Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “A Quiet Spell” — just relax and solve. – Erin’s write-up
Jonesin’ solution 7/30/24
Hello lovelies! This week Matt is saying the QUIET part out loud in his Jonesin’ grid:
- 17a. [*”I’m headed onstage,” or an introduction to the first letter?] HERE’S MY CUE (HERE’S MY Q)
- 22a. [*Tagline for hopeful lottery winners, or a question of the second letter?] COULD YOU BE NEXT (COULD U BE NEXT)
- 35a. [*Mount in exodus, or write down the third letter?] SINAI (SIGN I)
- 42a. [*Of change, or the segue to the fourth letter?] TRANSITIONALLY (TRANSITIONAL E)
- 50a. [*Executed perfectly, or closed with the last letter?] DONE TO A TEE (DONE TO A T)
Other things:
- 55a. [Ability to charm, slangily] RIZZ. It’s short for charisma. There’s also W rizz, which is winning rizz, and L rizz, which is losing rizz (or rolling a 1 in Charisma if you’re a D&D fan).
- 32d. [Ice ___ (popsicle, in the U.K.)] LOLLY. Lolly is a short form of lollipop. The American term Popsicle, on the other hand, arose after an 11-year-old Frank Epperson left soda and a stirring stick out overnight where it froze like an icicle. He named it an Epsicle, patented it, then changed the name years later because his kids called it “Pop’s ‘Sicle.”
Until next week!
Gary Larson’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Bedeviled”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar(ish) phrases that hide a type of monster within. The revealer is INNER DEMONS (55a, [Personal struggles, and what the answers with circles have]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Bedeviled” · Gary Larson · Tue., 7.30.24
- 17a. [Lunchbox snack] FRUIT ROLL-UP. Fun find.
- 27a. [Etta James classic] “I’D RATHER GO BLIND“. Also a good find, but I’m ashamed to say I don’t know the song. That’s absolutely my own problem because it’s a powerful song that’s been covered many, many times. Have a listen below.
- 43a. [Vinyl, cassette or reel-to-reel] ANALOG RECORDING.
It would’ve been nice to have another theme entry, but maybe that’s asking too much. This is a nice set as it is. Another entry might’ve put too much strain on the fill. (I did find “Coupe de Ville” as a potential entry.)
MAN-EATERS appears in the center of the grid, but it seems to be theme-adjacent (the clue refers to sharks). Other fill highlights include SHARPIE, ST. PAUL’S Cathedral, A.A. MILNE, RIO LOBO, UNJADED, and DJINNS. Not so keen on plural OKRAS starting off the grid at 1a, nor with odd ROUSERS.
I also didn’t know GST [Astron. clock setting], which I took to mean Greenwich Standard Time. That’s incorrect. The initialism stands for Greenwich Sidereal Time, which uses stars and constellations to tell the time. This has appeared in plenty of puzzles over the years, but I’ve never learned what it meant until now.
Clues of note:
- 49a. [Half and half?]. ONE. Probably not a new clue, but a good one.
- 44d. [Prop for Bugs Bunny]. CARROT. Can an animated object really be called a prop?
Nice puzzle. 3.75 stars.
Jeffrey Martinovic & Will Nediger’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 7/30/24 – no. 0730
The theme’s tied together by RSVPING, 60a. [Acknowledging an invitation … or a hint to the starts of 19-, 32-, 39- and 49-Across]. Those four answers start with R(ing), S(ing), V(ing), and P(ing). A boxing RING ANNOUNCER, SING BACKUP, actor VING RHAMES, and PING-PONG BALLS. Terrific clue for SING BACKUP, by the way: [Use non-lead pipes?]. Lead with a long E sound, not the metal lead with a short E sound. Chicago is lousy with lead pipes providing our drinking water, so I was not primed to read the clue any other way.
Fave fill: KIDS’ MENU, HE/HIM, VITAMIN, and NHL MVP (though I looked it up, and the NHL awards a season MVP thing called the Hart Memorial Trophy, plus a Stanley Cup finals MVP thing called the Conn Smythe Trophy, so maybe nobody really calls it “NHL MVP”? But Will Nediger is Canadian, eh, so surely he wouldn’t have it in the grid if it weren’t legit.)
Four stars from me.
Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 688), “Let’s Get Down to Business!”—Ade’s take
Crossword Nation puzzle solution, Week 688: “Let’s Get Down to Business!”
Hello there, everyone! Hope all is well as we speed into August! If you’re catching any of the Paris Olympics, let me know which events are catching your attention the most!
Today’s puzzle could have gone bust, but it was a boom instead. More specifically, five sets of circles featured in the grid and each one spelled out “BOOM” to create the visual of 11-Down, in the literal sense.
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- BOOMING INDUSTRY (3D: [Fast-growing business, like Artificial Intelligence])
- BOOMERANG KID (22D: [Child that left home … and then moved back in again])
- BOOMS (29D: [Sail supports])
- TICK TICK BOOM (9D: [Musical by “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson])
- LOWERING THE BOOM (11D: [Executing the puzzle theme in a strict, no-nonsense way?])
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I’m sure there are a few cheese connoisseurs out there who can let me know how STILTON tastes and whether it’s worth giving a try (25A: [Buttery blue cheese from England]). I’ll probably stick with my favorite, Drunken Goat cheese that’s bathed in Doble Pasta wine, but a buttery blue cheese definitely sounds good to go on crackers, which I always have at my place. At the moment, I’m watching a Team USA women’s beach volleyball TEAM playing, and winning against, an Australian team that medaled in Tokyo (13D: [Sports group]). From what I’ve heard, this team, Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, were teammates at LSU. I knew beach volleyball was a collegiate sport, but, before today, I think I had only seen colleges from the state of California field teams in my limited viewing. Of course, I should have been looking for more teams and talent in beach volleyball on the shores of the Mississippi, right?!? Baton Rouge, the beach volleyball capital of the world before this Olympics is over?!
“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: CHEEK (49D: [Blusher’s target]) – One of the all-time great voices in the history of sports broadcasting, Tom Cheek was the radio play-by-play broadcaster for the Toronto Blue Jays from the team’s first-ever game in 1977 until his retirement in 2004. Starting with that first game, played in the snow in April 1977, Cheek announced a whopping 4,306 consecutive games and 41 postseason games without missing one single contest. In June 2004, Cheek’s streak ended when he took time off after his father’s passing. One year later, Cheek passed away from complications of a brain tumor. On the microphone, Cheek, who’s in the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame, is best known for his call of Joe Carter’s walk-off three-run home run in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, which ended the series as Toronto defended its title from 1992. “Touch ’em all, Joe! You’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life!”
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
Wyna Liu’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up
New Yorker • 7/30/24 • Tue • Liu • solution • 20240730
About par for the New Yorker’s ‘moderately challenging’ Tuesday offerings, which is to say it isn’t too challenging at all.
- 17a [Word replaced by “orange” in a classic knock-knock joke[ AREN’T. Lateral thinking clue.
- 21a [One flying the Fleurdelisé] QUEBECER. Not an demonym I’ve seen. I did an Ngram with Quebecer, Quebecois, and Québécois. The former doesn’t appear at all!
- 22a [Self-aggrandizing jerk] POMPOUS ASS. Can’t say I’ve seen that in a crossword before.
- 27a [Turnovers, e.g.] STATS. Not culinary. 18a [Place to take note of a sports record?] SCORECARD.
- 47a [*Don’t pet the sweaty things,” e.g.] SPOONERISM. The original would be “don’t sweat the petty things”. Strikes me as a reverse-engineered SPOONERISM rather than something organic.
- 62a [Utterly destroyed, in phonetic Internet slang] REKT. That is, wrecked.
- 3d [Option for staying on track when you’re tired?] SLEEPER CAR. Symmetrically paired with 28d [Settings for some long-running competitions?] TRACK MEETS, which duplicates a key word.
- 7d [Comedian with the standup special “Get on Your Knees”] JACQUELINE NOVAK. Unknown to me. A grid-spanning entry.
- 45d [In __ (quickly)] NO TIME. 44a [Verbal equivalent of holding up an index finger] ONE SEC.
- 52d [Bird whose name sounds like a twenty-tens dance] NENE, and nae-nae. Interesting cluing approach.
Michael Berg’s Universal Crossword, “Free Bird” — Matt F’s Review
Universal Solution 07.30.2024
This puzzle has multiple layers. First, the clues hint that a letter is missing from each answer. These letters, in order, spell out B-I-R-D. That’s the “free” bird hinted at by the title. The elegant touch beyond that is that each theme answer, without the missing letter, contains a type of bird:
- 17A: [Major NFL events] = SUPER (B)OWLS
- 31A: [Classic cocktail with olives] = DIRTY MARTIN(I)
- 46A: [Declines an invitation, formally] = SENDS (R)EGRETS
- 64A: [Difficult-to-please audience] = TOUGH CROW(D)
I had fun peeling back the layers – er, feathers – of this puzzle. While solving I could only see that B-I-R-D was missing, but when I looked back and saw the types of birds adjacent to those missing letters, I got a nice “aha!” moment. Clean construction, too, and the bonus slots – I AM SO THERE, and YOU IN OR OUT – injected some playful energy into the fill. Great work all around!
Thank you for the puzzle, Michael! And thank you, Taylor Johnson, for the editorial touch.
Regarding today’s LAT puzzle, I thought the clue for 40D just didn’t work. “Become smitten with” is just not TAKENTO. It may be TAKETO, but TAKENTO simply doesn’t make sense to me as a proper fit for that clue. And the cross being a somewhat obscure proper name didn’t help (Hawaii Senator Hirono MAZIE). Since the LAT is so superbly edited, I have to assume that I’m somehow wrong about this, but I just don’t see it. Any thoughts?
Didn’t do the puzzle, but perhaps “I’ve become smitten with” equates to “I’ve TAKEN TO” someone/something?
Yes!! I was thinking that “To become smitten with” could not possibly be “To taken to,” but you’re absolutely right! The “I’ve” makes it work. I’m unsurprised and happy to be wrong here. Thanks Gary R.
WSJ – I was grumbling from the beginning with, as Jim pointed out, plurals for OKRA and ROUSER. Also, I don’t know if I’ve heard SITPAT. I have a nice Google ngram chart of SIT PAT and STAND PAT that clearly shows which is more in the language. But I don’t know how to post it in these comments.
I decided to look at one more theme answer and my mood did a U-turn. “I’d Rather Go Blind” is one of my absolute favorites. It is often overshadowed by the wedding staple “At Last.” I’m familiar with the version Jim posted but I prefer the one from her 1968 album “Tell Mama.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcus42ihkTI
I don’t believe that civilian readers can do that, but here you go.
(Agreed on the 1967 recording. Additional recommendation: amazing 1975 live version, also in Montreaux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZt1xKtPbUQ)
Thanks p!
@pannonica: any tips on how the heck to post imbedded “graphics” here? (Months ago, I’d wanted to share xwordinfo data about trends on how “NRA” has been clued over the decades… in terms of the tipping points and overall numbers of instances, graphically.) I can view source code, with embedded links. So, all via embedded links?
Just curious here. :-]
Yep, any puzzle that includes “I’d rather go blind” gets my vote :) … Thanks for posting the link to the album, and pannonica for the Montreau ’75, a really wonderful live performance by Etta.
(not for nothin’ but Beyonce did a nice cover in “Cadillac Records”. I was surprised I like it.)
A funny comment on the ’75 video was “I’d rather go blind than to see more ads pop up during a song “touché!
I was impressed with Beyonce’s cover, too
I suppose SIT PAT could be non-idiomatic conflation of “sit tight” and “stand pat,” amounting to much he same as either. But the whole cluster of these had me rolling with it. The plurals didn’t bother me as much as they did Jim and others. I can easily imagine a use for a plural of ROUSER, just as we have rabble-rousers.
The Etta James in our record collection is limited to her greatest hits and one of her late jazzy albums (on which her voice shows the toll of aging).
But man! The greatest hits album is one of the best road trip albums I know.
We put “Stop the Wedding” on the playlist for our wedding reception, but rejected “At Last” as too predictable. At least I think we did; I somehow deleted the wedding playlist and had to recreate it from memory.
WSJ: I was surprised to see PILLS crossing both ILLS and HILL. A Larson grid usually has a really smooth fill, but the use of “ill” in three words in the same section felt like overkill.
All due respect, I think the observation you make here is, itself, overkill. I don’t get the whole anti-letter-string movement. “Duping” concerns two types: 1) etymological repetition (e.g., I once had a grid returned for containing both COCOA and CACAO), and 2) phonemic similarities [I’m pretty sure “phonemic” is the adjective I want here, but I’m not totally sure], where a word or major word part is repeated (such as COPPERTONE and COPPER, or COP CAR and COP A PLEA–but *not* COPSE and COPS). As I’m writing I’m realizing some of this is more subjective that I’d perceived when I began this paragraph, but, nonetheless, the way I see it is that those two dupe types are an order of magnitude or two above a letter-string dupe.
I rarely notice minor duplications, but three-letter strings? That’s taking things a bit far. I think crossword construction programs probably set the default highlighting at three letters because it’s more likely to pick up word fragments that really are duplicates.
NYT: Fun Tuesday, and quick solve. I had to go back to check out the theme entries; not sure how I missed RING / SING / VING / PING on the first time through, but a nice puzzle!
I liked the NYT puzzle, too. The SING BACK-UP clue is worth the price of admission.
I got VING and last name pretty much from the theme alone. Without that, I’d have been lost in the section that crossed it with UGG, because the clue wasn’t half as familiar as the answer.
In TNY, yeah, only Quebecois really plays to my ear. More generally, though, while I’m not sure where in the middle ground of moderately challenging I’d put the puzzle, but it aimed for those two words the worst way and TNY way, with too many overly familiar gimmes and too much trivia. Yes, I understand that one has to get some things by crossings, and that deduction can be interesting. But it can become tedious, and yet another TNY grid-spanning name is annoying. Especially when one of the crossings is REKT.
Yes.
Quebecer is legit, but a much older form. You would see it a lot 40 or 50 years ago, and probably still among certain Anglo demographics.
I didn’t know JAQUELINE NOVAK either, but most of the crosses are not too hard. I’m sure that I learned REKT from some crossword.
I know I had a few wrong answers that I had to change, but all I remember now is OPERA star. And it’s been a very long time since I have heard the knock-knock joke ending with “Orange you glad it’s not banana?” (or whatever the first fruit is).
I’m a little surprised that I didn’t recognize the Spanish for “train.” I don’t speak the language, but my basic vocabulary isn’t that bad.
For me, it’s on the easy end of “moderately challenging.”
Finished with an error at that crossing of ENTRE and TREN. I know about as much French as one picks up from doing crosswords. I know a bit more Spanish (something I want to work on now that I’m retired), but TREN isn’t in my vocab.
Apart from that, I’d agree on “easy side of moderately challenging.”
Also, I’m sure I shouldn’t complain about the clue for LIE, especially as the qualifier in it made it valid. But it really grated on me. Maybe someone has subway delays as an easy excuse, but geez. If she can go two straight days without massive delays and awful experience on the subways, she’s luckier than I am.
And this after the governor cancelled a project sure to raise money for mass transit, although today she claims to have found money for at least one big-time project. Not that it’s helpful for modernizing tracks and signals or anything that matters, and the Times doubts the money is there for what she claims anyway. And meanwhile the Times also interviews professional drivers pointing to traffic that makes trips longer by far than they’d ever experienced, another target of that congestion fee. The mayor is no better.
I once met my boss by chance on the subway and the train stopped between stations and stayed that way a long while. The boss said, “I see it’s true. You bring the delays with you.”
I see Jenni was up for the LAT but didn’t post anything. I’ve also noticed her absence on this forum for some time. I hope this doesn’t indicate something wrong in her world.
Please take this as sincere, because it is.
It’s refreshing to see someone note the absence of a Fiend reviewer and express concern for that person’s well-being, rather than just complain about the lack of a review.
+1, Yup. And well said.
Any reviews here are (a) free to you, and (b) for your edutainment! (Right?)