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TUESDAY, Sep. 8 2009 — Conflict settled by Treaty of Paris in 1856 / Skewered Asian fare / pseudopod-forming organism / Pirate or Padre for short
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: DANCE (71A: Word that can follow the ends of 17-, 21-, 36-, 44-, 54- and 64-Across)
Word of the Day: SATAY (34D: Skewered Asian fare) —
A dish of southeast Asia consisting of strips of marinated meat, poultry, or seafood grilled on skewers and dipped in peanut sauce.
[Malay saté, satai or Indonesian sate, both perhaps of Tamil origin.] (answer.com)
···
Couple of oddly phrased clues today (e.g. 21A: Joe Six-Pack's protrusion => POTBELLY), but otherwise there wasn't much in the way of resistance today. Took me only about 15 seconds longer than yesterday's puzzle did. I always feel slightly disappointed now when I see a "word that can precede" or "word that can follow" puzzle, as I was told the NYT was steering away from that particular type of puzzle on account of its being wildly overdone. This one doesn't even have that bonus element you sometimes see in this type of puzzle, where maybe both words in a phrase can precede/follow the magic word, or maybe the theme-revealer is a clever expression instead of, you know, just a word, sitting there, in the corner. As these types of puzzles go, this one is very solid, and the theme density is admirable, but conceptually it's pretty run-of-the-mill.Theme answers:
- 17A: Borrower's limit (credit LINE) — I have a hard time seeing "limit" and LINE
as synonyms, but I see how an argument can be made. - 21A: Joe Six-Packs' protrusion (pot BELLY) — I think my mom took BELLY-dancing lessons when I was a young boy. Ah, the 70s. So many things to be embarrassed about.
- 36A: Harmless-to-humans slitherer (garter SNAKE) — "SNAKE dance?" Maybe this should have been my Word of the Day
n.
- A ceremonial dance of the Hopi in which the dancers traditionally carry live snakes in their mouths.
- A procession of people who join hands and move forward in a zigzag line.
- 44A: Typical visitor to Cooperstown (baseball FAN)
- 54A: One cause of deforestation (acid RAIN)
- 64A: Conflict settled by the Treaty of Paris in 1856 (Crimean WAR) — wow, three Native American dances, one Asian, one Middle Eastern. And then there's the LINE dance. USA! USA!
Non-theme fill was occasionally wonderful. Love the unexpected non-"V" plural of MAPLE LEAFS (11D: Canadiens' rivals) and their equally Canadian nemesis the ACID RAIN. GARTER SNAKES are GREEN so the intersection of GARTER SNAKE and GREEN LIGHT is nice (28D: Go-ahead). Watched a great U.S. OPEN (19A: Up-front) tennis match last night in which young Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark beat the favorite Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia in a tiebreaker in the third set. Wozniacki ACED (40A: Hit a serve past) her opponent almost never, but SHE (43A: "That's all _____ wrote") was far more consistent — the Russian seemed like clearly the better player (when SHE wasn't making scores of unforced forehand errors), but SHE had on-court emotional stability issues, and couldn't pull ahead and close it when SHE had the chance. Oh, this all took place at (or near, I forget) ASHE Stadium (66A: Queens tennis stadium), which is part of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York City, where the U.S. Open is held.Bullets:
- 10A: Part of Latin 101 conjugation (amat) — guessed wrong with AMAS, but TINY straightened it out (13D: Facetious nickname for a giant).
- 1D: Popular ballpoints (Bics) — also popular lighters.
- 5D: Bernie Madoff job (swindle) — PONZI, SCAM, "INVESTMENT," all came to mind before SWINDLE, which I think of more as a verb than a noun.
- 6D: Co. offering a Buddy List (AOL) — never been an AOLer. I know what I know about it largely from xwords.
- 10D: Pseudopod-forming organism (amoeba) — get a real pod!
- 38D: Sedona and Sorento automaker (Kia) — I'm beginning to think KIA designed its name so that it could get into the puzzle more than any other automaker and thus give its various models a lot of free face time with the car-buying public. This strategy did not work out for the Oldsmobile ALERO — or for Oldsmobile in general.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
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64 comments:
There were a couple places in this that just would not fall for me. I had AGAST for a long time, irked that they didn't use "Var" in the cluing, as I've never seen that spelling. Of course, that's because it was just wrong, but then, I've never seen the word AGASP used either.
I have less ability to pass the blame away from myself with my other problem spot: EASYA. Had EAS-A and still could not see it. Lost a lot of time here. It was one of those "oh I'm an idiot" moments when it finally clicked for me.
Even discounting those spots, I'd put difficulty at about a Medium. Some good cluing for a Tues, I thought.
Last 40 years: Montreal Canadiens - 10 Stanley Cups. Toronto MAPLE LEAFS - 0 Stanley Cups, same as the Hamilton ACID RAIN. Rivals? I think not.
NLER should have been clued "Term a 44 Across never uses".
Couldn't Parse EASYA either. Actually, I am still unclear as to what exactly the clue is referring. Gut Course?!
The clue "Lake former, perhaps" really threw me. I loved "It may be floppy or pointy."
I agree that the theme isn't all that new but there are some fresh words in the grid.
I think we just want every day to be spectacular. But then, why not?
@Crosscan -
Excellent point; I'd be happy if we could find a way to put a stop to all this AL-ER/NL-ER nonsense.
Rex, CREDIT LINE is very much in the lingo -- and you are lucky if you don't have to pay attention these days, as a line can get decreased with no warning and no reason except the problems of the issuing entity!
That aside, the puzzle tickled me with the GARTER SNAKE -- and my lack of immediate insight as to the theme until arriving at DANCE at the end. Looked back at POTBELLY and had a BELLY laugh.
∑;)
@Matty -
Years ago, at any rate, a course that took little effort, and in which getting an A was almost certain was called a snap course, a gut course, an EASYA
I always thought it was "garden" snake. Learn something new every day. I also always thought that the term "that's all she wrote" originated in reference to Mary Shelly who wrote Frankenstein. Not sure where I got this notion, but I've always thought it. A quick google seems I may have been incorrect all these years... anyone have any ideas?
Never said CREDIT LINE wasn't "in the lingo."
Oh my children, why do you doubt me?
Not to worry, the seasons are changing, and NLER and ALER will pass. With the advent of football season, we'll soon have AFCER, NFCER, and on Fridays & Saturdays, AFCEER, AFCCER, ...
Trust me, you'll soon be crying again for ALER, NLER. Which I will make appear in another six to eight months.
@Mike, Same understanding for both the snake and Shelly. When researching "SHE wrote" see if you can find the source of 86 as used to mean take it off the menu or we are out of that.
@joho, Lake former had me going as well. I tried to remember all the famous/infamous Lakes now divorced until I said: Damn.... then the answer came to me from the voice of @G*D.
EASYA defines this puzzle and I am happy to AMOEBA with its E.
Don't forget EDSEL as a crossword cursed auto as well!
It appears to be a fact that I will never accept that the adjectival form of LAITY is LAIC, not LAIT.
This led me to wonder for a while what DANTE had to do with LINE, BELLY, SNAKE, etc.
@dk ... I kept thinking Lake nee Pond? Formerly named Mud? Then when I finally got DAM I said damn! I like your divorce angle, too.
AGASP? Really? That one is news to me. I'll have to store that one away for the next time I'm AGAHST.
I had never heard of SATAY before, but that sounds yummy. I intend to learn the word and try the dish.
I pretty much worked from the NW to the SE, so didn't get the theme until the very end of the puzzle. Had no clue what the theme might be until I got there either. Not much of a revelation. At least we had some long downs, MAPLE LEAFS and GREEN LIGHT, to make the grid interesting.
SNAKE Dancing? Yikes. No You Tube links, please.
Not much to say. A fast Tuesday for me. (Among other character flaws, I have keyboarding issues.) And it was fun.
G*D, you made me laugh, but, then, you always have.
Just got back from Orange's blog where I learned about the relative uses of AGAPE and AGASP in crosswords. Looks like AGAPE is far more common, but AGASP gets plenty of usage. Man, I got to do me some more puzzles.
@Mike
"That's all she wrote":
Etymology - Origins unclear; circa 1940s; thought to be a reference to Dear John letters
(US) Indicating an abrupt termination of a project, or of one's hopes or plans.
1980 Bruce Springsteen - "The River"
Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote.
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat.
-----
A garter snake is any species of North American snake within the genus Thamnophis. Because of the similarity in the sound of the words, combined with where people often see them, they are sometimes called garden snakes, gardner snakes or gardener snakes, or even garder snakes or guarder snakes. They are harmless to humans.
.../Glitch
@dk
86'd
In the early days of the Remington and Royal typewriters, when paper was expensive and the results messy, overtyping to block out errors (e.g.: old prices on the daily menu or items out of stock) was common. Repeated typing of the the digits 86 over a word would cover almost any previously typed word. The X was also used, and when you either typed "X" or "86" over a word the resulting edit was always called an "86" and anything so blotted out was "86'd".
That's the connection with Delmonico's, and other downtown NYC eateries where the menus were printed for the day or week and had to be "overtyped" to eliminate items off the menu.
"The raw oysters were 86'd by the time we got seated for dinner."
Also an old newspaper term for "killing" a story.
---
Some indicate the original source was "Killed and never found" because he was buried 80 miles [out of town] and 6 feet under.
.../Glitch
Workaday Tuesday. I couldn't figure out the theme until I got to the bottom corner, which is how I think these "add a word" puzzles should be. Indeed, I was convinced there wasn't a theme until the very end.
Monday was a hard act to follow. This was fun, but not as much fun as yesterday. Agree with dk - AMOEBA looks much less naked wearing its E.
REOIL is, well, ugly. Obvious, but still.... I'm waiting for G*d to RESOLVE this.
Interestingly, @ 39A: papillons may be either flop-eared or prick-eared, and both may appear in the same litter. I was glad "It may be floppy or pointy" clued a three letter word and not a four that wouldn't pass the breakfast test (or the editor's).
Oops - Should have been "AMOEBA looks much less naked wearing its O."
I want to do a puzzle with GREEN as the word that can follow the ends of stuff and have ROYAL MARINE as a theme entry.
Glitch, you skipped this part: Female garter snakes produce a sex-specific pheromone that attracts male snakes in droves, sometimes leading to intense male-male competition and the formation of mating balls of up to 100 males per female. Just one more thing to add to the list of stuff I never want to see.
Fun Tuesday puzzle. I was torn between GARTER SNAKE and the garden variety, but NNA for 37D ruled that out.
Just because Greene asked for it, here's some cheesy 80's video goodness:
SNAKEDANCE
Decent Tuesday puzzle.
How about a musical interlude, even if we didn't need much Help!?
Yes, around here a "gut course" (or just a "gut") is still a class where you expect to get an 49A:EASYA — as opposed to a 21A:POTBELLY course of 27D:NACHO chips with 33A:SALSA. Or was it 51D:MACHO chips?
Solving from the SE Westward, I wondered for a few seconds what "I MEAN WAR" could be missing (64A)...
Why is an 14A:INLAW a "family tree member" and not simply a "family member"?
@Bob Kerf, here's a musical interlude: I wonder whether AMIN (as in Idi) has ever been clued in the same way as today's 54D:AMAJ. "All-natural key?", maybe?
NDE
Right on the money with your comments Crosscan. Isn't there more to being rivals than simply playing in the same sport in the same division? Seems like sports teams frequently get clued in this manner. And ALER/NLER exist almost exclusively in crosswords.
Easy Tuesday. My favorite answers were GARTER SNAKE, POT BELLY, MARBLE. My least favorite was AGASP which seems to indicate an AUDIBLY rather than VISIBLY shocked state. Yesterday's fun certainly raised the bar for early week puzzling.
Kinda blah, I thought. I know Satay and a lot of other unusual foods from watching Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmerman, neither of which are blah. I have never heard of gut course, I think we used to call them gimmes. I liked credit line crossing Madoff's swindle. In one way or another, all of us are paying for the actions of people like him.
Fun puzzle, but had a tough act to follow, after yesterday's fishing expedition.
I'm OK with ALER and NLER, as long as we can lose the Latin verb conjugation. I live in Arizona, and even with the big Latino population here, no one is speaking that language so much anymore. Any websites that just review the three or so verbs that keep popping up every week or so?
I share Rex’s doubts about LINE and ‘limit’ as synonyms. The line is from 0 up to the limit. If I throw someone a line I don’t just throw them the end point, I throw them the whole rope up to the end point. This definition from the Financial Dictionary gets it right I think: “A credit arrangement in which a financial institution agrees to lend money to a customer up to a specified limit.” But most people takes line to just mean limit, including many dictionaries. So, what are you gonna do?
@Glitch - Thanks for the explanation of 86. File that under 'things I'm glad to know for reasons that are unclear to me.'
I wondered if Rex or anyone agreed with my immediate assessment that something seemed wrong about limit as a synonym for line. Someone could certainly have a $50,000 credit line, so the clue/answer combo is essentially non-nittable, but I think of the line as the account itself and the limit as the max amount available to draw down from that account.
Steve Manion
@ Noam D -- re "inlaws/family tree members":
At our family reunions (McFarlane clan) the spouses were jokingly referred to as "not of the blood"... I don't suppose they were amused, but it was just one of those things.
The Redheaded McF's were a subgroup who also liked to point out that A Conan Doyle had great-grandfather's carriage business transplanted to London along with others owned by redheads for extra background in his story "The Red-Headed League", due to Doyle's earlier visit to Chicago. It was a much smaller Toddlin' Town back then...
Rex, I had a BELLY laugh at your statement: "Ah, the 70s. So many things to be embarrassed about." Well, BELLY DANCing is in my 70's repertoire, but it was a blast! I never took lessons because I grew up watching it so it learned it by osmosis. I'm sure there are some incriminating videotapes lying around. The good news is that the point is the motion, not the crazy costumes and lucky for me, I never wore one of those...
I'd like to meet you mom. Maybe we can brush up on our belly dancing skills!
The problem with ALER/NLER isn't that they show up in x-words (there are some legitimate references to them), it's the relative frequency with which they show. It so far surpasses their use in everyday language, even among baseball fans, that it's off-putting.
What's the word for this? Is it just crossword-ese?
@Noam D. Elkies - To answer your question, "I wonder whether AMIN (as in Idi) has ever been clued in the same way as today's 54D:AMAJ. "All-natural key?", maybe?":
According to www.xwordinfo.com, in the NYT crossword from 1/30/94 to 6/8/09, AMIN has appeared 32 times, 30 times with reference to Idi Amin and twice with reference to other Asian leaders.
@ZJM - I agree. That is the case with a lot of crosswordese. ENID OK, ETUI, ERNIE ELS are all legit, but for example, absent crosswords, would most of us even KNOW that ENID OK existed? Actually I will spend a week there in October, but I bet few among this group have. Or will. Or have a yen to.
A decent Tuesday puzzle.
Esp. following yesterday's fun.
A tough act to follow to be sure.
I'm home sick and delirious with fever of 101.8. Yuck.
I'm going back to bed.
Still kvelling over yesterday's sweet comments by everyone. On behalf of the lovable but snarky Afish, Thank you!!!
I really like Alan Arbesfeld's puzzles in general...
and six kinds of dances!
He always does stuff I like...with words that seem super fun...
POTBELLY, IWON! SWINDLE, LEOTARD (to tie in with the dance theme, so that makes, like 8!)
Yesterday bleedover: ACE/ACED
(I snuck in ACE in mine bec those were my initials before ACME!)
My one mistake other than shared AGAST/AGASP was KEBAB for SATAY.
Loved the J in the bottom corner...
The clue for FATE "You can't escape it" seemed very ominous!!!!!
I've been collaborating with so many folks lately, another constructor asked whom I was cheating on him with this week, so maybe I've now become EASYA. (AGASP!)
Sadly, my belly now dances all by itself!
@ArtLvr - Funny, I just read "The RedHeaded League" last week. I purchased The Complete Sherlock Holmes for summer beach reading this year. Great stuff.... I am now on "The Man With the Twisted Lip", it is addictive.
Mike
Easy Tuesday with only two write-overs AGASP over agape and NUTRI over nutra.
Think I'll take a pass on the SNAKE DANCE this time around
@PlantieBea - I'm right across the pond from you in Menominee MI, back to WI in a couple of days, husband DYING for a fish fry.
Sure is fun to be in a normal time zone with the rest of y'all.
@ chefwen, Do they still call them "fish boils" up there?
Don't forget to have some cheese curds!
Sqeek the anonymouse
@chefwen: waving across the bay to you from my mom's back yard. Try the Nightengale or Bud Birmingham's for Friday fish fry with standard pub/supper club ambiance.
My non-puzzle solving sister from LA had a harder time with today's puzzle. She, a one-time gogo dancer, was disappointed in the end not to find her dance.
@chefwen -- That's barely the UP. I'll be in Crivitz (Wisc) at the end of the week.
Midday report of relative difficulty (see my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation of my method):
All solvers (median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Tue 7:27, 8:25, 0.88, 20%, Easy-Medium
Top 100 solvers
Tue 4:15, 4:22, 0.97, 49%, Medium
I'm not sure that it will hold up come the end of the day, but we've got another large disparity in relative difficulty between all solvers and the top 100. This time the top 100 is having a relatively more difficult time with today's puzzle (it was the opposite this past Saturday). As a rule, the median solve time for all solvers goes up and that for the top 100 goes down as the day goes on, so some of the disparity will probably abate.
Thought that I was done with the POTBELLY issue already today. A close friend, who now lives in DC confided that he had acquired the J6 protrusion, despite his reasonably abstemious lifestyle. I first attributed it to happy marriage, since there seems to be a correlation there. Age may also be a contributing factor; duh. Then it dawned on me that location may have something to do with it. My contemporaries who have departed the West Coast are all a bit plump now, while those of us still by the Pacific Ocean tend toward slender. Whether it's circumstantial or competitive, I hesitate to guess.
Oops, I forgot to mention how delighted I was when solving this puzzle. It was a gem, on a par I might say, with yesterday's.
Fun puzzle, way better than the typical Tuesday.
Never heard the term "gut course" at the college where I teach. Around here students call it an "EASY A."
@Rex and Foodie: not just bellydancing, but platform shoes, disco, pet rocks, and streaking!
@Sanfranman: I always enjoy your statistical analysis. Thanks.
@Two Ponies ... I hope you feel better!
Later today when I was looking at the puzzle I thought it would have been fun to have the CHICKEN dance in it. Or is that just a Cincinnati thing? Maybe it doesn't exist anywhere else.
Yesterday's gem by Michaels/Ashish a very tough act to follow; can we expect to see more of those Andrea? This was "medium" for me but just right today. @glitch-thanks for very interesting origin of "86". Btw, we have garter snakes in So. VT that get to be two feet; yes, they can (and will) bite but the bite is "harmless" to humans. The sight is not always "harmless"! The snakes do our mice patrol. Also: who doesn't go around saying "I'm really IRED at you!". Have similar problem w LAIC but so be it. Use of ERLE and ONEA are beginning to strike meas very tired, dull fill. What I did like: GREENLIGHT, TIDIES. On balance, totally agree w RP this was "run of the mill"
Mike -- beware the foray in Sherlock's territory. I counsel you now while you still seem an innocent.
Glitch's enthusiasm for Bruce I share.
CREDIT LINE, from my experience in Banking, which is rather embarrassingly extensive, does have a very definite upper limit. So odd that at one time I used to play around with $50 million. (I still had a conscience then, but quit because I was losing it.)
@archaeoprof ... thanks for the shout out ... it seems that there is just about enough interest in the numbers to keep this gig going
@Glitch ... always great to see Bruce quoted ... and one of my very favorite lines at that. A practically lifelong friend tried unsuccessfully to get me to listen to Springsteen throughout our teens in the 70s. I didn't see the light until Badlands hit me upside the head at the tail end of a party my senior year of college (circa 1980). The rest is history. His latest effort is the first to truly disappoint me after all these years. I even loved his less critically acclaimed work of the 90s.
GUT COURSE was used "back in the day" says an older co-worker. No one under 50 here had a clue about that term. I'm guessing it's out of fashion now.
Since last night, I haven't been able to make up my mind about what I think of this puzzle. There's a lot to like about it, as pointed out by Andrea, but I also agree with the apparent lack of flash. What helped me was to think about the theme revealer, "in the corner" as Rex said, slightly differently. It's like you're supposed to figure it out by yourself, and the constructor gives you every chance by putting this hint at the very end... Give up? then here it is. This then puts it in a special subcategory of puzzle, unlike the ones where the theme is evident and may help you all along. In fact, part of the puzzling experience is to be actively confusing-- by making the theme answers as disparate as possible rendering the puzzle "diabolical" (a la Sherlock Holmes). If I think of it this way, then it's really good... And the other layer of interest is that the theme is something lovely-- DANCE, while most of the theme answers (except Baseball Fan) are very far from it, a POTBELLY, a WAR, a SNAKE, ACID RAIN and God help us, a CREDIT LINE. So, it took a while, but I'm now in the very positive camp!
This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation. 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 6:54, 6:55, 1.00, 55%, Medium
Tue 7:31, 8:25, 0.89, 20%, Easy-Medium
Top 100 solvers
Mon 3:51, 3:41, 1.05, 68%, Medium-Challenging
Tue 4:12, 4:22, 0.96, 45%, Medium
The disparity noted in my midday report remains at the end of the day. I think much of the explanation here is that, once again, the fastest solvers are bumping up against a ceiling (or floor?). The fastest median solve time for a Tuesday in the 14 weeks I've been doing this is 4:03 and for a Monday it's 3:19. So there's not a whole lot of room for improvement beyond today's 4:12 median for the top 100 solvers.
But since I care so little about theme, when it doesn't seem to matter, ...
just got yesterdays puzzle. have to call nytimes and see what's going on.
what's anonymous 6:27 all about - i'm not clicking on anything. is it the same anonymouse with all the chinese junk
guess rex deleted it!!thanx
Don't know why I didn't see gartersnake. I had dartedsnake for the longest time. Otherwise, okay. Don't know what happened to yesterday's in syndication; seemed like my paper picked up a much older one--so missed out on all the fun I read about.
Okay, so the theme is old, but like @foodie said this one had a nice twist to it, plus lots of theme answers. I was in the "there isn't really a theme" camp until I got to the SE corner, when I smiled. Not a bad puzzle at all, although exceptionally easy (despite the garden snake sneaking in there until RNA fixed it). I am surprised no one noted the additional theme answer: SALSA.
43A: "That's all ____ wrote (she)
In 1991 Firehouse had a song All She Wrote.
Enjoy the you tube
All She Wrote
RSD
here in Enid Oklahoma, we call it a "cake course"...
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