Constructor: Joseph Knapp
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: none
Word of the Day: Sam ERVIN (
48A: Senator of Watergate fame) —
Samuel James Ervin, Jr. known as Sam Ervin (September 27, 1896 – April 23, 1985), was an American politician, a Democrat, he served as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1954 to 1974. A native of Morganton, he liked to call himself a "country lawyer", and often told humorous stories in his Southern drawl.[1] During his Senate career, Ervin was a legal defender of the Jim Crow laws and racial segregation, as the South's constitutional expert during the congressional debates on civil rights.[2] Unexpectedly, he became a liberal hero for his support of civil liberties. He is remembered for his work in the investigation committees that brought down Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 and especially his investigation in 1972 and 1973 of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation in 1974 of President Richard Nixon. (wikipedia)
• • •
Very smooth, very easy. Got
AWE (
5D: State at a spectacle) and then
MALAWI (
14A: African country with a namesake lake) and then was off to the races. The middle of this grid is beautiful — very nice triple stack of thirteens — but also Very easy to pick up, one answer right after the other. Needed only the "WN" to get "
DAWN OF THE DEAD" (
35A: 1978 sequel set in a shopping mall), only the "K" and the "X" to get
JACK IN THE BOX (
37A: It might pop up at a nursery), and then ... I don't know, by the time I saw the clue for
ACE IN THE HOLE, it was quite obvious (
32A: Secret weapon). Only the NE and SW corners gave me any trepidation. Any time you venture into wide-open corners like that, there's always this feeling in the back of your mind that you might never get out alive, that you might be eternally condemned to a self-contained little nightmare of a mini-puzzle ... but those fears didn't pan out today.
SMITH and
KENO gave me more than enough leverage to work the NE, and though the SW proved a bit harder, once I threw
MISHA down (
45D: Diminutive for Baryshnikov), I could see the HOUSE part of
HOTHOUSE, which made everything else fall into line pretty quickly (
56A: Where things might pop up in a nursery). There's not a single unfamiliar word or person in this grid. I finished the puzzle in about 2/3 the time it took me to do yesterday's. And I was dead tired before I did this puzzle—I was seriously contemplating just going to sleep and solving / blogging in the morning. Just my good luck, I guess.
There's some pretty crackling cluing in this puzzle. The NW starts things off in a pretty edgy manner — hazing rituals (
4D: Break a pledge?) followed by a 9-1-1 call (
6D: It might be hard-pressed to get assistance). Add that adrenaline rush to the mall-beseiging zombies in "
DAWN OF THE DEAD" and the poisoned popes and Freddy in a
FEDORA (
30D: Part of a Freddy Kreuger costume) and the
HITMEN lurking in the corner (
59A: Ones given money to waste?) and, well, "
I'M CALM" becomes the unlikeliest of sentiments. The nursery/pop up clues are kind of far apart to really, uh, pop, but it's the thought that counts. I didn't know Captain Cook was a ... what, a mountain? I also didn't know
MESA was founded by Mormon pioneers. That clue may as well have stopped at [Southwest city]—I had the "M" and didn't need anything else. Didn't know the [
Patron saint of the Catholic Church] straight off, but I knew it started with a "J" and ... well, it seemed like it probably had to be someone *pretty* big, so it didn't take me that long to hit
JOSEPH. I knew Mandalay was *somewhere* in the East (I feel like there's a film production company with a tiger logo called "Mandalay" ...), but I didn't know where. Luckily for me, the president and Sec. Clinton were just in
MYANMAR the other day, so that country was fresh on my mind (
58A: Home of Mandalay). Aside from these minor struggles, as I say, this puzzle was kind of a pushover. I blew through this so quickly I didn't even see several of the clues (e.g. for
MCI, for
NTH, for
ORT). Not complaining. It was good-easy, not where-the-hell's-my-Saturday-puzzle easy.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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55 comments:
Medium for me except for NE which took me a while to sort out. Had raMP for JUMP, did not remember MENELAUS, was slow to get SMITH... Only other erasure was Moab for MESA.
Plenty of zip with a smattering of violence and danger...911, DAWN OF THE DEAD, IMPALE, POISONED, FEDORA wearing Freddy, HITMEN, and I swear I remember a movie with an evil JACK IN THE BOX.
Liked it. Fine chewy Sat. Thanks Josh Knapp.
Got Naticked on the MENELAUS / INS cross. If you don't know the former, then IVS fits the clue "Hookups" just fine. Took a -1 on a crossword that I otherwise pretty much blew through; just crushed it.
Didn't know NEMEAN either, but it held up.
Liked the two 'pop up at/in a nursery' clues.
Wanted BALLSY before BRAZEN with "Contemptuously bold", but knew it couldn't be a NYT answer.
If I finished it, especially in a quicker Saturday time than usual, it has to be easy. In retrospect the puzzle does have some interesting clues/answers but I felt nothing when solving it.
Thanks for sharing this
Play more Online Crossword Puzzles ..
Maybe a little too easy...
But I like FGH KIJ across the top.
Something bugged me about seeing 911 spelled out, hasit ever been.
And "IMCALM" strikesme as a made up random phrase. Maybe at most you'd be "(but) I AM CALM!"
Comment above me seems to be spam crosswords out of India, but at least people get bylines!
Aside from wanting Cereal for breakfast no big problems.much easier than yesterday ,A little heavy on the ENTO/HEXA/NUM but acceptable
Easy puzzle for the left side and middle, more medium on the right. MENELAUS was a tough one to figure out for me. I actually really liked NINE ONE ONE as an answer, it makes my brain work a different way
Thought we were going to have a mini-theme in the middle of (blank) IN THE (blank). Cool how AT HEART bridges three THEs.
Speaking of cool, I now need to dress warmly for our local holiday parade this morning, because it ain't warm in Michigan today.
That central stack is actually 12-13-12. It's cool how the THEs are offset.
Nice, smooth Saturday, perhaps a bit top easy, but there were some fun clues. I can't parse LINE for "extra desire." The clue for 7A must refer to downhill skiing over obstacles, because ski jumpers on the big hills *don't* use poles. That's a bit unfair, even for a Saturday.
@Glimmerglass - I was having trouble with LINE as well but it just hit me: "extra" as in actor.
Trouble with IMCALM and SKIJUMP as they make no sense and are wrong, respectively.
I will dwell on the latter: I will give you a penny for each skier you see going off either jump at Lake Placid with poles.
Also not happy with INS.
Otherwise fun fill as noted by others.
*** (3 Stars)
Now that robots have proven they can invade this space may we abandon the proof part of posting. Seems it is no ACEINTHEHOLE.
This puzzle is the easiest NY Times Saturday puzzle I’ve ever solved.
Things that should have been sufficiently difficult to trigger brain freeze, like NINEONEONE, ACEINTHEHOLE, SKIJUMP, THEBRITISH, AFGHAN, HOTHOUSE, JACKINTHEBOX, et al were filling themselves in, unaided by crosses, as if I had Crossword Compiler as my assistant solver. A stunning experience!
Further aiding the situation, proper names were there for the picking, like Sam ERVIN, MAUNALOA, Antonin SCALIA, MISHA Baryshnikov, MYANMAR, even MATT and MESA and at this point there was an overwhelming feeling of disappointment that the constructor and editor had so badly misjudged their product.
Some wonderful fill but it deserved a tougher presentation, much tougher.
Everything's been said already!
Or can we stir up a bit of controversy at 47 A? Well, not if it is a tiger you catch by the toe, I guess.
I wanted MERCUTIO instead of MENELAUS. Though I couldn't remember him actually meeting Paris, they were with rival factions. That gave me TUMOR, instead of ULCER. By then I was stricken with self-doubt. Isn't that enough to prove I'm not a robot?
I did this last night and actually finished pretty fast so knew it would be rated easy. Still as @Rex mentioned some very nice cluing and fresh answers kept it interesting.
@Afghan Ces Menelaus, I really liked seeing NINEONEONE spelled out and actually checked to see if it had been done before. The answer is yes, threes times. I also checked MYANMAR thinking it must be a debut, but nope. PUREGOLD seemed new to me, too, but was used just once before.
Just a Q short of a pangram.
I enjoyed it, thanks, Josh!
By the way, in what sense did Scalia replace Renquist? Roberts became Cheif Justice and Alito took the vacated seat on the court.
@dk - Most ski jumpers don't use poles, but apparently, some do.
I defy one and all to watch this and say I didn't go over a ski jump with poles.
@Danp -
"In 1986, Scalia was appointed by Reagan to the Supreme Court to fill the associate justice seat vacated when Justice William Rehnquist was elevated to Chief Justice. Whereas Rehnquist's confirmation was contentious, Scalia was asked few difficult questions by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and faced no opposition. Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, and took his seat on September 26, 1986."
I, too, wavered on IVs vs. ins. Heard of Paris, didn't know Menelaus nor Mevelaus, so I figured the lack of abbreviation in the clue unplugged the needles.
Tried to work "Mt." or "Mount" into the peak. After I figured out 'insecure' wasn't 'unsure of' I fixed my problem. Capt. Cook should have led me to Hawaii in the first place.
Just got our first Jack in the Box in Cincy. Tacos, two for a buck!
Nice surprise on 'far from whole'=skim, and 'Raiders org.?" ATF instead of NFL or AFC.
You have a picnic on a blanket, you put a picnic lunch on a blanket, but I don't think you put a picnic on a blanket.
Ah, Watergate. Sam Ervin made for terrific theater. I have one of my early flying licenses---maybe a radio operator's permit?---signed by Alexander Butterfield, who was the guy who confirmed that Nixon taped all his conversations in the White House.
*********************
[Elaine groans in frustration as Kramer enters.]
Kramer: Hey. (notices Elaine) What's wrong?
Elaine: Oh, Peterman ran off to Burma, and now he wants me to run the catalog.
Kramer: Where?
Jerry: Myanmar.
Kramer: The discount pharmacy?
*********************
Bonus Seinfeld since it's Saturday. You're welcome:
********************
[Kenny Banya asks Jerry for help because his girlfriend---unimpressed with his comedy act---has dumped him.]
Jerry: Well it's just that you got so many things with the milk. You got that Bosco bit, then you got your Nestle's Quik bit, by the time you get to Ovaltine--
Banya: You think you can give me a hand with my material?
[Jerry jots down an idea]
Banya (reading): 'Why do they call it Ovaltine? The mug is round. The jar is round. They should call it Roundtine.' That's gold, Jerry! Gold!
********************
Evil
Speaking of pangrams, check out the LA Times.
Scalia gives me the heebie jeebies far more than Rehnquist or Roberts. What was that committee thinking?
This took a good two hours for me from start to finish, but I get to discount the time I spent helping my less than technically literate in-laws figure out what was going on with their email account, so medium here.
I solved in the new "play for fun" app. What happens when I finish? I get a "huzzah" and the puzzle goes away. South went down smoothly, but my post-interruptus north solving experience was a bit of struggle. Starting with MoUNt LOA was no help. Duh! I didn't understand LINE until coming here, and neither AMBLED nor FARINA came easily. Still, a pleasant solve.
"Don't Panic" always makes me think of Douglas Adams, and that makes me think of Towel Day.Its going to be on Saturday May 25th.
Never too early to start planning.
The most surprising thing today was that I had pretty much the same solving experience as @REx.
Started with AWE and MALAWI, and continued with similar reactions and thoughts throughout.
This is not normally the case, as Rex's 'wheelhouse', speed, and take on the puzzle far surpass mine...so it was a pleasant yet shocking revelation. May have to call 911.
Thought it was terrific, had fun all the way, although it was by no means easy for me. Didn't help that I had the BeaTles coming instead of the BRITISH until the crosses were impossible and that Souter was the only "S" justice I could think of at first (Scalia repression at work, apparently).
I like how GIFTS crosses the three long center answers, because I saw them quickly and they allowed me to get into those corner areas.
@Rex - On "...eternally condemned to a self-contained little nightmare of a mini-puzzle" - so well said! I had "DNF" flashing before my eyes while staring at lots of white space in the NE and SE.
Thanks, Josh Knapp. This one was PURE GOLD to me.
I'm afraid "agua" is FRIO, not FRIA. Despite ending in 'a', it's a masculine noun (el agua, not la agua), which to me ruins an otherwise decent puzzle.
Sad little tidbit. The NYT puzzle that appeared today in the Dallas Morning news was the one originally published on October 20. 17 across was "Old TV cliffhanger." And the answer was of course, Who shot JR?
The lead front page story of that same paper was on the death of Larry Hagman.
Apparently (if Wikipedia is to be believed and I am reading correctly) the Pittsburgh Steelers' Terrible Towel predates the Hitchhiker's Guide by about 3 years. Given the immense power of the Steelers' towel, I mean Towel, that one would probably be a good choice to take on a galactic journey. My favorite remains Towelie from South Park, though I'm told MATT and Trey thought he was the dumbest thing they had ever thought of.
@Evil Doug, I see why people missed you! Thanks for the Seinfeld. I'm with you on PICNIC, and there were several others like that, like Acme pointed out for IM CALM.
Otherwise I thought the weird misdirects were fun, the kind of thing my sainted husband always gave me to figure out. He was stumped by puns while I think life is boring without them. On a related subject I got SMITH for 7 D only on crosses -- right, MENALAUS gave me less trouble, though it was one of the last for me to fill in -- but I only just now figured out what a SMITH has to do with forgeries. Duh. Blacksmith uses a forge, etc.
Confession: I had to look up the Herculese labor. The only one I know is the Augean Stables. ( bonus: while I've been pecking out my post the captcha changed to something I can read!) whoops! Or not... Try again.
Easy-medium for me, with the NW the hardest part. At 19A I tried part and role before line, and had craven for brazen.
Look, Scalia is surrounded by impale, poisoned and hitmen!
That's a major mistake, the fria for frio. OTOH, how about aqua velva?
I tend to be disapproving of the names of persons I deem unworthy appearing in the NYT puzzle. It should be an honor, no? I reflexively hesitate before entering a Palin, Amin, or Taney, for example. (C'mon, admit it, I'm not the only one).
So at 57A with the S in place, I, like @Carola, had Souter before SCALIA. The former was an able jurist; the latter, a maverick whose personal views and intemperate rants tend to confuse rather than settle the law. (If you've never actually peered into a can of worms - and would like to - just read one of ol' Nino's opinions).
With Souter taking up space, the SW was the last to fall. Moreover, I almost naticked at the 43D/51A crossing. NEMEAD rang no bell, and SCAt seemed a plausible definition of "run-in." I ultimately went with SCAM, so I finished...finished a Saturday... Yeah!
FRIA is correct as clued. By itself, 'el agua' is correct; 'el agua' and 'los aguas' Also, 'el' is an exception to avoid the double 'a' situation, where one word ends in 'a' and the next word starts in 'a'; 'la agua is not correct. However, in this situation, the reference is 'agua fria' (cold water) and is correct.
PS - I'll grant that the clue seems a bit sloppy as written. I threw down FRIO first.
@D_Blackwell is quite correct. In fact I realized my mistake almost as soon as I posted, but for some reason the comments page wouldn't accept a second contribution to correct it. Apologies all round.
@poc, agua is actually feminine, it takes el instead of la because it starts with a vowel.
I never got smith! So DNF.
Thanks for explaining LINE, just couldn't see that. Had LovE for a while. . . .
@ D Blackwell, it's las Aguas, because with the s on the end of las, there's no double vowel problem.
Nice job, Knapper.
YES Rex, your last sentence summed it up perfectly! And my solve was very much like yours, except it wasn't as easy for me. But I did remember Myanmar because of the recent news. And I love the long stack in the middle, with a mini-theme of [blank][blank]THE[blank].
I figured you'd rate it easy when I completed it without Googling, but I'm still at the stage where I'm still pleased as punch just to successfully complete a Saturday.
wordie - Yes,'las aguas'. Typ0. Sorry. el alma, las almas, etc.
I guess I'm the only person to mos-read the "Mandalay" clue as "Manderley" and wonder what Rebecca had to di with Burma.
This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 8/1/2009 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 7:08, 6:46, 1.05, 76%, Medium-Challenging
Tue 8:18, 8:57, 0.93, 37%, Easy-Medium
Wed 11:11, 11:49, 0.95, 39%, Easy-Medium
Thu 17:02, 18:47, 0.91, 34%, Easy-Medium
Fri 20:40, 24:21, 0.85, 25%, Easy-Medium
Sat 20:59, 29:00, 0.72, 5%, Easy (9th lowest median solve time of 167 Saturdays)
Top 100 solvers
Mon 4:09, 3:41, 1.13, 91%, Challenging
Tue 4:41, 4:41, 1.00, 56%, Medium
Wed 6:49, 5:57, 1.14, 85%, Challenging
Thu 9:57, 9:23, 1.06, 67%, Medium-Challenging
Fri 11:47, 12:10, 0.97, 48%, Medium
Sat 11:36, 16:29, 0.70, 6%, Easy (10th lowest median solve time of 166 Saturdays)
I got it all and enjoyed the puzzle, but found it more medium than easy. I had ivs, but then thought mevelaus wrong and vaguely remembered menaelaus.
Weekend Puzzle Partner and I attacked this when I got home from work and had it done (with OWS) in an hour - that's lightening fast for us on a Saturday! Only writeover was because I thought the "Extra desire" would be a rolE instead of the much less ambitious LINE. Like others, we wanted the "Hookups" to be IvS and the cross wasn't familiar so the error stayed in. Yesterday's syndicated puzzle was equally easy so we are feeling pretty cocky this weekend - I'm sure our comeuppance is lurking nearby.
@SanFranMan59 - I see that every day this week but today that there is a sizable difference in rating between All Solvers and Top 100 Solvers. Is the count still down? Is the "slowest solvers are solving for fun" hypothesis still the likeliest reason?
@z, I dunno if I'm reading @sanfranman59's figures right, but seems like today (Saturday) is in the 6th percentile for the Top 100, and the 5th for All Solvers. That's in the "Easy" bracket for both groups, but more easy for All Solvers by 1 percent, than for the Top 100. But the disparity on the other days is indeed puzzling. I don't understand why it would throw off the figures that much if the slower solvers as "solving for fun" -- meaning they aren't timing themselves? The masses should still be, and are, slower than the Top 100. I do not understand why Weds was Easy-Medium for the totality of solvers and Challenging for the Top 100.
But I fear I'm a robot. We'll see.
Rex, Captain Cook is a city on the western coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. The volcano is to its east.
Could we just use the word "chewy" to describe food texture please? Medium for me. Had Bishon for Afghan, which bowed me up. It's nice to finish a Saturday with no mistakes, even if it's considered "easy".
Medium. Took a while to get a toehold, then it all fell into place. Of course, writing CEREAL in for 2D right away didn't help much.
@Bob K: I don't know what ski jumping you've seen, but poles are essential for balance. Every jumper I've seen has them.
I AMBLED through the NW in nothing flat, and wondered if it really WAS Saturday. Then came the DARKROOM in the SW. TUNER at 46d held me back some. The breakthrough came with SKIM for "Far from whole." I'm getting better with these Shortzian clues.
DASHING across the center with all those THE's, I arrived at the SE: no PICNIC, because like others I didn't know SCALIA from Souter. I am the world's worst timeline solver. Couldn't even give you the decade. Finally remembered MOE which gave me GOALIE; done there but for the SCA_/NE_EAN cross. Was it T? NETEAN?? Nah. Then I applied the Shortz principle to the clue for 51a, and saw of course it was SCAM.
On to the NE. SKI--what? Run? Nope, need 4. Wrestled with that for a time before seeing JUMP, and fini. LOG filled on crosses. "Call log?" Whassat?
An enjoyable solve, though if I were making it I'd want something besides NTH for the centerpiece down word.
@Spacecraft -- Just to clarify, it was @Glimmerglass and @dk who had protested that ski jumpers did not use poles. My feeling was that they did use them, but when I looked at Google images to find a picture to illustrate the point, it turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I did post a link to such a picture, but I had to concede that not all jumpers used poles.
When I was able to complete this puzzle, I knew it would be rated easy-that's how it goes. My biggest hold-up was thinking I can't really be expected to know the Russian for diminutive, followed by a "doh" when crosses led me to the right word. Coming here I found I mistakenly credited comedians with. PUREGaLl, which made the movie DAYOFTHEDEAL, sounded ok to me for a shopping mall story, and LaG sounded ok for the call thing, so my error got hidden. But, hey, I was THIS close!
@ evil doug 9:43 AM - Cincy just got its first Jack in the Crack?! Are you serious? They've been so ubiquitous out here for so long I would have bet they were nationwide. Also, a tip from my teenage me - their two for 99 cent tacos taste much better at 2:00 A.M. when you're starving and drunk off your butt and nothing else is open. Ah, memories ...
Never heard of Farina - was guessing maybe Purina was the dog's breakfast until the crosses negated that idea.
@ Tobias Duncan 10:46 AM - "Don't forget to bring a towel!" (I know at least @ Ellen S will get that. Ellen, you haven't indicated how old your daughter is, but if she's young enough to have watched The Backyardigans, and if you've ever seen the "Samurai Pie" episode, you might appreciate this - when they were singing "Do you want to make pie; Yes I want to make pie," it made me imagine Towelie singing 'Do you want to get high; Yes, I want to get high'!)
@ lawprof 1:08 PM - I also got hung up in the SE (not SW) due to having Souter instead of SCALIA at first - I mean, what are the odds of having two out of six male Justices with six letter last names starting with S? My first thought was Souter, and figured there couldn't be another, and somehow, of the eight Justices I could think of of, Scalia was the one I couldn't come up with for a while. Oh, and for future reference, SCAt is animal poo, or a type of Jazz singing, not a "run-in."
@Anonyrat, so was Towelie doing a parody of The Backyardigans? I had never heard of them before this; even my granddaughter at 19 is too old to have watched them. They look like if the Teletubbies and Barney had a baby. Found the "do you wanna make pies" song on Youtube. Definitely something that would be improved by watching while high. Thanks for thinking of me.
Oh, god, I must be a robot. I can't read the captcha at all.
Ellen - No, I'm pretty sure Towelie came well before the Backyardigans. My kids used to watch them all the time (it's off the air now), and when I saw that episode, my (twisted?) mind just conjured up Towelie singing "Do you want to get high."
Anyway, it's nice to have found someone here who even knows who Towelie is, let alone a Towelie fan. Every time I took my kids to their swimming lessons I would tell them "Don't forget to bring a towel!" using Towelie's voice (they didn't get the reference, but were amused anyway).
I'm told that Matt & Trey thought Towelie was the dumbest character they'd ever created. This, from the people who invented Mr. Hankie, the Christmas Poo!
But I love Mr. Hanky! He's hilarious! Towelie may be a little silly, but he does have a couple of good catch-phrases. In this day and age, do you need anything more?
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