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

Wednesday, January 24 2024, John-Clark Levin

Hello all!  With the recent cold snap here in Toronto, I was occasioned to put on a pair of LONGJOHNS on a weekend walk, and timely it was, as here it is now, smack in the middle of the Wednesday NYT crossword, revealing the puzzle's theme.  The humourous take on this instruction is - each of the four theme clues refers to a well-known figure whose first name is (or was) JOHN, and what goes in the grid is the person's surname, stretched, or made LONG, by doubling each letter.  This led to some confusion at first - "First American to orbit the earth" I quickly wrote in as JOHNGLENN ("Gimme", I thought), not twigging that there was a white square left over.  After a bit more confusion, as the crossers revealed 'N' after 'N' after 'N' at the end of the answer, it finally became clear what needed to be done - GGLLEENNNN - and I was off to the races.  The other answers were then very easy with that transformation in mind, thanks to their straightforward cluing; and the theme answer was more of an "of course" moment than an "aha" one.   

Construction-wise, the black squares result in an almost-S shape, with little connectivity between the corners and a sparse middle.  I liked it - thought it worked great.  And the consistency of the theme answers all being 5x2 letters long was nice.

Highlights elsewhere in the grid - I do like my QMCs, and "Introductory course?" (SALAD) was cute  '"*How rude!*"' (SLAP) puzzled me for a bit.  Nice use of asterisks there!  And ordinarily, you'd never expect to see ANDS in a puzzle - a pluralized conjunction? Really?? But the clue makes it work, more or less - "Logical operators outputting 'true' if both inputs are 'true'" - better known as AND GATES in the world of microelectronics and I will accept this because it tickles my geeky, computer-y fancy.

I shall leave you with this somewhat sparse review.  Very enjoyable puzzle.  Did not take me long to solve.

Have a great day everybody!  "See" you again tomorrow..

-philbo

Tuesday, January 23 2024, Patrick Maher

Lifted from the Periodic Table is the theme of today's puzzle.  Four chemical elements appear in the grid, as suggested in the central revealer "Principles for good prose..." - ELEMENTSOFSTYLE: OXYGENMASK, LEADAPRON, GOLDGLOVE and TINFOILHAT.  Neat!  Stylish, even.  As for how literal these references are - I was unsure about whether the Gold Glove was actually made of gold, so I looked up and yes, it's got gold lame on it, so everything's on the up-and-up.  The four elements even have a metallic nature in common, though if you want oxygen to be metallic, you have to cool it way down and apply a tremendous amount of pressure to it.  No practical application there that I know of, but still, neat to know.

What else, what else .. no real impediments to report.  I'd never heard of EGGCREAM and so the fact that it contains neither EGG nor CREAM rates a mild "huh" from me.  Brilliant QMC in the middle - 'Bad match on tinder?' is ARSON.  Love it!  Who knew that a LLAMA could guard sheep?  I guess nothing deters a marauding wolf quite like getting spat on.  :)   Amazing that VANNA White is still around, presumably still turning letters on Wheel of Fortune, which I haven't watched in decades.  She's immortal!

Not much else to report.  If I hadn't typed in OWNUP instead of OWNIT for "Take responsibility for something" down at the bottom, I'd have been sub-2:30 on this one.  Instead - FWOE (or is it FWTE?)...womp womp.....

-philbo

Monday, January 22 2024, Jake Halperin

Well, the Apian community is likely up in arms today after being short-changed on the Monday NYT crossword:  Today's theme is "the sex talk" (BIRDSANDBEES) with four theme answers PENGUINBOOKS, DOVEBAR, GOOSEBUMPS and TURKEYBOWL.  See what's missing?  The bees!  Where are the bees??  (The Avian community is perfectly satisfied, meanwhile.)  Would have been nice to see a few bee references in there as well; e.g. something with HONEY, or HIVE, or WAX, or QUILTING.  Or make the grid hexagonal for a change!

But hey, I'm quibbling.  It's not that aPOLLIN, really.  As I COMB thru the grid, I see "Bug bite annoyance" (ITCH), which, despite the clear insect reference, doesn't take the STING out of the bee snub.  Perhaps closer is "One who makes his living with his hands" (WORKMAN) - not quite WORKER, though.  And I see nothing in the answers that puts me in mind of QUEEN at all...ok, I'll stop DRONEing on now...

 Nice to see the other other spelling of NOOB (NEWB) for "Inexperienced gamer, informally", for once (correctly spelled with zeros: N00B).  And a shout-out to all of you who knew that Paul ANKA, who wrote "My Way", is a Canuck!

Fun, all in all.  Found it a bit slow going for a Monday.  Was it just me?  

Time to BUZZ off.  See you tomorrow!

-phil