Tuesday, December 24, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Jingle All the Way” — look for the helpers. – Erin’s write-up

Hello lovelies! For this Christmas Eve puzzle Matt pulled the ELF off the shelf and placed him in the grid! The theme entries are common phrases with an additional ELF.

• 19a. [Reminiscent of a photographer’s storage closet? CAMERA SHELFY (camera shy)
• 36a. [Getting enough sleep, practicing mindfulness, etc.?] SELF CARE TACTICS (scare tactics)

51a. [Understands a “Beverly Hills Cop” instrumental theme?] GETS THE AXEL F (gets the ax). And earworm in 3…2…1… Axel F

Other things:

• 57a. [Actor Ke Huy___ of 2025’s “Love Hurts”] QUAN. He won the 2022 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” after an almost two-decade break from acting.
• 28d. [Rapper who pioneered trap music] JEEZY. Jeezy helped bring trap to mainstream audiences in the mid-2000s. The genre was born in the 1990s in Atlanta and other locations in the South.

Until next week! Happy Holidays!

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Decked Out”—Jim’s review

The word PINE is “trimmed” in successive theme answers until only one letter remains. The revealer is TRIMMING THE TREE (37a, [Yuletide undertaking, exemplified by the circled letters]). Theme-adjacent entries TINSEL and LIGHTS round things out.

• 18a. [Hardy Canadian evergreen] JACK PINE.
• 23a. [Bun holder] BOBBY PIN.
• 51a. [Film for which Ang Lee won his second Oscar] LIFE OF PI.
• 54a. [Symbol found on caps of both Keystone State MLB teams] CAPITAL P.

I found this slightly more interesting than yesterday’s puzzle, but only just. Christmas trees are typically firs, but I guess using the four-letter PINE was preferred over the three-letter FIR.

Looks like that does it for Christmas-themed puzzles in the WSJ this year. We’ve had some years where we get a week’s worth of Christmas grids, but not this year. I’m not complaining because I’m sure some people could do without them entirely, but this seems a little meager compared to the fare of Christmases past. Perhaps Boxing Day will liven things up.

VITAMIN, TITANIC, and EVEREST top the fill, which to be honest, also seems a bit thin. There’s nothing too out-there, thankfully, but just not a lot of sparkle.

Clues of note:

• 29a. [Tibetans call it Chomolungma]. EVEREST. Nice bit of trivia. I’m going to test my neighbor with it (though I bet he knows it).
• 6d. [Easternmost Caribbean islander, informally]. BAJAN. Needed all the crossings and had to guess at the J. The island is Barbados and the people are either Barbadians or Bajans. Another fun fact: BAJAN rhymes with Cajun.

3.25 stars.

I never heard of the JACK PINE, but I do know the mighty Scots Pine of course. Here’s the best tree-trimming song (haha) that I know…

Sarah Sinclair’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap

With the Tuesday-level clues throughout, I finished the puzzle without paying the slightest attention to those oddball black squares with rows of … teeth? Let’s take a look and figure out what they’re here for. Ah, yes, teeth. The revealer is THE NUTCRACKER, 39a. [Classic ballet set on Christmas Eve, with a hint to four black squares in this puzzle]. The nutcracker’s teeth are crunching the inside of four nuts: ESCAPE and CANE TOAD has a PECAN, LIP BALM and ON DRAFT hide an ALMOND, PAY CASH and “EW, GROSS” have CASHEW (nothing gross about cashews!), and there’s a PEANUT in EUROPEAN UTOPIA despite peanuts having originated in South America. Love nuts, like the theme, appreciate the seasonality of THE NUTCRACKER.

Fave fill: “THAT SAID …”, DNA SAMPLE, TUSH, STEP DANCE, HOOPLA.

Four stars from me.

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 708), “Sweet, Seasonal and College Bound!”—Ade’s take

Hello there, everyone! Hope all is well and that you all have a fulfilling holiday season ahead.

Last month, we had a Thanksgiving riddle theme, and we have another holiday riddle in store for X-Mas. These are the types of grids that either fall real easy because or take a much longer time because I can take educated guesses in what a the question or answer might be as I’m starting to fill the grid. This was more of the former, especially after getting “Gingerbread” and “Oxford” down, which made the answer a lay-up. 

• • • • WHY MIGHT THE GINGERBREAD MAN ATTEND OXFORD (17A: [Holiday Riddle Question: Part I], 24A: [Riddle: Part II], 39A: [Riddle: Part III])
      • BECAUSE HE’S A SMART COOKIE (48A: [Riddle’s Answer: Part I], 60A: [Answer: Part II]])

Loved CASBAH to start out the grid, especially given the historical cluing being a citadel and not a fill-in-the-black to the song by The Clash … not that I have anything against the song (1A: [North African fortress]). There’s a chance that I’ll be going to Los Angeles on a work trip next month, and though I would be excited to make it back out West, especially during the winter, I definitely will not be looking forward to the TRAFFIC (23D: [Gridlock cause]). 

“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: GENT (24D: [Bloke]) – Just found out that one of the best nicknames of any college in Division I basketball is no longer featured in D-1. Centenary College, in Shreveport, Louisiana, is nicknamed the Gentlemen, and one Gent who became famous is former Boston Celtics center Robert Parish, who is enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s been over a decade when the school reclassified its athletics to Division III, back in 2011, but didn’t know that until now. Aw, man … it was cool back then seeing the old college basketball standings in the paper and seeing Centenary and knowing that I was one of a few people who knew their nickname without looking it up. Yes, those things were important to me when I was little!

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

Taylor Johnson’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

A timely theme that didn’t quite work for me. The revealer in the middle tells us what we’re looking for: 38a [Christmas morning activity, and what 17-, 25-, 47-, and 61-Across all have?] is OPENING PRESENTS. So the opening of each theme answer should be a present, right?

• 17a [Asset of a highly skilled individual] is a TRAINED EYE. A time-honored Christmas present – a toy TRAIN.
• 25a [Lizard with a misleading name] is a HORNY TOAD. A horn? Is this a common Christmas present? In our family the lizard would have been more likely.
• 47a [“The Nutcracker” performer] is a BALLERINA. OK, a BALL. Got it.
• 61a [List of cheap eats] is a DOLLAR MENU. One DOLLAR? In a stocking?

Maybe this is a cultural thing – I don’t celebrate Christmas. Never have. A couple of these feel like reaching to me. The last thing I want to do is “bah. humbug” a holiday puzzle, though.

I have a question for the opera aficionados among us. 54a [Opera soliloquies] is ARIAS. I would have said RECITATIVES were more like soliloquies. Maybe that’s only in oratorios? I’m a choral singer, not an opera singer.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that Nick NOLTE appeared in “Affliction.”

Anna Shechtman’s New Yorker crossword, “The Holiday Crossword: Tuesday” — pannonica’s write-up

So I gather this crossword is part of a series where New Yorker-notable names and titles from throughout the past year are crammed into the grid. Mostly for those clues and entries I waited for enough crossings, but estimate that I knew about a third of them, maybe a quarter? Anyway, the result is that the solving experience was more like a booby-trapped obstacle course than an engaging pastime. On the other hand, my judgment is probably miscalibrated right now, for various frame-of-mind reasons.

The grid contains no real salient entries—the closest I guess are a pair of 10-letter thematic ones, PAUL AUSTER and PEN AMERICA—nor does it have exciting stacked entries. I really don’t know what to make of this cruciverbal gavage.

The only playful, question-mark clue is 32d [Remembrance of things past?] RELIC, which in my opinion almost works, even with that question mark.

As for mis-fills, I distractedly entered IPOD for 51d [Apple début of 1998] IMAC, even though in crossword clues, it should be reflexive that Apple + 1998 = IMAC. Also, I first had MMHMM for 29d [“Sure sweetie”] MMKAY (which can be transcribed in various ways, from m’kay to mmmKay and beyond).

46d [Surrealist André who wrote, “Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all”] BRETON. I’m not sure how to interpret this, but apparently it’s the final line of his 1928 novel Nadja. Perhaps reading it in context would be elucidatory, but perhaps not, as it is a surrealist novel.

addendum: I see now that this puzzle’s theme is specifically “2024 in Literature”