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Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: a dozen Z's (not really a theme, just a fact)
Word of the Day: WOLD (48A: Chain of treeless rolling hills) - n.
1. an upland plain: a region without woods
2. an open hill or rolling region (Webster's 3rd Intl)
This felt way harder than it ended up being (my time was right in the medium range, maybe a little bit under). At some point I realized that the constructor was probably trying to go for some kind of Z record, and maybe that made things easier, or maybe that was just an annoying distraction - I don't know. As soon as I sense the puzzle getting gimmicky (esp. a themeless), I tend to start losing my love for it. Today's held up OK, but man there was a Ton of stuff I didn't know, and a good dozen answers that I think might send people scrambling for Google today:- JACUZZI (16A: "Water that moves you" sloganeer) - familiar word, not a familiar slogan
- FITCH (13D: Clyde _____, "Beau Brummell" playwright, 1890) - there's a name I've never heard and will start to forget right ... now.
- YITZHAK (19A: Shimon's predecessor) - Rabin should be a familiar name to people, but how to spell that first name .... I guessed right on the first try, somehow.
BAUM (22A: "Mother Goose in Prose" author, 1897) - a clue where seeing the date made all the difference. People know BAUM from "The Wizard of Oz" (beautiful new adaptation out from Marvel Comics, btw). Four letters, children's author, late 19c. ... first thing I guessed - and it gave me the "B" I needed to get JOJOBAS! (1D: Southwestern shrubs yielding a cosmetic oil)- POMATUM (25D: Fragrant hair dressing) - what in the wold!? ... POMADE goes in hair. JOJOBA goes in hair (it's in some shampoos). POMATUM must be Latin for POMADE. I like it better backwards, as MUTAMOP - the mop that transforms into, let's say, a robot.
- GIRO (54D: Big name in cycling helmets) - for all I know, this is the brand of *my* helmet. The name just isn't familiar
- FOURS (29A: All _____ (card game)) - kinky
I didn't know ZOG (45A: Planet visited by Spaceman Spiff in "Calvin and Hobbes") or GIRO, but they were easily gettable via crosses. It dawned on me today that I finish quicker than I start for a reason - of course I start slower. When you start, you have nothing to build on. It took me 6 minutes to get the NW quadrant, and about that long again to finish the entire rest of the puzzle. Maybe the other quadrants were simply easier, but maybe the fact that I could work my way in with a known quantity of letters helping me out made the terrain much easier to cross. On the last quadrant (SE), I could come at it from two directions - very important, as I really had to get PETARD (40A: Gate-breaching bomb) surrounded before it would fall. For a moment, I was all set to go with the heretofore unheard of explosive device called the GERARD (named, I believe, after its inventor, GERARD Manleyson, a Sussex farmer who wanted to retrieve the sheep he believed his neighbor had stolen from him and, well, got a little carried away).Bullets:
- 1A: Response to "Is anyone else here?" ("Just me!") - for some reason the first answer that came to mind was "JUST US." This helped by giving me SHELTER, which was wrong (the answer was SECLUDE - 3D: Screen), but which gave me the "L" I needed for OWL (18A: Nighttime noisemaker), which gave me UNAWARE (2D: Not with it), etc.
- 14A: Sports star who wrote the 2008 best seller "A Champion's Mind" (Sampras) - weird how quickly he's fallen out of my mind since his retirement. My mom always says he reminds her of me (I'm tall with dark hair and I used to play tennis). She's got Very rose-colored glasses when it comes to her son.
- 21A: Sucker, quickly (vac) - "quickly" for "abbr." always throws me. "Say it faster!"
- 36A: Polynesian libation (kava) - came to me out of nowhere. I know there is a plant called KAVA. Or KAVA KAVA (used as a sleep aid, perhaps).
- 61A: Ancient Roman writer of comedies (Terence) - never read one, but his name is familiar
5D: Tangled and interwoven (mazy) - MAZY is a mouse, as far as I'm concerned. Last night at Pizzeria UNO'S, Sahra did the maze, then every puzzle on the placemat, then insisted that we each color in our own surfboards (placemat provided many blank outlines). She's on the verge of being a puzzle person, but I do *not* want to push her (caught her watching me solve over my shoulder the other night ... then realized I was solving Crasswords - puzzles by the best constructors around, but with a twist: explicit sexual content. I was torn between wanting her to share in my passion and not wanting her to ask what the cryptic clue [Cock is inserted into pussy to make something creamy] meant - turns out the "pussy" and the "something creamy" are both very innocent; the "cock," not so much).- 7D: Believer advocating universal brotherhood (Bahai) - always get it confused with B'NAI!
- 38D: Staple of norther Italy (polenta) - part of the super easy SW. The Z's from PIZZAZZ helped that whole quadrant go down fast.
OK, done.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Two guessing crosses for me. WOLD/SWAGE and PETARD/POMATUM. The W emerged from a district in England (Cotswolds), the T proved elusive. Took almost half the time of yesterday's puzzle. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteBANDB is that Bambi's slightly demented sibling an outer ion ring, or the back up to banda.
ReplyDeleteONEHALF killed me. A half is not over a minority (he rants)! I had ONEupon, misspelled JACUZZI to further reinforce my certainty principle. Getting MAZY (lame IMHO) saved the morning. Actually a cinnamon bun at Isle Bun will be my saviour.
I guessed gETARD as I always thought PETARD was a sharp pole upon which one hoisted oneself.
More on the hard side for me, agree with PhillySolver compared to yesterday.
Began my "career" as a volunteer photojournalist with our neighborhood paper this week.... on to fame and glory and steaming wallpaper.
I loved the scrabbliness of this puzzle - all those z's, the double J in jojobas, just a lot of fun to solve.
ReplyDeleteMUTAMOP cracked me up - seems like what I have on a really bad hair day. ACME, looks like you've got some competition!
I also guessed "wold" because of the Cotswolds - seemed reasonable. The Giro/Terence cross was the last entry for me - an outright guess.
A nice workout for a Saturday.
For a change, I was able to move steadily southward as the northern part of the puzzle gave me little trouble as I had read the SAMPRAS book and began to see the handwriting on the wall with the Zs YITZHAK JACUZZI CHORIZO but I met stiffening resistance in the SE which was my only trouble spot spot aside from the guess I had to make at the *OLD/S*AGE crossing which turned out to be correct, the word WOLD came swimming up from the recesses of my brain.
ReplyDeleteI had SEIZURE at 58A which held me up for a long time. ROMANCE finally broke the logjam and I was able to solve this one with a lot less trouble than yesterday.
The single word PIZZAZZ got me almost the entire SOUTH which helped me get SPHERIC thru the COAX/OZARK cross.
Intrinsically not hard, but for a long time, I had an odd pattern with completed perimeter and holes in the center. MAZE in lieu of MAZY held up YITZHAK. I had PANACHE in lieu of PIZZAZZ, SEEN TO instead of SEE OUT, ROCKS in lieu or RULES, etc..
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many people still wear a FEZ in Morocco... I have a cool photo of my grandfather wearing one
and managing to look very commanding.
Yes, I had PANACHE, too, and it had me stuck until I realized it was all about the Zs.
ReplyDeleteThat and the SWAGE/WOLD were the only things that really held me up. In fact, I think I completed this one in record time (for me).
Cheers!
I had KIVA/RIP instead of KAVA/RAP. I'd never seen KIVA used that way, but then I'd never heard of KAVA. Both RIP and RAP were plausible for the clue. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteI liked the concept of getting lots of Zs into the puzzle, but the execution felt more than a bit forced. MAZY? Ick. I pulled out my Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes book (seriously) and found that Spaceman Spiff had visited planets BOG, X-13, MOK and ZOKK. No ZOG to be found. The aliens were often ZORGS, however.
ReplyDeleteI had POMADES initially, but the RUMOR was not to be denied. My dictionary lists one definition of POMATUM: POMADE, both words dating back to 1562. My other writeover was SCHLOCK for SCRATCH, which momentarily gave me MUBARAK--oops, wrong country (and last name rather than first name). Like Bill from FL, KIVA was entirely plausible. My last square was the W in WOLD.
As for 1A, now I'm hearing the Police in my head singing about Miss Gradenko. Stewart Copeland's lyrics were always more fun than Sting's.
This one felt challenging to me, with cartoonists, playwrights sports start who didn't want to come to me...
ReplyDeleteI have got to remember that petard; I also envision sharp stakes to hois upon.
What about Terence, is that the English version of Terentius or something?
Rumor took a long time, I couldn't get away from "fears" or "angst".
Cute how sloes and gin fizz are in a quadrant together.
Wold I got, but the word makes me think of woods and forests, somehow.
Good puzzle, perfect Saturday, just a little bit beyond me without googles.
I'll preview next time, sorry for the spelling mistakes. I haven't had any coffee yet.
ReplyDeleteOnemore seems a better answer than ONEHALF, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI had a reright at OWL of all places. Wrote it in, then thought there is no more silent flier than an OWL and erased. When I entered it again I had my AHA which is a loud WHO WHOOO.
I had a mistake in the end with fOLD/SfAGE. Well, sfumato is a word and my only defense. And fold is a place in the hills. Probably not treeless or rolling.
All in all, even with a mistake, how can you not love a puzzle with JOJOBAS?
I got TERENCE in an around-about way, which shows how my mind works. From "comedies" to "stupid" came "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff" from A.E. Housman's A SHROPSHIRE LAD. My favorite part:
ReplyDeleteMalt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to Man.
I also had to blindly guess at SWAGE/WOLD. I know it's Saturday, but that seemed needlessly double-obscure, especially since a T would have fit in the W square just fine.
ReplyDelete@Hudson Hawk-
ReplyDeleteIf you go here you will find reference to the planet ZOG from 1986.
I found this a lot easier than Friday's. Even so, I couldn't finish without looking up Mother Goose and larghetto, which I thought would be food-related with that h (like spaghetti).
ReplyDeleteOne thing that got me was that I went overboard with the z's and had "ZZZ" for "nighttime noisemaker" (thinking that symbolized snoring).
HudsonHawk, maybe it needs more Authoritativeness. edith b's link didn't work for me, here's another.
ReplyDeleteI drink from the POMATUMs of Matt Ginsberg. I like the differently pronounced crossing CHs, and love the word MOOCH.
Jist like yesterday, I had the lower half completed, even the upper middle area with YITZHAK and SCHLOCK, but still stumbled inn the NW and NE...
ReplyDeletePEAK was excellent for Busiest. I thought JOJOBAS came from the Middle East, not realizing we had native plants in the US.. And for a short while I wanted VOA at 9D for Voice of America, though it may be defunct and didn't fit anyway. Oh well. Lots to like in this puzzle!
∑;)
Great Saturday level of difficulty for me. I got it, but it was hard slogging the whole way.
ReplyDeleteGot the eastern seaboard first, not too slowly, then messed myself up with "ring" for "clap" (to summon a servant), "goad" for "coax" (urge), and "hedged" for "dodged" (hemmed and hawed).
"Jacuzzi" would NOT come to me for the longest time. And in the southwest, I had some terrible flashbacks as I searched my memory for Brat Pack members. Judd Nelson? No. Rob Lowe? No. Molly Ringwald? No. And so on.
"Jojoba" wants to link itself in my mind to jujubes, the candy. Like Milk Duds, in my mind they're permanently stationed at the movie theater counter and are out of place anywhere else!
And yes, "swage" was a complete guess. I'll go Google to see what the heck a swage is.
ZED for "lack of organisation" really really stumped me and is really, really clever.
ReplyDeleteSince I started with "ONLY ME" in the first place, this puzzle started slow. I was a Classics minor, and TERENCE eventually came to me, but I had the same concern as mac: what Latin word ends in "ence."
ReplyDeleteUsed google for a few, but loved those zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Thanks, SethG. EdithB's link didn't work for me either. I figured Spaceman Spiff got to ZOG eventually. But it seems you could put any strange three letter combo in there and say that he visited said planet.
ReplyDeleteDrat!! Put in ALOES instead of SLOES, the second time I've done that recently (in a LATimes puzzle??). That made the woodworking tool be AWAGE, which is neither more nor less plausible than SWAGE.
ReplyDeleteAdding to my "Things I learned from xwords" list:
ReplyDeleteNot only is a petard is not a "pointy stick" (said before), its entymology goes back to include "breaking wind", giving "Hoisting on" an image I won't forget.
.../Glitch
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGreat puzzle - Jim H. has a few notes from MG on his attempt at getting a high "scrabbliness" coefficient w/ the zs, js and ks.
ReplyDeleteIt took me as long to get POMATUM, PETARD, DRIVEUP, and PEAK as it did the rest of the puzzle - so my solving experience was almost the exact opposite of Rex's - that and the fact that it took me of course much longer than 12 minutes to complete!
@ Edith B. Thanks for the Calvin & Hobbes link! It worked just fine for me - but it could be because I have a Mac and they're perfect (or maybe its just mine that's perfect?).
Weekend!
A good Saturday puzzle. Medium.
ReplyDelete1A was born as YES, I AM. I am glad SECLUDE came after I fixed that, else 1A would have stayed wrong for a loooooong time. I knew who ELZIE (6D) Segar was – just didn’t remember his first name. Any of it. JACUZZI (16A) encouraged the correct guess.
17A CHORIZO is pretty much a gimme for anyone down here in TX. Kinda payback for 38D POLENTA, which isn’t (or wasn’t for me anyway). POMATUM (25D) was a new word for me – it’s an alternative for POMADE I had never heard of. Like JannieB, loved MUTAMOP – POMATUM is one, in that it changes a mop of hair into a slicked-down non-mop.
Had LATHE, then FORGE @ 44D before SWAGE. The first two are at best weak fits to the def, so I was glad to make the change. Liked SWAGE and WOLD (48A) crossing because I knew both: one a la Cotswolds as PhillySolver said, and the other b/c I SWAGED many a piece of copper tubing in my day.
SLOES @ 44A and the parallel GIN FIZZ @ 56A – very nice!
“Never seemed to end” (43D) – the expression as I knowit is DRAGGED ON (AND ON….), but no harm no foul.
Knowing neither ELZIE, nor FITCH, I settled on "one hand" for ONE HALF. Guess I must be counting the votes in the Senate again.
ReplyDeleteDecided WOLD should be "fold," as I look at folds of land all day, but then I had no idea what kind of tool an SFAGE was - some kind of flange in the shape of an "S"?
Like COAX, didn't like HOAXING.
Knew the expression "hoist on one's own PETARD" but never knew it was a bomb- always thought of it as some kind of sail rigging (watching too many pirate movies). Wanted "rip" for RAP until KAVA showed itself.
Another of those puzzles that started out blank and was teased to completion. Very nice, Matt Ginsberg!
Now, here's XMAN with a problem. He's read about the cleverness Of ZED being the answer to 59d, "Lack of organization?" But he doesn't get it. Throw this TAR a lifesaver.
ReplyDeletepetard=break wind; thus, explosion. Since Hamlet.
ReplyDelete@XMAN, the British spelling, "organisation" lacks our ZEE, their ZED.
ReplyDeleteDazzling performance Mr. Ginsberg.
ReplyDeletePetard can mean break wind but it is mainly a gate-breaching bomb.
"For 'tis the sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own PETARD: and 't shall go hard."
Hamlet
Re: finishing faster than starting, a huge nerd like me would say that crossword puzzles are highly cooperative.
ReplyDeleteImprezzive puzzle! Medium-challenging for me, but only because I was guessing in a couple of places (e.g. SWAGE/WOLD, TERENCE/GIRO). Loved the Zs and the final Z-less clue. I also tried RING and RAG and had ERNIE Segar for a while. Very solid Sat.
ReplyDelete@ Leon - I believe your quote to be a double entendre involving a fart joke paired with a penis joke, which Shakespeare elsewhere did also. Old Will had to keep the groundlings amused. E.g. from Othello:
ReplyDelete"Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?
FIRST MUSICIAN.
Ay, marry, are they, sir.
CLOWN.
O, thereby hangs a tale.
FIRST MUSICIAN.
Whereby hangs a tale, sir?
CLOWN.
Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know."
This exchange happens again in Romeo & Juliet, as I remember, but I can't find the quote.
Took me a very long time, but I had fun the whole way. The Z's were kinda crazy, and I have to admit that it was strange to realize that there were tons of Z's, but not have that be any help whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteLoved ONE HALF, PETARD, JOJOBAS, and ZOG; I couldn't believe that I remembered Zog from my days of Calvin and Hobbes reading.
Can someone explain what bandb is?
ReplyDelete@retired_chemist. I've been hoisted, thanks.
ReplyDeleteB and b without the spaces, Barbara. (Bed and Breakfast.)
ReplyDeleteCould not finish, but I did better than I usually do on Saturday! I can't believe I didn't get "petard." And don't ask what I had instead of "zed."
ReplyDeleteThank goodness for Terence or I would have had nothing on the right hand side of the puzzle...
Oh, and thanks, Leslie because I also got "BANDB" but I did not "get" B and B.
ReplyDeleteI made a mistake (JACUZSI/ELSIE) but really had fun wrestling with this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Mr. Ginzberg!
@fikink: Thanks, that clears me up. Would that I had had my wits about me!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I guess PETARD would be a farter, since 'peter' is the verb 'to fart.'
ReplyDeleteAlso was one of the many switching over to PIZZAZZ, which is a little flashier. I liked the way SCHLOCK appeared one letter at a time.
Briefly had VAM for the quick sucker, since I've seen so many kids with the Twilight books. And PEAK was a most confounding superlative.
Pretty easy, I found, compared to yesterday.
The CotsWOLDs in England finally assured that iffy W.
Hey, XMAN! Not a lack of wit, at all. As I've said before, you don't see the sausage-making that goes on here. I spent GOBS (~TARS) of time with SINATRA at 60Across because I thot the clue was "Rat Pack member" - D'OH!
ReplyDelete(why I am not a speed solver)
@fergus, so how did cocks become peters?
Quite tough this one, but less annoying than yesterday's as the clues are actually correct. Had PLAUTUS for a while rather than TERENCE.
ReplyDeleteONEHALF is a very good answer. It's "just over" a minority because it's not less than half.
WOLD is an old Saxon word (e.g. the town of Stow-on-the-Wold). It may be related to wool, wealth and The Weald (a rich agricultural area in Kent).
For any non-Brit Tolkien swots out there, WOLD should have been EZ--The first thing to pop into my mind was the Wold of Rohan.
ReplyDeleteHilarious write-up today, Rex. I also had GERARD for my explosive; now I know the history of it.
ReplyDeleteI was sure I knew WOLD from a passage about nature in (the standard English translation) of Heidegger's Being and Time. So I got it right, though when I checked later, the word was not to be found there. He talks about "the flowers of the hedgerow" and "the 'springhead in the dale'." Nothing about any wold.
But I did find this (which I liked enough to share):
"Once in the wind of morning
I ranged the thymy wold;
The world-wide air was azure
And all the brooks ran gold."
-- A.E. Houseman
And now I know (?) the origin of the expression "to peter out." My education continues.
I didn't know lots of stuff, but the nice thing about this puzzle was that it was doable, with help of course.
ReplyDeleteI started off nicely when I saw zed right away which then led to seizing. I goggled and looked up words in the dictionary and learned a lot. I have seen wold and knew that was right. I did not know how to spell Yitzhak. It's surprising how many times I think I know how to spell something but don't when it comes up. I watched some of the National Spelling Bee and was amazed at some of the words those kids spelled.
This was much easier than yesterday's for which I am grateful. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
I'm really pleased that people seem to have enjoyed this. My first (and so far, only!) themeless -- I'm sort of at a loss as to how to find a nice synergy putting one together. As I mentioned on Jim H's blog, my goal in construction here was to maximize scrabble score; the Z's just turned out to be easiest way to do it. I did once try to construct a puzzle where *every* entry had a z in it, but that turned out to be too hard!
ReplyDelete@fikink: Thanks for the fig leaf!
ReplyDeletealright, I've trying to resist telling you about pétard in French, but I guess I'm weak-willed. So here, goes...
ReplyDeleteThe most common meaning is similar to what's been discussed here, except it means a small explosive that is used more for noise that for power, like firecrackers.
Also, in slang, it has two additional meanings-- a "cul" i.e. bottom or rear end (as in cul de sac, bottom of the sac), and a large marijuana cigarette.
In general, the term is much more in the language than it is in English. When I first saw it in a review in English ("the authors were hoisted by their own petard"), I thought it was amazingly rude. I later came to realize that in English the meaning seems to have been somewhat diluted...
Thanks Matt Ginsberg for the jaZZy puZZle. I needed some help, but learned a bunch of new stuff today, especially through the blog and comments. Will never forget PETARD...
ReplyDeleteExcept for swage/wold this seemed like a reasonable, enjoyable Saturday. It wasn't until I came here, however, that I understood b and b. I kept wondering why travel magazines included information about band b, whatever that was.
ReplyDeleteThank you Foodie, for an explanation that explains a few things to me.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Matt, to join us and explain some of your thinking. We always like that a lot.
It was a beautiful day in Connecticut. And now I have to clean up the debris of the lobster dinner husband and son had......
Rex,
ReplyDeleteActually, I think the GERARD was named for Manley Hopkins...
And didn't we see PETARD earlier this week?
Btw, remember: "John, to Ringo"? Well, the constructor in yesterday's WSJ had the exact same clue (and answer).
What are the odds of that? "LOOSY" I'd say!
@Daniel Myers, I knew that I knew WOLD from somewhere, and you nailed it.
ReplyDelete@Matt Ginsberg, you construct fine puzzles! But consider that you don't need to make them too scrabbly as we the solvers love a good solve that does not involve too many Z's or J's or X's or whatever. Just my opinion.
I worry I'm risking looking very stupid by having stared for hours at something obvious without seeing it (as happened a few weeks ago with the clunky but straightforward "re-stage," which kept looking to me like the nonsense word "rest-age" [emphasis on first syllable]), but this has been driving me crazy since yesterday so I'm giving up:
ReplyDeleteWhat does "tar" have to do with "cap'n"?
@timothy,
ReplyDeleteTAR = slang for "sailor"
rp
Thanks. This sounds sort of familiar, I guess. Maybe this usage is more common in crosswords than in real life.
ReplyDeleteI had "tag" for a long time but "sphegic" wasn't cutting it.
Loved it. If you're going to go all Scrabble-y, why not? Stuff was hard without seeming unfair. Cheaters aside, these grids of intersecting 7s are way harder to make than other kinds of themelesses. Approved and then some.
ReplyDeleteFive weeks late here because I see the syndicated puzzle, I'll add to the comments on 'petard'. It was such a common synonym for 'fart' in Elizabethan times that audiences clearly understood Shakespeare's meaning when he said "hoist on his own petard" to mean someone who was lifted by his own fart. As foodie observed, it's still commonly used that way in French, to the degree that a famous (or infamous) entertainer who was actually able to fart tunes on stage gave himself the derivative name of Le Petomane ("the fart maniac"). He could also blow out a candle from several yards away. (A contemporary entertainer with the same, uh, skill is a Brit calling himself Mr. Methane, who has released recordings.)
ReplyDeleteThis blog seems to be descending into scatalogical depths never reached before. Though. still waiting for someone to say they had SCHLONG rather than SCHLOCK at 14Down.
ReplyDeleteHello from syndication on July 4th with petards bursting in air......
ReplyDeleteJust had to let y'all know I've been LMAO reading this blog. I now have a whole new world of information re petard. Loved the puzzzzle.
Found this waaay harder than yesterday--or maybe I just wasn't too sharp. Needed Elzie to get Jacuzzi which finally opened up the Pacific Northwest. Glad for the info on petard. I won't forget that.
ReplyDeleteCan someone explain BANDB?
ReplyDelete@Victoria: Bed AND Breakfast
ReplyDelete