Before we get to today’s puzzles, a quick note to promote AVCX’s subscription drive! (Note of transparency: I (Nate) am an editor at AVCX Cryptics and have also joyfully published crosswords with other branches of AVCX.)
AVCX is a phenomenal indie puzzle outlet that offers fun, fresh, and engaging crosswords (themed, themeless, midi, and cryptic!) and trivia on a weekly basis. This winter, AVCX is reorganizing to become fully independent, and we’re working to add 1,000 new solvers by January 1. We’re well on our way, but would love to include you, too!
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Another puzzle plug: Sunday evening is the deadline for the Kickstarter for Peter Gordon’s Fireball Newsflash Crosswords. The subscription pledge is $18 for a year of newsy puzzles, arriving every two or three weeks.
Okay, now onto our Sunday puzzles:
David Kwong’s New York Times crossword, “Art Heist” — Nate’s write-up
12.15.2024 Sunday New York Times Crossword
Flavortext: Ten paintings have been stolen by a master thief! To solve this caper, locate each stolen painting in the grid. Then identify the squares in the Across answers from which they’ve been taken. In their place, the thief has left behind 10 pieces of evidence – letters in the Downs. Read them from top to bottom to reveal a message.
21A: EAST(I/ERN ST)ANDARD TIME [Winter setting in New England]
– An ERNST was stolen from this entry and moved to 54A. The I from IS INTO was put in its place.
33A: (W/GO YA)NKEES [Bronx cheer]
– A GOYA was stolen from this entry and moved to 92A. The W from THE CW was put in its place.
35A: BUENOS AIRE (A/S ARGENT)INA [Capital on the Rio de la Plata]
– A SARGENT was stolen from this entry and moved to 13D. The A from MODEL AS was put in its place.
53A: BO(S/DEGAS) [Neighborhood grocery stores]
– A DEGAS was stolen from this entry and moved to 63D. The S from ESTE was put in its place.
64A: HOO(F/KAH LO)UNGE [Bar with hashish pipes]
– A KAHLO was stolen from this entry and moved to 20A. The F from FEMS was put in its place.
71A: FRO(R/M ONE T)O TEN [Common scale ratings]
– A MONET was stolen from this entry and moved to 8A. The R from ASHORE was put in its place.
77A: SM(A/OKE EFFE)CTS [Fog and haze generated for a theatrical production]
– An O’KEEFFE was stolen from this entry and moved to 94D. The A from WU-TANG was put in its place.
101A: REGISTERED DIE(M/TITIAN) [Health professional focused on nutrition]
– A TITIAN was stolen from this entry and moved to 4D. The M from SPASM was put in its place.
105A: STEA(E/M IRO)N [Household appliance that makes a hissing sound]
– A MIRO was stolen from this entry and moved to 93A. The E from GETS WISE was put in its place.
118A: MARY HA(D/D A LI)TTLE LAMB [Classic nursery rhyme]
– A DALI was stolen from this entry and moved to 110D. The D from REPLOTTED was put in its place.
Wow, just wow! This grid features ten carefully modified theme entries and the names of the ten artists whose works were stolen from those original theme entries. That is an incredible amount of theme-related fill in what is otherwise a mostly smooth grid! There were certainly a few regions of fill compromise (SNERD / DARIEN being the toughest moment for me), but this felt like a relatively kind solve given the thematic demands. Wow! This was such a joy to solve and it’s a puzzle I’ll remember for a while. What a fun peek into David Kwong’s brain – it should be no surprise to you that he is a real-life magician.
The only real challenge I had in completing this puzzle in the app was when I got to MODEL _S at 8D as the last unfilled square. I had no idea what letter to enter since it’s not checked in BUENOS AIRE_INA and I had no way of easily marking the nine other letter swaps to try and suss it out that way. I’ll admit that I had the app simply reveal that last letter, and I was gratified to see the app highlight the ten letters left behind in place of the stolen artwork, which aptly spelled out I WAS FRAMED! We’ll see about that, art thief!
Wowowwow – the juice certainly felt worth the squeeze on this one. What did you think? Let us know in the comments – and have a wonderful weekend!
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Themeless No. 25” — Matt’s write-up
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword solution, “Themeless No. 25,” 12/14/2024
Themeless time in the Washington Post. Let’s dig in.
I don’t recall Evan’s previous Sunday themelesses to have such open areas in the corners. It both led to a quick start and meant that my progress was tougher through much of the puzzle, where there were fewer very long entries than in past puzzles. (I usually find the longest entries easier to drop in.)
I also found the cluing a bit on the tougher side for an Evan puzzle, so there was a nice challenge here. In many cases, that was from trickier or older trivia than usual – OSBORNE, BRAUN, HATTER, ARTE, WAITE – but I also liked a number of creative clues for longer entries:
- 1a [One with real chops for chops] KARATE MASTER. “Chops” as skill and something done in karate.
- 107a [Retirement account?] BEDTIME STORY. As in “retiring” to bed.
- 28d [Saving time?] RESCUE MISSION
- 38d [Bench player’s chance to play brilliantly?] PIANO CONCERTO. A ‘bench player’ is not a substitute here, but a player of pianos, seated on a bench.
Other highlights: DIGITAL DETOX, SPACESHIP EARTH, ENERGIZER BUNNY, ONE HORSE RACE, MINERAL WATER, APPS as [Things often launched by a thumb], a chance to learn that ANDY Griffith was in “Matlock” as well as the eponymous show, adding QUEENIE to my reading list
Evan tells me next week is a meta, so get ready! Cheers.
Kruno Matic and Jeff Chen’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Branch Managers”—Jim’s review
Our theme consists of circled letters spelling out synonyms of “manager” in a sort-of zig-zag shape. Below I’ll list the synonyms and the main entry contributing the majority of the letters to the word.
Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Branch Managers” · Kruno Matic and Jeff Chen · 12.15.24
- DIRECTOR mostly comes from 10d WIRE CUTTER.
- LEADER from 3d UNREAD EMAIL.
- HANDLER from 15d “LIVE AND LEARN.”
- OVERSEER from 73d INNER SELVES.
- FOREMAN from 65d STUDIO REMAKE.
- SUPERVISOR from 77d PAY-PER-VIEW.
Nice enough theme to grok and to help speed up the solve. I’m not too clear on the whole “branching” thing which, to me, implies splitting not just turning as you do when you read the letters in order. But maybe we can view it another way as the main body of each “manager” word in the vertical direction with some letters branched off to the right and left.
Plenty of lively fill to enjoy along the way with highlights: ECON MAJOR, MOLTO BENE, PINSTRIPE, CAR RADIO, “IT FIGURES,” “I’M AWARE,” and “BAD IDEA” and “NICE ONE” in complementary positions. I also liked seeing current entry REAL I.D.
Clues of note:
- 24a. [Leading]. IN FRONT. I came across this clue just after sniffing out LEADER in the NW corner. Maybe this could’ve been [Ahead] or something else.
- 74d. [“To the ___!” (“The Princess Bride” quote)]. PAIN. If you’re not quite familiar with that phrase, you can watch the video below.
Nice puzzle and a debut for Jeff’s co-constructor. Congratulations! 3.75 stars.
I wish the instructions had said, “To solve this caper, identify THE ARTIST OF each stolen painting…” The comments on Wordplay are very negative. I’m not sure how I feel. I think I would have liked it better if I worked it on paper so I could highlight everything, but my printer’s not working. Going back and forth was tricky.
I am impressed by how the names worked, especially Titian and O’Keeffe.
Yep. I agree it would have been better with “artist”; however, people do frequently refer to paintings using the artists’ names, it’s OK.
I cannot get it to solve – I’ve tried entering the 10 cells as a rebus with the “clue” letter/, and also with clue letter / the stolen artists’ name), and I tried it as a regular cell, using the clue letter alone. I’m solving it on my laptop from NYT website. Fun theme, but not fun for me since I don’t know exactly what’s required in the 10 key cells
It’s not a rebus puzzle. The names of the artists were moved to different locations in the grid and a letter was put in its place to make the down entry work. For example,ERNST is moved from EASTERN STANDARD TIME to 54-A and an I is put in its place to make IS INTO work.
NYT: I had fun discovering the stolen paintings – although all of the cross-referencing was a PITA. I was originally looking for names of paintings (e.g., Mona Lisa), but I’m good with the idea of a stolen painting being a MONET or a GOYA – that’s in the language.
A message embedded in the puzzle with letters being left in place of the stolen paintings was a clever idea, and I’m sure it represents an impressive feat of construction. But ten Across answers that make no sense was too big a price to pay (IMHO).
I found it very complex for my early morning brain to solve. I didn’t mind the missing artists’ names, but then to add in the “left” letters was a challenge for me — particularly, since I had no idea what 12D and 65D were.
I’m none too fond of hunting down cross refs, so this was more fun thinking about than doing. Then too the choice of artists borders on crosswordese or at least crossword staples, but I realize others could easily feel obscure to many.
Oh well. I’ll call it a nice job but with reservations.
Definitely in the category of impressive construction, but no fun at all to solve, for me.
Most of the problems have already been pointed out: nonsense theme entries like WNKEES, HOOFUNGE, etc. after the substitutions, the basically unchecked end of MODEL? (though I did correctly guess A rather than T), tons of short uninteresting fill in order to fit all that theme in. A couple of the substitutions using a letter that was at one end of the artist’s name (DEGAS/S and DALI/D) also made those ones a little more confusing.
And all made even worse by the failure in the web/app version to cross-reference the long themers back to the artists (e.g. 8-A highlights 71-A, but 71-A does NOT highlight 8-A for some reason).
And I did know both DARIEN and SNERD but I see for others it was a classic Natick, right down to one of them being a New England town.
All in all, just a slog.
It’s not HOOFUNGE, it’s HOOKAH LOUNGE with an F crossing the rebus KAHLO. It’s no more nonsense than any entry with a rebus where the rebus is abbreviated.
The (movable) rebus element is what made this puzzle so special, for me anyway, so I think it does the construction a great disservice to call these entries nonsense.
I get that it’s not for everyone, but I really enjoyed this puzzle.
I believe they understand the solution; HOOFUNGE is what one would write into those spaces in the puzzle.
Yes, I understood the mechanism, but thought the resulting puzzle was terrible.
andeux said it all, “…no fun at all to solve” and Martin summed it up with “…it’s not for everyone…”
To compound my frustration, I’m forced to solve it in The Times’ horrible Web site because I’m not able to load it into Across Lite — don’t know why and don’t know how to fix it.
It’s never fun for me when I have to scour the grid to find the cross-references. I just worked the puzzle and ignored the theme.
NYT: Yeah, I loved every minute of my terrible solve time. All that cross referencing always plays heck with the clock, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process. This is definitely the sort of thing–puzzles with tricky extra problems, rebuses, and meta answers–that I come to the pastime for.
I feel like this might have been a real bear for someone who didn’t know their western art museum canon, though. If this had been built around sports stars or Tony winners I would have been pulling out my hair.
Not sure if anyone from NYT reads these, but it would have been helpful if the 10 theme answers highlighted the artist clue in addition to the artist clue highlighting the theme answers.
I agree with this suggestion!
Not sure I do agree. For one, the way they did it plays into the puzzle’s narrative: The art thief knows where the items came from, whereas the burgled sites do not know where the items got to. I thought that was cute.
For two: Ugh, even more areas lighting up while I am trying to solve under time pressure would have made things all the more tedious over here. But I know that’s just me.
NYT: I have many things that I need to do today but I wasn’t going to do any of them until I had solved this heist. I enjoyed every minute of its clever and amazing construction. It helped that I solved on paper. With an eraser handy. Whew!
One place I wasn’t sure about: I am not familiar with THE CW, so I left that W square blank until I could fill it in at the end.
Thanks for a great start to my Sunday. Now I must go do the things. Have a lovely day, everyone!
I think solving on paper was the way to go! I wish I had done that myself.
Hats off for the feat of construction.
NYT – Sorry for all the people who have a problem with this puzzle. This is a great construction! Yes the instruction might be difficult to understand. I would blame that on the editors. 5 Stars for sure.
NYT: Not an enjoyable solve for all the reasons already mentioned.
Also, CRES is not how “crescendo” is ever abbreviated, it’s “cresc.”.
Plenty of musty entries: TOYMEN? DARIEN? SNERD? OLIOS?
Lots of green paint: ALERT TEXT, IS INTO, IRISED
I didn’t like “toy men,” either — I don’t consider toys to be “trinkets.” Perhaps there’s someting I’m missing there.
I agree re “crescendo”.
From ProMusicianHub.com:
“The word is often abbreviated to cresc. and usually appears at the point where the music starts to rise in volume.”
Today’s NYT is absolutely the best Sunday crossword of 2024!!
How are we supposed to enter this in the app? Rebus? It’s not taking rebus or just the single letter. Help!
There’s no rebus. The Down answer where the rebus would go has to make sense; the imaginary rebus basically replaces the letter from the Down answer.
In Across Lite, the rebus works.
Absolutely loved this NYT Sunday puzzle! I found the instructions confusing but once I got started with the fill, it became clear what was going on. I always do the Sundays on paper so I was able to cross reference the “stolen from” clues, which helped a lot. I’m totally in awe of this constructor. What a work of art!!
NYT: 27a Made eyes at = OGLED? 81a Flimsy, as an excuse = LAME?
These entries are bad; the clues are worse
Come again?
I’m in two minds about the NYT. It was satisfying to work everything out eventually, but the process was a bit of a slog, marred (as John says above), with some dodgy fill, to which I would add REAVE.
Evan’s puzzle, by contrast, was an enjoyable themeless, with some slightly tricky cluing but nothing at all groanworthy.
NYT: Nate – as a former Docent at the Georgia O’KEEFFE Museum in Santa Fe, I feel obligated to point out that the correct spelling of this artist’s last name has 2 F’s. Fret not: rarely have we encountered a person who spells it correctly, other than curators or art historians!
Visited the O’Keeffe museum when we were in Santa Fe for a nephew’s wedding in May of last year. Thoroughly enjoyed it – highly recommend it to any of you who might find yourself in Santa Fe!
Maybe I’m missing something, but, at least in the puzzle, it’s spelled correctly, with the double Fs.
Nate spelled it with one F in his write up ;) .
Apologies! That was my typo – there was so much theme material to type up and organize that I knew I’d mess up something. Apologies!
Impressive construction feat (New York Times), but it wasn’t a pleasure to solve. As others have noted, it just got too annoying trying to remember where any given artist might have appeared on this large grid.
By the time I solved it, I couldn’t even be bothered to read the secret message.
agreed!!
NYT: I guess the effort was there by the constructor but what a slog fest. If I could give this a negative rating I would. Zero enjoyment and the messiness of the random looking theme answers to fit the secret message in was just too annoying for me to appreciate. My least favorite Sunday puzzle perhaps ever.
One of the best NYT Sunday puzzles ever!
I cannot overstate how much I hated the NYT puzzle: FEMS just killed me. Looking at xwordinfo, it has been clued this way only 3 times, and the F was one of the “added” letters, so effectively uncrossed. Of course, one could get it by decoding the hidden message, but I had MODEL T for MODEL A (the A/T another effectively uncrossed letter), plus the extreme difficulty noted above of trying to cross-reference which words in which order contained the extra letters, made it so hard for me to put together the hidden message that I finally threw up my hands and looked at the solution.
Also, LEANNA Creel has never been in the NYT before per xwordinfo; is someone who appeared in only 10 episodes of a TV show that ended in 1993 really crossword-worthy?
Also, AXLED has been in the NYT only twice in the modern era, and IRISED only this once. There was a lot of rough fill here.
For me the whole thing (however admirable in theory) was an enraging slog.
NYT: I really enjoyed it, even with the extra time it took. I was filling in artists as I went thanks to crossings, but was struggling with the long “stolen” entries until I finally got to MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB; I put DALI in a rebus at first, but then I noticed that I had already found DALI in the grid elsewhere, which gave a very satisfying aha! moment. It really lent itself to a different solving pattern than I’m used to using, and that’s a rare and very cool thing to experience. I can see why others might find it a slog, but it was a really fun puzzle for me, and I would love to do more puzzles by this constructor.
I ended up using the pencil coloring on the NYT app to mark the substituted letters which made it easier to keep track. I disagree that the A in MODEL A’S was unchecked; it was checked by the meta of I WAS FRAMED; same for the F in FEMS.
WaPo: fun themeless! As mentioned, some great inventive clueing made for a fun solve. It went fairly quickly for me. With some of the 90s music that Evan includes, I’m suspecting that he and I may have had similar tastes back then.
Also, it’s not just that Andy Griffith is *in* Matlock… Andy Griffith *is* Matlock!
Agreed! Just don’t tell Kathy Bates. :-)
This was yet another (25th in a series!) fun and time-worthy themeless from a KARATE, er, puzzle MASTER.
Back in the ’90s I was the weird kid who rebelled against other kids by not listening to ’90s music and stuck to songs from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. It wasn’t until I went to college in 2002 that I started paying attention to more current music and found newer bands and musicians that I liked.
WaPo also published a Reagle classic titled “Modifi-K-tions” which contained one of the funnest word-plays I’ve seen at 101A: “Cross between a peach and a gourd?” Answer = Necktarine
Sunday’s WaPo also had a cute classic Reagle with one of the spiciest clues I’ve seen: 101A “Cross between a peach and a gourd” = Necktarine.
Sorry about the duplication above! I’ve been having a heck of a time getting my comments to publish here and my attempt to contact the sysop returned invalid e-mail address. Anybody else?
Waited until my occasional cosolver and I could both do it together over the telephone.
We figured out pretty early that what the instructions were called “paintings” were in the puzzle referred to by the artist’s name. This is quite standard (e.g., one hears of Rembrandts), so it didn’t faze us.
We were quite impressed with the technical feat of thinking up, and carrying out, such a complex theme, as well as making it solvable for crossword fans.
The theme and its execution were nothing short of brilliant!
It was not easy to get everything just right for the software, but we somehow managed (after PrISONER —> POISONER).
“Art Heist” was brilliant but it took me and my spouse, two experienced Sunday puzzlers, one with a lot of credits in art history, more than an hour and we needed to look stuff up. Hard Times!
I’m on board with “Wow, just wow”!
Nice to have a challenging Sunday puzzle and easier to solve with pencil and paper. I enjoyed it. Felt good to finish successfully!