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Azalea of rap / MON 3-13-17 / Fashion house founded in Milan / Start of playground joke / punny description / Four-time MLB All-Star Jose
Monday, March 13, 2017
Constructor: Alan DeLoriea
Relative difficulty: Medium (avg Monday)
THEME: POINT OF NO RETURN (60A: Punny description for 17-, 26- or 48-Across) — three themers are ... points of no return ... punnily ... I guess ...
Theme answers:
- BERMUDA TRIANGLE (17A: Atlantic site of strange disappearances) (so ... boats and planes don't return from here ... sometimes ...)
- FINAL SALE (26A: "As is" transaction) (here, you can't return whatever you bought...)
- TENNIS ACE (48A: Excellent service) (and finally, you can't return your opponent's serve...)
José Bernabé Reyes (born June 11, 1983) is a Dominican professional baseball infielder for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB). He previously played, most notably at shortstop, for the Miami Marlins, Toronto Blue Jays and Colorado Rockies.
Reyes is a four-time MLB All-Star. He led MLB in triples in 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2011. Reyes also led the National League (NL) in stolen bases in 2005, 2006, and 2007. He was the NL batting champion in 2011. He is also the New York Mets' all-time leader in triples and stolen bases. (wikipedia)
• • •
I had the most trouble with YO MAMA (the phrase "playground joke" really gave me very little idea of where the answer was heading) and ASIATIC (which is just a fancy way of saying "Asian"??). Otherwise, at 2:52, my time was dead-normal for a Monday. It's a place-filler puzzle, but I've certainly done worse. And hey, nice clue on NERDY.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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59 comments:
Very easy with a conservative slant.
Able to suss the reveal without reading the clue.
TENNIS ACE was best of themers.
Liked cluing for EARTH and PROOF.
Thanks AD
Medium for me and a pretty medium Mon. Mildly amusing theme with some nice long downs...SHUT UP, YO MAMA, BLARNEY, BRA SIZE...liked it.
This one had an inauspicious beginning for me. First thing I noticed was the four chea..., erm, helper squares. Then we get ATTY & APB out of the gate. Not great.
YO MAMA, FUTILE, GARGLE & IGGY, however, began to win me over. ZAPPA, BLARNEY, PITHY & ENNUI sealed the deal and this NERDY guy was sold.
Thought the theme was solid with a very nice revealer. I'm not sure why "Punny" was a part of the clue for the revealer. I think it works just fine in a literal, straight-forward sense.
Agree with @jae on Medium and the nice long Downs. I wasn't sure how well the theme answers related to POINT, but I liked the three different varieties of RETURN. Nice array of different feelings, too: ENNUI v. AWE, BLISS v. PANIC.
I noticed over on the right that TETRAS SANK. Sad.
Pretty darn easy for me, ripped right through it. Hey, it's Monday.
Used to get the back of my dads hand if I said SHUT UP to my bratty brother, he insisted we say "be quiet please", yeah right! Like that's going to happen.
I thought YO MAMA would be the start of an insult, like YO MAMA wears Army boots, not the start of a joke.
My ASIATIC hairdresser calls me a NERD because I always pack a puzzle to do while I'm under the dryer. I get no respect!
I get how each has to do with RETURN, and I didn't mind BERMUDA TRIANGLE as there are three POINTS to its shape, or TENNIS ACE as the game involves also involves POINTS, but what does POINT have to do with final sale??
Blew theough this not even thinking "theme"
and didn't hit a snag except for ASIATIC. Could not think of another adjectival. And "TENNIS ACE" just seems redundant so it took me a bit to see the "tennis" part. In retrospect, I guess when I think about an "ace" it is either a pilot or a smoking serve that's I have missed because I absolutely suck at tennis and so for me, typically the context makes the descriptor unnecessary. Although, now that I have spent way too many minutes contemplating the term "ace," table tennis, badminton and volleyball have aces, too. Probably typical crossword brain freeze.
Amusing that the TETRAS SANK, and we had PROOF of the BERMUDA TRIANGLE.
An easy but not very PITHY Monday.
@Isaac - If you look at your bank statement on-line you will see the initialism POS which stands for Point Of Sale. If the POS conditions are "as is " there are no returns.
Great start to the week. The only place I stumbled was when I created a new bone, the “fibia.” Sheesh.javascript:void(0)
I’m sure glad ERIC’s clue specified which Clapton. Otherwise I may have gone with his second cousin, Boyd.
Big music vibe going on with TUBA, ERIC, NSYNC, ELLA, IGGY, ZAPPA, YOYO MA. Har.
GARGLE is a fun word. It’s gotta be onomatopoeic, right?
@CDilly52 – I noticed that TETRAS SANK, too. Poor little guys.
NOID looks vaguely medical. We had to run maw maw to the doctor because she had a big ole noid growing on her left fibia.
Thanks, Mr. DeLoriea. Nicely done.
@M&A -- BLISS for U, with those 9 U's
Is NOID a DOOK?
I thought it was a terrific Monday theme. It's not a retread, and each answer features a different meaning for "return". And I love the word PITHY.
My brain pointed out two sub-currents in the puzzle:
1. PITHY / NERDY / TINY / BLARNEY / IGGY
2. ERA / BERMUDA / ZAPPA / ELLA / TETRA / YOMAMA /TUBA / PRADA (This sub-theme could be titled AAH).
Nice idea and very clean. Not sure about the as-is sale being a point, but no foul. Well above average for Monday IMO.
I did across clues only for the first time. I see that it's much harder to recover from a Casco or a typo without the cross clues!
Doggone it, Smith, you beat me to my Clapton comment. Thought sure you'd be busy telling dog sled tales and leave clue grousing to me....
Really happy YO MAMA didn't get slammed for cultural appropriation--yet, anyway. They're fun jokes across all racial boundaries....
We had regular USAF supply missions to Bermuda, and I always thought about the aircraft losses thereabouts. But I managed to beat the odds. We never got to stay the night, but I ran into the gift shop to buy an "I Survived The Bermuda Triangle" t-shirt. Sure would've been hilarious if we crashed flying out of there, huh?
One of my friends doesn't bother with Monday or Tuesday puzzles. I do them, because there's often something of interest, and if they're dull, they don't bore me for long. Good Monday review by @Rex, which I know is hard for him. I wonder if "punny" wasn't added by an editor to try to make the theme easier? It makes better sense without it. I likedthe clue for EARTH.
Cut through this like a hot knife through oleo, but enjoyed the ride. cupSIZE before BRASIZE.
I think of Asian as a simple way of saying ASIATIC, rather than the latter being a fancy way of saying the former.
JEAN comes from Genoa, just as denim comes from Nimes.
I must agree with @chefwen, Yo mama was always the beginning of a "dis" in the South Bronx, not a joke. The puzzle was interesting with a couple of clues I will tuck away for future reference.
Hey All !
Nice MonPuz. Some super easy clues, ENE, DIM, OCT, ALA, OPEN. Wondering which one wins @M&A's Moo-cow easy prize.
calLER before DIALER. Wasn't The NOID a Pizza Hut commercial claymation thing?
Rex's time cracks me up. I like to actually slow down on a MonPuz so it isn't over too quick. For some reason, I don't like when answers auto-fill. Once I get a bunch of Acrosses, say, I like to look at the DOWNS to finish them first before the final Across in the area auto-fills them in. First, did that last sentence make any sense? Second, not sure if that's a weird quirk on me, or if others do the same.
Anyone seen the movie POINT OF NO RETURN with Bridget Fonda? Not the best ever, but she's a cutie, so some leeway is given. :-)
YOMAMA is NERDY :-P
RooMonster
DarrinV
Fun puzzle but not at all funny!!! Hand up for not understanding Yo mamma. Haven't made chicken ala king in a while...time to make some
With ROGUE clued as a Star War episode crossing IGGY and SULU this was for me a natik corner on steroids. Otherwise it was a typical Monday. Original theme. I liked TENNIS ACE and FINAL SALE more than Rex did.
Re 8D -- Isn't that supposed to be a Secret, Victoria? Stop blabbing.
Re 16A and 11D -- Did you just cross two Star War clues with each other, Alan??? Well, did you???
Re 5D -- I thought denim was the fabric and JEANS (can you even say JEAN?) were the style.
But all in all, a pretty zippy Monday. The theme served up a bit of sidespin. I liked it.
Sorry about all that white space. The side of my left hand brushed against something, I don't exactly know what, on the keyboard, and all hell broke loose.
My proudest association with Bermuda is that I've played all six golf courses on the island.
One of the companies with which I was associated was a NE-US-located company claiming international status for tax purposes. Because of that, board meetings had to be held out of the US. We alternated between Toronto (a one-day trip, meeting in a rented room at the Airport) and Bermuda (two days, with early-morning golf on the second day).
Fortunately, one of the other board members was a member of the private and exclusive Mid-Ocean Golf Club there, one of the world's fabled tracks, allowing us on as his guest. Otherwise, my claim above could not be made.
One trip there, the taxi drivers were on strike. Since non-residents are not allowed to drive cars there, we travelled around the island on motorbikes. A fine way to get around in thus scenic setting. If you go there, try it!
I love the way the clever people on this blog discover the repurposing of some answers. DOOK and NOID, for example. I picture a scene from The Diner... "The dook was really noid at the way you dissed 'im."
In response to chefwen and beaglelover: when I grew up in the South Bronx insults were interchangeable with jokes; it was called "playing the dozens ". Depending on how you took it, you either laughed or fought.
Found the puzzle easy, my fastest time ever.
Oops. Movie is just Diner.
@LMS
re: fibia, I made the same initial mistake and WE ARE NOT ALONE
https://www.healthtap.com/topics/fibia-vs-fibula
I think of the jokes "yo mama is so ugly that . . ." In general, I would not advise anyone to make jokes about other people's mamas. When I was a teenager, I told a guy two years older that his mother had a strange laugh. Even though we were in church at the time, he reacted by punching me so hard in the stomach that it knocked the air out of me and caused me to double over.
PR for me today. Not an objectively fast time, but my best yet without really concentrating on it. Fun theme.
Shakespeare and his YO MAMA joke:
Demetrius: "Villain, what has thou done?"
Aaron: "That which thou canst not undo."
Chiron: "Thou has undone our mother."
Aaron: "Villian, I have done thy mother."
Cute Monday, UNDEAD zombies and all. Liked PRADA RATS and PROOF sitting atop of the BERMUDA TRIANGLE's strange disappearances.
A puzzle with some grits in it.
@Nancy
16A: Star Wars
11D: Star Trek
@JC66, thank you. Bless her heart . . .
Loved PITHY, can't remember it in a puzzle.
@chefwen etal. re YO_MOMMA...definitely an insult lead-in, rather ugly connotation.
@LMS and @JC66....hand up for fibia...didn't think anyone else would fall for the same error I did!
Lovely snow just on tree branches this morning in St Louis. I hope you NE folks are ok in the storms.
@JC66 (10:14)-- Aha. That explains it. I suppose everyone on the blog not named Nancy knows the difference.
For a Monday, liked this one pretty well overall...reasonably clean fill, themers with varied and interesting relation to the revealer. My one nitpick (NYT-pick?) is that while I have no problem with FINALSALE, TENNISACE is not a real thing. I mean an ace is a real thing in tennis, obviously, but TENNISACE as a phrase is not. Would have much preferred SERVICEACE, which is redundant and overly formal, but at least exists as a real term.
I wrote maybe last week I saw no reason for every early-week puzzle to have a theme. But as themes go, I enjoyed this one. POINTOFNORETURN was pretty clever I thought.
I have owned a JEAN jacket, and that's what it was called. So no foul there.
Don't detect a "pun" in the revealer. but like the way the three themers come together in it.
Also like NOID as a gridiom (hello @lewis) and the parallel descending pair of TREK and SULU.
Then there's the double command of ASK ME and SHUT UP.
PANIC seems to be a recurring theme in the puzzle lately. Perhaps a sign of the times?
I liked the theme just fine. Puns? Where? I didn't notice even an attempt. I'll admit I'm slow this morning, just not waking up properly. I guess an ACE is a point because of no return. Is that some sort of pun? I dunno.
I have to say I'm glad @Evil Doug did not crash after buying that potentially self-fulfillingy prophetic t-shirt. How unknowingly deprived we would be.
Given the definition of NERDY in the clue I'm surprised nobody has noticed that the NERDiest musician I know of is featured here. That wold be Frank ZAPPA; he was Innovative, and edgy and seriously jazz oriented, I enjoyed watching him stand aside in a performance conducting his band with his index finger.
I never noticed TREK crossing SULU until it was mentioned here. I went back and looked, what a surprise. I never saw LON, IGGY or SEEK either, I basically just sailed through this on the acrosses. Pretty good for someone's second NYT puzz. Jeff's POW too which fills me with dread for the coming week.
TUBAs, like trumpets, only infrequently (or always in cartoons) make the cheeks puff out. (The tuba is the instrument I play — which makes me “passionately brainy”. No?) Of course, YO MAMMA’s cheeks puff out when she plays. Fun puzzle, tho.
SHUT UP SULU. What a finely crafted phrase …
Thanx to @Lewis for the zealous U-count over-respect, and to @Roo, for his moo-cow clue interest.
Well, hey -- Jeff Chen says that this here is yer staff Pick of the Week NYTPuz. Point of no return, dude. And it does sport a hefty 8 U's, after all [AAH] -- so what's not to like. Fun solvequest.
staff weeject pick: YUK.
fave moo-cow MonPuz eazy-E clue: {WSW's opposite} = ENE. Other possible answers? MSM?
fave Desperate & Desperater answer: DIALER.
fave desperate harbor of cheater squares: the SE corner. Protectin three U's [lil darlins].
Thanx, Mr. Deloriea. Passionately Uey, dude. [M&A overdid the U-luv today? thought so.]
Masked & Anonym8Us
**gruntz**
DIALER - an anachronism I shook my head at, mostly at just how fast the "dial" disappeared into history. I was so excited when I first got a phone number in my name in the early 80s along with a sleek black pushbutton phone that I still own - it's connected up in my garage. I never answer it because it has NO [caller] ID!
A fun puzzle done in my average Monday 6:33 time with a rare "no writeovers". I was blank on what "____ my words" was, so thankfully I did not fuse my calf/shin bones into a Fibia - the FEMUR MARKed the correct answer for 37A.
Nice sophomore effort, Alan DeLoriea.
nice shout out to Frank ZAPPA and ERIC Clapton, two guitar greats.
Hi all,
Happy to see this in print, and as happy to read all of your comments.
My lip wrinkled a bit when I read "punny" edited on to the revealer, but *shrug*
Realized later a missed opportunity to swap an 'S' into MARK and clue 37A as "39-Across" neighbor.
Where is George?
Where is Z?
I hope the nasties didn't drive them away. It would be sad to lose their intelligent comments.
Hey Alan!
Nice to "see" you here. No control over editing, I guess. At least you have a few puzs in the NYT. I'm still waiting with fingers crossed. Har, a pun!
RooMonster
@LMS Can add me to the "trying to squeeze fibula into 26 down" crowd; particularly embarrassing as I spent 10+ years doing osteoporosis research.
@Nancy OK, we need a poll here! How many people on the blog don't know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars? Only reply if the answer is "yes, I do not know" so we can keep this completely un-scientific.
@Roo 8:02 AM - Dominoes instead of Pizza Hut.
Avoid the NOID.
A smiley Monday, let me count the ways:
- Bermuda Triangle (btw agree w @numinous on that one, need @evildoug around)
- Zappa
- undead (a zombie clue! Yay!)
- bliss
- Sulu
- dog sled (to be honest, one reason I popped by here was to check if there were any outraged posts on the "cruelty of the Iditarod", a fray I would happily enter and probably offend a lot of otherwise nice people in the process...)
- pithy! Love "pithy" as a word. It's just so....PITHY.
- dilute. Can't remember the last time I saw this in a xword.
- noid. gargle. futile. MiG. The Fed. Thin air.
Such fun words not often seen, especially Mondays. I really really enjoyed this fast smooth Monday.
No puns. Erm (heehee @Anoa Bob)... Wordplay that highlights the differences in the commonality. Subtle, esp for a Monday.
Agree with @Cassieopia (here's looking at you, Cassie!): great word list, though neither a caller nor a dialer be. Also not quite mad for PITHY, remembering Physiology lab with the pithed frogs.
And speaking of helmets: would a person be swell-headed if their capsize is larger than their brasize? Or vice versa?
For YO MAMA as a joke, check out Remember the Titans; can;t swear that locker-room scene is real, but it's on film. And for Frank Zappa fans, check out Boulez Conducts Zappa, if you haven't yet. (That's Boo-Lez, as in Nez Perce, the one we recently lost)
@Roomie, me too. Any day of the week, I like to slow it down, laissez les bons temps roulez plus longtemps. Erm, probly why I'm posting at this hour...
Well, guess we can't put TREK in our puzzles any more, lest Sappa (any relation to Moon Unit or Frank ZAPPA?) come barging in again. Don'tcha think maybe one post coulda handled it, honey?
To our TENNISACE of a puzzle. I thought the theme was...well, I thought there WASN'T one, till the punchline. And that's a good thing. Tied it all together, yielding more of an "AAH" moment than an "aha" one. Also the fill is an improvement over recent offerings, THE (though at least this time it's not alone!), DIALER and the RCD* notwithstanding.
The start was inauspicious, with an abbr. at 1-across--and a "start of" clue at 4-down. I said to myself, "If I see a 'more of the joke' clue I'm dropping this like a hot ball bearing." But no, it was, mercifully, by itself. Actually, in practice I believe YOMAMA is more of an RPR.** Then things picked up. Very easy, for me; did it in...well, not long. ELLA's been in the spotlight so often lately; let's pick a JEAN for DOD. How about JEAN Simmons, who played not one but two evangelists (Guys and Dolls; Elmer Gantry)? Oh dear me, I have committed the sin of lust! A tap-in birdie.
*random compass direction
**random playground retort
SHUTUP & DIALER
I SEEK PROOF of YOMAMA ELLA’s TINY BRASIZE,
it’s BLARNEY, so FUTILE, such a NERDY and INANE thing to learn.
In a PANIC, I TORE it OPEN, do NOT ASKME why
I saw the TWO PACT in it, now I’m past the POINTOFNORETURN.
--- ERIC BLAIR-KEATON, ATTY.
Nice puz to start the week. TWO abbr.s starting in the one-hole, but no worries.
Rather see IGGY Pop than Azalea, he’s got talent, she can SHUTUP. And instead of Michael KEATON I’d go with yeah baby Diane KEATON. If you ASKME, there’s a reason Mike got the title role of Birdman, and it won because the Hollywood types like an inside story. That’s how full of themselves they are.
In these parts RUBIO is T’wolves point guard Ricky RUBIO.
I’ve still got that Eb TUBA if any one’s interested. Oomp AWE oomp AAH.
When the small town I live in had three bars kinda kitty-corner from each other they called it the BaRMUDATRIANGLE.
Pros outweigh the CONS.
Doing acrosses only, this seemed almost a fill-in-the-blank puzzle until I got a third of the way down. At FINAL SALE, I reverted to my usual way of solving, which OFL says is "wrong", and I got more interested. Wasn't aware of a theme until the revealer, which actually was one. I liked @BS's POINT OF NO RETURN better than the ones in the puzzle.
Nice to see ERIC clued as Clapton, and not the "other" one.
Could have used some appropriate adjective for RUBIO.
NOID could've been clued as Bronx pronunciation of NERD. I say this not really knowing if people in the Bronx talk like that. Brooklyn, manybe. And also, speaking as a Canadian, I wonder if the THE FED, which I've heard, is the Federal Reserve. I don't really know.
Anyway, I liked this well-situated Monday puzzle.
Didja ever go to Google a word or idea, only to forget what you were Googling by the time the Google site came up? Yeah, that's the kind of morning I'm having. Thank goodness it's Monday, and the Monday puzzle brought some joy to my otherwise Googled brains.
I did do a bit of a grunt (a ladylike one) when I wrote in DIALER. Noticed that only @Teed wrote of my own thought - that this is an outmoded term. Saw a dial phone the other day - wondered if some might know how to use it. Not!! When I worked at the UCSD Medical Center, I had a dial phone that I used all day long. Longed for an up-to-date touch pad. Remember dialing a number, your finger getting stuck, and then having to hang up and begin dialing again? Those were the days. Let's make phones great again!!!
Ooh Ooh! I just remembered what I was going to Google. I gotta go - quick!
Diana! Lady-in-Waiting! For Crosswords!
BRASIZE...
BRAga, BRAzil, BRAhms, BRAhman, BRAvo, BRAva, BRAvura, BRAwny, BRAwl, BRAcero,....
Time for a BRA-themed puzzle. Why not?
The history carved city, Himalayan glacial freshwater lakes, and the world's highest elevated snow Himalayan peaks are all excellent delights in Nepal. It's tough to describe how attractive Nepal is because it's a collection of much-worthy natural beauty. Among 1000's amazing places, I have mentioned the 9 most beautiful places in Nepal.
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