Saturday, May 18, 2024 | (2024)

LAT3:07 (Stella)

NYT3:52 (Amy)

WSJuntimed (pannonica)

Adrian Johnson’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

Whoa, Joel! You may have swung back too far towards the “let’s ease up on the clues a bit” side. This one played like a Tuesday for me.

I gambled on VICTORIA’S SECRET being the answer to 1a. [Where you might shop for the sheer fun of it?] and everything unfurled from there.

Fave fill: “I MEAN IT THIS TIME,” CALL ON THE CARPET, IRANIAN AMERICAN, “SAVE THE DATE” CARD (my son and daughter-in-law mostly used the emailed equivalent this spring), “THERE ARE NO WORDS,” VICUÑA, CELIBACY (great clue: [Nun’s habit?]), SAURON, HYPE MAN, THE BARD.

Three more things:

• 35d. [Certain drag racer], NITRO CAR. I know about cars getting a boost from nitro, but haven’t seen the two-word term before.
• 14d. [___ Okafor, 2004-05 N.B.A. Rookie of the Year], EMEKA. Looks like he didn’t make a huge dent after that rookie year, but the name’s familiar.
• 33a. [Many a character in the 2018 animated film “Smallfoot”], YETI. Never heard of the movie, but a small-footed Bigfoot is an inferrable concept.

Crosswordese: 2d. [Turkish inns], IMARETS. Historically, these were basically soup kitchens, feeding people as an act of charity. Doesn’t the clue sort of connote that a tourist visiting Turkey could book a few nights’ stay at an imaret? I don’t think it works that way. At any rate, it might be nice to see IMARETS clued via Muslim charitable efforts if solvers are going to be quizzed on the vocab.

Four stars from me.

Parker Higgins’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Ugh, this puzzle is so good. Like, annoyingly good. Wish-I’d-made-it good. (I couldn’t have, though. Parker is younger than I am, and a coder, and both of those things show in the grid.) Also wish I had time to do more than just point out a couple of gems:

• 6D [Defining question?] is ARE WE A THING? Both a great entry and a very clever clue.
• 37A [In-person appointments that require an online application?] is TINDER DATES. See comment above.
• 24D [One with many good buds] is a SUPERTASTER. As in taste buds. Awesome.

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Let Me Spell It Out” — pannonica’s write-up

Payoff at the end:

• 111a^R [Aretha Franklin song spelled out phonetically by the additions to this puzzle’s theme answers] RESPECT. The song, of course, features her spelling out the word as part of the chorus. (13d [Chorus line?] LA LA.) In the other theme entries, words are respelled as necessary to accommodate the suffixed syllables.
• 23a. [Material for a Coast Guard balloon?] NAUTICAL MYLAR (nautical mile + R).
• 34a. [Doctor’s job when finishing a C-section?] CLOSING BELLY (closing bell + E).
• 48a. [Admission into the venue for the NFL draft?] PICK ACCESS (pickaxe + S).
• 60a. [Speechless dwarf when he’s feeling more like Grumpy?] SOUR DOPEY (sourdough + P).
• 70a. [Flower whose petals are added to the greens?] SALAD DAISY (salad days + E).
• 86a. [Particular liking for overhead décor?] CEILING FANCY (ceiling fan + C).
• 100a. [Get rid of some of the accord provisions?] TRIM THE TREATY (trim the tree + T).

Yep, sure.

• 1d [Sonata quartet] TIRES. What a great clue, and I was completely misled. This is about the Hyundai car.
• 4d [Play makeup] ACTS. 52d [Play makeup] SCENES.
• 6d [Plane figures] COPILOTS. I guessed correctly about the clue’s subject but still had difficulty parsing the COPIL– crossing letters I had in place.
• 8d [Island with a delegate to the House of Representatives] GUAM. Just because I had recent occasion elsewhere to share this notorious Congressional moment, I’ll repeat it here: “Burning Question: Will the Marines cause Guam to tip over?“
• 15d [Holler] CRY. 110a [Call out] YELL.
• 32d [Dizzy Gillespie forte] BEBOP. 77a [Drum kit components] HI-HATS. There’s a certain affinity here, no?
• 35d [Tool for prep chefs] GRATER. 42a [Tools for prep chefs] PARERS.
  
• 49d [Pretentious pancakes] CRÊPES. Is it because they’re French? The circumflex? (38a [They look like inverted v’s] CARETS.)
• 61d [“Did that really just happen?”] OH DAMN. Is this a crossworthy phrase?
• 80d [Animal shelter sign] ADOPT ME. Sometimes I stop and worry about all the unadopted animals in the overburdened system, but then I also worry about pets being too-easily adopted by abusive types. Honestly, it’s just another aspect of societal despair. Apologies for the downer moment. I’ll give my lucky cat an extra hug.
• 84d [Hardly a super duper] BAD LIAR. Another standout clue!
• 92d [Enlightened] AWARE. AWAKE could also work here. Y’know, woke. 31d [Fit for sentry duty] ALERT.
• 97d [Low pitch, perhaps] BALL. Another sneakily good clue, a notch below the other two I’ve previously highlighted.
• 1a [Brand produced by the McIlhenny Company of Louisiana] TABASCO. Nice to have a gimme right at the start of the grid.
• 33a [Carefully winnow] CULL. The process is not always carefully executed, however. Oof, pun was not intended.
• 45a [Suit in a Spanish card deck] OROS. Somehow I’d never learned this. Let’s find out what the others are. “The Spanish suits closely resemble Italian-suited cards as both were derived from the ‘Moorish-styled’ cards. The four suits are bastos (clubs), oros (literally ‘golds’, that is, golden coins), copas (cups) and espadas (swords).” (courtesy Wikipedia)
• 63a [Word separator] SPACE. Perhaps surprisingly, this was a relatively late development in written language, especially Latinate ones.

Ben Zimmer’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up

Genuinely surprised at my relatively quick time on this one, because it surely seemed as if I was getting nowhere for quite a bit.

• 5a [Taylor Swift 2023 haul (nine)] VMAS. Site of the letter I needed to hunt down for nearly a minute at the end. Had CMAS here and as I was solving I just assumed 5d [Summit] CERTEX was some obscure thing I’d never heard of, but it turns out the awards were for videos—Swift is more of a pop artist than a country artist these days—and VERTEX makes a lot more sense.
• 9a [Out to lunch] SPACY. Sure, but 1d [Sap] DITZ?
• 16a [21st named storm of 2020] ALPHA. I had originally suspected something beginning with a U, naturally.
• 17a [What NASA‘s eHEALTH ONE device emulates] TRICORDER, from the Star Trek world. One of those clues where the response is, no it can’t bethat, can it? Could it really be? Wow!
• 18a [Andean city where fire-kindling is tough] LA PAZ, because of the high elevation.
• 19a [Deep pan] ZERO STAR REVIEW, for which I had … RATING at first.
• 26a [From] STARTING crossed by 11d [Certain beginnings] APPETIZERS and avoiding duplication. 33d [Certain beginning] SOFT-C.
• 30a [Plenty of nothing] VOIDS. Plural makes it a bit trickier.
• 32a [Half of an interlocking pair] YANG. I feel that ‘interlocking’ sells it a little too hard, but on the other hand ‘complementary’ wouldn’t have been tough enough by Stumper standards. Anyway, I was thinking (because of Zimmer’s language credentials) of typographical ligatures, which is also off the mark.
• 36a [Larry or Curly, by their own admission] MORON. Unaware of the specific basis for this beyond their professional stoogedom.
• 41a [Where gumbo comes from] BANTU. Language, not locale.
• 48a [Cluster] BUNCH. Was primed for this because the crossing entry 25d [Darlin′] turned out not to be HONEYBUNCH but HONEY BUNNY.
• 52a [Using crafts] SLYLY. Meta clue.
• 6d [Up-and-down address] MADAM. Referring to its palindromic nature and the vertical aspect of the entry. See also, 26d [Up-and-down flights] SOLOS.
• 9d [Prizes for Wimbledon Women’s champs] SALVERS, or trays. Etymology: modification of French salve, from Spanish salva sampling of food to detect poison, tray, from salvar to save, sample food to detect poison, from Late Latin salvare to save — more at SAVE (m-w)
• 10d [Beef also a beef cut?] PLAINT. Not understanding how this works. 20d [Aged beef?] EGADS. Not exactly buying that an exclamation = a complaint.
• 28d [Canada __ ] GOOSE. Also the name of a company that makes nice but very expensive outerwear that people have decided is a status symbol.
• 34d [Combat with light artillery] LASER TAG. No question mark here, making it a bit more difficult.
• 37d [Word from Latin for “lead down”] DEDUCT. Makes sense.
• 43d [Adjectival “what”] QUEL. No indication that the answer is in French, perhaps I’m missing something. (27d [Tempo oscuro] NOTTE.