Sunday, January 31, 2021, Jim Hilger

PRODUCT MISPLACEMENT

Today's clever, if commercial, theme takes familiar phrases and replaces one word with a brand name, then–obviously–clues the resulting phrase wackily. As is so often the case, explanation will be made easier with an example: "Nature abhors a vacuum" is changed to NATUREABHORSAHOOVER, and is clued with "Reason that the prestigious scientific journal refuses articles from President Herbert's relatives?" See? Nothing at all tortured about that clue, right? 

More straightforward, I think, is "Volunteered at a nursery?" for WORKEDFORPLANTERS (Worked for peanuts). As I said at the top, though, it's clever enough, and the idea of THROWINGINTHEBOUNTY (Adding a historic ship as a deal sweetener?) was humorously absurd. And really, what more can one ask?

In the fill, I have a couple questions. One - is MONTE always a "rigged card game?" Isn't it possible to play it in an honest way? I mean, it's still hard to follow the hand movements of a skilled practitioner, isn't it? And two - does the answer to "Cloth woven from flax fibre" have to be IRISHLINEN? Is it thought that the spelling of "fibre" makes it so? Couldn't it still just be plain old linen? I'm sure I don't know. 

I liked the highfalutin answers "Ad VALOREM tax" and NUNCIO (Vatican ambassador), the geologic pair of SEISMS (Great shakes) (Nice Non-QMC) and BASALT (Volcanic substance), and the clever QMCs "General practice?" WAR and "Nice nicety" MERCI. That's Nice the town on the Riviera. In France. Clever! And I loved "Two fifths of one quarter" for DIME. Very nice.

And have I ever told you the story of when Frances and I went to a bakery in Denmark and asked them what word they used when talking about the sweet pastries they had for sale? They said "Viennoises." Well, we haven't yet been to Vienna, but we will get there, and when we do, we'll take one more step toward getting to the bottom of this ongoing mystery!

Overall, this puzzle had a good spirit. Fun, clever clues, references from all over, and a kooky theme. Thumbs up!

- Horace

Saturday, January 30, 2021, Nam Jin Yoon

Another week has flown by, and we end with a super smooth Saturday themeless. This grid shape is excellent. It's so rare that we get 13- and 14- letter answers, and to have them stacked in the north and south of the puzzle is cool looking.

I'd like to start by acknowledging Ms. Ronan of "Little Women," "Brooklyn," and "Lady Bird." What an amazing actress: I have yet to see a movie she's in where I haven't been enthralled by her performance. Furthermore, when I saw the clue, I said to myself, said I: "I'm going to mess up the spelling of her name." And like Cassandra, my prediction came true. I put the I before the O. Fortunately, 41A: Buck, boomer, jack, flyer or jill, informally (ROO) saved the day, and I ended up with SAOIRSE.

How about the pair of 10D: Frosty air? (ICINESS) and 11D: De-frosting? (DETENTE)? It's a nice adjacent set of clues. I'm not convinced that either of them actually need question marks. Thoughts?

Actually, the QMCs in this puzzle were not particularly misleading. Or maybe I just had my Saturday solving hat on. Not an actual hat, mind you. It's metaphorical. You know, for those tricky...

Never mind. The point is, these ones didn't really make me work hard. With the exception of 19D: Holding up the line for? (CUING). That's perfect, really. Too bad the rest couldn't live up to that one.

AXOLOTL

But that's okay. I thoroughly enjoyed my journey through this puzzle, starting at 1A: Hero of Philadelphia (HOAGIE, which dropped right in to start me off). The long answers were all very good, starting with ROCKETSCIENCE. The other three have such a nice conversational feeling to them, and each are four words or longer. My favorite is MOREPOWERTOYOU.

Well, tomorrow starts another week with Horace. I'm looking forward to it!

- Colum

Friday, January 29, 2021, Robyn Weintraub

I had a feeling the turn was going to be good this week, and lo and behold! Ms. Weintraub's name pops up on the screen. I'm always excited when I see her byline. She is consistently smooth in her construction, and fun to solve.

Today, I felt there was something of a hidden theme going on. When you're in PARENTHOOD, it's common to have a PICKYEATER in the household. Many Moms and Dads have a SECRETRECIPE to convince them to eat, and then it's a DONEDEAL. Unless it's EXTRASPICY, and then there's ZEROCHANCE!

OVERTHETOP? Maybe. But at least I amused myself.

I like the contrasting "100% not happening!" and "100% happening!" clues. Other great clues include:

18A: Big brass (TROMBONE)

30A: Hot dogs do this (PANT)

11D: Talk up? (PRAY)

46A: "The weapon of the powerless against the powerful," according to Molly Ivins (SATIRE). I was thinking maybe "the vote" but that just goes to show how naive I still am, apparently.

31A: Bar exam? (PUBTRIVIA). Excellent.

MRS Lovett and Sweeney Todd

My favorite comes at 19D: TV roommates for 50+ years (BERTANDERNIE). By the way, it can't go the other way around. Ernie and Bert is not a thing. 

My other favorite is at 14A: Choice for those eager to retire and travel? (SLEEPERCAR). So much is good here, that I can't even get them all in. 

Can tomorrow match up to Thursday and Friday? Tune in to find out!

- Colum

Thursday, January 28, 2021, Steve Mossberg

Debut alert! Always impressive when a constructor's first puzzle published in the NYT comes on a Thursday, because of the trickiness expected of the theme on that day.

And today's does not disappoint. We get four phrases, to which is added the letters -ILY, transforming the last element into an adverb, which now describes the first part of the phrase. You have to imagine a comma between the two parts in the reworked phrase. Clue wackily, and hilarity ensues, as they say.

All four of the theme answers hit the mark, if you ask me. The one that made me laugh out loud was 39A: Golden blades that may be tenderly chew'd by equine or bovine beings (HAYLOFTILY). Also amusing was THELASTWORDILY, while the other two weren't quite as chuckle-inducing. Although I love the clue for 34A: L iKe aN Ov eN (HOTMESSILY). 

Meanwhile, the fill was also of high quality. I love the clue for 3D: Common congestion points (NOSES). I had NOdES for a while, but the actual answer is more square on the nose, if you will. Also nice was 43D: It may be rolled out for exercise (YOGAMAT). 

RENE Auberjonois from Deep Space 9

The southwest corner has a nice little connection between the two excellent clues 57A: Follower of pigs and cows (EIEIO) - I did not see that coming at all - and 60A: Country sound (TWANG). 

Does anybody else remember NETZERO? Boy, I have a strong feeling that I used it for a while to access the Interwebz. I never much liked AOL. 

Finally, 26A: 90s, say (AAVERAGE) and its symmetrically placed item 45A: One committing insurance fraud, maybe (ARSONIST). Honestly, I liked just about everything about this puzzle. The turn is coming through, baby!

- Colum

Wednesday, January 27, 2021, Mike Knobler

Now I have to live down the embarrassing mistake I made in yesterday's post, thinking from a cursory interwebz search that there were 2 Ks in a Scrabble set. Thanks to faithful reader Mr. Kingdon for providing a link to official rules.

As a balm to soothe my furrowed brow, today's theme falls back on what we used to call Wacky Wordies, for those who recall the old GAMES magazine style puzzles. The three 15-letter answers are all phrases that start with prepositions that imply position underneath something. And then the phrase is placed below a word that is synonymous with the second part of the phrase.

Thus, 39A: Sick ... or where this answer goes? (UNDERTHEWEATHER) is placed under 36A: What to expect between June and September in India (MONSOON). The other two phrases, BENEATHCONTEMPT and BELOWTHESURFACE are equally recognizable phrases. I'm impressed that all three are 15 letters long and fit the requirements of the theme.

A real roadrunner and CACTI

Because of the close relationship of the long answers with the connected short answer, the grid has to put up with a fair amount of CST, NSEC, WDS, and UEY in those sections. But it's made up for with some nice long down answers in JANEFONDA and TUMMYACHE. 

38A: What's what, in Italy (CHE) gets my nod for best C/AP of the day. Another good one is 32A: Merit badge holder (SASH) - that is, not the boy scout. 52A: Knuckleheaded act? (NOOGIE) elicited a groan, of the good kind.

It's been a sort of odd week so far. But the turn starts tomorrow, so let's look ahead!

- Colum

Tuesday, January 26, 2021, Peter Gordon

How often do we talk about answers which are pleasingly Scrabbly in these reviews? Well, I've got the winner for the most Scrabbly answer yet: SCRABBLE. 

I'll pause for the groans to die out.

But seriously, folks, today, Mr. Gordon has given us four answers which are impossible to play legally due to not having enough of given tiles. Thus our limits are set at words which have 3 Zs (one Z and two blanks), 3 Ks (one K and two blanks) or 6 Ss (4 Ss and two blanks). Now that I look at it, though, there are actually 2 Ks in the set, so why can't we make KNICKKNACK? That has 4 Ks, so the 2 blanks should make it possible (although unlikely). Am I missing something? Help me out, folks!

PIZZAZZY, STRESSLESSNESS, and RAZZMATAZZ are fun words, although I can't really imagine any situation where I'd use either of the first two in real life. All of those rare letters make for odd crossings, such as KEENER, SANZ (does anyone remember Horatio Sanz? On SNL from 1998 to 2006), and GAZERS.

RITZ

I very much like TANZANIA, home of Dar-es-Salaam. Sporcle is a fun thing I do in my spare time, and the Geography quizzes keep me up to date on the 147 countries of the world. I always forget Sao Tome and Principe.

Otherwise, there's not much in the clues that stand out. 47D: Paper tiger? (HOBBES) is cute. The very chunky corners made my time longer than typical for a Tuesday puzzle, but the whole concept slants hard, so I'll give myself a pass. 

- Colum

Monday, January 25, 2021, Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels

I like to think of this puzzle as a sendoff to a certain individual. YOUREFIRED being applied to him with a modicum of dramatic irony.

The theme is a set of synonyms for letting an employee go, all hidden at the end of more standard phrases. Thus, GARBAGECAN and BATTLEAXE. These are nicely hidden, in my opinion, although the marquee phrase QUARTERBACKSACK may get its word from a similar etymology. Okay, so maybe not! Instead it seems to come from the sense of sacking a city. Nice!

I'm going to apologize for the brevity of this review. It's been a crazy day and night for various reasons. Suffice it to say that I liked much about this puzzle. Very smooth and straightforward, with a couple of fun clues like 69A: Dealer in futures? (SEER) and 70A: It's a plot! (ACRE).

Also, 4D acts as an antidote to this company that's laying off people left and right. NOCUTS!

- Colum