Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “En-Games” — finishing the same way. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 8/20/24

Hello lovelies! In this week’s Jonesin’ puzzle, both words in each them entry end in -EN.

• 16a. [Xenomorph leader of sci-fi filmdom, for instance] ALIEN QUEEN
• 24a. [She’s portrayed both Queens Elizabeth (I on TV and II on film)] That’s Dame HELEN MIRREN.
• 35a. [Type of incandescent headlamp bulb] TUNGSTEN HALOGEN. A halogen lamp is a tungsten filament and inert gas in a envelope with a halogen such as bromine or iodine.
• 47a. [Greeting in Gelsenkirchen] GUTEN MORGEN (“Good morning” in German)
•  58a. [All tied up] EVEN STEVEN

Other things:

• 27d. [Part of OPEC, for short] ORG. It’s Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
• 32d. [When most children begin sixth grade] AGE ELEVEN in the United States. My 11-year-old starts sixth grade in a couple of weeks. (How do I have a middle schooler already?!)
• 50d. [Half of “Good Mythical Morning”] RHETT. The YouTube talk/comedy show by Rhett McLaughlin and Charles Lincoln “Link” Neal III first aired in 2012.

Until next week!

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 691), “Step Right Up!”—Ade’s take

Crossword Nation puzzle solution, Week 691: “Step Right Up!”

Hello there, everyone! I hope all of you are doing well and that you’ll enjoy the final full week of August! Typing this blog from the USTA National Tennis Center, watching qualifying for the US Open, and, after a couple of passing showers, it is a perfect, cool evening in the Flushing section of Queens. 

Today’s puzzle might have been created to REASSURE all of us that our constructor has not lost a step in putting out good grids (14A: [Give comfort to]). Or, it may just be to point out the first words in each of the four longest theme answers, all going down, and how all of those words are types of steps. 

• • • DANCE TO THE MUSIC (3D: [Hit “party” song by Sly and the Family Stone])
    • QUICK ON ONE’S FEET (5D: [Moving speedily and lightly])
    • BABY GRAND PIANOS (8D: [Music conservatory keyboards])
    • BOX ON CHOCOLATES (11A: [Heart-shaped Valentine’s Day gift])

Took a little while to get going, especially when I put in “bergs” instead of ORCAS that caused me to get stuck right away (6D: [Sightings on an Alaskan cruise]). No matter how many crosswords I do, I’m never going to remember who’s who with Harry Potter, but, in my mind, I know a five-letter entry concerning it will be either Snape or DRACO, and that’s all I’m putting into my memory bank (40A: [Harry Potter’s nemesis]). Only entry I was totally at a loss for was MOGEN, but then, when I looked it up just now, I absolutely remember the company because of the MD 20/20 label on the bottle, with the drink better known on college campuses as “Mad Dog” (31A: [___ David (kosher wine brand)]). Crazy I’m knowing this more than 20 years later, but I guess I’m glad to know about something I’ve only drank a couple of times … and probably never will again!

“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: USA (54D: [Mex. neighbor]) – A There’s still so much talk about the Olympics that was completed a couple of weeks ago, and some of that chatter revolves around the amazing performances by women representing Team USA. The Stars and Stripes and China were tied at the top of the list for gold medals won with 40, and 26 of those golds were won by women, either in an individual event of a team event. The American women won so many medals that if they were their own nation, they would have place third in the overall medal count, behind the US’s overall total and China. Rock on, American women!

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

Sam Buchbinder’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

NY Times crossword solution, 8/20/24 – no. 0820

Solving during the DNC, so untimed.

Did not look at the theme until after I’d finished the puzzle. THE SOUND OF MUSIC as a revealer, 59a. [Best Picture winner of 1965 … or a description of the ends of 17-, 30- and 45-Across?]. TRADEMARK SYMBOL ends with a homophone of cymbal. AIR FORCE BASE gives us a bass. And GOLDMAN SACHS goes the sax route. I like it!

Not expecting to see TAJIK, [Neighbor of an Uzbek], in a Tuesday puzzle. Know your -stans! Hardish crossing with TAIGA, yeah?

Fave fill: JELLY BEAN, MRS. POCK … I mean, MR. SPOCK, CUBE FARMS, and FELONS.

Four stars from me.

Zachary David Levy’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

Team Fiend in the house! To borrow his language, I thought the theme was cracking. I like a Tuesday puzzle where I need the revealer to understand the theme. Let’s start there, shall we, so I can demonstrate in the theme answers. The revealer is at the bottom, as God intended. 59a [Rudimentary span suspended over a river, or a span found in 17-, 25-, 37-, and 45-Across] is ROPE BRIDGE. Let’s look for the ROPE.

Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2024, Zachary David Levy, solution grid

• 17a [Garage button] is the DOOR OPENER.
• 25a [Jewelry that hangs just below a lobe] is a DROP EARRING.
• 37a [Coriander-based sauce] is CILANTRO PESTO. Since I am not one of the people who thinks cilantro tastes like soap, that sounds yummy.
• 49a [Promotional interest rate, perhaps] is ZERO PERCENT.

Nice! All the theme answers are solidly in the language, as is the revealer. Fun!

A few other things:

• [Do one’s darned best?] is a great clue for SEW. Not sew-sew, then.
• My daughter is coming home today so we have to stock up on GUAC makings,.
• I am so conditioned to write EMS or EMT when the clue mentions CPR that I was stymied for a second by 26d [One performing CPR, perhaps] is ER DOC. Duh.
• Mmm, now I want AREPAs for lunch.
• Once again I ask if anyone has seen AROAR in the wild. I mean the word.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that the AZORES are northwest of Morocco. I can alway count on a geography clue to give me material for this section of my post.

Oh, and by the way, no relation, as far as I know. Levy is the Jewish version of Smith, which I’m allowed to say because my husband’s name is Smith.

Aimee Lucido’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

New Yorker • 8/20/24 • Tue • Lucido • solution • 20240820

I FOR ONE would agree that this was more or less ‘moderately challenging’ because some of the skewing-younger clues were outside my wheelhouse. (38a [“Others may disagree, but from my perspective …”])

• 1a [Like a lunch eaten in one’s cubicle, cutesily] AL DESKO. That pun—new to me—is almost so bad it’s good. Almost.
• 13a [Logic by which refunds for returned clothes are treated as earnings, per a facetious coinage] GIRL MATH. Have heard of this, but it was unhelpful that I persisted in misreading earnings as earrings.
• 26a [Some smushy-faced Instagram stars] is simply PUGS, presumably the dog breed.
• 46a [“Sicko Mode” rapper Travis] SCOTT. No idea which is the first name and which is the second.
• 50a [High-energy genre for Mac Dre and E-40] HYPHY, or maybe HY-PHY. It seems like a play on hi-fi. My first guess was HYPER.
• 61a [Portmanteau for a “genre of swords and soulmates,” per the Guardian] ROMANTASY, which is also onew to me but quite inferable. 40d [Not prone to crushes, briefly] ARO.
• 64a [Relax deeply on, perhaps] SINK INTO. “Relax deeply on” seems a weird phrasing, but I certainly understood the meaning, and that’s what’s important.
• 2d [Large hybrid cat whose counterpart is a tigon] LIGER. Tigon = ♂tiger × ♀lion, liger = ♂lion × ♀tiger.
• 10d [Psychoactive brew used in the Amazon basin for spiritual ceremonies] AYAHUASCA. Interesting etymology here.
• 14d [Ghosts someone?] HAUNTS. Back to the older sense.

Adam Levav’s Universal Crossword, “Sound It Out” — Matt F’s Review

Universal Solution 08.20.2024

This puzzle was created by Adam Levav, and edited by David Steinberg. Thank you both!

Each syllable of the theme words is a letter homophone, and those letters fill in the blanks of the theme clues. The clues on their surface hint at the word filled into the grid, which brings everything full circle.

• 17A – [Exalted person‘s honorific] = EXCELLENCY (X L N C)
• 24A – [Expression of covetousness] = I ENVY YOU (I N V U)
• 38A – [Devilish] = DEVIOUS (D V S)
• 51A – [Strikingly Edenic] = ARCADIAN (R K D N)
• 61A – [Clown fish’s marine home] = SEA ANEMONE (C N M N E)

If you tried to solve this puzzle quickly, you might have been frustrated by the construction of the theme clues because they required a bit more focus to unpack. After I recognized the theme gimmick, I relied on the down clues to pepper the theme answers and then used pattern recognition to think of plausible words to fill in the blanks. On the other hand, a patient solver might have taken time to look at the theme answers closely and work on each one as a little mini puzzle. Any way you slice it, finding words made purely of letter homophones is a neat gimmick, and building a clue to describe the word on its surface is a nice extra layer. Leaving the “I” unchanged in the 2nd themer is a small nit, but it didn’t ruin the solve for me. SCOPE CREEP hits close to home in my day job. HAPPY DANCE, WELL-READ, and STRATEGO are nice bonus words, too. I thought it was cute to see URCHIN crossing SEA ANEMONE. I knew DWYANE Wade, but I forgot his name had a unique spelling, so I hade Dwayne for a long time until the surrounding pieces fell into place.

See you next week!

Kathy Bloomer & Jeff Chen’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Early Lead”—Jim’s re-cap

My apologies to our constructors for this late review. I didn’t solve the puzzle, but I’ll share my thoughts on it.

Theme answers are familiar phrases whose first words are slangy terms for “information”. These phrases are presented vertically with the “info” words at the top of the grid. The revealer is HIGH-LEVEL INFO (56a, [Overview of the big picture, and what the starred answers contain]).

Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Early Lead” · Kathy Bloomer & Jeff Chen · Tue., 8.20.24

• 3d. [*Barely gets into the water?] SKINNY DIP.
• 5d. [*Low-cut gown feature] SCOOP NECK.
• 9d. [*Brown comedic graphic in some texts] POOP EMOJI.
• 11d. [*Pigpen of “Peanuts,” e.g.] DIRT MAGNET.

You had me at POOP EMOJI and by citing Pigpen. Nice theme with fun theme entries.

Lots to like in the fill, too, with IVORIES, RATATAT, LITURGY, SEA KALE, RED MOON, MAHALO, and ACTIVIA.