Sunday, May 27, 2018

Hex/Quigley 10:51(Laura) 

 


LAT 8:13 (Amy) 

 


NYT untimed (Amy) 

 


WaPo untimed (Erin) 

 


Andrew Chaikin’s New York Times crossword, “21”—Amy’s write-up

NY Times crossword solution, 5 27 18, “21”

The theme is “21,” and all six 21-letter theme entries are clued [21]. AGE FOR DRINKING LEGALLY (of course, LEGAL DRINKING AGE is way better, but it’s only got 16 letters), NUMBER ONE ALBUM BY ADELE (not her first album—that was 19—but her first #1 in the US), GUNS IN A MILITARY SALUTE, SPOTS ON ALL SIDES OF A DIE (I prefer PIPS but that would make it a 20), WINNING BLACKJACK TOTAL, and LETTERS IN THESE ANSWERS. I liked this a lot better than most themes in which the clues and answers are basically swapped.

There were a few grievous bits of crosswordese and cruft that barked at me. TEN LB, OCC, STENS, HI-SPEED (my eyes read that as “his peed”), EL RIO clued as an unincorporated community in California, SMALL A’S (whaaat? no!), SSTS, AT. NO., and the stunningly uncommon-in-crosswords TERNI57d. [Italian city where St. Valentine was born].

Six more things:

  • 69d. [Guardian Angel Curtis ___] SLIWA. Now, this is an uncommon surname, and if you didn’t live in a city that had Guardian Angels patrolling the trains, I can’t imagine you weren’t asking “WTF??” while solving. With the could-be-misconstrued [Loos] clue for WCS (Britspeak for bathrooms, aka water closets) crossing SLIWA at the W, there are probably going to be plenty of newspaper copies of this puzzle with an error here. (It was easy-peasy for me, though! The Guardian Angels and their trademark red berets were  in Chicago when I was a young suburbanite.)
  • 33a. [Former Nebraska senator James] EXON. Between this guy, Curtis SLIWA, CLEA DuVall, LON NOL, medieval TRISTAN, David Ogden STIERS, CHITA Rivera … yeah, some tough names for many solvers to wrangle.
  • By Wenbinbin2010Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

    33d. [Nonpoisonous, as mushrooms], EDIBLE. Now, I don’t generally eat mushrooms, so I’m no expert. But I can’t help thinking there are mushrooms out there that aren’t toxic but are also not considered edible because they taste terrible. But maybe they all taste sort of similar? Don’t ask me.

  • 111a. [Shape of every Baha’i temple], NONAGON. I drove past the one north of Chicago this morning. Just now learned from their website that the building is ringed by nine different gardens. I must go visit soon!
  • 75d. [Old civil rights org.], SNCC. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Congressman John Lewis chaired SNCC in his early to mid 20s. Have you seen the commencement address he gave at Harvard? It’s worth the 18 minutes of your time to watch it. (I don’t think there’s a transcript available yet.)

3.3 stars from me.

Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post crossword, “Stop Making Excuses” – Erin’s writeup

WaPo solution 5/27/18

We’ve got some conjunction expunction from common phrases this week:

  • 23a. [“Between dried grapes made by Mr. Ripken and Ms. Peeples, which do you prefer?”] CAL OR NIA RAISINS. “California Raisins” minus IF.
  • 29a. [Attractive, as a slithery fish would be?] EEL PRETTY. “I Feel Pretty” minus IF.
  • 37a. [“This floral ring’s not long enough”?] LEI’S TOO SHORT. “Life is too short” minus IF.
  • 63a. [Well-liked opponent of the GOP?] POPULAR DEM. “Popular demand” minus AND.
  • 65a. [Fighting forces commanded by the leader of the Police?] STING ARMIES. “Standing armies” minus AND.
  • 81a. [Sweet dessert shaped like pitcher Young?] CHOCOLATE CY. “Chocolate candy” minus AND.
  • 83a. [Cutlery belonging to the star of “Moonstruck”?] CHER KNIVES. “Butcher knives” minus BUT.
  • 106a. [Lift weights?] ELEVATOR TONS. “Elevator buttons” minus BUT.
  • 119a. [“Mr. Sajak, be less noisy”] PAT SOFTER. “Pats of butter” minus BUT.
  • 125a. [“I don’t want to hear any excuses,” as well as a hint to this puzzle’s theme] NO IFS, ANDS, OR BUTS

Other things:

  • 1d. [Seller of the Crispy Colonel Sandwich] KFC. Apparently it took them until 2018 to put a boneless piece of chicken on a bun with mayo and pickles.
  • 27a. [Gun-control activist González] EMMA. So much love and respect for this remarkable young woman.
  • 86d. [Wild plum] SLOE. Fellow crossword bloggers Lena Webb and Michael Sharp have a podcast named “On the Grid.” In one episode they discuss SLOE as well as EELs.
  • 5d. [“Rainbow Connection” singer] KERMIT. Let’s end with a rendition of the song featuring Kermit and Miss Piggy along with Queen Latifah and John Legend.

Gail Grabowski’s Los Angeles Times crossword, “Suppressed Urges”—Amy’s write-up

LA Times crossword solution, 5 27 18, “Suppressed Urges”

I didn’t find the theme too exciting. YEN is 107d. [Urge hidden in this puzzle’s eight longest answers], and each theme answer follows the —Y EN— format.

  • 25a. [No-fuss course], EASY ENTREE. I’m not sure this is a legit stand-alone phrase.
  • 27a. [“Spin” that really doesn’t affect the ball], BODY ENGLISH. The zippiest of the themers.
  • 44a. [Invitation enclosure], REPLY ENVELOPE.
  • 83a. [“Curious though it may seem … “], “FUNNILY ENOUGH…”
  • 99a. [Fairy tale feature], HAPPY ENDING.
  • 104a. [Frank account, e.g.], DIARY ENTRY. The clue uses both the “honest” sense of frank and Anne Frank here.
  • 35d. [Focusing completely], FULLY ENGAGED.
  • 40d. [Military construction expert], ARMY ENGINEER.

I prefer Sunday themes that feel a bit playful, and “these letters are in the middle of those phrases” doesn’t fit that mold.

Favorite fill: “BUNDLE UP!”, DOES LAPS, BOTNET, and the implausible consonant run of CFL BULBS.

Five more things:

  • 61a. [Wine label first name], CARLO. More accurately, [Jug wine label first name]! Carlo Rossi wines are specifically in big glass jugs. Some poor ad copy from their website: “For forty years, people have been enjoying Carlo Rossi’s unpretentious, fruit forward red and white wine in a jug. Carlo Rossi, the man, always believed that good wine doesn’t have to cost a lot, that is a belief that Carlo Rossi has stuck by. From the delicious grapes to the sturdy glass jug, quality and value has been the goal. ¶ There are many theories about why Carlo Rossi wine comes in a jug. Some say it’s from the grape stomps. People would gather for a grape stomp and carry the fresh juice home in a jug. Others think it is about the convenience. A ring makes it easy to carry, pour and share. But we think it’s just another way Carlo Rossi wine stands out from the crowd. No matter what the reason is, be sure to enjoy your jug of wine with friends and family.” LOL.
  • 20a. [Donovan of “Clueless”], ELISA. Not one of the main five characters. Are we this hard up for notable CARLOs and ELISAs?
  • 69a. [Landlord’s sign], TO LET. I call a foul on this, since it’s not an American term but there’s no hint of that in the clue. This is perennially one of my least favorite phrasal entries.
  • 54d. [Light beer?], PALE ALE. I really wanted this to be PILSNER, though the question mark would probably be a bit out of place then. Your PALE ALEs of the India style, IPAs, are rarely my cup of … pilsner.
  • 92a. [He pardoned Richard], GERALD. Ah, Watergate, Ah, presidential corruption and impeachment and pardoning by an ally.

Three stars from me.

Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon’s CRooked Crossword, “Marathoner’s Playlist”—Laura’s review

CRooked - 5.27.18 - Cox & Rathvon - Solution

CRooked – 5.27.18 – Cox & Rathvon – Solution

This puzzle’s theme makes more sense if you remember that the CRooked is the Boston Globe‘s Sunday puzzle, published five weeks later. Five weeks ago was the Boston Marathon; as everyone knows, NATICK is a town at the eighth mile of the course. Cox & Rathvon imagine songs to run by:

The song I hadn’t heard of in this list is BACK BAY SHUFFLE, which is a swingin’ Artie Shaw tune to which you could dance a swell foxtrot. According to a noted jazz blog, the song is “a little tone poem describing the scramble of musicians after a late Boston gig to catch the last train back to New York, lest they be stranded over night.” You can catch a train to New York at Back Bay Station; Back Bay is also the neighborhood where the Boston Marathon ends. The 2013 Marathon bombing at the finish line killed three people and injured hundreds. This year was the fifth anniversary of the bombing; if you’re interested, check out Our Marathon, a “digital memorial” and oral history site created by librarians, archivists, and students from Northeastern University.

 

This entry was posted in Daily Puzzles and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

27 Responses to Sunday, May 27, 2018

  1. Byron says:

    Theme squares = 6*21=126 = number of entries.

  2. Ethan says:

    INFAMOUS FIXED QUIZ SHOW

  3. David says:

    WaPo: Another gem from Evan. I don’t know how he keeps doing this, week after week. A puzzle to love.

  4. Lise says:

    I have a question about the Saturday Stumper, which I finally completed this morning, and which I liked a lot. Can anyone explain BLT as the answer to 56A “Lunch with beefsteak, perhaps”? Beefsteak, lettuce and tomato? If that’s a thing, that’s fine; it’s just that I have not heard of anything but the bacon variety of BLT.

    Thanks :)

  5. Christopher Smith says:

    How FAMOUS RESTAURANT IN NYC didn’t make it into this puzzle I have no idea. Also have no idea what SCRIES is. But apparently I liked this more than Amy.

    • Richard says:

      SCRIES is the very uncommon 3rd person singular simple present of “scry.” Overall, though, I liked it better too. The mediocre fill wasn’t too distracting, and I enjoyed trying to predict the later theme entries.

  6. jim hale says:

    NYT for me had too many unfamiliar non-interesting names. Did not know engram (kind of interesting), sncc (not interesting). The Bahai temple was odd as I spent a long day at one in New Delhi… but needed most of the cross to get nonagon. I didn’t care for “Spots on all sides of a die”, yes they add up to that, but they are not on all sides.

  7. JohnH says:

    I’ve no idea about SCRIES either, and RHUD isn’t helping, so I guess I don’t care for that clue. I had trouble with STIERS crossing CLEA and the clustering of EXON, ADELE, DIDDY, and an Olympics site near the Harley clue. SNCC, TRISTAN, and (here in New York) SLIWA did come back to me, although can’t say I thought highly of the Guardian Angels.

  8. Jenni says:

    I can’t read my own writing, so I thought the C at the beginning of CASE of was an L and filled in MALEVOLENT instead of MALIFICENT, which made OR ELSE – not. The travails of actually using pencil and paper.

    I also found the theme a slog and did not like it as much as Amy did.

  9. Lise says:

    Lovely WaPo! I remember doing a 15 x 15, years ago, by Elizabeth Gorski, with this theme. It was also wonderful. It was fun to see it done in the large format with lots of entries. Both puzzles were/are very clever feats of construction. It’s amazing how many entries there were, that fit the theme.

    NYT: I didn’t know EXON, CLEA, or CHITA, and needed to wrestle SLIWA out of the neural attic, but I thought they had fair crossings. I liked the puzzle more than most, it seems.

    Time to do a little scrying to predict the winner of the Indy 500 ;)

    • Penguins says:

      I just had a delicious beefsteak, lettuce and tomato sandwich, Lise, so I wanted to thank you. A little heavy on the tomato but very tasty nonetheless.

      So I knew more penguins were on the way but this is ridiculous.

      Go to Gravatar to set your own avatar, Lise.

      • Lise says:

        Oh, now I have tomato envy. Right now all I have are the tiny ones that come in different colors.

        That’s a lot of penguins!

        Thanks for the link. I’m thinking owls.

    • janie says:

      > I remember doing a 15 x 15, years ago, by Elizabeth Gorski, with this theme.

      everything old is new again, and it does show up from time to time. lee glickstein and nancy salomon used it for a new york sun puzz in may of 2007, ditto michael blake — also may of 2007 — for the lat. both of these, too, were 15x. the former drops the words to make new “wacky” phrases (as evan has done); the latter simply drops the word as it appears in well-known phrases (which is not so much fun, imho…).

      ;-)

      • Lise says:

        Wow, you have a stellar memory!

        • janie says:

          thank you for thinking so. yes, the theme felt very familiar, but where the specifics are concerned: no, no — cruciverbal has a kinda stellar data base!

          ;-)

  10. AV says:

    Liked the variation on a theme, which felt like a themeless … but ATATIME and ONETIME could be cleaned up.

  11. Mary Flaminio says:

    Can’t find Marathoners playlist- cane you direct me to the site? Thanks

  12. Dr. Fancypants says:

    The NYT was pretty “meh” for me today.

    Random note about the site: I’m not sure if it’s just me, but when I view the mobile version of the site on my iPhone, the puzzle rating (and the option to rate the puzzle) doesn’t show up. This seems to be a recent development—and I can work around it by switching to desktop mode—but wanted to flag it for our hosts. Could be something on my end, though.

  13. cyberdiva says:

    I too am having a problem with the ratings on my Android tablet (running Android 7). I can see the rating stars and I can select a rating to submit, but when I click on Submit, nothing happens.

Comments are closed.