Friday September 30, 2022, David Karp

I'm guessing some of our speedier solvers might have sliced through the puzzle in near-record time today. I don't mean to make it into a SLAMDUNKCONTEST, but I finished in just over seven minutes, which is a pretty a CRISP Friday time for me, and I thought that was NEATO!

But enough about that. This one is stocked with six grid-spanners. My favorite might have been COLLECTORSITEMS (Rare comics and vintage dolls, e.g.), because I find myself getting a bit too interested in certain old things. I've already got way too much stuff, but still I want more. Why? Why are we interested in finding HENSTEETH? Is it because it makes us feel like we are slowing the inevitable oblivion? We all end up with NOBARS eventually. It's BLEAK, so we clutch EVER tighter to bygone AGES, and look to things with the ECLAT of MICA to feather our NESTS in hopes of being PLACATED.

Sorry. I think this poetry class might be affecting me. (Now who's being "Pretentiously creative" (ARTSY)?!) ... Let's go down a different AVENUE, shall we?

What do we think of "Stretches for the rest of us?" (NAPTIMES)? Me, I love this kind of tortured game. "Stretches [of time taken] for [the purpose of] the rest [that is required] of us." Nothing simpler. :)

I also enjoyed the non-QMCs "Play group" for CAST, and "Bill promoting science" (NYE). Very nice. But I'm worried by "Hawaiian crop threatened by the apple snail" (TARO). Will I never be able to taste the crossword delicacy poi?!

And speaking of food, it's interesting that "English chip" could be either CRISP or "French fry," but, of course, only one fit comfortably into the five squares.

OK, I think that's probably enough for now. 

- Horace

Thursday, September 29, 2022, Jeremy Newton

Wouldn't the "Cartesian sum?" be je suis? It's likely that he really did write it in Latin, but if he didn't, it would have been French, right?, not English. Strange clue.

The theme, on the other hand, I like. ITSALOTTOUNPACK explains it. Part of me wishes that the rebus ran from top left to bottom right, but I'm sure it was already hard enough to make it progress in an orderly way from top to bottom. And it unpacks from right to left both in the grid and in the letters as it moves down. Quite elegant, really.

 

What about the "containers?" Well, I liked ANDTHATSSAYING[ALOT] ("So many layers here" ... or a hint to the circled squares) (interesting that they gave this clue so soon), but CALIFORNI[ALO]TTO (Contest for millions on the West Coast), was a little dull. I guess "lotto" is now understood as another word for "lottery," and it did have a cute clue. So okay. ALOEVER[AL]OTION (Popular skin moisturizer) is maybe the flattest overall. Boring answer, boring clue. And then the revealer is solid. 

Boy, it sounds from my review so far that I didn't really like this one, but I did enjoy it while I was doing it, and I think it's a cool trick. So let's look at the fill.

I enjoyed the unusualness of SNAZZ (Spiff (up)), and the "It's a good look" (SCAN)/"It's a bad look" (SNEER) combo was fun. I had a little slowdown when I guessed PIEcrust for "Quiche base," which led me to enter cApo for "Family man." I guess I was thinking "family" meant "mafia." As we've said many times on this blog, it's odd what the brain will do to make its guesses seem acceptable to itself. 

You know, Frannie had the idea a while back to use a five-letter word from the puzzle as her Wordle starting word every day, so I've been doing that myself lately. But today, there are very few five-letter words in the puzzle that don't also have a double letter, and while I'm not against guessing words with double letters, I don't usually do so in my first guess. There's SENOR, but I wonder about foreign languages and the Wordle database... and then there's TUBED, but I generally steer clear of inflected words unless I'm forced down that path... so today I just thought up a non-puzzle-related word. Fascinating, I know, and just what you came here for...

So anyway, that's my review. How do you pick a starting Wordle word? Are you one of the sheep who always uses "adieu?" or do you mix it up every day like the Franster and me?

- Horace

Wednesday, September 28, 2022, Jeff Stillman

How do they keep coming up with these things? This theme both made me guffaw and wowed me with its simple elegance. The revealer, INITIALHERE, serves double duty by holding all the missing initials from four famous names. We need each letter of the word "here," in order, to complete:

WILLIAMMACY

ALFREDNEUMAN
EDWARDMURROW
and the amusing

CHUCKCHEESE

Really, that's such a nice idea, and somehow it's symmetrical. Hat's off, Mr. Stillman.

OK, review's over. Nothing more to talk about. ...

Well, ok, let's say a little about the fill. AHME. Although I did chuckle at the portmanteau BACNE (Breakout caused by a sweaty uniform, perhaps), I'd prefer to never hear it or see it again. There are a couple gratuitous plurals (CAMRYS & ALIASES), some so-so fours (INLA, ALII, YOHO) and a few strange threes (DAW, NRC, AHS), but really, the more I look around, the more I think it's not bad at all.

When I saw the double As in 52A I started to worry, but LAALAA (Yellow Teletubby with a curly antenna) is timely. Didn't I just hear they were going to reboot that show? And COMMONSENSE (Not standing in an open field during a lightning storm, say) and CIVILLAWYER are two solid long answers. And we've got fun cluing, too, like "Place to get a date, maybe" (OASIS) (date, the middle-eastern dried fruit), "No ____" (what Mary Tyler Moore is to Dudley Moore), and the classic "Psalm beginning?" (SILENTP). 

We've been doing this for nearly ten years now, and I'm still impressed and amused. Amazing.

- Horace

Tuesday, September 27, 2022, Peter Koetters

It's so neat and orderly! That was my first thought when, after finishing, I noticed that the shaded areas contained all the months in sequence. Kind of amazing, I thought, in a weekday puzzle. It is unfortunate that UPA sits at the very center of the grid, and there are a few oddities elsewhere, but really, the junk is limited. 

The calendar is an interesting thing. My favorite effort at dividing the year into days and months is the early Roman calendar of ten months. It started with March and ended with December, so back then, the numeric prefixes for September, October, November, and December made sense. Before Julius Caesar (JULES to his friends) got his hands on it, his month was called "Quintilis." Also at that time, "Sextilis" only had thirty days, but Quintilis became July, and then when Augustus came to power, he wanted a month too, and his couldn't be any shorter than Caesar's, obviously, so Sextilis became August, and it got 31 days too.

But anyway, my favorite thing about the early ten-month calendar was that after December, "winter" was just a long, uncounted string of bleakness. Imagine if January and February were just all one big blur of dark and cold that lasted until the vernal equinox. No wait, that's how it still is! :(

What's that? I'm supposed to be talking about a crossword puzzle? Have you not GLORIED in this NOVEL approach? ...

I liked NEIGHBORS (Fencing partners?), STOOLIE (Informal informant), and NOMADIC (Like a wanderer). The nautical duo of SAILFISH and MARIANAS Trench is nice, and it seemed like I hit a J everywhere I looked. I count only three, but I guess anything more than one (or maybe none) seems like something.

With so much theme to fit into a rigid pattern it almost seems like a stunt puzzle, and thanks to Bruce Haight, I'm perfectly fine with that. :)

- Horace

Monday, September 26, 2022, Margaret Seikel

Fun theme! A CLIMBINGGYM, a COATCLOSET, an ARTGALLERY, and a MANCAVE - four places where hanging occurs. I admit, the MANCAVE made me guffaw, and what more can you ask for on a Monday?

The solve was further heightened today by some non-Mondayish answers like RAGLAN (Kind of sleeve that extends to the collar), BOLSTER (Give support to), GARNER (Gather, as support), and IDYLL (Pastoral poem), but it still had Monday smoothness. And the cluing showed spunk too, with "Like pizzas and piazzas" (ITALIAN), "A big one might be standing in a concert hall" (OVATION), "Too bad, so sad!" (ALAS), and "Claims rated 'four Pinocchios,' say" (LIES). I had never heard of a "Pinocchio rating" before, but I chuckled at it. 

Slight duplications with BURRO and ASS, and MANCAVE and LAIR :) but overall, a lovely way to start the week.

- Horace

Sunday, September 25, 2022, Meghan Morris

TAKE TWO

Greetings! It's Horace here again, after two fabulous weeks of reviews from Frannie and Colum. Thanks, you two! :)

Today's revealer is WORKSWITHOUTANET, and when parsed differently, as the clue asks us to do, it becomes "works without an 'et.'" Now, believe it or not, I figured out that the "Take Two" title meant that two letters had to be taken from each clue for it to make sense, but I didn't realize that the two letters that had to be taken from each clue were always E and T together. But that's exactly what needs to be done.

"Rocket scientist" minus "et" becomes "Rock scientist" or GEOLOGIST. (Hi Dad!)

"Security blankets" becomes "Security blanks" or USERNAMEANDPASSWORD.

It's a fun trick, and I don't know if it was that, or if I'm just a PEABRAIN, but clues like "Stands" (STOMACHS), "Draws" (ALLURES), and "What the Beatles never did" (REUNITE) took me far too long. And I thought "Lines on which music is written" was almost too obvious, but no, they wanted STAVE instead of the more common "staff." And then there were clues like "Rapper with the 2011 hit album 'Ambition'" (WALE) (is that like the movie - Wal-E?) and "One of South Africa's official languages" (TSWANA) that needed every cross.

On the other hand, we just saw TOSCA at the Met in January, so that was a nice gimme, and the amusing "Do some backup dancing?" (TWERK) didn't fool me for a second. 

I like the three little three-word answers YESICAN, ASIAM, and IAMSO. 

I like a trick like this, and this was a fun Sunday. 

- Horace

Saturday, September 24, 2022, Martin Ashwood-Smith

As if I could see the future! Yesterday's review was prescient, because Friday was certainly harder than Saturday this week. Looking back on the two grids, I think at least part of it is that elusive quality, flow. Yesterday's grid does not lend itself to cascading answers falling into place as you solve. While today's has the NW and the SE pretty isolated, the swath from NE to SW starts to fall like dominos as you get certain entries in place.

Also, I didn't have missteps or errors along the way. That helps.

Of course, getting 1A: Unwanted items (CASTOFFS) immediately starts you off on the right foot. I confirmed with OPI and FENS before entering, but then the NW corner went pretty quickly. Nice acknowledgement of the early 1970s Oakland Athletics, with World Series wins in 1972-1974 for the THREEPEAT, a term apparently invented and trademarked by the coach of the 1989 Los Angeles Lakers, Pat Riley. The Lakers did not succeed in that goal.

13D: You'd prefer to have service in it (TENNIS) is some fun misdirection. No wi-fi or roaming issues here.

COUNTBASIE

Even though I couldn't get any exit from that corner, 27A: String game (CATSCRADLE) started me off in the middle. I worked up into the NE corner, where Shakespeare's "What's" INA / NAME helped out a bunch. 12D: Final participant (TESTEE) was not what I expected, maybe swayed by the earlier sports clue.

Funnily enough, although I had ____ERAID, I couldn't finish that clue for a while, due to misparsing it as ___er aid. SEROTONIN was a gimme for this doctor, but I had to resort to the SE corner to help me out. 

I love the clue for ARSENIC. Dark humor! 56A: Caves (SPELUNKS) is a great clue also. 54A: Thy're sen n ths cle (DELETIONS) wins the award for most peculiar clue this year.

Finally, with SCOREBOARDS, I broke the rest of the middle. The clue for STATEMOTTO is fascinating. For the record, the French one is from Minnesota, Spanish is Montana, Italian is Maryland, the Greek one is California ("Eureka!"), the Chinook is in Washington, and I couldn't figure out which one was in Hawaiian.

Just kidding! Turning over the reins to Horace for tomorrow.

- Colum