LA Times Crossword Answers 27 Oct 2017, Friday

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Constructed by: Andy Kravis & Erik Agard
Edited by: Rich Norris

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Today’s Theme: If Y Is Inserted

Each of today’s themed clue is a common phrase or word with the letter sequence IFY inserted:

  • 19A. Watch a music-streaming app? : SEE SPOTIFY RUN (from “See spot run”)
  • 26A. Organize circus performers? : CLASSIFY CLOWNS (from “class clowns”)
  • 46A. Rationalize one’s need for duel assistance? : JUSTIFY A SECOND (from “just a second”)
  • 53A. Worship at the altar of buttercream? : DEIFY FROSTING (from “defrosting”)

Bill’s time: 9m 51s

Bill’s errors: 0

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1. Apples on a desk : IMACS

The iMac is a desktop computer platform from Apple introduced in 1998. One of the main features of the iMac is an “all-in-one” design, with the computer console and monitor integrated. The iMac also came in a range of colors, that Apple marketed as “flavors”, such strawberry, blueberry and lime.

6. Unattached : STAG

Back where I come from, bachelor parties are called stag parties, and bachelorette parties are known as hen parties.

10. Ruler meas. : CMS

Centimeter (cm)

13. Two-sport Sanders : DEION

Deion Sanders is a former NFL footballer, and a former Major League Baseball player. He is the only person to play in a Super Bowl and in a World Series. And, in the 1989 season Sanders became the only person to hit a major league home run and score an NFL touchdown in the same week. While playing, he earned the nicknames “Neon Deion” and “Prime Time Sanders”.

14. Texas city : WACO

The Texas city of Waco is named for the Wichita people known as the “Waco”, who occupied the area for thousands of years.

16. Braugher of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” : ANDRE

Andre Braugher is the actor who plays Captain Ray Holt on the sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”. Braugher played a more serious cop on the TV show “Homicide: Life on the Street”, namely Detective Frank Pembleton.

17. Maker of Swift laptops : ACER

Computer manufacturer Acer has a line of ultra-portable laptops that are remarkably thin, which are sold under the “Swift” label.

19. Watch a music-streaming app? : SEE SPOTIFY RUN (from “See spot run”)

Spotify is a popular music-streaming service that was launched in 2008 in Sweden.

In the “Dick and Jane” series of book for children, Spot was a cat back in the thirties, but then became a dog in later editions.

The “Dick and Jane” beginning reader series of books was originally written by William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp and first published in the 1930s. There are claims of plagiarism from an earlier pair of books published throughout the British Commonwealth that featured the characters Dick and Dora. Indeed, I grew up in the British Isles with “Dick and Dora”, and always assumed that “Dick and Jane” were somehow their American cousins!

22. Garden State city : NEWARK

What is now the city of Newark, New Jersey was settled in 1666 by puritans from the New Haven Colony. It is thought that the settlement was named for one of the towns named Newark in England, either Newark-on-Trent in Yorkshire or Newark in Nottinghamshire.

Apparently New Jersey was nicknamed “The Garden State” by former Attorney General of the state Abraham Browning. While speaking at the Philadelphia Centennial exhibition in 1876, he described his “garden state” as an immense barrel, filled with good things to eat and open at both ends, with Pennsylvanians grabbing from one end and New Yorkers from the other.

31. Where Spike Lee earned his MFA : NYU

New York University (NYU) is comprised of fifteen schools, one of which it the Tisch School of the Arts. The Tisch is famous for its acting program, with notable alumni such as Debra Messing, Christopher Guest and Josh Radnor.

Film director Spike Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia but has very much made New York City his home and place of work. Most of Lee’s films are set in New York City, including his first feature film, 1986’s “She’s Gotta Have It”. That film was shot over two weeks with a budget of $175,000. “She’s Gotta Have It” grossed over $7 million at the US box office.

32. Louisville Slugger wood : ASH

Louisville Slugger is a brand of baseball bat manufactured by the Hillerich & Bradsby Company in Louisville, Kentucky. The famous bat is made of Northern White Ash grown on the New York/Pennsylvania border. These ash forests used by the company are threatened by the emerald ash borer which is moving closer and closer every year. There are already plans in place to replace the traditional wood used in the bat as the assumption is that the source of ash will succumb to infestation.

37. Brazilian music genre : SAMBA

The samba is a Brazilian dance that is very much symbolic of the festival known as Carnival. Like so much culture around the world, the samba has its roots in Africa, as the dance is derived from dances performed by former slaves who migrated into urban Rio de Janeiro in the late 1800s. The exact roots of the name “samba” seem to have been lost in the mists of time. However, my favorite explanation is that it comes from an African Kikongo word “semba” which means “a blow struck with the belly button”. We don’t seem to have a need for such a word in English …

43. Blanc with “That’s all folks” on his gravestone : MEL

Mel Blanc was known as “The Man of a Thousand Voices”. We’ve all heard Mel Blanc at one time or another, I am sure. His was the voice behind such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Woody Woodpecker, Elmer Fudd and Barney Rubble. And the words on Blanc’s tombstone are … “That’s all folks”.

50. Actress Aniston, in tabloids : JEN

Jennifer Aniston won a 2002 Emmy for playing Rachel on the great sitcom “Friends”. Jennifer’s parents are both actors, and her godfather is the actor Telly Savalas.

Tabloid is the trademarked name (owned by Burroughs, Wellcome and Co,) for a “small tablet of medicine”, a name that goes back to 1884. The word “tabloid” had entered into general use to mean a compressed form of anything, and by the early 1900s was used in “tabloid journalism”, applied to newspapers that had short, condensed articles and stories printed on smaller sheets of paper.

52. “Mean Girls” actress Seyfried : AMANDA

Actress Amanda Seyfried’s first film role was in the 2004 teen comedy “Mean Girls”, supporting Lindsay Lohan. Seyfried has quite the voice too, using it to good effect in her leading roles in 2008’s “Mamma Mia!” and 2012’s “Les Misérables”. Seyfried married fellow actor Thomas Sadoski (from “Life in Pieces”) in 2017.

59. Tantalus’ daughter : NIOBE

In Greek mythology, Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus when her children were killed. There, she was turned into stone and wept for eternity. There is indeed a Niobe’s Rock on Mount Sipylus (in modern-day Turkey) that resembles a female face, and so is known as “The Weeping Rock”.

In Greek mythology, Tantalus wanted to make an offering to the Olympic gods, so he cut up his son Pelops into pieces and made up a stew. After his shoulder was consumed, the gods stopped the feasting and reassembled the boy’s body. They replaced his shoulder with one made of ivory.

67. Sparkling wine choices : ROSES

Rosé wines get their color from the skins of the grapes, although the intensity of the color is not sufficient to make them red wines. Of the varying type of rosé wines available, we are most familiar with sweet White Zinfandels. Personally I am fond of the really dry Provençal rosé wines.

Down

1. Mont. neighbor : IDA

Idaho has the nickname the Gem State, mainly because almost every known type of gemstone has been found there. Idaho is also sometimes called the Potato State as potatoes are such a popular crop in the state. I’d go for the potatoes over the gems, but that’s probably just me …

2. “White __ Can’t Jump” : MEN

“White Men Can’t Jump” is a comedy film about two street basketball hustlers played by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

3. Charity fundraiser since 1985 : AIDS WALK

The first AIDS Walk was held in 1985 to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles. The goal was to raise $100,000, but the 4,500 walkers that turned up brought in almost $700,000.

8. Vinegary, as acid : ACETIC

Acetic acid has the formula CH3COOH, and is the main component of vinegar.

9. Brute : GORILLA

The gorilla is the largest primate still in existence, and is one of the nearest living species to humans. Molecular biology studies have shown that our nearest relatives are in fact the species in the genus Pan (the chimpanzee and the bonobo), which split from the human branch of the family 4-6 million years ago. Gorillas and humans diverged at a point about 7 million years ago. The term “gorilla” derives from the Greek “gorillai” meaning “tribe of hairy women”. Wow!

10. Oscar-winning “Gravity” director Alfonso : CUARON

Film director Alfonso Cuarón has been at the helm of some real blockbusters, including 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and 2013’s “Gravity”. When he won the Academy Award for Best Directing for the latter film, Cuarón became the first Mexican director to be so honored.

20. Parchment source : SKIN

The writing material known as “parchment” is made by processing the untanned skins of animals. If calfskin is used, the writing material is known as “vellum”. Parchment is usually made from the skins of goats, sheep and cows. The term “parchment” comes from the name of the city of Pergamon, which was a major center of parchment production in ancient Greece.

22. Org. that fills bowls? : NCAA

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)

23. Bulldog fans : ELIS

The Yale Bulldogs are the athletic teams of Yale University. The Yale school mascot is “Handsome Dan”, the Yale bulldog. The Bulldogs’ logo features a bulldog in front of a letter Y.

27. “Just an update” letters : FYI

You might see “FYI” (For Your Information) or “Attn.” (Attention) at the top of a memo.

38. Selene and Luna : MOON GODS

“Luna” is the Latin word for “moon”, and is the name given to the Roman moon goddess. The Greek equivalent of Luna was Selene. Luna had a temple on the Aventine Hill in Rome but it was destroyed during the Great Fire that raged during the reign of Nero.

39. No foe : BOND

“Dr. No” may have been the first film in the wildly successful James Bond franchise, but it was the sixth novel in the series of books penned by Ian Fleming. Fleming was inspired to write the story after reading the Fu Manchu tales by Sax Rohmer. If you’ve read the Rohmer books or seen the films, you’ll recognize the similarities between the characters Dr. No and Fu Manchu.

40. Only actor to appear in every episode of “M*A*S*H” : ALDA

Hawkeye Pierce is the lead character in the “M*A*S*H” novel, movie and TV series. Hawkeye was originally portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the film, and then by Alan Alda in the television show. Pierce is the only character appearing in all 250 episodes of the groundbreaking TV series.

44. Future atty.’s exam : LSAT

Law School Admission Test (LSAT)

46. Valet in Wodehouse stories : JEEVES

Jeeves is probably the most famous character created by novelist P. G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse’s full name was Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. Bertie Wooster’s celebrated valet’s full name is Reginald Jeeves.

48. Oatmeal alternative : FARINA

Farina is semolina or cream of wheat. It is made from wheat grain in which much of the nutritious ingredients are removed leaving a fine “flour”. The name “Farina” is a Latin word meaning “flour”.

49. Key of Dvorák’s New World Symphony : E MINOR

Antonín Dvořák was a composer from Czechoslovakia who spent three years working and composing in the United States. He was the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York from 1892 to 1895. Certainly here in the US, Dvořák’s best known work is his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”, which is often referred to as “The New World Symphony”. His career was very much helped along by fellow composer Johannes Brahms, who very much appreciated Dvořák’s work.

50. Singles network logo with a partly outlined Star of David : JDATE

Spark Networks is company that owns several special-interest dating sites online. The most famous is probably ChristianMingle.com, but there is also BlackSingles.com, LDSSingles.com, JDate.com and CatholicMingle.com.

60. Pollen carrier : BEE

The fine powder known as pollen is basically a flower’s sperm. Pollen carries a seed plant’s male reproductive cells.

61. Hectic hosp. zones : ERS

Emergency room (ER)

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Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1. Apples on a desk : IMACS
6. Unattached : STAG
10. Ruler meas. : CMS
13. Two-sport Sanders : DEION
14. Texas city : WACO
15. Leave work : QUIT
16. Braugher of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” : ANDRE
17. Maker of Swift laptops : ACER
18. Waiter at a stand : TAXI
19. Watch a music-streaming app? : SEE SPOTIFY RUN (from “See spot run”)
22. Garden State city : NEWARK
24. “__ be the judge of that” : I’LL
25. Make the call : OPT
26. Organize circus performers? : CLASSIFY CLOWNS (from “class clowns”)
30. Afflicts : AILS
31. Where Spike Lee earned his MFA : NYU
32. Louisville Slugger wood : ASH
33. Answered counterpart : ASKED
35. Little devil : IMP
37. Brazilian music genre : SAMBA
41. Up to, for short : TIL
43. Blanc with “That’s all folks” on his gravestone : MEL
45. Punch or file : TOOL
46. Rationalize one’s need for duel assistance? : JUSTIFY A SECOND (from “just a second”)
50. Actress Aniston, in tabloids : JEN
51. Afternoon social : TEA
52. “Mean Girls” actress Seyfried : AMANDA
53. Worship at the altar of buttercream? : DEIFY FROSTING (from “defrosting”)
57. Declare openly : AVOW
58. Streaming on Facebook : LIVE
59. Tantalus’ daughter : NIOBE
62. Manage : TEND
63. Over : ANEW
64. Further out there : ODDER
65. Start of something? : ESS
66. Gets some sun : TANS
67. Sparkling wine choices : ROSES

Down

1. Mont. neighbor : IDA
2. “White __ Can’t Jump” : MEN
3. Charity fundraiser since 1985 : AIDS WALK
4. Vital business holdings : CORE ASSETS
5. Villainous visages : SNEERS
6. Exchange : SWAP
7. Folded Mexican fare : TACO
8. Vinegary, as acid : ACETIC
9. Brute : GORILLA
10. Oscar-winning “Gravity” director Alfonso : CUARON
11. Mistakes : MIX-UPS
12. Stretch on the job : STINT
15. Invoice abbr. : QTY
20. Parchment source : SKIN
21. Dental visit freebie : FLOSS
22. Org. that fills bowls? : NCAA
23. Bulldog fans : ELIS
27. “Just an update” letters : FYI
28. Delish : YUMMY
29. “Need my help?” : WHAT CAN I DO?
34. Catchy tune : DITTY
36. Edible orb : PEA
38. Selene and Luna : MOON GODS
39. No foe : BOND
40. Only actor to appear in every episode of “M*A*S*H” : ALDA
42. Become prostrate : LIE FLAT
44. Future atty.’s exam : LSAT
46. Valet in Wodehouse stories : JEEVES
47. Labor parties? : UNIONS
48. Oatmeal alternative : FARINA
49. Key of Dvorák’s New World Symphony : E MINOR
50. Singles network logo with a partly outlined Star of David : JDATE
54. Chain email abbr. : FWD
55. It may be self-cleaning : OVEN
56. Works with threads : SEWS
60. Pollen carrier : BEE
61. Hectic hosp. zones : ERS

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21 thoughts on “LA Times Crossword Answers 27 Oct 2017, Friday”

  1. LAT: 18:57, no errors, but I struggled with it considerably. Newsday: 13:50, no errors. WSJ: 14:45, no errors, haven’t thought too much about the meta.

    I had to fill in my name and email again. Bill: Has something changed to cause the site to forget our information?

    Yesterday, while searching for a particular NYT puzzle, I came across a very amusing and informative article that appeared in the New York Times on October 8, 1979. It is titled “Confessions of a Crossword Editor” and was written by Eugene Maleska, who was the 3rd editor of the NYT crossword puzzles (in between Will Weng and Will Shortz). Due to the way in which it was created, the version I found had a lot of errors in it, so I located the original in the NYT archives and created a corrected version, which I have posted on my brand-new (thank you, Glenn!) Word Press web site:

    https://kennisonskorner.wordpress.com

    A good read! Don’t miss it!

  2. @Dave Kennison
    Apologies for the issues with the commenting form. There is something amiss for sure, and I am working on it. I don’t know what the problem is as yet, and I am trying to work out what changed. Please bear with me!

      1. @Dave Kennison
        I am having trouble replicating the problem, Dave. Can you perhaps
        email ee and tell me a little more about what exactly is going wrong? I would appreciate the help!

        1. @Bill … Jeff seems to have responded as I would have had I not gone back to bed to make up for not sleeping well last night. I’d be glad to help in any that I can. (And, FWIW, I just had to put my name back in again.)

          1. @Dave Kennison
            Thanks, Dave. I see the issue now, and am still trying to figure it out. Scratching my head over this one!

  3. I just don’t understand why a non musician should know in what key a work is composed. And even if you know what the key is, what difference does that make? Just too obscure, if you ask me.

    1. Hi Anonymous! It is obscure info, but you always know it will be a letter followed by either MAJOR or MINOR. So, I think they include those clues because it automatically gives us 3 letters: M_ _ OR. Makes it easier. I’m a musician and I NEVER know those answers! Also, you can narrow down the very first letter as being A thru G. That part does need a little musical knowledge tho.

  5. Whew, I put in my user name right away…
    I had a tough tough time with the puzzle, and especially the long theme answers which were a mystery. So, a friday is done.

    Thank you Bill, for Dick and Jane history, and why the Garden State is one. I was in NJ recently, and its all urban, and the drivers drive like crazy, and they all seem as if in an awful hurry …. They also have the highest auto insurance rates in the country. They also have no mercy fo “out of town” license plates ….

    I heard about Tantalus, from the Tantalus cup ( a physics experimental cup equipment, which demonstrates suction and atmospheric pressure, and water finding its own level – )

    and the Tantalum, the exotic metal …. and its closely related sister, Niobium. The most popular uses of Niobium seems to be as anodized colorful tie clips and other jewelry !@!

    Palimpsest is parchment which had been once written on, then scraped off, and reused for rewriting. This was to further use the original expensive and rare parchment ….. Sometimes, the original writings can still ne faintly deciphered.

    have a nice day, all.

  6. 20:48. I had a pretty easy time with this one until the NE. I had to insist on TAXI being right in order to guess my way through it. Had to lean on the theme as well.

    Bill – There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the site per se. It’s just that names aren’t being saved as they usually are. If I type in my name all is well, but I have to do it each time now.

    Dirk/Carrie – Only rationale for the quick hook for the pitcher in Game 2 is that apparently Rich Hill has a history of having a very difficult time with a line up the third time around. He always does well the first 4 or 5 innings, but teams then seem to be able to adjust to him. Roberts was trying to avoid a problem before it started. Can agree or disagree, but that was his rationale. Extra innings made it worse.

    Minute Maid Park will be rocking tonight for Game 3….

    Best

  7. Dave Kennison, thank you, thank you, thank you etc. for your ‘contribution’ in re-editing that article by Eugene Maleska ( who?) . Once in a while, you come across an article that charms your socks off ! Today, your article hit the heart …. I ‘saved’ it on my desktop … its worth re reading again.!

    Seriously, this is why I avoid the NYT crosswords like the plague ….
    … and am so glad we have our guru, Bill, to explain all the mystifying clues !!@! Those clues would drive me batty.

    I, as a well informed ( I think !) indian, never knew there was a golden temple in Benares ( now Varanasi ). The ONLY golden temple in India, for me, is the Sikh HeadQuarters in Amritsar … ( though I have absolutely no intentions of visiting either city ….. ).

    Also I did not know that Reno is NNW of Los Angeles !!@! Yess … WEST !! I checked the Google map, and it is true.

    Did you know …. that Boston is south on latitude than Rome, Italy ?
    … that London is north of Calgary, Canada, and Berlin and Dublin are still farther north ? That Phoenix Ariz., is the same latitude of the Phoenician empire, in present day, Libya ?? That Montreal is south of Paris, and Miami is at the same latitude of Saudi Arabia ??? Wow !

    Thanks again, for that wonderful article !

  8. @Vidwan –

    Panama City in Central America is further south than Caracas, Venezuela in South America…..Log that one for a bar bet as well…

    And our guru here who explains all the answers/clues does the same thing over at the NYT. That’s a big part of the reason I specifically do the LAT and NYT. The other puzzles mentioned here without a corresponding write up as Bill does would just feel incomplete to me somehow…

    @Dave –

    I wonder how well received that article will be over at the NYT blog for Mr “Anonymous”…if he even reads it…

    Best –

  9. 32 minutes, 2 errors on this for some toss-ups for some obscurities and nonsense. Other than those two small sections on the right where in most of that time was spent, this struck me as abnormally easy for the LAT Friday norm.

    15 minutes, 1 error on the WSJ. Again struck me as abnormally easy. Haven’t had a chance to look at the meta yet.

    I guess, though, my brain is finally kicking in a bit more on these after being sick late last week, earlier this week.

    @Dirk, @Carrie
    Jeff got the answer. Blame Moneyball.

    @Dave
    Nice article, though you might want to think a little about posting such things.

    @Anonymous (9:49am)
    Bloggers post things like this to just about every puzzle out there that isn’t considered easy “B-League”. Just got to know where to look. Oddly enough, I was posting puzzle “reviews” like what Bill does randomly to my own blog, and I’m a bit surprised about the ones that get more interest than others. Right now, a lot of my interests are pretty far from crosswords, so I haven’t posted any more. Plus, I haven’t exactly gotten anyone asking me to focus on any particular puzzle instead of just the ones that interest me when I have the energy/desire to blog puzzles. Besides, I have other interests reflected by other blogs that intrigue me more right now.

    As far as obscurities go, Maleska is the one that is constantly maligned, especially for people that want to laud Will Shortz. I’m extremely tempted right now to write a blog post entitled “Why I Stopped Doing The NYT Crossword” for all the obscurities that Shortz allows into the puzzles ala Maleska, as generally reflected in Dave & my own comments here. To wit, if someone said they actually knew all of the NYT puzzle clues, I wouldn’t believe them.

    What people seem to not realize is that crossword puzzles are, by their very own nature, an exercise in obscurity. While Maleska traded in obscure dictionary definitions and factoids most would never know or care to know, Shortz trades in obscure culture and word nonsense that most would never know or care to know. The day will come that Shortz will be as equally sneered at as Maleska is now. And hopefully the next editor will have enough sense to undo what Shortz has done.

  10. @Jeff …

    I think the “anonymous” poster on the NYT site to whom you refer has posted today and, as I expected, he did not read the Maleska article (though I suppose it’s possible that he may do so later).

    And, as for my web site: I have no firm plans to do anything else with it at the moment, but it did occur to me that I now have a way to post that FORTRAN-language Sudoku solver that I wrote a few years back and mentioned here once before. I may also post a little article about a computation that I did in 1978 as a test of a brand-new Cray super-computer: it generated 5 million digits of the mathematical constant “e” (at a time when the record was a fraction of that). Shoulda published, damn it! ?

    @Glenn …

    I would appreciate a little more advice about “thinking a little before posting such things”. Having an “online presence” in the form of a blog (or whatever my Word Press website is) is a whole new thing for me.

    And I’m surprised to hear that Maleska is maligned (and Shortz will be short-changed? ?). I began doing the NYT puzzles every day in the era of Will Wang and found them rather boring. In 1989, I took two of his books of (Sunday) puzzles with me on my one and only climbing trip to Nepal and completed most of them (a few of them working by flashlight at 18,000 feet) with almost no errors.

    I like your perfectly-phrased comment that crossword puzzles are intrinsically an “exercise in obscurity”. What I like about many of the NYT puzzles (and about Croce’s puzzles – though I’ve now run into a couple of exceptions there) is the fact that I can often/usually do them in spite of the fact that they are filled with obscure things that I’ve never heard of. The fact that the entries have to interlock in a grid means that they are not just trivia quizzes (at which I would be a miserable failure).

    What I most liked about the Maleska article is the sense it gives of the tightrope that he had to walk during his tenure as the NYT crossword editor – damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

    Oh, well … enough … he said, belatedly … ?

    1. @Dave
      I didn’t want to get too specific in a public venue. But think “Copyright” and you’re headed towards what I was thinking when I wrote that.

      As far as Maleska goes, that was a commentary on what I’ve read so far in Crossword Land. Every time I encounter an assessment of Shortz as editor, there’s always a slam of Maleska in there. I get that there’s personal preferences which get in the way of objectivity, but I’m sure Maleska did the best job he could. As far as I can observe, Shortz really isn’t much better given the Maleska puzzles I’ve seen.

      As for the current puzzles, one could look at difficulty, and quality. We’ve been saying much about difficulty – like I mentioned before, I could come up with a list of clues like you did for the BEQ for about every NYT grid I’ve ever done – I do often get stymied or end up making WAGs (have to adopt that lol) like I did on the LAT today because something is either obscure trivia or nonsense and the crosses don’t help. If I had to assess why my times are what they are in late week compared to early week, it’s usually for spending time trying to make sense of the nonsense, or trying to make guesses of some kind to get through the grid.

      Quality of course is more subjective, but my general assessment is that there are many other outlets putting out more interesting/fun grids right now than the NYT. That’s a heavier indictment on Shortz than obscurity matters, but that’s another discussion entirely.

  11. @Glenn …

    I did wonder a little about copyright issues (certainly not an area of expertise for me), but it seemed unlikely that the Times would be too concerned about an 48-year-old article. In any case, I’d be happy to just link to their digital version of the article, which can be found using Google, if they fixed it to avoid all the errors that were embedded in it by their use of optical character recognition on a comparatively poor photographic representation of the original.

    The BEQ that you mentioned was highly unusual in that it played to every one of my weak areas at a time when I was a little burned out on crosswords (which does happen from time to time ?). I can’t think of another time in the last couple of years when I so completely gave up on a puzzle. Usually, it almost seems as if the setter and editor know exactly how far to go to keep me with them – part of my fascination with the process.

    As for puzzle quality: I realize that I’m awfully easy to please and I have to believe that it’s based on my one attempt to create a crossword puzzle, some 60 years ago. The attempt did not go well and it gave me a lasting appreciation for anyone able to do it at all … ?

  12. Make that a 38-year-old article. Geez. And, since I’m here … I did today’s Tim Croce puzzle, with no errors … but I’m still stuck on one from last March … and beginning to think I can’t do it without cheating. I’m also baffled by this week’s WSJ meta … but I’ve finished Saturday’s puzzles … so I can stare at the meta all day tomorrow … ?

  13. Mostly straightforward today, except for the NE corner; about an hour with 4 errors. Had __S where CMS was supposed to be and T__I where TAXI was supposed to be. All the rest took about 45 minutes.

    @Glenn I take your point on Moneyball, but there’s an article in the LA Times (1st article when googling “Rich Hill”)by a guy that says those stats are wrong and that if you’re going to pay someone $16M he should be able to go more than 4 innings.

    @Glenn,Jeff,Carrie Yow! Another micromanaged pitcher lineup by LA. Houston deserved it tonight and it was entertaining. I’m sticking with 7 games and starting to waiver a little on the Dodgers. Hopefully they can pull it together.

  14. Hi gang!!
    I’m going to say that I finished this one error-free…. but the truth is that I was REALLY stuck at TOOL/BOND. I guessed “O” but peeked at Bill’s grid to confirm. ? Could NOT get “No foe!” I can’t call it a Natick, cuz if the clue had been “Foe of No” I would have gotten BOND.
    DAVE!! Shoulda published– I hear you.
    @Jeff & Glenn, yes I get Dave Roberts’ rationale but omigosh a manager has to think situationally!!! Wild game tonight. I wonder if Yuli Gurriel will be suspended.
    Is it too late to put me down for Dodgers in 7 rather than in 5?? ?
    Megan! Do you make your family’s Halloween costumes? Either way, sounds like so much fun! ?
    Be well~~™⚾

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