Constructor: Jeff Chen and Angela Olson Halsted
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: RAID to RUDE vowel progression — long vowels sounds move up the alphabet as you move from top to bottom of the grid
Theme answers:
- 20A: Get a midnight snack, say (RAID THE FRIDGE)
- 28A: Find a subtext of (READ INTO)
- 37A: Leave by horseback, as into the sunset (RIDE OFF)
- 46A: Tour de France conveyance (ROAD BIKE)
- 53A: Unpleasant shock (RUDE AWAKENING)
Word of the Day: FLAME WAR (
39D: Nasty online argument) —
A flame war results when multiple users engage in provocative responses to an original post - while the original post is usually flamebait, this is not always the case. Flame wars often draw in many users (including those trying to defuse the flame war) and can overshadow regular forum discussion if left unchecked. (wikipedia)
• • •
Textbook. A good, old-fashioned vowel progression puzzle. Monday-easy. A few flashy themers. Rock solid fill. Some interesting long Downs. This thing is polished within an inch of its life. Not exciting or astounding, but clean as a whistle, and — as Monday's go — very interesting, fill-wise. Plus, two Xs, a J, and a Z, and none of them forced on us. Full disclosure: these constructors are my friends. But still, I don't think Mondays come much more solid or clean than this. I kind of had some "trouble" (it's Monday, hence the quotation marks) right off the bat, as
TUG AT for
[Pull on] was not ... intuitive. Easy. I think I was imagining "pulling on" a sweater or other article of clothing. Also did not get
FEEDBAG (
4D: Item strapped over a horse's head) or
FRET OVER (5D: Worry about) right away off those initial Fs. Biggest hold-up, however, came from misspelling
SONJA (
49A: Skater Henie). I had SONIA. On a Monday, a mistake like that is a disaster, time-wise. I actually got to ADI-STS at
42D: Alters and thought "?????" before finally noticing the theme, getting (fittingly)
RUDE AWAKENING, and realizing it wasn't ADIUSTS but
ADJUSTS. Made another stupid mistake at the end when I saw HUM--E at
50A: Compassionate and quickly wrote in HUMBLE. "Are you sure you have all the letters right?" (question automatically comes up when you fill in last square). Checked crosses and obviously I did not (the answer is
HUMANE). All this mucking around and I
still came in under 3. Hence, Easy.
Happy Monday.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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65 comments:
I found this one quite easy: it's one of my 2-3 fastest Mondays ever. But I found it to be rock-solid. I don't recall one groan at bad fill or one eyebrow lifted at dodgy clue/answer pairing, nor did I notice anything particularly hackneyed or stale (which a big risk on Mondays). Those are the things that mark good Mondays for me.
My attitude toward word ladders is generally ho-hum, but I do like that the theme answers here were solid and not goofy or awkward.
Really liked FLAMEWAR and FEEDBAG (although FEEDBAG was a bit slow - relatively speaking - to come to me). And I still find "A Fish Called WANDA" hilarious. Don't call me stupid.
Easy Mon. Straight forward theme with a very smooth grid. No erasures and the only thing I learned from crosswords was how to spell SONJA. I used to put a Y in there. Nice one Jeff and Puzzle Girl.
Very nice, easy without being condescending I've learned how to spell SONJA from the puzzles. And also Henie and not Heine.
Supposed to be a period after "condescending" but I struggled so hard with THAT spelling I forgot all about the punctuation.
Old enough to have spelled SONJA correctly without benefit of crosswords.
An easy themeless as far as I could tell before coming here. Solid Monday fill, but nothing was at all challenging.
Thanks, Jeff and Angela.
Had RAID THE icebox... which I think I'll do in a minute.
Liked CHAGRIN and FLAME WAR.
Nice Monday.
Had AMES IOWA the other day in a LAT puzzle and I thought of Angela. Now we have MATS as wrestling pads and Angela appears loud and clear.
Loved the puzzle Angela and Jeff, as Rex said Monday easy but fun and entertaining.
You don't have to be friends with these two to see that it's pretty much a perfect puzzle!
Liked the musicality of starting with STAFF and ending with RESTS.
The only thing to my CHAGRIN is the NE corner is very sporty, what with HOLEINONE (Nod to Puzzle Sister who is a phenomenal golfer) crossing HOYA, IRISH, ALEX as a sports clue.
I'd have made either IRISH or ALEX a non-sports reference, only bec you also have NOLANRYAN, ROADBIKE, MATS (for Puzzle Girl's college wrestling obsession) and ASHE.
Several phrases ending with AT, INTO, OFF, OF, OVER and the like, nothing to FRETOVER, but I'm glad those weren't criticized.
Anyway, what fun to start off with RAIDTHEFRIDGE crossing FEEDBAG, a little IGLOO here, ZOOM there and up-to-date FLAMEWAR.
Super nice, CHENSTED!
What a beautiful Monday puzzle! Congratulations, Angela and Jeff.
I had step for step the exact experience Rex had, of course just slower.
I seem to remember Angela is from Nort Dakota.
What a beautiful Monday puzzle! Congratulations, Angela and Jeff.
I had Rex's experience word for word, just a lot more slowly.
Isn't Angela from North Dakota?
Easy and fun. Needed to get all the wey to RUDE before I saw the theme. Liked FEEDBAG (thanks, @acme, for pointing out the FRIDGE cross) CHAGRIN, FLAMEWAR, NOLANRYAN.
EYE + LEER, maybe at GAMS. ATEAM + XMEN.
Besides RESTS, you could also find HOLDS on a STAFF.
Awesome, awesome puzzle. I'd say the worst entry is NDAK. If that's the worst you've got, you're doing great! Some pretty crispy fill here.
Agreed on all counts...hard to make a plain ol' vowel progression zippy but this was. Like acme pointed out, I also loved the STAFF/RESTS bookend. Great job!
AWE heck. I can’t help but READ INTO this one its diet theme – RAID THE FRIDGE, CHEW something TABOO, suffer a RUDE AWAKENING when you have to TUG AT your jeans to get’em zipped, try to RIDE OFF those pesky pounds on a ROAD BIKE, (mine, of course, outfitted with a FEED BAG, just in case. . .)
Andrea – I liked all of those two-word phrases! And I noticed the musical start and the (END AT) RESTS, too. Also –musical NOEL, FRET, and ELLA.
@Carola – nice catch on the LEERing at the GAMS and the XMEN ATEAM pair.
“Stew” for CHEW briefly, thinking that “Tole. . ne” would be some golf person I didn’t know. Also "race" before ROAD.
Very, very solid puzzle, Jeff and Angela!!
I muttered its a raceBIKE but thought no one would care. It seems I was wrong.
Agree with all the cooing over this one.
🌟🌟🌟 (3 Stars)
Off to our Nation's capital to meet in rooms without windows.
Old enough to have seen Sonja Henie in an ice show.
Liked this puzz, but unlike Rex and most of you - had more of a Tuesday feel to me.
I ZOOMEd through this last night and thought what everybody has already said: perfect Monday theme, superb execution.
CHAGRIN is a great word.
Loved learning FLAMEWAR and happy that we don't have many here!
Fantastic start to the week, thanks, Jeff & Puzzle Girl!
I don't really know the bike nomenclature; rode 20 miles yesterday, nothing for a serious cyclist, and it killed me. But I don't think of ROAD BIKES for the Tour de France -- if not a racing bike, maybe a touring bike; for me a road bike is the fat tire thing I ride to work on. Still, they do ride on the road, it's not a mountain bike or a track bike, so maybe that's what they call it. I await the weighing in of someone who really knows.
That's nitpicking, of course, great puzzle! I've been trying to think of a way to spell all the vowel sounds either with or without an A before the D; REDE and RODE, but I don't think there's a RAID, and certainly no RIAD (I mean, there is, but not pronounced right) or RUAD. So I'll settle for this, fun and easy.
Just checked Wikipedia on ROAD BIKE; they say you can go either way.
Also, forgot to mention, I grew up knowing about SONJA Henie, but went to school with a Sonia, so as a result I can never remember which letter goes with whom - had SONyA at first.
Am I the only one reading FLAME WAR for the first time?
That word held me up the most in an otherwise very easy Monday. Very tight, very smooth Monday puzzle. Thanks!
Fun one for me. Been getting Mon-Wed, but struggling after that.
Easy fun Monday puzzle . I too had stew for chew at first. Never heard of flame wars. What does ATF stand for?
Thanks Jeff and Puzzle Girl!!!
Speedy, fun Monday - loved it. Actually smiled many times while solving, like at CHAGRIN. Loved how the vowel progression stayed true to the long vowel sounds throughout.
Had the same pauses at SONiA and at HUM--E as @Rex described.
Loved the THOR and X-MEN pairing.
I would definitely call the Tour de France bikes ROAD BIKEs. It's how I refer to my bike that I have to clip into and is designed for speed. My husband has a triathlon bike, which is even a little different. But I suppose they could both be called racing bikes - in a race.
“I’d like to buy a vowel please, a W.”
The old vowel progression theme states “AEIOU and sometimes Y and W”.
Trouble is, Y and W didn’t make the cut, even though they offer some interesting words.
“Y” vowel words are of the easy, familiar variety, think hymn, rhythm and syzygy as examples.
But about that “W”.
Almost** every English word needs to contain a vowel, so those wascally Welsh have decided that when we co-opt their words, the vowel could end up being a “W”:
“cwm, a bowl-shaped valley or hollow in (Welsh) mountains”
“cwtch, which is a Welsh “hug or cuddle”
“crwth, a “Welsh stringed musical instrument”, (that looks like a violin designed by a committee).
But, undaunted, Jeff and Puzzle Girl skip the Y’s and W’s and stick to the basics by giving us five phrases that begin with four-letter "R" words and include one of the vowels, (AEIO or U) and the letter “D”.
(The best of these theme entries are the A phrase for RAIDTHEFRIDGE and the U phrase for RUDEAWAKENING, the other three phrases being acceptable but not notable).
The fill is fun and gettable for all solvers, with only moderate posers like CHAGRIN, BINGE, HUMANE and EMANATE and a clever run of “F” phrases that are (more or less) in the language, such as FRETOVER, FEEDBAG and FLAMEWAR.
An excellent start to another week of puzzling, thanks to Jeff and Angela.
** Think “nth” and choose its vowel.
It's taken several years, but I finally broke the 3-minute barrier with this puzzle. Took me a good 45 seconds after that to figure out the theme, largely because I wasn't sure which answers were theme answers.
alcohol,firearms and tobacco
What was Rex talking about with the question that popped up, " are you sure....? " does this come up when you are ready to check the entire puzzle or every time you enter a wrong letter?
Oh never mind. He said "last square"
For whatever reason, I started at the bottom and worked my way up. Loved the image of riding off into the sunset. I've done that a few times, and it's wonderful... When I got to the top, I had BAG, and had to wait to see if it was FEEDBAG or nosebag. Other than that, smooth sailing throughout.
@jberg: In cycling jargon, what the Tour de France riders use are most definitely ROADBIKEs. Road bikes actually have the narrowest tires and trimmest frames (other than track bikes), because those characteristics provide optimal speed on the road. What you likely ride is called a hybrid, as it incorporates features of both a road bike and a mountain bike: somewhat sturdier frame but more like a road bike's frame geometry, fatter tires, etc.
A touring bike has a heftier frame and thicker tires than a road bike, although it has the same basic frame geometry. That's to accommodate many pounds of gear attached to the bike, since they're intended for multiday journeys.
So, amongst cycling geeks, the answer was spot-on.
Running hubby around to tests today so finished late, but finished quickly as well. I was happy when I saw the constructors names and knew it would be good and it was. I became familiar with flame wars when I visited an early quilting chat room. I think those folks just wanted to fight, not quilt. So I quit going there. All the quilters I know are super nice.
I do like NEWT, BINGE, and EGO all near each other...
Solid puzzle. Never heard of FLAME WAR, and as I had RIDEout, it make me think. Making me think is a good thing!
@acme -- ATEAM and REESE (PeeWee) also have sports connotations...
Wow. This would be the puz to introduce new solvers to the NYT crosswords. Not much in there to shake skittery folks up. ICI next to NDAK, maybe, but that ain't much resistance. Themers are basic and good.
Clues are easy, but not much of the comically easy, moo-cow level variety. Should allow the beginner to make slow, but steady progress.
About ten people names. Most of them pretty well known, altho they might skew slightly toward people with one foot in the rest home. SONJA Henie and WANDA the fish, with NOLANRYAN on the mound, etc. Not bad at all, tho.
Estimated Typical Beginner's Take: That was fun! Put up a fight, but I think I can do this. I'll be back. How come there aren't more U's?
I put my STEW in the ICEBOX to my CHAGRIN so no record time for me.Clean ,colorful (FLAMINGOS in a FLAMEWAR?)Fabulous!
SONJA Henie's tutu!
So easy I didn't notice any theme.
Yes, a skillfully crafted Monday puzzle. CHAGRIN was my favorite entry. I don't think it's completely above criticism, however.
Don't mean to start a FLAME WAR or kill the saccharine buzz generated already, but the central themer, RIDE OFF, strikes me as a 7-letter partial. I bet the constructors looked for something better there.
And I would be remissssss if I overlooked the flock of double POCs, where TABOO/MAZE, HOLD/LEER, HANK/ODD, & GAM/REST all share a final "S". Definitely "helper squares", those.
As my grandfather, a fount of wisdom, used to tell me, "If you can't say something bad about a puzzle, you're not trying hard enough."
Now back to your regularly scheduled love-in.
Briefly tried egbdf, cleff and scale before settling on STAFF. The .13-letter answers came right away and all went smoothly after that. Thank goodness for this straightforward one after suffering through both Saturday and Sunday.
@lms. Is today' picture a toad or frog ( in the road.) ? A bout to be run over by a ROAD BIKE? Or what? Stumped again and am PINK with CHAGRIN., a SCAR where my EGO used to be.
DBriefly tried egbdf, cleff and scale before settling on STAFF. The .13-letter answers came right away and all went smoothly after that. Thank goodness for this straightforward one after suffering through both Saturday and Sunday.
@lms. Is today' picture a toad or frog ( in the road.) ? A bout to be run over by a ROAD BIKE? Or what? Stumped again and am PINK with CHAGRIN., a SCAR where my EGO used to be.
Pretty easy for me but didn't understand the theme till I came here. Also never heard of flame war. Didn't know how to spell Sonja. Just a broken record. What everyone else said. I'm boring.
I know I shall fall from grace but I honestly didn't find this puzzle all that clever or even fun.
In my estimation, there were way too many proper names and as @Anoa Bob mentioned, a ton of ESSESSSS.
The theme felt so tired, over used, and, well, boring.
So, having said that, I liked a lot of the non-theme word. CHAGRIN, always brings a grin. FLAME WAR was great although I thought maybe a "Troll" or two might weigh in since they do drop in often.
Sorry, just not my cuppa.
@Gill I.P.,
U still seem mighty graceful, to me. What the hey. Everyone has their prefs.
14 letter S's in a grid, per se, seems pretty average. Looks like 5 of them are used to not end any words. A few of the S's end words that ain't exactly plurals, like: HANKS, ODDS and LENS. The ending S's do help make the puz a bit more Mondayish, as the beginner can deduce some plural endings from the clues. Probably makes it easier for the constructors to fill the grid with easy vocab, too, of course.
Proper names: I prefer improper names, myself. It might be a cool theme idea sometime for a puz, to totally banish all people names from a grid. Instead, have themers like:
OLDWHATSHERNAME
or
YOUKNOWWHOIMEAN
or
THEMANWITHNONAME
or, of course:
Masked and Anonymous
har.
Favorite (mis)use of an S is on a roadside store in ruralWV, probably an hour E of @LMS in Charleston: DOUGLA'S MARKET.
@ret_chem -- love your roadside sign! Are you a fan of Lynn Truss? Sneak out at night in a balaklava with a can of paint, correcting apostrophes? (or... apostrophe's). That's a new/old avatar you have, yes? I missed the babies first time around -- is the Grand Champion in the picture their daddy or have they grown up and are taking the dogshow circuit by storm?
@chefbea -- did nobody ever answer you? ATF is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [and Explosives]. Along with other highly armed federal agencies (FBI, US Marshals) the ATF was involved in the Ruby Ridge and Waco Massacres. Or... federal peacekeeping actions, if you prefer.
@Ellen S - you know what they say, where there are no cops there are no speed limits.
I see that whatever great words of wisdom I had at 7:30 this morning disappeared into the ether. At least the electrons got recycled. It is days like today when I wonder what @I skip M-W would say.
@Ellen S thanks for the info on ATF
@ Ellen S -
Never heard of Lynn Truss 'til now.
The GCh in my new avatar is a female. Her babies haven't yet done anything much on the show circuit, but they are wonderful, cuddly, dogs, fulof joie de vivre.
Thanks for asking.
ps there are three s's in my captcha.
LAMS!
That's a brand-new (I think) internet abbreviation for "Laughing at MySelf"
I did this puzzle at the beach today. I may have been a bit more distracted than usual, since the only clue/answer I had circled for possible comment was at 10 A. I had entered SHEW, and I knew that just couldn't be right, and yet every cross was perfect -- if you accepted my spelling of 10 D as SHAGRIN! Honestly, I know better -- but I just couldn't see it!
Fine Monday puzzle otherwise!
Speaking of improper names (and "U" ones to boot), today's NY Times featured a prominent article describing how the legal system identifies participants with no known identity in a case or police investigation as:
FNU LNU.
Stands for "First Name Unknown" "Last Name Unknown".
Coming soon to a Saturday puzzle near you!
Wasn't FNU LNU a Burmese Prime Minister?
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 5:43, 6:09, 0.93, 18%, Easy
Top 100 solvers
Mon 3:32, 3:46, 0.94, 18%, Easy
Rock solid? Shale maybe; surely not granite. You've got four partials in there--two of them long! TUGAT, ENDAT, FRETOVER, READINTO. This doesn't bother anybody? I mean, it's a very good grid and all; other than the partials and DSL it's pretty clean fill. Vowel progression themes are somewhat less than exciting to me.
My dearth of chatroom experience left me to fill FLAMEWAR in on crosses, and I'd inadvertently wrote in ICEBOX before correcting to FRIDGE (it just seemed the most natural expression, not that I'm THAT old!), but otherwise no problems. I pretty much wrote letters into the grid without stopping. I happened to notice that the time when I started was exactly on the hour; when I looked at the finish twenty minutes had passed. I just do not understand how anybody can do these in less than 20% of that. Mystifying.
@Diri: you were quite right yesterday: I never noticed the wrong square! Had mAG, which fits as well as RAG, and since the down clue was totally unknown to me I was ready to accept any three letters there. Guess I have to strike "Victory!" and substitute "DNF." :(
I concur that this is an excellent exemplar for would-be constructors aiming to create a Monday-level puzzle. Solid to a fault.
Entries which have been described as partials are simply alternate ways of expressing the clues for those answers, and I see nothing to FRETOVER. So, I guess I'll just RIDEOFF.
capcha: deftuse, as in this puzzle's handling of progressive vowel sounds.
Nothing to FRETOVER but only surprise to me was that our very talented constructors didn't try to include an RY to complete the vowel progression, even as a down entry. It's certainly hinted at in 33D (nolanRYan) but maybe a RYanoneal would have allowed them to RIDEOFF into the sunset in glory.
Overall a fun Monday puzzle easy enough to SWAT away any remnants of a weekend BINGE.
Enjoyed this one, but poor spelling did me in, again. I knew that sHEW couldn't be a word, but couldn't figure out what was wrong. However, it did give me me a smiley memory of Ed Sullivan introducing his "really big shew", so not every mistake is a total loss. Now to remember CHAGRIN with a C.
I think this was just a little more Tuesday tough than a Monday. Enjoyed it, so thanks to Jeff and Angela.
Had SONyA before SONJA, which made "Alters" ADyUST. Well, isn't that the way they pronounce it with SONJA's Norwegian accent?
Been playing golf my whole life and am CHAGRINed that I've never had a HOLEINONE. Must be my on course BEERS.
Capcha: snivel. Which is exactly what I'm doing. Aceless.
Go Hawks.
@SIS Not bragging here, but I've had 2 holes-in-one. The first came when I was 13, and I had to wait 52 years for the second, just last year at Desert Canyon, a course you may know. So, the message is to just keep swinging. It'll happen.
Agree on the "Go Hawks".
@rainforest, I've played Desert Canyon several times. The long (660 yards?) par five is one of my favorite holes. I birdied it once with a driver, driver, 3-metal to the green and sunk about a ten-footer.
Good for you as a two-time acer! I've come really close several times, but no cigar yet. A woman friend at our club has six!
Really enjoyed (for about the sixth time) Beautiful British Columbia's Desolation Sound. There is no where on earth like it.
A fun Monday puzzle with shout-outs to my younger son, ALEX, and our cat-who-thinks-he's-a-dog, THOR, done while enjoying a couple of BEERS (Coors, no less) on the pool-deck. Why would I complain?
@DMG - love your "smiley memory" of Ed Sullivan.
What everyone has been saying, beautiful puzzle. Much too elegant to rush through. How can you savor the experience in only 3minutes?
@DMG, The tennis this weekend was great, especially the Nadal/Fed match, and the Isner/Nadal Championship. I had daytime obligations and ended up watching at midnight and later, while suffering with the Sat. puz.
@SIS and @rain forest - 40-10 Yeah!
Several months ago @Tita tipped us off that you can substitute most any number for that part of the captcha, and that she uses '42'. My actual captcha is:
42 thctsag
@DMGrandma: "Shew" is a word, although nobody uses it anymore to my knowledge, and my use of it above has been flagged as a misspelling! It's a variant or archaic (depending on the dictionary) form of "show" (the verb -- conjugated shew, shewn, shewing). I've only ever seen it in Anthony Trollope's novels... I think it even occurs in a chapter title in "He Knew He Was Right." Now, if I could only find my copy of that book....
It definitely doesn't work in the context of 10A, though.
I loved the superhero team trifecta. First XMEN, then THOR, and finally a hidden one: FLAME WAR is old USENET terminology derived from people writing "flame on" to let readers know that they're about to not mince words.
That in turn came from the Human Torch's catchphrase in the Fantastic Four comics.
I guess that simultaneously dated and pigeonholed me ...
@strayling - this blog needs a "like" button for comments like that. FLAMEWAR was new to me and I had no idea it originated in the comics. But yes, you are dated and pigeonholed.
@AquilaAquilegia, you're absolutely correct about the variant spelling "shew" as they used it in our Grade X Trigonometry books which, I guess, were printed in the UK.
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