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Percussion in pagoda / MON 11-19-18 / Streamer of Game of Thrones / Noted 1965 film / Fluid 2017 film / Lacking depth informally
Monday, November 19, 2018
Constructor: Jim Hilger
Relative difficulty: Medium (3:09)
Theme answers:
- "THE COLOR OF MONEY" (20A: "Green" 1986 film?)
- "THE SHAPE OF WATER" (36A: "Fluid" 2017 film?)
- "THE SOUND OF MUSIC" (47A: "Noted" 1965 film?)
Carl Heinrich Maria Orff (German: [ˈɔɐ̯f]; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982) was a German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential approach toward music education for children. [...] The Orff Schulwerk, or simply the Orff Approach, is a developmental approach used in music education. It combines music, movement, drama, and speech into lessons that are similar to child's world of play. It was developed by the German composer Carl Orff (1895–1982) and colleague Gunild Keetman during the 1920s. Carl Orff worked until the end of his life to continue the development and spread of his teaching method.
• • •
First: TWOD = Two-D i.e. two-dimensional (47D)
(yes, it's bad...)
(so much email about this...)
(OK, moving on...)
First: TWOD = Two-D i.e. two-dimensional (47D)
(yes, it's bad...)
(so much email about this...)
(OK, moving on...)
I had minor trouble all over the place, so I guess I should be happy my time came out pretty much dead normal. I could picture a pagoda, but the "percussion" there? I was thinking something much more drumlike, and therefore couldn't recall it. "OH BOY" took an odd lot of work (6D: "Yippee!"). First thought was "OH YAY!" (I had the last "Y"). Thought [Story] was a level of a building. Clue on FLUFF is accurate enough but even with FLU- I wasn't sure. Hey, why is SELF the answer for 34A: Subject most familiar to a portrait painter. I honestly have no idea what this means. I know that there are such things as self-portraits (Van Gogh has a famous one; Rembrandt did a bunch), but John Singer Sargent was a portrait painter—in that he painted people's portraits. Why would SELF be "most familiar" to him? If there's wordplay here ... well, I demand a "?", firstly. And secondly, I don't get it. Use a specific painter, or throw this clue in the garbage.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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81 comments:
Slightly harder than the average Monday. I wonder if 56Across ORFF would have passed the smell test without the happy tune, but what else could it be? Colors, Shapes, and Sounds Theme. HBOGO is another WTF.
Medium works for me. Not much glue and the theme helped the solve, liked it more than @Rex did.
I totally agree with OFL's quibble with the themers. Worthwhile films with cookie cutter titles are Monday worthy, but I was hoping there was more to the quotation marked words in the clues, some kind of unity escapes me. Maybe, someone else can bring it home. That would be nice.
I'm no constructor, but the fill seemed good to me. I always enjoy puzzles with a minimal number of three letter answers and this thing only had four. Sunday puzzles often have that many or more in a tiny corner. Tedium ensues.
No problem with the portrait painter's familiar subject cluing SELF. When I was a young man, like a parakeet, I spent an inordinate amount of time gazing into the mirror and, unlike a parakeet, was not always pleased with what I saw. Now, I'm a decent looking man for my age, or so I'm told, but I'm extremely LAX about checking my appearance before I head out. That bit of breakfast in my beard is from this morning, I hope.
GRILLE if you say so. Love the imagery of that word in reference to someone's face, as in "up in my GRILLE." Those shiny tooth coverings, not so much, or for that matter, any embedded metallic enhancements. Dude has a cuff link in his tongue?
This puzzle made me think of @chefbea’s daughter Elizabeth who writes books and has a great blog about eating in Italy. ITALY, ROME, PASTA and PREGO made a super mini theme.
Fun, Monday easy puzzle. One write over AD REP over AD man. AD REP, much better.
I read it as
THECOLOROFMONEY is green
THE SHAPEOFWATER is fluid
THESOUNDOFMUSIC is noted
Nothing to do with the movies, just the dissociated titles.
I spoiled my time by entering a typo and laughing too hard at the HOkY GRAIL.
Didn’t share Rex’s problems nor his displeasure. Found this easy and enjoyable. Don’t understand the issue concerning self portraits; who knows one better than oneself?
The movie thing was like an answer to the title.
What is the color of money? Green.
What is the shape of water? Fluid. (Kind of weak. Fluid isn’t a shape. Amorphous may have been a better clue.
What is the sound of music? Notes. (A bit weak too, but not random)
Loved the three double F's and the five words that end in O, and column 8's GATO/ALOE/BOFFO. But most of all, the theme reminded me of:
The Tree of Life
The Wizard of Oz
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Prince of Tides
The Guns of Navarone
The Battle of Algiers
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Triplets of Bellville
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Bells of St. Mary's
The Perils of Pauline
The Spirit of St. Louis
I disagree with Rex’s analysis of the theme. The themes did not just have structure in common, and Lewis’s list actually nicely illustrates that. In the puzzle, each theme was THE quality OF substance. Color, shape, and sound are all qualities; money, water, and music are all mass nouns in English (so, grammatically, substances). None of Lewis’s examples fit this pattern. Nor does THE TOUCH OF SATAN. :)
I love when I learn new words. I'd never heard of TWOD. Ever! So that means I'll see it a million times in the next few weeks.
Am I misremembering, or didn’t pasta originally come from China?
At first I thought this was going to be a cheese theme, what with Brie and Big Cheese (I had kahuna first) but then I got the movie idea. No problems there, but overall there was too many commercial product names for my taste. Botox, Skyy, Kreme, Prego, HBOGO, and IPod. Not to mention celebs. It lacked OOMPH. TWOD has another meaning too apparently. And isn’t EVAN the English spelling of the Welsh “Leuan”?
Whoa, whoa, whoa!!! 19-Across is WRONG. Pasta did not originate in Italy, it was from China. Marco Polo brought it back to Italy. How did Shortz let that one get through?
BOFFO? Do people say that? I zipped right through this and then came to a dead stop at the crossing of ORFF with BOFFO. Ugh.
Easy theme, but I did a lot of downs this morning. Some very entertaining entries. I’m still cooling off from the Saturday slog.
It's a Monday.
Confidence-restorer for the folks who considered the end of last week a series of toughies.
Mondays are at a bit of a disadvantage because of the three ways a puzzle can excel (theme, fill, cluing), they are always going to be vanilla in the cluing. Then when you get a non-functioning theme like this, all you are left with is fill.
But the fill today was pretty good. Some bad phrases like NOR I and I BET, an awkward prefix (MATRI), but avoiding the worst gunk like XVI and ELHI, and including some nice stuff like BABY BUGGY and BOFFO.
TWOD (which I’ve never heard of) and ORFF don’t really belong in a Monday puzzle I don’t think. Otherwise I liked the puzzle more than Rex and agree with those who didn’t see SELF as a problem. Self-portraits are a recognized and common part of most portrait painters’ bodies of work.
I think it’s two d as in 2-dimensional
JJK, it's not "twod" (one word), it's "two-d", as in "two-dimensional". Unlike 3D.
@JJK - TWOD is actually TWO-D, short for two-dimensional.
@Several posters. Noodles were probably independently invented several times. But in China and Northern Africa, they were not called PASTA. That name belongs to Italy.
I'm surprised that TWOD as in "two-dimensional" was that new to anyone. I'm sure I've run into it several times in doing the NYT the last 5 or 6 years. I could see an argument for not using it on a Monday, though, maybe. I was about 30 secs over my average, so in my estimation, the puzzle was a bit harder than the average Monday.
At about the halfway point I thought, "Oh, a themeless Monday". I enjoyed the puzzle in that way and, though I was aware of the movie titles, didn't think about it. Thus I was spared from critiquing the theme. A little ignorance is bliss.
But, in observance of the theme:
"The Bliss of Ignorance" 2015
Through first-hand testimony The Bliss of Ignorance investigates South Africa's complex relationship with one of the country's most abundant resources: coal.
Director: Simon Waller
Writers: Shiraya Adani, Simon Waller
Fun solve, and Twod is new to me too.
Still trying to remember Cabochon from a few days ago. Looking forward to a short work week and T'giving puzzle.
Yep. Story is that Marco Polo (crossword fav) brought it from China in the 13th cen.
It’s not the fact that many artists do self-portraits it’s that “self” is the most familiar subject! Who else is one more familiar with than oneself?
I completely agree with Anon@6:25, this was more than just The X of Y, there was a connection between the structure of these. I enjoyed the theme.
However, I ended in an ignominious DNF, because I thought that the Welsh shared the Scottish "Ewan", and it was crossed with some sportsing guy, so I had no way to know I was wrong. I spent forever going over my puzzle looking for what could be wrong before finally giving up, and was annoyed when I discovered where the error was.
I thought the puzzle was TWOD.
HEY NOW, OH BOY, OOMPH, OORF!
Played medium or harder for me. I imagine it would have been really tough for newbies, especially young'uns nit familiar with 1960s television or films. I didn't get the happy pencil music, and spent all my time trying various alternatives to SKYY, which looked wrong. In fact, my error was having fATRI and cREME in the downs, which gave me fAcE ME! for 25A, which was NE'ER enough for me, as in:
The Donald (as he turns and walks away): "You're fired!!"
Staffer: "fACe ME!"
NO VAK! sounds like the lament of somebody searching fruitlessly for a Hoover. TWOD, I've just learned, is slang; I had assumed it came from Jabberowky.
Liked the interchangeability of BRIE, BIG CHEESE, and KREME. I wouldn't dilute good BRIE on a TWOD cracker, though. DIVE under THE SHAPE OF WATER is a nice touch.
Note to Mr. Shortz: I think we've seen plenty of SPA for now; give it a rest. Welcome back, ALOE. It's been at least a week, no?
TWOD. Did those of you who thought that was an actual word think to just, you know, google it to find out what it meant?
Spoiler alert: You would have found that it meant "Till We OverDose."
As it turns out, the story of Marco Polo bringing pasta from China to Italy no longer holds (a big pot of salted) water. I goggled it. Could have also started with the Etruscans.
The themers were really great, but any puzzle that starts out with Jack Webb and Actress Perlman, and contains clues like Hill:Ants::___Bees, Singer McCarney, Ginger___, Enter a pool head first, and rink surface just screams big day at Assisted Living.
It's the cluing. Cracker topping spread with a knife! Way to demote a fine French cheese. Longtime rival of Saudi Arabia. Yeah, that's it; it's a rivalry.
Geesh, we're old, not stupid. Get a better clue.
I guess SEAN is Irish not Welsh. EVAN means young warrior. My name means child of the gods. I'll take it.
I honestly wondered if the COLOR, SHAPE and SOUND would be dissected. Such a simple concept with a common bond. I suppose there are lots of "THE....OF...." movies, but this one makes nice for a Monday.
Like @chefwen, I secretly hoped this might turn into a cheesy puzzle. I'm pretty sure I've tried them all. Smelly ones are the best.
Glad to learn that TWOD is two words. Could TWOT be two tiered?
I actually feel sorry for Roseanne BARR. She's famous for putting her foot in her boca but man alive, I've heard worse from people who should know better (think Bill Maher) and they still own their jobs. P.S. I actually think Maher is brilliant!
I like seeing MAKE ME HOLY, BOTOX and SKYY with ICE, some BRIE, MONEY a little WATER and lots of MUSIC.
BOFFO Monday.
My take: this is a fine fun Monday and Rex is just in a bad mood.
Lots of people in this puzzle, especially the top half.
I like @Lewis' list (some of my faves are in there), but the cool thing here (as Rex notes) is that they're all five letters on each side of the "of." That's gotta be a much shorter list.
How about this?
“The puzzle that sucked”
Very easy, but then I'm old enough to remember Jack WEBB, and they were still talking about Mata HARI when I entered the world. (I'm not old enough to remember, though, when WHELM was used as a stand-alone verb.)
It's a genuine puzzle-creating "find" to identify three such similar themers with a matching, grid-spanning number of letters, but that doesn't a fun solving experience make. I did what I always do when bored -- tried to guess a great many answers before reading the clue. Usually I was right.
The "withheld the publication of" = SAT ON clue/answer had overWHELMing emotional resonance for me. I almost burst out in tears. I'm going to cut and paste this comment right now and place it prominently on the Wordplay blog, where hopefully the one person who can make me smile again will read it. Bye for now.
TWOD, as in "trod the boards as an actor" as spoken by Elmer Fudd. I only got into voice work as a failed actor. I got so much feed-back from casting directors, actual directors, agents, fellow actors that I conveyed no depth as an actor that I turned to voice work. I gave Elmer the lisp only to fit "TWOD" (no depth, get it?) for "trod" into the act. One little private joke to make the ignominy of being a voice actor in cartoons bearable turned into a cash cow for me. Who'd have thunk?
Me again. The proper clues for the three themers are "green", "the tank", and "melody". Getting one of three right for the #NYTXW is about par, no?
I'm dead for 29 damned years and I'm still better than Will!
Dear Z,
I am still unclear on 6D from Saturday. I took your advice and went back with FIND but no one explained it, just called it difficult. If you can, or if anyone can, I would really appreciate it.
I thought this was typical Monday level, and I"m not a rapid solver. Easy to get the theme and nothing not inferable. "Self" was easy peasy. Hmmmm.....
Hope there are some Thanksgiving themes this week ... pie!
I did want them all to be colors, but I’ll take the misplaced ?s.
The V in NOVAK was tough, since I know Welshmen name Euan.
And FWIW, Kipling wrote “never” not NEER. OTOH you could go with “ne’er so we’ll expressed”
My five favorite clues from last week:
1. Moo goo gai pan pan (3)
2. Going green? (7)
3. Band since 1922 (15)
4. Missed out (5)
5. "It has one syllable" and "It's fourth letter is T" (5)
WOK
ENVIOUS
WORLD SERIES RING
ERROR
HINTS
East is East and West is West
And never the twain shall meet...
You're right, of course, @jberg (9:37). It killed me when I read NE'ER and I was going to mention it but forgot to. It kills me because Kipling had one of the finest ears in the entire history of poetry and NE'ER robs the above couplet of all its music. Read it out loud as written. Then substitute NE'ER and hear the gorgeousness of the sound completely disappear. For shame, Will!
@Jofried -- I've never heard BOFFO said in real life, either. But if you read "Variety" at all, it's there favorite adjective. Maybe they coined it?
Four clues with the qualifier "informally" and one "formally".
What to see self portraits? Look at Frida Kahlo's work.
Huffed? Isn't that slang for breathing glue fumes?
Orff on a Monday? Carmina Burana is unknown. Looked like Carmine Miranda who I do know.
It was easy to predict the Two-D discussion that Rex tried to avoid but too many people already had to chime in without reading his note.
This happens every single time.
I also figured we'd get the Italy v China pasta debate.
All of this actually is a good thing and better than boring so I guess I was whelmed.
Their favorite adjective. Sorry.
Puzzling that so many haven’t seen TWO-D, before and that so many don’t get that “fluid” is perfectly okay as a SHAPE OF WATER. See adjective definition 1.2.
The puzzle has WEBB/HARI/RHEA at the start and people are saying the fill is clean? Puzzling.
I liked the themers and cluing fine. @Zen Monkey was the first to describe the theme as I understood it. That Rex didn’t get the theme is puzzling.
@Anon9:34 - I won’t explain it here as some may still be working on the Saturday puzzle, but I did find four explanations in the Saturday comments, @kitshef9:56, @burtonkid9:59, and me at 11:14 and 1:59. Two more explanations would have been fitting. Anyway, it is a stretch of a clue.
Yeah, this was real rough for a Monday. I finished way over my recent average. Just so much plodding. TWOD, ugh.
To be fair, nobody ever actually writes it that way; same with THREED. It’s basically always 2-D or 3-D, occasionally hyphenless.
Hey All !
Theme worked for me. MONEY is Green, WATER is Fluid, MUSIC has Notes. Bam. What's the problem? The Long Downs are nice, too. BIG CHEESE! BABY BUGGY! Plus OH BOY, OOMPH. MAKE ME, GNAW.
Fill was good, light dreck, ORFF and MATRI the two most Huh? answers. Surprised that TWO-D tripped up so many.
A very nice MonPuz, I actually finished in 6:29. HEY NOW! I figured Rex would've broken the 3 minute barrier, as I don't try to speed-solve.
Who doesn't like a puz with 8 F's? Har. Very high F count.
HUFFED FLUFF
RooMonster
DarrinV
Works just fine for a Monday.
I would go see:
-- The WIDOW of ITALY
-- The OOMPH of NOVAK
-- The FLUFF of HBOGO
-- The ADIEU of BOTOX
-- The ADREP of PREGO
@Nancy. You said, The "withheld the publication of" = SAT ON clue/answer had overWHELMing emotional resonance for me. I almost burst out in tears. I'm going to cut and paste this comment right now and place it prominently on the Wordplay blog, where hopefully the one person who can make me smile again will read it. Bye for now.
I think if you want to make an emotional plea on this blog it behooves you to explain. I can't be the only commenter who is puzzled.
Initially went with "China" for where pasta originated. Because, that's where Marco Polo "discovered" it and brought back samples to Europe. But I guess more accurate to say that NOODLES originated from China, and pasta from Italy. (Still sounds wrong to me, though.)
@Mel Blanc, thanks for stopping by. Loved your Elmer Fudd take on TWOD. My favorite from Elmer:
East is East and West is West
And NEvER the twain shall meet
Which is good because
They run on the same twack
Try saying the following rapidly, three or four times in a row:
Rubber BABY BUGGY Bumpers
Would "whoa" be a good name for an anoa?
E-Z here, with the theme answers coming quickly and only a couple of wait-for-it entries (OOMPH, MAKE ME). I liked the line 5 confrontation of HOLY and LAX and the WEBB for the Black WIDOW.
@chefwen and @chefbea - I have often looked at Eliabeth's blog and appreciated her recipes and restaurant recommendations in ROME and Florence. Very fun to learn about the connection here.
@codger - LOL on your reaction to those clues.
@Zen Monkey - Thank you for your comment about the theme answers.
Furthering the points of Anon. 6:25, JoeR, etc.,
Not only do the first main words of the themers describe qualities, but the qualities cover the three divisions of experience, visual (color), audio (sound), and kinesthetic (shape). The set of themers is incredibly cohesive with the bonus of being all well-known, well-respected films where the main words are all five letters long. This is nothing to sneeze at, unless you have a sneezing-mandatory blog.
You say Carmina and I say Carmena
Youj say Burana and I say Burena
Carmina, Carmena, Burana, Burena
Let's call the whole thing Orff.
Puzzle made me wonder why we say headfirst for diving into a pool or sliding into a base, when it is really hands first?
Pasta originated in Asia. Aren't the clues fact checked?
I am underWHELMed by Rex's complaints about this puzzle. I like the theme just fine - the repeated meter of the themers ties them together. If anything, I think the third themer is a bit of an outlier. The Color of Money is "green" and The Shape of Water is...there is no shape, it is "fluid". But while music can be noted, The Sound of Music is more like "lilting" or "tonal" but neither of those is punny in the least. So noted.
Did anyone else get the cross of 11D and 16A wrong? Ah, I see @Joe R 8:20 did also. I thought that EwAN sounded more like a Welsh John and I had no idea on the tennis player. Turns out, from the very basic post-solve investigation that I did, that Ewan isn't John-related at all. Sigh.
Thanks, Jim Hilger, for a FINE Monday puzzle.
More fun than your usual Monday for sure. Esp. the SE quadrant.
Look at all of those double letters.
aRRow
boFFo
huFFed
orFF
pEEvE (a triple)
BaByBuGGy (full house!)
Good one Mr. Hilger. Thanks.
Didn't mind the theme(s) as much as some. Getting angry at a crossword puzzle doesn't strike me as especially productive. If it's not fun (otter power!) and so on.
I suspect those of you who think you are unfamiliar with Carmina Burana would recognize it if you heard it, or at least some of it. Very, very dramatic--some might say melodramatic piece often used as a background for intense tv stuff,like commercials featuring action heroes.
Maybe a little rubbly for a Monday but I liked it.
@kitschef - I assume because heads and feet are the literal and immovable tops and bottoms of our bodies. Hands can kind of go almost anywhere. We're just trying to describe the orientation of the body more so than what literal part of the body hits the ground/base/pool first.
Finished this one in just under average time. Looking back at it, I'm not entirely sure what slowed me down. I really enjoyed the theme. I thought it was clever and fun for a Monday puzzle. No issues with the way the clues are worded.
It took me a few beats to parse TWOD as 2D, or two-dimensional, but I had all the across clues filled in, so I didn't need to figure out that clue. At least now I have it in my memory banks. Oh, yes, HBO GO had me tangled up a bit. I was thinking Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Sling, etc., but couldn't come up with it. Needed the down clues to fill it all in and then realized that I had heard of it, but I don't have HBO so I wouldn't have considered subscribing to it. (I think it's only available to HBO subscribers, but I may be wrong.)
I, too, was one of those who put in China for ITALY on the pasta clue. Luckily, later down the grid there was the related clue asking for this answer's capital, and it was four letters, so had to be an ITALY - ROME pair.
BOFFO I've only known from Joe Martin's comic Mr. Boffo in the newspaper. I didn't realize that was an actual word meaning anything but, once again, didn't need it as the across clues were fine. (ORFF was a gimme for me. I'm no classical music buff, but for some reason I've always known the name of the composer of what is essentially a classical music one-hit-wonder.)
Well, music has color (aka timbre), sound, and shape, as does water (especially the sea), and, more prosaically, money.
Rainbow @11:49, my take on @Nancy's cryptic paragraph that you quote is that she has a puzzle that has been submitted to or perhaps accepted by the NYT and now is in limbo, waiting, waiting, waiting for some closure.
I thought the theme worked fine, and would add The (Unbearable) Lightness of Being to the list of movies that "the (quality) of (substance)" made me think of. Got hung up on SELF but thanks, @small town blogger and others, for the help with that. Fun monday.
LOL - People complaining about the pasta clue but then obviously not bothering to look it up. As is often true, Wikipedia provides a nice place to start. Pasta are noodles, but not all noodles are pasta. The earliest evidence of noodles is from China, but pasta is clearly from ITALY. One has to wonder if people bitching about fact checking ever do a minimal amount of fact checking.
BTW - I had heard that pizza came from China, too. However, the earliest reference to pizza predates Marco Polo's travels by a couple hundred years.
I missed the double Ys in BaBYBuGGY. Looks weird huh?
Also, I didn't read the clue for 50D. I read it as nori. That's the seaweed you wrap your sushi in, I think. Only going back did I see it as Nor I.
@nickyboy (6:36 AM): WS lets *everything* through. That's been my theme for the last 20 years, to no avail. The puzzles should be up to the standard of the rest of the paper. They're not. Not even close.
Re OldActor (12:54) and 56A.
Actually for all of the 3-syllable neuter plurals, where the nominative has two syllables, the stress falls on the first syllable: thus CARM-in-a, STIGmata, and TEMPora. But these are more often than not mispronounced in English. I went to an entire academic conference in Ann Arbor on the medieval Carmina Burana where the Carmina was consistently mispronounced Car-MEEN-a by professional medievalists. That idiotic film *The Stigmata* had the title word mispronounced Stig-MAH-ta throughout. Here I can't be too uppity since I actually sat through the entire damned thing.
Anon. i.e. Poggius
Z may be a pompous guy but he’s articulate and often if not usually correct. He nailed it today. Case closed on the great pasta debate. It comes from Italy.
This Monday was okay. The theme was really obvious after THECOLOROFMONEY, but I like movies so I won’t complain. The fill had some old doozies, WEBB, HARI, WHELM, BOFFO, but I’m old enough to have heard them so no complaint there either. They were balanced by ECIG, HBOGO and BOTOX and just the memory of a now forbidden Krispy KREME, improves my mood to no end.
Reading the blog I’m reminded of the upside down ketchup bottle and “Anticipation” playing in the background.
ORFF was no problem for me, as I've been in a choir that's performed Carmina Burana. No, scratch that, two choirs. Once with an orchestra, and once without.
Took a while for the penny to drop on TWOD for me, as well.
Thank you! I not only had entered CHINA there, but had entered YUAN for its capital elsewhere in the grid.
I'm just baffled - what is a "green" movie? What is a "fluid" movie? Here's a few better ones - Stag movie - The Deer Hunter, Splatter Film - Pollock. Those are actually film genres.
This theme just doesn't work.
WHET KREME
OHBOY, even THECOLOROFMONEY
can’t MAKEME let my FINE daughter
DIVE into an ADHOC SPA with a funny
ANIMAL like in THESHAPEOFWATER.
--- PAUL EVAN NOVAK
Do you hear Santa yet? Yes - up there - hear him?
The puzzle was a bit over-the-top for a Monday - not so hard, but, well, you know. Not an eve in sight.
Don't get the quibble with SELF - even I get it, and I'm no art expert. Tho I've seen many a self-portrait. Never tried to draw myself, myself. Have you?
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Christmas - wrapping it all up!
HOLY COWS, I just figured it was a sensory thing to see/see or feel/hear the object at the end of the film title. Along with THE 5 OF 5 thing. Hadn’t read the film clue yet when I put in BIGkahuna, so a mess to clean up there. Don’t like it as is? Move it to Tuesday. I thought it was FINE for today.
In the 1970s I was listening to a little GATO Barbieri on the sax. Listen to THESOUNDOFMUSIC that he makes. FINE jazz there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8brfSeYbRwY
Ever see photos of the real Mata HARI? OHBOY! A hundred and some years ago IBET she earned a few yeah babies.
This puz does not get the GONG from me. Have a nice Christmas Eve.
A FINE piece of FLUFF for a Monday. I was a tad uncertain about the cross of E_AN/NO_AK: was it V or W? I wrote in V, crowded to one side of the square, so that if it was W I could just add a couple of strokes. But I did leave it at V, so it counts as finished.
In fact, let's use NOVAK, namely KIM, for DOD. Now there's a movie I'd see: "The Shape of Kim NOVAK."
I agree that TWOD is odorous, but no other PEEVEs. WHELM is interesting; today it survives with the qualifier "over." Why? Who knows? But it descends from the W of WATER, so is perfectly placed.
Fully in the Christmas spirit, I award this one a birdie. And the happiest of holidays to all in Syndiland!
A decent puzzle. TWOD was a bit of a head scratcher though. Not too much FLUFF and a bit of OOMPH here and there. Not quite BOFFO, nor GONG-worthy but good enough to MAKEME say: "HEYNOW that was just FINE for Monday."
Maybe a 3-D effort here:
"Green">COLOR>>MONEY
"Noted">MUSIC>>SOUND
"Fluid">WATER>>SHAPE (nope, doesn't work)
But close enough for puzzle-work.
Two pausers: TWOD and HBOGO.
Quirky Monday
That is incorrect, and already been debunked. Pasta existed in Italy before Marco Polo. Almost every culture that grew grains came up with some sort of noodle. In Italy, it was called pasta.
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