Constructor: Herre Schouwerwou
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: Quote by Ogden Nash, with punctuation included:
Theme answers:
- "I COULD HAVE / LOVED NEW YORK / HAD I NOT LOVED / BALTI-MORE"
Word of the Day: DORY (
41A: Flat-bottomed boat) —
The dory is a small, shallow-draft boat, about 5 to 7 metres or 16 to 23 feet long. It is usually a lightweight boat with high sides, a flat bottom and sharp bows. They are easy to build because of their simple lines. For centuries, dories have been used as traditional fishing boats, both in coastal waters and in the open sea. Variant spellings are doree and dori. (wikipedia) [note to constructors: please immediately forget that you ever saw those variant spellings, thank you]
THURSDAY'S PUZZLE — Needs More John Waters
Here's the thing about quote puzzles—the quote amuses you or it doesn't. That's pretty much that. There's nothing to think about or plan, from the constructor's end. Sure, you have to worry about layout, but here the constructor cleverly / cheatingly (depending on your point of view) fudges things to get the layout to work, so with that settled … yeah, you either enjoy the quote or you don't. I thought it was OK, I guess. Not Nash's finest hour. I really do think the "punctuation" angle is cheap rather than interesting. I mean, who cares about a hyphen? It doesn't add anything. It's "clever" only insofar as it allowed the constructor to pull off quote symmetry. It has no other cleverness. And other, less fortunate punctuation marks go sadly unacknowledged. "What about me?" cries
ILLSAY. "When will I get full representation!?" wails
EER. The
LIL TMEN are probably saying something too. I'm just saying there's no value added w/ that damned hyphen square. I was fully prepared to leave that square blank, until I went back and read the theme clue more closely. I'm bugged by the fact that the quote doesn't appear to be a poem—it has no rhyme, no metricality. Or maybe you elide the second "I", which would leave you with something vaguely iambic. Also, I'm not sure why loving BALTIHYPHENMORE precludes your loving New York. I myself am municipally polyamorous. Don't judge.
[More]
Speaking of cities,
UTICA. That was my first entry. Clue says it's a city in New York, it's five letters long …
UTICA! Good ol'
UTICA. Gateway to … somewhere north of here, I'm sure. After I got going there in the NW, I sort of sidled down the west side of the puzzle and then up into the middle until I had shot through much of the quotation. Then I inferred (most of) the quote and finished the remaining couple of corners thereafter. Cluing seemed toughish in parts, perhaps because it had to be to keep this thing at all Thursday-worthy. For some reason [
Sports division] seemed a really vague clue for
EAST, and I had to start running the alphabet to get the "B" at
52A: Trust fund? (BAIL) / 52D: Exhibit some immodesty (BRAG). I'm not familiar with Stephenie
MEYER. She really, really sounds like the person who wrote "Twilight," but I suspect not. Oh … wait, she *is* the author of "Twilight," and I totally misread the clue. I somehow processed [
"The Host" author Stephenie] as [
"The View" host Stephenie]. Well … that was disturbing. I wonder what other massive emendations my brain is engaged in on a daily basis.
Though I didn't care for the theme today, I do admire the way the constructor handled the long Downs. Lovely pairs in the middle and then longer bookends in the NE / SW. All colorful and interesting. Grateful for the '80s throwback
MOON BOOT (37D: Fashionable 1980s item resembling a bit of astronaut's attire). I'd forgotten those existed. Would've been better in the plural, but I'll take this. It offsets the clue/answer pair at
6D: Bamboozle (EUCHRE), which I nominate for the olde-timiest puzzle entry ever.
EUCHRE's already a pretty marginal / bygone card game, but slang for "bamboozle," which is itself pretty olde-timey?! That's … nuts. When was the last time anyone used
EUCHRE to mean "bamboozle," keeping in mind that I won't believe you if your answer is any later than 19-aught-5.
Knock knock.
OUSE there? Good night.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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94 comments:
So so. Guess I was hoping for more of a payoff since it was an Ogden Nash quote. But it'll do -- I did have a LIL SMILE ON my face at the punch line.
Favorite clue: "Rain makers" for NIMBI.
Looks like Rex is rubbing off a bit on Hayley Gold, as is evident in her cartoon for today's puzzle.
I read the Meyer clue the same way you did ... which is pretty weird.
Medium-tough for me. Got off on the wrong foot with seCTS followed by UNtie. So, the West side was slow. The EAST was easy-medium. Knowing ART TATUM and DARYL Hall helped.
Crunchy solve, light on dreck, I'm a Nash fan....Liked it! A fine debut.
Odgen Nash
without hash
is just trash.
The hyphen is used to put the emphasis on MORE in Baltimore, i.e. New York is great and all but I just love Baltimore more.
Euchre marginal/bygone card game? Someone hasn't been to the Midwest lately. Just played it when went home for Christmas and I'm only 25. 'D rather have that any day than baseball hall of famers who were "relevant" before my time.
I figured out the "trick" with Sea-Doo rather quickly (even when I still had no idea what the quote was), but then was dramatically slowed down everywhere else because I assumed each line of the quote had some kind of punctuation/rebus in it.
Having "unTiE" for "unPiN" (both equally plausible) and "baNK" for "baIL" (even though I didn't trust "bank") for far too long also caused trouble.
Those missteps made it a pretty challenging Thursday for me.
I also made that same weird mental reversal with the MEYER clue. Go figure.
Haley Gold's cartoon said it all for me, as did Rex's write up. This one just left me on the cool/cold side. Hoping for an excellent rebus puzzle and got stuck with a quote. Oh well, maybe next Thursday. Where is Elizabeth G. When you need her?
What @jae said, but with many more speed bumps. I finished clean in 51 but had to study the BALTI_MORE pattern to see if today's rebus might be the Maryland state flag, or something. SEA_DOO, a brand I only know from crosswords, didn't help solidify the hyphen. Anybody seize upon SEA-DOO as a hyphen-driven brand? Anybody?
I solved the latest NYT quote acrostic earlier today. My best solutions to the definition part were wrong, e.g., [Country within a country] LESOTHO? Nope VATICAN? Nope, so I devolved to blind-guessing 2 and 3 letter words and running check-puzzle after each guess. That was the only way through it. While slogging, I mused that we hadn't had a quote crossword in a long, long time. Out of fashion? I thought. Let's hope so! Famous last words.
Like acrostics, quotes are essentially uncrossed. My time reflected the guesswork associated with 40 or so unchecked squares. Not that much fun, but the quote counts as a jab at the Yankees, so I'll take it.
I had a similar experience to Anon @12:29. I was expecting a little more than just the one hyphen. Is having only one MOONBOOT like wearing only one glove??
Agree about the stellar Downs. Lukewarm about the theme. Had trouble in the SE: tried CoM, COral, DIrtY, and extra before I finally saw how BALTI-MORE and SEA-DOO worked.
A Midwesterner like @Anonymous 12:20, I"m familiar with EUCHRE as both the noun and the verb.
EUCHRE/EAST was an UGLY intersection for me. Got the quote fairly quickly, hyphen and all, but I still don't know how CAM = web ending. Wait, I just this second figured it out. WebCAM. Wow.
Does it bother anyone that T-MEN did not receive the hyphen treatment? Makes the puzzle's gimmick invalid.
Adding one hyphen does not make this Thursday-worthy for me. I don't have a quarrel with the puzzle. It's a perfectly fine Wednesday or an easy Friday, but I prefer something just a little more twisted on Thursday.
What goes in the rebus? I am getting not solved? I put hyphen? Thank you!
I had an error outside the rebus! Thank you!
Best thing about this puzzle was getting to read Hayley's cartoon. Dud.
My main objection is OTOH, which is maybe better clued as "texting shorthand for undecideness" - poor old Twitter shouldn't be equated with millennial-speak just b/c of its 140 char limit
08/14/2014
"You can’t do anything about it. Once you go OPP (Ontario Provincial Police), you’re kind of euchred.”
A quote puzzle. Ooh. Aah.
Favorite part of the puzzle was trying to decide if " Herre Schouwerwou" could possibly be the constructor's real name. I mean, my last name can frighten people with the odd "igt" combo after the Z, but ---werwou?
The Haley cartoon nailed it!
Perhaps Dr. Hfuhruhur?
I was bamboozled at EUCHRE with a sloppy mistake made in haste. I know the card game so I wish that had been the clue. I had one wrong square with lUCHRE/lAST ... as in lAST place. Ugh.
I got all the rest including the SEA-DOO/BALTI-MORE trick and thought the quote was cute, but the single, lonely one hyphen was a bit of a let down. I was searching for apostrophes, commas and semicolons in the other theme answers.
I thought it fun to see two boats with DORY and DINGY -- until I realized that's not how you spell
DINGhY.
For a brief moment I thought one might wear a MOONrOck around their neck as an 80's fashion statement.
Congratulations on your debut, Herre Schouwerwou!
I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.
I just checked out Hayley Gold's cartoon ... now that's clever!
Like others, I found this to be a letdown. I was anticipating a punctuation-filled quote with some downs like [,]CKLONGISLAND, ESCA[.]EJANEIRO, WOULDACOUL[—]OULDA, [:]NADE or something. Instead, a single [-] that's there for expediency, nothing more. Bummer.
Still, the quote is cute, the fill is actually quite good, and any NYT debut is worth celebrating -- so congrats, Herre!
Never heard EUCHRE used as a verb, but I love the card game. It's a staple when my family is together -- played over the holidays when my kids were home from school. I like to think of it as very, very poor man's bridge.
For me, the MEYER giveaway was not the book in the clue (never heard of it) but rather the way her first name is spelled (second "e" rather than an "a") -- don't think I have ever seen it that way for anyone else.
The clue for BAIL is wonderful.
Hilarious that @Rex linked to the Golden Earring video. That happened to be the last song I heard on the radio before going to bed last night. Don't love it, but a funny coincidence.
Alaskan anti-development slogan: Not In My Back Igloo!
Y'all are crying nevermore,
While I be thinkin' yeah, encore.
I had a good time with this. Clueing worthy of a late-week puzzle and a fun quote. I'm happy to see this kind of puzzle occasionally. And we get to welcome a debut constructor today too. Thanks Mr Schouwerwou.
Hand up if you knew a hyphen had to go in that square, but couldn't figure out how to enter one. In Across Lite I tried Edit->Special Entry->Symbol, but the thingy that looked vaguely like a dash wasn't accepted as correct. Because to paraphrase Rex, WTH is Baltihyphenmore?
@Rex - FYI - Utica was home to the first Woolworth store, if that counts for anything. As an upstater yourself, I would think you wouldn't be so quick to sneer at another upstate city. Some famous people hail from Utica, including Annette Funicello and Dick Clark, as well as some not-so-famous people, including myself.
Hayley Gold's cartoon is brilliant!!!! Makes me love the puzzle, even though I felt a major Thursday let-down.
@SirHillary - just what I was looking for too.
I was stymied by having SkidoOs - "craft" being one of those nouns that can be singular or plural.
Even though I know they are on the water, not the snow.
You'd think I know, because they make up about 140% of the watercraft on Lake Candlewood.
I painted one into my mural of the lake - in my acrylic world, it is being attacked by a giant squid - a rarely seen denizen of these waters.
(Having a 14.5' sloop makes one feel this way towards motors, be they DORYs or DINGhYs or SEADOOS.
Liked TOMBOY and SLEEPOVER.
Malapop at Flat figure - smugly put in RENT.
Thanks Mr. Schouwerwou.
Was looking for commas etc throughout the puzzle. Is a hyphenated word considered punctuated??? Now to check out Haley Gold
I've been waiting a long time for a quote puzzle that I remotely enjoyed. After this one, I'm still waiting.
As many have mentioned, one hyphen is not enough to hold the weight of this thing. (Btw, on the NYT Xword app, you can enter the actual hyphen; looks much better than BALTIHYPHENMORE.
Not much to say about this, other than I found it a slog. Like many, I also misread "The Host" as "The View". I don't know what that says about all of us.
Was wondering why I've been so happy, puzzle-wise, for so many weeks. It's because I haven't seen a quote puzzle in a very long time. DOES ANYONE ELSE HATE THEM AS MUCH AS I DO? They're so often irritating and extremely frustrating to solve, and even when they're not, they're boring. The quality of the quotation bears no relationship to the quality of the experience in solving. This one was made much worse by the SEA-D00/BALTI-MORE cross, which I didn't get. Unpleasantness added by the tweet initials jargon and the MOON BOOT in the singular oddity. (I thought they were space shoes, but what do I know.) A puzzle I really hated.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
Awesome, thanks for that wreck!!
@chefbea - precisely - I was looking for . , ? ! - now THAT's punctuation...
As for things like - and '...
Let me tell another little story.
My name includes 'punctuation'. My mom was spelling her name to a clerk over the phone... "D as in David, apostrophe, A as in Apple..."
Clerk interrupts - "Not so fast! How do you spell 'Apostrophe"?"
@Nancy - yeah, if I had to pick a puzzle genre to hate, I pretty much would pick quote puzzles.
One lousy hyphen does not a Thursday make.
Cluing was a bit tough.
For an amusing take on the puzzle:
http://acrossanddown.net/?comic=quip-it
UTICA, home of the internationally famous Utica Boilermaker 15K road race! But strangely not on Wikipedia's list of NYS cities. . .
And my MOONBOOT(S) were amazing when they kept my feet warm all the way from Quebec to NYC after getting soaked in melted snow. So glad I had TWO.
I agree, Haley Gold's rant was the best part of this puz!
I checked the Grimm wiki: no wesen named Herre Schouwerou. Yet.
EUCHRE is NOT bygone. It is still played by millions of people in the mid-west. But to rex, cocky provincial jerk that he is, it is too obscure and old-fashioned. Use it in a sentence? Okay, here: Those of you who give this clown your money are being EUCHREd.
@Caryl Baron: How could I forget to include the Boilermaker!! Thanks for mentioning it!Kathy
@casco, a Sea-Doo is like a Ski-Doo, only it floats.
And getting EUCHREd is pretty much like getting snookered, only maybe with a little more finesse.
Finally, here is the most famous DORY photo ever.
I don't mind quote puzzles, I'm curious to the outcome. This one wasn't great, though. Big problem when you don't know those water craft.
Thank you for the Golden Earring! Amazing name, Herre Schouwerwou. Sounds Friesian.
Nice, subtle Simpsons reference there.
Chalmers: You call hamburgers steamed hams?
Skinner: Yes. It's a, regional dialect.
Chalmers: Oh yeah? What region?
Skinner: Er, upstate New York.
Chalmers: Really. Well I'm from Utica and I've never heard the phrase 'steamed hams' before.
Skinner: Oh no, not in Utica it's an, Albany expression.
@Sir Hillary - Your 1st paragraph sums it up perfectly for me. I don't know the quote so I kept looking for punctuation in and crossing the theme. What a letdown at the end.
I could have loved Rin-Tin-Tin, but I loved Balti-more.
I could have loved Arthur Godfrey, but I loved Gary Moore.
Mr. Holt, if you search for the meaning of life, you will find it is hope, Les.
Hyphen aside, this was just a bad, bad puzzle. FAR too many obscure elements.
You should be ashamed, Mr. Shortz!
I thought the puzzle was just hunky DORY but I loved Herre Schouwerwou's dogs more. I believe Schouwerwou is a Dutch (Boer?) name. National heritage is a fascinating subject.
Like @joho et al., I thought a DINGY, like a DORY was a small flat-bottom boat, but I am not a fan of flat bottoms.
I love the ash,
I love the oak,
But I adore
The sycamore.
I want less -- I'm sick o' more.
I like the viola but I love the viola d'amore.
You want more? I spare you.
I am not a sophomore,
Don't want you to suffer more.
The fill was less than SLOVENLY. I especially liked SMILEON which almost cost me some simoleon. I was wearing Earth Shoes instead of MOONBOOTs back in the day. I am more down to earth.
Here is a Rashomonesque presentation of a little piece called Humoresque (Op. 107, No. 7 in G flat) by AntonÃn Dvořák: the original for piano, a violin transcription, a parody by a famous goover, and then comes ART TATUM.
Enjoy!
All Ogden Nash quotes are funny. OK, it's not up with The Pelican or the lama/llama one, but I enjoyed trying to figure it out, and got suitably confused as to whether the L word was "lived" or "loved".
My last move was to figure out what the punctuation mark was.
Since I solve on paper, in ink, I try very hard not to put words down until they are confirmed by crosses. So my first thought was the religious groups would the "sects", and 1D would be "shush", but I ended up figuring UTICA was in there,and I had "I could" as a possible start for the quote.
I ended up solving the entire top two-thirds, with an ocean of blank space below. But I figured out the river had to be OUSE. There are OUSES oozing everywhere in England -- the one most tourists see is the OUSE that runs through the City of York.
Kudos to the constructor for HAIL MARYS and PIEDPIPER.
"Less is more"?
More or less.
UTICA: A City on the Grow!
(Another Simpsons reference. Can never have too many!)
Britain? Boston? No. Something humorous. BALTIMORE? Maybe, but it seems to need another T or I. What's crossing? Ah, yes, that SEA-DOO that confused me earlier as It seemed to need another A or something. Maybe if I drop a hyphen in there..........
Re: Euchre - Didn't Rex go to Michigan??? He should be ashamed. Midwest represent!
(Although in my experience the game is more just a Michigan/Ohio thing. Maybe Wisconsin?)
I like quote puzzles, including this one, although I was expecting something zingier from the great Ogden Nash.
I found it tough with only 22 squares filled with gimmes and eight entries, including the four in the quote, unknown to me.
Since it was tough and I was able to get it without Google (although The Closer gave me a couple of answers), I'm a happy camper.
Hey All !
Med-challenging, but quote puzzles will do that. Like otners, was looking for a punctuation mark of some sort throughout the quote, so that slowed me down a bit, as was not trusting the downs as much as I should. The SE corner had me flummoxed, had SEADOOS in there, also didn't know MEYER, throw in the (-), and all was lost. Took the DNF, and came here. Had OiSE for the river. That's a river, right?
Got a RRN today! No Eels, though.
LOSE UGLY
RooMonster
DarrinV
@Anon 12:20 pm: In my experience, euchre is not a Midwestern thing, but a thing in a very specific part of the Midwest. I grew up in Minnesota, and I never heard of the game until I moved to Indiana. And even then, it seemed largely to be played by Ohio and Michigan transplants. I think it's also common on western Pennsylvania.
No chance. Quit after ten minutes. Just not in the mood to wrestle with the tough clues. Maybe tomorrow.
The puzzle was okay, but I hate it when it triggers some tiny spark way back in the brain, niggling at me until I go nuts. Finally turned to Ms. google . .
I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honor more.
Richard Lovelace.
Embarrassingly/hilariously, I got stuck for too long on thinking:
HADINOTLOVED hAiTI-MORE
...imagining it was some kind of Love/Hate gag. Woops!
Got hung up on "GO-GO BOOT" (sans hyphen), and never figured out it was wrong. Never heard of Sea-Doo (Only Ski-Doo); never heard "EUCHRE" used as a verb, although I agree that the card game itself is alive and well. (So is Whist, by the way -- Bid-Whist, to be exact -- if anyone cares.)
Got hung up on "GO-GO BOOT" (sans hyphen), and never figured out it was wrong. Never heard of Sea-Doo (Only Ski-Doo); never heard "EUCHRE" used as a verb, although I agree that the card game itself is alive and well. (So is Whist, by the way -- Bid-Whist, to be exact -- if anyone cares.)
Ah schitt -- any way of deleting an unintentional double-post?
This one really threw me. I just couldn't get a foothold and had to peek at the solution more than once. Not Thursday level cluing for me. The puzzle's theme? Meh. Haley Gold's far more amusing.
At 14 across "Starters", I had: AT I AM. You know, 1 am is early, right?
And 3 down was LIMON. Sheesh.
For the HYPHEN, I tried all of the following:
~ _ - ' , .
and then DASH and COMMA.
No Happy Pencil for me!
Here's the best part: Hart Crane's father invented Lifesavers!
Rex wasn't dissing UTICA, he was merely pointing out that it's one of those Crossword Cities that you can fill in automatically.
NY city = UTICA
Maine city = ORENO
Fla city = OCALA
It's the VCVCV sequence that makes these words so useful, it's the mortar that the constructor uses to hold the bricks together. That's why you see so much of ATARI, UHURA, ALINE, IRANI, ABASE etc. etc.
Hah! @Casco: You beat me by about ten minutes. Most of those minutes were spent trying to figure out what went between BALTI and MORE/SEA and Doo. Finally, I had a OWWTH moment and put a hyphen there. Much to my surprise, I got the Congratulations box.
I don't love quotation puzzles but I don't dislike them either. This one had that cute Ogdenian "Oh!" moment at the end. I guess I don't ask for a lot from a crossword, maybe just a smile when it's done. This debut puzzle produced a little one.
Many many many years ago, my Boy Scout troop used to have summer camps at Lake Utica in the Stanislaus National Forest up in the Sierra Nevada. In those days nearly nobody else ever went there. Other troops established 'summer homes' at other lakes in the vicinity. In the three weeks we were there it would have been unusual to see anyone not one of our scouts. It was almost pristine wilderness, something, I gather, nearly impossible to find these days. When the name "Utica" catches my attention, it's usually not a city in New York that comes to mind, rather, it's blinding granite, tall pines and icy water drenched in the summer sunlight. Cold evenings around a huge campfire after badly cooked dinners on wood burning improvised camp stoves. Ah, the good old days.
You weren't the only one who misread the Stephanie MEYER clue. I filled in the crosses and though, "Since when did she get a day time talk show?"
What Nancy said. And I love Ogden Nash, but this is not one of his better quotes. Hate product names in general, since I seldom know them, sea-doo? Never heard of Stephanie Meyer, have but the vaguest recollection of moon boots, with "OUSE"? I don't even like the clue for "Tomboy."
@maisdemere - without checking, is that the same poem with the line "Four walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage?" That is Lovelace also...
Didn't know about Nash's connection with Baltimore, but I know he was a Yankee fan, mentioning in one poem "sailing serenely into harbor with Mel Allen and Red Barber."
Raul -- That's "Orono."
Euchre is common in Rochester and the rest of western New York too.
What the hell does OTOH mean? I've never 'tweeted' and sincerely hope this is the last time we will see a Twitter reference in a NYT x-word (punctuation included).
Grateful that no one here has taken the opportunity to dis my adopted hometown of BALTIhyphenMORe in the comments so far! Here is my dilemma on the subject of the Nash quip: A Jersey girl, born and bred, NEWYORK was my first love. Any reference to going into 'the city' meant, of course, a bus or train ride into Manhattan. First 'real' job and apartment after college was mid-town and upper east side (rent controlled).
But then...a teaching offer in suburban Balto. (not the PIEDPIPER) brought me here. It was not a love match by any means. Rotting piers downtown were not yet demolished to create the Inner Harbor attractions. The provincial, small-town-in-a big-city atmosphere was a let-down after the 24-7 excitement of NYC. But...within a year, I found myself saying to friends and family up north, "Baltimore is like a fungus; it grows on you!" And I meant that in the nicest way. Part of the appeal of "Charm City" is just that--the people here are truly charming, Hon! And here I sit, 39 years later! But I still adore NY.
Thanks, HS and WS.
@ludyjynn...I don't tweet or text but I think it means - on the other hand....notice the hyphen I used
@ludyjynn - Hon! I miss it (lived there 1971-1974).
The clue for sleepover was odd. For us a sleepover was a kind of party not a kind of night. We'd say "I'm having a sleepover, do you want to come" the way you'd say "I'm having a party". I'd expect the clue to be "perfect party for a pillow fight". Could be regional.
Michael Jackson probably would have started a one MOONBOOT fad except it interfered with his MOONwalking!
@Sir Hillary, loved your NIMBI acronym.
secTS/shush, yup. UNtIe? Yup. DNF due to OiSE and AGEe/BEes. I forgot bees have drones, not kings, doh!
Thanks, Mr. Schouwerwou, for a different kind of Thursday solve (and congrats on your debut.)
Oh yeah, Haley Gold is pure gold today!
If EUCHRE isn't the official card game of Michigan it is only because our pols are a bunch of slackers.
Mentioned to Ultimate car-pool buddy that I do the NYTX. He asked' "how far in the week can you get? Wednesday?" I barely felt smug at all when I told this Brown grad, "Oh no, an occasional Saturday might stump me but I solve most of them." I kept a small degree of modesty by not saying "in pen." Wouldn't want to BRAG.
Also went seadoos in the SE.
I am doing some looking at that quote. It appears in tons of Nash related stuff, but it never seems to have a source. I did find a piece in the April 1961 Baltimore Sun, that says Nash said the following at an author's luncheon:
I could not love New York so much
Loved I not Baltimore
Maybe he said a variation of the thing all the time, or maybe by the time he published it he changed it.
I solved the whole puzzle and then spent twenty minutes trying to figure out what to put in the square that required the dash. Frustrating . Never did come up with the right answer. Utica happens to be where a branch of Dunder-Mifflin (note the dash) Paper Company is located.
I'm with Rex and everyone else who took issue with the snubbing of the other punctuation marks in this puzzle. I mean what are they - CHOPped liver? Found some of the clues quite iffy as well such as Bow (to) for LOSE. I think of bowing to something as accepting loss, not the loss itself. I also struggle with HAIL MARYS in this context. Would it be OKTHEN to say, "I finally Googled OUSE in a HAIL MARY to finish this puzzle"? Not sure but I think UHUH. Quote themes... *sigh*. Loved the cartoon though!
Shouldn't soul producer be "Seoul"? Kia cars are made there in Korea.
@Anon2:26Sunday - Good thought, but KIA has a model called a Soul
Hardly medium over here. MOON BOOT? There was such a thing? "Fashionable?" Then why have I never heard of it? Don't believe I've ever seen one, either. So, so much I didn't know. including ART TATUM right next door. I thought I wouldn't even come close to finishing. Wild guesses, like ILLSAY off just the first L, saw me through. Thanks for that one gimme clue: "Deliver, as a big kiss." Man, if that word wasn't PLANT I was gonna throw the book.
The rest of the clues were Saturday tough. And since the Nashism presented here was a total unknown for me, practically the whole grid was hard. In the first place, that "...with punctuation included" caveat led me to imagine several rather than just one, and most likely rebus involvement. When it turned out to be but a single dash, I was let down--or, relieved that the puzzle was doable after all.
The quote left me as flat as the bottom of a DORY. This was indeed "not his finest hour." Gee, I could have loved elm or oak, had I not loved syca-more. Whoop de (SEA-)DOO. The fill was not too UGLY--but not scintillating either. Give this one a B-: hard to go lower because I finished correctly after being sure I wouldn't.
Kinda obtuse cluing I thought; couldn't get much going at first, just some wide-spread seeds.
Had lAst gAspS for HAIL MARYS until DARYL Hall saved me from that mess.
I'm thinking that MOONBOOTS were only "popular" in colder climes as they looked to be insulated pull-on affairs.
EUCHRE is still played here on the MN/WI border. I think some taverns and the Legion hall still have tournaments.
Know ARTTATUM (and many others)from the late Leigh Kamman's "Jazz Image" radio show on on MPR. Spent many a late Saturday night with that cranked up.
This puz wasn't exactly a LEMON, but it sure wasted alot MORE of my time than I was expecting.
Gotta love Ogden Nash, even a somewhat lesser effort. Like many others I was on the lookout for punctuation all over the place, and caused myself grief when I first entered SEAdoOs ("craft" can be plural). There were many places where the opaque cluing made for slow going, but I have to say that the cluing in general was high-calibre.
This took over an hour, but I finished with a flourish.
The webCAM was clever, I would ARGUE.
No photos today.
While I did RENT an AGED SEA-DOO,
OLGA inquired to USE MARYS DORY.
We three then did something TABU.
And when it became just a LIL UGLY and GORY
The weather seemed to be right ONCUE.
When from NIMBI came HAIL
And we all had to BAIL,
ICOULDHAVE have been hurt HADINOT loved those TWO.
@rain forest: Yes, I have been here before, but not often. Thanks for the "welcome" post yesterday.
Today I had virtually the same experience with this puzzle as you did. When I got to the punctuation business at the end, I found it a bit of a letdown.
Had trouble with this one. Painfully worked out everything but the central bottom. Only thing I got there was ARTTATUM and OKlets, obviously not enough to give me any help with the acrosses. Tried MOONshoe , but, for obvious reasons it didn't feel,right. Some you win, some.....
Check
Euchre; yukk!
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