Dave Rus’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Pea Soup”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases with first words normally starting with L, except now a P has been tacked on to the beginning.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Pea Soup” · Dave Rus · Wed., 7.24.24
- 18a. [Fat wad of bills?] PLUMP SUM.
- 24a. [Daredevil magnetism?] PLUCKY CHARM.
- 39a. [Advice for a football tackle or end?] PLAY IT ON THE LINE.
- 50a. [Advocate for the “Tao Te Ching”?] PLEAD THE WAY.
- 61a. [Charge for the breakage at a Greek wedding?] PLATE FEE.
A fine add-a-letter theme and I like the added constraint of having the original phrases start with L, otherwise the theme is too wide open. As it is, it’s still fairly loose, but it’s tighter than it would’ve been.
The title “Pea Soup” feels too generic, however. Also, when I think of soup, I tend to think of things all jumbled together in a mishmash, which is the opposite of having every entry start the same way. On the other hand, you could argue that pea soup is a “starter” before the main course, so that might hint at the P always showing up at the beginning.
The fill is mostly smooth, and I liked SQUARISH, LIE DOWN, and MEDUSA. I’m not so keen on TELL A FIB which feels much less in-the-language than “tell a lie.”
3.25 stars.
Shaun Phillips’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 7/24/24 – no. 0724
I was perlexed by the entries displaying in yellow, not seeing how they depicted a CLAW MACHINE GAME (that term for it seems … off), but it’s the black squares that show a claw dropping the black plus sign towards the exit. AMUSEMENT ARCADE doesn’t feel like a term I’ve ever seen (though it has a Wikipedia page), and “HOLD ON A MINUTE” doesn’t quite feel like the theme needs it. But yes, a CRANE OPERATOR would grasp the process of picking something up with a joystick-controlled claw, so that’s fun.
Fave fill: STUBHUB, INDY CAR, CAROTID, BRAND NEW, and HIT IT BIG. Not so keen on PIER ONE (the business was called Pier 1 Imports, not One) or RERINSE ([Clean again, as hair]? No. If you’ve rinsed the shampoo once, cleaning it again would be reshampooing).
Two interesting bits of fill:
- 3d. [Soccer org. that runs the Champions League], UEFA. European soccer. The top four teams in each key country’s professional league compete in the Champions League. The European soccer tournament that just finished up was national teams rather than league teams. (Talking to my husband while he’s driving to get this info.) Not entirely sure I’ve seen UEFA in a puzzle before, but it’s household knowledge here.
- 49d. [Fashion designer Cohn with an eponymous rhinestone-encrusted suit], NUDIE. A Nudie suit is not naked. If you don’t know Nudie’s work, check it out.
3.25 stars from me. Word to the wise: Save your money and don’t try your luck at the claw crane!
Aidan Deshong’s Universal crossword, “Creative Spelling” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 7/24/24 • Wed • “Creative Spelling” • Deshong • solution • 20240724
A theme with more than one layer.
- 16a. [*Type of Oreo with extra creme] DOUBLE STUF.
- 26a. [*”Stairway to Heaven” album, as it’s commonly known] LED ZEPPELIN IV.
- 46a. [*Resealable plastic pouches] ZIPLOC BAGS.
- 61a. [*Crowdsourced movie review website] LETTERBOXD.
- 67/68aR [… deceive, or a hint to how the spellings of the starred clues’ answers were formed?] FAKE | OUT. The letters F-A-K-E are missing from the ‘correct’ spellings of those elements: stuff, lead, -lock, -boxed.
Very nice.
- 5d [ __ Khan, founder of Khan Academy] SAL.
- 10d [Grill for too long] CHAR. Needs a ‘perhaps”-type qualifier?
- 37d [What a child may stand on] TIPPY-TOE. Deft how the invocation of a child distinguishes the answer from tiptoe or toe-tip.
- 1a [Spanish for “Enough!”] NO MÁS. I confidently filled in BASTA right off the bat.
- 41a [Spicy Mexican chip brand] TAKIS, which are unfamiliar to me.
- 50a [Chess pros, for short] GMS, grandmasters.
Michael Schlossberg’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
Michael Schlossberg’s puzzle today is ambitiously tightly defined: the central answer is PETPROJECTS, and three of four starred answers are things that one could build for a pet that can also be used metaphorically: PIGPEN, GOLDFISHBOWL, HAMSTERWHEEL… That’s a mighty specific pair of criteria to fulfill, and so, the fourth theme answer, CATNIP is noticeably different. The clue tries to pretend like growing CATNIP is like building the other three, but it’s a big stretch… Still, this is a refreshingly imaginative theme idea regardless of the imperfect execution.
Not much more to add. I do wonder if the more modern meaning of [1990s fad disc], POG, “excellent”, will appear any time soon?
Gareth
Katja Brinck & Matthew Brinck’s USA Today Crossword, “Airline Food” — Emily’s write-up
Catch a bite while solving!
USA Today, July 24, 2024, “Airline Food” by Katja Brinck & Matthew Brinck
Theme: each themer begins with the name of an airline and ends in a food
Themers:
- 20a. [Tex-Mex cook-off entry], SOUTHWESTCHILI
- 35a. [Bakery items based on Portuguese sweet bread], HAWAIIANROLLS
- 53a. [Versatile food known for being very meltable], AMERICANCHEESE
What a tasty trio of themers in today’s set! I had the end of SOUTHWESTCHILI before the first half. The only baked good that came to mind was an egg tart so HAWAIIANROLLS took me a few crossings. AMERICANCHEESE was the hardest of the three for me, since it’s not something I use (or even think of often) though the cluing is spot on, even though it seemed cryptic to start. With the theme, we get the airlines SOUTHWEST, HAWAIIAN, and AMERICAN, along with the foods CHILI, ROLLS, and CHEESE.
Favorite fill: GUAVA, ELLIPSIS, HOTSAUCE, and LICHEN
Stumpers: ICILY (needed crossings), SHALE (new fact to me), and FIT (also needed crossings)
Delightful puzzle today! What a fun collab! Loved the theme, themer set, and all of the lovely bonus fill. Despite my time, the solve felt smooth and the grid design is great. I hope we see more from this duo!
4.75 stars
~Emily
NYT was somewhat hit or miss, as Amy says. CLAWMACHINEGAME doesn’t seem right, although AMUSEMENTARCADE sounds fine to me. I seem to remember that was the general name for the places I wasted many pennies on when I was a youngster on holiday at the English seaside.
PIERONE just seems flat out wrong. It took me a while to come up with it because it should be PIER1, and to call it an anagram of ‘pioneer’ isn’t right.
The idea behind this puzzle was reasonable, but it needed a lot more help from the editing team than it got, most glaringly at 15A.
The full name of that retail chain is “Pier 1 Imports.” So you drop more than half of the name, spell out the number, and anagram the result? C’mon.
NYT: I pretty much agree with Amy’s assessment. Nothing terribly wrong with the puzzle (except maybe that clue for RERINSE), but neither of the two grid-spanning themers sounded quite right to my ear (though I have to admit, I’ve never tried the claw game and have rarely visited an arcade). I’m generally not bothered too much by spelled-out numbers (I can live with seven-up), so I was okay with PIER ONE – and at least the clue was kind of clever.
ICE HUT also sounded a bit off to me. People went ice fishing where I grew up, and it was always ice FISHING hut or shed or shanty. I’ve only been ice fishing a few times, so maybe I wasn’t around it enough to know the shorthand.
I understood the grid art after the theme emerged, but for some reason, grid art usually doesn’t do much for me.
Mike Shenk deserves some of the credit for PIER ONE. It was an answer in a WSJ puzzle about two years ago.
AV Club: The TAKE A BOW theme is solid enough, if you don’t mind the change in pronunciation. (Three theme answers all take long O bows; SHIPWRIGHT — like the revealer — has a short O bow.) And I question whether a SHIPWRIGHT “takes” a bow as opposed to makes one.
But the puzzle was a nice affirmation of many little things that I have learned in four years of daily crossword solving: AAVE, the “correct” spelling of R2D2, RAWR (which I would describe as “cutesy,” not “cute”), OPI . . . And my vocabulary has further expanded with “pibling.”
NYT: A pretty solid debut, despite its flaws like PIER ONE and the redundancy in CLAW MACHINE GAME. AMUSEMENT ARCADE doesn’t really bother me, even though I have always referred to such places as simply ARCADES.
I give the puzzle bonus points for reminding me of the very funny claw machine scene from the original “Toy Story.” Look it up on YouTube if you’ve never seen it.
There’s also a pretty funny episode of Bluey centered around a claw machine…
NYT – Not my favorite
I very rarely care for grid art. It’s trying to present an image using large, square, black pixels. First generation Lego is about as good as it can get. BTW, sound based themes are right there with grid art for me
GAME and AMUSEMENT didn’t belong in the across themers to me. Others may use those terms so maybe I’m in the minority
“Clue that anagrams to X” is among my least favorite type of clue and there it was early in my solve.
On the plus side, I felt that 5d and 10d were good and apt for the CLAW MACHINE theme
All that said, I agree with Eric about this puzzle being a solid debut.
Not a theme for me, but then I’m obviously not a gamer. Still, a lot seemed wrong that Amy and others have pointed out, like the odd addition of GAME and the odd cross between amusement park and what was once called a penny arcade, I suppose. And then there was the forced inclusion of the first long down entry, and the weirdness of RERINSE.
I generally like grids that shows pictures or tell a story, but yeah needed lots and lots of work. And I’ll just have to take the puzzle’s word for NUDIE.
Don’t just take the puzzle’s word on NUDIE Cohn: The fantastic suit that he made for Gram Parsons (an icon of country rock circa 1970) is in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudie_Cohn
Today’s AVCX puzzle would appear to have an error. While Lagos is the largest city in Nigeria, Abuja has been the nation’s capital since December 1991.
I noticed that, too. I was about 20 years late in learning that Lagos was no longer the capital (or maybe I knew it once and forgot it).
In any case, I hesitated to enter LAGOS until the crosses made it obvious.