Monday's New York Times puzzle solved: June 4, 2018

My time: 5:20.

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Zhouqin Burnikel showcases the Hilton hotel brand DOUBLE TREE with three phrases in this puzzle.

BALDERDASH has two trees: alder and ash.  STEALTH FIGHTER contains teal and fig.

The last clued phrase is new-ish to me.  A "boneless cut named for a New York restaurant" is DELMONICO STEAK, a strip cut or short loin.  It was the house cut at Delmonico's Restaurant in the 1840s and '50s.  However, no one remembers what the exact cut was originally.  Records were poor, the meaning of "sirloin" has changed, and so on.  This website claims that "the historical fact is that the original, authentic Delmonico Steak is, in modern terms, the first boneless top loin steak cut from the front of (anterior to) the short loin."  Anyway, as regards the theme to today's puzzle this phrase contains elm and teak.

I don't know "Meet the Press" host Chuck TODD.

"Some showy blossoms, informally" is GLADS.  Gladiolas grow in a huge array of colors.

Deborah KERR played Anna in The King and I.  She also had a leading role in the far better film From Here to Eternity.

Gotta memorize those state flowers!  The IRIS is the state flower of Tennessee.  Point of order, actually: the passion flower is the state wildflower, while the IRIS is the designated state cultivated flower.

Iraqi port city BASRA appeared on May 30.  Today it's clued as an anagram of arabs.

I had very little trouble with the fill, so it must have been the theme, with its long and obscure phrases (STEALTH FIGHTER, while totally kosher, isn't exactly in common coinage) that made me go so slow.  I gotta do faster!  DON'T BLOW IT, is what I should say to myself, or ELS I won't break any records.  AMEN TO THAT.

Wednesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: August 22, 2018

My time: 8:00 even.

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John Lampkin (possibly changed from the original Lambkin) through up this puzzle, in which words with the sound cluster umb have it changed to ump.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I guess he just thought it was better that way.  It's a neat bit of wordplay, but not exceedingly interesting, in my opinion.

So, "you think the blanket needs messing up?" is READY TO RUMPLE, "guideline for testing watermelon ripeness?" is RULE OF THUMP, the laconic "whence slouches?" is SLUMPERLAND, and "title of a trash collector's memoir?" is DUMP AND DUMPER.

Ha ha?  Well.... stay humple, Lumpkin.

As for the fill, TANIA Mallet is a British model (of Russian heritage) who played Tilly Masterson in Goldfinger and not much else except herself in a handful of TV appearances.

"Neuter" is a tough, even misleading, clue for ALTER.

STK is an abbreviation for stock, which is the material of a brokerage sale.  It's a little hard to Google because STK is also an abbreviation for a special technologies growth fund traded on the NYSE.

The ad campaign "Say PEPSI, Please" was used in the late '50s onward.  Any Warhol did a lithograph of a matchbox cover with the slogan.

The fruit açai comes up a lot as an answer, but this time, it's a clue, as an example of a PALM.

"Pharaoh honored near Aswan" refers to the massive Abu Simbel temples, southwest of Aswan on the border of Sudan.  The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, during the reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses II (or, as the newspaper puzzle styles his name, RAMSES). They serve as a lasting monument to the king and his queen Nefertari, and commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh, the largest chariot battle ever fought.

Speaking of the Aswan Dam, it's in UPPER Egypt, which is, counterintuitively, the southern half of the country.

Lots of old friends this time around:

That UCLA is the home of the Bruins came up on May 14.

Baseball legend "Country" ENOS Slaughter came up to bat on May 5.

We last spied Iraq port city BASRA on June 4.

Basketball strategy the ZONE defense was outlined on September 9, 2017.

Big name in windows PELLA was last seen on January 20.

DYES, needed in batik, came up on October 25, 2017.  I keep forgetting what batik is.

Clever clues: calling ALAR an "apple application" is pretty devious. "One in a black suit" is SPADE.

Well, it isn't a record, but I did this one fairly quickly.  It was A SNAP.  I have NADA thing to complain about, except maybe that somewhat pointless (if amusingly silly) theme.

Wednesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: December 9, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time: 6:18, one minute slower than the record.

Theme: phrases that sound like they might have to do with LIMBO.  For example, SET THE BAR LOW ("establish a standard that's easy to reach").  BEND OVER / BACKWARD works well with this, but UNDERACHIEVE is really a pun, not something you would actually do in LIMBO.

Now let's straighten up and get to the fill.

Utah senator is Mike LEE, a conservative Republican who is a puppet of the oil and gas industry, and has zero backbone or principles.  He mocked the Green New DEAL, and said that having more babies would be a better response to climate change (!?).  He's part of what is making America weak and moribund.

Veronica ROTH is a YA novelist I don't know much about.  I have heard the titles of her books but that's about it.

ARUBA, one of the ABC islands or Lesser Antilles, claims Oranjestad as its capital.  ARUBA is a constituent country of the Netherlands, so they speak Dutch.

The Iraq port city of BASRA has been in the blog a few times.  Today it's clued as "home to Sinbad the sailor."

"Four are credited for a grand slam" is RBIS.  This is the baseball grand slam, which last appeared in the blog on September 2, 2018.

I forgot that OBOE came up as the letter O in the WW II Army/Navy alphabet on July 4, 2018.

The Kia subcompact RIO came up on April 26, 2018.

This is an inoffensive, unexceptional Wednesday puzzle.  The fill isn't impressive, the theme is just okay, and the clues are fine.  Not bad, not great.

Wednesday's New York Times puzzle solved: May 30, 2018

My time: 6:28, pretty good!

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Today's puzzle, by Sande Milton and Jeff Chen, has a big smiley face in the grid just like this Monday's, but it has nothing to do with any happy or smiley wordplay.  No, this puzzle is about SCRABBLE.  There are four PLAYERS represented in the grid, each themed word being behind a triple row of black squares to represent the rack, facing each other in a square.  The other answers are JUMBLED, ARRANGE, and LETTERS.  These four answers are clued as jumbled letters of their answers, i.e. "rack #1: AELPRSY" for PLAYERS.

But that's not all!  A sixth themed answer is MIXED BAG, representing three other anagrammed answers in the middle of the squared off PLAYERS: these are ISLET, STILE, and TILES.

Very clever!  So here's to you, Sande and Jeff, for toasting Alfred Butts and his Lexico game.

In other fill:

An "approach shot in golf" is a CHIP shot.  This is a ball played from close to the green, popping the ball up and over some small barrier such as the last bit of rough, so you can get close enough to putt.

Evo MORALES has been the president of Bolivia since 2006.  An indigenous Aymara, he was a coca grower and activist before becoming a politician.

The BEEB, of course, is the BBC, but I didn't remember at first that Sky UK is another British TV channel.

For "yawners, in sports" I initially put *ROUTS but it's... ROMPS?  Merriam-Webster defines it as "an easy, winning pace" synonymous with runaway, so I guess so?

The Spanish city of AVILA, capital of the province of the same name, is noted for its 700-900 year old walls, the most complete fortifications in all of Spain.

In other foreign city news, I couldn't remember offhand the name of BASRA.  Its in the southeastern part of the country, on the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, about 70 miles north of the Persian Gulf.

"Irish Rose's love" is somewhat opaque, but I'd read somewhere that "Abie's Irish Rose" is a play by Anne Nichols about the wedding of an Irish Catholic woman, Rosemary Murphy, who marries a Jewish man, ABIE Levy, over the objections of their families. There were two film versions made. 

"The Runnin' Rebels" of the NCAA is UNLV, whose sports teams bear that tedious name.

Did you know U.S. ROUTE 50 goes from California to Maryland?  Me neither.  It's about 3000 miles long, with some stretches called "The Loneliest Road in America."

The Miracle Mets appeared in a puzzle on February 21, but today they want one of the players.  It's Tommie AGEE, an outfielder who made two of the greatest catches in World Series history, and both were in game three of the 1969 World Series.

It's well known that all the great detergents have monosyllabic names.  Bold.  All.  Cheer.  Biz.  Gain.  Fab.  Proctor & Gamble's entry is ERA --- two syllables!  They dare to break the mold.

Scotland's Firth of TAY appeared on May 8, but today we learn that the River TAY is Scotland's longest river.  It's 117 miles.

"Big name in nail polish" is ESSIE.  Never heard of it!

I didn't know that there was a path in the Andes called the INCA Trail, but it makes sense.

"1953 Leslie Caron title role" is LILI.  Lili Daurier is an orphaned young woman who joins a puppet act and starts a relationship with the antisocial puppetmaster.  Caron also played Gigi in Gigi.

SAS, when it comes to airlines, stands for Scandinavian Air Systems, headquartered in Stockholm.

TEENA Marie appeared, along with the clue that she sang the 1985 hit "Lovergirl," on April 30.

Clever clues: "Key" is ISLET.  "It has a head and hops" is ALE.  "Links things" is TEES.  "Car nut" is LUG.

I'm very surprised I did this so quickly, considering that long list of new concepts!  I guess it's all that practice ENABLING me to make better guesses.