Tuesday, July 9, 2024 | (2024)

LATuntimed (Jenni)

NYT3:47 (Amy)

WSJ4:54 (Jim)

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Tidy Up” — an apt puzzle. – Erin’s write-up

Hello lovelies! We have a nice clean Jonesin’ grid this week, in that each of the theme entries contains the word NEAT.

• 17a. [Single file] ONE AT A TIME
• 23a. [Bombarded, Biblical-style] THREW A STONE AT
• 37a. [Action seen in “The Hunt for Red October”] SUBMARINE ATTACK
• 47a. [Lyric from Hall and Oates] SHE’S A MANEATER
• Our revealer 58a. [Interlocks, like what each theme answer does?] FITS NEATLY

Other things:

• I like the timely inclusion of SABER and EPEE with the upcoming Summer Olympics.
• 20a. [Front-of-book list, for short]TOC. Table of contents, although an alternate clue could reference the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, with the overlap between cruciverbalists and trivia enthusiasists.
• 11d. [Antsy feeling]AGITA. Otherwise known as my baseline.

Until next week!

Joanne Sullivan’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “U Tube”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar two-word phrases or compound words whose first words can also precede “pipe.” The revealer is HALF-PIPE (61a, [Ramp for a skate- or snowboarder, and a description of the answers to the starred clues]).

• 17a. [*Fuelless power plant] WIND FARM. Windpipe.
• 34a. [*”Bridgerton” attire] TAILCOAT. Tailpipe.
• 41a. [*Driver with a need for speed] LEADFOOT. Lead pipe.
• 11d. [*Hurler’s tally] PITCH COUNT. Pitch pipe.
• 28d. [*Plows over] STEAMROLLS. Steam pipe.

Solid theme with good theme entries. Very often in these types of themes, the keyword will follow or precede both halves of the main theme entries. But the clever use of the revealer here means we need only one “pipe” in each two-part theme entry, making finding theme answers that much easier.

Six theme entries is quite a bit to fit into a grid. Still, I wish HASH OUT could’ve replaced “NO SIREE” in the middle. Then I could’ve included Weezer’s “Hash Pipe” video here.

In the fill, HEBRAIC and MOORAGE are uncommon enough that they slowed me down. And I wanted LAUNDROMATS instead of LAUNDRIES [Sites of load-bearing machines?], but it’s all good. Other bits of colorful fill include POOR TASTE, “LET IT GO,” EUROPOP, and SANTANA.

Clues of note:

• 7d. [Apt fast-food corporation ticker symbol]. YUM. Falling under the YUM umbrella (yumbrella?) are KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and The Habit Burger Grill. You can decide which if any of those provides yummy food.
• 35d. [Tigers’ home]. ASIA. I was expecting this to be a sports clue. (But maybe it is since there’s at least one baseball team in Japan and one basketball team in China known as the Tigers).

Solid theme and fill. 3.5 stars.

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 685), “Mad About Anagrams!”—Ade’s take

Hello there, everyone! Here is hoping all of you are well and that you all had a good Fourth of July weekend.

Today’s puzzle is all about fun with anagrams, as each of the theme answers are punny three-word entries in which each word is an anagram of the other two in the answer.

• • • DEIST EDITS DIETS (17A: [Certain believer revises food regimens?])
    • STEAL TESLA TALES (23A: [Plagiarize Nikola’s short stories?])
    • SAINT TINA’S SATIN (37A: [Lustrous fabric developed by virtuous singer Turner?])
    • SPEAR SPARE PEARS (48A: [Skewer back-up boscs?])
    • SANER ASNER SNARE (59A: [More-reasonable method of enticing actor Ed?])

Along with the anagrams featured in the theme answers, we have anagrams intersecting each other with TSAR (44A: [Onetime Russian ruler]) and TARS, which adds a little extra finish to the grid (38D: [Old salts]). All of the long, non-themed fill was very pleasant, with IN-SEASON being my personal favorite (4D: [Like farmers market produce]). Unfortunately, the heat in Arizona (a record 116 degrees in Phoenix on Monday?!) and winds in tropical storm Beryl did not ABATE in their respective intensities, and I hope those of you in those areas are doing fine and are safe (22D: [Die down]).

“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: BEERS (67A: [Brewskis]) – Hockey fans in the New England area are probably familiar with Bob Beers, the former NHL player who currently is the radio analyst for Boston Bruins hockey games on 98.5 FM The Sports Hub. During his playing career, Beers competed in 258 career NHL games, scoring 28 career goals with 79 assists. Though the former University of Maine product played most of his career with the Bruins, Beers’ highest-scoring season came in 1992-93 as a member of the first Tampa Bay Lightning team to suit up in the league, as he scored 12 goals in 64 games played for the expansion team.

Thank you so much for the time, everybody! Have a wonderful and safe rest of your day and, as always, keep solving!

Take care!

Ade/AOK

Gary Larson & Amy Ensz’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap

The theme idea is to take “X or Y” phrases and reimagine them as “Xer Y” phrases instead:

• 17a. [Sting operation at a senior center?], BOOMER BUST rather than “boom or bust.” Clever!
• 26a. [Mission for an F-16?], FIGHTER FLIGHT. Solid.
• 45a. [Powdered wigs, petticoats, etc.?], FORMER FASHION. This one perplexed me, as “form or fashion” wasn’t ringing a bell as an idiomatic phrase. Googling yielded “in some form or fashion,” but I wouldn’t say that “form or fashion” is really a usage without introductory words.
• 61a. [Quarterback’s interception?], PASSER FAIL. Funny, but I come from “pass/fail” places rather than “pass or fail” so this one felt a little off to me.

Promising theme idea, but the execution left a bit to be desired for this solver.

Fave fill: TRAPEZE, BANH MI. Maybe on the hard side for newcomers to Tuesdays: ELL, KARA SEA, APIA. I do know someone who was just in Samoa, though! She also visited Guam, which Team Fiend’s Jim P has been to many times. Starting to feel like the only person who hasn’t gone!

3.25 stars from me.

Beth Rubin and Rebecca Goldstein’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

Back to the land of the revealer. Not a complaint! I had no idea where the theme was going.

• 17a [Intimate conversation in bed] isPILLOW TALK. My husband has a new pillow that’s a rectangle (more precisely, as he says, a rectangular prism) and he really likes it. Is that not the kind of PILLOW TALK you had in mind?
• 25a [Laundry apparatus used as a percussion instrument] is aWASHBOARD.
• 35a [Aerosolized popcorn ingredient] is SPRAY BUTTER. Eeuw.
• 48a [Timepiece innards] areCLOCKWORK. I’m more accustomed to seeing it in the plural except in the idiom “like CLOCKWORK.”

So what’s going on? 57a [Actor’s stand-in, or a hint to what can precede both parts of 17-a, 25-, 30-, and 48-Across] isBODY DOUBLE.BODY PILLOW,BODY TALK,BODY WASH,BODY BOARD,BODY SPRAY,BODY BUTTER,BODY CLOCK,BODY WORK. They’re all very familiar except forBODY BUTTER and I’m not going to look that up. I’ll take it on faith.

A few other things:

• I generally refer to bills as PAST DUE and library books as OVERDUE. Just me?
• 22d [“All Creatures Great and Small” airer] isPBS. In the US, sure. I presume it also aired in the UK?
• Who has seenUTILE in the wild – i.e. outside of a crossword? Anyone? Bueller?
• I decided to see if NAIR was still a thing and it turns out it’s not just for women anymore.
• I filled in 64a from crossings and wondered what kind of weird clue they would have for the pluralLORES. Turns out it’sLO–RES. My apologies.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that the protagonist of “NCIS” wasLEROY Jethro Gibbs.

Emily Carroll’s New Yorker crossword, “Any Last Words? / A Chatty Puzzle” — pannonica’s write-up

A themed offering.

• 39a^R [Hold ultimate authority … or what 17-, 29-, 36-, and 45-Across do, phonetically] HAVE THE FINAL SAY.
• 17a. [TLC reality series featuring couples facing K-1 visa deadlines] NINETY-DAY FIANCE. That sounds horrible.
• 29a. [Admonishment from a certain language-class instructor] EN FRANCAIS.
• 36a. [Inherently] PER SE.
• 45a. [Teacher ofnage waza (techniques for throwing opponents)] JUDO SENSEI.

The first two are French, the third Latin, and the fourth Japanese. I like the polyglot aspect, and it would have been that much better if there were four distinct origins. If we include the revealer (say is from Old English), we get four, but then we are still in need of a fifth.

I have no idea if the themed nature of this one exempts it from the New Yorker’s difficulty metric (Tuesdays are usually advertised as ‘moderately challenging’, although their relative knottiness—or lack thereof—varies quite a bit).

• 33d [Get fur all over] SHED. Can confirm via my cat. I could brush her every day and never catch up, especially this time of year.
• 43d [Philologist synonymous with synonyms] ROGET. I like the phrasing of the clue.
• 53d [Auditioners’ aims] ROLES. Would’ve gotten this much more quickly had I not misread it as‘auctioneers’.
• 16a [Spring form?] COIL. For those not understanding the question mark’s presence.Springform is a kind of baking pan.
• 21a [Driver’s one-eighty, slangily] UEY. This is my preferred spelling.
• 49a [JPEG alternative] PNG, portable network graphics.
• 51a [Steam, e.g.] GAS. I feel this is incorrect—it’s a vapor, which contains water molecules suspended in air. On the other hand, the dictionary definition here seems to have enough leeway to allow it.

Adam Simpson’s Universal Crossword, “Talent Pool” — Matt F’s Review

Today we have billiards puns! Each theme answer takes an everyday phrase and twists into the context of a billiards game.

• 17A – [To start the billiards game, the player …] = MADE A CLEAN BREAK
• 26A – [Before her strokes, she …] = CALLED THE SHOTS
• 42A – [And after every stroke, she successfully …] = DROPPED THE BALL
• 56A – [She celebrated victory once she …] = CLEARED THE TABLE

Some pun puzzles can feel way too forced and overly groanworthy. This one does not fall into that camp. I had a good time figuring out these answers from the playful clues. The theme answers have a nice progression from top to bottom to align with the flow of the game from beginning to end. I also appreciated the open look of this grid with the crossing 5’s at the center (You often see themed puzzles crunched down to 3’s in the middle).

Thank you Adam for the puzzle, and David Steinberg for the editorial touch.