Sunday, August 3, 2025

Take down a notch / SUN 8-3-2025 / Looks inside? / Warp-driven device / Florida beach town, informally / Tough spot / Hands-on professional? / Sneakily exploits / Something clicked to add an attachment / Brother of DIsney's Louie and Dewey Duck

Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Hard



THEME: Star Trek — There's a lot going on here! It's a Star Trek tribute puzzle. There's THE ENTERPRISE up top and MISTER SCOTT right below up. And a bunch of different characters are being beamed up ("BEAM ME UP!"), as they are featured backwards in circled letters in phrases they might say. We also have USS as a little bonus.

Word of the Day: SITH (10D: Enemy of the Jedi) —
The Sith are the main antagonists in the fictional universe of the Star Wars franchise.[2] They are the antithesis and ancient enemies of the Jedi. The Sith Order is depicted as an ancient cult of warriors who draw strength from the dark side of the Force and use it to seize power by any means necessary, including terrorism and mass murder with the goal to destroy the Jedi and rule the galaxy.
• • •

Theme answers:
  • THE ENTERPRISE (4A: Iconic sci-fi setting spelled out in this puzzle's shaded squares)
  • MISTER SCOTT (22A: Member of this puzzle's shaded squares who might say "I cannot change the laws of physics, Captain!")
  • STAR TREK (83D: This puzzle's theme)
  • BEAM ME UP (84D: "I want to go back to the ship," as everyone circled in this puzzle seems to have said to 22-Across)
  • WE HAVE TO MAKE THIS QUICK (CHEKOV) (3D: "Our window is closing for escape velocity!," as [circled letters] might say)
  • KEEP COMPOSURE (SPOCK) (36D: "Logic dictates that you control your emotions," as [circled letters] might say)
  • I TOOK A RISK (KIRK) (45D: "To protect my crew, the gamble was necessary," as [circled letters] might say)
  • ARE YOU HURT (UHURA) (48D: "We received a distress signal.  Any injuries?," as [circled letters] might say)
  • FULL THRUSTERS (SULU) (40D: "Stepping on the gas, Captain!," as [circled letters] might say)
  • YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON ME (MCCOY) (12D: "Any time! I'm a doctor, not a do-nothing!," as [circled letters] might say)
  • USS (90A: Inits. for this puzzle's shaded squares)
Hi friends! It's Rafa here writing about this Star Trek Sunday puzzle. Sincerest apologies this post is late! I hope this hasn't derailed your solving-and-reading-the-blog morning routine! But better late than never is something they say, and here we are.

There is a lot going on in this puzzle! There's THE ENTERPRISE and the name of the franchise and a bunch of characters (backwards) in a bunch of things they might plausibly say. It's a very intricate construction and it's a puzzle that I'm sure someone else really really enjoyed. Unfortunately, that someone is not me because I'm not at all a Star Trek fan. Nothing against Star Trek ... just ... never been my thing! My level of Star Trek knowledge is knowing UHURA since he (she? they? it? no idea!) always comes up in crosswords. And, I guess SPOCK is iconic. But ... CHEKOV? Never met him. MISTER SCOTT? Totally new to me! (Since the post was late this morning, you all get a pass to go in the comments and make fun of me for not knowing anything about Star Trek)
Torii in KYOTO
It felt like a really slow solve, and I wanted to blame it on the fact that I not a Star Trek guy, but a lot of the theme material isn't really related to Star Trek. So I think it was just a slightly harder-than-usual puzzle. One thing I admired is that it still was a very theme-dense tribute puzzle, but the exclamations all exist outside of Star Trek, so it make the puzzle enjoyable (or, doable, really) by non-fans.
It's RIO
It's really an incredible construction, IMO. I'm kind of amazed there exist things each character could plausibly say with the characters name in it backwards ... while also fulfilling the length symmetry requirement. And the fill didn't really suffer too much in spite of everything going on! You get stuff like A NET, sure, but overall I felt slow because the clues were kinda hard and not because of any iffy fill.
It's AMSTERDAM
I wish I had more to say about this puzzle! These kinds of tribute puzzles are always a bit hit-or-miss, depending on how much the solver knows / cares about the thing being tributed. Oh, this puzzle is also a pangram, which means that every letter is in it at least once. It feels less noticeable in a Sunday-size grid, but that's another cool thing. Usually, the scrabbly letters feel forced, but here I didn't feel like they led to any big compromises.

Alright, apologies again if this is being posted after you usually consume your morning blog! I hope you are all well and staying cool (unless you live in the Bay Area, in which case I hope you are staying warm) and having a lovely weekend.

Bullets:
  • CRYPTOS (31A: Digital investment choice, informally) — I don't know if "cryptos" are a thing
  • GAB (114D: Chinwag) — Sometimes when solving a crossword, I'll see a clue like this which is a word I've definitely ... seen ... before but absolutely cannot say what it means. And that does make it quite hard to get to the answer!
  • ESTE (11D: By Juan's early light?) — Never been a fan of these clues using names to indicate another language. Surely not everyone in the world named Juan speaks Spanish?
  • REAL ID (44A: D.M.V.-issued card authenticated by airport security) — I feel like they've been about to start enforcing Real IDs for so many years. Are they doing it now? Every time it's getting close it seems like they just push it back another year. I'm flying next week so I guess I'll find out.
Signed, Rafa

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SUNDAY, 8/3: TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Dear all,

I had substitute writers lined up for this week (I’m visiting my parents in CA) but apparently there was a misunderstanding about who was supposed to write today, which is why there is no post as of 830AM EDT. I have no way to solve write etc from where I am right now (I’m  writing this on my phone, which is not how I solve, let alone write blog posts, and anyway I have morning obligations already). So … there will be a late post or there won’t be. At least now you know there’s been a screw-up and I’m aware of it.

I apologize for the missing write-up. I also apologize for any infelicities in this post—it’s 5:30AM and I am writing this in a still-half-asleep semi-panic. Thank you for your patience 

REX

P.S. I started the puzzle. Can I stop now? 😭



at 81 comments:

Saturday, August 2, 2025

It's most beautiful when broken / SAT 8-2-2025 / Philadelphia university known for its professional co-op program / Title character of a Jake Gyllenhaal cult classic

Constructor: Robert Logan

Relative difficulty: easy AF (easily a low 3:xx on a new laptop with none of my usual settings applied, which meant the puzzle interface put up a fight; wish I could say the same about the puzzle itself)

Word of the Day: PRISM (Device featured in Newton's "Opticks") —
Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light is a collection of three books by Isaac Newton that was published in English in 1704 (a scholarly Latin translation appeared in 1706). The treatise analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and the behaviour of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. Opticks was Newton's second major work on physical science and it is considered one of the three major works on optics during the Scientific Revolution (alongside Johannes Kepler's Astronomiae Pars Optica and Christiaan Huygens' Treatise on Light). [wikipedia]
• • •

Hey hi howdy hello, Christopher Adams here, going beyond the concept of "haha it's funny that he keeps copypasting the intro", well past the realm of BAD JOKES, and into this blog post. Did not immediately recognize the constructor's name, but I see they've had a good number of puzzles before, all themeless.

This is certainly a straightforward grid for such a puzzle, and not terribly intimidating as a constructor: the little tunnels of five letter entries give you just enough wiggle room to more or less put the two sides of the grid (and the stacks of eight letter entries they intersect) together independently, with minimal impact on the other half. So I would expect some good stuff in the downs (and a high floor elsewhere), and that mostly hit for me; I just wish things weren't so straightforwardly clued. Which, nothing wrong with easy clues, but things can still be fun and easy without being rote, and this felt more like the latter throughout, with some (much-welcomed, and much-enjoyed) exceptions.

if you want BEEFS [Interpersonal "issues"], here's a (very incomplete) playlist of beefs from secret base

Started with a gimme of BATTED at 1A ([Like baseballs and some eyelashes]) and immediately switched to the downs, and bang bang bang BAD JOKES / A DROP IN THE OCEAN / THE NEXT BIG THING went in like [1, 2, and 3, in that order]. In all honesty I started typing "bucket" before "ocean" because I miscounted briefly, but it was a very quick fix so I'm not counting that as interrupting the solve flow. Nothing terribly misleading here, and having the first letters is always a help. THE NEXT BIG THING is one of those rare entries, imo, that's better with the THE included.

Anyway, cleared out the rest of that corner (shoutout to DREXEL and one of my best friends who went there, go Dragons) and also the lower left, which was even more an exercise in letter patterns, especially after easily dropping in BRAHMA on my way down there. (Side note, that might have been the hardest clue I'd hit to that point, solely because Vishnu is also six letters, which says something about how easy this puzzle is.) Arguable didn't need [European brewer...] given the HEI... start, but with all of that it's a gimme. Ditto for MANI-PEDI; only kinda for ANGLAISE ([Crème ___ (custard sauce)]) in that I've never heard of that sauce, but given the ANG... start, I have seen that word in other contexts, and it was nice to learn something while also dropping in letters.

[Flugelhorn player on the 1978 instrumental hit "Feels So Good"]; RIP to the recently-deceased Chuck Mangione, whose name is supervocalic (i.e. contains all five vowels exactly once)

From there, had the choice to go to the right side via either side of the diagonal; chose the upper path because that'd give me starting letters for the upper right stack, which would give me starting letters for the downs, etc. I cannot stress enough how much starting letters are a huge part of my solving philosophy. Briefly confused by ST BARTS ([Vacation isle for many a Francophile, familiarly]) because I only know that as the London hospital; this is actually Saint Barthélemy, which is a French island located in the Caribbean near Saint Martin.
if I had a nickel for every fun thing I've learned about something French from an entry in this puzzle, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice

The rest was slightly slower than before; I didn't get AT ANCHOR, but the MANGIONE gimme basically functioned as a first letter; there was the brief dilemma of "is this MOMENT or SECOND" for 13D, but that was easily cleared up by HOMEMADE COOKIES giving me EMO and CMON; had to briefly jump over to the SE to work up from that corner (again, first letters >>>> end letters), and shoutout to HEPA which imo is a fun abbreviation (and, side note, has been clued [Big acronym in purifying filters] in every Shortz-edited puzzle; props to Joel for changing up the wording even while keeping the same general clue angle); finished on SWIMS, whose clue probably needs a few caveats (like, certainly not in cursive; even otherwise, it depends on how curvy / angular your letters are and whether or not you worry about the dot on a lowercase i, and also I'll note that the W and M on the NYT app are not rotationally symmetric, etc.).

Olio:
  • TWEENIE [Preadolescent, informally] — The one answer in this puzzle that made me grimace; TWEEN I've heard of, and TWEENER I've heard of (in the context of "a tennis shot hit between the legs"), but the infantilizing -IE suffix, to me, screams "out of touch older people who don't know how to use slang trying to refer to a younger generation"
  • DOLE [Founder of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company in 1901] — As with so much of this puzzle, easy, but also fun in that you have to make a little leap from clue to "what are some fruit brands I've heard of" to answer, rather than just filling in the answer directly from the clue.
  • TAMERS [Certain circus performers] — Are there actually still tamers at circi circopodes circuses? Not that I've ever been to one, but my understanding is that animal acts are pretty much a no-go nowadays.
  • TATER TOT — As a card-carrying Midwesterner, I will heartily accept any hotdish recipes, especially if they will make me the star of my next potluck. I will also take any hotdishes and eat too much of it and tell you how much I love your cooking.
  • HOMEMADE COOKIES — As a card-carrying carb lover, I will heartily accept any and all homemade cookies, with the except of oatmeal raisin cookies because they are the devil's handiwork. (It's not that they're bad cookies; it's that I have shit eyesight and they look like chocolate chip cookies from a distance and I love me a nice warm chocolate chip cookie, and I start thinking about how much I'm gonna enjoy it and then I get close and all my hopes and dreams are dashed and that's why I don't like them.)
  • AMIRITE ["Agreed?"] — It's a valid entry, but it does feel a little dated, amirite?
Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

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Friday, August 1, 2025

Stringy parts of oranges / FRI 8-1-25 / Insect that can reproduce with or without mating / Who's ahead and who's not in campaign coverage, so to speak

Constructor: Abigail Martin

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:58)


THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: IFTAR (Evening meal during Ramadan) —
Iftar is the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims in Ramadan at the time of adhan (call to prayer) of the Maghrib prayer.
Iftar is the second meal of the day; during Ramadan, the daily fast begins immediately after the pre-dawn meal of suhur and continues during the daylight hours, ending at sunset with the evening meal of iftar.
In 2023, UNESCO added iftar to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
• • •

Hello squad, it's Malaika here! Happy Friday to all the readers, but particularly Abigail Martin (if she's reading...) who made her debut with this lovely puzzle! This grid shape is such a treat, fun to fill as a constructor and fun to complete as a solver. You get these gorgeous columns of long entries running up and down the left and right side of the grid, holding everything in place and then eight more long entries sprinkled through out. (I have filled (a variant of) it once for NYT, and twice elsewhere; if you're a new constructor, I highly recommend it.)

In October 2023, the NYT ran these three grids on three Fridays in a row

This puzzle was so easy and so fun. Was it... perhaps..... too easy?? I can't tell if the NYT has been making their Friday puzzles easier, or if I've just gotten better at solving. I recall Fridays being hard and Saturdays being very hard. Now it seems that Fridays are as easy as Wednesdays, they just don't have a theme. Curious to see what y'all's thoughts are! And of course, who am I to talk.... I love making easy puzzles.

Let's go ahead and list out all the great long entries: we have STREET FOOD (with an almost-symmetrically placed CARNE ASADA), then SCAM ARTIST. SEAWEED SALAD, SPIDER SENSE, and PHOTOSHOOT (which has an almost-symmetrically placed CAMERA READY), plus STEEPLE CHASE and NEW RELEASE. Then ROSE PETAL, HOT CEREAL, and HORSE RACE. (ACCESS ROAD and LATE APRIL weren't particularly sparkly to me, but perfectly serviceable especially in the presence of the aforementioned great fill.) This is a bonkers high amount, the grid is truly stuffed!

I've been having a blast watching Known Crossword Lover Natasha Lyonne in the show "Poker Face"; Season 2 had a great episode about scam artists

Recently (quite recently! Like in my last ~six months of constructing), I've been thinking more about the clue/entry dynamic:
  1. You can have a fun entry with a pretty standard, definitional clue (like [Finished with hair and makeup, say] for CAMERA READY)
  2. You can have a pretty standard entry with a fun wordplay clue (like [Sew what?] for HEM)
  3. You can have a fun entry with a fun wordplay clue (like [Phish-monger?] for SCAM ARTIST)
  4. You can have a pretty standard entry with a pretty standard clue (like [Wise ones] for SAGES)
All puzzles are heavy on (4) (just by necessity; puzzles have lots of entries), and this puzzle felt very heavy on (1) as well. The grid was fantastic, but I would have loved to see a little more tricksiness from the clues. I wonder if the editors are saving that for Saturdays!

Bullets:
  • [Literally, "grilled meat"] for CARNE ASADA — I paused here when I thought this would be "nyama choma," which also means grilled meat (in Swahili), but realized that was wrong from the crossings
  • [Intuitive ability in the Marvel Universe] for SPIDER SENSE — I was ready to go on a rant about how this is called SpideY Sense, but I looked it up and it can be called either. In the Tom Holland movies, they call it the "Peter Tingle"
  • [Dad, in Korean] for APPA — I know this from the show "Kim's Convenience." I love when TV makes you smarter!!
  • [Insect that can reproduce with or without mating] for APHID — I knew this because today I had to write a crossword clue for this same entry and I read a substantial amount of the Wikipedia page, which included this fact, in order to brainstorm
  • [One of the three landlocked countries with four-letter names, aside from Chad and Mali] for LAOS — Fun little geography test here! Did any of you get it by visualizing a map of the world? Or did you wait for the crosses like I did?
xoxo Malaika

P.S. Since the notes below call out the upcoming Lollapuzzoola tournament, I should mention that I am writing one of the puzzles for it! I hope to see you there, and if you're there, I hope you enjoy my puzzle!

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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