Theme: Synonyms for “child” are found in the circled squares within familiar phrases. Nothing groundbreaking, but a solid Monday theme.
I especially liked the six-letter find in the third theme answer. I didn’t know there was a giant version of the otter. I’m not sure I’d want to meet up with one in the wild. Although the fellow in the picture looks quite dignified.įun fill in “ WHAT SAY YOU?” and WARMED OVER. TELETYPE and GOOD EGGS both feel decidedly old-fashioned. Anyone here following the Olympics more closely? I’ve only seen a little bit of Olympics coverage tonight for the first time, since my wife always seems to find the figure skating events. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word “putout” before. It looks like its definition is specifically confined to baseball.Īndy Wang and C.C. Burnikel’s Los Angeles Times crossword - Stella’s write-up Los Angeles Times 2/7/22 by Andy Wang and C.C. I haven’t enjoyed a Monday this much in a long time. It might sound odd to say “enjoyed” about a puzzle that took me all of a minute forty to solve - I certainly didn’t spend time savoring it - but I mean it! The simplest of themes is elevated by perfect execution.
(I was just there a couple of weeks ago to attend an opera for the first time since before the pandemic started, and it was so good to be back!) The LINCOLN CENTER in this case is the trigram ABE, as in ABE LINCOLN, that appears crossing two words in the middle of each theme entry: 58A, the revealer is a rather unwieldy but nicely evocative clue for LINCOLN CENTER. What really takes this puzzle over the top for me is how smooth the fill is. There’s not a single entry in the grid that makes me think, “mmm, a little hard for Monday,” and it showed in my solving time. is involved in making a puzzle, I know to expect some evocative food and drink references, and this one has even more than usual: LATTE, CARAMEL, SWEET TEA, CAKE, TALL (clued with reference to Starbucks), YAM, MEAT, PEA, the themer LIMA BEANS, and MARINADE. (Pro tip: Pretty much any time you marinate meat, pat it dry with paper towels before you cook it.