Wednesday, September 6, 2017

This week’s AV Club puzzle has a meta element with the chance to win a great prize if the answer is submitted by September 10. We’ll have a review/recap up on Monday.

Daniel Raymon’s New York Times crossword—Jenni’s write-up

I am a terrible judge of how long I spend solving. This felt like it took a long time for a Wednesday, and it was faster than last week. Good thing there’s a timer and we don’t rely on my internal clock.

We have a replace-the-sound theme today with “Y” added to the “O.” Wackiness results.

NYT 9/6, solution grid

• 20a [One traveling around Scandinavia?] is a FJORD EXPLORER (Ford). I’m pining for the fjords…
• 35a [Visit to the salon?] is a BEAUTY CALL (booty).
• 40a [Argument that involves pointing?] is a FINGER FEUD (food).
• 49a [Soldiers in line formation?] is a MILITARY QUEUE (coup). This one took me a long time to parse.

I like the fact that the top two theme answers have the shift in the first word and the bottom two in the second word. All the base phrases are solidly in the language and the shift is consistent. It’s not a breakthrough of any kind, but it was fun to solve and I enjoyed it.

A few other things:

• 1a [Female singer with a hit album in every decade since the 1960s] is CHER. Impressive staying power.
• 1d [Course designer] is a CHEF, and I’m glad it was a relatively obvious answer because 14a [Confused state of mind] could be either DAZE or HAZE.
• 12d [Metro area] is one of those words never seen outside of crossword puzzles: URB. Feh.
• 29d [Dangerous circus jobs] are LION TAMERS. Not in so much demand these days.
• 48d [Gig parts] is referring to data storage, not music performances, so the answer is BYTES.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that I.M. PEI turned 100 this year.

I leave you with a sampling of CHER.

Jim Page’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Sand Box” — Jim (Peredo)’s review

I didn’t recognize the byline, but Jim has had a handful of NYT grids published over the past several years. Looks like this is his WSJ debut.

The revealer starts at 35a: [With 45-Across, hurricane-prone area, and a clue to this puzzle’s edges]. Answer: OUTER / BANKS.

Too soon? With Houston still reeling from Hurricane Harvey and facing a long and daunting recovery, and with a Category 5 Hurricane Irma making its way toward Puerto Rico, this revealer really could’ve done with a non-hurricane clue, especially since it’s not pertinent to the theme. [North Carolina’s barrier islands] would have worked just fine. I don’t know when clues are set in stone, but it seems like there’s been enough time to change this one.

Anyway, the perimeter entries in the grid define BANKS in different ways.

WSJ – Wed, 9.6.17 – “Sand Box” by Jim Page

• 1a [With 9-Across, high-rise feature] ELEVATOR / SET
• 12d [With 32-Down, it’s used in a rebound shot] POOL / CUSHION
• 17d [With 57-Down, drift] PILED UP / SNOW
• 71a [With 72-Across, roll to one side, e.g.] AIR / MANEUVER

These…didn’t work for me, mostly because I’m not a fan of the whole “clues as entries” idea. As a solver, I find it anticlimactic to search for an answer and then discover it’s something made up like “ELEVATOR SET.”

But if you’re okay with that, let’s look deeper. I’ll grant that you can have a bank of elevators and a bank of snow. And I know you can bank off of a POOL CUSHION (if that’s what you call the edge of a pool table) but is a POOL CUSHION a bank? And I know banking as a pilot’s turning maneuver, but is AIR MANEUVER the best description for that? It doesn’t feel complete to me.

I was also thrown off by the theme answers each being divided into two entires. Until I grokked the theme completely, I was wondering if these divisions were actually part of the theme as is occasionally the case in WSJ puzzles. They aren’t; they’re just there to make the grid easier to fill. But still, it was distracting.

And I imagine it was tough enough to fill the grid as it is with those large stacked corners. For the most part they work; I especially like IL POSTINO, MORATORIA, and OIL PAINTS. I’m less fond of START ANEW and some of those rough crossings (ISLIP which I only know from crosswords, PINER, and CRI). But this grid posed some unique structural challenges, and as far as that goes, it’s built quite nicely.

Clues of note:

• 27d [Way around London]. TRAM. Eh? Most people think of the Tube as the way to get around London. According to the Transport for London website, its tram network has 28 km of track serving 39 stops. 29 million passengers used trams in 2016/17 (not exactly sure what that stat means). Compare that to 402 km of track for the Tube serving 270 stops and 5 million passengers per day. London’s tram network only serves a portion of south London and is roughly equivalent to one of the Tube’s smaller lines. A way around parts of London maybe.
• 39d [Lindy’s hop?]. SOLO. Referring, I believe, to Charles Lindbergh’s SOLO “hop” from New York to Paris. Also, the Lindy Hop was a dance popular in the ’30s and ’40s.
• Some clever clues in 25a [Hole in the head] for NOSTRIL, 31a [Park place?] for GARAGE, and 42a [It’s brought to order] for MENU.

All in all, not really my cup of tea theme-wise, but it’s solidly built with good fill and some nice clues.

And now, advice to the crossword lover: “Words are the worst thing ever!”

Samuel A. Donaldson’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s write-up

LA Times
170906

Today’s theme provided a pleasant scaffolding on which to erect interesting answers. I encountered POWERCOUPLE before I’d filled in much of the grid; that allowed me to fill in the AC’s and DC’s and unlock the other longer answers somewhat more easily. I don’t know if that was the most efficient method of solving, but that’s how it panned out. The first two themers both use a central ‘and’, which is mildly inelegant. However, both JACKANDCOKE and PEACHESANDCREAM are quality answers, and that more than trumps the former consideration for me. The last two of the set are SACREDCOW and BACKGROUNDCHECK.

Pair of bullets:

• [Aquatic plant], ALGA. Well that’s a clumsy clue right there… See this classification here.
• For some reason, the juxtaposition of ITSHERE and OHRATS amuses me… (And not just because a colleague’s pet rat gave birth to eight babies this morning.)

The grid design is heavy on three-letter answers, which doesn’t exactly bother me, except that it meant way more abbrs. than one typically sees…

3 Stars
Gareth