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"Coffee Cantata" composer / SUN 8-10-14 / Baseball's Alvarez / ___ prosequi / French "Inc." / City north of Seattle
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski
Relative difficulty: Pretty Easy
THEME: Number-One Friends — Theme answers are familiar phrases, the first words of which are all names of White House dogs.
Hi, everybody. It's PuzzleGirl again and this write-up is going to be super super short. As you probably know, today was a big day. Lollapuzzoola 7! The puzzles were great this year and the day really couldn't have been any more fun. Brian and Patrick have done such a great job with this tournament! Congratulations to the big winners, Jon Delfin (Express Division) and Patti Varol (Local Division). Lots of other trophies and prizes too. Seriously, what other tournament rewards people for cheating (Jonah Wolf), worst handwriting (Joon Pahk), and singing a cheesy 1980s novelty song (Adesina Koiki)? Too much fun!
So let's do a quick recap of this puzzle. Of course, the first thing you want to do with a Liz Gorski puzzle is take a look at the grid and see what awesome thing she has done with it. I thought this one was a teddy bear, but turns out it's a dog, which is also pretty cool.
Theme answers:
- 24A: *What to call a female ambassador [the Johnsons] (HER EXCELLENCY)
- 116A: *Pairing up for safety [the Clintons] (BUDDY SYSTEM)
- 3D: *Cleaning supply [the Bushes 43]
- 15D: *"My Fair Lady" co-star [the Reagans] (REX HARRISON)
- 67D: *Singer with the 1964 #2 hit "My Boy Lollipop" [the Bushes 41] (MILLIE SMALL)
- 70D: *Egg order [the Obamas] (SUNNY SIDE UP)
- 62A: What the answer to each of the six starred clues starts with (WHITE HOUSE DOG)
Other than that, I think I'll just say that I noticed some fun cluing and a bit of Scrabbliness. I don't understand 68-Across at all: Max Peel, for example: Abbr. (ANAG). But I'm sure I'll feel stupid when you explain it to me. Favorite entries for me include TEST RIDES (50A: Motorcycle demos, e.g.) and CYCLOPS (One with an eye for a storyteller?) and favorite clues are probably 100A: What a packing person may pack (PISTOL) and 89A: Modern know-it-all? (SIRI).
And with that, I'm afraid I must leave you. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.
Love, PuzzleGirl
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104 comments:
MAXPEEL is an anagram of, and hence "for" EXAMPLE.
Unlike PG's experience this was slightly tougher than medium for me with the west side tougher than the east. As PG pointed out, SW corner could be a problem. NEWELL and RAMA were WOEs (@leap, yes What On Earth as opposed the alternative...) and MILLIE SMALL and MARL are not exactly gimmes.
Cute doggie faced grid, fun theme, a bit of crunch. Liked it.
No fun at all. With the exception of 1A and 68A, the clues were all pretty bland. Six White House dogs? Big deal.
Is it my imagination or are the black squares shaped like a dog face? Did I miss that comment?
Agree with @mathguy. Very bland. The SW did me in and was the only real difficulty. I felt this was not up to LG's usual standard.
@dm300 PG said that in the write up.
Played easy for me except the OEO/DIEU cross. Misread the deli meat clue and wanted ON- something, rye or toast or anything. Finally got ONELB and finished that corner. TESTbIkES before RIDES and MALtO before MALLO. Never heard of a PITSAW.
Any puzzle that has NADIR in it gets thumbs up from me. For some reason, I just really like that word. Thx for the write up @PG.
I thought this had a nearly useless theme (who knows White House dog names? Okay, SPOT and REX were gettable as stereotypical dog names) but the puzzle was enjoyable, nonetheless.
I liked the clues for PROM, EMBOSS, OFFS, ORNATE, EGOTRIP, and ANAG, though I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't get the clues for ANAG and ONELB even after I'd filled them in from the crosses. Had to google and ponder those two (followed by forehead slaps).
I didn't like RAMA crossing MEARA (too many ways I could spell the latter, even though i know of her). Though, to be fair, RAMA is vaguely familiar from Ram and Rama in India so it's not a complete Natick.
onelb = one pound
ANAG still a mystery
Just learned from Bill Butler's Web NYTIMES SOLUTIONS
Max Peel, for example. Is an ANAGRAM
EXAMPLE CAN BE ANAGRAMMED INTO MAX PEEL
abbr, =. ANAG
Thanks for the puzzle, Liz Gorski, and the pithy writeup, PuzzleGirl.
... and here I had been thinking that MAX_PEEL was A_NAG from "The Avengers" ;-)
... and somewhere, legendary New Yorker cartoonist (and crossword enthusiast) ROZ Chast is bemoaning being bypassed for a fictional TV character.
.
Hi all! My wife and I both live in Paris and always do the Sunday puzzle (which we get in the International NYT weekend edition) on Saturdays, and on paper. When one of us is travelling we share answers by e-mail or WhatsAp, which can lead to some funny exchanges when we're are working on it fast and furiously. Her specialty is literature, 1960s and 1970s sports figures, ice skating, modern films, and food; mine is 1950s and 1960s television, politics, geography and science, bad puns, and rock music.
Having moved to Europe in the early 1980s, we're pretty abysmal on U.S. television since then, and (like many people here, it seems) modern pop and rap music and musicians. On the other hand, answers requiring some knowledge of French, German or Italian are gimmies.
Today we were both here, as well as our 20-year-old son, who is attending university in the 'States. He doesn't really understand the cluing of the puzzle, but is a great resource for answers requiring a knowledge of modern American life. And he has a girfriend from New Jersey who knew what kind of candy has a goey centre ... er, center.
All that to say that we enjoyed this puzzle for the most part. We had completely missed the dog muzzle staring us in the face. But after we completed the grid we recalled that this time in August is called the "Dog Days", and appreciated the canine answers such as "ARF", "CLAW" and "BOW-WOW" -- even if they are a bit dog-eared. So, congrats to Gorski & Shortz.
The SW corner was also where we ended up last. Required MALLO to break things open. Otherwise, too many propper names MASSed in one place.
Favorite answers: TORI, ORTS, NADIR, OBVIATES, SIRI, MARL. But who says "see for" to mean "consider necessary"?
Would someone please explain 1a Counts back? = ess?
@anonymous 4:23 AM
It's "Count back?" , ess as in countESS
btw, loved yesterday's, finished in record time for me.
got KFC right away, zipped on from there, even though much to-ing and fro-ing and doubts along the way. I agree looked impossible, then wasn't., and that's the best.
Many years ago knew first editor of Journal of Irreproducible Results
More on Saturday's
I knew Belushi was Albanian in origin. Someone yesterday thought he had to be Italian, but "shi" is unpronounceable in Italian — or Romanian for that matter
Can someone explain Bushes 43 in the 3 Down clue and Bushes 41 in the 67 Down clue? What do 43 an 41 refer to?
To Anonymous at 5:17 AM. To distinguish George H.W. Bush from his son George W. Bush, they are commonly referred to by which number President they were, in numerical sequence starting with George Washington, and counting Grover Cleveland twice for his two non-consecutive terms.
To all, Hayley Gold has a wonderful comic about this puzzle, found at: http://acrossanddown.net/
It's "see fit" not "see for"
@Americans in Paris: I believe the answer is SEE FIT. I still don't think that 'Consider necessary' is a great clue. I think SEE FIT means something more "deign to do".
@Anonymous: Since there were two Bush presidents close together, people sometime distinguish them by their terms. 41 and 41, or by their middle intials, H.W. and W (or "Dubya" for short)
@Mark, 4 minutes to read and post, I'm impressed!
@George, thanks for the extra presents! The ROZ Chast had me laughing, but the sound quality wasn't great, so will have to relisten, to pick up what I missed.
The Across & Down was pure Gold.
Tacit and terse...well done
I saw the dog as soon as I printed it out and confirmed the picture with the title. Classic Gorski – so clever and cute!
The southwest was hard for me, too, and I guessed wrong on the song; I had "Millie Smile" and hence "mare" and "rami."
@Americans in Paris pointed out the icing on the cake – the symmetrical BOW WOW right there at the dog's whiskers –huge smile inducer. And also the top ARF. (And also the pooper SCOOPER to clean up all the stinky STUF.)
I really like the expression DRINK IN. Had DRINK "up" first, but DRINK IN is much better.
I didn't know some of the dog names, either, but they were all easily figured out with the fair crosses. Hey – she didn't go way back in history to choose names of, say, Tyler and Hayes. I thought the theme was tight and well done, and the grid picture is SPOT on.
Loved it, Liz! I'll remember this one for a long time!
SW was the last to fall. I was fast-forwarding the surveillance video of my solve and as I was looking at the sad wanderings in the SW my wife walked in with an example usage sentence from a French dictionary which read
Il a toujours du mal à finir les dernières cases de ses grilles de mots croisés
He always has trouble filling in the final squares on his crossword grid.
Enjoyable, easy little doggie puzzle with lots of extra theme-related treats. I thought it was a bear at first, too, Puzzle Girl. But it turned out to be a faithful pooch. Fun!
Hand up for getting snagged in SW.
Sometimes a good solve has NOBELS and whistles. This Gorski had BELS and whistles, though the latter may be pitched too high for some humans to hear.
@MolyShu and other NADIR fans, that's probably on account of r.alph NADIR. Others may like GERMane Greer, ORNATE Silver. Me, myself, am partial to WAIFS and 'naifs'.
Warm-fuzzy grid art, a well-crafted First DOG theme and the usual Gorski-quality cluing OBVIATE any grousing about ASIF/ASOF or SNUBxSNOB. Moreover, there's a fine ending with a SERAPEtitious nod to ACME.
Bonus sub-theme: Closer examination reveals the grid to LORDED with geological references. Besides MARL (of MARLborough, I assume), there are mASIF, ALTAplano and PERMafrost, as well as Mt. EVERETT, ANNApurna and the MATTSterhorn, where one finds EDELWEISS and other ZEROEphyteS. I'm no expert in this field, so there may be other examples.
SAFARI didn't know an ERGOMETER was a thing.
Random droppings:
So. MILLIE has a MALL?
MOANa Lisa, MOANa Loa, MOANa Kea
Is ESTABLISH anything like ESTABLoid?
CUEBID'S Arrow? [not a bridge player, over here]
ANOTCHka was much better than the remake, "Silk Stockings". Except for Cyd Charisse legs.
If I bought deli ONELB, I usually only ATEOZ.
We have PITSAW. Where's CATO?
For Beaudelaire's oeuvre, I thought Verlaine first.
Didn't they REHANG Rasputin? And reshoot, repoison and redrown him too?
One very overdue admission: In freshman year English, we had to write a paper on the Metaphysical Poets. To a disgraceful extent, I Donne modeled my essay on the Preface of one particular book. Shameful as that was, it let me quickly figure out MDCC as the year Dryden died.
That's all she wrote.
Big jaw, round face, beady eyes and perked-up ears: it's a pit bull! I like grid art. This week we had three fishies and a dog. I'd like to see a spider monkey and a chameleon. Or a cat and a rooster.
The multitude of obscurities in the SW sank my titanic EGOTRIP. I had ANGIE Dickinson sitting there all by her lonesome, with only OREL Hershiser looking up her skirt from a few blocks down, for a long time. ANNE MEARA was a total guess, I don't even remember her in Rhoda. I didn't think Biggie SMALLs was around in 1964. MARL, MELLO, NEWELL? I take your word for it, Liz.
The rest of the grid filled without much resistance. I liked the long non-theme entries TOMATO sAucE, EDELWEISS (Leontopodium alpinum), CYCLOPS, OBVIATES, TESTRIDES, STATUETTE and ERGOMETER (every time you utter the word ERGO, it goes cha-ching and the song "We're in the money" starts playing). However I was less than pleased with ANOTCH (awhirl), NOLLE, OWESTO, BYAGE, REHANG (if the condemned is still alive), and a few too many POCs.
ENYA face, NOBELS for you. But I still liked the puzzle.
Mini-PPP® (@Lewis, I hope you don't mind):
There is a connection between DEL RIO and EVERETT. Can you find it? The following should provide a hint.
There once was a girl Dolores
DEL RIO, who loved OHSO Welles,
He's ten years younger
But he still stung her
With his citizen's cane, no less.
Time for some coffee.
Cheers!
Had same problems as Puzzlegirl and other solvers: SW corner. Never heard of MILLIE SMALL and CERTAINLY never heard of MARL. Had LAMA for RAMA and therefore had PLO- for "dance with a king." Befuddled by that, needless to say. DNF and thought this was harder than most Sundays. Also didn't especially love it.
Take a BOW ... WOW! Liz ... you've done it again!
At first glance I saw a lion but quickly changed that when I got HEREXCELLENCY above WHITEHOUSEDOG -- wasn't there some pulling ears Beagle controversy way back then?
REX (Hi, @Rex!)and SUNNY (where's Bo?) were new to me. I so wanted Barney for SPOT, another new dog face to me.
I surprised people don't know MILLIE, she even wrote a book!
I, too, loved the doggy bonuses especially Pooper SCOOPER just because it's fun to say.
I love dogs and I love Liz Gorski puzzles ... what a glorious Sunday!
And thank you, Puzzle Girl, great write up!
(I'm surprised .... typo, sorry!)
I have been reading the comments for quite awhile----Can't we all just enjoy the Sunday Puzzle for what it is????
Isn't an ego trip an experience rather than a type of person? I don't get the cluing there.
Other than that a very clever puzzle, but why didn't I enjoy myself more? People were complaining about the quote puzzle a day or two back but I thought that had some elegance whereas here I felt like I was constantly stubbing my toe on little bits of self-satisfied bric-a-brac.
I do Sunday on Saturday - the benefits of getting a real paper newspaper delivered to the door!
And now that I'm getting familiar with puzzle constructors, I can appreciate a "Gorski puzzle". Definitely fun to do - my experience was much like those who commented above. I even saw the doggy face come into view. YAY!
Started the puzzle last night...the wine I had with dinner made for a difficult puzzle. Woke up this morning and had no trouble at all. What a great fun puzzle.
Love the clue for 1 down.
Have already seen Haley Gold. I subscribe and get it whenever she posts. !!!
First thought was, Liz, Liz, Liz. Where are you in this mess? But - the more I stayed, the more it played. Thank you again, Ms. Gorski.
EXCELLENCY and REX threw me into an early XER PIT ('til I ) SAW there was no hope there. Gave up on the X-ness, then swiftly moved on. Well, swifter.
Like of the Day - EMBOSE [give some relief].
Question - What's a ONELB? Does it relate to SUNNYSIDEUP?
@ Leap - MILLIE[']S MALL hosted [many a ball], with SOIREEs for the MASSES, serving MALLOs in glasses.
Happy perigee, everyone.
@Maruchka..It's one pound...the abbreviation for pound is lb
@Maruchka, great day for a little DOGgerel, isn't it? You had me, right up 'til those glasses of MALLO. Rather a DRINK SIN, I say.
I've been wondering, is there a story behind the Maruchka name?
For me this was like two puzzles: the top half, typical Liz Gorski, straightforward, interesting, fun. Bottom half, ick: marginal cluing, vanishing obscurities, more typical of the NYT puzzles of recent years. Thanks, Liz, for the top half, anyway.
Sauce would have been better, but it was paste. I make mine with Bolognese sauce.
6 down, doughnuts, presented a problem for me. I have never heard of 'Tori' but filled it in with the crosses. Anyone else/
@I skip M-W, am curious about that business of no 'shi' sound in Romanian. Looking at 'Ceaușescu'(chow-SHESS-koo), it looks asif there's no problem with the short e 'she' sound. I last spoke Romanian when I was 2 or 3, so I have no examples, but wonder why the long e 'shee' doesn't work.
Neat about the JIR editor.
For an otherwise fun puzzle, that SW is pretty opaque. MILLIE SMALL was probably constrained by the theme, but ANNE MEARA, ANGIE Dickinson, RAMA as a Thai king, Mike NEWELL, OREL Hersheiser make that corner in desperate need of a rewrite. And then MARL.
Anon 10:39 - The clue is "A big head may be on one." Hence, someone with a big head is on an EGO TRIP.
Everyone get that Max Peel is an ANAGaram of Example now? Thanks @Mark for explaining this.
I feel that it is always best to put spelling errors in bold print, don't you?
BACH's "Coffee Cantata" certainly PERKed things up. As with several other things, there's a fine line between fashion and addiction.
For anyone interested in a translation:
http://emmanuelmusic.org/notes_translations/translations_cantata/t_bwv211.htm
Easy. Very surprised to finish error-free. Agree with PuzGirl in the SW; never heard of NEWELL, MARL and MILLIESMALL. OWESTO is rough and doesn't sound right. Thankful for the fair crossings on PITSAW. I thought I've heard of every bridge term from crosswords, but CUEBID was new. NOLLE crossing DELRIO was also a guess. The grid vaguely looks like a dog uttering BOWWOW, but I didn't like this as much as Gorski's previous puzzles.
Apparently the SPOT REMOVER worked well in Puzzle Girl's write-up.
@ Chef B - Oy. I was thinking of BLT or some such acronymity. Thanks.
@ Leap - A nickname from my UTE. Yes, it's very doggy. Isn't August Dog Day Afternoon time? Hmm. Clever Liz.
BTW: There's a good cartoon in this week's New Yorker re: dog scratching door. It's art!
Hey All!
Ok puzzle for me. I haven't read the comments yet, but I'm sure many people liked this one. Liz Gorski often gets that reaction. I did like the dog grid, at first I was thinking teddy bear. A little dreck, bu overall okay. Took me a while to break into the SE, but ended up getting it. SW had too many names in it, it should have been redone. NW was too much, I finally cried Uncle and settled for a DNF.
Did not like ONELB, part of the need for redoing the SW. ETTU as clued was a stretch. Haf a few missed letters, and the NW, of course.
Hope I'm not getting jaded!
RooMonster
DarrinV
I guess I am the only one old enough to have the 45 of My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small, which I happily remembered as I solved the puzzle (you all should check it out.
My word that I learned today is that tori is a oval geometric shape. Can't believe I haven't seen that in a puzzle before.
Enjoyed this one a lot, found it more medium than easy.
I knew MALLO (78A) from having eaten them in my youth (perhaps explaining some of my excess baggage now). But just below (88A) was ONrye (or so I thought). That took a lot of thinking, and some crosses, before the penny dropped.
Like @noreen I don't get 6D. What is the connection between Doughnuts and Tori?
@brookboy and others, from wikipedia: In geometry, a torus (pl. tori) is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three-dimensional space about an axis coplanar with the circle. If the axis of revolution does not touch the circle, the surface has a ring shape and is called a ring torus or simply torus if the ring shape is implicit....Real-world examples of (approximately) toroidal objects include doughnuts, vadais, inner tubes, bagels, many lifebuoys, O-rings and vortex rings.
TORI is the plural of "torus". Google for images of "torus" to see that it is doughnut shaped.
BTW, TORII is the gateway of a Shinto shrine.
Tori is the plural form of torus.Marl is, well, marl. Like clay.
The one I don't get is 61-across, RIE for expensive spoonful?!? Huh?
Was happy to see Nolle Prosequi. My years of reading Wodehouse finally paid off.
TORI is the plural of torus, the mathematical term for a doughnut shaped object. A mathematician (NDE, are you here? MathGuy?)
can explain it more technically but, it seems, already several have.
@aliasz -- Absolutely do not mind, in fact, I encourage it!
I'm lucky to see your post -- I normally do not do Sundays (in favor of the Fireball puzzle), today was a great exception. As for your PPP:
V jnf guvaxvat vg jnf Znevba Qnivrf, jub jnf Jryyrf' ybire nf jryy nf n sevraq bs Qry Evb, ohg V'z fghzcrq ba gur RIRERGG natyr!
Ah yes - the puzzle. Even after several comments pointing it out, I do not see the grid as looking much like a dog's face.
RiE is wrong - 61A is ROE.
Overall a Nike puzzle (just do it) IMO. Knew most of the names of the dogs but found that unexciting. Banged in MILLIE but didn't know SMALL. Never mind, the crosses gave that away.
Not my favorite Sunday. De gustibus......
I have to agree with many here, it was kind of pedestrian and not terribly difficult with the exception of the SW. I did not see the "dog's face" until I came here.
I had a tougher time with this than most. The obscurity-fest in the SW tripped me up, as it did many others. But I also had a hard time getting going in the SE, and central section between the dog's eyes was also tough. NOLLE is a WTF for me, I resisted NADIR for a long time (to me, "It's all uphill from here" means things are about to get tougher, not easier), and I could not remember DEL RIO for ages (also, El Paso and Laredo - also Texas border towns - both fit in that space).
For a puzzle where the grid art is the payoff, this was reasonably enjoyable. Some of the compromises forced by the grid were ungainly (CIE, MARL, ONE LB - where I kept wondering "what meat gets an abbreviation?" - OEO, XER - and I couldn't remember the name of any WHITE HOUSE DOG if you paid me. But the themers were pretty well-crossed, and aside from MILLIE SMALLS, featured easily recognizable phrases or people.
I've never heard of or seen a MALLO Cup. Are they an East Coast thing?
I am with the positive posters. The cleverness of the extra dog references and the caricature more than make up for the SW difficulty and other nits. I would put "table scraps" and "Memory of Trees" in the doggy-clue column too.
My big problem was I filled in "presidentsDOG" for the revealer which made for quite a mess. Glad I had a pooper SCOOPER to clean it up.
Thank you all for your explanations of the word "Tori" and its relationship to doughnuts. Now I know about this heretofore unknown (to me) word.
Who would name their dog Her?
This we know from experience: If you misspell leotards as leotardes, it will line up with legwarmer in 5 places adding even more difficulty to the SW.
Good (Dog) puzzle!
Love,
D and A
PS. Their other dog was Him.
D and A
@Steve J 1:33 I think nadir means the lowest point, as in "...the discussion between them reached its nadir when they started throwing punches..."
Mallo cups are similar to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, except their filling is gooey marshmallow instead of peanut butter. They were widely available in candy stores in NYC when I was a kid - late 40's and early 50's. They were among my very favorites. Haven't had one, though, for many years now.
Her, daughter of Beagle, sister of Him, died tragically after swallowing a stone while still a pup.
Sad story but still a terrific Sunday puzzle.
Torii (2 i's), usually, for the shinto gateway.
Him would (and him did).
Easy, enjoyable Sunday.
But where were Bo Obama, Barney Bush and Fala Roosevelt?
Ooops.. That's EMBOSS, not EMBOSE. Doh. Don't know how to EMBOld spelling errors on BlOgS.
Crisp and crunchy Sunday, but a very cute picture in the grid (airedale terrier?) and lots of good words. Try and squint, you'll see it too.
One quibble: you will find a Stein in a Bierhaus, a tankard in a pub (although i've never heard anyone ask for it).
What's the poor dancer going to do with one legwarmer?
lol @Z, I thought ANAGARAM was some Indian cuisine thingy.
Is it too soon to out what I found on PPP,Par tout? I aren't up to encrypting all this; @Lewis has more patience than me...
EVERETT Sloane played the role of a good friend of Citizen Kane.
Delores DEL RIO was a good friend of the actor who played the role of Citizen Kane.
Erica Kane was never a citizen of Rio del Janeirole.
Now I can't find Lewis' PPP Par twon.
Where is Checkers?
@Leapfinger - I'm not that spicy. Worse - I had spelt it correctly but thought I had skipped an A so went back to add it. I blame it all on camiocam distracting me.
I posted this link late yesterday, Hopefully no one will mind the reposting, but I thought this crowd would interested.
Mini-PPP® answer:
Dolores DEL RÍO (1905-1983), born María de los Dolores Asúnsolo López-Negrete in Durango, Mexico, was a film actress. She was a Hollywood star in the 1920s and 1930s, and was one of the most important female figures of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. She was the first Latin American female star to be recognized internationally. In 1938 she met Orson Welles with whom she had a torrid affair for four years. Rebecca Welles, the daughter of Welles and Rita Hayworth, met DEL RIO in 1954 and said, "My father considered her the great love of his life… She was a living legend in the history of my family."
EVERETT Sloane (1909-1965) was an American stage, film and television actor, songwriter, voice actor and theatre director. He joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theater and appeared in many of his films: Citizen Kane, Journey into Fear, The Lady from Shanghai, Prince of Foxes. Tragically, he committed suicide at 55 for fear that he was going blind.
Orson Welles, Dolores DEL RIO, Joseph Cotten (another ubiquitous Welles collaborator) and EVERETT Sloane all acted in the movie Journey Into Fear (1943) produced and directed in part by Orson Welles.
I know someone who named her dog Tiz, so she could stand out front in her yard and call "Here, Tiz!"
@r.alph, torii [if plural] implies torius [singular]. The Royal Vic needed one of those, might have been for a production of Mikado, so the stage manager sent her order out. Set design crew got 'er done, gave the signal: Send her Vic torius.
You might have to be a Brit or Canadian to appreci8 that one.
I have a question...When I printed out my puzzle, the title is ..NUMBER-ONE FRIENDS
In the magazine section which I also get on Sunday..the title of the puzzle is No. 1 Friends
Why the difference??
Anonymous 3:48pm -- Checkers wasn't presidential (dog) material, only senatorial material, right?
@Leaps,
You've got it. As a reward, here is something special just for you:
Csak egy kislány van a világon.
PITSAW acquires a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
Some odd cluing and unfamiliar fill made this "medium-challenging" for me with more googling than usual. But
I finally ground it out and can now move on to the acrostic.
Not an unpleasant Sunday morning-- other than having to deal with ANAGRAM. Abbreviation?? Good grief!
@leapfinger -- I take a PPP holiday on Sundays.
@aliasz -- yours was great, very interesting.
@Steve J: Mallo Cups
@mac: LOL
The quibbles aside, always enjoy Liz Gorski's puzzles! I aspire to make such inventive crosswords...
@Alias, Fantastic! You had me completely fooled. I went in the direction of RetSAW PITSAW boom boom boom!
To be truthful, I discovered that clip a couple of years ago when I was browsing songs my mother sang to me. Wonderful to hear it again; those keening sounds could tear the most hardened zigeuner heart-strings. Altogether smile-inducing.
Ez egy szép születésnapi ajándék.
Really tough for me -- I had MILLIE SMALL, just on plausibility, but not confident enough to change MiRe to MARL until my wife, fortunately, told me 79D was ANNE MEARA.
Not only NADIR, but ACME. Always happy to see the latter in the puzzle; wish we were still seeing her in thesse comments, as well. I notice she's at the opposite end from REX, but maybe they can inch closer, with our help.
I think leaving out FALA was a plus; confused by SUNNY instead of BO, though, i had to look that one up after I finished. Apparently Bo was worn out by the cares of state, and in need of companionship. They're calling her "Bo's Little Sister," but come on, who are they kidding?
Whoever said torii as plural implies torus as singular missed two points: 1) torii is singular, and 2) contrary to popular belief, Japanese is not a romance language.
Great puzzle, wonderful grid art. XENONS? Not so great. The price one must pay, I suppose.
As the Grouchy Marx said:
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Gets me every time.
Thanks, @jberg, I'll try to remember that about Japanese :D
God Save the Queen, anyhow!
Please, someone, enlighten me: What are tori and how do they relate to donuts?
Pretty nice Sunday, which would have ended a perfect week, but I discovered today that I had a wrong square on Saturday. (Shakes vs. Shaves). That gets me grumpy. Nevertheless, I think this was a very pleasant week of puzzles.
Anon @ 8:21 - the mathematical term for a circle with a hole in it is a
"Torus". Latin convention asks that you pluralize a masculine noun with an "I" - hence "TORI".
Crosswordese in the extreme. I'm not sure the word has been used in 200 years, but I'm sure someone will post a reference from a physics paper from 85 years ago to prove me wrong, that's usually how it goes.
@anon8:21 & @Steve - This question was answered several times right around the 12:30pm mark. If you don't want to read all the comments a simple find command in your browser will work.
CascoKid where are u? I read most posts but definitely yours since we seem to be at the same level. Also missing ED and M&A today but I know they have been lurkers more often than not, of late. Anyhow, same issues as most here, top easier than bottom and Millie Small was certainly not in my music database. Thanks, Ms. Gorski and PG.
Er, I meant COMMON knowledge.
Nadir & apex!
Yes, indeed, the black squares are a dog's face!!!! Finished completely, no need for Googling, thanks Ms. Gorski. However, RIDICULOUSLY EASY!!!! There were some half dozen clues I enjoyed very much, but dozens of gimmees and dozens more where a letter or two sufficed to solve it. Inexcusable for a Sunday puzzle. Any oldies fan knows the horrible song "My Boy Lollipop" (Millie Small), you can't erase it from memory no matter how hard you try.
2 days late but I loved it! I finished it in an average Sunday time for me, but I didn't understand TORI or ESS until I came here. Thanks guys!
The "Doughnuts" clue was the toughest - to confuse things even more, the singer Tori Amos has a song called "Doughnuts" - pretty clever of Tori as well as of Elizabeth!
Maruchka, it's EMBOSS for give relief. Great puzzle.
Starting out with REX... and HEREX... I was set up for an all-REX theme; then looking at the title I thought that OFL was Liz's #1 friend. XENONS and XER, BTW, are both s-t-r-etches. The flag flutters, but manages to stay put.
It comes out, however, for ONELB. By now, you know why. We'll just lump in the RRN and call it all one violation.
I liked the theme, after finally grokking what it was; also appreciated the enhancements of canine noises and the grid shape itself. Not to mention the Pooper SCOOPER. Oh, I mentioned it. Sorry.
W/O's include DELRay (no wait--that's in Florida!) and EGOTist. Cluing was just devious enough to move it out of the "easy" column; I'll go with an "easy-medium" and a B.
2515, no good. ARF BOW WOW!
I'm a dog person so I enjoyed sniffing out all the names and doggie noises that populated the grid (but I missed the POOPER SCOOPER, always a necessary accessory, until @spacy mentioned it). I even noticed the puppy portrait in the middle of the grid. What I didn't do was finish the puzzle - I misspelled Anne's last name so parts of the SW corner remained never materialized. My Cocker BUDDY was glad he was in the puzzle and the Labs weren't - he's still rubbing that in.
266 - only marginally better than spacy.
To jberg @ 6:05
Your comment was so funny I almost soiled myself. Still chuckling:)
Regarding the above remark by Groucho Marx about it being too dark to read inside of a dog, in 2009 Alexandra Horowitz published her compelling book " Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know." Just sayin' ...
D and A
Good fun! Had to google southwest over Marl and Millie, but gave good crunch and was doable!
Two paws up!!
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