Sam Ezersky’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 8/31/24 – no. 0831
First up, I just have to say: Not convinced that CANOPIC, MINICAMP, and POINCIANA in last Sunday’s Spelling Bee puzzle are familiar vocabulary. Sorry, Sam, but it had to be said (and surely was said by others elsewhere!). /disgruntled
Moving on to the crossword! Lots of fill that’s fresher than that FRESH SALAD. My faves: VAPE JUICE and KOOL-AID (you thirsty?), CRO-MAGNON, MCNUGGETS (I sure couldn’t have told you these were [Fast-food order that comes in four shapes: bells, balls, boots and bow ties]; apparently many call the last one a bone shape), ALASKANS, the ECHO DOT (*shudder* no thanks on having a smart speaker in the house, or a “smart refrigerator”), “YAS, QUEEN,” rapper WARREN G with a clue alluding to President Warren G. Harding (note: my family tree includes some men named Gamaliel, which is what Harding’s middle name is), “OKAY, WHAT?”, “ONE, PLEASE,” PEDIATRIC, STOPWATCH, VC MONEY, SAKE BAR, LOUNGEWEAR, and BESEECH. Could do without ENSILE, GALOPS, IS BIG.
Intriguing: 2d. [Ancient continent that included present-day Siberia], ARCTICA. Little bit of a wild Wiki article.
11d. [The Mexican state of Michoacán produces 5.5+ billion pounds of this annually], AVOCADO. AVOCADO as a mass noun rather than a count noun? Curious. I appreciate the shout-out to Michoacán because Chicago has a lot of ice cream shops called La Michoacana, along with restaurants and such with the state’s name. Here’s a Chicago magazine feature on why Michoacán is so big here. And yes, the restaurateur in the article is pictured with a crate of avocados!
45d. [Kraken’s home, for short], NHL. Dang, I wanted this to be an abbreviation for Seattle, home of that hockey team. A sea monster in SEA? It’s apt.
Samuel A. Donaldson & Doug Peterson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 8/31/24 by Samuel A. Donaldson & Doug Peterson
I expect a lot when I see either of these two in the byline, and this puzzle mostly didn’t disappoint. (There were two entries that were a bit of a needle scratch for me; we’ll get to those later.) First, the highlights:
- 11A [March 1 : lion :: March 31 : __] is LAMB. I missed this clue entirely while solving, and I don’t think it would have given me any trouble, but it does give me a smile. I admit I’m a sucker for an analogy clue.
- 32A [Small pile of leaves] is a rather devious clue for QUIRE, which is a group of 25 sheets (leaves) of paper. Between this clue and the fact that I had ART in place of the correct URN at 33D for a while, the middle of this puzzle was the last to fall for me.
- 43A [Most dot matrix printers and flip phones, now] is an evocative clue for E-WASTE.
- 45A [Emmy-winning show about Clio-winning execs] is MAD MEN. Like 11A, a clue I missed while solving that isn’t super tricky, but it’s a nice parallel to point out.
- 48A [Strands in the winter?] is TINSEL. Clever!
- 58A [Dull roar?] for MEOW made me laugh.
- …as did 61D [Booker prize?]. The answer — which I’m starting to feel like I’ve seen a lot — is SENATE SEAT, because Cory Booker has one, geddit? This is an example of a meh entry being lifted by a great clue.
- 6D [Union contract] is a nice misdirect for PRENUP, in which the “union” referred to is a marriage.
- 14D [Body part that includes the xiphoid process] is BREASTBONE. Again, not that into the entry, but I like the clue because “xiphoid process” is fun to say. (Still don’t know what it means; will look up after I finish writing this post.)
- 43D [Cowboy legend Smith] is EMMITT. I know 0 about the NFL, but I have seen a couple of the episodes of his Dancing With the Stars run and he’s really fun to watch.
The needle-scratch entries: RESOWS, which the clue [Makes seedier?] could not save, and NICK OF TIME, which feels like a partial even though the clue [Last-second] was an attempt to make it into an adjectival phrase.
Christopher Youngs’ Wall Street Journal crossword, “Movie Magic” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 8/31/24 • Sat • “Movie Magic” • Youngs • solution • 20240831
A superficial reading of the title would lead one to expect a theme involving cinema, but aside from 53-across, that isn’t the case. Instead it should be parsed as “move E”, which “magically” transforms two longish entries in the same row.
- 23a. [Faucet that dispenses Johnnie Walker?] SCOTCH TAP{E}.
25a. [Flee from nannies and kids?] {E}SCAPE GOATS. - 53a. [Backstabbers with medical coverage?] SNAKES ON A PLAN{E}.
56a. [Village whose citizens are into angsty music?] {E}MO TOWN. - 90a. [Rodent occupying a London apartment?] FLAT RAT{E}.
92a. [Pickpocket’s paradise] {E}DEN OF THIEVES. - 122a. [Irresistibly delicious suet?] TEMPTING FAT{E}.
- 124a. [Watering hole on a wealthy family’s private property?] {E}STATE BAR.
Easy enough.
- 8d [Brazilian dance fighting] CAPOEIRA. I really should memorize how to spell this.
- 10d [Cybertruck maker] TESLA. Yeh, ugh.
- 12d [Agitated] IN A STIR, not IN A SNIT.
- 26d [Embodiment] EPITOME.
- 29d [Visits dreamland] SLEEPS.
- 36d [Improv comedy rule of thumb] YES AND. It’s all about positivity and creativity rather than sniping and cutting others down. Could be applicable elsewhere, maybe.
- 41d [Near thing] CLOSE SHAVE. Looks like it could make a themer; [Borscht on hand?].
- 43d [Wee] EENSY. 120d [Wee] ITTY.
- 47d [Make the world a better place] DO GOOD. 54d [It’s “loved by what is best in us,” according to Emerson] NATURE.
- 103d [Achiever of tennis’s only Golden Slam (in 1988), familiarly] STEFFI Graf. I sort of knew this fact, but it helped to have a crossing entry. 75a [Only performer to twice sweep the Album, Record, and Song of the Year Grammys] ADELE.
- 109d [Done in] SLAIN, not SPENT.
- 32a [Film container] REEL. I encountered this before fully appreciating the theme, so I was still thinking in terms of cinema and the idea was reinforced.
- 48a [Shipwreck cause, perhaps] REEF. 60a [Shipwreck cause, perhaps] SIREN.
- 70a [Those seeking a better deal] HOLDOUTS. 73a. [Appears in ads for, say] ENDORSES. With just two entries in this row (but not extending to the edges, it should be noted) and an E at the beginning of the second, this unfortunately resembles the theme pairs.
- 131a [Big Apple-based 2004 spinoff] CSI:NY. Who would have been a good fifth member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young? Not Tony Iommi, I should think. Nor James Ingram, who was probably a little too young anyway. Hmm… Ike Turner? Iggy Pop?
Anyway, not a super-exciting theme, but the good news is that this 21×21 never felt like a slog.
S.N.’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 8/31/24 • Saturday Stumper • S.N., Newman • solution • 20240831
My approach this week was more reckless than usual. I found myself following through on half-guesses and other lateral leaps—amazingly, nearly all of them ended up being correct, hence my rather good time on an ostensibly harder offering from Stan’s S.N. byline.
- 16a [Kicks back, as boxes] RETURNS TO SENDER. This was not one of those entries that I gambled on. The clue was just too weird to make any sense of without getting at least half of the crossing letters
- 19a [Mouthed motivators] RAHS. An even more pained clue. 29a [Rooter’s cry], for which I’d been put in mind of RAH (before getting 19a) turned out to be OINK, as pigs notably root around in the dirt with their snouts.
- 20a [Official UN agreement] OUI. One of the five(?) official languages of the organization. Here’s an example of the risk-taking I described at the outset: 15d [Whom the Senecas absorbed (c. 1750)] ERIES. I’m aware that the Senecas were part of the Iroquois confederacy, and I knew that the crossword-common ERIE people belonged to it as well; with a provisional I in place, OUI seemed a strong possibility for 20-across. There were at least four or five more encounters like this in the grid, but I won’t be listing them; suffice to say they were a big part of my success.
- 21a [Capital consonants resembling two vowels] PHIS. Speeding through the crossword, I didn’t pause to really consider the clue. But now I can see that it’s Φ, which could be described as resembling a superimposed O and I.
- 22a [Where rock bands hang out] AGATE. Yeh, I just casually tossed that into my grid without any crossings. (!)
- 27a [Possible response to “Don’t know”] GUESS. Just from the S of ERIES. More heedlessness.
- 31a [PVC product] TRANSPARENT TAPE. My final entry, as I needed to find a few wrong letters in crossing entries: 32d [Reindeer cookies accompaniments] NOGS (not LOGS) and 23d [Nome comune italiana] GINA (not GINO). The latter is a fairly open-ended clue, but perhaps there aren’t too many common four-letter names in Italian?
- 41a [Smallest-weight whitefish] SCROD. I wouldn’t have thought that, but I had the D from 27d GATED and once again plunged headlong.
- 42a [Followers of ST on TV] TNG. Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- 46a [NCAA’s NYer Engineers] RPI. Only a half-guess this time, again with no crossings.
- 1d [Locks you can pick?] DYED HAIR. I didn’t fall for the big misdirect, but the second, smaller one got me and I was ruminating on pick combs rather than choosing a hair color.
3d [King’s claim to musical fame] BLUES. Albert? Freddie? Riley B.B. Blues Boy?- 6d [Tall character in Son of Godzilla] ESS. It’s the capital S in Son, really. Yeesh.
- 9d [“Publisher of Cheap and Popular Pictures” principal] IVES. As in Currier & Ives, but I needed many crossings here.
- 16d [Forcibly remove] RIP OUT. Had to wait to see if it might be RIP OFF.
- 30d [Accredited messenger] ENVOY.
- 34d [Candide’s mentor] PANGLOSS. A welcome gimme.
- 39d [Gaunt person] SCRAG. Filled this one with more confidence than I had any right to, as I wasn’t even sure of the word, but it just felt correct.
- 51d [What a surfer needs, in brief] ISP. Internet service provider. Another small but crucial guess which really helped my solve.
The Times was an incredibly slow slog for me, and succumbed only after a hour-plus (!?!). Once again, I’m dazzled that Amy dashed it off in what would be for me a splendid time for a Monday.
I found the NYT sloggy, too, finishing in 25:29, which is much slower than usual for me. There were a few clever clues (CROMAGNON, ONE PLEASE, PEDIATRIC), but answers like ENSILE and FRESH SALAD didn’t do anything to make the puzzle more enjoyable.
I thought it was an ordeal, too, and I never came close to finishing the NE (in part because I still had “ensilo”). Pretty awful puzzle.
pannonica’s been on a real streak with music; my thanks. I’d forgotten the intro to “Eggs and Sausage,” a song I often sing to myself. The album made a serious impact on me when it came out and hadn’t heart anything like it. Appropriately enough, I soon got to hear him live in Trenton, of all places. And last week had one of my favorite recordings ever, “Jacky Wilson Said.”
Thanks! I do try not to get too cozy in the classic/oldies milieu, but oftentimes one of them is unavoidably appropriate.
NE corner was very rough… I had QUICK SALAD at first (which seems a much better answer to the clue than FRESH SALAD, but anyway…)
I had a clue question; I can’t figure out how “Ontario, e.g., to the Quebecois” is answered by LAC. Any help?
It’s simply ‘lake’ en français.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Ontario
NYT: I know Sam Ezersky can take some heat, so I feel I can say that I did not love this one. Amy already pointed out some of the biggest flaws: IMO, none of ENSILE, GALOPS or ISBIG should be in a 2024 New York Times puzzle, and cluing AVOCADO in a way that’s better answered as AVOCADOS is unnecessary, even for Saturday. FRESHSALAD feels very green-paint-like to me, especially with the clue straining to make sure we understand that it’s not just SALAD, it’s FRESHSALAD. I did not love BRATING, either, especially since you could basically use the same clue for CRATING or DRATING. I think an ADDON is an extra, but I’m not sure an ADDIN is an extra – as far as I know, ADDIN as a noun specifically refers to a computer hardware component or software added to give extra functions, but I don’t know if the ADDIN itself is an extra any more than any additional piece of equipment is an extra on some level.
I also had a fair number of personal knowledge gaps that others may have known: I had never heard of VAPEJUICE, ARCTICA, SAKEBAR, RIMA, or ECHODOT before.
I also found that a lot of phrase answers were near each other, so in the SE, for example, we have HAILACAB right on top of EMAIL ME right on top of ADDINS, with ONEPLEASE two below. Those are all completely legit answers, but none of them except for ADDIN are ever going to make it into the dictionary, so there’s a certain amount of having to be on Sam’s wavelength in order to breeze through the puzzle. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from what’s accepted and not accepted in Spelling Bee, it’s that I am NOT on Sam’s wavelength at all! There seem to be a bunch of obscure plants and animals as Spelling Bee answers, but some fairly common scientific/medical terms are often missing.
On the other hand, I loved the clue for WARRENG, which I figured out by counting backwards from our recent presidents, since I didn’t know exact numbers between Abraham Lincoln at #16 and recent ones. I was not sure of the exact order of Harding/Hoover/Coolidge, and at first I was having trouble figuring out how any of them could be related to rapper names. Then I started thinking about first names, and the lightbulb went on.
I believe you can have ADD-INs to frozen yogurt, for example.
As for Sam’s Spelling Bee caprice™, in addition to the relative dearth of some common medical and scientific terms, there aren’t enough flora and fauna names for my liking—which just goes to show that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
pannonica, you’re right that ADDINS can be extras in frozen yogurt.
The thing that really bothers me with Sam and Spelling Bee is that it seems arbitrary. He’s never said as far as I know that he uses any source other than his own head to determine what’s accepted and what isn’t.
Here’s my nit. Or possibly my lack of experience – I wouldn’t think a sake bar would be big on hot sake. In my experience, premium sake is enjoyed cold. Hot sake is cheap and tastes like fingernail polish remover, or more accurately, how I imagine it would taste.
There is some good hot sake, but for connoisseurs cold is where it’s at. Cedar-aged taruzake is probably my favorite. (I do not consider myself a connoisseur.)
While the finest grades of sake are best served chilled (and should be stored chilled), even in Japan, warming is appreciated for ordinary sake. In a small restaurant, if you order sake they may only have two choices, one warm and one chilled. A sake bar will absolutely have a selection of sakes to be served warmed. “Hot” is a bit of a stretch, but fine for a punny Saturday clue.
Sake fermentation is much more complicated, biologically, than winemaking because it involves the simultaneous action of molds (to convert starch to sugars) and yeasts (to convert sugars to alcohol). The strains of molds and yeasts used have a profound effect on the flavor and fragrance of the product. Some of the greatest (daiginjo) sakes, to my nose, use a yeast called #9. These sakes have a floral, coconut-like scent that is destroyed by heat. On the other hand, some yeasts that are traditionally used with less-refined rice produce some harsh flavors that are tamed when heated to body temperature. Both are authentic sake.
IS BIG! Thanks, that’s the other answer (another answer?) that irked me.
I’m pretty sure that I have seen VAPE JUICE in some BEQ puzzle, but I don’t know anyone who vapes. Despite a strong suspicion from the beginning that 1A referred to vape pens, I needed a lot of crosses to get VAPE JUICE.
I‘m impressed that you counted backwards on the presidents. I would have had to start with George Bush (a/k/a 41), and I was too lazy to do that. But I have a solid grasp of the order of the 20th century presidents. My boyhood in Vermont cemented Calvin Coolidge in my memory as Harding’s veep and successor.
I actually counted back from George Bush! I was a bit desperate because I was getting nowhere, and this seemed like an answer I should be able to figure out, if I knew which president it was. The presidents from FDR on are pretty engrained in my head, so it was not terrible.
I knew Lincoln was #16, but moving forward from him would have been a challenge. The presidents between Grant and McKinley are kind of a blur to me.
I gave up with less than half the grid filled – this pretty much never happens outside of the Stumper. After looking at the solved puzzle, the write-up and comments here, I think I made a good decision.
NOTE TO SELF: when you see Sam’s by-line, just save yourself the trouble – life is too short.
It very much reminded me of a Saturday Stumper with a bit more humor.
“ME” — I would like to better understand why you don’t like seeing ENSILE, GALOPS, or IS BIG.
I’ll tell you why I flagged those entries. IS BIG isn’t an idiomatic phrase where the words are tied together. What makes this distinctively different from ISUGLY, ISGOOD, ISSTRONG? GALOPS is one of those terms I learned from crosswords of yore, a word I have rarely encountered anywhere else. ENSILE also smacks of crosswords from decades past. Who is even using that word? Are farmers ensiling, or are they just putting corn into a silo? I don’t know. But ENSILE has three vowels and three common consonants so here it is. It doesn’t enliven the puzzle for me.
Thanks for explaining!
As noted, NYT was a slog. Got through it though, with ZTILE as the last entry filled. YASQUEEN was completely unknown to me.
Some examples of YAS QUEEN I found by searching this site (vs. crossword archives/databases):
Hmm. I did a few of those puzzles.
I’m sure I did some of those puzzles, too, and yet I needed several letters to get YAS QUEEN.
I’ve definitely done puzzles with this phrase in the past, and got this without too many crosses. But it seems tautological to say this is an actual thing just because it’s been in other NYTXW puzzles. There are probably a lot of people doing this puzzle who have never encountered this phrase in the wild.
Kudos to the Team Fiend member who’s up early today. Thanks for removing those truly nasty comments.
Not that the puzzle probably did not deserve many of them. Darn. Being on the west coast denied me much pleasure in seeing how many other people might have hated this NYT puzzle.
No, the ugly comments were directed towards Amy Reynaldo and one of the commenters. There was nothing remotely perceptive about the comments.
Thank you. Since I never saw them, I obviously had no context and should not have made the assumption I did.
Count yourself lucky that you missed them. The comment directed to Amy was particularly crude.
I needed so much help with NYT today, which makes me very glad, yet again, that this page exists.
The rare Saturday where the NYT (needed a few googles to complete) was tougher than the Stumper (proudly finished without cheating!).
Another complaint: Alaska is not on its own time zone, unless you think Papeete isn’t real. So many clues in this depend on questionable associations. E.g., Cromagnons weren’t old and only half of them are men.
NYT: I disliked this puzzle more than any recent NYT I can remember. Weird (and, to my mind, show-offy) mix of high-falutin (NIHILO, GALOPS, RIMA) and trendy (VAPEJUICE, YASQUEEN, OKAYWHAT), along with silly words such as ENSILE and SOOTS (as a verb).
But FRESHSALAD takes the cake. Would sir like some fresh salad? No, I’d prefer the day-old greens, if you have any.
stumper – an odd experience, after about 20 minutes of not getting anywhere, it just magically came together in the last 10 minutes… all’s well that ends well? (if later than you geniuses)
I’m puzzled — I see a link for pannonica’s review, but it’s not working and I’m not seeing it. I found it interesting, but had to look up 7A in order to finish the upper right. I don’t like the clue for 21A. Since I don’t know Italian, I also took the “comune” of 23D to be “commune” and thus was thinking regional geographic name. Rest was reasonably fair. I’ll be interested to see what pannonica thinks of it.
What’s wrong with 21A? Iota is a vertical line, omicron is a circle, and phi is circle and vertical line.
Yes, in a technical sense, you are correct. However, working solely with the clue of “Capital consonants resembling two vowels,” I was having serious issues. For example, “capital” — financial, capital city, etc.?? So, for a while, I was trying to figure out how “yuan” or “euro” could be applicable. For one brief wild moment, when I had the “?hi?,” I even wondered if “Ohio” somehow applied. Also, how many people seriously know that there are both upper case (which would have been a better wording) and lower case Greek letters, much less what they look like?? Perhaps someone from Greece or who knows the Greek language would, but I sure don’t. I know the alpha, beta, etc., but that’s about it.
Ah, so it was just a normal “this is a vague clue that could have several meanings” type of dislike. Welcome to the Stumper! :-D
I’m a physics teacher, so I use Greek letters all the time (in equations), and the shapes of most upper- and lower-case Greek letters are very familiar to me. But I can see that for others it would just be a totally unknowable thing. To that, I’d say…Welcome to the Stumper! :-D
Sorry—
I thought I patched it in this morning. On it now.
Thanks! I see it now!
NYT: This was rather tough for me, taking almost twice my average time. I did not know VAPE JUICE, VC MONEY, ARCTICA, YAS QUEEN, and hadn’t heard of the rapper WARREN G or of SAKE BARs before.
I appreciate that the puzzle has little or no pop culture trivia.
But for some reason this solve was not as enjoyable as usual. Maybe because I felt aware at all times that my opponent was the constructor. Usually I never think of that.
WSJ was entertaining … but I did not like the fact that the across row in the very middle of the grid, where one might expect a theme entry, had an E at the start of the answer to the right like all the theme entries, but was not in fact tied to the theme. I don’t know if the constructor was trying to be tricky, or if it was just happenstance, but I did not like it.
The write-up mentions this too.
Yes, but I thought it needed to be emphasized a bit more.