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Black Sea port to locals / TUE 5-21-13 / Fictional member of Potawatomi tribe / Antsy premeal question / Right on german compass / media-friendly quote / Bowlers skimmers /
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Constructor: Patrick McIntyre
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: THE FIVE Ws (67A: Journalism staple) — five theme answers begin with each of the five Ws, respectively:
Theme answers:
- 14A: Defiant response to an order ("WHO SAYS SO?")
- 20A: "Can you explain this?" ("WHAT GIVES?")
- 29A: Searcher's query ("WHERE ARE YOU?")
- 45A: Antsy premeal question ("WHEN DO WE EAT?")
- 52A: "Is it any use?" ("WHY BOTHER?")
Word of the Day: YAZOO (33D: Mississippi's ___ River) —
The Yazoo River was named by French explorer La Salle in 1682 as "Rivière des Yazous" in reference to the Yazoo tribe living near the river's mouth. The exact meaning of the term is unclear. One long held belief is that it means "river of death".[1]The river is 188 miles (303 km) long and is formed by the confluence of theTallahatchie River and the Yalobusha River in Greenwood. The river parallels theMississippi River in the latter's floodplain for some distance before joining it north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Natural levees which flank the Mississippi prevent the Yazoo from joining it before Vicksburg. A "yazoo stream" is a hydrologic term which was coined to describe any river or major stream with similar characteristics. (wikipedia)
• • •
Just a quick write-up this morning.
I don't think this works, on many levels.
Then there's the fill. Three answers destroy this puzzle for me (and would destroy virtually any puzzle for me): E-DATE (!?!?) (32D: Online time stamp), ODESA (twice in one year with this thing?! Come on...) (34D: Black Sea port, to locals), and ALOE VERAS (63A: Soothing lotion ingredients). If one of the questions in this puzzle had been "WHERE ARE MY ALOE VERAS?", all would be forgiven. "WHO SAYS 'ALOE VERAS'?" "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?" Etc.
See also EFT, ECRU, I SAW, I THE, ELHI, ARETE, and on and on.
I do like the answer SOUND BITE (37D: Media-friendly quote), and the clues on POLICEMAN (10D: One keeping the beat?) and UDDER (35D: One may be above a bucket) and TONTO (16A: Fictional member of the Potawatomi tribe) are nice.
In the wake of the absolutely horrendous tornado destruction in Oklahoma yesterday, all I want to do is remind you that "American Red Crosswords" exists. It's a collection of 24 puzzles I put together to benefit the Red Cross's Disaster Relief Fund after Sandy, but the money is used to respond to disasters everywhere. You can donate to the fund and grab the puzzles in .pdf or iPad/iPhone form here. Thanks.
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57 comments:
Hey! Where is everyone?
Played medium/challenging to me. West, with SCREW, POACH, ANDRE was last to fall; whole center was hard for a Tuesday.
A good Tuesday theme, pretty obvious after 17A. Putting theme in second/fourteenth rows stacked with non-theme 9s was a bit confusing, though.
A good Tuesday.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are riding along, when suddenly the horizon fills with thousands of screaming Indians on the warpath.
TLR says, "Well, this doesn't look good. I don't think we're gonna make it out of this alive."
"What do you mean 'we,' Kemosabe?"
Someone needs to use the identity "Tired Phil." But I do like the word SISTA. There used to be a shop here called "Sistas With Nails". Scary.
Rex’s point about how the WH questions is well taken. Some underlying thread beyond their WHness would have definitely made this more elegant. Hand up, @John V, for wondering early on if the other two 9’s would be themers, too. Still, six themers with SOUND BITE, POLICEMAN, SISTA, LONG REACH..I'll take it. Thanks, Patrick!
All of you WHO haven’t donated – those Red Cross puzzles are excellent. Sending prayers to all of those in Oklahoma.
This whole puzzle was in my wheelhouse; I whizzed through again, my only stumble being the northeast: solid white until I saw ON TV. Whew!
“Pacemaker” and POLICEMAN have the same number of letters.
TONTO crossing ON TV with LONE up there, too. And speaking of ON TV, WHO crosses SHOT. . .
Whoa. Whait a minute. I’ve never taken a journalism class in my life, but somehow it seems unfair that how isn’t included in the wh-word group. Shouldn’t it? I think back a gazillion years ago when I studied linguistics, we considered it a wh-word, too. . .
What – a murder
Who – TONTO killed a STAGER
When – last night
Why - because he spelled Odessa with one s
Where - in KIEV. In a SPA there somewhere, ya know, near that WOK store.
How - hit him ON THE NOSE with an AWL. Or maybe an OAR. An UDDER, tragic LOSS.
Ok. Again – no journalism background. What’s the difference between STET and SIC?
STET (editor leaves it in, implying the mistake is understandable?)
SIC (editor leaves it in but is laughing at the mistake because it’s just plain SICk?)
Gotta go whip up some breakfast. Whether it’s some whole wheat toast or curds and whey. . . WHO’s going to whine. . .?
Medium/challenging for me also. I thought the theme was fine for a Tuesday. I didn't mind the fact that the themers don't tie to each other or work on some other level as Rex wanted-it is only Tues. after all. My only (minor) issue was a few the phrases struck me as things someone might say, but not necessarily in the language - WHERE ARE YOU, WHEN DO WE EAT and WHO SAYS SO. The others seemed more in the language - WHAT GIVES and WHY BOTHER.
Didn't like ODESA, EDATE, and the ALOE VERAS plural either, but balanced by the good SOUND BITE, ON THE NOSE, LONG REACH, and some of the neat clues that Rex mentioned. All in all an ok Tues.
Personal pet peeve is when two foreign words cross as in 40A and 31D.
Did the puzzle on my Droid today. Usually print and solve with pen early in the week, pencil later in the week. Nice to know the Droid works, although it's pretty clunky.
EDATE is pretty bad. It appears to be an Excel spreadsheet function. What is worse is that it is called an **online** time stamp. Online means connected to another computer on a network yet it is my impression that Excel is usually used offline.
Arranging a meeting on Skype would be an e-date.
Bit of a yawner. Most challenging part will be entering the Captcha.
@anonymous8:02 what DROID app do you use?
Taken from wikipedia because it's far more eloquent than my words at this hour (or most hours, really).
Stet is a Latin word (meaning "let it stand") used by proofreaders and editors to instruct the typesetter or writer to disregard a change the editor or proofreader had previously marked.
Sic is a Latin adverb (meaning "thus"; short for sic erat scriptum, "thus was it written") added immediately after a quoted word or phrase (or a longer piece of text) that indicates that the quotation has been transcribed exactly as found in the original source, complete with any erroneous spelling or other nonstandard presentation.
i think every time rex complains about a puzzle we get punished. the puzzles have been utter crap recently. "CHG!" Really?
Smugly plunked down Eel at 64D ... Ah well.
This was a good day for Ukraine, at least. There were a few nice touches in the puzzle, too -- such as the two thread holders. OTOE and Potawatamis (how do we know that about Tonto? And what was he doing way out West?) But, yeah, a lot of crosswordese.
I'd have liked 34D better as ODECA.
I agree about the questions being kinda "whatever," but the reveal redeemed the theme for me. Stared at THEFIVEWS in UDDER confusion, trying to see how it could be made into THE FIVE o'clock neWS, rebus-wise. Eventually the penny dropped - D'OH(A)!
HAWN - an archaic past participle of "to HAW"? Just kidding.
@Loren - On words having the same number of letters as POLICEMAN - my first thought was "constable,"
Left most of the theme entries blank until the reveal, so they definitely helped me solve. Agree that this was not the most exciting puzzle. But I actually LOL at the ODESA, knowing it would be a sore spot today.
TONTO was Potawatomi? Was he just really lost from the upper Midwest?
The SCREW/SPOOL cluing combo was fun. And I liked SISTA.
Wanted pulse rate for 10 down.
Hand up for eel
Loved the clue for udder
What the hell?
Patrick McIntyre (WHO), constructed today’s NY Times crossword puzzle (WHAT) on the heels of his last published Times puzzle, two years ago, (WHEN) as an opportunity to have his achievement acknowledged in the “Paper of Record” (WHERE), having learned that earlier efforts had earned him the plaudits of family and friends (WHY).
(A journalist’s 5 W’s are usually realized over the course of the story, not in one sentence, but hopefully that feeble example is good enough for government work).
I enjoyed the smart-alecky phrases used to generate THEFIVEW’S and since they all filled without need of the crosses, they were either nicely clued or an accurate reflection of my personality. (I’ll opt for nicely clued).
But, the grid was just Tuesday’s usual “take-it-or-leave-it-nothing-special-to-be-found-here” fill, with a few exceptions like CONSIGNED, ONTHENOSE, SOUNDBITE and the trickiest cluing in the puzzle, a nice misdirection that signaled EEL but when ordered to HAW, turned into an EFT.
One side benefit of the puzzle is the mention of ALOE VERAS (SIC), giving me a chance to recommend them to one and all as a wonderful, easy to grow and maintain houseplant that will magically evolve into a living sculpture.
Buy a few of them at your local supermarket’s florist shop, group the plants (in the pots they came in), in a cachepot or other suitable container, give them good light but not direct sun light, water them gently every two weeks and watch them grow and bend in wonderful, unexpected directions, giving you a unique, inexpensive, living work of art to brighten up a room in your home.
Move over, Martha Stewart, we’re going green here!
Fine Tuesday, with some good terms: what gives, sista, why bother and the five Ws.
Otherwise not a lot of sparkle. On to Gareth's puzzle in the LATimes.
Suddenly I can't get the LAT puzzle through Safari and Google Chrome. Anyone else having a problem?
After doing these NY Times puzzles for decades, one thing comes to me through loud and clear. Monday and Tuesday puzzles are not about elegance, cleverness, cuteness and so forth. They are about simplicity. First and foremost, they are meant to be easy to solve. I suspect that Mr. Shortz would love to publish exemplar puzzles exclusively, but I also suspect that, especially for the Monday's and Tuesday's easy puzzles, he simply doesn't have enough simple but perfect puzzles submitted to him to select from. I have no reason to not believe he is giving us anything but the best of the lot of the submissions he receives that are suitable for Monday or Tuesday publication.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Too bad he can't let some of us stand in for him as editor and see if we couldn't select better puzzles satisfying the Monday and Tuesday difficulty requirement levels. Now there's an idea that intrigues me a lot. Since that's not about to happen, perhaps more solvers need to take the time to improve the quality of Monday and Tuesday puzzles by submitting their own [much better] constructions. Thinking about that, it must be quite hard to avoid answers that are too difficult for an early week puzzle when one's primary goal is to come up with terrific theme answers. I've never tried to emulate my brother (who had two puzzles published in the Malseka era).
Today's puzzle has six theme answers, more than normal. And it seems to me there are more longish non-themed answers than is usual for an early week puzzle. Perhaps that is the reason Mr. Shortz selected this submission for publication. My expectations being what there are, this puzzle seemed to me to be good enough for a typical Tuesday solving experience.
These thoughts have inspired me to come up with an idea for a rather odd contest. Why not come up with a set of crossword puzzle theme answers. (Or perhaps a few such sets.) Each submission would be a puzzle meant to satisfy one of the difficulty level requirements for the Monday through Thursday puzzles. I think it would be interesting to compare the quality of submissions.
@mac I can't get today's LA times puzzle. Sunday's comes up.
THE FIVE WS was ok, YSER!
But WHY BOTHER with REC, CHG, TRA, OST, HAW, and Eel- oops, I mean EFT.
ESSO, ODESsA, OTOE, ECRU, and ELHI SIC of 'em...
HAW and HAWN?? E-DATE?
WHAT's ON TV?
WHO is this ASCH guy?
WHAT YAZOO came up with CHG?
WERE is EEL when you need it?
WHEN did ODESA drop his S?
WHY are there three phrases that begin with "I"?
I'm at an UDDER loss and not the least bit YSER for this puzzle.
LAT seems to be broken.
I found this puzzle easier than this week's Monday puzzle. Ialso misentered Eel for EFT.
@LAT puzzlers... I got at the TuesPuz fine thru the Mensa site.
@NYT puzzlers... Only thing really wrong with this theme concept, is there ain't very many WHU- words. WHUPASS? Is that a word? If so then maybe you could go with a run-the-vowels-with-WH theme...
* WHATTHE(colorful expletive)
* WHEETHATSTINKS
* WHICHWAYOUT
* WHOAHORSEY
* WHUPASSBEATING
See there? Now you're startin to really cotton to the original fun theme, by comparison.
M&A
My favorite was definitely 35 D. I hesitated putting in the obvious answer at 29 A (. . . YOU) because "One may be above a bucket" made little sense to me (something from basketball, maybe?), and, a five-letter word starting with U? USHER? Whatever? My last fill!
Also, had a write-over at 62 A, RESIN before ROSIN (obviously, befor
e I saw HORA.)
@ Masked and Holdin a Pair of Us - don't forget Whydah, a bird in the Viduidae family, also called indigobirds.
When the LA Times puzzle isn't posted at Cruciverb, go to the LATimes web site, click on "Crosswords", then click on "Daily Crossword" and then wait for 30 seconds or so while an advertisement runs (though there may be nothing but black on the screen but wait it out) and you can print out the puzzle or play on-line.
(Or, maybe M & A will provide the "Mensa" link he mentioned).
Medium for me. Actually a tad faster than yesterday's. My take on this one is pretty much what @jackj said. I thought the theme answers were zippy but the rest not so much with the possible exceptions of SOUND BITE and SISTA. So, not too bad for a Tues. I give it one jnd above meh.
@lms -- DOHA is another one of those where does the H go words for me.
@jackj--that Mensa link is butt-ugly-lookin. But just google on "mensa crossword", and go from there.
@Whichidude--Sounds suitably awful. Let's toss it at the wall, and see if it sticks...
* WHYDAHLONGFACE
@Jay S:
I heard the punchline, many years ago, as "What do you mean we, Paleface."
The very epitome of a Tuesday puzzle.
I'm glad to see that others wondered how a Pottawatomie got lost in Texas.
But this made me wonder, The Lone Ranger has great theme music, why not a Crossword Puzzle Theme. I'm sure we can get Brian ENO to write it. Maybe make it part of the AcrossLite app. Maybe even have variations with a C Major variation as the puzzler nears the solution and an A Minor variation when there are errors. Whuddya Think?
Or maybe just a SOUNDBITE. ENO has the most heard one ever, right?
robc -- that cross was my last letter, right in the middle of the puzzle. And I agree with you.
Blue collar puzzle today; kept the solving muscles toned. I thought the theme and answers were adequate for a Tuesday.
Loren, I have a journalism degree, and we learned it as the five W's, not five W's and an H.
Loved SISTA, EDATE not so much.
Had a hard time parsing THEFIVEWS, at first had the end and thought somethingNEWS.
Didn't feel satisfied last night, but am glad @rex hadn't posted yet, because instead of commenting right away, had a chance to sleep on the puzzle and liked it a lot more in the morning...
Here's Why:
The questions were NOT journalistic and all had some sass to them... WHENDOWE EAT, WHYBOTHER, WHOSAYSSO, WHEREAREYOU, and esp WHATGIVES
Are all demanding, very vocal, a little pushy and nonjournalistic so I think it's a fresh (-mouthed) take on the staid journalism -info association.
Plus as someone mentioned, six theme answers constricts the fill yet he still managed to get in SOUNDBITE, SISTA, and tease us with Eel/EFT.
I'm enjoying folks comments today, particularly @Carola and @Gill I.P. 10:33 am was worth waking up for this morning!
@LMS
Whether or not How (anagram of WHO!) is part of the journalism creed it would mess with a tricky and interesting reveal, so whatever (which could be added as a 6th W, as in "WHATEVER happened to Baby Jane?"
(But you are, Blanche, you are!)
Moved steadily through today's until I hit d64 and d56 Should have seen immediately the connection of a67 to the theme. Duh! Finally saw the light but still hate ELHI and EFT--though those answers are regulars in these puzzles. A bit harder than the usual Tuesday.
I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but this trend of creating E-fill by putting "online" in front of the clue needs to stop. For one, it's absurd because you can theoretically put it in front of anything: When you use Skype is that an E-CALL? When you buy something from Amazon is that an E-PURCHASE? For two, too much E-fill consists of things no person ever actually says or writes down. E-ZINE? Stretching my tolerance, but I have vague recollections of people using this in the early days of the Internet. E-DATE? That's just not a thing.
Tired of this theme (I recall it being played a few times). Anyway – A fine puzzle, but some of the cluing/crossing was beyond Tuesday level IMO. 4A crossing 7D, for example, left me guessing TRIAD or TRIED (I guessed correctly as the odds were on TRIAD over ESCH). Agree with others that if THE FIVE WS had connectivity, this would have been a much better puzzle.
Write-overs:
HALON before RADON
ANO before DIA
MDS before DRS
HUNG before I THE
LIVE before ON TV
ELEM before ELHI (misread clue)
Uglies:
ALOE VERAS (plural?!)
STAGER (promoter)
E-DATE (E-whatever)
@lms – LOL at the murder mystery (not laughing at the tragic murder itself, but how you wrote it)
@Davis (and @pmdm):
Wow, there's yer new puz theme, right there. Contest winner, dude. Take regular stuff, put the internet E- in front of 'em, and produce whacky results. Top examples:
1. E-WOKRECIPES
2. E-LATEFEES
3. E-STATEPOLICE
4. E-SCAPEGOAT
5. E-VENTFRUSTRATION
6. E-LANDOFLINCOLN
7. E-ELTORO [Ellen!]
8. E-MOTIONPICTURE
...gettin tired now. Need to lay down. Anyhoo, seems like a theme that someone's probably done before.
har. Might be worth doin it again, tho, just for EEL TORO...
Hand up for the EEL. If Roma remains ok how is ODESA a nogo?Even I how spell Peking BEIJING!@JACKJ AAH I put my ALOEVERAS outside! @12' wide and towering 30' high-now you tell me!
I am going to visit Rusia.
I do not have children, is Elhi used in the real world?
Midday report of relative difficulty (see my 8/1/2009 post for an explanation of my method and my 10/15/2012 post for an explanation of a tweak to my method):
All solvers (median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Tue 9:06, 8:09, 1.12, 77%, Medium-Challenging
Top 100 solvers
Tue 5:26, 4:49, 1.13, 80%, Challenging
LA Times crossword link-
Anyone having trouble getting the La Times Daily Crossword might want to "Bookmark" the following link:
http://tinyurl.com/l92xvs5
This is M & A's reference for the Mensa site, reduced on "Tiny URL" to make it less "butt-ugly-lookin".
Thanks, M & A!
@jackj thanks. Have already book marked it!!
@jackj: No sweat. Thanx to one of the chef-gals, who told me about that mensa site. No ads. Works great, unless using iPad. M&A
The ALOE VERA, or its POC (plural of convenience) ALOE VERAS---if the puzzle slot calls for nine rather than eight letters---is farmed commercially hereabouts in deep south TX. It's also a common landscaping plant.
Like most succulents, it does best in warm to hot temps, in soil that has good drainage so that it dries quickly after infrequent, heavy watering, and with lots of sun.
Under those conditions, they look like this.
Yes, agreed, a good Tuesday. Rex is petulant...
OK Tuesday. What everybody said.
Storms in Dallas has us all in a tizzy but they turned out to be nothing much.
Think of the Moore OK victims as well as Sandy victims and get Rex's puzzles.
NE fell hard, but fell. 18:32 - ok for a Tuesday.
What is THEFIVEWS?
This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 8/1/2009 post for an explanation and my 10/15/2012 post for an explanation of a tweak I've made to my method. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.
All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Mon 7:18, 6:14, 1.17, 96%, Challenging (8th highest ratio of 179 Mondays)
Tue 9:09, 8:09, 1.12, 77%, Medium-Challenging
Top 100 solvers
Mon 4:21, 3:46, 1.16, 94%, Challenging
Tue 5:23, 4:49, 1.12, 77%, Medium-Challenging
More invasions. Will someone please shut the door? Anyway, I come down on the side of WHYBOTHER? about today's offering.
WHOSAYSSO: I hear "Who says?" much more often. The SO seems superfluous.
ALOEVERAS: So then, there are several subspecies? WHO knew?
ODESA: Perhaps the one-l lama visited there. UGH! Now somebody can use ONES...oh wait. Nevermind.
THE THE THE: Three THE's and you're out! Call the POLICEMAN!
Of mild interest is the mini-Rosetta Stone, with ASL, French crossing Spanish in the center, German, Japanese and Hebrew. Plus a couple of Russian cities.
Also HAW/HAWN.
While I agree that the long non-theme answers (63a excepted) have some zip--they surely outshine the theme ones!--this puzzle just did not fill me with delight. I mean, when ISAW ELHI again, I just said "Who cares?"
That's a WRAP.
While I enjoyed the puzzle, I enjoyed the comments even more. This is an amazing group of people. And what an interesting eclectic mix! Luv Y'all!
After the the first 2 theme answers, I confidently wrote in WHERE, WHEN, WHY in the obvious theme spots, and finished it off with 'how' to start 63-A. My only write-over. In my journalism experience (many years ago) 'how' was an integral part of the '5 W's and H'
@DMG - I'm shocked SHOCKED that Nadal lost yesterday. He was most certainly off his game, but Darcis played inspired tennis. Nadal's type of game, his 'take no prisoners' approach, his intensity, is usually inspiring to watch. I'll sure miss him this fortnight.
Not much to say. Filled it all in and bombed at the revealer. Even guessing at SISTA ( not part of my vocabulary) did not let me see the "F" in EFT. So once again, a one letter DNF. But then the lizards in my neighborhood tend to scamper, scurry, and do little push-ups. Can't say I ever saw one "wriggle". Also, always thought the milker uses a pail. So bucket made UDDER slow to come. Maybe it's regional?
@Ginger. Nadal will be missed. Impressed ar how he praised Darcis. Hope he's back in fighting shape for the USOpen! Now to see how the remaining "big three" fare.
Captcha: gelatine Prevelc. A new form of anti-anxiety pill?
Pasti angka jitu
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