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Neighborhood east of SoHo / SUN 8-14-11 / Synthesizer designer Robert / Sacred city of Lamaism / Title girl in 1964 Chuck Berry hit
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Constructor: Paula Gamache
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: "Hack Saws" — Clues are beginnings of adages. Answers are jokes. Hack jokes.
Word of the Day: RESH (93D: Hebrew letter after koph) —
n.
The 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.[Hebrew rêš, of Aramaic or Phoenician dialectal origin.] (answers.com)
• • •
Groaners. Not a fan. You like this kind of humor or you don't. I don't. Not much else to say about the theme.
Fill was OK, though occasionally cruddy. I resent having to know every damned letter of the Hebrew alphabet. RESH? Whatever. That section (from RESH across to ENABLES) was by far the toughest part of the puzzle for me. Wanted GRUMPINESS or GROUCHINESS for GR---NESS (82D: Surly manner). No fit. The "joke" was not helping me fill in REDEFINE. At that point, I just wanted it all to be over. And soon, it was.
Theme answers:- 27A: "A penny saved is ..." ("NOT ENOUGH TO RETIRE ON") — HA ha! Zing! Wait, that's not funny. It's not enough for anything.
- 35A: "Where there's a will, there's ..." ("GOING TO BE A RELATIVE") — that feels like an oldie. Because, of course, it is.
- 56A: "Where there's smoke, there's ..." ("AIR POLLUTION")
- 66A: "People who live in glass houses ..." ("LET IT ALL HANG OUT") — ??? I would think they would be quite careful about letting anything hang out.
- 80A: "He who laughs last ..." ("FINALLY GOT IT") — what about he who never laughs because it's not funny.
- 99A: "If at first you don't succeed ..." ("REDEFINE THE MISSION")
- 108A: "Don't bite the hand ..." ("THAT HASN'T BEEN WASHED") — you are biting people. Germs are the least of your problems.
NOLITA is a neighborhood I've never heard of (89A: Neighborhood east of SoHo). I guess NARITA (a well-known airport) was too much of a gimme, or else there is some kind of provincial NYC answer quota that wasn't being met until NOLITA went in. Too bad there's no such word (or knight) as SIRLOIL (51D: Prime cut). KI-MOON feels like a terrible partial, even though the hyphen clearly makes it one name unit (78D: Ban ___ (Kofi Annan's successor)). Reminded me of a question I asked my Facebook followers a couple days ago: Which is a worse partial: BOYZ II or II MEN? (A: "you can't be serious"; *or* IIMEN). Other ick = ICS ANSAE (121A: Looped handles) CIR (88A: Part of a cul-de-sac address: Abbr.) REE AIT AARE OLLAS OOP ... but given that the puzzle is Sunday-sized, there really isn't that much garbage. I just didn't enjoy the theme, and that's that.
Bullets:
- 19A: Formula One driver Prost (ALAIN) — There is only one good ALAIN. ALAIN Delon.
- 116A: Oldest von Trapp child in "The Sound of Music" (LIESL) — damn. I half-remembered this. Went with LEEZA.
- 123A: Sacred city of Lamaism (LHASA) — did my typical LLASA-for-LHASA screw-up. Have never seen the word "Lamaism" before.
- 127A: Stupid, in Sonora (TONTO) — have seen this trivia before. Forgot it.
- 4D: Boulevard where Fox Studios and the Los Angeles Convention Center are located (PICO) — I read this clue as having something to do with the (Red) Sox. This seems highly improbable in retrospect, but that's what happened.
- 17D: Port on Gulf of Guinea (LAGOS) — Nigeria. Somehow I think of Nigeria as landlocked, which it clearly isn't. It's right in Africa's armpit.
- 9D: Synthesizer designer Robert (MOOG) — piece of cake. Only one four-letter synthesizer designer I know.
- 50D: It's north of Baja, informally (CALI) — it's also in Colombia.
["She said / She liked / The ocean"]
- 85D: Party of the underworld (MAFIOSO) — great clue. Really wanted something with HADES in it.
- 114D: Nymph spurned by Narcissus (ECHO) — she of course went on to front The Bunnymen.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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63 comments:
Specifying the actual number of minutes could not begin to convey how much time I spent staring at 74A, baffled by what one letter could possibly make C_O a/the partner of the American Football League. Seriously. The alphabet run I did on 68D L_T should have fixed it in like ten seconds, but I was brain-locked on Literal.
I blame the start of football season.
Age-onset stupidity aside, I loved the puzzle. Only other real hang-up was being too sure too soon that 27A was …NOT ENOUGH TO REINVEST. Played havoc with that NE corner for a bit.
I blame my MBA.
In literary news, NOLITA was an early draft of Nabokov’s famous novel, rejected by the publishers, in which the young girl never yields to the narrator’s demands for sexual favors.
I blame the bossa-nova.
Thank you for a very pleasant Saturday evening, Ms. Gamache. And @Rex, loved your theme title—LOL.
p.s., didn’t get to the Saturday puzzle till 28:37 ago, so yeah—easiest Saturday I’ve ever seen. I guess Friday’s puzzle actually was this week’s Saturday.
I liked this break from "add a letter" or "cut a letter" Sunday themes, though I agree LET IT ALL HANG OUT 1) makes no sense and 2) doesn't match the other themes as it is a common phrase in its own right.
Some tough cluing, but NOLITA is common to all who live or work in Manhattan (North Of LIttle ITAly).
I'm off to Tribeca...
@lit.doc Don't feel bad about stumbling on your first name: LIT; I live in NMEX and kept thinking Wheeler Peak sounded familiar but it took me a while to suss it out.
Had MOTTO for LATIN which went fine with YETI but messed up the rest of the SW corner for a while. Also, I misread Tome for Torme and threw down MEL. Turns out I don't even know SAO. Tried RATS first and I still prefer it but the puzzle insisted on YIPE. I remembered LIESL but it took a bit to get the letters arranged correctly.
Agree that LET IT ALL HANG OUT doesn't really fit but I liked the other theme answers. IT'LL DO for a Sunday. Thanks, Paula.
Medium for me also. Got billion and trillion mixed up so NE was a problem until GIGA replaced TERA. YIKE for YIPE was my other misstep. Seemed like an average Sun., kinda entertaining but nothing special.
@George NYC -- Thanks for the NOLITA explanation, I had not a clue. Just had to trust the crosses.
I guess I like "groaners" because I either grinned or chortled at every long pun. Started out rather poorly at 10A where I filled no bed of before ATTAR of roses. Loved 35A GOING TO BE A RELATIVE, and I thought LET IT ALL HANG OUT was just another way of saying who cares what everyone else sees, so it fit in for me.
Two thumbs up Ms. Gamache.
This went pretty smoothly for me. I had beeS before ANTS and ile before AIT, but otherwise not much that stayed in and was wrong. I just kept running through the clues and chipping away.
The theme was just FAIR, in my mind. Several of the gags are very familiar.
I like PAINKILLER, EASTINDIA, AMINOACIDS and TABOULI.
It was a good beach puzzle.
Rex, don't feel bad about the Hebrew letter clue--I didn't get it right out of the gate in spite of years of Hebrew study and also knowing the Hebrew alphabet from "Barney and Friends." Problem is, there are three letters, kaf,khaf and kof, that all get muddled up, at least in my mind.
Medium for me, too. Strangely, I had trouble in the NE, which is full of old crossword standards: DALI, ELAN, ALIEN, and INANE. GIGA and LAGOS I didn't remember quickly. Part of my problem was I misspelled TABOULI as tabbuli, not noticing that I was missing the third O in NOT ENOUGH T BRE. . ., so banged my head against the ending of the "joke" (a very small joke indeed, about a tenth of one ha). Lots of stuff I didn't know in this puzzle, but all getable from crosses.
They must have added NOLITA since I left NYC in 1973.
I finished but it was still medium Challenging for me. Too many crosses like ATTAR, BAHAI, AARE and RITT where I just kept guessing, checking, erasing, guessing again, etc. until I FINALLYGOTIT.
As Rex said, Just wanted it to be over, only it wasn't over soon for me.
(from yesterday) Thanks @JC66 - I guess that's a dead givaway that I wasn't at woodstock either..
Scams from Haiti in Rexworld?
No way am I going near that!
@Two Ponies ... I know, I'm surprised he didn't say he had a big fat check just waiting for us there!
@Rex, NARITA is a gimme???
I had no idea that TONTO means stupid ... I wonder if he knew?
I liked FINALLYGOTIT and THATHASNTBEENWASHED the most.
Thank you, Paula, for an amusing Sunday morning solve.
Transliterated Hebrew letters can be tricky. Resh comes after kuf (pronounced koof). Lamed comes after koph. Actually, there's a choph (gutteral ch) and a choph-sofeet after koph.
NE and SE corners just wouldn't fall for me.
Had THATWASNTEVERWASHED for 108a.
Too many obscure answers crossing others, although I did enjoy some of the theme answers.
Don't get 110d SINE.
Liked TORT, HIPPO.
AZALEAS are in the Genus Rhododendron, so I didn't care for the "cousin" in the clue.
@Smitty
NYC realtors have a history of creating acronyms to make otherwise ordinary neighborhoods sound sexy. I believe NOHO was also coined after 1973, while TriBeCa appeared right around that time.
For those who are Big Apple challenged, here's a cheat sheet.
BTW, like you, I wasn't at Woodstock.
This was the first Sunday puzzle I've done on my new iPad, using Crossword, and it went better than I thought it might with such a big grid. The app doesn't have the Check Letter function I sometimes use in Across Lite, but it does have a Clear Incorrect Letter function which I had to use to realize that UHURA isn't spelt Uhuru.
Got the theme at AIRPOLLUTION, which was also my favorite of the not-very-inspiring answers. Not overly impressed with the fill, nothing too awful, but nothing sparkled, either. I, too, don't know my Hebrew letters, never had any reason to learn them. I did know NOLITA because I'll be in New York for four nights the week after next and was just re-reading a guidebook.
Had some trouble in the NW, not knowing ALAIN or PICO or TITO (the one I know ran Yugoslavia) or TINO, and having to dig deep for MOOG. SINE crossing LIESL and ANSAE was a toughie, too. And I was very surprised by EASTINDIAN for "Javanese or Malay". East Asian, yes, but East Indians live in the east of India... or else it refers to the Indian sub-continent. There are Indians living in Malaysia, but there are a lot of Chinese too, plus rather more Malaysians.
As I worked my way through another fun Paula Gamache puzzle I couldn't help but think of Barbra Streisand's "Memories, light the corners of my mind" as obscurities like AIT, ANSAE, RESH, LIESL, KIMOON, CALI, AARE, et al filled the grid and Eugene Maleska seemed reborn. Yikes!
But, one happy memory Paula did awaken came at 14 down, which sought out "Director Martin" for RITT. Marty Ritt had all the fashion sense of Oscar the Grouch and to slide through his work days without being chastised for his wardrobe, Marty wore one-piece jumpsuits, which just seemed to accentuate his problem. No matter; a fine director was "His Gruffness".
Thanks, Paula for another Gamachean treat.
@rex, Would you please comment on / explain the post from Haiti at 8:33AM?
Groaners aside, it was a good puzzle. But can someone explain "attar of roses". Thanks!
Of course you realize that Kemo Sabe means SHITHEAD.
I am shocked that I have never heard of Martin Ritt despite his having directed many films I like, including frequent crossword entry Norma Rae.
I enjoy Paula Gamache puzzles and this one made me smile in several places. Much better than the usual Sunday slog forme. And I'm with @CoffeeLvr on favorite words. Loved the clue for TORT.
My version of the "glass houses" line is: "People who live in glass houses shouldn't."
@Rosemary
at·tar /ˈætər/ Show Spelled[at-er] Show IPA
noun
1. Also, atar, athar, ottar, otto. a perfume or essential oil obtained from flowers or petals.
2. Also called attar of roses. rose oil.
Got stuck once, at BADLOT. I don't think "rapscallion" comes close enough; a rapscallion is sort of lovable, whereas a BADLOT is just, well, bad. Had IFITHASNTBEENWASHED for a while, until the YETI made its appearance, which set me fairly straight. And I had always thought that Mrs. Garrett's first name was Anna -- way more STYLE-ish than EDNA, no? And no comparison to LIESL.
I finished in average time (for me--nothing like Rex OR those numbers that get posted), no googling, so I feel pretty good about this puzzle. I agree that the "jokes" weren't. The hardest part of the puzzle for me was the NE. I just couldn't see DEGREES, didn't know RITT, LAGOS, or GIGA. But eventually it tumbled. I hope I remember those next time--as well as how to spell Liesl. Knew the name, but the "i before e except . . ." did me in. (I didn't follow it.) Crosses rescued me.
A couple of trouble spots--isn't BAD LOT plural while the clue rapscallion is singular? Also, I don't like SLICES INTO for reduces significantly. Slicing into a cake doesn't reduce anything until one removes a piece. Am I missing something? And finally, what on earth is Pops TIL Tuesday? Can someone help?
@lit.doc--I'm still giggling about Nolita. Thanks.
@Jay Silverheels--another big laugh.
And hands up for don't know the Hebrew alphabet, don't want to have to learn it. (OOO--that sounded anti-intellectual. Perhaps I should remove it . . .) So much for thinking out loud. It stays.
Finally, thank you for the LL Cool J! I love him on NCIS:LA but can't say I ever heard his music before. Really enjoyed it.
Rosemary: Attar of roses is the essence of rose petals used to make rose water and perfume.
Well Tonto it looks like we are surrounded by hostile Indians;
What you mean "we" paleface?
Thanks to Jay Silverheels for the big laugh of the day.
saw rex's facebook status before we started... so that helped us a little...
had the entire puzzle except for th ATTAR and it's crosses....
best answer was 48A LCDTVS -- love a real answer with no vowels...
while we didnt really enjoy the theme... FINALLY GOT IT may make it into a joke somewhere
Thanks for answering my question despite its lack of proper punctuation! :)
@600 -
bad lot (plural: bad lots)
A bad person. [quotations]
1876, Charles Dickens, All the Year Round
But he's a bad lot, is the master — a thorough bad lot, take my word for it, and I'm one as knows him well — too well, by a deal.
Desperately wanted "try playing second base" for 99A, but couldn't make it fit.
A fun puzzle, and a nice way to spend a little diversion on Sunday morning.
@Jaysilverheels- thanks for the laugh
@Wiktionary--thank you. I should have looked it up myself. I don't think I've ever heard of Wiktionary before, and wasn't sure what to do about the two words. Now I know.
Meanwhile, I've figured out "SLICES INTO." Not like slicing into a cake, as I had thought. More like "Too bad working slices into my leisure time." But all of you knew that.
And Google tells me TIL Tuesday is a pop band. I just wasn't reading the clue that way--thought all three words formed one title.
I can wash my hands of this puzzle.
A Medium for me - pretty fun solve, though I enjoy goofy word play far more than unrelated puns and jokes. At least it wasn't Joke Part 1, Joke Part 2, etc. etc. Got the theme right from the title. which didn't help me get any of the theme answers of course, but oh well. Still, I like Sunday puzzles that I don't waltz through, and this one kept me on my toes.
For the theme answers, I don't get LETITALLHANGOUT, though ironically that was by far the easiest big clue to get.
Almost wrote in painrelief for PAINKILLER, and did have a quick writeover in STINKY for STINKO. Enlisted the help of my fine 13 year old son to confirm RESH for me, asking it as a sort of quiz from his old Hebrew studies days, and fortunately he nailed it.
Also though NMEX was Northern Mexico at first!
@ david If you live in a glass house you should always wear your shortz! or something!The EAST INDIES included the islands of Oceania (like java and such)think spice islands! Ilike a sunday with a little resistance ! Paula told you upfront they were Groaners!
@joho and Jay Silverheels, I'd always heard that "Kemo Sabe" was the Cherokee word for "Honky".
Heartily recommend Patrick Berry's WaPo puz. He da man.
Very busy today so not much time for the puzzle. Company coming for dinner so lots of preparation and cooking.
Had Bee for 87 across...of course.
was a fun puzzle even though I DNF
I took 'HACK SAWS' to mean 'sayings - saws - such as a hack - cheap or not-so-excellent - writer would write them'. So I took the banality of them to be the point.
Had no idea what T.A.E. was, so crossing it with a bunch of initials (AFL of AFL-CIO) made it a NATICK for me.
And was it Friday's syndicated puzzle that had '24th letter in the Russian alphabet'?!
I wrote a whole comment and hit the wrong button. Zip.
I thought the theme endings were kind of arbitrary. Some comments above have helped.
For 89A first thought of Loisaida (wouldyou believe for Lower East Side)? FINALLY GOT IT. Thanks @GeorgeNYC and JC66 for parsing it out.
Had CIO before AFL because I never know my EFTs from my ENTs. An okay rainy Sunday puzzle. Looking forward to Monday.
A most amusing puzzle that I had fun with. It makes up for this week's completely unfair and undo-able NE corner of the Friday puzzle and the too easy Saturday puzzle. This one was just right.
I want a Sunday that makes me smile, even just a little. This one did. Thanks, Paula!
Remember Bill Cosby's routine on TONTO:
"You go to town, Tonto."
"You go to hell, Kemo Sabe."
Here is my two sense on NOLITA which was a gimmee seeing i was born and raised in this city. It stands for North of Little Italy...and like many other annoying location acronyms in NYC (i.e. MEPA, DUMBO etc.) it is an attempt from those in the real-estate, restaurant and retail industries to gentrify certain neighborhoods that were otherwise blighted and nameless. NOLITA as a name did not exist until somewhat recent history, (my guess late ninety early naughts, peak of the bubble when yuppies needed new neighborhoods to move develop). It was always just SOHO seeing as it is south of houston, or Little Italy when that neighborhood involved more than 5 touristy cafes. The term NOLITA, like RFK Bridge or Ed Koch bridge for that matter, is a new edition to the crossword lexicon.
Kind of a slog for me, but I didn't have a lot of time chunks to pay attention to it. When I did I got the theme answers, some cute, some not, then tried the crosses. So not as much fun as usual, but I thought the puzzle was OK. Little boys take lots of time--and they don't make Big Wheels anymore, so we got a 12" bike. Big hit.
45A (E-mail alternative) FAX
Okay, in what century are we living? Who still sends faxes? And I thought we had agreed we could drop the hyphen in email.
I confidently plopped in SMS (Short Message Service [texting])@ 45A, which I still believe is a better answer to that clue in this century.
That's my 2 "Not enough to retire on"s.
captcha "ismesc" = creed, plus PC key?
Late to the party, so I'll save my Tonto joke for another time. I smiled through the solve, so I'll give it a solid B.
Paula Gamache was obviously inspired by a recent exercise a first grade teacher did with her students where she provided the beginnings of well known proverbs and they filled in what they believed to be the endings. You can view the results here;
http://stuffofawesome.com/a-1st-grade-teacher-had-her-students-finish-well-known-proverbs-here-are-the-results-1309626004-5271.png.html#.TkFLjeKpDrw.facebook
People who live in glass houses...must change their clothes in the basement.
I laughed my arse off. I have plenty of arse to laugh off. When I look at Rex's pix it appears that he has no arse to laugh off. Hence why he doesn't think this puzzle is funny?
Add me to the never heard of "ATTAR" group. Can someone that knows the website tell us when the last time that was in a NYT puzzle? Don't recall seeing it in the last 3 or so years.
Overall, loved this, as I do most Sunday puzzles.
@lit.doc - NOLITA was hysterical
JenCT:
The SINE clue can only be answered in total geek mode. Stop now, or read on. You have probably seen a picture of a Sine wave -- a mathematical figure that has regular oscillations reminiscent of extremely neat ocean waves. One way to make one is to rotate a crank at a constant speed, marking the height of the handle's connection to the wheel at regularly spaced points above a horizontal line. When you have turned the crank one full turn, the Sine pattern begins to repeat; that's the "period." For even more geeky reasons, in math angles are often measured in radians, the angle you get when you take the radius of the circle and run it along the circumference. Since it takes 2 times Pi radians to measure the circumference, and one time around the circle completes the Sine pattern. . . well, now you know.
@Digital Dan: Thanks for the explanation - I would never have known that!
ATTAR is a fairly common crossword answer and according to Jim Horne's XWord Info, which has complete NY Times puzzle stats for the Will Shortz era, ATTAR has appeared in 47 separate Times puzzles from Dec. 1993 through Aug. 14, 2011.
@jackj - Thanks for the info - I couldn't remember the site until I read your post. ATTAR has been there 7 times, prior to today, since I began doing puzzles, and usually has a very similar clue. Seems I should remember this one!
Steve Earle's take on NoLita:
"Now hell's kitchen's Clinton and the Bowery's Nolita
And the East Village's creepin' 'cross the Williamsburg Bridge
And hey, whatever happened to alphabet city?
Ain't no place left in this town that a poor boy can go"
-from Down Here Below
I was on Bond St in NoHo when it was still a slum. Will Smith didn't live on the block then...
Based upon recent Sunday experience, I was convinced that each theme answer had the letters "s," "a" and "w" hacked out of them. That plus never seeing "attar" before made this relatively difficult for me.
Following a link here, I find "NoHo - is an acronym for "North of Houston". Its a Manhattan neighborhood that's boundaries are Houston Street to the south, *8th Avenue to the north*, the Bowery and Third Avenue on the east, and Broadway on the west." [Emphasis mine] Yes, you can always trust the internet for facts.
Anyway, I liked this puzzle for FINALLY GOT IT (my experience exactly) and REDEFINE THE MISSION. Liked Rex's write-up for its concision and for remembering both Echo and the Bunnymen and LLCoolJ.
I don't mind the groaners--I've seen much worse on a Sunday--so much as I mind the fill. WAY too much garbage in this one. Or maybe it's just that I'm not nearly as smart as I like to pretend I am. Five errors in one six-square area directly above EBERT. I still have no idea what's going on up there. My only other error was Ku-MOON, but there were a ton of Hail Mary guesses that somehow found receivers. Good Sunday challenge, but less than satisfying.
@tptsteve
SWITCH TO SECOND BASE fits, and would have really screwed you up
captcha = improtant: unable to relate to Kevin Spacey
I almost never find it necessary to Google for answers on Sundays, but got completed stumped at RESH. And, natch, the first two sites Google directed me to didn't even include the letter "Koph," so that little section really annoyed me.
As to the theme, I thought most of them were groaners, but I'd never heard FINALLY GOT IT and chuckled. Then laughed out loud at "you are biting people. Germs are the least of your problems," and several times more reading the comments, so the puzzle experience was mostly a pleasant one for me today.
From syndiland, I came to a screeching halt in upstate NY (or as anony 12:04pm said, the area directly above EBERT) so DNF. Smiled when my late mom's name, EDNA, showed up (and no, @Sarah, I do not think Anna was a more STYLE-ish answer).
Why do you suppose Rex left the post by Majid Ali undeleted?
Sorry, but if you have to dig around in Dickens to justify BADLOT being the answer to "rapscallion," that's pretty thin. No offense to one of my favorite authors. Instead of saying "IT'LLDO," I'D'VE tried harder to avoid using those two--especially next to each other. And while we're on the uglies, must we watch LCDTVS whilst solving crosswords? Uber-ugh.
But it was just my bad luck to hit on FATOUSH before the correct TABOULI, and ONEMORE before ONETOGO, which caused delays and writeovers in the north.
The WSW was the biggest headache, with the clue "come from ____" for AFAR (was there ever a more opaque clue that that?) and the extremely awkward TALCED, but I FINALLYGOTIT! I agree with RP: too much slog for not enough reward.
Regarding the AFL-CIO thing: I've seen this cluing pattern before, where a is defined in terms of b and vice versa. They won't let you do that in logic class; why do you do it here?
One last point: MAFIOSO. At first I objected to this clue, since "party of the underworld" appeared to refer to a party, or group of people--which would have required the "I" ending. But then I realized that "party" could mean one person, as in "party of the first part," so the singular "O" ending is quite all right after all. That and the other single letter at LAID instead of LAIN, were my only other writeovers.
"Step" for DEGREE? Paula, I have to give you the third "step" for that clue.
Weird syndication here; two Sundays behind.
Paper here showed 110D "It has a period of 2ω"... from the comments, perhaps they meant 2π?
And K is followed by L: The Phoenicians' alphabet order defined most everyone's alphabet. (kaph then lamed.) Confused me so much I had both L and R in 93D and 93A. Latin R follows Q for the same reason that resh follows qof.
CAPTCHA sez somebody is "stuped".
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