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Constructor: Chris A. McGlothin
Relative difficulty: HARD
THEME: Philately
Word of the Day: 45A PARDO (Longtime late-night announcer) —
Dominick George "Don" Pardo (born February 22, 1918) is an American radio and television Saturday Night Live.[1]announcer. He is known as the voice of the long-running late night sketch comedy show.
Pardo is noted for his long association with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as The Price Is Right, Jeopardy!, and NBC Nightly News.[2] He has been the announcer of Saturday Night Live for all but one of its seasons. He continues to provide voiceover services during the program's opening montage, several years after his official retirement from NBC. [from wikipedia]
• • •
Hello, Rexworld. This is treedweller, filling in for Rex. Mostly filling, anyway. This was one of those Saturdays when my weak areas were exposed and it took a handful of googles to get the whole grid. I eventually used APBS (48D They're issued to cruisers, briefly) to get PUTS THE KIBOSH ON (56A Vetoes), and the whole bottom section soon after, but lack of familiarity with the Pulitzer winners of my youth left me stranded up top and sent me to the interwebs. 
I once collected stamps, but my hazy memory of that time only gave me a lot of bad guesses when it came to the roughly seventeen postage-related clues. And a confident mistake at "odds" for BETS (29A They're often taken on horses) left me struggling to cadge some sleep (instead of CAUGHT A FEW WINKS @ 8D Grabbed some sack time).But once I got a little traction, the grid steadily filled up and, as with many late-week puzzles, it mostly seems natural and obvious in retrospect. Totally fair for a Saturday, anyway.
Bullets:
- 22D Hiawatha's grandmother in "The Song of Hiawatha" NOKOMIS — Wiki informs me The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem, in trochaic tetrameter, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, featuring an Indian hero. It was a Noko-miss for me.
- 31A ". . . we'll ___ a cup o' kindness . . .": Burns TAK — This was obviously some kind of elision. I had no idea. Turns out, it's from Auld Lang Syne, a song I know about eleven words to — including the three in the title, but not including TAK'.
- 26D Lab growth need DOG FOOD — I totally fell for the feint and was stumped when neither agar-agar, petri dish, nor medium would fit.
- 30D Father of 38-Across/38A Son of 30-Down ARES/EROS — I started out thinking biblically, since it seemed the most likely source of four-letter names, and spent a lot of time trying to make Amos and Enos work before trying the Greeks.
- 39A " ___ wise guy, eh?" SOA — This made me CRINGE (33A Quail) a bit. Tried it for a while as "Oh, a" before abandoning it and getting it from crosses later.
Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
I seem to be in first with comment. This is my second puzzle on ipad app, which is surprisingly handier than pen on newsprint. "By the wigwam of Nokomis by the shining deepsea water by the shores of Gitchee Goomie" or something like that sings in my head from my infancy. PUTSTHEKIBOSHON was the easiest fifteener to me, except that I had to go back and change my a to an i when "DAI" didn't seem like a year number. Entertaining and not as difficult as I thought it would be when it first opened up.
ReplyDeleteEasy-medium for me again only because I struggled with the top 3 stack. Which is embarrassing because I've read the book. I kept thinking fiction, plus I forgot that it won the Pulitzer. Having skirtS for EVADES and map for GPS didn't help. The rest went with out much resistance. Only other erasure was Plane for PILOT.
ReplyDeleteYa think Chris might collect stamps?
I have crosswords to thank for ZORA and AHN.
I have living in San Diego to thank for LA MESA. Now I know how Minnesota folk (you know who you are) feel when EDINA turns up.
The crossing 15s were GREAT as were about half of the two 3 stacks. But, I gotta like any puzzle with GODEL, ESCHER, and BACH in it. Nice one Chris and thanks treedweller!
Hey, Tree Dweller, miss you. I'm still using Liquid Paper. Makes my puzzle nice and tidy. Don't yell at me.
ReplyDeleteWe did so well on this one except for the 1A, which nearly brought me to my knees. GODEL ESCHER BACH. What the (you know what)? Every cross had to come into play. Other than that, most enjoyable.
Hard because of the top stack, Godelescherbach was the biggest question mark I've ever had in a puzzle. I'll have to google.
ReplyDeleteEnded up with a mistake: air at 48A (like an oxygen tank) and Laresa.
Good Saturday. Hi, Treedweller, sorry you didn't make it to Lolla either.
A nit: just googled the three, and Goedel's name has an umlaut. That makes 1A 16 letters long.
ReplyDeleteThat isn't Don Pardo in the photo, but Don Novello, who played Father Guido Sarducci on SNL.
ReplyDeleteOne wrong square :(. BiTS for BETS on horses even tho PiRF couldn't be right. Damn!
ReplyDeletePAgE for PANE didn't help...
Didn't know 1A, big gap in my knowledge...but knew enough French, Spanish, German and Greek to get DES, SES, TETE, OROS, ZWEI, and ETA.
@jae.
We Minnesotans not only love EDINA, we love Lake NOKOMIS!
Luckily we had DAMASKS earlier in the week.
The top stacks mirror the bottom, so he must have been working on them simultaneously.
Look how gPS/oPS, AnN/AhN, ccC/soC, heE/enE plus both ending with STANCE (subSTANCE/aSsiSTANCE)
I think Chris A. McGlothin unintentionally showed us the rough drafts of the puzzle in the finished work.
This was a dichotomy of gimmes and nopes (as in, "Ya know that?" "Nope.") Thankfully, the former outweighed the latter, making this a medium for me. Its challenges weren't clever, even once revealed. Just, "Okay, so grandma is NOKOMIS, and his name is STEFANO...Ah! Potsdam." BFD.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of GODEL ESCHER BACH. aVoidS, HUBRIS, EDSEL, ANN & tEE, however, catapulted me through PRIVATE AUDIENCE and SUM AND SUBSTANCE (a phrase we litigators use, unfortunately, almost daily). Worked 1A off of the 15s beneath it and the middle and bottom then fell in workmanlike, if not "quick" fashion.
The center-crossing 15s were nice. The triple stack along the bottom were horizontally solid, I thought, although the OPS/ETA/DII/AHN/SOC/ENE fill necessary to permit them is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty bad.
Favorite clue/answer: Lab growth need (no question mark necessary)/DOG FOOD. That's good.
Re-works: EVADES from aVoidS; CCC from tva; HEE from tEE; ZWEI from drEI. 13:23. Meh.
Will someone, please, I'm beggin' ya, legislate the ban of foreign language words in English language crossword puzzles? It's like those French have a different word for EVERYTHING!!
Oh, and crap like First year of the Liang Dynasty/DII? Stop it. Just stop it.
Before heading off to the other Manhattan for the tourney: thought spearfishing need was air so wound up with Laresa for the San Diego suburb.
ReplyDeleteOK, so now I want to read Gobels, Escher, Bach. Couldn't finish the puzzle, but in the end I like all the long answers. Couldn't imagine that Kan State was wrong, though (as I slap myself).
ReplyDeleteYes, HARD!
ReplyDeleteTook for-absolute-ever to get any momentum, but finally finished except for SUp AND SUBSTANCE crossing DIp.
ReplyDeleteWriteover: scaNT >>> A HINT
I have the Skidmore College Dean of Freshmen to thank for having assigned me a roommate from EDINA, so no problem there. And my precocious little brother spent a summer vacation carrying GODEL ESCHER BACH everywhere he went (op-arty birds on the cover) though it took a slew of crosses before I connected the title with the clue.
"By the shores of Gitchi Gumi, by the shining deep sea waters stood the wigwam of Nokomis, daughter of the moon, Nokomis" -- closest I could get to the actual quote -- I had to memorize the first lines of "Hiawatha" as a school girl lo these many moons ago. I read "Godel, Escher, Bach" when it first came out. Douglas Hofstadter, late 1970's. It's a fascinating book -- I am smart enough to appreciate the intricate thinking, but not smart enough to understand it all. I highly recommend it. I'm delighted to discover Zora Neale Hurston's first name in a 2013 NY Times crossword puzzle -- a major writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Quite a literate puzzle today. Nothing to put the kibosh on. Enjoyable -- and way difficult!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous is right. That is not Don Pardo in the photo!
ReplyDeleteVery challenging for me, but eventually doable. I love Saturdays like this. (I must, or why would I spend almost two hours wrestling with a puzzle?) I agonized over the NW. Never read the book and never heard of GOxEL. I finally tried SUM AND , , , and saw that DIM was a kind of turn down (lights). Like August West, I found this was a mixture of aha and woe. SPOKE OFF THE CUFF and PUTS THE KIBOSH ON came with only a few crosses; the other 15s, not so much. Finished (no Googles for me until afterwards -- I'd rather fail).
ReplyDeleteMy brother went to K State. No one ever went to Kansas St.
ReplyDeletefor 1A I wrote in Angels in America -- it was a three parter, it won the prize, it has 15 letters ...
ReplyDeleteNice to see Don Novello in the photo. Father Guido Sarducci was the very funny character he played often on Saturday Night Live. Also he had two books of letters that he wrote to celebrities -- with responses.
Craig
GREAT puzzle. Got underway at POTSDAM and by fits and starts got it all. Loved the lab and spearfishing clues. Acquainted with Douglas Hofstadter so was able to get !A from BA_H. A little annoyed about the lack of umlaut on GODEL, but I should be used to it by now with "uber" all over the place ("uberall").
ReplyDeleteAlmost finished...had to cheat by revealing
ReplyDeleteThought PILOn, as in when you race, they are placed around the curves, around which one banks...too bad that word is PyLOn...
Where's the schwa police - it is definitely KaBOSH!
Nice to learn (be reminded? Sorry, Prof. Casson) that the god of love is the son of the god of war...
I was not wild about the totally arbitrary fill, like LAMESA, DII...
@August West - funny reference to Steve Martin's classic plaint, but I don't agree with you on that point...I would have been nowhere in today's puzzle without every single one of those foreign words...
à chacun son gout...
Is today Lollapuzzolah??? So sorry to be missing it - a fabulous event. Good luck to everyone there.
Aargh! Never thought of ARES/EROS, never heard of P.J. CHOI, so finished with AREn/Ewen (TwEY seemed as good as TWEY). Also the AIr/LAnESA error.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's legit to link Chinese dynasties to Roman numerals; otherwise I liked it fine. GÖDEL, ESCHER, BACH is probably responsible for the current popularity of "meta" as a synonym for "self-referential" or better, "recursive."
@Tita, where I come from we stress the i in KIBOSH, be schwa there.
Too long thought 1A was a play on the name Gustav Aschenbach (of Death in Venice) despite having solid ESCHERBACH. Needed all crosses.
ReplyDeleteAlso vacillated between AIr/AIM- DIp/DIM and I'll add TAe/TAK. That K being my final fill.
So I'd rate this puzzle Gitche Gumee.. letters rising like pixils in molasses.
100 bits= zeroes? Could someone explain 41 down?
ReplyDeleteAlso, seventeen stamp related clues? I saw maybe four. Could someone enumerate?
Hard is right! Had to run the alphabet a couple of times. Best of luck to our comrades! They are all winners - no Lollapalosers!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I've been told that if you look up anything, absolutely anything, you're "cheating." Glad to see somebody who subs for Rex admits he's human. I'm getting better at Saturday's. Have worked several now without a hitch -- and without looking anything up!
ReplyDeleteCarole, 100 is made up of three bits, one 1 and two zeroes.
ReplyDeleteHard indeed. I DNF as the DOGFOOD and LAMESA clues confounded me. Looking for science lab answers. But I like a struggle when the results are excellent so it was a good morning.
ReplyDelete@Susan McConnell - (Carola, not Carole, but...) Thank you - I'd wondered, too, and forgot to ask.
ReplyDelete@jberg - ARE_ x ER_ _ was my last quandry. A Norskie here, so first thought was ERic the Red and his father... A REd? Unlikely. Ran the alphabet. Happy when I got to S!
LOL @jae, I grew up in EDINA and last lived in San Diego so LAMESA was a gimme. @Arapaho Cringe Moss, yes! NOKOMIS a gimme, too!
ReplyDeleteHaving no idea about GODELESCHERBACH and not speaking French I ended up with one wrong square at sES. I couldn't decide between the correct letter S and chose the incorrect M for mES. So close but no cigar.
Thanks, Treedweller ... I agree with you, this was HARD!
Thanks, Chris A. McGlothlin for a true Saturday challenge.
Finished but for one answer, which for me indicates an easy Saturday. Missed NOKOMIS -- had pages for PANES and tae for TAK. Other than that, a lovely morning -- enjoyable, clever cluing!
ReplyDeleteI knew the book for 1-across but the title was spelled Goedel, Escher, Bach. This threw me for quite awhile. It deservedly won the Pulitzer and is worth reading. Being older this was easier for me... I knew "Nokomis" and Zora Neale Hurston and Don Pardo, had studied German so knew zwei. My only mistake was first "eupohoric" then "ecstatic" for "beatific".
ReplyDelete@jberg maybe on to something. GODEL, ESCHER and BACH is about recursion which is a tough concept to grasp. Andrew Plotkin once quipped "If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is."
ReplyDeleteAnd @Carole -- I suspect treedweller was kidding about the stamp related clues as well a the pic of Novello. That sort of stuff is more or less a trademark of this blog.
Wanted to boast about NOKOMIS rising like "Pixels in molasses" (lol, @Questinia...
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks @Treedweller for a great writeup, especially describing the meter of that poem...sounds like something I might have swimming in an aquarium...
PUT THE KIBOSH ON was a favorite phrase of my late father, who died some years ago - yesterday would have been his 104th birthday.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a long I, with stress on the I where we come from (Brooklyn).
Worked my way up from bottom to top w/ GODEL ESCHER BACH the last to fall...am a v. big fan of Douglas Hofstadter and his faith in intricate reasoning as a source of meaning, so my dumbness in coming up w/ his title was v. pleasant.
ReplyDeleteAlso v. pleasant was finishing this one eight minutes or so faster than my pace car and better tushnet.
Anything tarnished about my relative success this morning? Well...I do have a tiny bit of a guilty conscience about using my CrossWorlder's -ESE awareness to get a toehold at the very beginning w/ ORU, EDSEL, and ARAPAHO. But guilt about unfairness to RealWorlders is not all that consuming an emotion for insect-robot villains like MR...at least not when it's a puzzle that solves smoothly as this one did.
New stuff I didn't know I knew, but ended up bein gimmes...
ReplyDeleteCHOI (had the H)
NOKOMIS (had the N and K)
DACHA (had the D)
RITA (had the -ITA)
LAMESA (had the S)
TAK (had nothin)
Still, puz was overall, hard at my house, too. Told yah. UNC-W. Uncle.
fave weeject: SOA.
SunPuz will be big. M&Ark my words.
Ms. Shmurak question reminds me of the old joke:
ReplyDeleteThere are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
And it's not an insult, it's a JOKE!
This was a lovely Saturday effort. Took me two hours of concentration. What a lovely time, what a waste. I feel guilty but it tastes good.
Mr. McGlothlin gets my vote.
Very embarrassing! I'm even listed in acknowledgements of GEB, but struggled a long time w/ top three lines. Glad in a way that I managed almost to forget Ann Romney's name so soon, but it would have helped.
ReplyDeleteBut did finish finally, google-free. Was stupidly snookered by Snicker clue, would say heh was more like right answer than hee once finally saw it.
Do love a challenging Sat, so thanks Mr. McG
p.s.
ReplyDelete@Melodious: Have U wurked the M&A Two Bits puz? Sounds like U'd be a fit for it. See comments section, two or three months ago.
Things we know about today's constructor, based on puz entries and partial DNA evidence...
* collects stamps
* speaks French
* partial to abbrs.
* is actually James Coburn in disguise (really... check out his xwordinfo pic)
* lives in a tree (whoops nope, that's the excellent write-up sub-dude)
* his mere byline causes 4-Oh to leave town
* has no more idea what SUMANDSUBSTANCE and Liang dynasty means than M&A does
* will pull wings off flies, if pushed
* will use SOA in a puz, if pushed
* spends too much time in airports
yep. Off to check out the weekend parties at UNC-W...
Hi Mr. Rex and thank you for your riveting entries and comments on the crosswords that I look forward to each day upon awakening. I do my puzzles with a black BIC ballpoint mostly because I like the feeling of the pen on the newspaper as I etch the letters in the squares. Today (Saturday) I had to "write over" ten squares, not bad, huh? P.S.: I'll be 74 in a few months, God willing (and if he exists).
ReplyDelete@m&a -- great post!
ReplyDeleteThis was tough for me; finally had to Google. But I loved the challenge and the question marked clues (as well as the DOGFOOD clue -- classic!) Impressed that the 15s crossing at the middle. Lots of grid gruel, surely the only way to make this puzzle work.
Hard. Middle resulted in DNF. Others may have noted already, but that is Don Novello, Father Guido Sarduci, in the picture.
ReplyDeleteHard. Ran up the flag after two hours.
I didn't find this hard except for NOKOMIS, who I had never heard of, crossing PANES which could just as easily have been PAGES (in a stamp album, for instance). Otherwise, not a bad piece of work.
ReplyDeleteGahhhhh! I had 17-Across down as SAPANDSUBSTANCE, which makes 2-Down (Sch. founded by a Pentacostal preacher) as ORA (which, Google tells me, happens to be a religious school!), and 3-Down (Turn down) as DIP. This made for some frantic head-scratching at puzzle's end. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteThis 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.
ReplyDeleteAll solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Mon 6:50, 6:09, 1.11, 87%, Challenging
Tue 7:23, 8:13, 0.90, 19%, Easy
Wed 8:57, 9:43, 0.92, 32%, Easy-Medium
Thu 20:27, 16:30, 1.27, 86%, Challenging
Fri 15:55, 18:52, 0.84, 24%, Easy-Medium
Sat 30:42, 25:40, 1.20, 89%, Challenging
Top 100 solvers
Mon 4:15, 3:47, 1.13, 89%, Challenging
Tue 4:42, 4:57, 0.95, 30%, Easy-Medium
Wed 5:24, 5:35, 0.97, 42%, Medium
Thu 11:42, 9:30, 1.41, 90%, Challenging
Fri 8:48, 11:04, 0.80, 19%, Easy
Sat 20:02, 15:51, 1.26, 89%, Challenging
Yay! Finished a Saturday after Googling the 1980 Pulitzer Prize winner. Anybody know that one off the top? Well, congratulations if you did. Ther rest I got without having to resort to ASSISTANCE, STATE or otherwise. However, other than being able to fit seven 15-letter answers into the grid, I can't see how the puzzle got published what with answers such as CCC, HEE, ETD, OPS, SOA [so a wise guy?], PERF, SES [a female french pronoun?], and INDS so predominant. PANES and BOOK and perhaps PHIL and PERF did suggest a theme but little else supported it. I certainly admire anybody who gets a puzzle accepted, but this one was a bit of a stretch even though I'm pleased to have completed it. Maybe I shouldn't complain, but I'm a bit hacked off on behalf of those who have received rejections referring the the NYT "rules".
ReplyDeleteA pisser,but doable.
ReplyDeleteRidiculously hard for me, personally. I usually only do crosswords on weekdays because I pick up a paper on the way to work, but decided to actually subscribe today. Are all Saturday puzzles this tough?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, there were some good clues here and some really, really bad ones.
-Loved the clues for DOGFOOD and ONESECONDPLEASE. Could not wrap my head around the "Vehicular bomb?" clue until I had --SEL. That's a pretty clever way to clue such a commonly used crossword answer.
-Hated the clue for OPS. Short for opportunities, I'm guessing? That's pretty awful. I was sure it was IFS and refused to erase it, so that immediately threw me off on the two 15-letters at 49-A and 56-A. Also had to CRINGE at the clue for SOA, it was simply too OFF THE CUFF.
-Crossing TAK with NOKOMIS was just plain cruel, especially when using such an obscure (to me, anyway) clue for POTSDAM.
Well that's it for me.
I am duly and truly humbled - I'll take another crack at it tomorrow when WPP can offer some assistance.
ReplyDeleteThat's Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci on SNL).
ReplyDeleteMy head is still spinning from the puzzles at LP6, but I came home to my paper NY Times and did this puzzle, enjoying the challenge. Finished with just one write-over, 30 A, Happening, had EVENT before AFOOT.
ReplyDelete(PS - Rex won a trophy!)
Hey, wait a minute. I think I mixed up my SNL alums. Sorry for any confusion. Congrats to all lollapuzzoola expats, and thanks to those who enjoyed the write up.
ReplyDeleteA fresh look on Sunday, together with a few short answers penned in by WPP overnight, enabled me to reduce the grid to two blank squares in 1a (my French is rusty and know nothing about romance novelist's awards) and a couple of wrong squares elsewhere. I'm willing to declare victory and move on to the Sunday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteGotta ask again, because the explanation from Susan did not filter through my puzzled brain: Why is "100 bits" a clue for ZEROES?
ReplyDeleteBTW, I know full well what bits and bytes are, but the clue and the answer simply do not compute.
ReplyDelete@Stephen - "Bits" as used here means "pieces", so the pieces of the number 100 are its digits, 2 of which are "0".
ReplyDeleteWow, I was off the grid, so to speak, on Saturday, and so I just got to this yesterday.
ReplyDeleteWhat a struggle -- almost 90 minutes, but I finally slew it. Ares and Eros were the very last ones.
A great challenge. "Bits of 100" really had me as did most of the long ones.
gpo
Strange...GODELESCHERBACH was just recently mentioned in a clue; now here today it's the leadoff hitter. Do constructors get their ideas from doing other puzzles? Hey, why not. BTW, its recent mention was the ONLY way I could get it. Worked from the bottom up.
ReplyDeleteOne reason the top was so hard was a single-letter mistake in a clue: "Dangerous things to weave on." I resisted LANES for a long time, because you drive ON the highway--but you drive IN lanes. You do NOT drive ON them. That's gonna be a five-yarder for using a bad preposition to end a clue with.
This has to be a milestone for me: I out-solved our lead blogger! OK, he's a sub, but still. Yes, I was somehow able to get it all sans benefit of lookups. I think I was just lucky. Threw down some of those entries on a wing and a prayer, and they worked out.
Don't try this at home.
@spacecraft - You raise an interesting point. If you drive IN a lane, that is, within the lines designating the lane, you may be a bit unsteady but I doubt that you would be charged with WEAVING. However, if your line of travel crosses from one lane to another and back again quickly, you might be considered to be WEAVING -- ON the lanes.
ReplyDeleteHaven't gotten to today's puzzle, or yesterday's for that matter. Been a little bit, er, distracted. In fact yesterday's paper wasn't delivered until today. Supposed to be more rain tonight and tomorrow after getting a respite yesterday. We have been luckier than most people; only lots of muck from a drain outside our garage that keeps backing up. Our garage flooded early on, but we got that fixed. So many people with flooded basements ... or worse. National Guard choppers periodically going overhead, evacuating people from nearby areas that are totally cut off due to washed out roads, lack of power and potable water. It's been surreal.
ReplyDelete1A was a gimme, so I had a great start to the puzzle. Much of this was baffling at first, especially in the East where I had 9 write-vers. Putting ZWEI in 42A instead of 41A didn't help. The bottom was simply a case of get a few downs, change APPLE to ATARI, intuit a few letters for the 15 stacks, and voila, complete but messy looking puzzle. Didn't understand ZEROES for a long time after I finished, but I now get it. Never heard of AHN.
ReplyDelete@Cary in Boulder - my thoughts are with you and all of those affected by the flooding in your area. I hope the forthcoming additional rain doesn't make an already tragic situation even worse - stay safe.
ReplyDelete