Wednesday, April 24, 2024, Jeffrey Martinovic

First off, what to heck is ABYSM?

According to Professor Google, it's a "literary or poetic term for abyss." I cry foul. I mean, MAXIMUs seemed odd at 46D (and it violates the theme, covered more in the next paragraph), but ABYSs also seemed more correct.

In any case, the theme of the puzzle is revealed at 62A: Feature of this puzzle's grid and the answers to the six starred clues (LATERALSYMMETRY). Which is to say, if you fold the grid in half down the line starting at 7D and ending at 64D, all the black squares would overlap. Also, all of the letters in the starred clues are symmetrical that way, which is why the theme answers are in the downs.

It's notable that the only vowel (including Y!) without that symmetry is E, fortunate for the constructor. Otherwise, he has H, M, T, W, and X to work with. Thus we get MAMMAMIA (all Ms), or MAXIMUM (Ms and an X). I like HOITYTOITY a lot, and MAUIHAWAII is a great find as well.

Michael Keaton looks so young

With all of this theme material, Mr. Martinovic is forced into some compromises (hello, "abysm"). WOAH is a stretch, and I don't love EWW or ELIE either. Note also ERM and UMS. When you have to clue two answers with "sound of hesitation," you know you've pushed the theme to the limit.

Once again, not much in the way of clever cluing. I'm looking forward to The Turn. But despite these little concerns, I find this puzzle interesting.

- Colum

Tuesday, April 23, 2024, Judy Bowers

Well, it turns out it's really hard to come up with sentences where every word is only TWO letters long. I thought for maybe 30 seconds about writing the first paragraph that way, and got no further than "Hi, my..." But, Ms. Bowers has given us 5 sentences of this sort (one of which is split into two parts).

Of course, the best by far is 16A: "Yuck! I've dated him before. Swipe left!" (OHNOEWHEISMYEX). The "Ew!" in there is so evocative. OKIFWEGOINONIT is impressive as well. The other three are SOISIT / UPTOME, DOASWEDO, and HIMAIMUP. It's fun to look at them in the grid because my brain wants to parse the collection of letters into longer words, like "Oh, noe! Whe is myex?" Or "Hi maim up!"

She don't got SIGHT

Anyway, that's a fair amount of theme material to pack in two-letter segments across the grid (58 squares). As is typical for an early week puzzle, the fill is smooth if not as sparkly. I liked SAYSPRESTO., but otherwise there's not a SLEW of interesting answers to catalog.

14A: Standing at 6-5, say? (UPONE) plays nicely on the customs for how we might typographically represent someone's height as opposed to a sports score. There's a nice rose connection between the clues for APHID and POEM. 

And that's all I got. It was a fun solve for a Tuesday.

- Colum

Monday, April 22, 2024, David J. Kahn

On a Monday morning, it's nice when the puzzle gives a little bit of an uplift. I'm uncertain whether today's puzzle does that or not...

The theme starts with 1A: Nonrenewable energy source ... and the start of an eight-step word ladder (COAL). There's a nice visual of the eight 4-letter words moving down diagonally from COOL to WOOL to WOOD to FOOD to FOND to FIND to 64A: Renewable energy source ... and the end of the word ladder (WIND).

Along the way, we get the dour GLOBALWARMING and FOSSILFUEL and the hopeful GREENPOWER. But there's also 49A: Goes extinct (DIESOUT) and 37D: Botches badly (LOUSESUP). I can't help but feel that these are related somehow.

ADAM Lambert

The rest of the puzzle moves along smoothly enough. I took longer than necessary to answer 5D: Element whose name anagrams to GROAN (ARGON). I can't help but play the word game. If the clue had been just "Element," I would have gotten it so much faster. How about you?

I also would like to think that 19D is a shout out to our own Philbo.

- Colum

Sunday, April 21, 2024, Michael Schlossberg

GET CRACKING

[Warning - spoiler alert below]

Hey, good folks, puzzle enthusiasts, and loyal readers (and likely all three at once)! Glad to be back with you for another week of New York Times crossword puzzling and reviewing. Thanks to Philbo for another fine week of blog posts.

Today, as we prepare for a late lunch book club (we're making two fritattas, one with fried potatos and onions and one with asparagus and goat cheese) (oh, and we read The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nuñez), I got to spend some time with the Sunday puzzle. When the grid opened, I knew immediately I would need to look at the info box to get some clue to the seven odd circular locks symmetrically placed across the puzzle. 

The blinking I button told me that, when the puzzle was completed, the letters in the locks could be rotated in only one way to create a new set of four crossword acceptable answers. When all seven locks were in the correct position, the "safe" would open to reveal a seven-letter answer appropriate to the theme. A meta-puzzle! And, otherwise, an essentially themeless Sunday.

I filled in the whole puzzle and figured out the answer, but did not get the pop-up congratulations message. So I tried to rotate the locks to see if that would correctly fill in the grid. No luck. Turns out I had incorrectly put an M in the crossing of 6A: Items on the backs of some Jeeps (GASCANS) and 11D: Former name of the electron (NEGATRON). I don't really know why I thought a "gas cam" would be a thing, but "megatron" didn't sound so wrong.

Anyway, the meta-answer (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!) is [JACKPOT], definitely appropriate. My favorite transformation was AORTA to [S]ORTA. 

ELFOWLS

How odd that CCLEF and CCLAMP both appear in the grid. When you add in GSUIT, that's a surprising number of letter-word answers. I liked the clue at 678A: Partner ship? (ARK). And POPQUIZ is a great answer. I've never heard of SOLARPUNK, but love the phrase. And that's it for ANSWERS today ("Key components" - excellent).

- Colum

Saturday, April 20 2024, Garrett Chalfin and Andrew Kingsley

Rounding out my week of blogging is this delightful gem of a Saturday puzzle, which took many minutes of steady pressure to bring to heel.  Numerous juicy stacked long Across clues including a triple stack in the centre, lots of misdirection - great weekend fare, this!

Nothing was jumping out at me until the very middle, where "Sentimental feelings" had to be WARMFUZZIES, but I couldn't think of a three letter word for "Catch" with a U in the middle, so I had that erased for a while until finally RUB sprang to mind.  Ordinarily I'd be off to the races with a long answer like that in place, but not today - nothing else was immediately obvious and it took a lot of forward and backward before things started revealing themselves.  When "Chew the doors, e.g." in the SE corner finally revealed itself as the excellent SPOONERISM, followed right below by the "Green-tinted cocktails" APPLETINIS, I felt relief, and shortly after, I figured out that "Lacked pop" was HADNOOOMPH, which may be the first time I've seen a triplet of 'O's in a grid.  

Had some uncertainty about the spelling of WOOKIEES, inspired apparently by George Lucas' dog.  I liked the math-y SINE and RATIO in close proximity at the top.  I think we've seen that clue for SINE recently ("1, for 90 degrees") - one of the ACPT puzzles maybe?  And BOOMROASTED as a "burn" expression is about an entire generation separated from me, I think. 

I have to cut this short as I am on the road all day tomorrow (it's Friday night as I write this).  If you are reading this and you've done the puzzle, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Cheerio!

-philbo

Friday, April 19 2024, Kate Hawkins

Hello all!  I find myself in an awkward position today, having completed (and enjoyed) the crossword and finding that I can't think of much to say about it.  Not that it wasn't a perfectly good puzzle... let's see.  Anchored by two long Across answers, both things that one might say to someone - IDONTHAVEALLDAY while anxiously tapping one's watch, and SOMETHINGCAMEUP after one's plans change.  These both share a temporal aspect - "I'm gonna be late" and "Sorry I'm late".  (The latter of which is soon going to apply to yours truly, if I don't get this blog done.)

There really weren't any hiccups while filling in the grid.  I liked the indirectness of the very first clue - AHAB ("Stubbs was his second mate").  Also liked VIBRAPHONE as a "Marimba lookalike".  I love the "vibes" and have great admiration for those who've mastered the instrument.   Two side-by-side "Unspecified amount"s (ANY and ALOT) was a nice touch.  And the two QMCs that tickled me were "Shell company?" (CREW) and "Bound for the big stage?" (JETE).  

When one encounters a clue like "Bizet's 'L'amour est un oiseau rebelle,' for one", one can write in ARIA without any operatic knowledge whatsoever.  Such is the curse of the experienced solver.  My mission this afternoon is to find and listen to that piece!  

As a sci-fi-loving teenager, I was a huge fan of OMNI magazine when it first came out.  Either it changed or I grew out of it, but there were some good years at the start..

22A ("Deep-fried bite") triggered an amusing little memory from the ACPT - we went for drinks at a bar after the stress of Day 1, during which Frannie ordered a round of TATERTOTs to take the edge off...TATERTOTs might not be a thing up here in Canada, actually.

That's all for now.  Have a great day everybody!

-philbo

P.S.  just about hit "Publish" on this thing, but twigged to something:  the answer to 44A "Dances for which girls do the asking, informally" is SADIES, which, if we disregard the awkward pluralization, is short for SADIE HAWKINS - same surname as our constructor today!  Coincidence?  I...think...not........

Thursday, April 18 2024, David Kwong

Well, that was fun!  I just wrapped up the Thursday crossword and then stared at it for two solid minutes before figuring out what the theme was.  In doing so, I had to enter answers to the six starred clues without comprehending them.  The revealer, the thrice-remade movie ASTARISBORN, finally made it all make sense.  We're instructed to re-parse it as six words, which at first looks impossible - but if you read it as 'A STAR IS B OR N', then aha!  It's telling us what to do with the stars on those clues.  So we have:

• *Assist in a foursome = MCCARTNEY if the '*' is a 'B'.
• *Allot time = ELECTIONDAY if the '*' is a 'B'.
• *Acre on the ocean floor = MOTHEROFPEARL if the '*' is an 'N'.
• *Ascent stage for a bird = HATCHLING if the '*' is an 'N'.
• *Ice is found on it = RIVIERA if the '*' is an 'N'. <-- my favourite!  So nice and terse
• *Ovid of Greek mythology = THECRETANBULL if the '*' is a 'B'.

Quite neat, not obvious (not to me), and I like the even distribution of 'B's and 'N's.  Six theme clues is also a lot to pack into a 15x15 grid. 

A bit of an unusual layout, not unpleasant, with little isolated areas in the NE and SW.  I thought "Money maven, for short" would be CPA but it's CFO, so that was a little hiccup.  I loved the ALI clue, with the factoid about his vertically-mounted marker on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - this is what keeps us coming back!  And indeed, coding loops and measuring cups can both be NESTED.  (But they can't both be RECURSIVE...) Couple of notable QMCs - "Cross fit?" (SNIT) and "Sightsee?" (AIM) were worthy.

Aren't LEIs worn around one's neck, not head?

This was great.  Such an inventive theme, and good cluing despite the relatively high number of short answers.

-philbo