sadistic SS officer Amon Göth. Is it an advantage to be older when a clue is about a 32-year-old movie? Sure. But I’ll take whatever advantage I get.
- 59A [What’s part of a spirit’s workout?] GHOUL PUSH-UP I’ve spent five minutes trying to figure out the pun here. I give up. Any ideas?
As punny themes go, this is fine (except for the inscrutable to me 59A pun). It’s appropriate to run it on Hallowe’en’en. (I’ll be glad when my neighborhood is no longer decorated with inflatable pumpkins and life-size or larger skeletons. Skeletons seem particularly popular around here.)
Other stuff:
- 15A [“___ King” (Stallone series)] TULSA We’ve seen at least three series from the Tyler Sheridan factory, but not this one. Stallone has made my skin crawl since Rocky.
- 16A [Japan’s longest-serving prime minister] Shinzo ABE He led the Liberal Democratic Party from 2006–2020 and was assassinated in 2022 after he left office. I was surprised when he was killed because — well, I’m almost always surprised to read of shootings in liberal democracies like Japan.
- 20A [Proofreader’s catch] TYPO When I worked for the Texas Legislature, almost all our bill drafts went through the proofreaders down in the basement. I’m almost over the time that a proofreader caught a mistake that wasn’t a mistake and that led to the senator whose bill it was publicly castigating my colleagues over the error that the proofer’s catch put into the bill.
- 47A [Idol drawings, perhaps] FAN ART I did my share of those in my youth.
- 51A [It’s dropped in a flash] TROU Anyone but me think “It’s” ought to be “They’re”?
- 62A [Card in a phone] SIM I thought most cell phones made in the last few years had virtual SIM cards, but I’m sure there are some out there that have physical SIM cards.
- 64A [“Stiller & ___: Nothing Is Lost” (2025 documentary)] Anne MEARA Does referring to the film help anyone who’s unfamiliar with Stiller & Meara?
- 7D [Like kawaii characters] CUTE I thought I’d never heard of “kawaii” and assumed it was something akin to kanji or kana. Looking it up, I realize I’d seen it in a New Yorker crossword very recently. I must have subconsciously tried to block it from my memory.
- 10D [Wagers that something won’t happen] LAY BETS I don’t gamble (at least not in that sense) and hadn’t heard that term before. My 30 seconds of Googling found a usage in the dice game craps, but it doesn’t sound at all like this clue.
- 26D [Fleck who leads the Flecktones] BÉLA A gimme. I feel like I’ve see him in crosswords a lot in the last few years, even though his band has been around for the last 35 years.
- 28D [Well-endowed] HUNG This clue/answer pair annoys me. Anyone who thinks it means something relevant doesn’t know much about male genitalia.
- 32D [“They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” author ___ Abdurraqib] HANIF That title sounds vaguely familiar, but I had no idea who wrote it.
- 37D [Mans name that sounds like a roof section] YVES If you say so, Brendan.
- 40D [Mans name that sounds like a roof section [Eastern daylight time events] SUNRISES What — The sun doesn’t rise here in the Mountain time zone? Weird clue.
- 56D [Canary Islands currency] EURO I guessed this off the R, but in my sleep-deprived state, I had the Canaries in the Pacific, not The Atlantic. Tenerife North–Ciudad de La Laguna Airport in the Canary Islands was the site of a runway collision in 1977 that killed 583 passengers and crew. That’s the first time I remember hearing much about those islands and it’s been hard to forget.
- 61D [___ Heller (grumpy neighbor on “Only Murders in the Building”)] UMA I had no idea here. I’ve heard good things about that show, but we’re maxed out on streaming services.
NYT: Nice enough theme, but not especially tricky for a Thursday. I liked the fact that the theme entries were still legitimate words with the letter rearrangement. Odd to come across ELPHABA twice in one week (Monday’s TNY). Still couldn’t remember it (and I’ve seen the show)!
Liked the clues for HOTWIRE and GRAMP.
I’m not sure 22-A is technically correct, at least in Major League Baseball. Don’t they now start extra innings with a runner on second?
Yes they do, except in the postseason. It started in 2020 as a health measure due to the pandemic and was made permanent before the start of the 2023 MLB season.
Yes, and I was just at a Little League game where the extra innings started with bases loaded and one out so my initial guess of NONE OUT was also going to trigger a comment about being careful with “every”.
Coincidently Game 3 of the World Series just went to 18 innings and probably would have ended much earlier with the “ghost” runner rule.
I started with NONE OUT, too – until crosses suggested that I was “off base.” I coached a Little League team some 50 years ago, but never came across the “bases loaded, one out” thing. Interesting concept – I kind of like it.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2 stars
I’m in the group that hasn’t seen Wicked, which made the theme tougher. But no one’s going to know every piece of pop culture in the world, it’s fine, that’s not what IRKED me.
What IRKED me was the fill. Just a bunch of things not to like. ATON, AROAR, SOFTC, GOTATAN, OFAGE, plus the rhyming box set of NOONEON, LATERON, and IWON. Also maybe I don’t understand, but how is TOAST the answer to words (plural) after ding, ding, ding?
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
with you on the fill although liked the theme (and have not seen the show either)
ding ding ding is the clinking of the glass before giving a toast, I assume.
3 stars
I did come around on the theme in the end. Maybe I was just cranky. I was about as tired as Eric when I solved this last night and all that gunk got to me.
I thought it brilliant. Tough crowd.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 4.5 stars
One of the most well-constructed themes in a while. And I prefer crosswordese over sitcom actors in the 60s or sports players.
That said, NO ONE ON and LATER ON contain an inexcusable duplicate, and aesthetically I would like to ban NO ONE ON on all crosswords since it’s so hard to parse on the grid. NO O NEON? NOON EON?
Two instances of ON in a grid are among *the* most excusable duplicates. I’ve heard the Los Angeles Times doesn’t care for minor duplicates like this, but I’m sure I’ve done it multiple times by now and am extremely unlikely to ever notice it or care if I saw it another puzzle.
NYT: I was exhausted after dinner, a combination of a sleep deficit and a 13-mile bike ride on a brisk autumn afternoon. (It’s not so much the mileage as it is climbing all the hills around our neighborhood.)
But I had my review of the Universal puzzle to finish and post, so after cleaning up the kitchen and taking a shower, I plunked my tired self in front of our iMac.
While completing my Fiend tasks, I saw Zack’s review calling the Thursday NYT puzzle “easy.” His solving times and mine are typically pretty close, so I figured that meant I could knock the NYT out quickly and go to bed.
Nuh-uh.
A heretofore unappreciated danger of solving on a desktop computer (as opposed to an iPad, my usual device for puzzles I don’t plan on blogging): If you start nodding off while typing, you can fill every goddamn empty square with a D (first time) or a K (second time).
About 9, I was so tired that I my choices were to go to bed or sleep there at the desk. Except for the comfy bed part, it reminded me of some of my nights working for the Texas Legislature. (Some of the lawyers at my agency had something in their office they could sleep on: a couch or a cot, or, in my case, a self-inflating air mattress. I’ll spare you the reasons why we had to be in our offices and not at home getting some much-needed sleep. But if you really want to know, I’m happy to explain it.)
I had correctly filled about ¾ of the grid when I started falling asleep, but I hadn’t fully understood the trick behind the words in which the shaded circles appear.
I woke up after about four hours of sleep and knocked out the rest of the puzzle in a few minutes. Total time: A disappointing 18:00.
I actually like this theme. Wicked is a fantastic novel, an OK Broadway show (we saw the national touring company maybe 10 years ago), and a movie that was good enough that we’re looking forward to the conclusion of the story when it hits theaters next month). “Defying Gravity” is a good enough song for what it is (I’m not a big Broadway fan) and is the only song from the show I really remember unprompted.
The circled letters being at the top of each theme answer, having each theme answer be a valid word on its own (which I greatly appreciate), getting the theme answers in the correct order to spell ELPHABA — that all makes it harder to fill the grid without using some of the less-than-stellar fill this has. (I actually think the fill isn’t all that bad, but the duplicated ONs don’t bother me.)
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
I fell asleep reading your long post.
Thanks for letting me know.
Not nice!
I did read it all and would love to know why you needed sleeping accommodations in your offices! Something to do with billable hours?
You are a good and interesting writer, Eric.
Someday I’ll have to tell you about what happened with Landman and “Beverly” played by your sister-in-law. long story
Thank you, marciem!
I will expand on my weird yet wonderful-at-times job when I get a chance. I don’t miss it, but it was really the perfect legal job for me and I am lucky to have found it when I did.
I’d explain it now, but (1) I really should try to get back to sleep soon (it’s 2 AM here) and (2) I’m typing with only my left hand because I’m laying in bed.
“… because I’m laying in bed.”
TMI, dude ;-)
C’mon. Even Lucy and Ricky Ricardo had beds. Twin beds, but beds all the same. :-)
ok, you didn’t ask, and its the day after so hopefully nobody will see it, but I gotta spit it out…
You mentioned that your sister-in-law had a part in Landman, starting with Episode 7. Character named “Beverly”. Hubs and I were enjoying watching the show together, but a health issue hospitalized him when Episode 7 came on. So I couldn’t watch it. But my curiosity was flying. So I decided to peek until I saw “Beverly”.
Long story longer, at the very beginning of the episode, when the African-American nurse brings Cooper to his girlfriend’s car and Billy Bob is there, the very dark skinned nurse makes a comment about “Romeo and Juliet”. Billy Bob said… and I quote… “They died, Beverly”.
Ok, soooo… I know you are not African American, but I don’t know about your husband or his siblings. Nor about the spouses that any of your own siblings might have, who may be female African Americans…. So I left it at that, shut off the episode, and waited until me and my sweetie could watch together. Turns out the REAL Beverly is as you described, grandmotherly and a resident of an old folks home, NOT an A-A nurse.
I believe BillyBob made a slip in the dialog and they left it in for whatever reason TV people do that for. I just re-watched the beginning of that episode to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake
I completely missed Billy Bob Thornton’s flubbing his line. Yes, my sister-in-law plays the nursing home resident who, on one of their outings, is wearing a rainbow-colored clown wig. (Gail got to choose her costume for that scene.)
Yup I caught her after finding the real Beverly. I have no idea what the nurse’s characters name is.
So you neither confirm nor deny the possible A-A connections I mentioned? :D :D … j/k … that’s asking TMI about your private life. Guess what I’m asking is, is that Les’s sister or one of your sibling’s spouse?
marciem,
I got Gail’s character’s name from IMDb.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32798925/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cst_sm
She’s down towards the bottom of the list. She’s my brother’s widow.
Eric, it’s good to know I’m not alone about putting D’s in a crossword puzzle when I’m falling asleep! For me, it’s always D for some reason. It’s never been K or any other letter. I’m right handed, but I guess my left hand is sleep-dominant!
I often do crossword puzzles and other puzzles at night to relax, but sometimes that means I drift off to sleep, I think usually for just a few seconds but long enough to leave D’s in my puzzle. Last night, I fell asleep twice before I realized that I was ruining my Thursday time by not accepting reality and putting the puzzle away.
Even after I woke up, I had a lot of trouble with the SW and AROAR/PYRITE/ESCHEWS/GOTATAN/SOFTC. I even had trouble with OREOS! I don’t think of store-bought cookies as being dessert, although of course they certainly can be. But personally, I eat cookies as a snack at non-meal times, not as dessert. I see that some others at the Wordplay column are non-Oreo-dessert people as well.
Eric, why were your colleagues sleeping in the office rather than at home?
Thanks!
As I told marciem, I will write a bit more about my strange job as soon as I can.
I do appreciate the two of you asking. I can go on about my job for many paragraphs, though I promise to try to be as concise as I can while still communicating the essentials. (After almost 30 years of drafting statutes, I am pretty good at that.)
Marciem and Me: Since you so kindly asked about my job with the Texas Legislature: The structure and scheduling of Texas government hasn’t change much since 1876 when the constitution was written (and when Texas was a sparsely populated state with an agrarian economy). So its 31 million plus residents are governed by a legislature that meets in regular session only every other year and only from early January to around Memorial Day. So there’s a lot for the legislature to do in that six months, including adopting a two-year balanced budget.
I worked for the Texas Legislative Council in the Legal Division, drafting whatever bills, resolutions and other legislative documents other than the budget that the members directed us to draft. Most of the time, they wanted their documents ASAP, but as the legislative session was winding down in May, they really needed them quickly. Failure to have a “committee report” or a “conference committee report” of a bill could mean the bill would die (which is what happened to most of them). Since the stakes were high, attorneys working on high profile bills like public school finance or insurance reform sometimes needed to stay around the office waiting for drafting instructions. And we had a desk in the house of representatives chamber where we drafted amendments to bills being debated on the house floor. An attorney who had a significant bill scheduled for debate was generally expected to be around to draft any amendments.
Staying was often less frustrating than going home to get some food and rest and be called back to the office almost as soon as you got home.
All of this was before COVID. While some work could be done from an attorney’s home, most of the time, we needed to be in the office. (We had an extensive review process and it was easier to do that face-to-face.)
So attorneys often had something in their office to sleep on, be it a couch, a cot or an air mattress.
I was almost always involved with some important bill at the end of the session. During the month of May, I typically worked about 80 hours a week for three or four weeks in a row, sometimes with only a few days off. By June, I was exhausted (especially as I got older). The actual work of drafting statutes suited my personality well; for example, I’m usually pretty detail-oriented. It was (at least for a while) a bit exciting to be involved with issues that affected the lives of so many people.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1.5 stars
I’m guessing that most NYT Xword folks never saw the theme’s musical Wicked since it appeals to a different audience.
I also think the fill was unpolished.
Interesting speculation regarding the NYT XW demographic. I would have guessed the opposite. I would think this audience would have greater awareness of and/or interest in the arts – and so, might be more likely to have seen the play or movie than the average person.
Maybe I’m “projecting” – my wife and I have seen the stage show (a touring company – we’re in the Midwest) and she has seen the movie version.
I also assumed a majority of NYT solvers would have either a) read the book, b) seen the play, or c) saw the movie by this point.
That’s a fair assumption, Zack. Just looking at the film, Wikipedia says it grossed $756.4 million worldwide and was the fifth-highest grossing film of 2024. 10 Oscar nominations.
I get that it doesn’t appeal to everyone. If you’re able to stay awake reading my earlier comment, you’ll see that I’m not as big a fan of the musical or the movie as I was the book.
But if it’s trivia that’s not worthy of being the basis of a crossword puzzle theme, then we might as well give up on pop culture themes.
Well, I don’t have to like it, and it barred my coming close to completing the puzzle. It became a trivia night during the day. I didn’t have the revealer as song title to help make sense of the seven altered words, so I was in deep trouble, between that and the unrelated fill others have complained about. I was actually hoping for (and in need of) an explanation here.
I had seen the name before, of course, just recently with TNY, but failed to make a point of remembering it, and it looked completely new to me. I dismissed it at the time as just more of a Natan Last litany of dumb stuff.
It’s an interesting question about what percentage of Americans know the name Elphaba. I think the percentage who are familiar with it would be much higher for NYT crossword solvers than for the general population.
About 15.3 million tickets have been sold for Wicked on Broadway and about 65 million worldwide. Around 40 million tickets were sold in the US for the movie. The novel has sold 5 million copies.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1 star
Trivia junk does not a puzzle make.
WSJ: Very pleasantly surprised to solve the puzzle today and realize that they FINALLY updated their solving interface! It’s almost a pleasure now, especially thinking back to how slow and clunky it used to get (particularly when the puzzle was almost completely filled).
It took me a while, but I was delighted when I finally got the idea. For a long time I saw that my answer to many entries had too few letters, but I had no idea which entries were needful or why. So nice. Shading or circles would have given away too much.
I will have to check the WSJ interface out. It was long my least favorite one to use.
Big thanks to Martin for making the WSJ puzzles available as .PUZ files. That has saved me tons of time and frustration when I have filled in for pannonica on the Saturday WSJ puzzles.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3.5 stars
The fill wasn’t great, but I liked the theme well enough. (I was going to rate the puzzle lower because it was too easy, but it’s not the creator’s fault that the NYT editors put this on Thursday instead of Wednesday.)
Today’s NYT was elegant and creative (and any criteria for a topic that is worthy of a crossword theme surely must encompass a movie/musical that made $750 million worldwide and has been on Broadway for 22 years).
I’ve never seen Wicked (I don’t know whether that puts me in the minority or majority of solvers), but I thought the theme was cute, and the song title was easy enough to get even though I’ve never heard of it.
But I wasn’t thrilled with some of the fill and cluing. AROAR will never be a good answer, no matter how clued. GOTATAN is an EATASANDWICH kind of an answer, as Rex might say.
More significantly, I started my professional life as a theoretical physicist and spent my whole career in science-related work, and I have never ever ever heard the ratio 2pi referred to as TAU. Also, the word TREK comes to English from Dutch, the original connotation being the movement of settlers north from South Africa; they traveled by wagon. There’s nothing about TREK that signifies journeys on foot.
Finally, my Android devices respond better to ‘hey, google’ than they do to OKGOOGLE.
I went to play Spelling Bee this morning and noticed I could spell AROAR. I typed it in and was told it’s not a valid word.
Spelling Bee has never accepted AROAR, despite over 100 chances to take it.
Of all the A-whatever words, AROAR is one of the few that I can imagine actually using. AWASH, maybe. ATILT, not likely.
https://www.sbsolver.com/h/Aroar
For clarification: Sam (editor of Spelling Bee) selects particular words. The message you get if your valid word is not accepted says “Not on word list” (it doesn’t say or mean that it isn’t a valid word, its just not on his list).
The opener for the game isn’t clear that it is only selected words that make the cut. Once you accept those parameters, you can relax and enjoy the game.
In Sam’s defense (and given the amount of frustration he has caused me over my years of doing Spelling Bee, I am reluctant to come to his defense), I don’t think AROAR shows up in many dictionaries.
I’ve abandoned Spelling Bee and do the “Blossom” puzzle at Merriam-Webster’s website instead. Similar concept, except you just try to find the 12 highest-value words you can come up with – so it’s finite. And they accept almost any word that shows up in the M-W dictionary (I think there are a few words they reject as “objectionable”).
Accepting BILLIONTH but not NONILLIONTH bothered me. “The mass of the average chihuahua is one nonillionth the mass of the sun.” is a perfectly reasonable sentence, which I use all the time. Every time NOLITH appear in the Bee, in fact.
“The mass of the average chihuahua is one nonillionth the mass of the sun.”
I believe I heard someone mention that just last week, when I was waiting in line at a Starbucks! Were you in East Lansing last week, Martin? :-)
I was gobsmacked when billionth was accepted but nonillionth wasn’t, while nonillion was… but that’s how Sam does it sometimes. I just check my spelling and move on if my word is “not on word list” for the day. Its a game.
“Once you accept those parameters, you can relax and enjoy the game.”
I stopped playing Spelling Bee a couple of years ago because I got annoyed by all the good words that weren’t on Ezersky’s list. Since starting up again with it a year ago, I’m much less irritated by those omissions and only rarely email them over a “missing” word.
I think of words like AROAR and ATILT as crosswordese and their reliable absence from Spelling Bees as worth heeding. I would be happy never to see them again, but it’s anyone’s call, I suppose.
Random House Unabridged doesn’t include them, but MW online does. My print copy of MW Collegiate is is out of reach for now while some structural work on my apartment displaces its bookshelf. So I can’t tell you if the online version is larger and, if so, because it draws on the unabridged or caved when it comes to decent English.
Sam accepts ATILT.
ATILT is in the M-W 11. AROAR isn’t.
I was just amused that two games published by the same company have different standards for the same word on the same day.
It happens a lot. The editors have different needs. The fact that “aroar” isn’t in the MW11 supports Sam’s ruling that it’s obscure. On the other hand, all those vowels!
I saw a stage production of Wicked too many years ago to remember Defying Gravity, but when I see that title (which I think has shown up, at least as a clue, in crosswords before), Jesse Winchester’s song by that name starts going through my mind, and it’s a lovely earworm to have. I recommend that you check it out.
Nice suggestion!
I’m mostly familiar with Emmylou Harris’s version of “Defying Gravity.” It’s a great song.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1 star
horrid. Who cares about Wicked. Rest of it was crap.