Sunday, February 2, 2025

Oscar season is upon us and so are our version of the awards for crossword puzzles, the ORCAS. Check out the nominated puzzles and vote for your favorites here on this page. Voting closes on Monday, February 17th with winners announced in a livestream a week later.

Derrick Niederman’s New York Times crossword, “Two-For-One Special”–Dave’s recap

Dave here again, subbing for Nate this week. Nate will be off blogging duty for weeks or months after losing his home to the California wildfires. There’s a GoFundMe raising money to help Nate and Ben rebuild their lives in the aftermath.

NYT Crossword Solution – 2/2/25

So we have a rebus puzzle today, two word phrases are clued in italics where the first word in the phrase clues a word that is just one letter different from the word clued by the second word. (Hope that makes sense!) Perhaps it’s better to list them out:

• 18D: [Skinny/dip] clues SLIM and SWIM, the LW appearing in the crossing 22A: RACHE[L W]EISZ
• 24A: [Fast/car] clues QUICK and BUICK, the QB appearing in the crossing 8D: PD[Q B]ACH
• 25A: [Wild/bunch] clues ZANY and MANY – and – 48A: [Holland/tunnel] clues DUTCH and DITCH, the ZM and UI appearing in the crossing 13D: HA[ZM]AT S[UI]TS
• 31D: [Horse/power] clues COLT and VOLT (I would claim WATT instead of VOLT is a unit of power), the CV appearing in MMMD[CV] (rather hard to find entries that end in CV without resorting to Roman numerals, eh?)
• 61A: [Stadium/timekeeper] (granted I imagine there is such a person, but as a standalone phrase it doesn’t ring true to me) clues METRODOME and METRONOME, the DN appearing in ROA[D N]OISE
• 74A: [Average/income] clues PAR and PAY, the RY appearing in FLATTE[RY]
• 77A: [Denver/Colorado] clues STAGE NAME (John Denver?) and STATE NAME, the GT appearing in YOUN[G T]URK
• 102D: [Slumber/party] clues SIESTA and FIESTA (my favorite of the set), the SF appearing in U[S F]LAG
• 105D: [Trail/head] clues PATH and PATE, the HE appearing in [HE]RNIA
• 111D: [Promise/keeper] (I’ll just leave you a link to their Wikipedia entry and have you make your own judgement) clues WORD and WARD, the OA appearing T[OA]STMASTER
• 116A: [Dino/expedition] (this is a phrase?, perhaps in Jurassic Park but not elsewhere) clues T-REX and TREK the XK appearing in JAGUAR [XK]ES (another hard letter sequence to find a crossing entry for!), and finally…
• 117A: [Card/game] clues JOKER and POKER, the JP appearing in [JP]EG

I’m afraid this theme just wasn’t for me–I’m not confident that all of the italicized phrases really work on their own, and it’s just hard to look at entries where the rebus works as 2 letters in one direction and as a choice between 2 letters in the other. And further, these choice letters tend to both be consonants limiting what the crossing entries can be. I wonder too if the theme is too dense, was there really a need for 12 of them in the grid, leading to entries like YESM, LETTER A, AGIO crossing DOGEs and the vaguely sexist BE A DOLL?

Hope you enjoyed this one more than I did, and have a great rest of your weekend!

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Either You See It or You Don’t”–Matt’s recap

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Either You See It or You Don’t” solution, 2/2/2025

This week’s puzzle from Evan is apt, considering the date. Our longest entries are theme-adjacent, with the entire middle row joining in the fun:

• 26a [Predictions about snowy or fair conditions, perhaps] WEATHER FORECASTS
• 45a [Pennsylvania setting of a Feb. 2 festival] GOBBLERS KNOB
• 68a [Season predicted to be extended, depending on what 116 Across sees] WINTER
• 70a [Either one of two things that 116 Across might see, represented as a word you will either see or you won’t, depending on your answers to the six starred clues] SHADOW 
• 72a [Season predicted to come early, depending on what 116 Across sees] SPRING
• 97a [1993 film where a meteorologist relives Feb. 2 over and over again] GROUNDHOG DAY
• 116a [Beast renowned for its sight?] PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL
  

None of these clues are the starred ones references in 70a, though. Let’s run through those:

• 55d [*Gardening tool] HOSE
• 65d [*The ___ Man (1930s film character)] THIN
• 71d [*Fix] AMEND
• 47d [*Fuzzy thing that can follow “Black”] BEARD
• 57d [*Cat’s sound] MEOW
• 67d [*Influence] SWAY

So what’s going on here? Well, these are the six crossing entries for 70A SHADOW, and it turns out all of them work if the letters of SHADOW are omitted, if “we don’t see it,” we might say: Gardening tool HOE; The Wizard of Oz character The TIN Man; fixing by MENDing; black BEAR instead of Blackbeard; MEW instead of meow from a cat, and influence as having a SAY rather than having sway. If you solve on the Post’s website, after the puzzle is complete, the entry SHADOW blinks in and out to illustrate the concept. Nice touch.

I quite like this take on the yes/no of the SHADOW: this is a mechanism we see from time to time but I still had to revisit post-solve to fully grok what Evan pulled off. And while I’ll prefer wordplay throughout the grid on a Sunday, this theme just didn’t necessitate it and the long answers helped set the tone and keep my interest up through the solve.

Other notes: My mother, a retired biology teacher, would lament “blue” in the clue for VEIN. It seems many students learn that deoxygenated blood is blue rather than a less-bright red. But of course, veins do look blue under our skin // A bit of late-00s nostalgia here for [Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja, e.g.] for APP // Do I know Elizabeth PENA, apparently an actor in “Rush Hour”? No, but I know that the four-letter actor Elisabeth SHUE spells her name with an -s- and wasn’t correct here

Always glad to see Jennifer GREY in grids, as that’s the way my brain wants to spell the color // ROBOSIGN [Endorse, as a document, without reviewing it first] was new to me, though decently clear with a few crossings. I wanted “rubber stamp” 

With Groundhog Day falling on a weekend this year, it’s the topic of a few more puzzles than normal. Crossword Fiend doesn’t cover the puzzles over at Vox, but Andrew Ries’ grid from yesterday (2/1) would be well worth your time.