Wednesday, April 24, 2024 | (2024)

LAT7:50 (Gareth)

NYTuntimed (Amy)

WSJ4:36 (Jim)

Kelly Richardson’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Plants with Personality”—Jim’s review

I’m not the type of person to talk to plants, but I know some people are, especially those with the knack for growing a houseful of house plants. Today’s theme might speak to these people. Theme answers are two-word made-up phrases where the second word is a plant and the first word is an adjective differing from the plant by one letter.

• 17a. [Fungus with a strict code of ethics? ] MORAL MOREL.
• 25a. [Vegetable with a dashing appearance?] RAKISH RADISH.
• 44a. [Crop known for its shrewdness?] CLEVER CLOVER.
• 57a. [Green with a reputation for being insensitive?] CRASS CRESS.

I enjoyed this pleasant theme. I can certainly imagine people assigning these attributes to their plants, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to me. The only thing I hoped for but didn’t get was for the differing letters to spell out something significant. But maybe that’s too tall of an order. After all, the newly-added first words must still be adjectives that could conceivably describe a plant. For the record, the letters in question in the adjectives are AKEA. In the plants, they’re EDOE.

The fill doesn’t have anything extra long, but it’s smooth for the most part, even with those large-ish NW/SE corners. Highlights include LE MONDE, AVOCADO, ERITREA, ISADORA Duncan, Rock me AMADEUS, and SELENA.

Clues of note:

• 38d. [Lively merrymaking]. REVELS. Feels like an odd choice to clue this as a plural noun.
• 5d. [“Como la Flor” singer]. SELENA. Theme-adjacent clue? The title means “Like the flower” and the song compares a dying flower to losing love.

Enjoyable puzzle. 3.75 stars.

Jeffrey Martinovic’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap

The theme revealer is LATERAL SYMMETRY, 62a. [Feature of this puzzle’s grid and the answers to the six starred clues]. The grid’s got left/right symmetry and so do all the letters in MAUI, HAWAII, “WAIT, WHAT?”, MAMMA MIA, HOITY-TOITY, “MWA-HA-HA,” and MAXIMUM. This theme is brought to you by TOYOTA.

I am going to call BS on 5d. [Sound of hesitation], ERM and 68a. [Sounds of hesitation], UMS. (First off, please don’t pluralize interjections! Find me dictionary support for that, will you?) These words are basically identical. “ERM” is not pronounced with an R sound. It’s British. Gen Xers may remember learning that singer Sade’s name was pronounced “shar-day.” The SH sound was helpful, but the Brits don’t pronounce that R. It’s psychotic, I tell you. “Erm” sounds like “um” spoken with a British accent, no R.

Solid theme, except for ABYSM playing a role as theme crossing. You want 70a. [Bottomless pit] to be ABYSS, don’t you? Especially when it’s a Wednesday puzzle and not a Saturday. The crossing is an easy word, but it has a calculus clue?? Come on now. I had filled in ABYSS and figured MAXIMUS was some calculus term I’d long since forgotten. Grr.

While I’m grumbling, let me also express disdain for the WOAH spelling being given the NYT crossword’s approval.

Three stars from me.

Caitlin Reid’s New Yorker crossword — Sophia’s write-up

Hey folks, Sophia here covering the New Yorker Wednesday. I’m a huge fan of Caitlin’s themelesses, and today did not disappoint. Let’s do a rundown of today’s standout clues/answers.

• Loved MEET IN THE MIDDLE as the appropriately-central answer! PUNCHLINE also felt central-appropriate so I liked that cross. The whole grid kind of felt like a 90 degree rotation from a standard themeless grid, no? Given that the long central answer is a down? I’m into it.
• 53a [City that’s home to Superman and Lois Lane] – METROPOLIS. Wanted “Smallville” at first. In the superhero spoof “Megamind” they live in a place called Metro City, which Megamind always pronounced like it rhymes with “atrocity”.
• Enjoyed the PERSON/HUMAN cross, especially since I wanted PERSON for the initial [One of about eight billion on planet Earth] clue.
• [Best Actress winner for “Poor Things”] – EMMA STONE. Incredible performance from her in that movie. Glad to see a pretty recent clue here.
• At first I thought that [Venue for “La Bohème” or “The Barber of Seville”] would be a place where both of these shows are set. But no, it’s where *you* would see them – an OPERA HOUSE.
• [Word before “Pizza” or “River,” in movie titles] for MYSTIC. Fun fact, one of Matt Damon’s first movie roles was in “Mystic Pizza”. He has a basically non-speaking part as the brother of the rich love interest.
• [Contents of jewel cases] – CDS. Took me a while, I was thinking jewelry boxes.
• [Acts as a whistle-blower?] TOOTS. Last thing I filled in in the puzzle. Does a whistle really make a “toot” sound?

Happy Wednesday all!

Daniel Bodily’s Universal crossword, “Permanent Record” — pannonica’s write-up

Solved the puzzle quickly, didn’t pause to interrogate the theme. Let’s find out together.

• 54a^R [Unchangeable … and like one word within each starred clue that’s been obscured] WRITTEN IN STONE.
• 20a. [*What some say about stage one] IT’S JUST A NUMBER (st{age} one).
• 28a. [*Skin tone charts] FAMILY TREES (s{kin} tone).
• 47a. [*Stallone is often found here] LAUNDRY ROOM (st{all}one—the laundry detergent brand).

That’s a new twist, and nicely done.

• 25d [Earth Day’s month] APRIL, just a couple of days ago, in fact.
• 49d [Minor blunder] MISHAP.
• 54d [Policy expert] WONK. 57d [Geek (out)] NERD.

• 

  Marthasterias glacialis

  1a [What an invertebrate lacks] SPINE. They often have many! 38a [Name of a book] TITLE.

• 46a [Arizona tribe whose name means “peaceful person”] HOPI. Learned something new.
• 65a [Pot grower?] ANTE. The one playful clue in the puzzle, aside from the theme material.
• 70a [Traffic cone] PYLON. Greek pylōn, from pylē gate.

Aimee Lucido’s AV Club Classic crossword, “That Way!”–Amy’s recap

First off, let me say that I wish the AV Club Classic puzzles were all 15×15 puzzles, because I don’t love solving bigger puzzles.

I do like this theme: interpreting phrases with a reversal aspect by using a quasi-cryptic crossword vibe. The clues are words or phrases printed backwards:

[srefeD] clues FLIPPED TABLES, with the verb sense of TABLES. [srojam TIM] gives us REVERSE ENGINEERING. [raoS] clues RETRO ROCKET. [Detius] yields BACKWARD COMPATIBLE (a term that relates to new software working with older versions of system software). Now, this one feels all wrong to me: [Trap nolocimes] for INVERTED COMMA. No, a semicolon has a regular comma with a period above it. An inverted comma has the bulbous part at the bottom and the mark is raised above the baseline (as in single quotation marks). So the clue needed replacing.

One reason I’m not wild about larger crosswords is that there’s so much space to fill with all those 3s and 4s, and too often they’re not all good. I’M IT, EERO, OGEE, MSGT, EEO, IRAE, ESS, ESSA? On the plus side, the longer fill has plenty of highlights. ROCKETTE, the TENEMENT Museum, NECKBEARD, GODSENDS, FOOD COMA, ELECTIVE classes, and the Friends phrase “ON A BREAK.”

Three stars from me.

Alex Rosen & Brad Wilber’s LA Times crossword, – Gareth’s summary

In a rare themed foray, Brad Wilber, along with Alex Rosen, give us a pesach-themed crossword. Six baked goods are formed by circled squares running across, in five cases spread across two rows, but with MATZO an actual entry. The idea is five are LEAVENED, MATZO is not. MEALS below MATZO felt like a bonus entry of sorts as did SIFT at 1D. The other baked goods were: ROLL, CAKE, SCONE and BAGEL.

The puzzle design, possibly to accommodate all the short baked goods, was very walled-off, without around six distinct mini crosswords, with only a couple of ways in and out. This may have contributed to it playing harder than most for me. I had never heard of a FLOORLAMP nor a “torchere”. I wanted FLOODLAMP since at least FLOODLIGHT is something I had heard of. Similarly TELLY was unknown as clued. That was the area I struggled the most with.

Other clues/answers worth highlighting:

• [Bahama __], MAMA. Sparse clue, but I’m guessing it’s a co*cktail… yes.
• [Court for King James, briefly], BBALL. This clue felt forced. Describing the sport as a “court” is rather inapt.
• [Rodeo cry], RIDEEM. I really overthought this. EM implies plural. How does one ride more than one? So I put RIDEIM.
• [Fruit in the liqueur Bargnolino], SLOE. Is that the third co*cktail reference in this puzzle?

Gareth

Stella Zawistowski’s USA Today Crossword, “Build-A-Bear” — Emily’s write-up

Fun puzzle with a playful theme!

Theme: the themer set progressively “builds” the word “bear” at the start of the themers

Themers:

• 18a. [3.0 GPA],BAVERAGE
• 31a. [Advice that encourages authenticity],BEYOURSELF
• 42a. [Actress who played Dorothy on “The Golden Girls”],BEAARTHUR
• 58a. [“Please remember…”],BEARINMIND

A variety of themers today but all with fair crossings so even if you don’t get one right away, they fit in nicely as the puzzle fills in: BAVERAGE, BEYOURSELF, BEAARTHUR, and BEARINMIND. Not only are the themers consecutively building on each other to make a “bear”, they also are the entire first word of each themer: B—, BE—, BEA—, and BEAR—. I realized this while doing the write-up, which makes me enjoy this theme even more. Bravo!

Favorite fill: ALIA, SOMEDAY, and DREAMON

Stumpers: MATTRESS (cluing new to me—so good though!), ROPY (this always gets me, needed crossings), and DRESSER (needed a couple of crossings)

For a Stella puzzle, this was a quick solve for me so the difficulty must not have been too tough today. Excellent puzzle and loved the theme!

4.5 stars

~Emily