Note: This week’s New Yorker is their annual Cartoons & Puzzles issue, so the regular slate of puzzles is on break this week. We can’t be sure which puzzle people have been rating, but it’s not a Monday themeless! We won’t be blogging the special issue’s puzzles.—Amy
Joe Marquez’s New York Times crossword — Sophia’s write-up
Theme: QR CODE – Two word phrases where the first word begins with Q and the second begins with R
New York Times, 12 18 2023, By Joe Marquez
- 17a [Preliminary tournament stage] – QUALIFYING ROUND
- 30a [Snake oil salesman’s offering] – QUACK REMEDY
- 45a [Woman temporarily serving as monarch] – QUEEN REGENT
- 57a [Financial statement issued every three months] – QUARTERLY REPORT
- 47d [Scannable black-and-white square … or a hint to 17-, 30-, 45- and 57-Across] – QR CODE
Cute if simple theme today. Does the “code” in QR CODE have any bearing on the theme answers? I don’t mind it, just curious if I’m missing something. QUALIFYING ROUND is my favorite of the theme answers; QUACK REMEDY is good too but it took me a long time to figure out what the second word was.
Some great long fill in the grid today, WRONG MOVE and BLUEBIRDS especially. Other highlights for me were Maurice SENDAK, DEFRAUDS, INTERNS, and “Honey I SHRUNK the kids”. I tried “nudge” before BUDGE and “ice baths” before ICE BAGS for [Swelling reducers for sprains] – is this a common phrase?
Anthony QUINN was new to me, and I read B AND O Railroad as a single word every time I see it. There are a few other answers that could be tricky for newer solvers (ADEN, ALEE, ABA to name a few), but overall the fill is pretty clean – I refuse to say anything bad about IONE Skye being in this puzzle; “Say Anything” is one of my favorite movies.
Congrats to Joe on a great NYT debut!
Dave Rus’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Artificial Intelligence”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases whose first words can also be synonyms of “smart.” The revealer is SMART START (64a, [Kellogg’s antioxidants cereal, and a clue to 17-, 24-, 31-, 45- and 51-Across]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Artificial Intelligence” · Dave Rus · Mon., 12.18.23
- 17a. [Prominent color in Barbie posters] BRIGHT PINK.
- 24a. [Apple Store fixture] GENIUS BAR.
- 31a. [Sinking hazard in an adventure movie] QUICKSAND.
- 45a. [Hard left or right, on the road] SHARP TURN.
- 51a. [Zinger from the peanut gallery] WISECRACK.
Solid theme making for a good Monday puzzle. The only nit I’d pick is that all of the “smart” words have their meanings sufficiently changed except for “genius.” Whether you consider the employees at an Apple Store to be geniuses or not, the word is used as a synonym of “smart,” unlike the other phrases in this grid.
I like DRIP DRIES and BLUE WHALE in the fill as highlights, though the other two 9-letter entries aren’t bad at all. Even though all four long fill entries intersect with two themers each, they cross at useful letters (vowels and S’s and T’s and the like), allowing the constructor some leeway to put in entries with a bit more sparkle. And that comes down to good grid design.
Clue of note: 9d. [Welcomes at the front door]. ASKS IN. These aren’t really the same though, are they? In my book, “welcome” is more a synonym of “greet” than “invite in.”
Jay Silverman’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 12/18/23 by Jay Silverman
I’m embarrassed to admit that when I opened the file to solve this puzzle, I thought I was opening a different puzzle — a Fireball themeless — and therefore it took me a decent amount of time to realize that the clues in the NW corner were actually straightforward, and not traps laid for the unwary. Oops.
Anyway: The revealer at 61A [Welcome words from a bartender, and where to find the ends of 17-, 30-, and 46-Across?] is ON THE HOUSE, because the second word of each theme entry is something that can be found on the outside of a house:
- 17A [Online customer service component] is a CHAT WINDOW.
- 30A [Metaphorical feature of a poorly run company, perhaps] is a REVOLVING DOOR.
- 46A [Does a celebratory dance by pushing up one’s palms] is RAISING THE ROOF.
It’s pretty hard with words like WINDOW, DOOR, and ROOF to get away from the literal images of those things as they appear on a house. I think these theme entries are about as close as one can get to doing that, but I still found all of them evocative of the literal physical features. Nice smooth grid; highlights for me were the mid-length entries like OLD NAVY, WIFE-TO-BE, and LAID BACK.
Lauren Bradley and Adrian Johnson’s Universal crossword, “In Good Times and Bad” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 12/18/23 • Mon • “In Good Times and Bad” • Bradley, Johnson • solution • 20231218
After two theme answers I realized I had a word ladder on my hands. Then after consulting the title, I knew where it would end up.
- 16a. [*Sources of street tunes] BOOM BOXES.
- 20a. [*Device used to launch an old video game, perhaps] BOOT DISK.
- 25a. [*They’re not worth discussing] MOOT POINTS.
- 47a. [*Like the people on a high-profile list] MOST WANTED.
- 52a. [*Not to be missed novel] MUST-READ.
- 60a. [*1989 Young MC hit, or what might do when listening to it] BUST A MOVE.
So it’s boom to bust.
- Nice longdowns in VARIETY ACT and ONE-DAY SALE (10d & 27d)
- 26d [Garfunkel and __ (folk duo)] OATES. Better than Lindhome and Micucci, right?
- 56a [Futuristic Nintendo racing series] F-ZERO. If you’d asked me, I would have guessed this was the name of some sort of energy drink.
- 64a [Food for an angel or devil?] CAKE. Almost an impressionistic clue, and it definitely needs the question mark.
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Themeless Monday crossword — solution grid
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Themeless Monday crossword solution, 12/18/2023
I found this pretty tough today but never really came to a full stop. Think it will play pretty tough for all, but let us know in the comments. ST MARK, EXTANT, and GO GONZO opened areas up for me, while of the intersecting stagger stacks, only NINETIES KID came to me easily as things like ??? LIST, ??? TILES, and ??? STICKS just waited for enough crossings to show up.
NYT: The CODE to figuring out the theme answers is the Q and the R.
Quite Right.
(Wordplay agrees on this, btw.)
Since “code” can mean “rules”, I’d also be OK with the idea the term “QR CODE” means QR-based “qualifying rules” – i.e., to be in today’s theme – b/c the pattern/”code” was pretty easy to notice on its own.
Nice debut puzzle!! :^)
Fun Monday! I had the same wrong fill as Sophia, which slowed me slightly (what are N_U_BIRDS? And QUEEN RET__T?) but worked out great in the end.
At TNY, I’m seeing not a Monday puzzle, but the cartoon and puzzles issue. Is that right? The magazine itself will reach me by mail later in the week.
I was a little confused as well. I think the Monday puzzle is called Triple Play. I enjoyed solving it. Here’s the link I used – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/triple-play-crossword
I also found this note – This week, in lieu of our usual crosswords, we bring you the2023 Cartoons & Puzzles Issue »
Thanks. You navigated it better than I. Looks like a challenge, with lots of fine print. Of course, it may look more accessible in print.
Thanks for the url!
And thank you for the Ray Charles track!
Thanks for the link. Every time I tried to get to the crossword puzzles in the New Yorker app, the app crashed.
That put me in a bad mood before I even started the puzzle. I sort of figured out what was going on with the 27A R.E.M. clue, but it was still a bit confusing because I wasn’t counting the truths and lies. (I’ve heard of the game, but never played it.)
It’s not my favorite puzzle from Brooke Husic and Adam Wagner, though I generally like their work.
Now that I’ve spent some time with it, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the issue’s Monday puzzle. Surely they’re all on an equal footing.
Now, I’d never heard of the game and took forever to get crossings to the revealer, so I was pretty much on my own. I first saw TOO/TOO/TWO, and my first thought was that we were going to be given alternative entries that, crossing other answers, would give two or three alternative puzzle solutions. That’d have been a tour de force of construction, probably impossible, but another clue or two quickly ruled it out. Say, ANDS might be read as a clue for AND, so fitting on its own but not at all crossing TWO or TOO, and then SHROVE clearly would not fit.
I couldn’t see for a while that two versions of a clue would always give the same answer, but I did start to see that the third version is deceptively close (the way that Shrove Tuesday is not ASH Wednesday or ANDS is not ORS). So amusing.
The usual New Yorker crosswords are on hiatus this week and will return on Monday the 25th. Instead, readers can solve the puzzles from the Cartoons & Puzzles Issue, which can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons-and-puzzles-2023.
There’s a variety puzzle by Patrick Berry (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/lost-in-central-park);
A split decisions-style puzzle by Fred Piscop (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/track-maintenance);
A crossword by Brooke Husic and Adam Wagner (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/triple-play-crossword);
A cryptic by Neville Fogarty and Lily Geller (https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/cryptic-crossword/2023/12/17);
A rebus puzzle by Suerynn Lee and Liz Maynes-Aminzade (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/seeing-stars);
A spot-the-errors puzzle with illustration by Lauren Humphrey (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/only-in-new-york);
And a word puzzle by me (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/trimming-the-tree).
I just finished your puzzle and enjoyed it very much
Your word puzzle was an amusing change from the kinds of puzzles I typically do. But the second sentence is such a groaner! :-)
Patrick Berry’s “Lost in Central Park” is great. I printed the pages to solve on paper. It’s easy-ish, but a treasure of a puzzle. Unlike any I’ve seen, but I don’t get out much. :-)
I’ll have to solve it. His Bagel Shop puzzle from last year’s edition was a blast.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/26/bagel-shop
Somebody [BEQ?] used to do a a “rows and rings” puzzle on occasion, in which you had across rows with multiple words and then ever smaller concentric circles using the same letters from those rows for different words. Hope that makes sense. This was way more complicated, but enjoyable, although I thought the coding for the online version was abysmal. I probably should have printed it out, and I’m sure it was not PB’s job.
WSJ: Certainly enjoyable for a Monday, but I wonder if some will scratch their head at the revealer. As much as I personally love it – probably because it has 18 grams of sugar per serving – I don’t think Smart Start is among even the top 30 cereal brands sold in the United States. I wonder how many solvers are familiar with it.
New to me, but then I shrugged it off since I haven’t had cold cereal for hreakfast since childhood.
NYT: I enjoyed it! And thought the non-theme related fill was lovely. Felt very smooth, and I know it’s not easy to pull off. Congratulations.
Where is the solutions to he 12/18 puzzle?
where are the answers to 12/18 puzzle, please?