Friday, April 26, 2024, Matthew Stock and Christina Iverson

If you're looking for fun fill and great clues, this puzzle is FULLOFIT! Oh, wait. I don't think that's what they meant by that answer.

A super smooth and pretty quick solve for a Friday themeless. But I enjoyed it all the way. Let's start with those long across answers:

11A: Alternatives to booths, perhaps (MAILINBALLOTS) - I was really uncertain where this was going, and it was the last answer I got in the puzzle. It's very of the moment, naturally.

14A: Device for an on-line conversation? (TINCANTELEPHONE) - yes! So good. I love the sneaky use of the word "device" here. Sounds so electronic.

48A: Bare-bones outfit (SKELETONCOSTUME) - one of the best clues of the year to date, in my opinion. I love the non-QMC, and it's so perfect.

51A: Many superheroes have them (ORIGINSTORIES) - they sure do.

Other fun entries include 5D: Lisbeth Salander in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," for one (ANTIHERO) - loved those books - and FONDUES. 

31A: They hang around in kitchens (APRONS) is another good clue. 

I'm not sure I entirely get 47A: They're OK (DOS) - is this the opposite of a NONO? Like, it's OK to do that? Is there something I'm missing here?

Great Turn so far.

- Colum

Thursday, April 25, 2024, Hanh Huynh

Hooray! We're back on The Turn! I am fond of a straightforward themed puzzle, where it's well put together, and the theme is fun. But give me the tricksy puzzle with clever clues, and you've got a happy Colum.

Today, I had no idea what was going on. I figured out with SIMONC-O-WELL and then SC-O-WL that I needed to skip over the circled squares, but why? And also, was I to leave those circles blank? We've had puzzles in the past where there were empty squares.

I actually worked my way naturally down the east side of the grid until I got to the SE corner, where I found the revealer, slightly delayed in figuring out the answer because I had ECHOEd at first in at 42D: Like like this this clue clue clue... (ECHOEY). And then I got 61A: "Wow" ... or a phonetic hint to this puzzle's theme (HOLYCOW). 

I immediately saw the pattern, and then put C-O-W in 46A: City in the Pacific Northwest with a Russian-sounding name (MOSC-O-WIDAHO). Then I looked at the crosses that contained circles, and saw 44D: Not retail - and it hit me. W[HOLE]SALE. Aha!

My favorite of the crosses is 3D: Ire (C[HOLE]R) because of how beautifully the "hole" is hidden in that word. The remaining answers are either simply "hole" or "whole," which demonstrates how hard it is to hide a 4-letter rebus in a larger word. But just a very fun theme. And I'm fine with the circles in this one.

Checkered TAXI

I like clues that play on the ambiguity inherent in a language. Thus, 1A: Snap (PIC) and 18A: Good and hot (ENRAGED). 

How about 44A: Wicked stuff? (WAX) - that's stuff on a wick. Wow. 

I don't fall for clues like 6D: Leads of "La La Land"? (ELS) much any more. But this one's good.

Fun stuff!

- Colum

Wednesday, April 24, 2024, Jeffrey Martinovic

First off, what to heck is ABYSM?

According to Professor Google, it's a "literary or poetic term for abyss." I cry foul. I mean, MAXIMUs seemed odd at 46D (and it violates the theme, covered more in the next paragraph), but ABYSs also seemed more correct.

In any case, the theme of the puzzle is revealed at 62A: Feature of this puzzle's grid and the answers to the six starred clues (LATERALSYMMETRY). Which is to say, if you fold the grid in half down the line starting at 7D and ending at 64D, all the black squares would overlap. Also, all of the letters in the starred clues are symmetrical that way, which is why the theme answers are in the downs.

It's notable that the only vowel (including Y!) without that symmetry is E, fortunate for the constructor. Otherwise, he has H, M, T, W, and X to work with. Thus we get MAMMAMIA (all Ms), or MAXIMUM (Ms and an X). I like HOITYTOITY a lot, and MAUIHAWAII is a great find as well.

Michael Keaton looks so young

With all of this theme material, Mr. Martinovic is forced into some compromises (hello, "abysm"). WOAH is a stretch, and I don't love EWW or ELIE either. Note also ERM and UMS. When you have to clue two answers with "sound of hesitation," you know you've pushed the theme to the limit.

Once again, not much in the way of clever cluing. I'm looking forward to The Turn. But despite these little concerns, I find this puzzle interesting.

- Colum

Tuesday, April 23, 2024, Judy Bowers

Well, it turns out it's really hard to come up with sentences where every word is only TWO letters long. I thought for maybe 30 seconds about writing the first paragraph that way, and got no further than "Hi, my..." But, Ms. Bowers has given us 5 sentences of this sort (one of which is split into two parts).

Of course, the best by far is 16A: "Yuck! I've dated him before. Swipe left!" (OHNOEWHEISMYEX). The "Ew!" in there is so evocative. OKIFWEGOINONIT is impressive as well. The other three are SOISIT / UPTOME, DOASWEDO, and HIMAIMUP. It's fun to look at them in the grid because my brain wants to parse the collection of letters into longer words, like "Oh, noe! Whe is myex?" Or "Hi maim up!"

She don't got SIGHT

Anyway, that's a fair amount of theme material to pack in two-letter segments across the grid (58 squares). As is typical for an early week puzzle, the fill is smooth if not as sparkly. I liked SAYSPRESTO., but otherwise there's not a SLEW of interesting answers to catalog.

14A: Standing at 6-5, say? (UPONE) plays nicely on the customs for how we might typographically represent someone's height as opposed to a sports score. There's a nice rose connection between the clues for APHID and POEM. 

And that's all I got. It was a fun solve for a Tuesday.

- Colum

Monday, April 22, 2024, David J. Kahn

On a Monday morning, it's nice when the puzzle gives a little bit of an uplift. I'm uncertain whether today's puzzle does that or not...

The theme starts with 1A: Nonrenewable energy source ... and the start of an eight-step word ladder (COAL). There's a nice visual of the eight 4-letter words moving down diagonally from COOL to WOOL to WOOD to FOOD to FOND to FIND to 64A: Renewable energy source ... and the end of the word ladder (WIND).

Along the way, we get the dour GLOBALWARMING and FOSSILFUEL and the hopeful GREENPOWER. But there's also 49A: Goes extinct (DIESOUT) and 37D: Botches badly (LOUSESUP). I can't help but feel that these are related somehow.

ADAM Lambert

The rest of the puzzle moves along smoothly enough. I took longer than necessary to answer 5D: Element whose name anagrams to GROAN (ARGON). I can't help but play the word game. If the clue had been just "Element," I would have gotten it so much faster. How about you?

I also would like to think that 19D is a shout out to our own Philbo.

- Colum

Sunday, April 21, 2024, Michael Schlossberg

GET CRACKING

[Warning - spoiler alert below]

Hey, good folks, puzzle enthusiasts, and loyal readers (and likely all three at once)! Glad to be back with you for another week of New York Times crossword puzzling and reviewing. Thanks to Philbo for another fine week of blog posts.

Today, as we prepare for a late lunch book club (we're making two fritattas, one with fried potatos and onions and one with asparagus and goat cheese) (oh, and we read The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nuñez), I got to spend some time with the Sunday puzzle. When the grid opened, I knew immediately I would need to look at the info box to get some clue to the seven odd circular locks symmetrically placed across the puzzle. 

The blinking I button told me that, when the puzzle was completed, the letters in the locks could be rotated in only one way to create a new set of four crossword acceptable answers. When all seven locks were in the correct position, the "safe" would open to reveal a seven-letter answer appropriate to the theme. A meta-puzzle! And, otherwise, an essentially themeless Sunday.

I filled in the whole puzzle and figured out the answer, but did not get the pop-up congratulations message. So I tried to rotate the locks to see if that would correctly fill in the grid. No luck. Turns out I had incorrectly put an M in the crossing of 6A: Items on the backs of some Jeeps (GASCANS) and 11D: Former name of the electron (NEGATRON). I don't really know why I thought a "gas cam" would be a thing, but "megatron" didn't sound so wrong.

Anyway, the meta-answer (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!) is [JACKPOT], definitely appropriate. My favorite transformation was AORTA to [S]ORTA. 

ELFOWLS

How odd that CCLEF and CCLAMP both appear in the grid. When you add in GSUIT, that's a surprising number of letter-word answers. I liked the clue at 678A: Partner ship? (ARK). And POPQUIZ is a great answer. I've never heard of SOLARPUNK, but love the phrase. And that's it for ANSWERS today ("Key components" - excellent).

- Colum

Saturday, April 20 2024, Garrett Chalfin and Andrew Kingsley

Rounding out my week of blogging is this delightful gem of a Saturday puzzle, which took many minutes of steady pressure to bring to heel.  Numerous juicy stacked long Across clues including a triple stack in the centre, lots of misdirection - great weekend fare, this!

Nothing was jumping out at me until the very middle, where "Sentimental feelings" had to be WARMFUZZIES, but I couldn't think of a three letter word for "Catch" with a U in the middle, so I had that erased for a while until finally RUB sprang to mind.  Ordinarily I'd be off to the races with a long answer like that in place, but not today - nothing else was immediately obvious and it took a lot of forward and backward before things started revealing themselves.  When "Chew the doors, e.g." in the SE corner finally revealed itself as the excellent SPOONERISM, followed right below by the "Green-tinted cocktails" APPLETINIS, I felt relief, and shortly after, I figured out that "Lacked pop" was HADNOOOMPH, which may be the first time I've seen a triplet of 'O's in a grid.  

Had some uncertainty about the spelling of WOOKIEES, inspired apparently by George Lucas' dog.  I liked the math-y SINE and RATIO in close proximity at the top.  I think we've seen that clue for SINE recently ("1, for 90 degrees") - one of the ACPT puzzles maybe?  And BOOMROASTED as a "burn" expression is about an entire generation separated from me, I think. 

I have to cut this short as I am on the road all day tomorrow (it's Friday night as I write this).  If you are reading this and you've done the puzzle, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Cheerio!

-philbo