Leslie Young and Andrea Carla Michaels’s New York Times puzzle – Sophia’s write-up

New York Times, 09 19 2022, By Leslie Young and Andrea Carla Michaels

• 4d [*Routine medical checkup] – ANNUAL PHYSICAL
• 7d [*Whom one might not marry no matter what!] – LAST MAN ON EARTH
• 13d [*”Cool” get-together with cones and scoops] – ICE CREAM SOCIAL
• 14d [Implementable with expertise and expert ease … or how the starred clues’ answers can be taken?] – DOWN TO A SCIENCE

So, the theme solutions go down, and every of their final phrases is a SCIENCE: bodily science, earth science, social science. I prefer it! And the revealer is ideal and an awesome a-ha second. LAST MAN ON EARTH and ICE CREAM SOCIAL are each enjoyable evocative solutions as nicely. ANNUAL PHYSICAL wasn’t as thrilling, and I puzzled if a distinct science may have labored in that slot. Maybe one thing ending with “life” or “food” or “computer”? (OK, I’ll admit I’ve some bias in direction of that final one 🙂 ) Side observe that it’s attention-grabbing to me that the idioms “down to a science” and “down to an art” just about imply the identical factor, regardless of science and artwork themselves being very totally different.

I gained’t complain a lot in regards to the selection of theme solutions, although, as a result of this grid looks like it could have been extremely robust to place collectively. Because DOWN TO A SCIENCE is 14 letters lengthy, it will possibly’t go within the subsequent column to the suitable with out making a two letter phrase (test it out for your self and see!). That placement signifies that all 4 theme solutions are crammed into the center of the puzzle, which makes filling it cleanly tough, however I believed Leslie and Andrea did an awesome job. I imply, the 2 longest throughout solutions, CASH BONUS and CON ARTIST (each nice solutions in their very own proper) cross three out of 4 theme solutions! The center of the puzzle did really feel a bit uneven with a bunch of quick solutions, however for the aforementioned causes I understood why it needed to be that approach.

I solely had a couple of main MESS UPS within the puzzle – most of my slowness got here from me typing within the unsuitable letters. I believed 29d [One way to reduce one’s sentence?] may be “plea” however it was EDIT, and I fully forgot the place Hispaniola was for a scorching second once I was making an attempt to reply 38a [About one-third of Hispaniola, area-wise] – it’s HAITI. My favourite clue within the puzzle was additionally for the final reply I crammed in: 25a [Make-up specialist?] for LIAR.

Happy Monday all!