Friday, April 4, 2025, Karen Steinberg

It's one of these puzzles with several 15-word pins through it. I prefer these to quad-stacks, for example, because the crosses tend to be less strained. That said, I did learn OMBRE (Hair color blending technique) and LAR (Roman guardian spirit). I've had something like ten years of Latin and I have never come across LAR. But the crosses were fair, so no foul.

My favorite of the fifteens was ICALLEMASISEEEM ("Lemme be straight with you") because I got the end first, and I was worried about that ...EEEM. Yikes.

Loved 1A today - ALSO (It may lead to a second opinion). Really nice clue there. It's too bad that the next two were so close and so ... blah. (BLOBS (Shapeless stuff) and MUSH (Shapeless stuff)). They tried with the repeated clue to make it interesting, but when the words are so mid it just doesn't really sing.

Other fun clues were "Messy things to eat in a car" (TACOS), "Ottomans, e.g." (LEGRESTS), and "Every bad situation is a blues SONG waiting to happen": Amy Winehouse." 

Decent Friday. 

- Horace

Thursday, April 3, 2025, Hanh Huynh

This is a lovely Thursday puzzle. And it looks to me like the stars in the grid echo the placement of the stars in the referenced painting, where they are grouped largely on the left side, with one bright one in the upper right corner. Very nicely done.

I caught on quickly with CO* (One sharing the credits?), but didn't really know what to do with *NSYNC (Band with the 2000 11x platinum album "No Strings Attached") because I didn't remember that the name began with an asterisk. See also: Q*BERT and E*TRADE. I knew both answers immediately, but had forgotten about the asterisks. It wasn't until M*A*S*H (Show with the most-watched episode in scripted TV history) rezzed in that I finally caught on. 

Fave clues:

Corner piece - CASTLE
Places for prongs - OUTLETS
Get on - AGE

Overall, a nice way to turn a STARCROSSED thing into something beautiful.

"AVEC beaucoup d'amour,"

TOMCAT

Wednesday, April 2, 2025, Daniel Bodily

Almost seventy squares of fill in today's puzzle. That seems like an awful lot, but judicious use of black squares make it so no Down word has to pass through more than two of the theme answers, and that keeps the fill reasonably decent. I was introduced to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC (New Deal program in which workers planted more than 3.5 billion trees, in brief)) (sigh...), I learned the word DEMISED (Transferred at death), and I question PANIN (Get a closer shot) as a valid term. But those are small things, and there were plenty of good Down answers too.

WARLOCK (Dark wizard), BUFFOON (Goofball), and EPISTLE (Romans, e.g.) are all STRONG. ORACLE (Clairvoyant), SCOURS (Cleans vigorously), and ASIAGO (Parmesan shelfmate) are all strong in the non-fill Acrosses. And who doesn't like HEARTS? Might be my favorite card game of all.

The heavy theme was well done. Solid Wednesday.

- Horace

Tuesday, April 1, 2025, Sande Milton

It's April Fools Day today, so we could expect something a little different in the puzzle today. And lo, we find that someone has started it! I don't know about you, but when I pick up a puzzle that has been started by someone else, I ignore what has been entered. I did the same thing today and got pretty much the same result - some previous answers were right, some were wrong. 

If we set aside the penciled-in answers, we see a theme of INFLIGHTMAGAZINE, SEATBACKPOCKET, PRIORPASSENGER, and the unsatisfyingly incomplete RETURNTRAYTABLES. Plus the word GUESS (What you might do if you don't know an answer. And maybe even ENDRESULTS (Final outcomes)?

My brother really hates the idea of an INFLUENCER (Big shot on the internet), so that brought a smile. (I think he's just jealous of me being a crossword influencer. :P) HIPS (Body parts that swivel) brought to mind the lyric "The world moves on a woman's hips. The world moves and it swivels and bops." And come to think of it, that same brother also hates David Byrne, for some reason. 

An interesting Tuesday.

- Horace