Wednesday, June 12, 2024 | (2024)

LAT4:54 (Gareth)

NYT4:15 (Amy)

WSJ7:22 (Jim)

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Shifty Business”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar two-word phrases of the form [Adjective] [Noun ending in Y], except the Y has “shifted” to the end of the first word.

• 17a. [Trade show where everybody’s smiling?] TOOTHY FAIR. Tooth fairy.
• 25a. [Supersized member of a carillon set?] PORKY BELL. Pork belly.
• 35a. [Fancy button on Stengel’s baseball uniform?] CASEY STUD. Case study.
• 47a. [Role best suited for a ham?] STAGY PART. Stag party.
• 56a. [Burlesque Boas Company, say?] PLUMY BRAND. Plum brandy.

Fine wordplay which I found to be enjoyable though not necessarily lol-funny. “Stagy” and “plumy” are uncommon enough to look forced, but it can’t have been easy to come up with this theme set. I performed a little search and could only come up with one potential theme answer: IRONY LAD. Think you can find some more?

The stacked 7s in the corners yield these highlights: BOOTS UP, KIPPERS, and HASHTAG.

Clues of note:

• 5a. [Unable to eat another bite]. SATED. Do people use this word in this way? I typically see it as a synonym of “satisfied” not as a synonym of “completely full.”
• 54a. [Sweat producer]. TOIL. The clue led me to PORE which made that whole SW corner difficult to untangle.

3.5 stars.

Simeon Seigel’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap

Cute theme for what is apparently a few days before Father’s Day, which just snuck up on me. Each themer includes something you call a male parent, or something that relates to dadhood. There’s a DAD JOKE clued as [Pop corn?], fun. PATERNITY TESTS are [Pop quizzes?]. THIS OLD MAN is a [Pop song?]. [Pop wisdom?] clues FATHERLY ADVICE, and your dada is in DADAISM, [Pop art?]. The theme clues’ consistency elevates the puzzle.

Fave fill in this 16×15 grid: PEEVISH, NONSENSE, LOVE TAP among cars, the pool’s DEEP END, and an etymological ROOT WORD (I enjoyed this recent RobWords YouTube video on the roots of European country names).

Long day, got miles to go before I sleep so I’m checking out. Four stars from me.

Patrick Berry’s New Yorker puzzle – Kyle’s write-up

Thanks Patrick for today’s New Yorker crossword. This puzzle was a pleasure to solve–full of interesting entries and clues, pitched right in the ‘beginner-friendly’ range yet not so easy that the grid filled itself in.

Triple stacks of OUTER SPACE/STAR CHARTS/TO BE HONEST and BIDDING WAR/AROUND HERE/COLD SPELLS should be studied by anyone who wants to learn how to construct a themeless puzzle. I love the juxtaposition of OUTER SPACE and STAR CHARTS; the latter’s clue [Celestial maps] also seems to echo CLOUD ATLAS. A brilliant use of repeated clues for consecutive entries is seen with two variations of [___ Joe] which leads to GRANDPA and SLOPPY (the clues have additional parentheticals, which I’ve omitted, that provide more context and ease up the trickiness).

Learning moment: I knew first-place ribbons were BLUE, but not that second-place ribbons are RED.

August Miller’s Universal crossword, “Breaking Trail” — pannonica’s write-up

Container time, although we’re to interpret it differently.

• 60a^R [Ended a relationship … and a hint to this puzzle’s theme] PARTED WAYS.
• 18a. [*Place to argue a case] COURTHOUSE (course).
• 24a. [*Initial guess] ROUGH ESTIMATE (route).
• 39a. [*Relaxing rub for a pregnant person] PRENATAL MASSAGE (passage). Google returns nearly three million hits for the phrase.
• 51a. [*2006 dark fantasy film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro] PAN’S LABYRINTH (path).

To be explicit, these synonyms for ‘way’ are parted by the internal letters of the words/phrases.

• 13d [Chick sound] PEEP, 23a [Domino dot] PIP.
• 31d [“Pressure” singer Lennox] ARI. New ARI to me.
• 36d [Likely locale for an earthquake] FAULTLINE. Vaguely theme-adjacent, to my eye.
• 47d [Iditarod vehicle] SLED. 22a [Olympics sled] LUGE. eep.
• 9a [So inclined?] STEEP. Yep.
• 14a [Speck of dust] MOTE, 15a [Ink stain] BLOT.
• 17a [The “U” in UX] USER experience.
• 30a [Frustrated cry] GAH. Can confirm (but not while working this easy crossword).

Rebecca Goldstein’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary

Rebecca Goldstein provides us with a very cute theme today: FLAVORTOWN is imagined as a place with several smaller locations named after foods:

• The APPLESTORE, [Workplace for some Geniuses].
• A WAFFLEHOUSE, [Breakfast chain with a museum in Decatur, Georgia]
  On SESAMESTREET, [Home to Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus]
  with a OLIVEGARDEN, [Restaurant with a Never-Ending Pasta Pass].

Smorgasbord:

• [Country on the Arabian Sea], OMAN is currently competing in the Men’s T20 World Cup in USA & the West Indies…
• [Candy mixed with co*ke in a chemistry experiment], POPROCKS. I associate that with Green Day, otherwise it’s MENTOS?
• [Turn a certain corner in Monopoly], PASSGO. Favourite answer.
• [The lay of the land?], TOPOLOGY not sure why that needs a “?” exactly.

Gareth

Hanh Huynh’s AV Club Classic crossword, “I Swear!”—Amy’s recap

What a fun theme! When you render a swear word with assorted non-letter marks, that’s called GRAWLIX, and there are three theme entries in which the dirty words have been replaced by punctuation marks, etc. The symbols work in the crossings.

18a is TOUGH *S&! (tough sh*t). The crossings are *NSYNC, MA$E (I had to Google to get this one), AT&T, and “YO!” as part of an MTV show’s title. 5d HAUL &$# (haul ass) crosses M&A (mergers & acquisitions), KE$HA (some years ago, she dropped the dollar sign and is just Kesha), and the hashtag #TBT (throwback Thursday). Last, you’ve got 64a @&$! BUDDY (f*ck buddy) crossing “don’t @ ME,” M&MS, and Rocky A$AP (aka Mr. Rihanna). This was delightful, and it’s the sort of theme a newspaper just can’t run.

Favorite clue: 39d. [Google competitor, bless their heart], YAHOO! I quizzed my husband on this clue. He got it on the first guess. This one also amused me: 50d. [Likely response to “Are you certain you want to pass on the extended warranty?”], “I’M SURE.”

4.75 stars from me. Fun and a memorable theme idea!

Amie Walker’s USA Today Crossword, “Flip Side” — Emily’s write-up

Lots of goodies in this puzzle!

Theme: each themer contains —EDIS— (a backwards, or “flipped”, side)

Themers:

• 16a. [Sink fixture for handling food waste],GARBAGEDISPOSAL
• 37a. [“Do you really require further details?”],NEEDISAYMORE
• 60a. [“High Hopes” band],PANICATTHEDISCO

A mixed themer set today with GARBAGEDISPOSAL, NEEDISAYMORE, and PANICATTHEDISCO. All were easily filled with a few crossings to get me started. The theme took me a couple of minutes afterward to see though it was simple enough to spot since the first two kind of line up, though the third is slightly shifted over.

Favorite fill: FISHTACO, CATTREE, and ALICIA

Stumpers: LOB (needed crossings) and PUGH (also needed crossings)

A nice grid with lots of great fill and cluing. Not sure why it took me a bit longer to solve, as there’s nothing particularly tricky about it—I was just a bit off.

3.5 stars

~Emily