Wednesday, January 31, 2024, Nathan Hale

Oh, I really really liked this puzzle. First you get a silly pun style theme, but there's also a bonus! It's a lot of theme material, but the fill is reasonably smooth. 

First, the theme. Mr. Hale takes phrases of the form X to Y, and reimagines them as Xd a Y, turning the first part of the phrase from a noun or adjective to a past participle. Clue them wackily, and hilarity ensues. Thus, 20A: Prepared to fight Goliath? (READIEDAROCK) comes from the original phrase "ready to rock."

My favorite is probably 34A: Practiced changing one's costume by the clock? (TIMEDAGETUP). What a clever twist from the phrase "time to get up," because the second part has to be reparsed as well. BACKEDAWORK is fine, although not as guffaw-worthy.

The second unexpected part comes from 51A: Betrayed Paddington? ... or what 20-, 34- and 41-Across did in this puzzle (CROSSEDABEAR). It would have been enough to leave it just as another humorous reparsing. But it turns out that the other answers all intersect with down answers (in shaded boxes) that are types of bears: TEDDY, SMOKEY, and BOOBOO. Just superb.

In MILANO

Add on top of that SKEDADDLE (such a great word), and 61A: Something you shouldn't take lying down? (POLYGRAPH), and it's one to remember. 

Also full of chutzpah is 44D and 41D, adjacent answers both ending in -ING, which leads to the SW corner having RADII, UPENN, and GREGG on top of each other.

Color me impressed.

- Colum

Tuesday, January 30, 2024, Freddie Cheng

I love a theme which recognizes the oddities of language. How many different definitions are there for the word "tank" in English? Mr. Cheng has come up with four: a tank that HOLDSWATER, a COMBATVEHICLE, the verb as in DROPSLIKEASTONE, and a SLEEVELESSTOP. None of the answers are clued with the word, which allows the very clever revealer at 63A: Bodies of advisory experts ... or, when reinterpreted as an imperative, a hint to 17-, 24-, 38- and 52-Across (THINKTANKS). I will admit to chuckling aloud when I thought about somebody admonishing me to "think tanks!"

That's a lot of theme material (I think more by squares than yesterday - yes, confirmed). The grid is set up so that no down answer crosses more than two theme answers, but there are 20 of them that do cross two. So credit to Mr. Cheng for making a delightfully smooth puzzle. I have no complaints with answers. 

ETTA and ELLA (and Aretha and Nina)

TJUNCTION is a fun looking entry. I raised an eyebrow initially when I saw the TJ___ start, but enjoyed seeing how that could work. 

I misread the clue for 7D at first. I kind of wish that after 5A: Frat dudes (BROS), that 7D would be "eight dudes" (OCTET). Instead it was "Four duos." 

37D: Layer of 61-Across (HEN) had me nicely confused because I had not come anywhere near 61A: What might be found in nesting boxes (EGGS). I did not see the first word of the clue as "lay-er," one who lays, but rather as "layer," a quantity of thickness.

Also nice: 48D: They may come with big waves in Waikiki (ALOHAS). Hah!

Nice Tuesday.

- Colum

Monday, January 29, 2024, Garrett Chalfin and Andrew Kingsley

In the commuting life, I am now writing this blog post from the living room of our apartment on the Upper West Side. The view out the window is across Broadway towards Central Park (which I can't see). 

What an odd Monday puzzle theme! The revealer is in the middle at 36A, with the answer PALINDROMES. Only we're not really dealing with palindromes in the starred answers. They're palindromes as long as you ignore the first and last letter. So is this a thing? PEPELEPEW does in fact have the form _EPELEPE_. Okay, I'm sort of impressed that our constructors have found six examples of this, and it's a lot of theme material for a 15 x 15 grid. But still, more mildly interesting than "aha" or "haha." Which are the same word if you ignore the first letter of the second one...

MORDOR

Of course, with all of that theme material, the puzzle needs a ton of black squares, and the longest non-theme answer is only 8 letters. There's more crosswordese than we're used to nowadays. I don't think Zsa Zsa GABOR has made an appearance in quite some time. Add in OOO, APBS, EDYS, SKOR, and OUTLIE, and you get what I'm talking about.

I will raise a glass to 46A: Their are too in this clue (TYPOS). 

On to tomorrow.

- Colum

Sunday, January 28, 2024, Nathan Hasegawa

Hello folks! I'm back for another week of blogging. Things have changed mightily since I last posted. I'm now living most of the week in Manhattan, working in New Jersey, and commuting back to Albany on the weekends. Everything is very new and exciting, but also still a little unsettled. As always, it's nice to have the crossword as a throughline!

Today's puzzle brings back memories of summers at the beach, going to the boardwalk and playing stupid games for small amounts of money to try and win useless stuff! But also having fun doing it. WHACAMOLE was always a favorite of mine. It's more about getting into a rhythm than it is force or precision. Certainly winning was a SMASHINGSUCCESS!

The five spots the plastic animal could pop out of are represented in their traditional setup as circles in the grid. Four of them are filled with the rebus "hole" while the fifth is the eponymous "mole" rebus, above whose head the [MALLET] is poised to whack. Very elegantly done.

The best rebus associated answer is 58A: Approach something with gusto (GOW[HOLE]HOG) because the word is hidden inside another one. The other hole rebus answers are all just that: holes, such as [HOLE]INONE, or FOX[HOLE]. 60A: What's the matter? [MOLE]CULES is very nice. It turns out that [MOLE]SKIN cotton is not actually made from the animal's hide. But still, it is called that because of its resemblance, so this is not a hidden rebus either. But I'm just being picky because I can, since I didn't make the puzzle.

Other fun bits include:

23A: Mnemonic start (SILENTM). I thought I wasn't going to be fooled by these sorts any more. Guess I was wrong.

13D: Make perfect, maybe (PRACTICE). Hah!

88A: 2017 musical retelling of the stories of Henry VIII's wives (SIX) - we saw this in London in the East End, and enjoyed it very much. It had a surprising twist, but was also surprisingly short.

86A: Knuckle-headed act? (NOOGIE). What a good note to end on.

- Colum

Saturday, January 27 2024, Grace Warrington and Greg Warrington

For me, normalcy was restored this week, with a Saturday puzzle that took me longer to solve than its Friday predecessor.  Today's grid flows from the NE to the SW, with a nice three-high stack in the middle, connected with eight (!) long-ish Down answers, and the the NW and SE corners off doing their own thing.  

I didn't find any area overly sticky - the whole grid required the same level of thought.  Some really inventive cluing today.. in no particular order - ANDY was great, as 'AND' followed by its Spanish equivalent. "Collect, collect, collect" I thought was AMASS, but that didn't work (but HOARD did).  "Take" was nicely misleading for ANGLE.  Also, interesting way to clue ELON - "The Phoenix of the N.C.A.A."  I feel like there might have been another way to clue this one.  Can't quite put my finger on it ...  :) 

I think most of us are familiar with the word MANDALORIAN, even if we've not seen the TV series, and so it was easy to infer after just a few cross letters.  Aside from the write-in JAUNDICE ("Affliction treated in newborns with phototherapy"), none of the rest of the long clues were easy, but they all succumbed in the end.  

The one beef I did have today was with NARRATOR, a "character who's heard but not seen".  May I introduce as evidence The Shawshank Redemption?  Highly recommended, for the three or four of you on the planet who haven't yet seen it.  On the other hand, I didn't really have a beef with MANHOLE as "Way down below?" - I am not quite sufficiently PC, I suppose - and I also do have a weakness for QMCs

Note to self : I did the crossword last night and left the blogging till the morning.  Bad idea.

It's been a fun week.  The esteemed Colum takes the reins tomorrow.  Ciao till next month!

-philbo

Friday,. January 26 2024, Sarah Sinclair and Rafael Musa

Happy Friday, y'all!  I look forward to the NYT crossword every Friday for its diabolical challenge, often even more daunting than Saturday's, especially of late.  Today's offering I found a bit on the gentle side.  I got off to a good start in the NE corner, remembering that ITSIN precedes "...his kiss", and, although it seemed too obvious at first, "Everybody's opposite" is NOONE.  A slight stall with DETER instead of DEFER for "Put off" (hey, it makes just as much sense), but because of the SOFTLAUNCH crosser, that was quickly resolved.  

Over in the NW, I was tempted to enter BRILLIANT for "'That's genius!'", but it was a GREATIDEA not to, as that would have caused major confusion. Right above it was one of my faves in the grid - PUSHOVERS, who often cave but do not spelunk.  And another clever QMC crossed it - "Starts off-key?", which, when revealed to be HOTWIRES, was a nice little 'aha' moment. Rounding out the punniness, the capital F in "Show of Force" hints at its answer (STARWARS).

In the middle, I thought "Canine protector" might be something like MUZZLE, but ENAMEL fit the bill.  Weird that SETTEES ("Couches") makes an appearance - that word randomly popped into my head today, as such an old-fashioned way to refer to a sofa.  "Foe-run land?" (ENEMYTURF) was a groaner.

On to the bottom - no problems there, except I guessed wrong on "'The Bachelor' outing" - BLINDDATE instead of GROUPDATE.  Who knew?  Not I, not ever.  I liked the double use of the clue "Not natural, in a way" (POSED and DYED), though they were not adjacent in the grid.  And finally, the Rubik's Cube, once a FAD but forever a marvel of topological engineering.  I still have mine from high school.

Nice puzzle.  Nice consistency of difficulty throughout.  

Have a great day everybody!  See you back here tomorrow.

-philbo

Thursday, January 25 2024, Sam Ezersky

Hello all!  I'm not as tuned in to the regular NYT crossword setters as my co-bloggers are, but I do know that when it's Sam Ezersky behind the wheel, I'm in for a devious treat; and this crossword was no exception.  He's managed to clue four long Across answers with almost the exact same phrase:

• "Mercury is in this" : GLASSTHERMOMETER - elemental 
• "Mercury might be in this" : RETROGRADE - planetary 
• "The Mercury might be in this" : WNBAFINALS - basketball 
• "Mercury was in this" : BOHEMIANRHAPSODY - Queen (this one is more of a stretch)

Really, really impressive cluing!

The layout today has a definite upper/lower half configuration.  I found the top half went by very quickly, but I got really bogged down toward the bottom, and it took me forever to finish.  (Was it just me?)  The very first clue was clever - "Three-point letter you won't find in Scrabble?".  I entered PSI immediately and felt quite smug about it.  (A EUREKA moment, perhaps?)   Elsewhere in the top, my only niggle was TECH for "Chips, cookies, etc."  I guess those are both techy terms, but this one didn't sit quite right with me.  

A different story down below.  I liked "Here we are!" (EARTH) - pithy and to the point.  But my troubles really centred around "Have no more in stock", for which I put RUNOUT instead of AREOUT, and those three wrong letters gummed up the whole works.  Even with that sorted out - I had to guess LARB Gai as a Thai dish, as the crossing DREYERS was unknown to me, an Easterner and a Canadian to boot, as an ice cream brand.  Luck carried the day on that one.  Oh also, I entered WECARE instead of WECARD for "Cautionary store sign from an alcohol retailer".  It would be nice if they did post "We Care" signs, though that might perhaps smack of disingenuousness.  And my final beef : ARSONS.  Pluralized?  Really??

But the theme was so wonderfully executed that I really can't have complaints.  Hats off to the setter today!

-philbo