Jean & Mike Do The New York Times Crossword

A superb. Friday puzzle by Kyle Dolan: Jean found it straightforward, Mike had to dig deeply for clues like 4D, Representative, TOTEMIC (which definitely was not, as far as Friday clues go); 10D, Mission Santa ____ (National Historic Landmark in California), INES (now officially on our bucket lists);  14D, Question at a press conference, maybe, WHOSNEXT (no, WHOSONFIRST 😀).

The topper was 22A, Point ____, ocean spot farthest from land, NEMO, which coincidentally and most deservedly is our Fun Fact for Fun Fact Friday. And that's a fact!

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If today's crossword makes you fear you are seeing double, do not adjust your, er, eyes, because you are -- thanks to Philip Wolfe's cleverly constructed theme. We have all the deets inside, as well as a slight addendum to a discussion of yesterday's theme, just waiting for you to download, subscribe, and enjoy!

A friendly reminder: the New York Times Crossword would love to have you as a subscriber, and it makes a great gift for, well, you (as well as your  friends and relations)! Just go to nytimes.com/crosswords, and tell 'em Jean and Mike sent ya!

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Sam Koperas and Jeff Chen provide a master class in crisp crossword clues, with numerous LOL examples. There are too many to list here, but trust us (better yet, download the podcast and listen to us!) -- the grid is bursting to the seams with 'em. It definitely pegs the scale on the JAMCRmeter (that's Jean And Mike Crossword Rating meter), kudos to both constructors (and Will Shortz, it goes without saying but we just did anyway).

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Today's crossword is an homage to Taylor SWIFT, but even if you can't hum FEARLESS or SHAKEITOFF, fear not - the clues are  straightforward (respectively 20A, Like daredevils, informally, and 41A, Get over a minor injury, say) and the crosses gentle. Beyond that, we have to pause in admiration of the inclusion of YOINK, which Mike originally took to be YOIK, as immortalized by Daffy Duck, but the crosses fortunately helped straighten him out.

In other news, it's Triplet Tuesday, and this time it's Jean's turn in the hot seat. Will she set the world on fire? Or flame out? You'll need to download, subscribe, listen up, etc., to find out.

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Jean's favorite team -- the Kansas City ROYALS -- gets into the grid, as did Mike's favorite DC (and MARVEL!) supervillain -- ARCLIGHT -- so that's yet another cause for celebration, beyond, of course, the fact that, it's the 4th of July. Speaking of which, today's crossword was Bruce Haight's 59th, so while he hasn't had quite as many crosswords published as the US had had birthday's, he's definitely making headway! 

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Today's fine crossword by Tom McCoy featured grammargrams, a concept so rare that even Google couldn't find it, but thanks to WordPlay (the NYTimes Crossword column) we know that it's a real thing. You didn't need to know what a grammargram was to solve the puzzle - Mike is living proof of that - but it did help - and Jean (of course) is living proof of that.

In other news, we have a belated JAMCOTWA to announce, and want to wish a happy 4th of July to all our American listeners.

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A tough-ish Saturday crossword by Evan Kalish, with clues like 51A, Verb whose past tense form is an anagram of its present tense, EAT (that took a while!); 60A, Assign new keyboard shortcuts to, REMAP (yay, one for the nerds!);  and 53D, Plant that symbolized purity in ancient Egypt, FLAX (not FLAN, which while delicious is not necessarily pure), all giving a taste (especially the latter 😀) of the difficulty level involved (high).

We loved this crossword, and rate it a 5 squares on the JAMCR scale.

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A fine Friday effort by Christina Iverson and Caitlin Reid, although both of our dynamic duo (solving, as usual, independently) spent more of their solve time looking for mistakes than filling in the grid. In short the puzzle was relatively straightforward, until -- cue the ominous music -- it wasn't! To hear the deets, as well as (probably) learn a new fact for Fun Fact Friday, all you need to do is subscribe, download and enjoy!

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A brilliant Thursday crossword by Samuel A. Donaldson and Doug Peterson, that starts off -- as all great Thursday crosswords do -- by imbuing the solver with a sense of befuddlement and disbelief. Then, with a little luck, or in this particular case with a lot of luck, the answer emerges from the fog, and the solver can bask in the radiance of a job well done. Forgive us for waxing poetic here, but as you'll see in today's episode (or by looking at the grid - go to xwordinfo.com), it truly is a work of art (well, technically, a work of Samuel and Doug, but you know what we mean!).

In other news, we have listener mail from Rob Baker, the author of -- speaking of ides -- the June 15th crossword. It was brilliant, as we stated then and wish to reiterate now. For more info on his amazing story, check out Rob's bio and tv interview.

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In today's exciting installment, we go through the 4 stages of Rebus Identification, as today's crossword provides an excellent example of a rebus-festooned-grid. [Full disclosure: we do get a small gratuity every time we use festooned in the show notes, thanks to the generosity of the Society For the Promotion and Preservation of Festooning*]. As you can tell, we had oodles of fun doing this crossword, and to find out why, all you need to do is download/subscribe and listen up!

*ed: that was totally made up, there is no such society ... yet

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