.png)
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: none
Word of the Day: ORFE (24A: Ornamental pond fish) —
The ide (also id) or orfe, Leuciscus idus, is a freshwater fish of the family Cyprinidae found across northern Europe and Asia. It occurs in larger rivers, ponds, and lakes, typically in schools. The name is from Swedish id, originally referring to its bright color (compare the German dialect word aitel 'a kind of bright fish' and Old High German eit 'funeral pyre, fire'). (wikipedia)
• • •
This puzzle seemed reasonably easy, except for the NE, which was a kind of nightmare. Not just tough for me, but annoying tough, in that it was overwhelming proper nouns. Just look at the Acrosses. Name over name over name over name over whatever ORFE is over really awkward airport name (Airport alternative to JFK or LGA => EWR) over name over name over name over RESOD (45A: Fix, as some bald spots). 3/5 of the Downs are names as well. I love names, but come on. Balance. Also, for reasons I'm having trouble articulating, MAN BREASTS really bothered me (12D: Unmacho features) — the cluing seemed kind of offensive. I'm just trying to think of a comparative clue for women and how that would go over. [Unfeminine features]=>SAGGING TITS. I don't think so. Cluing seems oddly mean. Also, "man boobs" outdraws "man breasts," Google-wise, by a Huge margin. I did not even know MAN BREASTS was a real phrase. Rest of the puzzle seemed fine. I had AMEN, SISTER for AMEN TO THAT (26D: Response of approval), but other than that, no serious hangups.
Started in the NW and got those little Downs easily enough, but didn't know what followed EMPTY in EMPTY SUIT (1A: Good-for-nothing), and couldn't see GUARANTEE at all with just GUA-A---- sitting there. GUACAMOLE? Still not sure I understand TARS (4D: Hold hands?). Is a hold a place on a ship, and TARS are hands, or sailors, as in "all hands on deck"? Definitely didn't know the 80-year-old Triple Crown winner Earl SANDE, but, besides ORFE, I think that's the only answer in the puzzle I flat out didn't know. I should say, however, that the *only* reason I know Pou STO (42A: Pou ___ (vantage point)) is crosswords. It's a godawful piece of crosswordese. But today, that sort of thing was a rarity, so no complaints.Bullets:
- 15A: Light seeker's question ("GOT A MATCH?") — In what decade? "GOT A LIGHT?" seems the more common phrase, though I liked this answer fine.
- 16A: Eponym of an annual award for best left-handed pitcher (SPAHN) — I was lucky enough to get "P" and "H" as my crosses. Not sure I would have uncovered it easily otherwise.
- 32A: Code broken by Joe Valachi (OMERTA) — "Code" and "Valachi" told me OMERTA (code of silence among mafia, word I learned from crosswords)
34A: Picasso's "private muse" (DORA MAAR) — Again, learned from crosswords. Couldn't remember last name exactly, though (MAHR?), which added to my NE struggles.- 38A: Adversary of Rocky (NATASHA)— the Squirrel, not the boxer.
- 41A: Wimbledon's borough (MERTON) — uh, ok, if you say so ...
- 43A: He said "Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers" (ELIOT) — Wanted WILDE at first.
- 52A: Beggar in Sir Walter Scott's "The Antiquary" (EDIE) — uh, ok, if you say so. I don't even recognize that as a Scott title, so the character? No way.
- 2D: Sourpuss's look (MOUE) — word I never see outside of crosswords. 75% vowels = very useful.
- 9D: Its news network won a 2008 Peabody Award ("THE ONION") — they also have a great crossword puzzle, ed. Ben Tausig.
- 33d. Botanical casings (ARILS) — more mainstream crosswordese. I *still* get ARIL and ANIL confused (the latter being a blue dye)
- 47D: "South Park" parka wearer (KENNY) — "Oh my God, they killed KENNY!" "You bastards!" — he used to die in every episode.
- 55D: Ciliary body locale (UVEA) — for the last time today, I say ... uh, ok, if you say so. No idea.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
Hand up for wanting WILDE, forgetting ARILS, and saying 'argh' when NATASHA came out.
ReplyDeleteMOUE-- oddly enough, I used this word in my comment the other day (maybe on WordPlay's blog), but could scarcely believe it was in the puzzle. Seldom Seen! I actually knew ALBEN Barkley (a lot of things are still named for him in Kentucky) and finally, finally recalled CHIEF WAHOO (but thought he had, um, retired.)
My Waterloo was the South Central, where I had SPIFFY and ---STATES and ---SPEAK and just couldn't untangle it (or care enough to hang in there.) For some reason, 'KNITTENS' seemed like it could be a real word for 'things that are knitted.
I have to agree--MAN BREASTS seems pretty tacky for The NYT. @Paula and Will: What were you thinking? Ick.
DNF for me. Maybe NEXT Saturday...
Pretty fun, I thought. One mistake for me: SCRAP/PERTON. You know, like a bolt of fabric. Well, maybe not...
ReplyDeleteAlso had LEETSPEAK for a while, and didn't get the TARS clue until this blog. Cute.
MANBREASTS seems like a cleaned-up version of what they actually wanted. Would have like to have been privy to that conversation!
ReplyDeleteChipped away at the north for a while - knew Earl SANDE as my dad
was a big horse race fan and I spent a lot of hours going over the Daily Racing Form with him and I remembered ORFE from a Tony Orbach puzle earlier this year and guessed at MOUE (wink at Elaine) and finally got ICECOLD which unfroze a good half of this puzzle including WASTE and RENOIRS which gave me all of the West Coast.
ANNOTATES was my last entry which held me up for a long while but chip chip chip held me in good stead today.
I actually found this much easier than yesterday's. I agree with Rex that the NE was the toughest section. I had to guess at the Mare/Merton crossing since Male/Melton could have worked. Luckily I guessed correctly.
ReplyDeleteHoly moly, this was more than a medium for me. I'm just glad I finished without googling. Totally agree with Rex on all the unfamiliar proper nouns in the NE.
ReplyDeleteI always thought a MOUE was more of a put-on, wink-wink "I don't really mean it" little pout, rather than an actual sourpuss's expression.
Somebody please explain (unless Rex already did, and I didn't see it) why FORK is the answer for "Stick with it." I don't get it.
Raise your hand if you really, really wanted "limp wrists" instead of MAN BREASTS. Just as politically incorrect, but it leaped to mind much faster.
A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall.
ReplyDelete@Lesile - One can stick a fork into a piece of food.
ReplyDeleteI saw Paula's name and knew there'd be something provocative in the grid. Last year it was BIMBO ERUPTION. I'm not sure what it says about me, but I'm usually on her wavelength. So today's puzzle went pretty quickly for a Saturday.
ReplyDeleteThe Gray Lady has MAN BREASTS.
Good luck to all the LA solvers!
ARRGH! I feel like 1D today- beaten. Two cups of coffee and a DNF.
ReplyDeleteNice crossing Warren SPAHN, 16A, with CHIEF WAHOO at 13D. Spahn was the Indian's pitching coach when I was young. Alas, they probably lost more than they won.
Great comment re:12D, I was ROTLFMAO. The Seinfeld episode about the mansierre,or as Kramer called the invention,the bro,is forever etched in my mind. Not something I want to think about in the early morning.
Uvea in all the time, of course. Great for Xword, with three vowels and a "v"! CILIA are eyelashes, which is how I got it, but then, via the Net, see the term "ciliary body," meaning the area surrounding the eye.
ReplyDeleteAs I said chez Orange, to me PG is PuzzleGirl, but Paula Gamache gets honorable mention with this worthy effort.
ReplyDeleteHave fun in LA, everyone.
I figured out the top right but could not get the bottom left at all. I thought 27D might be GRADSCHOOL or that 39A could be LAYERING.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: Oh. Duh. [You can] stick [stuff] with it. Gotcha.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about Natasha, thought Natusha might be worthy of Rocky, so I had that plus mule for the trooer and Melton for the borough. So I screwed up. But a good puzz, nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteEasy - Medium for me, coming in at 30 minutes with breakfast.
ReplyDeleteWould say it was a 40 D, 25 D.
On the matter of 46 A, "Stick with it = FORK", I recall reading very recently a discussion about another such clue/answer set which violated Will Shortz's rule that answers should be the same part of speech as clues (There was a cited example of "Eat it = DINNER). Cute, but I think this is one rule that should be followed in standard crosswords (OK in cryptics.)
Anyone else think, on filling in 15 A, "Not since Superman died"?
Did it all today, with a couple of hints from a guest at breakfast re APOLO and SPAHN!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't much to start with, but DORA MAAR and the RENOIRS were gimmes. So was SOUND WAVE, because of a scientist I knew who complained more than once about sound effects being "totally wrong" in outer-space movies!
It turns out that MAN-BREASTS was a syndrome afflicting a whole platoon of marines, including a classmate who'd recently told me of corrective surgery he and others had to undergo. He said the cause was never tracked down, as far as he knew.
Lots of great stuff in this, like the Populist power couple PERONS -- super GOOD ONE, Paula!
∑;)
I was slowed down by typos.
ReplyDeleteAEILS is meaningless, but when I finally noticed that I'd typed it I was able to fill in RENOIRS and work the SE. I'd started with RHONE, which allowed xxxxSCHOOL. And initially had DECAY instead of WASTE, though I never considered tearing out the OMERTA.
I've, like, played for an ultimate team called Manboob. Dude.
I loved most of this puzzle, but I got stranded in the NE as well.
ReplyDeleteI started in the NW and was humming right along, getting one long answer after another, until Edie/triune gave me a hard time. Then I hit the East! I knew cilia means eye lashes, so put in eyes at 55D. Took a bit of time to clean up that corner. North from there there were just too many names I had never heard of. I'm off to google EWR.
I just kept... at ... it. I had SENIORprom for a while and like @Rex wanted AMENsister. Got that section fixed with RHINE.
ReplyDeleteLike others here, the NE was the most difficult. I knew it was DORAMAAR but didn't know how to spell MAAR. I thought it was MArR. So I looked that up to see I was wrong. Fixed the "R" to "A" and then totally guessed at the "W" in EWR because CHIEFWAHOO sounded a whole lot better than CHIEFyAHOO.
Just one mistake isn't too bad for a Saturday, so this WORKSFORME.
Thank you, Paula!
Didn't dawn on me that Rocky was the squirrel. I assumed it was Dolph Lundgren's girlfriend's name in Rocky IV ("Ve vill break you!"), which I mistakenly saw when I thought I was going to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
ReplyDeleteNATASHA was my first answer when I figured neither Apollo nor Creed would fit.
ReplyDeleteManbreasts doesn't pass the breakfast test, but reminded me of George Costanza's father and Kramer when they invented a brasier for men and wondered whether to call it the MANSIER or the BRO
Not knowing east coast airports or baseball, I had one error with Chief yAHOO crossing EyR. I'm OK with that considering how long the NE took to piece together. My only overwrites are in the NE, where I wanted ALlen for a while before the MAN BREASTS forced their ways in. Rex, you made me almost pee a little with your comments about this. I agree with everything you said, and I'm still giggling.
ReplyDeleteI also agree about the pond fish. What the ORFE? They flippered in through crosses, but not through knowledge. The chances that I will remember them are virtually nil. I have a pond, too.
With the exception of the NE, I just loved this puzzle. It made me ponder and mull in every quadrant, but then lights would go off in my noggin and the phrases would fall. It was very SPORTY!
No time for more. Today will be a busy one, as I'm hosting the end-of-season party for my bowling league tomorrow and a graduation party for a friend's son next Saturday. There is much prepping to do at Casa Jess. Also, must collect and deposit rents, pay bills and go to Sam's to restock my bourbon cache. I'm surprised that last one appeared last on my list, because it's high on my mind as a priority.
Happy weekend Rexites, especially all of you on LA!
Scitroug! (got me) -- jesser
After I'd hacked my way through the entire puzzle except the Northeast, DORAMAhR instead of DORAMAAR, and ALBaN (Barkley) instead of ALBEN totally obstructed 13D. Had to Google for the mascot; then realized that logic should have clued me that the Indians' mascot would very likely be a CHIEF...unless the PC police had got there first!
ReplyDeletewhen I saw triple crown jockey Sande, i thought today's theme would be horseracing - in honor of today's Kentucky Derby
ReplyDeleteBut guess fans like me are getting to be as rare as hens teeth.
Well, three out of the four corners were enjoyable, and the ONION/NATASHA cross was great.
ReplyDeleteWe agreed on MANLY NESTS for the NE corner, which I still prefer to the actual answer.
Good write-up!
Loved the Boris and Natasha reference, but other than that, more a crosswordese puzzle than a crossword. Fun for some, I suppose, but not in our house. And 'manbreasts'? Yuck.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, welcome to LA, Rex!
The NE was my Waterloo as well! Finally had to say "Uncle" and Google to get Chief Wahoo. And only then did the NE open up. Also, I was convinced the fish was an Opah, not an Orfe,which was completely new to me. Got Ms. Maar and Merton from the crosses. My only question: what does 10D "Asia" have to do with "polo?"
ReplyDelete@JayWalker -
ReplyDelete"Marco!" . . . . . "Polo!"
Stick that FORK in me. I'm done.
ReplyDeleteGOT A MATCH was my first fill, a question I have used when I forgot the zippo.
Then, in general, it was WTF after WTH, time after time. Today my mind was generally NOT on "wave-length."
By the time I got to the Wimbledon's borough, (for the third or fourth time) I just wrote in NATICK and put this one down.
Paula, GOOD ONE, even though it was a DNF.
Please, no more MANBREASTS.
ReplyDeleteI remember the tv commercials for AAMCO that ended with "AAMCO: Double A (beep beep) M C O."
NYT would do well to get a bit more with it. Too staid and conservative next to the independent puzzles that are out there. MAN BREASTS is very much in the language. That was the corner that broke me and I didn't get it:((
ReplyDeleteStick a FORK in me. I'm done.
Ciliary bodies produce aqueous humor (liquid found between the cornea and lens) and are responsible for changing the shape of the lens to allow near-sighted vision (lens accommodation). Thanks, med school!
ReplyDeleteEWR is a much better airport than JFK and LGA. One thing that really bothers me about LGA is that there are very few food options once you pass through security. Also the short runways make it seem like the plane is going to crash into the water on some landings. I hate LGA.
The Braves used to have a mascot called Chief Noc A Homa - sadly he got eighty-sixed in the 80s. Now we have a crappy mascot which is either named Rally or Homer - or maybe they are both our mascots now?
ReplyDeleteChief Noc A Homa used to come out of his teepee and do a dance whenever a Brave would hit a home run. Since the Braves were pretty awful during much of his reign, he was a welcome diversion.
I thought this puzzle was pitch-perfect, and don't understand the squeamishness about MANBREASTS. Its not like "macho" is a euphemism for "ideal"?
where does sunday puzzle rate in terms of weekly difficulty? do tell!
ReplyDeletei can usually complete sun but not fri or sat and sometimes thurs.
bravo to all you sat solvers.
hand up for senior prom.
@Anonymous: The Sunday puzzle is easier than Saturday--just longer.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the Friday gives me just as much trouble as the Saturday, though!
The NW was the corner that got me. The NE filled itself in. Not having seen any of the Rocky movies helped me spot NATASHA right off the bat. But putting EGoS instead of EGGS and MOpE instead of MOUE left me with the nonsense opARANTEE. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteHave fun in LA everybody.
difficult today. I knew Alben but had to google a few things.
ReplyDeleteGood luck to everyone in LA. Cant wait to hear all about it
@Anonymous 12:49: a few years ago Will Shortz wrote an essay in the NYT in which he said that the Sunday puzzle is on a Thursday level of difficulty. Which fits your description perfectly!
ReplyDeleteaaaaarggghhh!!!! Thought I had a best-ever Saturday time -- just over 20 mins -- then realized I had CHIEFYAHOO and EYR. Just as plausible to me as the correct answers -- in fact CHIEFYAHOO is better for the ringleader of rowdy baseball fans. For us non-NYers, local airport abbreviations are a bit of a tease, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteThe perfect storm of Naticks in the NE, not to mention the execrable 12D (which I can't even bring myself to type) converted this from a medium but doable Saturday into something deeply unpleasant.
ReplyDeleteSuch a shame when the rest of it had such clever clueing and non-obvious answers.
OK, so I just googled and discovered that EWR is Newark, which is a major airport that even I have heard of. But EWR? For Newark? WTF would be better...
ReplyDeleteCapitulating to manifestly necessity, I googled early and googled often. Still took nearly an hour. Was way outta my depth on this one. Amazing construction—brava, Paula Gamache.
ReplyDeleteThat 7D “Spits out” wasn’t EGESTS, 24A “Ornamental pond fish” weren’t KOIS (yeah, I know, KOI is sing. and pl., but hey, this is a crossword), 22D “Diminutive” wasn’t MIDGET, and 13D “Cleveland Indians[’] mascot” wasn’t RACIST LOGO was just the tip of the iceberg.
Glub glub glub…
One of these days, I've got to watch South Park. Or at least memorize all the characters.
ReplyDeleteBeing sure that Ohno's first name was ANTON really stymied me in the NE. I figured CHIEF something or other would be right. But the ANTON kept me blocked.
Also, I thought EGOS could take a beating, so GUARANTEE took a while.
Definitely a medium for me. But mediums can take me anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes. This one seems to provide too many footholds in most sections for a difficult.
@Lon, don't feel bad about having ANTON misfiled. It is, after all, actually part of his name. Me, though I can see him clearly in my mind's eye, each time he skates into a puzzle I have the damnedest time getting past that heavily caloused YOKO synapse.
ReplyDeleteMedium for me except for the NE. I knew Newark was the third airport but couldn't let go of "NWR" which, combined with ALLEN for 21a, made MANBREASTS tough to get. I eventually got it sorted out with a little help from my bride. Overall an enjoyable puzzle. I thought the both sets of 10 stacks were excellent.
ReplyDeleteIn spite of a few gimmes in the NE, I completely died there...and yesterday felt so good...
ReplyDeleteOne nit that hasn't been picked yet: MAGNA is the female form of MAGNUS--it would have been more elegant to clue it via a female Roman, like Livia or Calpurnia, not my man Gaius. I'm only saying this b/c PG seems to care about elegance.
Would love to know what's going on in LA ... anybody? Andrea? Rex? PuzzleGirl?
ReplyDelete@joho
ReplyDeletewhy not ride a car and go in there so that you will know the recent activities there.
I missed south park, no episodes available to us here. :-(
ReplyDeleteI just finished listening to that whole Carmina Burana, all 1:11;11. Nothin' about any fish.
ReplyDelete@Cousin Carmine - The composer is Carl Orff. I guess it is just Rex's way of having fun with orfe.
ReplyDeleteMayweather is a spam link. DO NOT go there.
ReplyDelete@Cousin Carmine
I know 'Carmina Burana' well, but I couldn't get the connection, either. Maybe it was just a 'piranha' rhyme?
About TARS, this is close but a miss. Yes, a "tar" is a sailor, and all crew are called "hands". (Sailors are called "tars" because in the days of sail the hemp rigging was tarred to keep it from rotting and the tar got all over the crew's hands.) BUT ... the sailors neither load nor unload the cargo in the holds so the "hold hands" aren't the tars. (This work was and is done by longshoremen - think Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront".)
ReplyDeleteThis 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.
ReplyDeleteAll solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Mon 6:00, 6:55, 0.87, 19%, Easy
Tue 8:02, 8:51, 0.91, 26%, Easy-Medium
Wed 12:17, 11:50, 1.04, 65%, Medium-Challenging
Thu 16:12, 19:26, 0.83, 12%, Easy
Fri 26:01, 26:29, 0.98, 50%, Medium
Sat 28:27, 30:46, 0.92, 32%, Easy-Medium
Top 100 solvers
Mon 3:19, 3:40, 0.91, 25%, Easy-Medium
Tue 4:23, 4:31, 0.97, 48%, Medium
Wed 5:57, 5:49, 1.02, 65%, Medium-Challenging
Thu 7:23, 9:18, 0.79, 11%, Easy
Fri 11:56, 12:47, 0.93, 36%, Easy-Medium
Sat 17:29, 17:36, 0.99, 54%, Medium
@RogerP (6:53pm) meet @Queequeg (8:20am), tar brushes at twenty paces.
ReplyDeleteApparently there were TARS before longshoremen.
Already taken; NEW (New Orleans Lakeview), NRK (Narrkoping Kungsangen), EWK (Newton City County), makes EWR for nEWaRk more sensible than HPN for Westchester County.
Note: Three letter ID's are unique WORLDWIDE. Not every one can be as obvious as Los Angeles' LAX :)
.../Glitch
@Glitch and Queequeg, I defer to a knowledge more arcane than mine!
ReplyDeleteI had a little report on the LA Crossword tournament from a friend's son, who was there as a reporter for the finals: he met up with PuzzleGirl who was very nice and helpful, explained the whole procedure to him. He told me he was amazed at how much more exciting it was than he had expected!
ReplyDeleteI mentioned in my comment that I remembered ORFE from a Tony Orbach puzzle "earlier this year." After I finished today, I Googled to see what ORFE crossed in that Orbach puzzle - it was CUCHIFRITO - and imagine my surprise when I discovered it was almost two years ago that it appeared!
ReplyDeleteAs I get older, I am learning that while my memory is What specific, it is increasingly less When specific. I check things like this for my own edification and store them up like a squirrel with a cheek full of acorns.
Ah, the things we do to fill the time when we retire!
Hand up for ALLEN and NWR, which led me to enter MANLINESTS,until my boyfriend straightened me out on Alben Barkley and manbreasts.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking that a MANLINEST might be kind of like a metrosexual, whatever that is :)
Argh, I put in 'highschool' insted of 'seniorhigh' which, with Rhone insted of Rhine and TACK insted of FORK kinda stymied me for a while cause 'other' fit too. And thought of 'knitwear' but for some reason my brain couldn't turn that into 'knitting'.
ReplyDeleteSo, way too many proper names to give me any sort of a fighting chance.
Glitch: I thought Eastern US airports I.Ds were not allowed to start with "N" and Western US airports not allowed to start with "K." Can't remember why. I don't know where New Orleans Lakeview, NEW?,fits in with this rule.
ReplyDeleteI wanted MIDAS for AAMCO, so thought the macho answer would start with "dainty." Really wanted EMOTICONS for 63A, which of course fits with nothing. Also had EGO and MOPE in the NW, truly wanted SEINE instead of RHINE. Long answers are tough for me, so many possibilities! Like YOUCANDOIT or GRADUATION. I guess & go, throwing myself off, then googling, but so enjoy myself. Thanks for a great blog, Rex!
ReplyDeleteThe NE fell into place fairly easily for me, although having POUT initially rather than MOUE slowed me down.
ReplyDeleteBut everything else was a mystery. Lots of possibilities, but nothing I was confident about. Googled South Park to find out that KENNY was the parka wearer and the rest gradually came together. (I also need to watch that show one of these days . . . )
"Stick with it" for FORK made me laugh. Makes sense if you think like Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road, take [stick with] it."
Aw right, I know I'm in the deep end of the pool here, but not everybody solves these things in 20 minutes.
ReplyDeleteI knocked out the SW at work Saturday afternoon. As a former classics student, I didn't like the feminine ending on Magnus, but hey...
Saturday evening I filled in the SE, then pecked away at the NE.
Sunday that whole NE corner filled in, and I was looking at the NW utterly stumped.
Monday after a nap that all came together. A blissful feeling of accomplishment, and I certainly got my money's worth from my newspaper subscription!