Scott McMahon’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 1/18/25 – no. 0118
Been a while since I’ve done a triple-triple stack. This one’s well-done—the Down crossings are not bad overall (always a risk with such stacked 15s) and the 15s are all solid.
Toughest entry for me was the heard-of-it-but-didn’t-remember-it 2d [Capital and second-largest city of Minorca], MAHON. I’m going to guess that constructor Scott McMAHON got a kick out of including it.
Fave fill: “A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL, …” (topical these days with talk of upending Panama’s sovereignty), “CARE TO ELABORATE?,” CHRISTMAS SPIRIT, Katherine Hepburn’s OSCAR NOMINATIONs, SPANISH OMELETTE, SATELLITE DISHES, HOTEL CALIFORNIA, and Kate WINSLET.
Clue/answer pair I might remember now: 43D. [Arabic for “prayer”], SALAH. A lot of Liverpool games air in this house, and their star player is Mo Salah. To keep winning, they just need Mo’ Prayer?
Nice to have a Jimmy Carter shout-out: 47D. [Jimmy Carter was the first president regularly seen in these], JEANS.
Four stars from me.
nice puzzle but not for a saturday
played more like an easy friday
without being in a hurry, one of my quickest saturday solves
NYT; Very deft triple triple-stack. All common phrases or terms and, as Amy says, no torturing the down entries to make it all work congenially.
I agree with Steve that it played much easier than a typical Saturday. One of my faster times.