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Canadian crooner Michael / FRI 9-15-17 / Basic beverage in baby talk / Parker so-called queen of indies
Friday, September 15, 2017
Constructor: Damon Gulczynski
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: John von NEUMANN (32A: Computer science pioneer John von ___) —
John von Neumann (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/; Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos, pronounced [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, inventor, computer scientist, and polymath. He made major contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, representation theory, operator algebras, geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, and quantum statistical mechanics), economics (game theory), computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics. (wikipedia)
• • •
["... 'cause we can't see EYE-TO-EYE ..."]
There's nothing wrong with this puzzle, but it felt a little flat. I think my standards for themelesses are starting to rise, as I know they're much easier to fill with interesting answers than themed puzzles (which have serious restrictions by nature). It's not shocking that I have historically liked Fri and Sat puzzles much better than those from other days of the week.
[from "Did Rex Parker like the puzzle?"]
Good themes are hard to pull off, and *especially* hard to pull off without dragging the non-theme fill down. Good themelesses, while they can be challenging to make, are generally easier to make *interesting* / splashy than themed puzzles are. So something like today's themeless puzzle, which is merely solid, leaves me a little cold. Without theme restrictions, you should be able to do a little dazzling with the fill. You can always dazzle with the cluing. But this clue dazzles on neither front. Again, it is not weak or bad. But I want art. Or cheap thrills. Or both. Something. I dunno. Maybe if the cluing were much better, it would've felt less like a warm-up puzzle and more like a Main Event.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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140 comments:
"I know right" is awful but otherwise this was fun, on the easy side for Friday.
Easy but for the NW where I blithely put in GEHRY and POD (for the whale clue) on first pass and found myself flummoxed for far too long.
Easy-medium for me too. Had problems with I KNOW RIGHT as my expectations were similar to @Rex's. Plus I put an "m" in where the K was in anticipation of I have no idea what. (MAUNA KEA took a while because of that "m"). I also tried ameliA which wouldn't fit before ENOLA. The rest was pretty smooth .
Solid Fri. which I liked (I'm just accepting the fact that late week puzzles are trending easier than they used to), but I agree with @Rex on the need for and lack of dazzle.
I tend to be a big fan of @Damon Gulczunski's themeless puzzles, and started out with the thrill of plunking in NEUMANN with no crossings. Born in Hungary from which he fled due to Nazi persecution, von Neumann invented game theory, among many other contributions, and had a legendary sense of humor [contact me off-Rex if you want to follow up; those who are impatient may want to take this book recommendation].
As for the puzzle, I ran into some of the same issues that @Rex describes, except I got stuck on I'M paYING (or is that a cousin of I.M. PEI or I.M. MERSED?!) and never quite unraveled the second of the bygone Chevy's. DEADRINGER reminded me of this joke.
Played challenging for me. @Anonymous: I had pod, too.
I also don't know BUBLE and didn't think about easy Spanish words so I had pUBLE and aNA and IMpaYING instead of IMBUYING.
The DRT cross with ADJURE also did me in. I wanted AbJURE, as in renounce, and bRT made no less sense to me than DRT.
Couldn't remember ALLTHATJAZZ, which I got from crosses.
Ugh.
I see that @George fell into the same 1 down trap as I did. Glad to be in such good company.
This was a medium. No goofy mistakes today just boring old got it all. The puzzle wasn't boring I just never felt pushed. Aren't there architects besides from IMPEI? PTBARNUM was just as obvious. That NW should have been a slam dunk but I had a couple pf write overs to fix. Of the long entries only the two debut phrases gave me any trouble. They were both a little off center in their own way. IKNOWRIGHT is Wayne's World speak and GRACIOUSME is Aunt Bee material. Two cars in one puzzle, I wonder how @Nancy did working around them?
Had the IK and tried to write in IKidyounot (which fit). Darn. It would have worked better.
Otherwise, yeah, easy/medium. The one spot that gave me real trouble was the ADJURE/DRT crossing, as I didn't know the former, and initially thought Gere's character was named mRT.
Count me amongst those who didn't care for the clueing for GAM.
DRT, really? And GAM... no. These rare animal collection words are not real things.
I sometimes don't solve in a vacuum. Today, I had a lot of distractions: mid-solve dinner followed by a trip to the bar. No complaints. West Coast people have an advantage on this blog format. It finally got serious in the SW and some staring ensued. I know my California stuff, and the UC blank was the ticket out of that little quagmire. I owe what my life has become, to the State College System which provided me with an affordable education. Not smart enough to attend a State University. SANTA CRUZ is an iconic community. UCSC has the Banana Slugs and UCI has the Anteaters. Students in the 60s voted on this stuff and licensing fees continue to pour in.
We eat BOW TIE pasta all the time. Some how I forgot that it was a thing. Then we get a chess clue wrapped up in a misdirection. Double glaze over here; what is wrong with me?
Got my money's worth on this one.
This was mostly fun for me, even if it was a bit too easy for a Friday. I find DRT especially annoying and it almost tripped me up as well. In spite of having suffered through the movie "Dr. T & the Women", when I saw DRT it seemed wrong. All I could think of was a grim acronym used by some ambulance crews. It was never written down, but I'd usually hear it when they went out on an urgent call, often to car crash, and wanted to let us know they wouldn't be bringing a patient into the ER, because, unfortunately, they had found the person DRT. "Dead Right There." Bad fill on several levels. I vote for retiring it.
This was a great puzzle.
I always get the MAUNA_ _ _ part and then I gotta figure out which one it is. I never get _ _ _ _ _ KEA or the other one.
"ALL THAT JAZZ" (1979) is a kickass great movie and I know from such things. Do yourself a favor and agree.
I thought mauna kea was mauna loa (get my volcanoes mixed up). My real problem was 19 down. I had the "R" and wrote in Sears, but then realized that couldn't be right. Sears is no longer a "retail giant," it's barely hanging on. Clue should have been "former retail giant founded in 1986."
I thought this was an enjoyable Friday for a lot of the reasons Rex described-- a fair number of red herrings, and interesting fill overall.
@George Barany as a computer science grad NEUMANN was my first fill, too, so I'll probably check that book out!
According to the episode of the Simpsons where they visit their state capital, their official state pasta is the BOW TIE, which is somehow the only was that I remember that pasta exists.
I love "IKNOWRIGHT" which is text-speak (IKR) my niece taught me recently.
I actually thought that I KNOW RIGHT was the strongest and freshest entry in the puzzle.
For some reason, I struggled with this one and finished with much worse than my typical Friday time. Damon is one of my anti-wavelength constructors; my instincts always lead me astray with his clues.
So much of my difficulty with this came from my initial guesses on various entries just not being the right ones, and losing time to corrrcting them. I started with IM PEI but then dropped IBID instead of IDEM and upon having that B, I wanted THROB instead of MATED. Couldn't remember NEUMANN and like many others I'm sure wanted POD instead of GAM. Happily went with GREAT SCOTT before GRACIOUS ME. In the space that ended up being ADJURE I had, at various times, ENJOIN, CAJOLE, and at least one other word that now escapes me. It would have helped if I had any clue about the Richard Gere role (DRT? DR. T?). And I tried CAIR (the well known Council on Arab American Relations) before ACLU. All of these missteps were surmountable, but not before they wrecked my time!
(Sorry-- CAIR = Council on American-Islamic Relations)
Everything went in swimmingly until I ended up in the northwest. Huge crash and burn. Ignoring the themeless alarms going off in my head, I put in “pod” for the whale group (hey, @Mike in Mountain View) which cemented in for me some kind of “I __ __ up” for the “it’s on me” clue. In that vein, I erased some stuff and put in “I’m guilty.”
Adding insult to injury, I was thinking the Canadian singer was “Boule” and not BUBLE.
Thanks, Rex, for refocusing my take on I KNOW, RIGHT? Whew. It looked like I KNOW RIGHT (from wrong), and I was feeling a little bad for Damon. But now that’s my absoute favorite entry. (Sorry, @Melrose, but I love that phrase. Scoot over, @Ando and @Matthew G.) Love it as a phrase of affirmation. (Love its truncated version, RIGHT? Even more. But you have to enunciate it just so – kind of draw it out and have the proper facial expression.)
Blog trolls are an example of why some mothers eat their young.
I KNOW, RIGHT?
“Abash” before ABASE. Guessed right on the LEV/AVEO cross.
Even with the MA _ _, there was no way in hell I was ever going to see MAUNA KEA. Ever. And with the “mea culpa” take on 1D, I just couldn’t recover. Suffered a pretty bad dnf. Ouch.
But hey – I should have figured out PT BARNUM and MATED. So the failure – it’s on me.
Nice one, DJG.
I was happy to see Damon was the constructor because I seem to just get his wavelength and today's puzzle was no exception. My solve was fast and I may have a personal record Friday time. Of course, I may be full of ALLTHATJAZZ because I just became a first-time grandmother at 2:10am. Nobody's sleepy in this family tonight!
My only query was MATED. I had it correctly, but didn't understand it was a chess reference until now.
This one just kept unfolding until the next thing I knew it was over. The clue for Enola ("First name in aviation") -- the plane that dropped the Hiroshima bomb -- felt too lighthearted to me. But the rest of the puzzle was one smile-producing revelation after another, lovely phrases like DEAD RINGER, MEDIA FRENZY, I KNOW RIGHT, THE RITZ, HEY YOU, EYE TO EYE, GRACIOUS ME. Then there was that terrific misdirect clue for SWEDE ("Celsius, for one").
Thus, I left this puzzle exhilarated. Thank you for that, Damon -- excellent one!
I agree with @Michael on IKNOWRIGHT. Great.
Started out strong, able to bung in IMPEI, NEUMANN, FRENEMY, and RIVERSIDE without crosses... oops. Really messed up the SW for me until I eventually got ALLTHATJAZZ and figured there must be some other UC campus with nine letters. None of them coincident with SANTACRUZ, by the way. Which is much closer to where I grew up. Do they give grades there now? My dad objected to what my transcript was going to look like, so I picked Davis (five letters). (But "went out of state," as the befuddled guidance counselors put it... huh, they have schools east of the Sierras?!?)
@Johnny, this helps sometimes with the Loa/Kea dilemma: Mt Mauna Loa is lower (lowa).
I must have spent too much time listening to teenagers lately because I KNOW, RIGHT popped into my head with no effort. On the other hand, I got stuck on GRACI and wondered if it was Italian? When I finally filled it in from the downs I saw GRACIO US ME.
SANTA CRUZ fell right in too thanks to the California college tour trip that was supposed to introduce my son to the beaches of my youth while listening to Beach Boys songs driving down the coast. Instead, it drizzled most of the time and he had control of the music which mostly consisted of what I now call stoner rap with a little Greatful Dead mixed in. I confess that the rap lyrics were not as vile as I had expected and some were actually quite funny. SANTA CRUZ would have been a fine choice except for the fact that it would have been more expensive than where he's going now because he would have had to pay out of state prices.
Bye, Cassini.
Had ARCHRIVAL instead of ADVERSARY which slowed down the NE for me, but otherwise really enjoyed this
Felt like a main event to me! I loved it!
I thought "I know right" was an exclamation until I read Rex, but now I seem to remember the phrase was used by ScarLo's character in Ghost World. Used by folks younger than me. I had meter for beat, in a way; correcting that finished the puzzle for me.
Overall, a good but not great Friday.
I love themeless puzzles (Hey, Will, can't we get more of them and less of those hokey themed ones?) and this was indeed a solid Friday. Perhaps a tad too easy -- not GLoSSY enough -- but no complaints here.
It seems to be a week of cringing for me since the mere mention of Michael BUBLE makes me feel the opposite of all "bubbly" inside. For me, hearing him (usually in the supermarket) is the musical equivalent of ipecac.
Speaking of cringing, did anyone else think of GROPE for "dirty cop"?
TGIF, y'all.
I.M. PEI and P.T. BARNUM were two out of my first three words, and I thought we were in for a two-initial theme.
Some nice misdirects: baD egG before ENDING, ScalE before SWEDE, ArchenemY before ADVERSARY. And yes, I wanted two squeeze doppelganger in there somehow.
But ultimately, the puzzle failed for me for the unpleasant IKNOWRIGHT (which I knew Rex would love), the comically obscure Prince Valiant reference, STE, and not one but two %&@% cars.
No problems today in this quick solve. I always liked, "Showtime!"
Was anyone else annoyed by the clue for 49A? Is LILAC any more likely a "Bridesmaid dress shade" than...any other color? I actually cannot remember a single wedding I've attended where bridesmaids wore lilac dresses. Black, dark purple, teal, green, yellow, light blue, dark blue, burgundy, pink... not lilac. I don't know if it's an out of date clue (was lilac a popular bridesmaid color in the 50s perhaps?) or just oddly random.
@QuasiMojo: " The musical equivalent of ipecac" may be the best thing I've heard in months; many thanks. True story: we were discussing music for our daughter's wedding reception; I had (I thought hopefully) put together a long list of multi-generation dance favorites. My daughter and her fiancé looked at me with pity, trashed nearly all of the list, and her fiancé suggested that it would be great to have some Michael Bublé. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out something to the effect of "oh good god, really? No eww". Great way to start a relationship with your future son-in-law…
Puzzle: I fell into all the holes that others have mentioned; GAM vs. pod was particularly galling, and added at least five minutes to my solve time, if you can call it that – I could not for the life of me pull out the bygone Chevy model that started with an A, and LE_ refused to be anything but LEO. AoEO? Sounds like something your local alleycat would say after a close encounter with a tin can. Finished with an error, multiple times, until my brain finally offered up a V. Thanks for nothing, brain...
@7:56 anon...LILAC dress is the new Green Paint.
@Hartley...congratulations!!! I'm 11 months into grandmotherlyness...it's so fabulous that the sting of suddenly having an old timer label quickly wanes.
Plenty to like here. IKNOWRIGHT is spectacular. The long words containing Z are very good. All four corners are well-constructed.
What I don't like is so many three-letter words -- 16 in all, which seems high for a Friday. And a lot of them are pretty junky -- ARN, CRO, NUS, STE, DRT.
WAWA looks like an outtake from WAWA WAND -- last week's puzzle interpreted by Elmer Fudd.
For me, SANTACRUZ brings to mind John Travolta wearing a Banana Slugs tee shirt in "Pulp Fiction".
Overall, the good outweighs the bad.
Is there anything in the 20th century that I.M.Pei didn't design?
Do they still make Archie comics? That was a lame comic even when it was sort of current. Good example of frenemy though, I guess.
Speaking of old comics...Arn? Is that still in print too? Another weak comic.
Celsius was a scale before a Swede, nice misdirection.
Who is Parker Posey? Indies as in films or islands? No idea.
Isn't the clue for All That Jazz backwards? It says Chicago came first.
Sounds like we had pretty much the same solve. On top of that, I spent a whole long time watching the tumbleweeds roll over a SW vacant but for ALLNEW and SANTACRUZ. Then I finally figured out CHAFF (had trAsh) and things started to fall into place.
There's nothing wrong with this puzzle . . . Except WAWA, SHH, STET, ALL THAT JAZZ crossing ALL NEW, AVEO, NOVA, AHAS and GAM. Other than that it was a treat.
Very nice Friday submittal from Damon. Crosses really needed but came in a timely fashion. Far better than most Fridays lately.
Was looking for a pangram but grid contains all letters except QX.
Great puzzle but I totally tanked. Biggest problem started with IMPEI. That went right in. But then I thought 1D was this bit of brilliance "IMPAYING."
What a sense of humor! I know. Right?
@anon 7:56 -- Agree about LILAC.
For more on today's NYT puzzle and some general Crossworld Olio (much more the latter than the former), feel free to check out my blog.
"There's nothing wrong with this puzzle, but it felt a little flat. I think my standards for themelesses are starting to rise...."
Really? That's possible? Bad news, constructors....
Kind of reminds me of Nigel Tufnel: "These go to eleven."
Did this one on my iPad and made use of check the puzzle feature. It doesn't supply answers but it does keep me from staying too long with wrong answers. I suppose it is a form of cheating but of a lesser degree. Does help to develop my solving skills and provides the satisfaction of successful completion.
"STE" is a business card abbreviation? It's short for "sainte" (French saint). Is that a business?
If any of you are in the St. Pete area and want to fight me in the park, I am there now.
This kicked my ass three ways past Tuesday. Double my normal Friday time, which of course had me looking at the PPP. This comes in at just below my arbitrary line of 33%, 23 of 72, 32%. So, if the pop culture and proper nouns are in your wheelhouse this should play easy medium. If, on the other hand, you forgot that the tallest mountain clue has been used before to reference sea bottom to mountain top MAUNA KEA, are actively trying to forget Michael BUBLÉ, have never drooled over Gere's lesser roles, haven't thought much about that long musing on death that you saw when you were much too young to relate to it, well, this might play challenging.
@Bob Mills - Also an abbreviation for "suite."
@Bob Mills -- It is also short for "suite", as in an office suite. Poor clue for a poor entry.
@QuasiMojo (7:16) - Agree on your BUBLE review, but if you're going to take this music critic thing seriously you might want to consider a touch more subtlety.
I liked this medium-for-us puzzle an awful lot. Learned much (HERZOG, LEV, and more), got misdirected (CAIR for ACLU), and got fooled (IKNOWRIGHT) - what's not to love? Also learned that the non-existent Mt. Uganda shares four letters with MAUNAKEA - lost much time there. Something tickled me about the clue for HEYYOU, and we felt really smart when ADJURE didn't have to fill.
Judy DENCH tremendous in "Philomena" btw, small film, true story - well worth your time.
Any linguistic type here know why we change LEV to Leo in English? Is "Lev" pronounced "Leo" in Russian? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?
I found the NW quadrant really difficult, in part because no one I know says "I know, right." But what made me really dislike this puzzle was the answer "Enola" for "First name in aviation." The Enola Gay was not a first name in aviation just because it was a plane. It's a little like a clue wanting Bergen (as in Bergen-Belsen) for a first name in camping (after all, it was a camp!) Maybe crossword constructors can avoid cute clues involving events where hundreds of thousands of people were killed or injured.
Had "Crumb" for 1A, thinking the RRHF might have a section for album cover designers. The cheap thrill didn't last long.
Learned from a puzzle (either NYT or indie) that IM PEI turned 100 this year.
Scale before Swede. Ash before Yew. Cair before ACLU. Worse time than last two Fridays.
Ever since I saw him carry Debra Winger out of the factory (35 years ago--can that be true?), I have been in love (or lust) with Richard Gere. So any puzzle that mentions him is okay with me! An "amen" from other Rex followers?
Yes, they still publish "Archie" comics.
I thought "You know, right" was a great contrast from "Gracious me"--Modern, up to date expression versus expression from the 50's.
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle.
@ Two Ponies,
Archie is still a going concern. I'm pretty sure it's the last of the mom and pop Comics. Big ones anyway. Recently they've been in the news for a nasty battle for control of the company. And sadly, they've left Mamaroneck, NY ( their home for decades) for Pelham, NY.
Now the best thing in town is Walter's ( a legendary hot dog stand).
One last thing if you're still reading. A couple of years ago, in a bid to stay current I guess, Archie introduced a gay character. A more transparent and sad act, I can't remember.
The good news is that Betty and veronica remain, well, perfect.
Cheers
Easy, except for the NW section which was hard, hard, hard. I not only had POD like so many others, but I also had tirED at 14A. I didn't know NEUMANN and I certainly didn't know PUBLE (17A). That's a name? Plus I hate clues like the one for I KNOW RIGHT, a phrase I've said never. So off I went into the easy sections, knowing that none of it would help me when I finally returned, because the NW was so isolated.
When I returned, 3D was still Pr-R--d. So I thought: Who would I want to have said those 3D words, since PR-R--D didn't seem to be anyone at all. AHA, I guessed: that's something that PT BARNUM would have said. I wrote it in, knowing I had to then fix POD and TIRED. I finally corrected, and I finished. Nice crunchy puzzle.
@mohair,
No way buddy. Philomena was not even close to a true story. It was truly a hatchet job. But it was in no way a true story. Read up, friend.
Oops. Thanks @Mike in Mountain View. I see now that I also had I'M paYING/aNA, and thus didn't finish. BTW, Buble seems like just as ridiculous a name as Puble.
I'm beginning to worry about myself. I'm agreeing with Rex more and more. Very nice puzzle, but lacking zip.
@George Barany: The dead ringer jokes you referenced were pretty lame, but the Princess Di joke on the same page was wickedly hilarious. Wow!
Welcome information. MAUNAKEA the tallest.
Considering this morning's headline the close position of the clues for ACLU and tram is an unfortunate reminder.
@Two Ponies (8:14) ALL THAT JAZZ is a song from "Chicago", but it's also the title of a posthumous biopic of the musical's director, Bob Fosse, which came out years after the musical.
I agree with everyone on LILAC. It's not only green paint, it's also a hideous color. Well, at least on me, it is. Glad I've never been required to wear it.
Hearty congratulations, @Hartley!
@JC66 (from yesterday) -- What a charmer, you are! Let no one say that you're not!
Thanks all, I'm obviously not current on my comics or my musicals. I loved All That Jazz but only knew Chicago as the movie.
Doh! Live ten miles away from UC SANTA CRUZ, yet stared at the SW, had SANTA and couldn't figure out what campus had only four letters. Something about the forest and the trees comes to mind. Finally got it when CRAZED went in. Double "doh"!
@ Kim -- I have done similar too many times. and @MohairSam -- agreed, subtlety is not my forte. To those not too game for GAM, I seem to recall it showing up a few months ago. I prefer to think of Juliet Prowse's great pair of gams. :)
I went with AbJURE, just because it sounds vaguely like 'implore' which is in "The Raven." Otherwise, this was OK. I did like FRENEMY, as well as I KNOW, RIGHT? And a fairly good way to sneak in EEL.
But what's will all the Zs? Is the constructor trying to get into Guinness? Does anyone know what the record is?
Count me among those put off by ENOLA. Would be better clued as 'first name in nuclear war.'
It's either 'gracious sakes' or 'goodness me', not 'gracious me'.
@ Hartley70
MAZEL TOV!
@GeorgeBarany The Quasimodo joke was very funny,,,thanks for sharing,
Ypu made my day.
@Barbara Weinstein, very apt analogy.
@Nancy, the last time I wore lilac was when I made my sister and I two identical lilac dresses with sheer puffed lilac sleeves with little embroidered flowers on the for a 4H contest and to wear on Easter Sunday. We of course had matching white lace gloves and white shoes with straps. My bedroom was painted lilac and my walk in closet which actually functioned as a mini study room was painted deep purple. It is definitely no longer my color. I hope I can be forgiven since I was only 10 at the time. I had no dress rules for my bridesmaids. They managed to come up with very complementary, yet unique, dresses that were not lilac, pink, or any other pastel shade.
Off on a citibike and I promise I won't run over any pedestrians or confuse them by yelling "on your right".
@Barbara 9:53, I'm with you on ENOLA.
@TwoP, Frank Lloyd Wright did a few. And if you want to know who Parker Posey is, see Best In Show. She's the one with the braces. Actually, if you don't care who Parker Posey is, see Best In Show.
@barbaraweinstein -- Well put!
What's not to like about I KNOW, RIGHT? Still, as noted by others, this was a mixture of great and challenging clues/entries and easy crosswordese.
I, too, started with NOVA in the wrong place. Which slowed me down in getting LEo back to LEV. But unlike Anonymous 11:20 I was quite familiar with GRACIOUS ME.
We have a grandson at UCSC so that was no problem. Go, Slugs!
I don't react negatively to the name ENOLA, but I spent a lot of time looking at first names of aviators and plane builders. Good misdirect.
A partly challenging, partly easy Friday, Still a nice, fun puzzle from our friend, Damon G.
How does 14A Beat, in a way = MATED? Who or what are you beating when you mate? The competition? That can't be it, so what am I missing (as usual)? I got it from the crosses, but it still doesn't make sense.
Never mind. It's a chess reference. (Thanks, Hartley70.)
Team solved it. Took a few extra nanoseconds to get goin in that NW openin corner, but then our solvequest started to pick up lotsa steam. PuzEatinSpouse smelled blood, roundin our clockwise turn into the final (SW) corner, and relentlessly crushed it. She wisely noted soon after completion that the puz had 7.5 U's, on account of YEW. She also clued m&e in on STE meanin "suite". Sooo … STE = STaff wEeject pick of the day.
@RP's treatise on why he is clampin down harder now on themeless grid meat was an excellent read. M&A's overall "buzz" from NYTPuzs on various days: Like em all, but kinda extra-partial to 15x15 and themed. fave day tends to be the ThursPuz.
fave au de speration: WAWA. Would WAWAWA be a valid abbr. for Walla Walla, Washington? Just wowowonderin.
IK NO, WRIGHT = {Quick reply to being flashed by a dude's early biplane cockpit??}
Re: FRENEMY clue … never got to read the Archie comics. Dimes were scarce and Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge sagas always had highest priority. Also passed on the HERZOG novel, at that time.
Thanx, Mr. DJG.
Masked & Anonymo7.5Us
**gruntz**
"ENOLA Gay" Tibbets was the pilot's mother. An alternative eerie theory is that her name, reversed, stands for "You All Go ALONE".
Yes, we know all the debating points:
A.Terrible weapon, killed and maimed countless Japanese;
B.But an invasion would have led to the death of countless Americans.
How 'bout we just give the constructor credit for a Friday-worthy clue and save the moral anguish for another time and place?
To all lauding Barbara Weinstein,
Her analogy is not apt. Many planes are named, especially war birds. the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima had a name: Enola Gay. That's a fact. It's neutral. To invoke the name is not a ratification of bomb dropping. Or pacifism or anything else for that matter.
Saying prisoners were camping at Bergen-Belsen would be grotesque. Fortunately today's puzzle does nothing like that with the Enola Gay clue. It asks for a name, and makes no play on what the plane was doing. Ms. Weinstein's example subverts what Bergen-Belsen purpose was, i.e it wasn't camping but extermination. Therefore it is not analogous to the clue for Enola Gay which is straight forward and in no way an obfuscation of truth. judgment.
I suspect the problem is that people don't like atomic ( now nuclear) weapons. And that's fair. But don't champion a weak argument like Ms weinsteins' in that service.
Thanks for sharing power bank
I live in California. I know where every UC campus is. Yet I confidently wrote in "Riverside" instead of SANTACRUZ. I think Santa Cruz is for some reason the campus that everyone forgets. Probably because you don't often see references to professors there. Like Santa Barbara, you can (a) surf and (b) skinny-dip at nearby beaches, but UCSB makes you think of frat houses, UCSC of hippies.
I did look up WYATT, which helped fix the "Riverside" mistake, and it was clear sailing from there. BOW and TIE had gone in at once. I only learned a couple of weeks ago that BOW TIE pasta makes the very best Mac 'n cheese.
I had no problems with "Neumann" or "Santa Cruz", but "gam" for a group of whales threw me for a loop. I would have accepted "pod" but got it from the crosses. I did check dictionary.com and it seems to list "gam" as a verb. Like Rex, I was not crazy about the cluing in this one, but all in all, pretty easy for a Friday. Tomorrow will probably be another story.
To Anonymous:
Okay, then, would "First name in camps?" be okay for Bergen-Belsen? I'm guessing the answer is still NO even though you can't object to it on technical grounds.
We know the name Enola Gay for one reason and one reason only. Whether you think it saved lives (sigh--I'm a historian and almost no one in my acquaintance buys that argument, but it's an argument that is worth engaging with), what it did was devastating, and almost entirely to unarmed civilians. So no, I don't think a cute clue about the Enola Gay is okay.
Hey All !.
I actually found this FriPuz to be easy. The one misdirect that slowed me down was everyone else's, it seems. pod for GAM. Only one other writeover, fishing in the wAZOO River instead of the YAZOO. Is that that wahoo and yahoo? Or woohoo? While drinking a YooHoo? Crying BOOHOO about your BOOBOO? (OK, I'll stop.)
Lots of Y's and Z's today. No real AHAS, bit pretty clean puz. Surprised a bunch of youse (New Yauk accent?) didn't know DR T. It's been in other puzs, and figured at least the women would get it, you know, Richard Gere.
4 INGs, all close together, ENDING, DEADRINGER, EARNING, IMBUYING. Not sure why that irks me. But still liked puz. ADJURE was a new one. Had an English teacher in High School who liked to use "Beseech".
Parker POSEY was also in Blade 3. One of her few mainstream movies. WAWA is also a convience store in PA & CT. YEW dig?
HEY YOU. I M PEI! GDAY.
RooMonster
DarrinV
Not only are Archie comics still going strong, but the TV series Riverdale, based on said comics, is currently airing on the CW, and picked up seven Teen Choice awards including best drama this year.
"Whether you think it saved lives (sigh--I'm a historian and almost no one in my acquaintance buys that argument, but it's an argument that is worth engaging with), what it did was devastating, and almost entirely to unarmed civilians."
(Sigh) I'm a former Air Force pilot, and my dad was a Navy pilot in the Pacific during WWII, and almost everyone in my acquaintance buys that argument. So I say again: If you want to engage with the argument, can you do it somewhere else?
IMPEI jumped into the grid followed by EEL followed by the suspicion that PTBARNUM might have said 3D so I held off on "pod" because I remember being burned by that assumption in a previous puzzle. This caution on my part did not prevent me from a crash/burn in the NW.
I got IM BUYING at 1D and at 2D, I said to myself, "HEY YOU, we got the whole MoaNA KEA today"! Yup, got carried away by the recent appearances of the animated film, MoaNA and never rethought it. This gave me BaBLE at 17A (a singer I don't know and it sounds from the comments as if I should be grateful for that, though BUBLE does seem vaguely familiar) and 14A Beat was a MoTEt (hey, it's musically related so not so far out of the realm of possibility?)
Guessing DENCH at 6A, I correctly put in NOVA at 8D. Our family owned one. It was reliable if clunky. After we'd owned it for a few years, it sounded like a Singer sewing machine. Our other cars were a '65 Mustang and a Spider Fiat so we had to have one dud, I guess.
This left me with __O__ at 15A. First name in aviation? One of the Wright brothers... oh yeah, Frank and LlOyd. I actually put it in, people. I KNOW, RIGHT? That area, I actually cleared up, leaving a mere three error DNF in the NW. And this puzzle was not hard! I wish I had @LarryG's excuse of solving at the bar.
Anyway, I always like a Damon Gulczynski Friday so thanks and G'DAY.
@Hartley70, congrats! All my friends who are grandmas love the new status so enjoy!
@BarbaraW9:53 --
Re: your apparent disgust with the "cute clue" (First name in aviation) for ENOLA GAY.
The fact is that the two bombs, while killing and radiating upwards of a million Japenese (as well as a handful of Allied prisoners, btw), they undoubtedly saved the lives of the many millions of Japanese who would have died in a conventional-warfare defense of their homeland. Recall that in the island-hopping Pacific campaign, Japanese soldiers fought and died to the last man on each island: dying for the Emperor was revered, while surrender would bring horrible shame on the family, for generations to come.
Not to mention the lives of tens of thousands (perhaps more) of Allied soldiers if an invasion had been necessary. One of which might have been my father-in-law, an Army lieutenant in a communications battalion slated to go ashore early to establish communications on the beachhead.
Hey, no-one should be in love with the deaths of enemy soldiers, much less innocent civilians, many children, the overwhelming majority of whom were swept up in events beyond their will. But the fact is that of a range of possible outcomes after August 1, 1945, this was almost certainly the best for the war's participants.
@BW again --
I forgot the most important issue I had with your screed. To make an analogy of what the ENOLA Gay did with that of the perpetrators of Bergen-Belsen is simply beyond the pale. How about an apology to all your readers?
I object to the Enola clue not for any political reason, ( my Dad was in Okinawa that August, was ambivalent about Hiroshima, but very much upset about Nagasaki) but because it is a poor clue. "Enola" is not famous for aviation, the way "Spirit" might be, but for other reasons.
Finished this one correctly, despite some guessing. Two Chevy models are too many - heard of "Nova" but not "Aveo." "In Brooklyn, it's two blocks north of Quentin Rd. " I guess non-Brooklynites would not care for that clue for "Ave O". Names of movie characters is on my list below product names and hip-hop-rap on clues I don't enjoy. OK, I found out that there was a character named "Wyatt" in a movie I saw 40 years ago or so. There was a "Dr T"? That one has been in crosswords often enough (like ESAI) for me to know it. How about this clue "He has been portrayed by Kurt, Kevin, and Burt in separate films."? Isn't that better, and more interesting than the name of a character in "Easy Rider"?
On the other hand, it is interesting that IMPEI designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and that LEV is Tolstoys first name in Russian. Never heard of Parker Posey - but Buster Posey is a career .300 hitter.
What is "STE" on a business card? But despite my personal misgivings, I think this was an acceptable Friday puzzle.
@Anon (10:07) - It went overboard in ripping the nuns, sure. Apparently Sister Hildegarde was a wonderful woman in real life - the movie used her as a symbol of the Church in the matter. But the Church did give her child away because of her "sin", they did lie to him years later when he searched for her, she did come to America to find him 50 years later, and we know who he was and what happened to him. All true.
This from ABC news:
"Philomena Lee, the real-life woman behind the hit movie "Philomena," got an ending to her story today that even Hollywood could not write, a meeting with Pope Francis.
Lee, 80, traveled to Rome at the invitation of the Vatican to meet the Pope, the head of the same Catholic Church that, six decades ago, forced her to give up her baby son for adoption by an American family because she was an unwed mother.
"Thank you. I'm very happy to meet you," Lee said, touching the hand of the leader of the faithful.
Back in 1952, Lee was 18 years old, unmarried and pregnant. She gave birth to a son in an Irish home for unwed mothers and, told what she had done was shameful, was forced to give up her son, whom she named Anthony, three years after his birth.
For 50 years afterward, she would periodically return to the home to try to get word of her son, but she never told anyone else about what happened because she felt ashamed." . . . .
"Ironically, Lee learned that her son had visited Ireland - and the home where he was born - to try and learn about her. He was told by the church that his mother had abandoned him."
The country of Ireland, btw, has apologized for its role in the Magdalene Laundry system. The movie was close enough to the truth for the Pope, close enough for me.
@evil
You're on the side of the angels with your argument. But you asked everyone to refrain from making an argument here, then indulged yourself with making one. As I say, you are correct, and Ms. Weinstein's position is ( sigh) sadly wrong. But either keep making the argument or stop saying no one should make the argument here. Youre better tan that.
from Rex today ...
I want art. Or cheap thrills. Or both.
I want to finish the puzzle.
@Anonymous 7:56 -- when I saw the "Bridesmaid dress shade" clue I was thought the answer was gonna be NOT WHITE.
Oops, I don't know how that unnecessary "was" got in there.
@Moahiar,
ABC news retracted the story of her meeting the Pope. She did shake his hand over the rope line at public event. But there was no meeting.
No one forced her to give up her baby. She did that of her own free will. The good sisters who cared for her during her pregnancy did so as an act of corporal mercy. They received nothing for it but smears and calumny. You do know of course that it was Philomena's father that took her and placed her in that convent, right?
Another falsehood is Philomena's never-ending search to find her
son. Steve Coogan, who plays the author of the book, says the film "tells the story of
Philomena and the journalist who helped her as they set off on an
extraordinary journey to find the son who was taken away from her 50
years ago."28 The book says that both Philomena and her son visited the
abbey looking for each other in 1977. Sister Julie says that their records
show that no such visit was made, either by Philomena or her son.
Even more disturbing is the lie, floated in the movie, that
Philomena and author Martin Sixsmith came to the U.S. to find her son. This is an
important statement, designed to win over the audience. "In fact," writes
reporters for the New York Times, "much of the movie is a fictionalized
version of events. Ms. Lee, for instance, never went to the United States
to look for her son with Mr. Sixsmith.
I could go on. But why bother? You wont believe anything but that Irish Nuns were bad. Good for you.
Q: What do you call a double bill of "Terms Of Endearment" and "Shadowlands"?
A: DEAD WINGERS
(as in Debra Winger, mentioned above by Airymom -- her character dies in both movies)
@those who loved I KNOW RIGHT -- I know, right?! Best.Answer.Ever. I thought the whole puzzle was superb. I guessed correctly that the LEV/AVEO crossing must be a V, though I don't remember the car. A clue referencing the book "My Name Is Asher Lev" might have worked better there.
@Rex -- ****ing stepbrother? Really? Was that necessary?
Okay, Evil Doug, I see your point. No need for historical analysis--just ask the guys who fly those planes!
Whether or not one thinks there was a "life-saving" justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how can we think of them as anything but tragic? I assure you that those most intimately involved in the making of the bombs and the decision to drop them did not see these events as a cause for celebration.
Thoughtless clue to begin with. Inaccurate as well.
It really was a nice crunchy puzzle. But as many times as I read the "I know right" explanations, the more I hope never to see or hear the expression again.
👍
i had POD and GEHRY and found this one very challenging, especially after such an easy week.
It'll be nice when all the people who worked for the military in World War II have left the earth and we can stop pretending that taking off in an airplane with the express intent of killing outright millions of innocent civilians and destroying whole cities was a jolly good idea, and an experience that allows the nation that did it to dictate policy to the entire world from that point on and forevermore while still bitching about 9/11.
Enola is as good for crosswords as Idi, which is to say, no good at all. Sorry if your grandpappy flew the damn thing, it is and was and ever will be pure evil.
@Anonymous,
So many words, so little intelligence. Its thanks to "those who worked for the military" whom you so causally dismiss, that your ass isn't speaking German or Japanese. There is a difference between attack and defense. The Axis powers were bad hombres; they attacked the world. The Allied response was a defense. All serious people understand Japan and Germany needed to be stopped. Only men with the machines of war could do it.
if you were trolling, Kudos, you got me. If you weren't, brother, you are an imbecile.
Excellent themeless Friday by the esteemed DG, and commentary to go with it. Beginning with the crossword architect who isn't Eero (Saarinen), I got the tough NW out of the way first (despite a brief PAyING stumble crossing the crooner) and didn't sail from there, but did enjoy a fairly steady solve. Quibbles: Dunno exactly why, but "Never-before-seen" seems shaky for ALL NEW (46D). And I must not have a clear grasp of exactly what a FRENEMY is. As a kid, I avidly read the comic books, and always thought of Archie and Reggie as close buds whose friendship was seasoned with a little rivalry, but no shade of enmity. Without benefit of crosses, I wanted WINGMAN at 42A. Oh, well. Happy weekend, all. @kitshef. Me too on ARCH ENEMY before ADVERSARY. @Teedmn. The Wright boys, Frank and Lloyd. Har!
I know, right?
Killing innocent people is obviously the way to defend a nation.
Let's keep it up.
Oh, yeah, we are...
@Anon3:21 --
Re: "...pretending taking off in an airplane with the express intent of killing outright millions of innocent civilians and destroying whole cities was a jolly good idea..."
Yep, killing civilians and destroying cities was our main motive for entering the War. A "jolly good idea," indeed.
So I guess that a better idea would have been for the US to stay out of WWII and leave Nazi Germany and Tojo Japan free to pursue their policies of invasion, subjugation, rape/pillage, and racial/religious extermination.
Great thinking!
@Anonymous 4:02
Brush up on your Aquinas. Especially double effect. Then check out Augustine. You'll dig jus ad bellum. Or maybe you won't since you seem like a smug asshole. None too bright either.
I love how people on this blog just can't wait for the oppprtunity a clue gives them to show off their political correctness. It's really conspicuous and sad. GET A LIFE.
Anyone remember Pearl Harbor?
@Barbara Weinstein 9:53, 12:37
You are atrocious.
Anyone remember Hiroshima?
@Anonymous 4:08, maybe you could check out Jesus as long as you're reading Aquinas and Augustine. Remember how he reacted? He let himself get unjustly tried and then unjustly killed. A whole religion got founded on the idea and on what he actually taught and actually said and actually did. And then it got warped by folks who think like you instead of him - "let's kill those bad hombres" ain't Jesus-talk even if 99.9 percent of "Christians" think it is.
Turn the other cheek? Not if you have a nucular weppin! Then ya jes kill folks and call it "very good, best of all possible solutions." And joke about it in crossword puzzles.
@OISK said it best. It's the clue, not the event My Dad the WWII Marine and numbers guy made the same argument as @Evil, and it's a credible one. Military expertise trumps a liberal-arts degree in history, in this case. Heavy sighing does not make you right.
But... the CLUE was unforgivable. A misdirect should end in a forehead-slap and rueful smile, as one mental image replaces another. In this case the second image was horror-inducing. That's not OK.
OK, everyone, put down your little rubber hammers, and stop making military and peacenik knees all over America jerk. This is supposed to be fun.
@Doug- WHY is your airplane dressed like Bozo?? I gotta know.
Liked puzzle a lot. Actually had more trouble with SW than NW altho had GyM for a bit and like others including Rex wanted Doppelgänger off the NGER.
@lms. No doubt conflated Michael Buble and Robert Goulet, another smooth Canadian.
We wouldn't have this discussion about the Enola Gay and the bomb if we kept on fire bombing cities and killing many more people than we did with the two atomic bombs combined.
Dead is dead, no matter the bomb technology, but for some reason every one seems to focus on the A-bombs. It is so much more efficient that makes it scary.
@Anonymous - I hate Irish Nuns? Thanks for letting me know.
I agree with the your perception of the Enola clue. Seems almost like gallows humor. Yeesh.
"Eye To Eye" put a different song in my head: https://youtu.be/uGDA0Hecw1k
For once I agree with the 'easy/medium' designation. Pretty much a snap---for a Friday NYT puzzle, that is.
Only trouble: LH corner. For 3 down I had Liberace---don't laugh, it FIT! Guess P.T. Barnum was too obvious---duh. Naturally, that screwed up the whole corner, and I was perplexed as to 14 across. Also, being a jazzer, I had no clue who designed the Rock Hall of Fame. Go figure. Otherwise, a no-brainer.
Onward and upward to wrestle Saturday's to the ground...
Hello every one out here
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Pay instead of BUY, and now I'm paying. Entire NW became a Natick. GRACIOUSME.
gotta go for a walk
Lady Di
This was a tough one for me. But I soldiered on and finished. It took forever to slay that evil NW corner. It all makes sense once it's done. But getting there gave me an Excedrin headache. Aren't puzzles fun?
GRACIOUSME, who knows what will set these people off? The name of a plane, and the Philomena thing. IKNOW, RIGHT? Such paper-thin skins! Others FUMED; I think I'll just stick to the puzzle.
For the longest time I stared at this page without venturing a single letter. What did I know? Nothing. At last I tried ADVERSARY, and before I knew it I had the top HALF. Ink mess ensued when I carelessly started to write in IMPLORE off the -RE before counting squares. Oops. ADJURE is a word I just didn't think of. One of those not spoken by real, in-the-flesh people.
So the triumph factor is huge this time. BOW TIE pasta helped in the SE. Don't know why it took me so long to get ALLTHATJAZZ; that induced a self-headslap. But easy-medium? N-noo.
Parker POSEY does nicely for DOD. I too wonder what business card abbr. is STE. Although I guess the church IS really a business...oh well. I can forgive one weird clue. Birdie.
HEYYOU (HALFCRAZED STANZA)
IKNOWRIGHT from wrong just like YEW,
but ALLTHATJAZZ is ALLNEW,
so I’MBUYING it up the YAZOO,
and I’ll be IMMERSED in RAGU.
--- DR.T ARN “SWEDE” NEUMANN
GRACIOUSME that north HALF was tough for me. The south seemed to nearly fill itself in especially with ALLTHATJAZZ coming from the two Zs. Had Leo at first giving me the NOVA down there instead of where it already sat in 8d, which then became vegA, then the second NOVA became the correct AVEO and the vegA back to NOVA. Lotsa Chevy ink spilled.
If I ever hear Michael BUBLE again it will be too soon. A former flame adored him. Good TESTCASE to move on.
@spacey – I have some NUS for you, the STE is for “suite”. Sounds more impressive (like THERITZ, maybe?) than a room number, I guess.
Agree on Parker POSEY, yeah baby.
Gotta run off to a wedding. G’DAY.
This was a little bit flat, as Rex suggests, for a Friday, though it had it's high points (Mauna Kea, e.g., har). To note a few highs and/or or other interesting features:
On the botton, GLASSY, DILATE, EYETOEYE, and FLARE and FUMED. String across the middle, GAM, WIG, LEV, TIE. Not really high notes, but neat short ones.
Would prefer a known ADVERSARY to a hypocritical FRENEMY.
Five Zees were helpful in the solve as were two INGs and two Chevys.
IKNOWRIGHT required some parsing, and HEYYOU seemed a little raucous for "Psst!".
Enjoyed it.
A retail giant it may have once been but SEARS Canada declared bankruptcy this week up here, just a year or so after Target did the same.
Relatively easy Friday other than GAM (really?), STE (thanks @RONDO for the explanation) and the DRTy/ADJURE cross. Particularly enjoyed the ADVERSARY-FRENEMY, GLASSY-DILATE-EYE(TOEYE) and Z-fest mini-themes.
C'mon Yankees. Would love a repeat of those great Dodger-Yankee World Series of the 50's.
And all their warranties are now null and void.
Fun with anagrams...
SEARS = ARSES
@Waxy in Montreal-- You evidently read @rondo's post before you read (or didn't read) mine. Yet your second sentence, second paragraph comes very close to repeating the gist of mine without acknowledgement. What goes? ( I'm a little sensitive about this sort of thing.)
My bad, @leftcoastTam. Had I but read your post, full credit would have certainly gone your way. Will try not to repeat. (Feeling better?)
@Waxy in Montreal--I guess you could be a FRENEMY, but let's just forget it.
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