Sunday, October 6, 2024

LAT tk (Gareth)  

 


NYT 12:15 (Nate) 

 


USA Today tk (Darby)  

 


Universal (Sunday) 8:44 (Jim) 

 


Universal tk (norah) 

 


WaPo 5:10 (Matt G) 

 


John Kugelman’s New York Times crossword, “Teacher’s Marks” — Nate’s write-up

I decide to take one day off from grading my students’ work and this puzzle pops up!  The universe wants me to have no peace.  :D

10.05.2024 Sunday New York Times Crossword

10.05.2024 Sunday New York Times Crossword

22A: DON’T QUOTE ME ON THAT [Mrs. B you’ll die when you hear what happened to “me” this summer.]
37A: YOUR MONEY’S NO GOOD HERE [So we’re at the convenience store and WOW I find a 5$ dollar bill on the floor]
45A: HALT, WHO GOES THERE [Surprise surprise! Whom should walk in? Just my best friend ever!]
64A: DON’T START WITH ME [Me and Jamie ask if we can get a couple of scratchers]
83A: ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE [My mom buys them, and she knows how much I loooooooove lottery tickets]
92A: PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER [“Scratch them your self girls,” she says, so we do]
111A: YOU CAN’T WIN THE MALL (THEM ALL) [OMG can you believe it! We won the mall!!!]

The themers’ clues read as a student’s essay about buying lottery tickets and each themer answer is a common phrase / idiom repurposed to read as a teacher’s literal comment on how to fix that part of the essay. I really enjoyed this puzzle and found myself cracking up almost every time I figured out one of the theme answers. This puzzle has a lot of theme density and a few moving parts that had to come together to have everything work this smoothly, and it really feels like the constructor pulled it off. Bravo!

The bonus for solving the puzzle in the NYT app is a “C+ Fix!” post-it note on top of the puzzle. A stern note in red ink? Modern teachers would never!

The rest of the puzzle felt largely smooth to solve. The only place I got tripped up was in the LEA / SHEENA crossing, especially since I originally had “HARK” instead of “HALT” in HALT, WHO GOES THERE. Entries like ARABY, MCCOO. and ORDS weren’t my favorite, and I might have edited “men’s” into the NETMAN clue, but those small bits felt worth it for the greater theme, at least to me.

What did y’all think of the puzzle? What grade would you give this “essay”? Let us know in the comments section below – and have a great weekend / start to October!

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Group Pictures” — Matt’s write-up

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Group Pictures” solution, 10/06/2024

No meta this week, just a bunch of movies. What ties them together? 

  • 23a [*2016 film featuring Robert De Niro as a foul-mouthed senior citizen] DIRTY GRANDPA
  • 32a [1970 film that’s a retelling of “Madame Bovary”] RYANS DAUGHTER
  • 49a [*1994 film starring Kathleen Turner as a housewife and secret murderer] SERIAL MOM
  • 58a [*2022 film in which a young man is “catfished” by his estranged father] I LOVE MY DAD
  • 70a [*2006 film in which a video game tester moves in with his elder relative Lilly] GRANDMAS BOY
  • 83a [*2020 film in which a closeted NYU professor comes out to his niece] UNCLE FRANK
  • 92a [2014 film in which the criminal Brendan Lynch commits armed robbery with his younger protege JR] SON OF A GUN
  • 111a [*1992 film with the tagline “Truth, justice and the Gambini way”] MY COUSIN VINNY

So we’ve got a set all with family members in the title, but I’ve only seen one of them, and only heard of one or two more, so there’s gotta be something else going on. The revealer points it out:

  • 123a [Films deemed suitable for people of all ages … or an ironic description of this puzzle’s R-rated starred films] FAMILY MOVIES

Aha. I might have had a more enjoyable time filling the grid if I recognized more of the titles, but the irony of R-rated FAMILY MOVIES is a nice little payoff. And I didn’t find the unfamiliarity *hard* – Evan was gentle in pointing us right to the family member in several of the theme clues. A solid Sunday offering, I think. 

Notes:

  • 20a [The stuff of party tray cubes] CHEESE. This clue jumped out at me during solving for its odd syntax. Am I missing a reference here?
  • 76a [Airport gate hassle] DELAY. Airport everywhere hassle, I’d say. I’ve been lucky to avoid delays the last few years. Knock on wood.
  • 79a [Base phrase, at times] NO SIR. As in a military base.
  • 96a [Plant product] CAR. The “factory” sense of “plant”
  • 132a [Guitarist Paul] LES. Les Paul and Les Miserables dominate clues for this entry nowadays. I wouldn’t mind some variety! WKRP’s Les Nessman and … something to do with spacecraft are out of date, I suppose.
  • 42d [Child’s scalp woe] LICE. I hope father-of-a-tyke Evan isn’t speaking from experience, here!
  • 60d [68 Across building] DORM. Three cheers for a cross-reference clue that’s in the same area of the grid as itself, *especially* in a Sunday grid.
  • 93d [Beetle juice?] GASOLINE. As in a VW Beetle. This brought a smile to my face, for sure.
  • 109d [Hybrids of ribaldry] SATYRS. The clue had me a bit cross-eyed – a phrase I’ve never seen before, with a certain poesy to it. But yep, SATYRS are mythological hybrids well known for their lustfulness.

Oh, and congrats to Evan and his brother Justin for winning the Pairs Division at yesterday’s (inaugural) Midwest Crossword Tournament. Seems like it was a successful event and hopefully the start of a new standard on the crossword calendar.

Michael Schlossberg’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Out With It!”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar two-word phrases that have OUT added to the end, fundamentally changing the final words.

Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Out With It!” · Michael Schlossberg · 10.6.24

  • 22a. [*Pamphlet on portion control?] HELPING HANDOUT.
  • 30a. [*Toddler’s accident when learning to walk?] BABY WIPEOUT.
  • 50a. [*Crow’s nest with a shiny new coating?] GLAZED LOOKOUT.
  • 62a. [*Statement like “That opinion stinks, Your Honor”?] JUDGMENT CALLOUT.
  • 81a. [*Tantrum thrown by Clark Kent?] SUPER FREAKOUT.
  • 91a. [*Chic grocery scanner?] HIP CHECKOUT.
  • 109a. [*Olympic gold medalist in freestyle snowboarding?] HOTDOG STANDOUT.

Other than the fact that I didn’t know what a “hip check” was (I’ve never watched a hockey game), a very nice set. I love the consistency in that each word with the added OUT becomes a wholly different word. While I may not have LOLed at the entries, I did appreciate the humor.

Fill highlights include HELLBOY, ROAD TRIPS, SOY LATTE, G-FORCES, LONG CON, “WHAT THE?”, TOSTITOS, and UMPTEEN.

Never have I ever heard of a BEARJAM [Traffic backup caused by a grizzly, in slang]. Is this even a real thing? I’ve been in a bisonjam at Yellowstone, but I wouldn’t have known to call it that. Also new to me: GLITTEN [Hand-warming garment with a hybrid name].

Solid puzzle. 3.5 stars.

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35 Responses to Sunday, October 6, 2024

  1. JohnH says:

    The NYT theme was cute enough, but I just wish it cohered a bit more. “Me and X” is a common grammatical error in speech, but others were different altogether. One or two were forced, and I can’t really swear that ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE is even pertinent, at least not as pertinent as some. There was no single error, much less a common one, for the money (a) on the floor and (b) with the dollar sign out of order.

    So call it close to a super Sunday but just not quite working. Oh, well. One of those under the new editor that I keep thinking a better editor would have intervened more. But all that aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if your reaction depends totally on what you think of a plethora of 3-letter fill.

  2. Scott says:

    I really enjoyed this. Fun and clever. Yes some easy fill to make it all work but for me it does. But to be clear, Jamie and Me is also incorrect in this context. Hearing people say this is like nails on a chalkboard.

  3. pannonica says:

    WaPo: 97d [Nowadays] ANYMORE. This is not a sense of anymore that is in my speech. I’ve encountered it, and it always sounds weird to me. Wondering if it’s a regionalism, a generational thing, or both. And also how widespread it is.

    • Gary R says:

      Great Lakes region for me, mid-Boomer. I’ve heard it and used it occasionally, and it sounds okay to me. “Almost no one uses a landline anymore.” “Almost no one uses a landline nowadays.”

      • Martin says:

        That doesn’t quite capture it. “I just use a cell phone anymore” is the usage.

        • Gary R says:

          I grasp the difference – and maybe that is what pannonica had in mind. But as JohnH points out below, there’s nothing in the clue to indicate this is the usage the constructor was thinking of.

          So I think “Nowadays” -> ANYMORE is fine.

          • Martin says:

            Yeah, I was responding to pannonica’s question about the (positive) usage more than the clue. But I do think that the positive sense does fit the clue a bit better than the vanilla sense. “Nowadays” and “anymore” are not really synonyms. Many (most?) uses of “nowadays” can’t be substituted with “anymore” without changing the meaning: “Nowadays we all have cell phones.”

            A clue that can substitute for an entry in a very limited set of usages is great for a Saturday Stumper, but this WaPo was very simply clued (maybe considering last week’s tough meta). On the other hand, the “positive anymore” IS a synonym for “nowadays,” so pannonica’s comment seemed reasonable.

            But yes, it’s possibly not what Evan had in mind.

            PS. Evan lives in Philly, a hotbed of positive anymore usage.

            • Gary R says:

              I guess I’m not following you here. The clue didn’t suggest anything regarding “positive” or “negative” usage, nor did pannonica’s comment.

              I offered a pair of phrases, neither of which I think Sunday WaPo solvers would have any trouble parsing, where “nowadays” and “anymore” are synonyms. This doesn’t strike me as particularly “Stumperish.”

              You seem to want to focus on the fact that there is a less-common usage, where some solvers wouldn’t see the words as synonyms, as a reason the clue/answer doesn’t work.

            • Martin says:

              You lost me here too. I never said the clue doesn’t work. As the Wikipedia article I linked, “Positive anymore” explains, the common sense of “anymore” is negative, as in “we don’t use landlines anymore.” The regional “positive” sense means “nowadays,” as in “we use cell phones anymore.”

              That’s it. Pannonica didn’t use the term “positive anymore,” but she was asking about it. Either way, the clue is fine. It’s merely a word-nerd discussion about the very different regional meanings of “anymore.”

    • Martin says:

      It’s regional. It’s largely a Midwest thing, but there are other pockets as outlined in the linked article.

      • Matt Gritzmacher says:

        Ah, yeah. I grew up in the Great Lakes and this didn’t trip any wires for me at all to even note it in the write up

    • JohnH says:

      Dictionaries and my ear agree with Gary on nowadays “in the negative sense” as widespread and more than sufficiently equivalent to “nowadays” to justify the clue. RHUD agrees with Martin that the positive sense” is “chiefly” regional and of south midlands origin. (Well, it also defines “midlands” as in England, which is how I think about it, but never mind.) MW has it as having now caught on everywhere but in New England.

  4. David says:

    The NYT puzzle left me a little flat. After getting off to a fun start with DON’T QUOTE “ME” ON THIS, most of the other themers felt forced or too easy (because they used words from the clue) or both (with the worst offender being PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER).

  5. aura says:

    Re: NYT
    How does a publication of the NYT’s gravitas allow this pathetic a puzzle to (dis)grace its pages? Horrible doesn’t begin to describe the experience.

  6. Art Shapiro says:

    LAT: Can someone explain 91A “Sharks and minnows, essentially” : TAG???

  7. DougC says:

    The NYT puzzle made no sense to me until I read Jim Horne’s note at xwordinfo.com, and learned that the PDF version of this puzzle has clues that are annotated with “red ink” teacher’s comments indicating errors that the student writer needs to correct. With that additional info, I think this was a cute and clever puzzle. Solving the web version without the annotations, not so much. As with so many “gimmick” puzzles, this one didn’t translate well across platforms.

    • Eric H says:

      I habitually skip the title of the NYT Sunday puzzles. YOU CAN’T WIN THE MALL led me to think that the theme was playing with crossword solvers’ tendency to DOOK answers. The appearance of the Post-It note cleared that misconception up.

      Having seen the PDF, I agree that this was probably a better theme on paper than in the app.

      But DON’T START WITH ME bugs me. What kind of teacher would miss the error of using “me” as the subject of a sentence?

      • Martin says:

        I chose to believe the teacher was letting the student discover this for herself. After changing to “Jamie and me ask …,” we might hope it would be followed by a realization that “me ask” not sound right. Teachers must be ever hopeful.

      • Dan says:

        ” the error of using ‘me’ as the subject of a sentence?”

        Isn’t that exactly what the teacher is trying to say?

        (I don’t skip the titles, but always skip the special notes, if any.)

        • Gary R says:

          I took it to mean that the teacher was correcting the student for putting her/himself first in the statement – “Me and Jamie,” rather than the more traditional “Jamie and me.”

          But the issue of using “me” as the subject sorta works, too.

          NYU linguist (and NYT Opinion writer) John McWhorter would likely argue that neither of these is a big deal.

  8. Dan says:

    NYT: A very, very mildly enjoyable theme.

    The unfortunate decision to gussy it up by overlaying a translucent Post-it type note from the teacher was done so sloppily that the note appears to read “C4” rather than “C+”.

  9. Dallas says:

    Pretty cute Sunday NYT; had to wait till the end of the day to get it in, but really liked the theme clues and answers. And not too bad for my 1000th NYT puzzle :-)

  10. Seattle DB says:

    LAT: 91A – “Sharks and minnows, essentially” is “Tag”. Good grief! (1 point editing deduction from me.)

  11. Seattle DB says:

    USAT: 31D – “OVERnight hangout” is “SleepOVER”. (One star deduction for the editing duplication error.)

Comments are closed.