LAT tk (Stella)
Newsday tk (pannonica)
NYT untimed (Amy)
Universal tk (Matthew)
USA Today tk (Matthew)
WSJ tk (pannonica)
Katie Hoody’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 10/12/24 – no. 1012
It’s been a helluva week and I’m tired out. In brief—
Fave fill: “THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE,” HONEYMOON PERIOD, IT TAKES A VILLAGE, “GEE WHIZ,” HITTING A DEAD END, “WHAT DID I TELL YOU?”, ANTARCTIC, SUCKS WIND.
Mysteries: That ENDO is a mountain biking move, that [Insectoid moon dwellers in H.G. Wells’s “The First Men in the Moon”] are SELENITES (sorry, don’t recognize the book title), that there us a David and Bathsheba and it has a URIAH in it.
3.25 stars from me.
The NYT was, in my view, the best kind of Saturday puzzle. At first glance, it looked hopeless, with vast expenses of white and only a few tentative stabs for my answers.
But there was tons of cross-talk between the four quadrants, and each of the six long answers was a very common phrase. So the puzzle ultimately fell, and in slightly less than my average Saturday time! Brava, Ms. Hoody!
Earlier this evening, I had struggled with the most recent Tim Croce puzzle and a 2007 Rich Norris Saturday in the NYT archives. My first thought on starting today’s NYT was that it was going to be a beast like those others. Instead, I got through without getting seriously stuck anywhere.
Amy, Wikipedia says an ENDO is “a cycling trick also known as a ‘stoppie,’ after the possible outcome of flipping ‘end-over-end’ if performed incorrectly.” It’s not something I plan on trying.
I liked the long answers quite a bit, although some of the fill in this puzzle (AGS, BYO, RUS, SYN, etc.) was very iffy. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars for me.