20 thoughts on “LA Times Crossword 9 Nov 18, Friday”

  1. There are blocks that are not used. See icons , a block , then sire. Also see sro, a block, then adin. Also see reos, a block, then setup. Sorry, no consistancy.

    1. Well, you actually missed a bunch of “blocks that are not used”, but … consider this: The revealer tells you to look for precisely four black squares that are used to represent an appropriate word. As it turns out, each of the four is on a horizontal line containing precisely two entries and there are exactly four such lines … all of which seems pretty consistent to me. (In any case, I would not have been disturbed if the special squares had been distributed differently … the theme is what it is, not what we try to insist that it is.)

      1. Even “consistency” was misspelled.

        I should not be critical, because we had an up and down week after Tuesday.
        Percentagewise, 70, 95 and 50. Pretty poor on our part. Just did not see it.

  2. 28 min. with no errors.
    Between this puzzle and the NYT 1005 it was a mercifully easy Friday.
    Thank you o great crosswords gods

  3. LAT: 13:17, no errors. The gimmick was easily uncovered, but inelegantly executed as pointed out above. WSJ: 15:58, no errors. Meta solved and submitted. Newsday: 18:20, no errors. Good stiff puzzle, stiffest of the three.

    1. @Amy … I think, if you say “Skoal!” and I say “Skoal!”, we have just had an exchange of skoals. Think “an exchange of greetings”.

      1. I understand but still believe it would have been more consistent had exchange been made plural. Thanks for replying! I ultimately went with skoals but it did slow me down a bit.

  4. LAT: 10:10, no errors; as I pointed out above, a marvel of elegance and symmetry 😜. Newsday: 11:13, no errors; with a theme character that is admittedly a bit stiff – particularly as portrayed by Boris Karloff 😜. WSJ: 16:46, no errors; meta solved and submitted (assuming that Mike Shenk isn’t pulling a fast one). Croce at 4:00 (if I get to it – I still have two from last week that I haven’t done yet).

  5. Greetings from Utica, whose name was drawn from a hat. The style, at the time, was to use classic names (and build Greek Revival homes). Utica in Africa had been a port, but is now “silted in,” the opposite of what’s happening on our coasts these days.
    Around here, when you say you’re from “the Valley,” you mean the Herkimer County part of the Mohawk Valley: Ilion, Mohawk, Frankfort, Herkimer.

    I Googled 3: GILA WKRP, ADIN. In my usual sports-ignorance, I put in “trey” where ADIN is. This held me back, as did not knowing the BLOCKs went for 2 words, not just 1.
    I thought the final result was quite symmetric. Good work!

  6. That was fun! Fridays usually aren’t. No doubt I’ll suffer tomorrow.

    I got the theme early on, and that helped a lot.

  7. 13:28, no errors. I’m usually not a fan of “block/black/square” visual gags, but this one wasn’t too egregious.

  8. You describe “ad in” as an advantage to the person shouting out the score. According to my tennis knowledge and Wikipedia, this is wrong.

    Ad In means that the SERVER is winning (and has the advantage). Traditionally, the server happens to call out the score prior to serving, in friendly games. But if the server calls out “ad in”, and the opponent replies, “no, it’s ad out”, that is a disagreement. In your system, that would be agreement, and ridiculous, leading to a “who’s on first?” comedy routine.

  9. 19:17. Fun Friday. Very Thursday NYT-ish. Very late to the party today and very happy it’s the end of a very busy week.

    Best –

  10. Moderately difficult Friday for me; took about 45 minutes with no errors, although 10 minutes was on the middle W block alone. The rest wasn’t so hard.

    I had SKEIN and NEWKID… but the rest took forever…well 10 minutes. Also had to change OldE_ to ONSEA. Got the theme but failed to note that it went in both directions. My complements to the constructors for working this out.

    Pretty smokey from the fires North of here…

  11. Greetings!🙃

    DNF, but I got about 90% of this, so I’m reasonably content. Clever theme.

    Sfingi! I’m in L.A., and “the Valley” has a WHOLE different meaning here. I’m sure yours is much lovelier than ours (No offense to valley peeps, but I think you know what I mean…😮)

    Dirk from yesterday ~~ I know right? Things are looking brighter. 😎 I’m looking at certain House committees whose new leadership may just rein in the crazy.

    Be well ~~✌🏻✌🏽✌🏾

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