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Office-inappropriate in web shorthand / TUE 10-2-18 / Folksy restroom sign / Carte that comes before the course, ugh
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Constructor: Paul Coulter
Relative difficulty: Challenging (4:20, 20 seconds over my slowest Tuesday time)
Theme answers:
- BIG COMPANY (17A: Megacorporation? [1996, 1970])
- HAIR GREASE 926A: Pomade? [1968, 1972])
- WICKED NINE (45A: Supreme Court that's corrupt? [2003, 1982])
- FROZEN ONCE (61A: Melted? [2018, 2012])
Dobbs Ferry is a village in Westchester County, New York. The population was 11,093 according to the 2016 census.[2] The Village of Dobbs Ferry is located in, and is a part of, the town of Greenburgh. The village ZIP code is 10522. Most of the Village falls into the boundaries of the Dobbs Ferry Union Free School District.
• • •
Let's return to how bad this is. EARED! It's bad. And tough. Why? Why would you ...? I'm told this theme has also Been Done Before (presumably better, Presumably With Some Kind Of Revealer That Makes Sense Of It All). Oh, wait, I thought of yet another way this theme is terrible. HAIR GREASE is an actual thing. BIG COMPANY is almost an actual thing. The others are manifestly made-up things. If they had all been Real Things, that would've at least given the theme ... something. But to put real and fake things together. It's a joke. This puzzle is AJOKE with badness. NUS! STERE! ORSO! LOL the sewing meaning of BASTE (35A: Stitch loosely), when presumably the sewing mafia already got their sop with DARNS (1A: Mends with stitches). Ugh. This puzzle made literally no right moves.
Five Things:
- 33D: ___ na tigela (fruity Brazilian dish) (AÇAI) — how is that a Tuesday clue? Don't try to dress your crosswordese up like culinary trivia. It's still a dumb "superfood" or whatever. Again, you've just made your bad puzzle harder.
- 39A: Worthless amount (FIG) — prithee, what year is it, m'lord!?!?!
- 35D: Ne'er-do-well (BAD EGG) — dated fill just keep comin'
- 20A: Sorrowful sound (BOO HOO) — BOO HOO is only ever a mock-sorrowful sound
- 59A: Render harmless (DEFUSE) — I had DEFANG, which is a thousand times better, give me Something, you ridiculous puzzle
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129 comments:
Awful, awful. Thought they were films.
Also I still don't get the EARED answer. I've been staring at it for a while and can't figure it out. Is EARED some baseball term I've never heard? Or do pitchers (the jugs) have ears? I'm confuddled.
The house elf from Harry Potter is Dobby, not Dobbs. :)
I enjoyed puzzling this one out, and didn’t think a reveal was needed for the double broadway shows. Though i agree that the clue for AÇAÍ (also SEGO) seemed rather obscure.
Sounds like Rex just blew a fuse. I am not familiar with Broadway Shows and don’t pay attention to movies, but this one posed no problems.
I grew up in the Midwest, spent many years in California am now living in the middle of a rather large ocean and plunked down DOBBS Ferry off of DO.
Only SNAGS were On or before OR SO and sou before FIG at 39A.
@Anon 5:34, Yup, pitchers as the kind you pour from, makes them easier to hold on to.
* Cute theme.
* Brain-loving more resistance than a normal Tuesday (due to unknown words and some vague cluing).
* All the plays were familiar except for NINE, which, after I looked it up, I remembered.
* Mini-theme of double O's (6).
* A dozen words starting with S (I don't know if it is, but that feels high).
* All over the puzzle, three-letter words ending with G: BIG, VEG, DOG, FIG, TAG, LAG, KEG, TOG, RIG, EGG, REG, NAG. (Not that I like word searches -- quite the contrary -- but my eyes just kept falling on these.)
The constructor notes say that the puzzle was originally submitted with DUETS, Musical partnerships, as a reveal. That might have helped, though three of the eight musicals were WOEs to me, and I had no idea that Big and Frozen went to B-way. That leaves Hair, Grease, and Wicked that I could have recognized as plays.
But normal time and only two “Rexes,” which is pretty fast for me. No harm, no foul. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
@anonymous Jugs can have handles that may look like "ears"...
The only thing that made me smile was the "deer sir" clue.
Loved this puzzle - totally in my wheelhouse. Got the theme immediately. A puzzle constructed for New Yorkers. Bravo.
It took me 23 minutes overall to finish, but I refused to be shut down by a Tuesday, no matter how bad the fill was. In the end I just threw in EARED + SELA and hoped for the best.
The blog wasn't posted yet when I finished, so I've had a few moments to calm down. For a Tuesday there was way too much questionable fill.
Acai na tigela was laughable, since tigela just means bowl. So this is a "dish" the same way "steak on a plate" would be a dish. STERE? Really? Oh, and how is GENTS remotely folksy? It's predominately British I would say..but folksy would be something more like Cowpokes or Buckaroos.
Worst puzzle I've seen in a while.
Enjoyed the theme and knew the pieces for.a change. Solved in about my usual pace while eating oatmeal and drinking coffee. FROZENONCE my favorite themer and I have to admit that I liked both movies. Favorite moments from Disney Marathon is running under the back balcony of Cinderellas Castle under Elsa and Anna.
I generally agree with OFL’s critique, except for the provincialism issue. Let me say that I’ve never lived in New York. But it is, after all, the New York Times, and it’s entitled to think that its core readers are New Yorkers. The rest of us should know that too.
Unabashed lover of HAIR and ONCE here. Not familiar with NINE or COMPANY. Who the devil is Duane READE?
MOCHA. Ugh. Why would you take one of the most delightful flavors known to man - chocolate - and pollute it with the taste of coffee? While we are at it, why not add kale to ice cream, or surstromming to a cherry pie?
Way, way, way, WAY over my Tuesday average. By a factor of four. I clocked a Saturday time. Even accounting for half-watching a show while I started the puzzle last night, this was absurdly hard for a Tuesday.
ONCE is worth watching, Rex. It was also a movie before it became a musical. A very good one, even for people who dislike musicals.
Only thing wrong with deer sir was the "?". I HATE THEM.
I think it's more a matter of enhancing the coffee with chocolate flavor. But the real answer to your first question is--Lots of people like it.
I struggled mightily for a Tuesday. I'm no Rex and a reasonable Tuesday would be between 5 and 10 minutes; this one took over 20 and it felt like worse than that. I kept saying to myself, "This is Tuesday! What's going on here? Have I lost my touch?" Figured out the theme was mashed-up productions with dates, but never dawned on me it was Broadway plays. Whole thing was very East Coast centric, so I have to echo Rex on this one.
BTW, kitshef: I love chocolate, but I am more like "Why pollute coffee with a flavoring?"
If the constructor was going to be "pro-Bway" or make the puzzle up from Bway shows exclusively, then he should have kept the ones made from films out. They confused the issue since they were popular films first, and seriously...that's all Bway is doing these days is making films into musicals...no need to emphasize that here in a puzzle. At least try to stick to purely stage-first productions. I just read that Tootsie is being workshopped in Chicago right now. Bway has become a pandering, Disneyfied cesspool of rehashed ideas. It's no wonder Hamilton is so popular...it's just about the only good original show right now.
Didn't like the cluing...it was trying too hard. And using two A- words (AFOOT, ARIOT) is just terrible.
Oh man @kitshef 7:12, them’s fightin’ words! ;)
I love it when I find a puzzle easy and enjoyable and Rex finds it challenging and runs ariot.. This was one of those days. Wah Hoo!
I had no trouble solving the puzzle, and I know all the shows inside out (except for FROZEN, which I guess was a popular Disney film-turned-spectacle that I've never seen or heard the songs from), but I found the answers forced and the solving experience very cludgy. I'm rarely negative about a puzzle, but I could not find the joy in this one.
HAMSUP I had for HASFUn, ugh. Wicked pine only slightly worse than wicked nine.
Othello, Act I, scene III
IAGO: Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
King Henry VI, part II, Act II, scene III
HORNER: Let it come, i' faith, and I'll pledge you all; and
a fig for Peter!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
NSFW: The Fig sign.
Well I’m never going to get those ten minutes of my life back. One of less enjoyable solves during the current 365-day streak I’m on.
Unlike Rex, I thought this was easy. But, yes, the theme was poor. OTOH Rex's criticism of this one is over the top. It's bad but not horrible.
@Kitshef Duane Reade is a NYC based drugstore chain. So that one would be a gimme to NYC folk but not well known to non-residents or non-visitors.
I was tickled pink by the difficulty and mystified by some of the obscurity. So many notes in the margins today that I couldn't believe it was Tuesday.
I loved the punny "Carte before the course"!
Doofus was Goofus for a bit. Memories of sitting in the doctor's office waiting room reading Highlight with Goofus and Gallant were almost overwhelming.
I'll take a Tuesday like this any time.
ONCE won 8 Emmys in 2012, including best musical. It's the best Broadway show I've ever seen. Loved it so much that I took our kids to see it in Atlanta on its North American tour.
I sometimes come here and am surprised by Rex's criticism of what I thought was a good puzzle. Today, I feel that Rex did not go far enough in trashing this puzzle, so awful, for all the reasons Rex said and more, HASFUN? Clueing SELA Ward with The Fugitive, of all things? This puzzle made me say BOOHOO.
@kitshef - Duane READE is another local New York thing, it's a chain of drug stores that are ubiquitous in NYC.
Huh, I rather liked it. The puzzle has a nostalgic vibe; the clue for BASTE brought back memories of my mother teaching me to sew, back in the days when it was cheaper to make your own clothes than to buy them. And DARNS - how many of us know how to darn a sock? Is that now a lost art? (I can, but haven’t in decades.)
AFOOT always brings the great Sherlock Holmes to mind, and TOGAS, NUS, SCALA, DONA, and ORION, I felt like I was nobility on my Grand Tour. Throw in the War of 1812, “Fie! I care not a FIG for that!”, and Dapper DAN, and ya definitely have a puzzle that skews old fashioned, to the point that entering in SIRI seemed just plain wrong.
And I, for one, liked it.
Loved it! How about:
“Borrow a salon product” = Renthairspray
Actually, kale has been added to ice cream and I have had a cucumber ice cream as well. They are not the best flavors I've tasted but they were ok. I never did get to taste the garlic ice cream in Gilroy.
Yes, some jugs (ewers) have two handles that are sometimes described as ears. But yeah... Ugh!
In 2010, Duane Reade was picked up by Walgreens.
The original was a drugstore on Broadway between Duane and Reade Streets in Manhattan.
Also, isn't FIG a worthless item, not a worthless amount? When you say 'worthless as a fig', you're comparing something to the fruit directly, right?
Working from crosses, I had NONCE before FROZE; remembering our discussion a couple days back I wondered how that was going to fit in!
@Rex, one of the complaints about the paucity of women constructors was that the ratio of sports to sewing was too high. This guy is trying, at least.
I agree that ARIOT is pretty bad.
21across: Most embarrassing was an attempt to fit GUIneapig where GUIDEDOG was meant to be.
Broadway shows! Sewing terms! Deborah Kerr and “Dapper Dan”! A puzzle my 90-yo mother would love.
This was very tough. I stopped the clock after 30 minutes. It never occurred to me that this was about Broadway plays. I had WICKED NINE but I thought it was a commentary about the Supreme Court. The fill was terrible.
Have to agree with Rex.
Wasn’t crazy about the puzzle, but the “corrupt Supreme Court” clue seems timely (unfortunately).
@TheBard8:00 --
Re your "The Fig Sign". .. Which I followed to see it meant the lingas and yonis. (Male and femal anatomicals.)
Then I picked up the DeMille novel that I've been reading ("Up Country", set in Viet Nam in an area called Nha Trang), and just where I resumed reading ...
The main characters visited an ethic Cham Temple complex, with erotic Hindu god and goddess statues, and also huge statues of lingas and yonis. I'll omit further details here....
But sheesh, what're the chances???
I could not agree more, Rex. It was hard for no reason. And there was even room for a revealer, where GUIDEDOG and MAKEGOOD ended up: BROADWAY SMASHUPS.
Nice to see my ORION back in the puzzle, accompanied by ARIOT which he doesn't no much now that he's 6 years old and middle aged.
I thought there was a saying (maybe in the 19th century?) "Little Pitchers have EARS".
I flew through this one, perhaps because I live in greater NY. Yeah, considering the Broadway theme, DOBBS Ferry and Duane READE, this puzzle is about as New Yorky as it gets. Overall, I thought it was just fine -- anything with DOOFUS in it earns extra credit.
Three excellent clues in my book -- those for STAG, EDEN and SIRI. Wonder if any will make @Lewis's weekly list.
ARIOT? C'mon, just stop.
Last night I briefly watched AROD "analyzing" today's Cubs-Rockies wildcard game. Man oh man, is he terrible.
Speaking of baseball, I think it's fair to say that the Sawx have a WICKEDNINE.
Sincere apologies in advance for this:
NOCHE NOCHE!
BOOHOO STERE?
ITISI, GENTS!
Awful. Awful. Awful. For all the reasons stated by OFL and more.
I dunno. I read Rex's critique and I think, ok, true, yes, I agree, etc.. and yet I don't have nearly as negative a view as he does. This was an inoffensive, if somewhat inelegant and musty, puzzle.
ARIOT AFOOT ACAI ABIT AROD AWED are all a tad (see what I did there?) silly looking at them now. SELA is ten times worse though, but that's just me. I had never heard BASTE used to mean anything other than pouring cooking juices on meat as it roasts. (I am now picturing yarn soaked in turkey fat.. ick). Didn't know STERE but didn't need to.
GUIDE DOG and MAKE GOOD look like they should be themers -- two-word phrases of about the right length -- but aren't. That feels clunky to me.
I finished in slightly-better-than-average Tuesday time.
Hubby is a pitcher. Never heard of “eared.” As a New Yorker, got Donna immediately. But the rest was not fun and more of a PITA than fun.
Days like this...thank you for the blog.
I had NO IDEA what the theme answers referred to. I just kept staring - but not for long - since I sorta lost interest. So agree with @Rex that this really needed a revealer.... a cute one!
One pregunta... Do people still say GUIDE DOG? In this here parts it's always Service Dog. Signs everywhere. I haven't seen GUIDE DOG in a coons age. If you come to Sacramento, bring your pooch. Here in fork-to-farm country, pets are most welcome in many parts. Guv. Moon Beam has a couple of Corgi's and he decreed that dogs don't have germs.
I wanted that folksy restroom sign to be WIMEN. GENTS? Whats the opposite? Dames?
@kitshef. The vegans have you beat....Only they could come up with Kale Ice cream. I bet there's even a okra one.
@Cassieopia. I still have my grandmother's DARNing EGG. It weighs about a ton but I love it. Once Walmart was invented, nobody darns anymore. Darn it.
HAIRGREASE. Imagine running your fingers through it sitting on you LOVE SEAT.
@Nancy from last night...Ah! My go to dead person would be Ernest Hemingway. I'd ask him for his mojito recipe.....
Nice rant, always the best part of reading Rex in the morning. I once got a freshman English paper graded with very similar comments. It helped cement my career as an engineer. I liked the puzzle well enough, but then what do I know. I especially liked that "pomade-hairgrease" was followed by "Dapper Dan." O Brother, Where Art Thou?
FARAD, STERE, TAGALOG, and (as clued) DOBBS and BASTE don’t seem very Tuesdayish. Hand up for wondering if Wednesday’s puzzle ran a day early. WICKED NINE screams for a Tolkien clue, but the Nazgûl were not known for their sewing prowess so I guess they don’t fit the side theme. I did get a lefty chuckle at Antonin La SCALiA almost making the puzzle above WICKED NINE.
PPP Analysis
Pop culture, Product names, and other Proper nouns as a percentage of the puzzle. Anything over 33% invariably causes some subset of solvers problems
This is a good example of PPP that causes classification issues. Is FARAD, a unit of measure named after Michael Faraday, PPP? I don’t count it anymore than I do ampere or inch, but it still has a PPP feel to me. Then there is the theme. None of the themes are clued as PPP directly, but realizing they are Broadway plays is most definitely a part of the theme. It doesn’t matter today, since the difficulty isn’t from excessive PPP even if the themers are counted, but there have been instances where the theme pushes the count over the 33% threshold.
Today comes in at either 18 or 22 of 74, so at most a highish 30%.
The List
ORION
A Prayer for OWEN Meany
BIG COMPANY
Suzanne VEGA
HAIR GREASE
NAM
La SCALA
WICKED NINE
TAGALOG
UBER
FROZEN ONCE
SIRI
USNA
DOBBS Ferry
ISP (AOL clue)
AROD
SELA Ward
MARC Chagall
LAKE ERIE
Duane READE
OSCAR
Deborah KERR
Fun theme in my wheelhouse. Got me thinking of other DUETS such as:
HAIRSPRAY NETWORK
CABARET RENT
CHICAGO GYPSY
Fill was tough and not in my wheelhouse. ACAI seems to be the new crosswordese of the day. What happened to ACNE and ACME?
You may not have heard of ONCE, but I’ve got NUS for you, Rex. It’s an award-winning movie and musical. In fact, it won the Tony for Best Musical a few years ago along with a bunch of other awards. It’s also where the OSCAR-winning song “Falling Slowly” originated.
Found this a wonderfully enjoyable puzzle. Clever and misleading and well worth spending time on. Took a while to realize it was Broadway, but should have guessed by Dobbs (first answer I entered) Duane Reade and A-Rod that there was a New York theme.
I cannot believe so many puzzle solvers, starting with Rex himself, object to terms like "fig" and "Dapper Dan." They are part of our common cultural heritage (starting with Shakespeare, as some commenters have already pointed out). Just because one is familiar only with comic book heroes, or 2018 music and movies, does that mean the rest of us should just die off and get out of your way? I will take this puzzle any day over those which feature a dozen proper name answers to things I don't encounter on a daily basis. Part of the joy of this puzzle, and any puzzle really, is not only to guess at an answer, but to put one's mind in action and use it to recall what might be buried in there. Honestly, I see no sense in taking pleasure to see how quickly a puzzle can be solved. Do people never want to THINK, or is the whole purpose of solving a puzzle just to pass the time as quickly as possible and get on to doing something else instead?
Not current with the Broadway scene but didn't slow me down much as lots of the other trivia was familiar. The only thing I really took away from this was an earworm of "HairGrease, a little dab'll do ya, Hair-Grease, you'll look so debonair " and so on. Thanks a lot.
Also am suspicious of ARIOT. If it's in the dictionary, it shouldn't be.
I expected that today's puzzle would elicit extreme reactions both pro and con. I am not disappointed.
If you are not interested in Broadway musicals, the theme entries would be tough. Yes, A, they do fall into PPP. If you are a Broadway fanatic, they would be gimmes.v I'm neither, but I figured out the theme very early on. Not that it helped.Would have liked to have seen more older plays like CAMELOT. Would have also enjoyed CATS
People who trash a puzzle simply because they don't like it have an EGO problem. Was the fill in today's puzzle bad enough to justify aggressive ranting against it? I didn't really think so, but perhaps I am more tolerant of bad fill that isn't PPP I don't know.
Is the puzzle "conceptually rotten?" Absolutely not. "Annoying provincial" is just another way of characterizing a puzzle of including a lot of stuff not in your wheelhouse. Mixing real things and made-up things in not a [bad} "joke;" it is simply including variation in a set of something, and variation is a good thing.
Although I live in Yonkers, very close to Dobbs Ferry, I needed two crosses before the entry came to me. I feel sorry for those who don't live in the area - a very tough one to get. The type I dislike when I don't know the entry. I empathize.
Rex, Old Stick, Despite giving this Tuesday a Challenging rating, you really stuck it to it's constructor Paul Coulter, which doesn't reflect too kindly on your character, You possess a mean streak you do and your followers would truly appreciate seeing it on display much less often when you critique the crossword offerings of these crossword contributors to your blog.
I don’t know, this seemed pretty Tuesday to me. I was only 4 minutes over my average. The only reason I came to the blog (usually it’s to cheat) was to confirm my suspicion that these were all Broadway shows. Once I got HAIRGREASE, I suspected the theme and it all came together.
FWIW, I'm a 79 (next Tuesday) year old New Yorker and finished this in average Monday
time.
Paul's working title for this puzzle was "Double Plays", but he tossed that as a reveal possibility when he decided to make all the theme answers be musicals. I think of musicals as well as dramatic productions without music as plays -- maybe I'm wrong here -- and think it would have been icing to the theme to have DOUBLE PLAYS as a reveal.
There's definitely something AFOOT with ARIOT, if my GEESE is any good!?
Man, I just finished about half the puzzle, said "screw this" and just gave up, clicked on "reveal puzzle." I just couldn't sustain interest to persevere. Not sure what it was, but absolutely nothing was clicking for me. Even when I had BIGCOMPANY and HAIRGREASE, I couldn't figure out what in the heck was going on. Add to that the stitching clues, STERE, I just lost patience. At least VEGA and AROD came to me easily.
This clever, playful puzzle was aimed right between my Musical Theater-loving eyebrows, and I loved it. I can imagine, though, that someone who lives in the 48A and is not familiar with any Musical Theater might find it baffling. But for me it was a pleasure. Not very hard, but fine for a Tuesday.
Given what the country is going through right now, WICKED NINE was my favorite combo.
I found it amusing that HAS FUN is in the same puzzle with DARNS and BASTE -- both sewing terms as clued here. You should know that on those rare occasions where I have been forced to either DARN or BASTE, I have not had any fun at all. I tend to SNAG the thread every five stitches OR SO and I DONA like the process A BIT. I'd rather go to a musical.
There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.
Sam Stone by John Prine
I think if you avoided searching for a theme, this puzzle played easy Tuesday. Pretty interesting to me that those emphasizing the theme aspect seemed to cause the most trouble for commenters. Love it when Rex goes full metal jacket.
I would rate this Tuesday easy peasy. The only answer that made me pause was FARAD. HAIRGREASE made the theme obvious to me as well as being an obvious answer to the clue, as all the theme answers turned out to be. Had Rex gotten his revealer, I would have found it superfluous. This was a fine Tuesday, but I would have done a switch this week and flipped it with the Monday crossword.
Forgot to add "Thanks" to "The Bard" for the brilliant quote. Has anyone ever dominated an area of human endeavor as has the Big S ?
Oh goodness! I had company over the weekend and have just now done the puzzles of the past few days and read the comments. I can't believe I missed the whole ILLINI and "to Dr. or not to Dr." discussion. And here I am with an earned doctorate from the home of the FIGHTING ILLINI! I imagine y'all don't care, but I use that title in academic settings, as shorthand for intellectual credibility, or to get a nice hotel room (though that seldom works):) otherwise, it’s embarrassing.
I liked yesterday's puzzle better than today's. The clue for WICKED NINE made me wince, which is not to say it shouldn't be there but just that I had a not-very-pleasant gut reaction. I haven't read these comments yet, but I'm wondering if anyone DARNS any more. Around here, socks with holes get recycled to the dog injury drawer for protecting cut or scraped paws. I loved seeing ORION, both in the puzzle and in the night sky. Once ORION appears again in the sky, after going on summer vacation, the Navajo will again start telling coyote stories. And I love coyote stories.
And now to see what everyone else has to say.
Guide Dogs for the Blind is a specific organization that provides service dogs for some people. All Guide Dogs are service dogs. Not all service dogs are Guide Dogs.
for a while (I won't admit how long) it seemed that the theme was LAKEERIE-esque. FROZEN being nearby. finally, seemed to be movies. not that either. gad.
"Little pitchers have BIG ears." Adults must be careful about what they say within the hearing of children. The saying refers to the large handles (ears) sometimes attached to small vessels.
Hey All !
TuesPuz.
MAKE GOOD, HAS FUN, BOOHOO AFOOT
RooMonster
DarrinV
Hundreds of things I could say but I’ll just leave it at (1) God almighty, this is a Tuesday puzzle? (2) I’ve lived in NYC for thirty years so DOBBS and READE, no problem, but being a Noo Yawkuh does not automatically make me an aficionado of Broadway musicals, of which I’ve been dragged cursing to several and only not loathed one: Cabaret (the Alan Cummings version, though I would have loved to have seen the Joel Grey version too). Let the subreddit wars begin.
Nancy, Your propensity for punning is most cunning, me likey a lot...Yes, SIRI!
I got HAIRGREASE and figured the theme answers were movies, plays, or musicals. I am certainly not a Broadway follower and actually don't care much for musicals. The other theme answers weren't difficult to get with crosses. Some of the clues were fun and interesting. STERE had been seen before. I like that there's a word for cubic meter. We need a word for cubic yard. EARED pitchers brings to mind EWER which has been in puzzles. I guess "Ears" are just handles.? I liked working through this puzzle but I agree that the theme fell flat or was incomplete or something.
GUIDEDOG is legit. Guide dogs are needed for a person (e.g. blind) to get around. Guide dogs are service dogs but not all service dogs are guide dogs. Many service dogs are for emotional/mental support.
(Leader Dogs for the Blind is a guide dog training school located in Rochester Hills, Michigan. It was founded in 1939 by Lions Club members.
Vegans would not eat kale ice cream or any other ice cream.
ARIOT is forced, as many a-something clues are. AFOOT is different. It is a word in it's own right.
Didn’t need a revealer. After I got one the rest were clearly going to follow the pattern. The puzzle was a bit tougher than the usual Tuesday but hardly so. Sorry that people think if they don’t know something right away it’s the puzzle and not them.
My mom had an expression about not talking in front of the kids: “little pitchers have big ears.”
"aLASS poor Yorick! I knew him, a man of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy" BTW, NUS is Greek to me...MARC well my words! Let's do LUNGE sometime?
Prine
There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years
Once again, Rex’s fields of expertise are the only ones that count and if he isn’t familiar with something, a: nobody could possibly know, and b: the subject is stupid and obscure
Signed, Kimberly the Theater Fan
Surstromming cherry pie, ugh, @kitshef. Though I've never tasted surstromming, having never been in Sweden in August, I've heard tell of the smell. I had beet ice cream once - it was pretty good. And the milk stout I had at a local brewery last week had such a strong MOCHA flavor that I thought I'd probably have caffeine shakes afterwards - the alcohol must have counteracted the effects because I didn't but ooh, bitter (not in a good way).
I had fun with this puzzle because it was a tough Tuesday solve for me, at 9 minutes. I'm just glad I knew NOCHE because without that I wouldn't have finished, BOOHOO. I got the theme idea at HAIR GREASE but thought they were movies. I even thought, wow, they made WICKED into a movie and I haven't seen any mention of it? Ha, just Googled it - it will come out as a film in December 2019.
I remember my grandmother darning my socks. She made it look so easy and neat - my few attempts have thread zigzagging all over and the end result isn't very comfortable to wear so I just toss my heel-less socks now.
A fine Tuesday, thanks Paul Coulter.
Outside the puzzle, but inside the blog post, can someone explain New York locality-naming conventions to me? Here is how I intuit things: every aquare inch is part of a county and within that county is also part of a town. Within the town there are logical centers with local governments that are called villages. Some square inches may be in a town, but not in any village? Or is everything assigned to a village?
New Jersey is easier to understand (counties, townships, boroughs) and most Western states are very logical (counties, towns, That's It). But New York has always mystified me. Especially the villages that seem to have two names, like Grahamsville/Curry.
Anyone?
@Teedmn:
I remember my grandmother darning my socks. She made it look so easy and neat - my few attempts have thread zigzagging all over and the end result isn't very comfortable to wear so I just toss my heel-less socks now.
helps if you use an egg.
I didn't mean to echo clayplay. My comment was submitted before I saw clayplay's after I "refreshed".
And acai, defuse, and stag were both answers in Monday's puzzle. (Were there others, too?) I used to think one repeated word each day was kind of cute -- but three????
When OFL grouses ISMS! methinks a more appealing clue for said offending fill could be "Texter's distress", as in I s*** my shorts!
Early in the week I print two puzzles and last night we solved simultaneously.
M-W Solver: I got it!
Me: The theme?
M-W Solver: But, where's the...?
Me: Revealer?
The theme was certainly mainstream enough for the NYT Puzzle crowd. After all, these are well-known plays/movies and have been widely produced regionally. As noted earlier, ONCE won lots of awards, including a Grammy, and if somebody aired one of those popular live TV productions, it would win an Emmy, so get on that. Also those bracketed dates indicated that we were dealing with two distinct entities. A bit tough for a Tuesday, but fair.
Cautionary advice for adults conversing around young children: "Little pitchers have big ears." John Prine uses the expression in his classic song Sam Stone, which I have heard OFL rhapsodize about.
I'll use every opportunity to get all English teacher, just to bond with @MUSE. We used to teach the five sentence patterns, one being N + LV + PN. In this case, IT IS I illustrates the need for the nominative case pronoun "I" following the linking verb "IS", a form of the verb "to be." Pronoun case matters, even in conversation.
Speaking of relics from the past, does any place still enforce a "no pets" policy?
All during the solvequest, M&A wondered what the themer parts were supposed to be. Figured they were either flicks or plays, but the puz, of course, never tried to make that clear. BIG made me think flicks, but WICKED made me think plays. Maybe some of each? Confused the M&A.
fave fillins: STRETCH. LOVESEAT. GUIDEDOG. DOOFUS.
fave A-words: ARIOT. ABIT. AFOOT. AROD.
staff weeject pick: NUS. Could NUS be clued as {Fake news?}, maybe? I'd like that.
Didn't exactly know: DOBBS. NOCHE. OWEN. TAGALOG/READE. DONA [thought maybe DAMA for a long while]. Lost precious TuesPuz nanoseconds.
Thanx, Mr. Coulter. I think U were right, to want to include that there revealer.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
Yes, Rex. HAIRGREASE is an actual thing, remember Dixie Peach, perhaps just ABIT before your time?
Many thanks Leon, You're a genuine Big Apple historian with your recall of how Duane READE was originally founded, You're obviously well READE! ;-)
Banana Diaquiri, DARNS, you're good! "Helps if you use an egg" is worthy of a standing OVAtion! Heh Heh Heh
Duane Reade is a drugstore chain, The first store was opened in NYC at the corner of Duane St and Reade Street. Really.
Terrible terrible fill. So dated and just bad. I love musicals and really struggled. Slowest Tuesday in months (Years?). Agree with Rex on everything above. Açaí clued to oddly crossing FARAD and SCALA? C’mon... maybe on a Thursday. Maybe.
Pretty tough for a Tuesday. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems the more challenging a puzzle the nastier the critique. All legitimate shows. Perhaps DOBBS and READE were too NY-centric but as noted, NY is where a strong majority of Times readers live. And, who says you must have a revealer?
Gonna brag cause it's been a cruddy day.
This past Spring I won a nice award ( part of a production team). There was much celebrating. Thanks to Duane Reade which sells beer the celebration continued down the Jersey Turnpike. I'm a fan of that drug store. The CVSs and Rite Aids around here aren't a patch on that magnificent emporium!
The puzzle was nice. Rex is a crank. And Once is so beautiful you may cry. Hit the Duane Reade and hoist and few and you'll actually bawl.
Mohair Sam, if you're out there, I've started the countdown to Clearwater and our Phils. Hope you're well, wherever you are. We all miss you.
operating rooms, grocery stores (mostly), classrooms, churches, restaurants, hotels and motels (not all), most hospital rooms (people in hospice care can sometimes have pet visits), offices of doctors (real doctors), dentists, etc. Add your own.
Words that (in my opinion) commenters in this blog need to give a rest:
Crunchy
Methinks
A couple of minutes over average Tuesday time but no big deal. I don't understand the grousing today. BIGCOMPANY went in with no idea as to the theme. Since I'd solved it with virtually no attention paid to the dates I completely ignored them on subsequent themers. HAIRGREASE made the them obvious. They're mash ups of titles. Titles of exactly what didn't matter. The clues told you everything you needed to know.
I've lived in Chicago for the past 38 years but DOBBS was as first guess as DARNS. My best explanation of this is that I lived in Westchester county NY in the sixties.
The extra 2 minutes was caused by working around ARIOT, RIGOR and OWEN. The latter I didn't know and the first two I just wasn't ecpecting.
Further along I had a LOVESOFA write over. What can I say, it seemed right at the moment. Not hard to fix.
In the south I didn't know READE and I had a DAMA write over at 58D. Luckily the SE corner was a slam dunk so little harm done.
HAS FUN was slow going in because it's a bit of a green paint phrase. It takes very little to tack on a couple of extra minutes.
To your list I would add:
Hand up
Wheelhouse
Nanosecond
Gimmee
Rexes (as in "I did the puzzle in 3 Rexes"--meaning 3 times Rex's time)
Not a New Yorker, just a fairly well-educated snowbird from Delaware and Florida. For Tuesdays, I freewheel back and forth with acrosses and downs. FARAD familiar from high school and college Physics courses. I fully enjoyed this puzzle and found it quite fair. As Pride says on NCIS New Orleans, “Learn things!”
I never understand people who come to a (free) blog and criticize its content. Why read it, then? From my perspective, he didn’t say anything negative about the constructor, but about the construction. If anything, OFL’s criticisms, when personal, are almost always directed at the editor, not the constructor.
@Barbie Barbie, if you're serious, here you will find a little info
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unincorporated_area#United_States
There are only a few states, mostly in the northeast and the upper midwest, where such issues come into play. New York and Pennsylvania have a special confusion; Maine, Michigan, others have issues to deal with.
Let me add my peccadilloes; People like @Anony 3:33 and you @OfftheGrid 4:16 who come here with nothing better to say other than what peeves you about commenters. I'll add the tedious, monotonous, boring, everyday @Rex bashers, who never once say what they feel about the puzzle.
Take it to Dear Abbey. She'll set you straight.
Duane and Reade run parallel and the first store was on Broadway between them — and, farther north, Broadway hosted all these musical shows, many of which won a Tony for Best Musical (including Once, Nine, Wicked, and Company), others ran for years (Grease, Hair); only Big wasn’t really big on stage. But then again, I don’t have a PhD in English — or the anger that apparently comes with one.
Can anyone please clarify the meaning of "it's a bit of a green paint phrase" please? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Thanks!
TJS,
Loved the John Prince reference. Had no idea what EARED was till coming here. It was clear it had nothing to do with baseball (speaking as a former pitcher).
Lots of strange ones for a Tuesday. But I did like being reminded of ‘A Prayer for OWEN Meany’. Great book. Highly recommended.
@Anon 5:49 "Green Paint" is a noun / adjective pairing that has no significance of its own in real life. "Wet Paint" is a real-life phrase. "Green Paint", while real, has no significance of its own. Green Beans is a thing, Green Paint isn't.
19A: Singer Suzanne VEGA. Her biggest pop hit was the song “Luka” which hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in August, 1987.
Thanks for the referral, Gill, but I don't know how to fix the whiners.
Just catching up with the comments now.
@Warren Howie Hughes -- I appreciate the compliment!
@Teedmn: Don't throw out your hole-ridden socks. Don't DARN them either. Cut off the holey foot part and save the pristine legs part. Use the leg part with your favorite summer ankle socks as leg warmers in the winter. That's what I do and I never have to buy leg warmers.
@kitshef -- COMPANY is one of Sondheim's earlier musicals and, for my money, one of his best. I'm pretty sure it was the work that made his reputation as a composer/lyricist. It doesn't have his best score, but it has one of the strongest books of any of his shows. It was a hit, but not a huge hit -- people found it pretty cynical for its time. But that was true of "Chicago", too, during its original production. I think you'd like it -- and anyway, the world has caught up with the cynicism.
Sob, @bookmark (8:07), sob. ONCE is a very nice (small) musical and it's wonderful that you like it. But OMG, if it's your favorite, I have to think you're pretty young and haven't been lucky enough to have seen -- or even heard a cast album of -- the really great musicals from the Golden Age. Carousel. Porgy and Bess. The King and I. My Fair Lady. South Pacific. Guys and Dolls. West Side Story. You have a future as a musical buff, I can feel it, and it would be tragic to go through life never even having heard these albums. And when you've heard those, then go to the next echelon: Chicago. Cabaret. Gypsy. Sunday in the Park. A Little Night Music. Camelot. Brigadoon. The Sound of Music. The Fantasticks. Maybe some of these you've seen as movies? That would be a good thing.
Piece of cake. Love Broadway musicals. Figured it out at once.
Methinks this was a crunchy puz that was in my wheelhouse. Hands up for some gimmes, took some nanoseconds for other parts. Took me three Rexes to finish. A good day! 😋😎 Har.
RooMonster
Gill,
I think your heart is the right place, but methinks and crunchy are awful.
@Abigail. Thanks for the laugh. You doin anything tonite? I got some hootch.
13:15, a minute over my average. I liked the "boondocks" clue but I didn't know the theme until I came here. Just did the clues straight.
I had DENUDE before DEFUSE, and while I found it a bit harder than usual it didn't give me fits the way it did OFL. Of course, I live in NYC and know DOBBS Ferry (another way to clue that would be using the Church of the Subgenius, but I'd hate to see what Rex would say to *that*!).
I got the Broadway thing early on, with BIG COMPANY (hadn't realized BIG was on the stage, but I filled in GREASE and then COMPANY and then got BIG, and boom! it hit me. I figured NINE had to be part of the Supreme Court answer; didn't suss WICKED until I had some crosses. Yeah, lots of mediocre fill but I enjoyed it more than @Rex. And I kind of enjoyed the lack of a revealer, although if you're not familiar with Broadway shows I can see this being really tough. But COMPANY, HAIR, GREASE, WICKED, and NINE are all pretty iconic. I loved the movie of ONCE, didn't like the show that much. FROZEN and BiG, whatever.
Hey @Adam Frank, nobody gives a damn dude, we’re already working on the next day’s puzzle roscoe.
@Nancy 8:07. No need to "sob" for me or to educate me about Broadway musicals. I am a 74 year-old South Carolinian, having seen my first musical In NY in 1964, My Fair Lady, with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. I have seen live or in movies all of the musicals you mentioned. Something about ONCE appealed to me as a work that was innovative. I loved its simplicity, its minimalism, its "quietness." I guess I'm tired of the over-the-top musicals of the past.
@bookmark
Hope you're doing OK after the storm.
But, I have to point out that Audrey Hepburn was in the movie; Julie Andrews was in the Broadway production.
@JC66. You are right. After looking it up, Julie Andrews was in the Broadway show. Now I wish I had saved all my playbills, as my mother always suggested.
We had minimal hurricane damage, as we live in central SC. Thanks for asking.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/little-pitchers-have-big-ears
May be an age thing? Heard this as a kid.... several decades ago
I didn't like this puzzle either. I didn't get that click of inspiration when I figured it out.
By the way, you are a superhero, Rex
Okay, maybe it’s because I’m a theatre rat but Inthought this was one of the easiest Tuesday puzzles ever. Enjoyed it!
Someone above said "A puzzle constructed for New Yorkers."
Yeah, that's what wrong with this puzzle. I still don't know what it's all about. But I solved it. On Tuesday. An easy day.
Glad to hear you also found this puzzle annoying. Frustrating that I had to "reveal a letter" three times on a Tuesday puzzle. Usually don't have to give in until Thursday.
MUSE NUS
I was SPYING ABIT on that BIG-EARED LASS,
her COMPANY HASFUN and she’ll MAKEGOOD,
ONCE she’s on the LOVESEAT SIRI’s just first-class,
she’ll STRETCH a GENT’S WICKEDNINE into AFOOT.
--- OSCAR READE
This cannot possibly be Tuesday. I'm so confused... whew! I'm glad I voted early!
I thought they were all movies. I agree with most of the points OFL made. To look at the completed grid, I wonder why it was so tough (other than DOBBS)--and the answer is: the clues. The one for ACAI was covered, but there were many others. Here's but one example:
"Doesn't take things too seriously" --> HASFUN. OK, I can see where he's going with this, but to call those two things congruent? I don't THINK so. The clue certainly does not lead to the answer.
If this is what we have to deal with on Monday and Tuesday*, what can the rest of the week bring? I cower in fear.
One saving grace is DOD SELA Ward, maybe my all-time fave, who has thankfully gotten more work now as the boss on FBI. Good on ya, sweetie! I score this a bogey; had it appeared on, say, a Thursday it might have struggled to a par.
*Don't forget to vote!
B’way? NUS to me, thought they were movies. Didn’t much matter after HAIRGREASE. I’ve only seen one B’way show and it wasn’t any of those. Movie or not, I haven’t seen FROZENONCE.
Ever wonder why one side of that flying vee is longer than the other? More GEESE.
The back side at Augusta National is a WICKEDNINE.
It’s no STRETCH to guess that @spacey will mention yeah baby SELA Ward.
It’s Tuesday. This is what we get. Don’t start ARIOT over it.
I'm with Rex today. I had no idea the gimmick was about Broadway shows. I just thought they were all movies and that there were four I had never heard of: COMPANY, WICKED, NINE and ONCE. Without a reveal to tie it all in I'm sure I wasn't alone. I had BADguy before BADEGG, but aside from that I did not hit any SNAGs. A bit on the challenging side for a Tuesday, and not all that enjoyable. Maybe Mr. Coulter will MAKEGOOD next time...
I sure do get the impression that early-in-the-week puzzles have been toughening up recently. Could be just me, but at least today's says otherwise. It's a good and challenging one.
Didn't see the gimmick until HAIR and GREASE. The other three (actually six) were not so clear, but they did eventually show up and fun to see.
As many times as ACAI has appeared it still slows me, this time crossed by FARAD, which added to the pause.
Other pauses were DOBBS and NOCH both crossed by STRETCH as was MOCHA. READE and VEGA, unknowns but revealed by crosses.
Wouldn't mind seeing more of these tougher Tuesdays. Nice work, Mr. Coulter.
I agree with @Lefty and others that early-week puzzles have seemed tougher lately. But this one - not TOO much tougher, IMHO.
Of course, we must consider my dnf. I considered M or A in AC_I, and chose the wrong one. Even tho I knew acai is a thing, I knew not of the "na tigela" dish. And thus thought the A would be too easy. Ha ha on me. I mean, FM RAD made a lot more sense to me. Might even be about FM radios??!!
DOBBS bopped right in for me. And I've heard of, or seen, all the movies/musicals. Even FROZEN - it's on TV all the time (which I seldom watch) and the music is truly captivating. Every now and then I overhear a little girl in a store singing "Let It Go" and that makes me smile. FROZEN, frozen treat for kids that it is, is more entertaining and better written than 90% of what passes for entertainment on the tube these days - again, my opinion only.
Today's episode of "A Car for Diana" is OWEN its advertising dollars to BOO HOO, maker of BADEGG MOCHA. (If you see it on the MENU, move on.)
Part III - More calls to car dealers delivered another sales rep who said the Wash. Plates would pose no problem. A 50-mile round trip and 5-minute showroom visit put an end to that myth. No one seemed to want to bother with the paperwork. (Which, by the way, consisted of handing me 3 documents from the purchase activity.) (And emailing a copy of same to the Washinton DMV) I began to despair, and even called back the Washington dealer (dealer #1) to see how I might renew the process with them. But then, the 25-mile-off dealer called us back and told us where the car I wanted was located currently at other dealers in the great state of California. One of the dealers was 150 miles away. Perhaps you can guess what my next step was...
Diana, While Waiting I should have asked SIRI for help
I found this to be somewhat resistant to my solving prowess even after I got the idea at BAD COMPANY. Other parts of the puzzle were challenging or else were out of my ken. But, I solved the sucker, and I have to admit I liked it which puts me in the minority, seemingly.
My favourite section was the middle on the West side where you have answers relating to electrical units, opera, a reviled war, a famous artist all contributing to a great musical (WICKED). I think AFOOT is a fine word, and maybe you can even parse ARIOT as two words, but I'm not going to try. Otherwise, the fill was fine.
@Lady Di - fascinating but confusing. I don't know anything about the intricacies of State law, but here in Canada, you can own a car in British Columbia with Alberta plates, no problem. Many people who have cabins in one Province and live in another and they simply renew the plates in the Province where it was initially licensed. Maybe I'm missing the point.
@r 4:27 - that was the confusing part. According to the DMVs of both states there should have been no big problem - just complete the proper paperwork. As I said, the dealers' reason? Because. Full Stop. Parking brake on. Engine off. They'd only sell and plate in Calf - no other options were put on the table. Or the freeway.
Lady Di, the Miffed One
PS - Mr. W was there with me all the way, so it wasn't just me "getting something wrong."
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