Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Drinks All Around” — these ones are on me. – Erin’s write-up

Jonesin’ solution 3/18/25

Hello lovelies! This week’s theme entries are flanked by four-letter alcoholic beverages.

• 16a. [Glass set in a wall] WINDOWPANE (wine)
• 60a. [Wage increase] SALARY HIKE (sake)
• 10d. [Popular read] BESTSELLER (beer)
• 28d. [Blowgun projectile] POISON DART (port)

Other things:

• 41a. [Bad ___, Germany] EMS. Bad means “bath,” referring to the town’s thermal springs.
•  7d. [Answer to the joke “Mr. Freud, what comes between fear and sex?”] FUNF. More German. Vier (sounds like fear) is four in German and sechs (sounds like sex) is six, so what comes between is the German five, fünf.
• 48d. [Beaker’s noise] MEEP. Beaker the Muppet assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, not beaker the lab equipment.

Until next week!

Jay Silverman’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Letter Carriers”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar phrases with hidden Greek letters within. The revealer is IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME (32a, [Confused response, which may be said upon seeing the circled words]).

Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Letter Carriers” · Jay Silverman · Tue., 3.18.25

• 18a. [Playground activity with ample stillness] FREEZE TAG. Zeta.
• 23a. [Olympians in red, white and blue] TEAM USA. Mu.
• 28a. [Mets outing at Citi Field, e.g.] HOME GAME. Omega.
• 42a. [Do some heavy lifting] PUMP IRON. Pi.
• 49a. [Severe reprimand, metaphorically speaking] RIOT ACT. Iota.
• 52a. [Freudian development stage] ORAL PHASE. Alpha.

Solid theme, and I like the play on words in the title. I do feel like the two-letter letters are so much low-hanging fruit from a constructor standpoint; I’d prefer to see at least three-letter letters like rho or psi (but four or longer are even better). Peter Gordon once rejected some theme answers of mine for a similar issue. (Some potential alternatives: AIR HORN, DEEP SIX, or BET AWARD.) At least pi and mu span two words each, so that’s a plus. All of the longer ones (omega, iota, etc.) are nice finds.

Nothing especially zingy in the fill, but that may be partly due to the fact that those NW and SE corners are on the large size with two eight-letter stacks each. BUS FARES, TECTONIC, and OLEANDER are highlights for me in those corners. PATOOT is fun, but I hear “patootie” more often. Not sure that anyone says EMAG. I’ve heard “online magazine” but not EMAG.

Clue of note: 10d. [Politico Cheney]. LIZ. My quick reaction was to put LON in for this, but at least I caught myself.

Nice puzzle. 3.5 stars.

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 720), “Come On, Jump In!”—Ade’s take

Crossword Nation puzzle solution, Week 720: “Come On, Jump In!”

Hello there, everybody! Hoping all of you are doing well today. 

We’re a month away from Holy Week, but the Easter bunny couldn’t help but come out and play with today’s grid. In it, each of the theme answers is turned into a pun by adding the letters HOP consecutively inside of it.

• • • • HIP HOP HUGGERS (14A: [Low-slung pants inspired by Jay-Z’s music?])
      • THE BELLHOPS (25A: [Haunting Edgar Allan Poe poem dedicated to luggage handlers?])
      • CARHOP PORTS (41: [Dessert wines recommended by drive-in servers?])
      • TIMES TABLEHOP (54A: [Make the rounds at a party for a venerable London newspaper?])

How can you see FUDGE and not think about Ralphie and A Christmas Story and the “F dash, dash, dash” word (32D: [Gooey, sweet treat]). I’m pretty sure the movie was the first time I ever heard of that euphemism. Speaking of euphemisms, SHOOT definitely is one we’ve all used a whole bunch as well (12D: [“Ask me anything”]). Definitely was thinking of making Italian food tonight, so RIGATONI might actually be a sign that that’s what I should do (7D: [Tubular pasta]). So how many of you associate TEXAS TEA with the cocktail instead of oil (34D: [Crude oil, slangily])? All the power to you if you had the drink and lived to tell (and remember) the tale! But if you’ve actually drank crude oil, then, well … I have nothing more to say!

“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: AGGIES (58A: [College Station athletes]) – Of course, the Aggies being referenced in the clue are the Texas A&M University Aggies from College Station, Texas. There are a few other schools at the Division 1 level who are nicknamed Aggies, including New Mexico State, North Carolina A&T, Utah State, University of California Davis.

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

Larry Snyder and Jonathan Kaufman’s Tuesday New York Times crossword—Evan M’s review

Larry Snyder and Jonathan Kaufman’s Tuesday NYT Puzzle Solution 3/18/25

This Tuesday’s puzzle is wholly avian, but definitely not for the birds! I actually had to look up what “it’s for the birds” meant, oops. The revealer is PARTY FOUL, and the clue guides us to “homophonically” use the phrase as a hint to our themers: DISCO DUCK, SILLY GOOSE, FUNKY CHICKEN, and WILD TURKEY.

I’m a little low on time tonight, so I’ll spare you a deep dive into why people think birds aren’t real. I’ll just say that this one was cute and fun. The qualifiers for the “fowl”-minded phrases are all fiesta/dance/whimsy-related, and they all stand alone as fun phrases on their own. 4 stars from me, a solid and classic easy theme, but not much fun outside of the theme. That said the solving did feel very smooth, and there weren’t any stretchy clues that didn’t feel worth it to me.

I also realize I never properly introduced myself – I am Evan Mulvihill, or Evan M for short here, and I mostly construct themeless puzzles. I’ll tell y’all a little bit more about me next week! Tata for now!

Caroline Hand’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

I didn’t get the theme until I filled in the revealer. I saw a different connection between two of the theme its fnswers and that distracted me.

The themers:

Los Angeles Times, MArch 18, 2025, Caroline Hand, solution grid

• 17a [Extremely good-looking person, slangily] is a SMOKESHOW. Kids these days.
• 23a [Actress who played Rollergirl in “Boogie Nights”] is HEATHER GRAHAM.
• 40a [Treat that can help a dog with indigestion] is a CHARCOAL BISCUIT. Pro tip: not just dogs (although I wouldn’t recommend the dog biscuits for other applications).
• 53a [Online publication founded in 1996 by Michael Kinsley] is SLATE MAGAZINE.

And the revealer: 65a [Range between black and white, and where the starts of 17-, 23-, 40-, and 53-Across can be found] is GRAYSCALE.  SMOKE, HEATHER, CHARCOAL, and SLATE are all shades of GRAY.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: never heard of SMOKESHOW and didn’t know HEATHER GRAHAM was in “Boogie Nights.”