Fictional character with ring of power / SAT 5-21-16 / Protagonist is Wilde's Canterville ghost / Gotcha in old lingo / Presidential moniker on west wing
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Constructor: Jason Flinn
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: none
Word of the Day: "Rats Live ON NO Evil Star" (8D: Anne Sexton's palindrome-inspired poem "Rats Live ___ Evil Star") —
[source]A palindrome seen on the side of a barn in Ireland
After Adam broke his rib in two
and ate it for supper,
after Adam, from the waist up,
an old mother,
had begun to question the wonder
Eve was brought forth.
Eve came out of that rib like an angry bird.
She came forth like a bird that got loose
suddenly from its cage.
Out of the cage came Eve,
escaping, escaping.
She was clothed in her skin like the sun
and her ankles were not for sale.
God looked out through his tunnel
and was pleased.
Adam sat like a lawyer
and read the book of life.
Only his eyes were alive.
They did the work of a blast furnace.
Only later did Adam and Eve go galloping,
galloping into the apple.
They made the noise of the moon-chew
and let the juice fall down like tears.
Because of this same apple
Eve gave birth to the evilest of creatures
with its bellyful of dirt
and its hair seven inches long.
It had two eyes full of poison
and routine pointed teeth.
Thus Eve gave birth.
In this unnatural act
she gave birth to a rat.
It slid from her like a pearl.
It was ugly, of course,
but Eve did not know that
and when it died before its time
she placed its tiny body
on that piece of kindergarten called STAR.
Now all us cursed ones falling out after
with our evil mouths and our worried eyes
die before our time
but do not go to some heaven, some hell
but are put on the RAT’S STAR
which is as wide as Asia
and as happy as a barbershop quartet.
We are put there beside the three thieves
for the lowest of us all
deserve to smile in eternity
like a watermelon.
• • •
Well, that could've been a LOT worse. When I first see a grid like this my whole being slumps. "What am I going to have to endure this time?" So when you start out with That attitude ... well, a puzzle like this comes out smelling pretty sweet. I count about nine Unfortunate Crosses in the two quadstacks, but out of 30? That's ... OK. Pretty good, even, given the level of difficulty. Again, I'd mostly prefer we just avoid the quadstack altogether, thanks very much, but I've suffered much worse than this in quadstacks—even triple stacks—and the actual stack answers are Good, so ... yes, this one passes. It gets the Martin Ashwood-Smith Quadstack Gold Star Seal of Approval (a thing I'm handing out now, apparently).
[This is how I started: note my trusted quadstack strategy of Quickly Throw in Whatever First Comes To Mind For The Downs and See Where You're At. It worked!!]
I would've changed 49A from LAS to ETS and then clued 50D THEMS as ["___ fightin' words!"]. This is because I hate everything about the word SLAVER and ditto AHEMS (though for very different reasons). To be clear, SLAVER is a word, so it's not empirically bad. It's just a matter of taste. I would rather sail around the unpleasant associations there If Possible. I guess you could change the clue on SLAVER to refer to drool, but gross (you've already got SNOT in the puzzle—why push it?). You could also change SLAVER to SHAVER, but you'd get HAS at 49A right next to *HAD* A HEART OF GOLD, so that wouldn't really work. My way gets you Hall-of-Fame pitcher and fellow Fresnan Tom SEAVER, a saucer full of ETS, *and* "THEMS fightin' words!" It's a winning combination.
[Here I was at the halfway point: just a handful of tiny openings to try to squeeze through]
I laughed at "Boy, DOI!" once I finally figured out it was "Boy, DO I!" "Boy DOI" is much more fun to say. Here is a poem I wrote from the answers in this grid about a beatnik who gets revenge on his square boss by ramming the boss's car with a shopping cart:
I'M HIP
I HATE
I DENT
Take that, Sexton!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
73 comments:
Yes, Rex... it gets the MAS seal of approval. Good call... and a reasonable puzzle. My major criticism is that 1-A is bland, which is a shame.
However, I remember srapping a set of quadstacks that has SNOT in the grid. I should dust it off and look again.
-MAS
MTGES? Shot who in the what, now?
I loved every bit of this puzzle. Looked at it suspiciously, grabbed the last of my sake and took the plunge of no return. OK, so I had OPRI_TES for 1A because of the downs I figured were right. Working backwards, I added a APR and sweet MISA gave me my first long answer.
I knew the sashimi we had for dinner had to be firing up the something upstairs because I just kept looking at one or two letters and plopping in answers. RANI could have ROLFed me no end.
Sweet!. My favorite "God I am so brilliant" moment came when I got TUSCALOOSA off of the U of UMA. How about that? I haven't done that often, but when I do, I'm like a DIVA seeking a room full of ATEMPO ALTOS asking for HUGS.
Really good puzzle Jason Flinn. Well worth a lot of RAND and throw in some SOU.
Easy-medium for me. Pretty good set of 15s for a double quad stack. Liked it but the weekends need to get tougher.
Great write-up, Rex. Thanks for posting the Anne Sexton poem: it is fantastic. I enjoyed your poetic contribution as well.
Thoroughly impressed by these quad-stacks. The 15-letter answers did not feel like long crosswordese: they were interesting answers. GAVE_IT_ANOTHER_GO on top of ETERNAL_OPTIMIST is especially wonderful. The longer downs (SEVENTH_DAY, TUSCALOOSA) ain't bad either.
FORCE-FEED may be an interesting word, but it reminded me of Guantanamo. Together with MIA and SLAVER, I'm left remembering several of the worst chapters in American history. Very strange to see these answers in the same grid as the cheery ETERNAL_OPTIMIST and HAD_A_HEART_OF_GOLD.
So does the constructor have a notebook of 15 letter phrases somewhere and keeps rearranging them until words start to appear? Is this computer driven? How exactly would one go about bringing a quad stack together. It's an MASQGSSoA level mystery.
I got the south much more easily than the north. PRINCIPLE, PETAL, ERGS, and the 4/7ths wrong SabbaTH was all I had anchoring those acrosses. REALER gave me just enough to get out of my The Nibelungenlied thoughts and PLOP in THE GREEN LANTERN. AGER, ONNO, and PLOP soon followed and it was a race to the finish.
Quads often yield a plethora of short crap. This one has just a small pile of doo-doo (looking at you, MTGE), so I agree with awarding of the MASQSSoA.
Well I, for one enjoyed it, even though it took me a lot longer than usual. When there are crucial areas that intersect, of course, you can get stuck. I still can't quite get my head around NOD, for example. I knew it had to be RAJA or RANI. But I guess it's zone like in "zone out." The long ones were harder to get than usual. I can't tell you how much time I spent reading comic books as s kid, but I never got into the Green Lantern. And the movie was do dumb I couldn't take more than a few minutes of it. And there's still something about MISAPPROPRIATES that doesn't quite ring true. Do the rest of you know that feeling? Still and all, it was a really good way to get through my all-too-often bouts of insomnia. Crosswords are still the best way to get through them.
Very difficult for me and DNF. I managed the bottom tier but just couldn't find a way up into the central zone (why "Zone, so to speak" = NOD remains opaque to me - I HATE it when that happens). Anyway, I put the puzzle aside and after a few hours GAVE IT ANOTHER GO, whereupon SEVENTH DAY and PRINCIPLE gave access to the upper level, and I "finished." Except putting in RATTAaL, I neglected to change RAja to RANI, so I had jOb x JEb instead of NOD x JED.
I thought the grid-spanners were all good, and TUSCALOOSA ROCKS.
I'm with any and all who looked at the grid and immediately felt like this could take a while. I was also pleasantly surprised when things kind of fell together like dominoes...a letter here, a letter there leads to a word here, a word there...and eventually you massage the thing (in some cases ROLFing is required) until it ends.
As part of the ROLFing process, there were quite a few write overs (I'm looking at you, 59D "Not worth Adam.") and quite a bit of guessing. But everything was fair and there weren't too many proper nouns or rapper names or even random roman numerals to muck things up.
I also wonder, along with @Z, how someone manages a puzzle like this. It must take a while.
Only A couple of NITs to pick: ODSON is odd. GIVEMEONE[good]REASON is more common, I think. And REALER. Realer? Really?
To Rex's point about Boy DOI, it reminded me of the song in Miss Saigon...Bui Doi...about children born to Vietnamese women and American GIs that were abandoned by the GIs when they left to go back to the US.
Good puzzle. It could have been much, much worse...I could still be doing it.
I enjoyed @Jason Flinn's puzzle and @Rex's writeup. TUSCALOOSA brought to mind this classic Groucho Marx shtick. The proposed edit involving Tom SEAVER also brought back memories of his fabulous Hall-of-Fame career, though it was jarring to see him in a Reds uniform. The mid-season trade away from the Mets following a nasty contract dispute with M. Donald Grant was a low point in the history of my favorite franchise, and even turned me into a Yankees fan for a while.
For some reason I found the bottom stack really easy -- despite trying GIVE ME a reason to first. The top was a lot harder, but I finally worked my way into it through A TEMPO, PRINCIPLE, and ERGS. It was the Baggins misdirect, I think. But I finally got MISAPPROPRIATES (which, unlike MAS, I loved -- I think because it is a single word), and the rest fell into place.
My other problem was at 24A, theorizing that a RANI is royal, but probably not a sovereign. Never saw the West Wing, but eventually dredged up JED, which fixed that.
In the last few days we have been increasingly elaborate and obscure clues for EEL, and now ASP. Are constructors doing this on their own, or is it Will Shortz?
No quips today. Just wonder who gave the nod to NOD? Surely someone knows the connection.
I have to PICKANIT on this one. It was tough for me to get going up top, mostly because THEGREENLANTERN really slowed me down. I was certain based on the clue that it was something to do with Green Lantern, but the "the" really tripped me up! Maybe in the olden days of comics is was used more often, but if so it still feels pretty dated–like saying "The Superman" or "The Batman." The movie (that I'd rather forget about) is called Green Lantern, the comic is called Green Lantern....no "the" in sight. It seems silly now that I didn't figure it out right away, but when plain old GREENLANTERN didn't fit, I sat there going through names of all the Green Lanterns I knew, and then moved on to thinking about Captain Planet characters until it finally clicked as other things filled in. Otherwise a somewhat challenging but fun solve for me.
@Leapy: Left you a late reply on yesterday's blog. ;>)
Loved it! Found it very challenging, very interesting, and very puzzling. I'm feeling smart because I solved it, and virtuous because I never once cheated -- especially on THE GREEN LANTERN answer that, had I known it, might have made this puzzle as "Medium" for me as it was for Rex. A puzzle that makes you feel smart and virtuous at the same time has to be pretty wonderful.
I'm wondering if everyone solves these quad stack puzzles much the way I solved this one: start in the middle, where the answers are shorter, and work your way both up and down in order to get the letter patterns that will enable you to solve the long answers. This worked better for me at the bottom than at the top: STAR STUDDED CAST (wonderful answer!) was my first long horizontal answer in. The other three came in quickly thereafter. The North was much more of a problem: PELT before PLOP at 9D; PIGTAIL before RATTAIL at 10D; and OH WOE before I HATE at 2D bollixed up that whole section for me. (And remember that I didn't know THE GREEN LANTERN.) I did have the truly awful REALER at 7D (when is this sort of thing going to stop, WS? I mean REALER-ly!!!)
But mostly a great puzzle and a worthy adversary. I hope all of you GAVE IT ANOTHER GO before caving in to any temptation to cheat.
As the quad stacks are not an every week occurance in the NYT puzzle, I really enjoy the variety it brings. It's a different solving experience. Agree with Rex that this puzzle was well executed, but this style of puzzle always takes me about 30% longer than my average Saturday solve time
Had JEb for JED for the longest time. Then remembered JEb's the real-life guy, and he ain't gonna be President.
I second (third? fourth?) the question behind NOD. Is zoning out meant as falling asleep, and thus you are nodding off? Seems like quite the stretch, since I associate zoning out with being awake but disengaged.
@Andy MTGES mortgages
NOD I'm assuming is the act of zoning out. I usually think on nod as actually falling asleep whereas zone would be more a daydream state.
Difficult but doable. Took some futzing around in the quad stacks to get some traction, but, as par, once once of the crosses went down it all started falling like dominoes.....
Loved the ROCKS cluing....it did certainly ROCK
Easier than usual for me. The music stuff helped, and for some reason I was just seeing the quadstacks today. I certainly enjoyed it more than Thursday's quip nightmare.
Is MTGES an abbreviation for mortgages?
Thanks @Z. Did I make the cut-off today?
Fairly easy Saturday for me. Found IN HIS and A TEMPO together and was off to the races. Nice puz, J Flinn.
I don't know too many execs with a jet perk. I had "Ret" there since I think exec as clued should lead to an abbreviation, n'est-ce pas? And retirement is something I, as a lowly freelancer, wouldn't mind having myself as a perk! So a DNF since I've never watched the West Wing and the only Jed I know is Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies or Jed Harris who once "ruled" Broadway. I had Red instead. Thank you REX for including that incredible Anne Sexton poem in your write-up. She certainly lived it.
Got it with one mistake: had NED/NET cross at 17. Seemed reasonable, NET as in safety net plus never having seen West Wing, NED seemed okay, too. JET clue stuck me as ambiguous.
All said, any time I finish a Saturday is good. Finding stack puzzles are coming easier. Scary thought :)
Good Fri/Sat wrap up after an ugly Thursday.
Could someone please explain MTGES and ODSON
Marna
@anonymour mama 11:03 am, mortgages and overdoses on
I love how some of the ETERNAL OPTOMISTSs who have HEARTs of GOLD on this blog can often give me more than ONE REASON to give IT ANOTHER GO when I HATE a puzzle.
I soon saw I would get no traction in the top stack so moved to the bottom. Now here's the secret to doing them. You have to get some Downs close enough to each other to see a pattern of words for the Acrosses. In my case I immediately had ROLF which gave me FORCEFEED, and GMAC. ILE gave me LORRE (a guess, but he did usually play villains). REMOTE and REASON and at the other end SLAVER and the bottom quadstack became obvious.
The top was harder. Like most of you, I was looking for some Lord of the Rings tie-in. But with ONNO and ERGS and ATEMPO, that old THE GREEN LANTERN comic came to mind. The original series ended in 1949, before I could read, but I remembered it. Probably some older kids had it in their collections. It helped that with just a few crosses ETERNAL OPTIMIST was obvious.
I liked the puzzle. And I liked that these quad stacks come up only every so often. If you had one every week it would be far too easy to OD ON solving them.
Writeovers: "Im hit" before IM HIP (which is far better and fits the clue), Jeb before JED, Raja before RANI. And really, how often has a female been the sovereign of an old Indian kingdom?
So, @Rex, do you need one of those sensitivity warnings before your solve, just in case you come across a word like SLAVER? Or FORCEFEED? SLAVER didn't bother me at all, but FORCEFEED did, because I saw Mondo Cane as a teenager and will never forget the scene were geese were force fed, in order to get a bird with a fat liver (foie gras). I'm told the geese don't really mind. Their lives are short but happy thanks to all that yummy food. But it certainly looks terrible from our point of view.
@mama11:03
Mortgages are explained several times above.
The other is OverDoses On.
Well, if it's poetry day:
The gal I love has quite a rack.
I took her out and brought her back.
We spent a fun night in the sack,
Then we finished this quadstack.
Rock's unaspirated cousin? No, that would be Udson. Must be overdosing on, then.
Yes on MTGES being an abbreviation for the mortgage you have on your house. Seems realer to me than REALER, which I agree is a little unreal.
I've no issue with Zone --> NOD. A stretch but we've seen worse. The elastic has not snapped on this one.
Well move over MAS, JF is in the house! I'm hoping you can share the accommodations because a quad stack is a rare thing of beauty to me. I was so pleased to see this today.
The bottom half came easier than the top, probably because I know nothing about THEGREENLANTERN. Marvel is not my thing and I wish Hollywood would see things my way. My last entry was ROLF. Really, a deep massage? In my lingo it means toss your cookies and I don't like to dwell on that over breakfast.
Great fun today! Thanks to Jason and WS!
I loved all the 15s (even MISAPPROPRIATES, MAS, which just looks cool to me), and they caused little junk, giving this puzzle a STAR STUDDED CAST of answers. What I like about these puzzles is figuring out the long answers with few letters filled in, and then having areas fill in flood-like. That happened quite a bit, so this puzzle was a combination of vigorous mental work followed by a gushing reward, and it doesn't get much better than that. Very nice one, Jason!
Mortgages (merges) and overdoses on (ods on)
I don't get "nod" either; otherwise I would have given this puzzle a nod. But never watched West Wing, so Jed, Jeb, Jep - all equally good for me, and for the first time in over a month, I guessed wrong. Single square DNF. I didn't know "rolf" either, but guessed it. Never heard of "Lai" (53 across,) either, and since "LUI" is an actual French word I know, almost had that square wrong as well, but Los Altos seemed right.
I don't like contrivances like "realer" either, but they seem to be occurring more and more frequently. Still, considering the difficulty in constructing stacks like these, a pretty decent puzzle. Jed?? Nod??? I know it is Saturday, but "not" with "jet" would have been more considerate...
Loved it...though opposire of Rex, south filled first, rather easily, then a pesky north.
Loved the Anne Sexton poem. Loved the puzzle. Love quad stacks. They are crazy cool. Do five stacks exist?
What @Martin Abresch said. Yes.
I fully expected Rex to give this one a ringing endorsement and was surprised by the initial part of his write-up. But, he ended up feeling the same as I do about this effort although, perhaps I liked it even more. I do not have a predetermined adversity to quad stacks. As long as at least most of the answers within the stacks are not disappointing and/or un-sussable, why not? And most of these quad stack fills were fine, i.e., you could figure them out and, when you did, they didn't make you think 'ugh'.
I thought 3d was a bit of cleverness that still managed to avoid being too cute. The one clue/answer that I quickly got but wished it wasn't in the puzzle was 7d realer for less of a dream. Realer strikes me as a word that is never used in either written or oral form and is therefore only a crosswordese word, which this otherwise excellent puzzle could surely do without.
Re: OFL's comment about wishing 45d had been clued for Seaver instead of slaver; Living in the times that we do of political correctness, we have a tendency to presume that many of the things that reasonable people take for granted, i.e., all races, genders and sexual preferences should be honored as equals is, has been (or should have been) the norm for most societies. But, of course, the opposite is true.
And reminders of that shameful part of our history such as slavers in crosswords and elsewhere is not only acceptable to me, I believe it to be important. One of the wisest sayings of all time, IMHO, is George Santayana's 'those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it'. You may know the history of slavery but, if you choose to avoid talking or reading about it, you really did not learn it.
Well I basically solved this from the bottom up but happy I finished it!
Most difficult puzzle in years for me. Too many references to the comic book/film/scifi genre.
After my first look through this one, I thought I was going to have to throw in the towel. I had absolutely nothing except a couple of hunches. So I went to the middle and filled up from there, got REALER, guessed ERGS, and once I realized that SabbaTHDAY was supposed to be SEVENTHDAY, there I was!
After that, the bottom was so easy that this in fact averaged out to a medium for me, too.
So, Friday was easy for everyone, difficult for me. Today was easy for me, medium to difficult for others. Not sure what's wrong with my brain. I found this puzzle to be a little too easy, not that I'm ungrateful. The long acrosses were pretty straightforward and came easily. The only hard part for me was the very center where I ended up guessing on a couple.
Stress free Saturday's can be a good thing.
I believe MTGES is a [godawful] abbreviation for 'mortgages'.
ODSON is actually OD'S ON, i.e. 'overdoses on'.
1 down. Mortgages
ODs on. Overdoes it
@Marna: MTGES is an abbreviation for mortgages. ODSON is an abbreviated way to say "Overdoses on.". OD = overdose
MorTGagES
OverDoseS ON
Mortgages
Overdoses on
Tough one for me, especially the top stack. Still a fun Saturday, good puzzle.
My "Boy, do I" usually has an EVER behind it.
Quite a pile: force feed, od's on, but I'm OK.
@Anonymous
MTGES = Mortgages which home buyers have on a house until paid off.
ODSON = Over doses on which is a hyperbolic way of describing overeatingfmi
@Dolgo, I had the same feeling about MISAPPROPRIATES. Embezzling feels like the better word for pocketing funds where as misappropriates better describes redirecting monies for unintended purposes.
While I knew the ring of power clue on 16A was going to be something other than The Lord of the Rings, I still had a hard time shifting my brain away wanting Frodo Baggins or Sauron which clearly wouldn't fit. Took a lot of crosses to bring me around to the DC Comics character.
Whenever I print out a puzzle and see long stacks, it's impossible not hear Rex's disapproving voice in the back of my head, but this was fun.
Let 'em die of self-starvation and you'd be whining even louder. And MIAs *need* to be remembered.
Saying the word "SLAVER" should be avoided because it gives you unpleasant associations is the most ridiculous uber P.C. misguided white guilt nonsense you have ever spewed. Let's take ROOTS off the library shelves too - that whole part where the Africans are not treated nicely makes it hard for me to sip my brandy at night. Are you serious?
@OISK -- Haven't seen you here for a while, it seems, so welcome back. I had the exact same single square DNF that you had: JEb/NOb. I, like so many others here, didn't get NOD at all, and since I don't watch "The West Wing" either, JEb/NOb made just as much sense to me as JED/NOD would have. I didn't mention all this because, frankly, it didn't seem all that important to me. I thought of my effort as a "finish" when I did it; and even after seeing the correct solution, REALER though it might be, I shall continue to think I truly solved this -- in spirit, if not in fact.
Pinch me. OFL spake well of a quadstack! We loved it of course because we always love stacked puzzles, and now that Will offers fewer and fewer we love them more and more.
Only complaints - MTGE and NOD. Started my career programming Balance Sheet and Income Statement info for banks. If I ever used that abbreviation I'd have been job hunting (its MTG). Agree with the other complainers on NOD as well, I zone out when I'm awake - Lady M tells me I'm usually zoned out when I'm awake - no NODding involved.
But all in all a terrific Saturday. Keep Stackin' 'em Mr. Flinn.
@evildoug, context is everything.
I've been in enough malnutrition wards during famine conditions to know that appetite can be suppressed and you really do need to FORCE FEED small amounts to starving babies at frequent intervals until they can regain their appetite and do the job on their own, So iin my mind, judicious FORcan be life saving. I once got into a huge fight with a group of anthropologists who thought I should have let an abused baby that I found starve instead of bringing him to the clinic. Since I was working for a public health organization my mandate clearly differed from theirs. The poor babe was 12 months old and weighed only 9 pounds.
My initial reaction to your first phrase, however, was "Try telling that to some of the parents I work with." Some parents have so little experience with babies before they have one that have no concept of what a newborns stomach will hold and some of the baby books push the notion that stuffing babies before bed helps them sleep. Then parents call me because they can't understand why their babies are up all night with indigestion. Having been of the generation that had the clean our plates, I still have memories of trying to figure out how to sneak the food I didn't want to eat into the bathroom to flush it down the toilet,
As for the MIA. They definitely should never be forgotten. I have never been in an active war zone, but have been in some sketchy places and lost a few friends and colleagues who were murdered while carrying out their work in public health. As the sister of a firefighter I will never forget for a moment the first responders on 9-11 either. So I keep a list of names in my head like Arya Stark. Unlike Arya Starkmy list of names consists of the lost (but not always missing) who I will always remember for the light they brought into the world,
I don't think there is anything wrong in discussing the many varied emotional reactions words can trigger, which is not at all the same thing as being in favor of censorship.
Tough (average Saturday) but fair. South fell pretty quickly, but North was a bear. SevenTHDAY and pedalO (for ATEMPO) sure didn't help, nor did somehow thinking anagram rather than homophone for 13D and going with lonI (anagram of loin). Also thinking cloture vote rather than voter. Also RAja.
Surprised not to see outrage over IDENT, which is REALERs ugly stepbrother. If you are going to shorten identification, you say ID. Why would you go with something 150% longer, when you are trying to abbreviate?
GREENLANTERN was my first thought at 18A, then I even counted to see if it worked with 'the', but with ERGS being the only crossing that worked, I gave it up and figured it would be some unknown Lord of the Rings thing. Although I am EXACTLY the kind of person everyone expects to be a LOTR lover, I've never read the books and could only stomach the first movie.
AGER? Because serving as president - presumably US president - ages a person? I found that entry weird.
Bah. Realer? Come on. Have you ever heard anyone say it, and if you did, did you not immediately taunt them?
Busy day so a very late comment. I actually did this on the Kindle last night so the solve time was thrown off. Like most people I solved the bottom stack first. The stacks are always a little intimidating until they start falling. The ring clue had me looking for Tolkien characters too. Gandalf the White does have 15 letters. Luckily we just had ATEMPO in that Saturday "face plant" puzzle.
Could someone please explain IDENT?
@Unk01:36 --
TSA agents require IDENTification before letting you go to the airport gate.
@Mariela, I am also stymied by AGER. Is that really the explanation? Anyone? Thanks...
SANS ROCKS
The ETERNALOPTIMIST HADAHEARTOFGOLD,
but on the SEVENTHDAY INHIS own way said, ”NO!”
“GIVEMEONEREASON’, TERI said, “IMOK, be bold.”
So on PRINCIPLE he GAVEITANOTHERGO.
--- ROLF RAND DESERET
This one was going nowhere fast with SabbaTHDAY stuck in there in the NW, and yeah baby UMA having given me TUSCALOOSA only from the U was the only thing making headway in the SE. Took a break. Came back to finally change to SEVENTHDAY and then it about filled itself in. Would never work at a xword tourney, but I’m glad I GAVEITANOTHERGO.
There’s a small town named CLE Elum near Roslyn, WA where Northern Exposure was filmed. Discovered it on a pilgrimage to the home of the best TV series ever. Do stop at The Brick if you go to Roslyn, it’s just like you saw it in the show.
Glad to see RAND not clued with Paul.
Garr or Hatcher, either way TERI has gotta be a yeah baby. Dated a TERI not long outta H.S. who was probably even more a yeah baby, if that’s possible, and oh so much REALER, and spectacular. Still have a letter she wrote to me +/-40 years ago. Dated another TERI about 15 years ago, Hall & Oates concert, she was concerned what we were doing might not have been legal. So every puz with TERI in it is a winner for me. Glad it happens often.
I wasn’t feeling like the ETERNALOPTIMIST when I saw the quad stacks, but GIVEMEONEREASON not to like this puz. Maybe MTGES.
Very slow getting into this one, with mostly random entries to start.
Finally got enough crosses to see most of the bottom stack. Then moved to the top stack and again crosses made it possible to see those as well.
In between, dawdled over ROLF and SLAVER, but was totally flummoxed by IMDB, which is were I DID. NOT. FINISH.
IHATE doing that, especially on an otherwise finish-able Saturday.
From Syndication Land:
Which of the following are "realer"?
mtges, ihate, onno, inhis, sen, cle, tmi, imhip, odson, cia, las, ile, lai, anit, asou, gmac, ident
Compared to yesterday's beautifully filled puzzle, this was full of junk. On the other hand, quad stacks are fun to solve in a "Wheel of Fortune" kind of way.
Excellent puzzle. There's really nothing here to complain about, unless of course your goal is to find SOMETHING to be negative about. And of course, there are those who invariably do. Even if MTGES isn't the "correct" abbreviation for mortgages, what else was going in there? Besides, it looked fine to me.
I can't see the rationale for changing the puzzle to get rid of SLAVER, since there were such ships used by despicable people to subjugate others. Sometimes I think there are still some who long for those days. Anyway, as someone else said up there, we need to always be reminded of how the the racism and bigotry of the USA had its origins. Or else you can stick your head in the sand.
The Sexton poem seems contrived, based as it is on a made-up palindrome. She has a turn of phrase, though.
I think the first sentence of the blog was a dead give-away. "Well, that could have been a lot worse", revealing that even before he started, @Rex was expecting something bad. In a crossword puzzle?!
Well, there was nothing bad here, unless one wants to perseverate on REALER. My enjoyment while solving this puzzle was real. Couldn't have been realer.
What happened to Cameron Collins and his high low
What happened to Cameron Collins and his high lo
I'm no more fond of quad stacks than Rex is, and for the same reasons. I agree that this was better than most. Like many others, I solved it from the bottom up.
On the plus side, IMOK was an improvement over yesterday's IMSAFE, and I was pleased to see the shout-out to William RAND, beloved, back in the pre-GPS age, of road trippers and armchair travelers alike.
REALER, however, if it is to be used at all, really needs a clue that acknowledges it is a non-real word. Clued as it is, it's just real ugly.
And there's this:
In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil's might,
Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!!!
No "the."
Last Friday, shopping at my favorite Trader Joe's, I was prepared for the question, "Doing anything fun this weekend?" "Not really, but I just came back from a CROSSWORD TOURNEMENT in St. Paul!!"
Turns out the cashier does the NYTP during his breaks. Discussion ensued. Told him where he could see an etui in the wild (the dollar store sells them for cellphones). He mentioned that he recently realized he could get a lot of traction by not avoiding the long answers. "Oh, yes, don't be afraid of the long answers - you can open up a lot of the grid that way." Me! Sounding just like Rex. A very slooooow Rex, but privy to the secrets of the solve.
So today, when I saw the stacks, I said, "Fear not! You will prevail." And prevail I did in the south, with no help at all. The north did need a couple of hints (aka, cheats) but then I finished up triumphantly. Had PLACE before MEDAL, but MENU changed all that. Got GIVE ME ONE REASON from 3 letters.
I did post yesterday, but the gerbils ate my homework. Never got the "your post has been saved" message, so I wasn't surprised.
Haven't read all the comments yet, but glancing thru it looks like a lively discussion...'magine that!
Hey @Rondo, Northern Ex was one of the few TV shows I watched faithfully in the last 25 years or so. I believe Cle Elem actually has its own moose roaming the streets.
It's Hoopfest Weekend in Spokane - over 7,000 3 on 3 teams participating all over downtown. Great people watching.
Enjoy the weekend - make up a good story for the store clerks!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Realer - it had to be, and yet, I actually wanted to be wrong
Pardon the lateness of this question, but the May 21 NY Times Crossword puzzle was just printed in today's Seattle Times. I don't understand the answer AGER for THE PRESIDENCY, NOTABLY. Does it mean that it has been known to age the person who holds the office?
@Anon 6:10 - Welcome to posting in Syndieland, our little 5-weeks-behind-the-Times puzzleplace.
I do believe you are correct - ager is what the office does to the pres. Didn't see any other posts to the contrary.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting (Synder) for Crosswords
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