junipuzzle

[junipuzzle]

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

"S" by Alex Eaton-Salners

Time: 5:51

Theme: ★★★★ Cluing: ★★★★ Fill: ★★★★

Favorite Clues:

19A: Okay boomer? (3)

25D: Hum bug? (3)

Lookups:

59D: Jon M. ___, director of "Crazy Rich Asians" (3)

It's Tuesday, and that means constructors can have a mote of creativity in their construction, meaning that - gasp - the theme clues are vertical instead of horizontal! It's quite lovely how such a simple change can provide a change of pace, and it feels like they tend to happen on Tuesday more often than other days. Not sure if there's any fact behind that.

Today's theme has five vertical entries that are two-part phrases, and the revealer tells us that all these phrases have TREE TOPS - the first part of the phrases are parts of a tree. LEAVES, BARK, TRUNK, and ROOT (honestly feels like a connections set). Simple enough for a Tuesday, though I will say that TRUNK SHOW felt a bit of a stretch.

The rest of the fill was amenable, with not much to note. It's easy to please me with double cluing, so I enjoyed the pair of "Wafting smells" at 1A (6) and 42A (5) for AROMAS and ODORS. On the other hand, the last spot I needed to fill was the natick of Credit SUISSE and Jon CHU. win some, lose some

Answers to noted clues:

19A: TNT

25D: BEE

[junipuzzle]

Monday, May 13, 2024

"Straight Shot" by Jeremy Newton

Time: 4:06

Theme: ★★★★ (bonus point for the animation) Cluing: ★★★ Fill: ★★★

Favorite Clues:

38A: Addictive thing in one's pocket (5)

7D: Topic of a wistful breakup song (8)

It's been a while! Life caught up with me. Whoops! Most of my classes have calmed down, and I've got more time to think about the crossword, which is lovely. Also have an excellent new crossword buddy that is keeping me responsible, so let's try and get back to doing this regularly.

We start the week with an odd design - lots of black squares, and two special squares - a shade on the left and circle on the right. It's a bit more constrained than I would normally like, but as the theme is solved, it becomes quite apparent why. In the NE corner, a revelation that the circle is a CUP, and in the SW corner, a revelation that the shade is a TEE.

We then have the line of Os bouncing around the zig-zag to make a HOLE IN-ONE SHOT, and a couple fun facts about MINI GOLF (the fact that it is scottish in origin doesn't surprise me, given that regular golf has a similar history, but the fact that it was designed for women is new).

Restrictions on certain kinds of letters are always interesting to me from a design perspective, so despite my initial dislike of this shape I can appreciate it after the solve.

I also want to point out 7D in particular, which could have either been LOST LOVE or LOVE LOST - having that kind of ambiguity in fill makes for a more interesting puzzle, and I appreciate having that in a Monday solve.

Answers to noted clues:

38A: PHONE

7D: LOST LOVE

[junipuzzle]

Sunday, February 11, 2024

"Bright Ideas" by Peter Koetters

Time: 25:20

Theme: ★★★ Cluing: ★★ Fill: ★

Lookups:

23A: Traditional Indonesian percussion orchestra (7)

30A: Sportscaster Hershiser (4)

39A: Place for poissons (3) look, idk my french

63A: Table scraps (4)

9D: Poet Federico Garcia _____ (5)

22D: Director Walsh of old Hollywood (5)

52D: Designer Miller (6)

108D: Hideki ____, W.W. II prime minister (4)

Favorite Clues:

77D: You can trip on it in the desert (6)

Really didn't like this one!

First thing first - I got a bone to pick with 100A: "One with two years to go, informally" is the clue for SOPH, short for sophomore. Am I crazy in thinking that this is outright wrong? A sophomore is someone in their second year - they still have three years to go, counting the one they're in.

The theme was fine in concept - the birthday of Thomas Alva Edison celebrated with a light bulb shape and seven of "his" inventions (I know the man was a labor thief and stole patents from his workers - dunno if all of these are actually his and do not have the time to look it up, but I will be doubting so until shown otherwise), and the theme entries were interesting enough, but the rest of the puzzle was just awful as a result of the light bulb cutting off open space.

For example, the middle row with REPINE / NODULAR /ERENOW were all pretty rough entries with unhelpful clues. ERE NOW was the only one I got without significant crosses, and that's because we see ERE all the time as crosswordese. NODULAR is another word that has come up recently (don't remember if it was part of a normal puzzle or an archive i did on my commute) but I wouldn't have known otherwise, and while I'm all for learning new vocab, REPINE doesn't seem like the best place to do it when there's so much other stuff I have to look up already.

Speaking of looking up... there were way too many proper nouns in this puzzle, and certainly too many of them crossing each other. The restrictions from the light bulb shape really necessitated some undercooked entries and I was not having a good time. I understand that I don't have to know every person in a puzzle and that constructors cater to different demographics, but this was a bridge too far.

The lack of interesting clues outside of the theme entries hurt the puzzle as well. There were very few tricky clues or difficult twists, just a lot of know-it-or-you-dont trivia, which a good puzzle does not make. I came back to post my thoughts on this a day later simply because I could remember so viscerally my frustration and disappointment with the puzzle. Hope next week's is better.

Answers to noted clues:

23A: Traditional Indonesian percussion orchestra (7)

30A: OREL

39A: MER

63A: ORTS

9D: LORCA

22D: RAOUL

52D: NICOLE

108D: TOJO

77D: PEYOTE

[junipuzzle]

Monday, February 12, 2024

"idle nonsense" by Jess Shulman and Amie Walker

Time: 4:55

Theme: ★★★★ Cluing: ★★★ Fill: ★★★

Favorite Clues:

10D: Baked things that get people baked (11)

52D: Something you might clear to improve memory (5)

A fairly run-of-the-mill Monday, all things considered. Not incredible, not bad, no naticks, but few stellar clues. I don't have much to say about this - were it a paper in my lab courses, it would get a B with few comments.

(seriously, struggling to find anything to say about this)

Answers to Noted Clues:

10D: POT BROWNIE

52D: CACHE

[junipuzzle]

Thursday, February 8, 2024

"how do they work?" by Samuel A. Donaldson

Time: 11:06

Theme: ★★★★ Cluing: ★★★ Fill: ★★★★

Favorite Clues:

2D: "Now I remember who sang 'Take On Me'!" (3)

14D: Food items originally called Froffles (5) this one isn't difficult but it gets points for being a new clue to a common entry

really disappointed in myself for getting so hung up about 16A - "Austin Powers catchphrase" (8) - on first pass I put in "Yeah Baby" instead of "OH BEHAVE" and then OVER PASS for 18A right below. Both were of course wrong, which led to a lot of confusion in the NW, cuz "yeah baby" is absolutely an austin powers catchphrase. anyway.

At some point I started to figure out where my issues were and realized some of the entries had to be mixed up, deducing the first part of the theme (two-part phrases where the parts are swapped, making another valid word). On second or third pass, I got the center entry, and the OPPOSITES clicked in my head. The rest of the fill was relatively smooth, albeit slow.

I liked all the longer entries on the top and bottom, which produced some nice stacks and difficult entries for a mid-week puzzle. However, the cluing as a whole for this was a little meh. It feels like it should have been a stellar Thursday given my tastes, but something just wasn't quite there for me.

[junipuzzle]

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

"broken record" by Daniel Mauer

Time: 7:46

Theme: ★★★★★ Cluing: ★★★ Fill: ★★★

Favorite Clues:

1A: One who might call you out (6)

43A: What offers worldwide protection? (5)

4D: Like a type that leans right? (6)

Pleasantly simple theme today that came at the cost of the rest of the fill. I thoroughly enjoyed figuring out the theme entries and appreciated that at least one of them was released in my lifetime, which isn't always the case! For the two songs I didn't know offhand (18A and 47A), it was also fun to listen to them after finishing the puzzle and nod along. Themes where you don't need a revealer because the theme is so simple are always tricky to pull off, but in this instance I think the intent is so obvious that it worked perfectly.

The rest of the puzzle was a little icky, however. I was never going to get HERVE @31D without every other cross, and both LILITH @10D and PIERRE @68A were shots in the dark once I had three or four letters. ROOTER @15A was also news to me, and I think LUCID @16A and DEAF @13D could have been clued a liiiitle easier.

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to pull off something cool, and I still enjoyed this puzzle despite the hiccups in the non-theme. It was clear that compromises had to be made in order for the repetition to work, and the constructors notes also comment that one of the theme entries had to be changed, as he initially thought the lyrics to 18A were "Lo-lo-lo-lo-lola" and not "LA-LA-LA-LA-LOLA" as clued. Interesting look into the construction process!

Answers to noted clues:

1A: UMPIRE

43A: OZONE

4D: ITALIC

[junipuzzle]

[junipuzzle]

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

"deez nuts" by Victor Barocas

Time: 6:38

Theme: ★★★★ Cluing: ★★★★ Fill: ★★★.5

Favorite Clues:

5A: Stone on a set (4) good use of capital obfuscation

Welcome to Tuesday, gamers, where the puzzles are smooth and the theme is just a little bit trickier. Today we have a nice punny theme revolving around moving the letter D from one word of a two-part phrase to the other in order to make a joke. Spiced rum becomes SPICE DRUM, and so on. It's an interesting theme, applied consistently, and the revealer was well timed, but it didn't quite have that pizzazz I like with punny themes - you're pushing the boundaries, why not go farther? Certainly up to par, but not quite an eagle.

I thought the fill was mostly good, with the exception of the NE corner - TALIA Shire crossing Brosnan role STEELE was a messy natick, and VERDI was a name I needed some crosses to fill. Add the fact that LOVE DONE was probably the weakest of the theme fill, and it took me a little while to get things done. The top half in general was a little tricky compared to the bottom, but outside of that corner it wasn't too much of an issue. Happy solving!

Answers to noted clues:

5A: EMMA Stone

[junipuzzle]

Monday, February 5, 2024

"marvelous" by Desiree Penner and Jeff Sinnock

Time: 5:18

Theme: ★★★★ Cluing: ★★★★ Fill: ★★★★

Lookups:

14A: Duck known for its soft down (5) filled it in correctly with a guess but had an error at the end and checked this first.

Favorite Clues:

65A: Delta deposit (5) simple, but almost a misidrect w/ delta airlines being the first thing i thought of

Once again felt a little off while working on this one. Not sure what it is, as my brain isn't fully kicked into gear today either. Trying to go sober from weed, and it's been a few days of withdrawal, so I'm wondering if that has something to do with it, but don't know for sure. I was reading the puzzle fine and the clues were coming to me, but it wasn't quite in the groove that I usually am. Oh well, at least we get a nice Monday theme that actually got my caught up for once!

On my first pass I filled in SCUBA TANKS @18A, and didn't think much of it until I was filling in the last few parts of the puzzle. The top half went more smoothly than the bottom, with PIZZA PIE coming easily while RUB OFF ON and POKLA POWER both took some crosses to make the phrases click. The center revealer came into focus on my second pass, and the rest was a smooth fill from there, until I got the mistake popup!

After checking the one natick I wasn't sure about, I did a bit more looking over and saw my mistake @18A - it should have been SCUBA MASKS, not tanks. Nice start to the week!

[junipuzzle]

Sunday, February 4, 2024

"Punch Lines" by Daniel Grinberg

Time: 18:00

Cluing: ★★★★ Theme: ★★★★ Fill: ★★★★

Lookups:

69A: 1970s-'80s Supreme Court justice _____ F. Powell Jr. (5)

80A: South American grassland (5)

34D: Director Lupino (3)

58A: HBO comedy about a sports agent (6)

Favorite Clues:

1A: Pink, purple, and blue Pride display, familiarly (6)

108A: It's signed after a break (4)

4D: Sense of orientation (6)

54D: Person of interest? (9)

99D: School name that sounds like a Canadian territory (5)

hello to all gamers, and happy sunday. today we have a classic sunday theme of several bad puns! i thought the theme was a good concept and the fill decent, but there was a bit of a disconnect for me mentally. maybe i just couldn't focus in enough for whatever reason, but it felt like i understood the gist but just didn't click well. looking back at the filled grid, the long theme entries are very lovely, so I'm giving a couple nuggets of points back in retrospect.

the SW, NE, and central areas were slow for me - the center due to a handful of trivia clues i had to look up, and the two corners due to taking a while for INCENTIVE and ALLEGORIC to click in my head. words just weren't coming to me today. enjoyed the queer cross in the NW of BI FLAG, GAYDAR, and AREOLAE (okay not really queer but i'll pretend it is).

Answers to noted clues:

69A: LEWIS F. Powell jr

80A: the LLANO grassland

34D: Director IDA Lupino

58A: ARLISS (stylized Arli$)

1A: BI FLAG

108A: CAST

4D: GAYDAR could have used a ?

54D: LOAN SHARK clue contender

99D: U CONN

[junipuzzle]

lil paintings

[junipuzzle]

Saturday, February 3, 2024

themeless by Carolyn Davies Lynch and Jeff Chen

Time: 11:27

Cluing: ★★★ Design: ★★★ Fill: ★★★

Lookups:

12D: Greek work for "knowledge" (6)

Favorite Clues:

17A: Transmitter of audio programmes (8)

21A: Cries of shear terror? (4)

31A & 17D: What it's not, in a saying (13 & 12)

7D: Angular movement? (6) should have removed the ?

I must be getting a certain way if I'm opening a saturday puzzle and disappointed to not see any super-long stacks. This puzzle didn't feel quite difficult enough for a Saturday, IMO. The long entries in the middle were nice, especially the central cross of the same clue twice, but the other sections weren't as impressive. I felt the cramped design in certain spaces resulted in some simpler clues (MEH, OMEN, and AHI were all filled on first pass without a second thought - I don't think a Saturday should have anything like that). Nothing stood out to me as spectacular, though I imagine a lot of these entries were debuts. For some, this was likely an interesting challenge, but it was a bit of a slog for me.

Answers to noted clues:

12D: GNOSIS

17A: BBC RADIO nice use of regional spelling as a hint

21A: BAAS not a fan of the implication sheep are scared of being sheared

31A & 17D: ROCKET SCIENCE & BRAIN SURGERY

7D: CUBISM

[junipuzzle]

Friday, February 2, 2024

themeless by Ryan Judge

Time: 14:23

Cluing: ★★ Design: ★★★★ Fill: ★★★★

Lookups:

43D: Where Midori Ito lit the Olympic cauldron (6) my input was correct but this corner gave me trouble so i checked this first

48D: Holiday celebrated by reading the Megillah (5)

52D: Gore Vidal's "____ Breckinridge" (4)

Favorite Clues:

12D: Some Instagram statistics, fittingly? (8)

14D: Puppet show locale, for short (8)

44D: John or Paul (6) nice misdirect

first thing: gonna be trying a changeup of the ratings i give by switching "difficulty" to "cluing." IMO it's important that a puzzle be at the "appropriate" difficulty for the day of the week, but a star rating doesn't really quantify that well (e.g. how do i differentiate between a puzzle too easy vs too hard?) not to mention it's quite subjective to my level of experience. gonna see if i can provide a bit more interesting feedback based on the aspect of cluing, since i tend to write a lot about it anyway.

after yesterday's puzzle being a 10/10 on nearly all fronts, i knew today's would feel a letdown in comparison and tried not to let it get to me too much, but i struggled to get through the south and thought the clues could have been a lot better. the entries were mostly good, especially the two long crossing entries - SUNK COST FALLACY and BELLY OF THE BEAST are both excellent, but i wish the cluing had been a little bit more ingenuitive for them.

i thought there was a Lot of trivia-style clues in this one, and a lot of it concentrated in the 70s/80s, which leaves you kinda screwed if you don't know that era. combined with some rare words (ENMITY, papal BULL, n-TUPLES). i don't mind those things on their own, but without more interesting cluing across the puzzle it feels like i can't make progress if i don't know the specific thing the instructor is referring towards.

Answers to Noted Clues:

43D: the 1998 NAGANO olympics

48D: the jewish holiday PURIM

52D: the 1970 movie MYRA beckinridge

12D: META DATA great unintentional pun

14D: SESAME ST.

44D: BUNYAN and not a beatle!

[junipuzzle]

Thursday, February 1, 2024

"thrill ride" by Simeon Seigel (Puzzle of the Year Contender)

Time: 14:08

Difficulty: ★★★★ Theme: ★★★★★ Fill: ★★★★

Lookups:

31A: Crown, in Persian (3)

Favorite Clues:

13A: Peak of revelation? (5)

23A: Character with a famous opening line? (7)

27A: Cultured dessert option (4) this needed a ? for a Thursday

54A: Home of some of the best drivers in No. America (7)

51D: Sects' symbol? (5)

Hi, we're back again with an incredible thursday puzzle. Apparently there were some issues with the theme displaying on the iOS app, but I was given a notification to update the app upon opening it this morning, so I didn't run into any issues. I can imagine it was a frustration for people solving last night, but at least the NYT tech crew fixed something in reasonable time. It's still really frustrating that they can't get things to work consistently ahead of time. I think I'm going to start tagging tech issues to have some idea of how often they occur.

I'm also going to start tagging puzzle of the year candidates - days where I think the puzzle was fantastic from start to finish in theme, design, fill, and cluing. I think the cluing trended on the hard side for a Thursday and a couple entries could have used a ? to indicate they were puns, most notably at 27A. There were also a couple naticks between TAJ/JAMON and TCBY/BAL that should have been fixed through cluing changes. Outside of that, I have essentially no complaints.

Any sort of theme with large overlays like the circles in this puzzle are going to instantly draw the solver's eye to the theme clues - in this case, the three long clues with two circles each represent LOOP DE LOOPS as revealed by 61A. In these entries, the clues are read from left to right including a trip around the circle - as a result, some letters are read twice and it results in some excellent long phrases containing a high amount of repetition and/or alliteration that you simply can't get in a mid-week puzzle due to size. THIS THAT AND THE OTHER, RAMA LAMA DING DONG, and WHEN THE TIME COMES are all fantastic (with the first being a little weak - haven't heard the phrase before, but at least it makes sense).

Tricky cluing in the other parts of the puzzle combined with some nice vertical 8-stacks make for an excellent grid all-around. I can certainly appreciate if some people found this too hard, as it definitely proved more difficult than usual for me, and the tech issues are inexcusable for the NYT. But when you look back at the end of the year and don't have the tech issues, I think I'll remember it fondly. Fantastic start to my day. I'll be adding Simeon Seigel to my list of constructors to look forward.

Answers to noted clues:

31A: TAJ

13A: SINAI

23A: ALI BABA the traditional name for Aladdin, who famously spoke "open sesame"

27A: TCBY short for The Country's Best Yogurt, a froyo chain

54A: PGA TOUR

51D: CROSS i think this works great in two ways - both the idea of a christian sect using the cross as a symbol, and the symbol of a cross as an intersection

[junipuzzle]

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

"tenacious D" by Nathan Hale

Time: 11:34

Difficulty: ★★ Theme: ★★ Fill: ★★

Lookups:

4D: Chris formerly of 50-Across (4) 50A is "NBC stable since 1975, in brief" (3)

Favorite Clues:

39A: First murder victim (4)

61A: Something you shouldn't take lying down? (9)

tbh the theme clues were all good but the theme as a whole was lame imo

lots of blah all around in this one for me - too much US-centric trivia, a natick of foreign languages, and two halves of a theme that didn't really jive with each other. the "crossed a bear" bit of each of the theme clues intersecting with the name of a well known bear is... fine, but not really interesting as an "aha" moment, nor was it particularly helpful in piecing together the solve. the other half (___ to ___ -> ___d a ____) really needed a reavealer of some sort, because it took way too long for me to figure it out and it seemed clunky. in concept and construction, there's nothing wrong with the theme, it's just... really blah for a publication this well known. combined with the other trivia issues, it was just hard for me to have much fun with the puzzle.

Answers to noted clues:

4D: RUDD of SNL

39A: ABEL

61A: POLYGRAPH

[junipuzzle]

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

"brain blast" by Freddie Cheng

Time: 5:42

Difficulty: ★★★ Theme: ★★★★★ (laugh rule) Fill: ★★★

Lookups:

43D: Singer Washington with three recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame (5)

Favorite Clues:

35A: Sound coming from a bay? (5)

31D + 56A: Lead-in to pod (3) double misentry on these

48A: They may come with big waves in Waikiki (6)

like four days ago my brother asked me if i recalled a movie we watched as kids where guys play pool to win money to save their favorite bar and invent a zero grav pool table to do it. for some godforsaken reason i could recall within seconds he was thinking of the movie Think Tank (2006) produced by two of the guys behind Napoleon Dynamite. I also remember we watched it on a tiny laptop screen during a road trip and that it was one of the least funny movies I'd ever seen. anyway.

maybe that was why i got a guffaw from revealing the theme of this puzzle to be "THINK TANKS" in which the four theme entries are all synonyms for different definitions the word TANK - a tank for keeping fish, a military tank, tank as in drop fast, and a tank top. unique idea and fun implementation. five stars, even without the laugh rule.

unfortunately i wish i could feel the same way about the non-theme fill, which had a lot of crosswordese - both ELLA fitzgerand and james ETTA??? ugh. the W and SW were also a slog for me, partially because i was so confident that one of 31D or 56A would be ISOpod, instead of the correct answers TRIpod and PEApod. I had to look up another jazz singer to fill out that area, and i think LONE EAGLE as a "High-flying metaphor for independence" is a pretty big stretch - certainly not a term I've ever heard, and not something I'm finding upon googling.

suppose i'd better just put my mind to coming up with something better instead of complaining!

Answers to noted clues:

43D: DINAH

35A: NEIGH

31D + 56A: TRI + PEA

48A: ALOHAS

[junipuzzle]

Monday, January 29, 2024

"back at it" by Garrett Chalfin and Andrew Kingsley

Time: 4:40

Difficulty: ★★★ Theme: ★★★ Fill: ★★★★

Lookups:

57D: Bauhaus artist Paul (4)

Favorite Clues:

15D: It helps a clown stand tall (5)

46A: Their are too in this clue (5)

welcome to monday, gamers. we are back at it solving the crossword, and our constructors are back at it with a theme of six partial palindromes (e.g. the entries are palindromes when the first and last letters are removed). I'm not too enthralled about it, but I will readily admit connections based on spelling are one of my less enjoyed theme categories. Fine for a Monday, just a little meh with the partials.

Took a point off for the natick at the intersection of Paul KL(E)E and a hockey D(E)KE in the south - I don't think either of those are common knowledge among the average person, especially for a Monday puzzle. Aside from that, I thought the puzzle didn't have much gunky filll - PERSEIDS and PEEKABOO were nice mirrors, and the 6-stacks in the NW and SE were both filled with quality clues. Certainly some crosswordese in the grittier areas, but not too bad.

Answers to noted clues:

57D: KLEE

15D: STILT

46A: TYPOS