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Like Cyrillic Hebrew alphabets / MON 4-1-13 / NJ city on west side of GW Bridge
Monday, April 1, 2013
We're back! And good news - we're here to stay! Rex is on an "extended hiatus" due to all the stress of doing puzzles, blogging about puzzles, writing puzzles, and competing at puzzles. So while he enjoys some R&R at the "spa" for who knows how long, we, Jenny and Liz aka Rex's BFFs, are your new Kings (ok Queens) of CrossWorld!
Constructor: Gary Whitehead
Relative difficulty: Impossible!
THEME: None — You'd think that on Easter Monday there would be some kind of theme but there must be some kind of a trick because we couldn't figure it out!
Word of the Day: None! Our first act as Queens of CrossWorld is to nix the word of the day. You may know that we've never been fans of this part of the blog.
• • •
Typically theme answers would go here, but we sure couldn't find a theme on this April 1st puzzle. Is this some kind of a scam? We felt like dunderheads and nincompoops trying to piece this puzzle together. Bullets:
- 16A. The "A" in Thomas A. Edison: ALVA. We don't know about you, but we can't hear the name Thomas Edison without automatically singing one of our favorite School House Rock Tunes!
- 46A. NJ city on the west side of the GW Bridge: FORT LEE — You'd have to be a boob to miss this one. Everyone knows that's where Rosanna Arquette's character lived in Desperately Seeking Susan (only one of the dopest movies in 1985!)
- 50A. Like the Cyrillic and Hebrew alphabets: NONROMAN — Really? On a Monday? Are we the only ones who felt like asses trying to figure this one out?
- 44D. Throat lozenge: TROCHE — We almost got duped by this one too! Ever hear of a Sucret??
In summary, this puzzle was no joke, but, this write-up is! April Fools! Rexy will be back tomorrow, and we will settle for being his BFFs and the laughing stocks of CrossWorld
Jenny and Liz
PS Hey it's me, Rex. I'll be back tomorrow, so the "extended hiatus" thing is "extended" only til tomorrow. In the mean time, here is a radio show I was on this morning w/ crossword legend Merl Reagle: "Life Elsewhere." Enjoy!
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103 comments:
Like all good April Fools' jokes, I'd hoped this was for realz. What BOOB I am. (I said BOOBS. Ha. Ha.)
11 minutes 59 seconds, but nobody will believe me. This is a world record for me. For reals, no joke.
Least faves:
"Barely Making" as a clue for EKES. I know I've lost this battle, but I don't have to like it.
"EARLAP" -- from the frequency with which this questionable hat part shows up in puzzles, I suspect they are made out of EELS.
Otherwise, seemed like a fine Monday to me, unless, whew, I just checked and my answers match Jenny and Liz's -- not some secret trick where all the answers are really supposed to be in Klingon or something.
The captcha is "offficu." Anon above me thinks he's being racy saying "boobs". Offficu will be my new term of dismissal.
Well, since nobody else is here, someone said late yeterday that the ATF is not part of the Department of Justice but is part of Treasury. Someone should tell the ATF about that because they think they're DOJ.
And since I'm wasting a whole post on yesterday's puzzle, here again (for the last time unless requested) is how to embed links in one of these comments.
You two are just too cute...if only I were 20 years younger...aw, who am I fooling. I'd still be too old for you.
Worst Monday puzzle for me in a long time. NONROMAN? TROCHE? Seriously? A personal high for me on a Monday puzzle, but I'm too ashamed to post it!
Well, April fool re saying there is no theme, you sly ladies, you.
Medium. Average Monday time.
EASTASIA sounds like a reference to the novel 1984..
And our favorite Lama again - Hello, DALAI.
Had FORT DIX before FORT LEE. Nope, some distance off. At least I knew it wasn't FORT ORD, which is defunct and was in California anyway.
TROCHE on a Monday? The world is changing....
____POOP right below ON A LEASH. Nice touch for dog lovers.
Are the Cyrillic and Hebrew alphabets PHONETIC? Don't think so. Anymore. What a DUNDERHEAD.
Can't look at 32A without thinking it is somehow related to exONERATE.
Thanks, Mr. Whitehead.
Tough Mon. for me even if you subtract the time it took to find the typo. Zippy theme, but it seems like there was quite a bit of non-Mondayish fill...EAR LAP, TROCHE, FORT LEE, AMEER, OOOH(?), ACETIC...
Liked it, but...
As Mr T would say, "I pity the FOOL ..." who is doing a Monday for the first time...and expecting easy.
Monday it ain't (TROCHE?!?!) but fantastic use of theme, at least eleven parallel theme words plus bonus !
Fan-tas-tic.
Since the gals didn't quite spell it out, allow me:
DUNDERHEAD/LAUGHINGSTOCK/NINCOMPOOP
(wow!)
SCAM...BOOB/ DUPE...DOPE
CON/KID
TRICK/CHEAT
(with bonus ASSES, which has no parallel entry unless DECCA was run by a couple of asses)
OOOH/NOP/TROCHE/SONO should have been rewritten (and I'll bet dollars to donuts that was already a rewrite).
Anyway, a dozen theme entries on the appropriate day (no premature 4th of July puzzle this!!!) I'd be a fool not to love this!
This is not a Monday puzzle. AMEER? ONERATE? FORTLEE? Does anyone outside of NYC know what city is on the other side of the GW? And TROCHE, ACETIC... not a fan, at all.
I still finished in under three minutes, so don't get the fuss about how it was hard. Except for troche, I agree with you on that clue. Never heard of it.
"OOOH/NOP/TROCHE/SONO should have been rewritten"
I would be seriously impressed to see you do that (successfully). Excepting TROCHE, I'm not liking those entries either, but I'd rather have this puzzle than not have it.
Sono legato lobo. Anc orth? Voce troche? Nop.
Alpes ameer centi dalai decca dada. (Adin ova chou.)
Grr.
BFF's, it's always a treat to see you back. Even when you TRICK me - I totally believed Rex was going to be gone for a while, thinking "Spring Break." I'm so gullible!
Liked the puzzle, with its fools galore, especially DUNDERHEAD. I wondered if the constructor would TRICK us by working in the fool that's a fruit and cream dessert. Had Deco before DADA, had heard TROCHE before but thought it was spelled with two EEs (turns out that's in poetry).
Liked GRR next to ON A LEASH.
Thought it was pretty chewy for a Monday. FORT LEE and LEGATO was my big sticking point. Have never been up on musical terms and I don't think I have ever been to New Jersey. Had FORT dEE first, looked good to me.
Happy April Fools Day all you puzzle fools. Hand way up!
@Carola - Safe trip home, say Hi to Lake Michigan for me.
6 minutes instead of my usual 4 for a Monday, which puts this at "challenging" in my book.
I went for EMEER first, and I had no idea on DECCA. So DADA was slow in coming for me. For some reason I thought it was REGATO, so I had FORT REE briefly until I realized that looked ridiculous. And TROCHE would have been ungettable were it not for mostly easy crosses (with the exception of NONROMAN, which I thought was ugly fill).
As a Monday, I thought this puzzle was too difficult. I suspect this was a medium-ish Tuesday that was shoehorned into Monday because of the theme. Unfortunately the theme was pretty dull, so I came away just a bit disappointed.
If all the fool synonyms had been placed at the perimeter of the puzzle it would have been a fool around puzzle.
Eleven entries that mean “fool.” Cool. Plus the bonus ASSES!
@r.alphbunker – I had the same thought, with the too-long reveal “surrounded by fools.”
Probably like thousands of others – malapop at the DUPE/DOPE pair.
@Evan – psychopop - just yesterday I was asking someone if she had a TROCHE in her purse.**
“Boustrophedonic” was too long for NON ROMAN and not even right anyway. And then I went back and noticed the “Cyrillic” there, too. I would not have gotten NON ROMAN without some crosses. So is our system non-Cyrillic?” Non-Arabic?
@Anoa Bob –AONE! OLE! IOU!
SVELTE is just a great word. Svery descriptive.
You know you’ve been doing too many crosswords when you look at the grid and keep parsing it as ONER ATE. What.
It’s a long story, but I just may have convinced one of my students to stage a serious game of Duck Duck Goose in the prison yard today. Wouldn’t that be a great April Fool’s prank? Just the thought of it makes me GRIN.
Maybe follow up with a spirited round of Red Rover. . .
When a LOBO GRRRs, does he show his INCISORs? And if yes, why is the meaning of this canine mammal showing his teeth to a fellow canine mammal so different from my showing my teeth to a fellow human in a GRIN? Any anthropologists out there? Or mammalogists? Desmond Morris? You out there anywhere?
**April Fools! (But it was easily gettable with the crosses.)
A toughie for me for Monday--having CHUMP, DODO, and A BIT in the SE didn't help.
The rest of the solving saga and the ratings (should this one be bopped for obscure fill and the SW or elevated for a wow theme?!) are at
I'm Bad
Good puzzle. Agree that it almost certainly would not have appeared on a Monday if the date weren’t a factor.
@OISK came clean about his nom-de-net on Friday; since I was similarly challenged I’ll say that webwinger is a word I made up years ago when I wanted a non-revealing handle for impersonal transactions online. Planned to abandon it when it began to attract spam (which it did—but was able to manage that adequately with filters); instead have stuck with it and in fact like it increasingly as time goes by. Easy to say and spell when I need to give an email address by speaking (don’t you hate how annoyingly hard that often is to do?) No competition for the name when I moved from one domain to another. For Crossworld, note that it almost has rotational symmetry—one of these days I’m going to design a logo with stylized letters that makes that explicit. And I find pleasing the sound and the image it conjures.
For now I prefer to remain semi-anonymous here, though I’ve dropped enough hints in posts that someone who knows me could probably figure out my identity; have also communicated with a couple of other Rexites on the side using my real name. I am definitely a person, but still find that the dynamics of blogging (a relatively new form of communication for me) make it somewhat difficult to relate as one such entity to others in this context—like being in a conversation where you don’t know if anyone can hear you, and don’t typically get any of the response cues that usually guide one’s interactions.
I was heads up for trouble thanks to an ad in the morning paper for "Bacon Flavored Scope---for breath that sizzles!"
Much better than the average Monday. The first three downs: Svelte, covert, acetic. Poop just up the road from asses? Etching across eking? Plus incisor, Ft. Lee, Decca, non-Roman, mamba, E-trade (I think I'd clue that with the ubiquitous ad baby somehow) and the new-to-me troche (my spell-checker says that's incorrect).
Even the girls were halfway decent this morning...or is that my April Fools joke? I'll never tell....
Evil
What if you had a secret identity but nobody cared?
Evil
@Ellen S - there is an article in the NYT about collecting glass EELS in the Hudson - I signed you up as a volunteer for 6 weeks to commemorate your birthday this summer...**
Uncle Manuel in Rumson was our favorite American uncle...he created the "Timber Wolf Society", initiation into which involved things like can of frozen OJ concentrate dropped down the back of your shirt. He was great at telling scary campfire stories.
Puzzle was fun. The toughness was mostly ok, considering the day, but a few were, well...
NONROMAN? It's also NONfloral. NONwooden. NONradioactive. And as @lms points out, extrapolating that out to our system sounds even more absurd.
**April Fools! And btw, thanks for the HowToEmbed post. Hopefully that will help plenty of folks.
Hard to believe that Google-owned Blogger is about the only online thing that doesn't automatically turn link live.
Foolish, fun Monday puzzle, some fools were nouns, some were verbs, most were across, but two snuck in as downs.
Just used diluted ACETIC acid the other day to dye the Easter Eggs!
Never, ever heard of a TROCHE. Husband says he's heard of it, but it was truly new to me. NON-ROMAN was slow-coming also, so that area was not Monday. Also had write-over of tied down before ON A LEASH - obviously did not check any crosses first!
Hoping the kids, who are on spring break, don't realize today is April Fools day. I'll have to think of a good one...
@40D ...Ortho=straight Pedics=children...Orthopedics means the doctors that have to straighten out children...years ago so many children had skeletal deformities due to rickets etc. that a whole speciality developed around trying to correct these bone problems.
Hard for a Monday, no? But great fun for an April Fool's Day. Didn't even remember it was AF Day til I came here. Yep, I'm a dunderhead ( fell for the BFF's joke too)
Welcome back, BFFs!
I don't know how ol Gary Whitehead is, but my first thought was "DECCA? Dumas novel? No more under-30s, I guess!"
My second thought was that the DECCA/Deco cross was kinda nice, but I had to give that up.
I see most commenters aren't prepared to suffer the fools gladly - but I didn't mind, I don't personally much care if Mondays are easy enough.
By the way, what did DECCA stand for?
59 across reminded me of my childhood introduction to crosswords via TV's "Father Knows Best." The father is haplessly trying to teach the teenage daughter how to parallel park and losing his composure. The mother is sitting on the porch doing a crossword puzzle. Not paying much a attention to the driving lesson going on in front of her, she calls for help on a clue: "10 letter word meaning fool?" Just then the daughter has rolled the car up on the curb, and the father calls her a "NINCOMPOOP!" "Thanks," says the mother, and pencils it in.
@PIX - thanks for the ORTHOpedic history. Never really parsed out the roots if the word, but it makes sense with your explanation.
BTW, I think I've already received one April Fool joke. It's snowing in Michigan today.
It's all been said so I'm echoing that I loved all of the different fools on parade with delightfully raunchy ASSES as our bonus.
Monday being my unfavorite day of the week, I found the lightheartedness of NINCOMPOOP, DUNDERHEAD and BOOB perfectly GRIN-inducing!
Great puzzle, no joke, Gary Whitehead!
Not much to say. Had deco for DADA for a few seconds but other than that this one was a fools errand.
💥💥💥 (3 exploding stars as the world is coming to an end. We had the Mayan calendar conversion wrong.)
Before we go: Anyone have an idea for how to determine if stereo speakers are out of phase. By clicking on my little picture you can send any advice via email. Thank you in advance.
When I was a child, during the Truman administration, those fold-down bits were called EAR FLAPS. More recently, I used to drive my Korean students to Fort Lee, where there was a huge Asian food market.
Decca is portmanteau of Dulcephone and mecca. Also, the people who ran Decca in the 60s were considered asses when the turned down a chance to sign the Beatles.
11 minutes here, so definitely on the challenging side, although I can't see what took me so long.
Otherwise, it's mostly been said. A fun puzzle.
@webwinger - @Seth G (who hasn't been around in a long time) came up and introduced himself to me on some ultimate fields in suburban Chicago last October. All from my nom de net and inferences from my comments.
Horrible Monday for me: 27:06
Gary Whitehead gives us eleven iterations of “Fool”; some verbs, others nouns, some of them both and we all received a reminder of a day to be wary of friends bearing gags, lest we unknowingly be made a LAUGHINGSTOCK.
But, those hankering for a tricky treat on April Fool’s Day will be disappointed when they realize there is no joke to be had, practical or otherwise, not even a lingering EASTEREGG to be found.
Early week solvers, bumping into the likes of TROCHE, NONROMAN, LEGATO and ORTH might feel the puzzle actually was a joke of sorts, an overblown Roget-ish WEDGIE.
Thank goodness we had Jenny and Liz to set the right tone.
Fun puzzle. Although I have to admit I just about did the entire thing Sun. evening without realizing Apr Fool's Day was tomorrow (today).
NONROMAN was legit but blah-took me a long time to see it. ON A LEASH was a fine answer but also took me a long time to see it. As a result that section was a bit more challenging than normal for a Monday. Still easy though.
In hindsight, I'll attribute any difficulty I had to too much Easter, sugar, and alcohol, plus a houseful of in-laws.
What a great writ-up BBF's.
Had dupe at 66across and 68 across. Didnt know legato so figured legatu would be correct. Then figured have the same word twice(which is a no no) was part of the April fools theme.
Any way..a fun puzzle
Slightly crunchy Monday, but not hard. Troche is completely new to me, never heard it, never read it.
I also had deco for Dada for a moment, and thought bozo for boob.
@webwinger: to us you do have a name, and we know your writing and reasoning style (and I enjoy them).
When I meet up with Rexites, they often call me mac, although they know my name.
Very cute and I found it easy. I haven't seen TROCHE in a long time and I don't think I've ever heard it used, but a good word and balance to 39D TORCH.
I hope having a dental appt. on April 1 is not an omen.
Probably my slowest Monday in a year or two. But that means it was a welcome change of pace.
A number of you have remarked about Fort Lee. I've seen this clue many times in a puzzle, usually as FTLEE. I guess it's considered a common enough answer that it would be a gimmie for most solvers, and hence suitable for a Monday puzzle.
Ellen S: The A tag in HTML are called anchors because their function is to specify a place on web page to jump to. Jumping to an external page is one function of the tag, in which case the external page is the anchor point. But say, for example, you are on a typical page of Wikipedia. There is often an outline of the entry at the top of the page. Click on any line of the outline and you will jump to that point on the page. (For example, if it's an entry about an actor, there is often a link at the top of the page to the actor's filmography found down on the page.) So in my actor entry example, at the point where you begin coding the filmography, you first code in an "anchor point." Then at the top of the page who code a link to the anchor point using the A tag. When jumping to an external page, by default the anchor point is the top of the page. So the A tag is used to jump to an anchor point, default or otherwise.
Perhaps more than you care to know. Anyway, it was good of you to share your instructions on how to use the A tag in this blog.
You got me, Gary Whitehead! Which is to say, another hand up for a write-over at EMEER/DECO before AMEER/DADA.
I'm with @Anoa Bob on this one.
Sono? No one says that.
Disappointed. I wanted a better trick like the ones given to us by the BFFs. Thanks ladies.
Long time lurker...first time poster..."ding ding..."
DNF due to NOtROMAN and ADIt. ADIN's not in my wheelhouse, and NOTROMAN is just as correct as NONROMAN, if you ask me.
Can't remember my last Monday DNF.
BFF's, Rex is lucky to have you in his world.
@ATX welcome. Hope you chime in more often
Certainly challenging for a Monday. I don't mind an early-week toughie, but I didn't care for all of the less-than-ideal fill that @Anoa Bob pointed out, though I'd have replaced LEGATO with EARLAP in that list and added NON-ROMAN (ugh). Cramming in 11 theme answers in a 15x15 will definitely put the constraints on what you can do with the fill.
@r.alphbunker:
FOOL AROUND would have been a great revealer for a puzzle of that type. I'm all for it.
@Loren:
April Fool's joke or no, I'm glad that psychopop is catching on. I had mine today when I was staring at a bunch of ASSES yesterday. (Actually, that's not a joke -- my wife and I stupidly watched the movie "Piranha 3D" very late on Saturday night and into Sunday morning. Even worse is that it was the second time I've seen it. Such a bad decision.) I had malapop with ASS at 41-Down before CON.
And for the uninitiated, psychopop is my term for a situation where you think of a word one day and then it shows up in the puzzle the next day. The less common the word, the better the psychopop, because it's too easy when it comes to short, common fill. There's probably at least one three-letter word in each puzzle that you could claim you thought of in some way the day before. For instance, I don't really consider BAD much of a psychopop even though I saw ads for "Breaking Bad" yesterday during the season finale of "The Walking Dead."
@anoa -- right on the money
I like TROCHE and TORCH near each other. TROCHE is also a commune in France with less than 1,000 inhabitants. Alas, this fact doesn't help rise the word out of obscurity.
@evil -- liked your second comment, made me laugh.
@miette -- not horrible at all. You got to spend more time in the pleasurable act of working a puzzle.
@chefbea -- I was just thinking this morning it would be cool if a puzzle did have the same word twice, but each with a different definition.
No, no, no. ONERATE means to blame. When you no longer blame somebody, you exonerate them.
NDE
I knew it was a hoax all along. If there really were two new monarchs (ahem) of crossword, Jenny and Liz would have to change their names to Regina.
____
Rex, I think you mean "meantime".
@Loren:
"When a LOBO GRRRs, does he show his INCISORs?"
Right before he laps your ears.
@Lewis How 'bout what we smoked way back when, and a fool=dope
Or here's another - what I do with cake batter, and how I feel when I'm tired=beat...not beet
@Lewis:
@chefbea:
If you have access to a NYT puzzle archive take a look at April 1, 2002.
It has all repeated words mirrored on the diagonal.
[Sorry, I somehow missed retired chemist's post with much the same joke on "ex-ONERATE". NDE]
I was wondering if I could get just a little more information on the psychopop....
Evil
Uninitiated
Well, since you asked @Evil - PsychoPop: me on Saturday as I sat in the back seat while my youngest took his driving test. He is now licensed and off with some girl.
Great job on Life Elsewhere, Rex!
TGIM
Enjoyed the podcast Rex. Thank you.
One of the easiest Monday’s ever. Unless you count the time wasted trying to come up with TROCHE crossing NONROMAN. COBRA (off the A in ASSES) didn’t help. Only other write-over was A BIT before A TAD @ 65A.
I don’t care for variations. Why give constructors the out. Who uses AMEER?
Too many Os at 63A.
45D is probably limited to OB/GYN lingo.
Well, Z, the good news is that they'll probably spend more time parking than driving...hmmmm...maybe not so good news....
Evil
@All - Have non of you read the memo? The one regarding the appropriate comments to make in the comments section? It's among the shortest memos this side of Twitter, yet you can't take the time to read it?
Once again, here it is.
1. Don't make comments @ED doesn't find interesting.
There, was that so hard?
A TAD more FOOLish than an ordinary Monday, but I muddled through, swallowed a TROCHE, didn't CHEAT and avoided becoming a LAUGHINGSTOCK here at home.. Much better than receipting for a Sunday DNF [which I angrily did.]
@chefwen - Mahalo!
I thought it was tough for a Monday - TROCHE/NONROMAN took me way too long.
DECCA... Sweetest little black dog I ever met. Had her owners trained to perfection. Lost her last year, to old age. Rest in peace, D.
Today's Meta Puzzler: What 1968 #1 R&B hit is the answer to this puz?
BF-ed Forever, on April Fools' Day. thUmbsUp. Better excuse than "the dog ate my solve time", from a recent 4-Oh treatise. Sober up and see U tomorrow, 4-Oh.
I had to comment because I thought this was such a great puzzle. However, I found "Fort Lee" (never heard of it) to be a bit New York centric. Absolutely brilliant development of the April Fool theme.....
FWIW- TROCHE is commonly mispronounced "trowsh" but its true pronunciation is "trow-key."
Now you won't sound like a DUNDERHEAD when you say it! :)
Psychopop: yesterday my son was reading me a Frank Caliendo tweet (re:Ware's injury at NCAA).
Or is that too many days removed from puz appearance?
Thank you, @Doc John. I just found it's from the Greek for wheel.
@Evan and Elle54 -
Can a Psychopop happen after it appears in a puzzle? Or must it happen prior to seeing it in the puzzle?
captcha = obabamam - Sounds like Prky Pig trying to pronounce the pres's name.
@Laurence Hunt - it's the NEW YORK Times...
Annoyed we may all be when the reference is to an obscure suburb of San Diego, but not this.
@Rob C, Evan and Elle54...
That is why I propose the slight variation 'psychipop', as it makes clear the psychic nature of the experience.
@Elle - 'synchronicity' allows for pre- or post-puzzle proximity - but it must be within +/- 2 days to qualify.
Which brings me to yet another coinage:
Optipop - for an answer that's better than the constructor's/editor's choice.
Gee willikers...we are going to have to elect an editor of the Rexford Crossword Dictionary if we keep coining terms at this rate...
I vote for @ED. ***
***See previous post.
Congrats on having the only trick to actually get me today.
Ameer, one rate, nonroman, Chou, troche, and earlap were all unpleasant, and I was shocked to find that my puzzle had no errors. 12 minutes instead of my usual 8 for a Monday.
Midday report of relative difficulty (see my 8/1/2009 post for an explanation of my method and my 10/15/2012 post for an explanation of a tweak to my method):
All solvers (median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Mon 6:57, 6:12, 1.12, 90%, Challenging
Top 100 solvers
Mon 4:24, 3:42, 1.19, 97%, Challenging
@RobC, when it happens after it appears in a puzzle it's a psychopoop.
When did sono become a word?
Very familiar with mint dragees, but not so much with TROCHE, although it rang a bell. Otherwise, enjoyabke not so easy puzzle for a Monday.
@ed: what the hek is webwinger talking about?
@joho - we should "wipe" psychopoop from the lexicon of this board. Oh boy, that was a pretty crappy pun.
@Rob C lol
@pmdm -- thanks for the explanation. I know about the difference, such as it is, between hyperlinks and anchors, but they're the same "A" tag. I thought of changing my explanation, but then do I tell people "A" stands for "Hyperlink"? A difference without much of a distinction, Wikipedia says:
"With the attribute href (hypertext reference [1]), the anchor becomes a hyperlink to either another part of the document or another resource (e.g. a webpage) using an external URL."
So Wikipedia calls it an "anchor" either way. The w3schools.com takes the coward's way out and calls it the "a" tag.
Now that everyone's snoring -- @Tita, the EEL counting sounds like fun. They pat them dry with paper towels before weighing them? These little bitty things the size of an earthworm?
@everyone -- what Rexian podcast?
@Blog Administrator -- I'm sure Evil can take care of himself (even though he's gone all soft lately; maybe grandfatherhood took the ginger out of him), but for the benefit of people new to the blog, maybe it would be prudent to wait until he writes something objectionable before laying into him.
A Mr. Richard Feder from Ft Lee, NJ writes....Dear Roseanne Rosannadanna....miss you, Gilda
Now I learned something!
DNFs and Mondays always get me down.... (K. Carpenter)
@Ellen S...check the end of Rex's post for the link.
I'm not a crossword whiz - last Wednesday's was the first I finished without at least a bit of Google help -but this was brutal for me (for a Monday). TROCHE, AMEER, NONROMAN and ACETIC are not in my wheelhouse. There were some fun ones (SVELTE is a great one), but am still thankful April 1 is on a Tuesday next year.
@ Charley - SONO is colloquial short for SONOGRAM, That you are supposed to be looking for something like that is tipped off by "pic"in the clue.
MetaPuzzler answer = "Chain of Fools"?
Had CHump before CHEAT. But it was the verb.
5 nouns, 4 verbs for fool.
MAMBA was a new critter for me.
@Glimmerglass - you've actually been to FORT LEE!
This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 8/1/2009 post for an explanation and my 10/15/2012 post for an explanation of a tweak I've made to my method. 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 7:02, 6:12, 1.14, 92%, Challenging
Top 100 solvers
Mon 4:22, 3:42, 1.18, 96%, Challenging (8th highest ratio of 172 Mondays)
Since dufus (Aug 14, 2007 Tuesday) was a theme on a Tuesday puzzle, I am thinking fool is stupider than dufus!
Extrapolating, we will have idiot as a theme for Wednesday, imbecile for Thursday and Moron for Friday!
Feeling humbled by a Monday puzzle :(
Non-Roman works, but Adobe calls them Non-Latin fonts
Whew! Won't have to struggle through the tough ones alone!
In Syndiland, of course, I didn't grok that today's offering had appeared on 4/1. Just started out in the NW with VOCE, SVELTE (fantastic word!), etc. to unearth SCAM. Well, I thought, I guess "Fool" works as a clue for that, but not on a Monday. But then: "Oh, there it is again, for TRICK. So, he's just taking advantage of a repeated clue--" which, I've noticed, constructors love to do.
Well, imagine my surprise to find it eight more times--and it coulda been nine! This is, IMHO, one of the cleverest grids I've ever seen. All the "theme" answers are good, legitimate--AND symmetrical! It's no wonder some of the fill has to be subpar to pull that off: EKING, OOOH, ATAD, ADIN. For that last, BTW to the uninitiated, it's ADvantage IN (to server, as opposed to OUT, to receiver). A tennis game must be won by two points, so if the player with the AD loses the next point, the score reverts to "deuce" (two to win).
But that said, it's still a great grid. Some of it may be ATAD un-Mondayish, TROCHE, I'm looking at you, but all handily inferred on crosses. Hand up for CHUMP, and the "1984" mindworm.
In days past, when we took day trips to NYC, we parked in a FORTLEE lot and took the bus over. What, you don't think we actually tried to DRIVE in New York City, do you?
Even if typically easy, Gary, a super Monday puzzle! AONE!
@Spacecraft: Thanks for the explanation of ADIN. I had no idea how it related to deuce. I had already read all the comments and did not find any one else explaining. I did get it from crosses though.
Good puzzle. A little on the "toughish" side for a Monday. 100% completed and 100% correct. I liked it.
Thank you Mr. Whitehead.
Fool me once, Fool me twice, Fool me 11 times! OLE! And... it did fool me here in syn city (May 6). Had totally forgotten that 5 weeks ago was April Fool.
Did not know TROCHE, but it was easily gettable. Misspelling SVELdt held me up for a while. Yes, there was some junk fill, but that's the cost for all the TRICKery and fun.
I moved LEGATO through this like a DUNDERHEAD, unaware that this ran on April 1 in the real world. What fun this slick puzzle was! TORCH is almost an anagram of TROCHE, a new one on me.
As an ex-AF weatherman, been enjoying the NW long run of cloudless hi 70's under a stationary high pressure system. Perfect.
Like others in Syndi-land I did not notice that it was an April Fool's puzzle until halfway through. Very cute even 5 weeks later.
Re: Thomas ALVA Edison, here's a comic strip from The Oatmeal that might convert you to being a Tesla fan instead.
I left Deco in just long enough for cUNDERHEAD to appear - I don't know what it means but it looks mildly obscene.
Had DODO instead of DOPE which led to EARLID (should be a word!) and a ABIT in the SW. In keeping with the theme, seems to make me a DUNDERHEAD, a LAUGHINGSTOCK, etc. But what an enjoyable Monday puzzle - hope the remainder of the week lives up to its very high standard.
Sorry, that should have been the SE.
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