Group organizing Mardi Gras parade / WED 1-23-19 / First pope to be called Great / Trotter's course / Bowl trendy healthful food / Maternity ward worker who counts each day's births / Cable airer of NBA games / Scraped knee in totspeak
Constructor: Amanda Chung and Karl Ni
Relative difficulty: Medium for me (4:15), but Easy for everyone else, apparently
THEME: GENDER NEUTRAL (56A: Like 20-, 28- and 45-Across vis-à-vis the female-sounding phrases they're based on?) — a familiar base phrase has its final "-ESS" removed and then the aural remnants are reimagined and reclued, wackily:
Theme answers:
DELIVERY ADDER (from "delivery address") (20A: Maternity ward worker who counts each day's births?)
FLYING BUTTER (from "flying buttress") (28A: Dairy item thrown in a food fight?)
Word of the Day: KREWE (27D: Group organizing a Mardi Gras parade) —
noun
(in the US) an organization or association that stages a parade or other event for a carnival celebration. Krewes are associated especially with Mardi Gras in New Orleans. (google)
• • •
First off, hurray for half of a woman constructor! It's now 22.5 men and 1.5 women. Parity, here we come! (But seriously, hurray). Big non-hurray for this theme though, which clunks the way only an off-the-mark sound-based theme can clunk. That extra syllable is just a horrible dealbreaker. ADDRESS is two syllables. Removing its "female-sounding" part (!) just leaves ADDR-, which sounds like "uh-DRUH-" The idea that taking away the "-ESS" leaves ADDER is completely preposterous. An "address" is something. An "adder" is something. An "adderess" is ... like, a female snake? I dunno. I just know that all of these themers simply do not work at the level at which humans form sounds with their mouths and larynxes. Matteress? Butteress? How is "delivery address" a "female-sounding phrase." It's barely a phrase at all. Has anyone ever thought, "'mattress' ... that's kind of like feminine 'matter'?" And by "anyone" I mean "anyone who wasn't super high." The great thing about watching instant reaction to the puzzle on Twitter at #NYTXW is that you can see trends. This puzzle was apparently very easy and also, to a good number of people, completely baffling. So many people out there are like, "I set a personal record time for a Wednesday but I do Not understand the theme." I too couldn't understand it for something close to a minute (roughly).
The fill also shouldn't be this blah when the theme isn't taxing the grid that much. The long non-theme answers are fairly dull and the short stuff is overrun with NYSE AONE STLEO ADREP ENS ACAI SSS NNE-level gunk. It's funny that people found this so easy. These imaginary-phrase themes always slow me down. Also, I just didn't see any of the answers clearly. CRAB no CLODS no VOL no ... had NAVE for APSE (not a big churchgoer, or church-understander, apparently), SPRUNG for SPRANG, blanked on KREWE, balked at AMEN and WEST, wasn't entirely sure about MEEMAW, had LET ME instead of LEMME (which ... what the hell is with that corner!? LEMME is so bad and unnecessary; you could do a million other things down there—you could also just change it to DEMME and turn LAV (ugh, again?) into DAD. OK, that's all. I'll leave you with a couple of interesting solver gripes. Good night:
Had a comical DNF...I too wrote SPRUNG (not SPRANG), and solving downs only, I saw DELIVERYUDDER and FLYING BUTTER...then glancing at the clue for the revealer - my brain didn’t fully process any of the information, I assumed the gender neutral bit had something to do with utters (as in breasts), and second-guessed blow up matter because CARRACE is so horrible, that maybe it was currice or something (MANX? Not minx?) so yeah - that was ridiculous.
I understood how the theme answers work a bit differently from @Rex, namely, that -RESS (not just -ESS) is subtracted and replaced by -ER. In trying to come up with words that have -RESS as a feminine suffix, I could only think of "seamstress," which indeed has its counterpart, seamster. I'm just not sure that an -ER ending = GENDER NEUTRAL. Anyway, I caught on to the substitution halfway through the FLYING BUTTER and got a kick out seeing the BLOW-UP MATTER come into view.
I got the theme pretty early. I had BLOW UP _ATTE_ and figured out what the theme was, and then that made the rest of the puzzle pretty easy. That said, even having somehow intuited the theme early, I still don't see how it works at all.
Not sure what was worse, the theme or OFL trying to explain the theme. He's trying to make sense of this and I'm over in the corner dusting off my hands after filling a grid. I think I understand the GENDER suffix thing going on, but rear view mirror and all that.
When I go to pray, it's that ever present APSE/navE dilemma. The latter is noisier, what with the choir and all. Lately, the puzzle has been favoring the former, so I confidently threw that one in.
The Monkees sang "I'm a Believer", but personally, I'm not quite sure where I identify on the BELIEF spectrum. Anyway, 4D seems too matter of fact for a Wednesday puzzle. I'd Google agnostic, but it's late.
Of all the Popes, ST. LEO was pretty great. He was so great that he was above having a Roman numeral attached to his name. No JR. or III or any qualifier. Apparently, sainthood is enough.
I have never seen a complete episode of the Simpsons. It's on my bucket list, right after all the Seinfeld episodes. Is APU's characterization demeaning and stereotypical, or have we already had this discussion?
TITO clued as an Afro-Cuban band leader as opposed to a tyrant; thank goodness for these options.
We had a great eclipse event in these parts and tomorrow morning we get a terrific conjunction of Venus and Jupiter before sunrise. Drink an extra glass of water before bedtime for nature's wake up call.
Finished It rather quickly, but the theme was another MATTER. Wasn’t making too much sense to me and I was too lazy to analyze it. Now that it’s been explained I’m still not thrilled. Oh well.
@Nancy, I loved your comments on my Skippy story of yesterday’s puzzle. I alway refered to him as a wise old man in a dog suit. I also ordered LAD: A DOG, I’ll have it by January 30th. @Mals, sound like Prudence and Skipper were cut of the same cloth.
Yeah –@Carola’s succinct explanation of how the trick works is spot on; to wit – lose the RESS and replace it with ER.
After yesterday, I kept seeing some kind of ADDER snake in a delivery room. Good fun. Can you even imagine? Bet it’s happened somewhere. When I was the event planner at a country club, we had a copperhead that showed up in the ballroom during a business meeting. Two of the cooks dispatched it forthwith, and no one was the wiser. I swear. And these two guys were outdoorsmen who know their snakes – not regular people who call Any snake they see a copperhead when it was probably a garden snake, but “copperhead” makes it a better story they almost died so there.
I stared off thinking about BLOW UP MATTER. In my marriage, there are two:
1) anything involving linguistics because, just like everyone else on the planet, my husband is an expert on all things having to do with language, and I still haven’t learned to ignore him, dismiss his mystifying comments.
Me: Say toy boat really fast three times. Him: tauh bauh tauh bauh…. (He can’t) Him: You know why that is, right? Me: Oh? So why can’t it be said quickly? Him. Because of the T.
I should just shrug and say Wow. Cool. But no. I have to say, What about tar pit? You can say that fast… and then it escalates to a nasty argument. Our most recent one was on the pronunciation of nuclear – he was all pissy about the fact that noo kyoo lar is accepted now and kept focusing on the spelling and I kept arguing that the language change genies never get the spelling memos…. Another BLOW UP.
2) charcoal grills. I’ll spare you the back story, but I can’t count how many times I’ve sat down to a lighter-fluid flavored filet mignon.
TAX RETURNS/NIXED. Ouch.
DEB/A-ONE. Deb Amlen over at Wordplay is a jewel.
An açaí bowl is the culinary equivalent of the good-looking high school It Guy – gorgeous, sexy appearance but a one-dimensional, forgettable, disappointing essence. I could never be a “clean” eater. Zero joy.
I liked the startling themers - duh, but I scratched my head at the conceit since, @Carola notes, ER is arguably the masculine counterpart of RESS. Waiter/waitress, mister/mistress… But BUT… Amanda and Karl went with words whose RESS suffix is not the feminine one. So I get the joke. Hard to think of others… Our esteemed UNITED STATES CONGER comes to mind…
I kind of liked the theme, and got it right away, or thought I did until I read @Loren’s post. Loren, I think you gave up too quickly - yes, the RESS suffix is not feminine when attached to the theme words, but then if you accept that, they were gender neutral in the first place. And ER is the masculine suffix, as in waiter/waitress, so the words are now, not neutral but, I dunno, trans. I guess we can watch and see what LAV they use. Actually, I think the ER suffix is just a pronunciation aid: unlike OFL, I would pronounce ADDR as “ADDur”, which could be as easily spelled ADDER. But WAITER isn’t the gender neutral term for the person who brings your meal. Restaurant workers use Waitstaff, I believe; I use “server”. Person who isn’t a Stewardess bringing you in-flight pretzels is a Cabin Attendant. Firefighter. Letter Carrier. to isn’t that hard. Oops - so now I’ve talked myself into being a CRAB. Sorry, Amanda and Karl.
Agreed!! This kept me from seeing ELK since I was so unsure of the L -- although eventually nothing else seemed to fit -- which then messed me up on KREWE, which I have never heard of.
What's the masculine of ACTRESS, TIGRESS, WAITRESS, CONDUCTRESS? Is it ACTR-, TIGR-, WAITR-, CONDUCTR-? No. So Rex and others should just consider the theme for a moment before moaning. Heaven knows why more women don't want to wade in as constructors and just get randomly criticized.
Randomly criticize? Rex criticizes all puzzles- that’s the point of the blog. And he is gender neutral in his criticism. Also the gender neutral form of actress is actor, not acter...so what’s your point?
Most protractors measure angles in degrees (°). Radian-scale protractors measure angles in radians. Most protractors are divided into 180 equal parts. Some precision protractors further divide degrees into arcminutes.
https://physlets.org/tracker/help/protractor.html
Of course, compasses are the usual measuring tools for arcs.
Any puzzle that makes my brain wander makes me happy, and here four possible themers came to mind: STATE OF UNDER [Australia?], MOTION TO SUPPER ["Let's eat!"], BENCH PER [Start using "for each"], and LIBRARY OF CONGER [Place for the eel at ease].
This was really super easy, like doing the 11x13 in my local paper. The theme is almost there but not quite. APU has been mentioned and I hope it doesn't become a "thing" today. 40A was fun. Thought of 4 & 20 blackbirds baked in a (humble) pie in conjunction with eating crow**.
**Although crows are black birds, blackbirds are a different, distinct family.
Truly frustrating and annoying puzzle, sorry. One of my slowest Wednesday times. Had SETOFF and then SPRUNG, so I got uDDER, which can’t really be more feminine. Never had an inkling about the -ess suffix because when one thinks of feminine suffixes one tends to think of -ette -enne -trix and -esse or -essa, but maybe that’s just me being super Romance Language oriented.
15A had me completely stumped and my aforementioned 8Ds didn’t help that much. Plus, agreed that 5A was totally wrong as a clue...and, why do we have RATTAN (huh?? People use that word?) and TITO (couldn’t we have a Mozart, Vodka, or Roman Emperor clue instead??) crossing. No no no. And I could not for the life of me get KREWE. Never heard of it. Word of the Day explanation doesn’t make it more relevant. And LETON?? I had ACTAS and PUTON for a while, which was making me think they were trying to be overly cute to write BUTTuh. Oy vey!
And if this is a gender neutral, or feminist puzzle, why even clue STRONGMAN or ELK? Why bring things that are so overtly masculine, unless maybe it was to balance it all out? Seems that the theme was forced to me.
One of the least enjoyable puzzles I’ve ever done, and since I often do five a day and have for many years that’s saying something. I’m sure I’m wrong but I can’t see how Sprang fits the clue as written. The past tense of spring in this context, grammatically speaking, is Sprung. “The trap was sprung.” Plus Udder seemed to fit the dairy theme.
I also was thinking that the theme was attempting to invent new gender non-specific words so I thought maybe they were going for a twist on Blow Up Doll. Matter vs mater. I was befuddled, but sadly not amusingly so. I guess this one was out of my chauvinistic wheelhouse. Remember I once spent the better part of a day on here defending the word seeress. “Delivery Address” is also a pretty dull opener to begin with. A paintress might use it for green mail.
Also I am an atheist but I do believe that an apse is where the altar is so it is not really the place in a church where people pray. Okay a priest might say a prayer in one but most of the praying in a church is done in the nave. Excuse me. I’m going to the library now to find a copy of Muriel Spark’s “The Abbess of Crewe.”
According to the NY Times, I DNFed at SPRuNG/DELIVERY uDDER. But I think the U works there in both directions. ‘Address’ is pronounced with a schwa at the beginning, so could be an A or a U. And SPRUNG is a possible correct answer to 8D. The trap had been activated – the trap had been sprung.
So, I’m going to count this as a successful solve and the Times be damned.
I was sure my DNF would be at KREWE, which I’ve never heard of and which looked ridiculous. Still does.
Anonymous 4.55: no, you're not. I thought this was easy and unusually unenjoyable, not particularly clever... kind of a "okay, that was a waste of time."
@LMS - “tar pit” is a good counterexample, but if you really want to win that fight, have him try to do it with “boy road,” which has no t’s but the same challenge. That makes it clear it’s the vowel sounds that are the problem.
I had LEDON before LETON and thought the latter was completely wrong and griped mightily to myself: Letting on is the the ending of pretending. Then it occurred to me that what you are letting on does not have to be true. The snobby hotel gave me lousy service until I let on I was connected to Saudi royalty. I was cook in a Saudi owned business. Too much of a stretch? Maybe for a Monday or Tuesday.
I'm with @ Quasi today. Just terrible. Meemaw is nails on a chalkboard to me. Misread 2D as "stud IN a pair of jeans" which gave me a beefcake thrill for a moment. Scabs? Eww. No joy in crossworld today.
Agnostic or not, everyone who wants to claim to be educated should be familiar with the basics of the major world religions, from architecture, to daily practice, to holidays, to the fundamental precepts. So no whining about AMEN or APSE.
ALERT THE MEDIA! I agree with Rex. This puzzle/theme was a hot mess. That said, the protractor clue was ok because it was asking for the types of lines "drawn" - as opposed to measured - by the device. It may not be the primary purpose of a protractor, but as one who has done some drafting in his life I can attest to its use (limited as it may be) in this regard.
I got ST LEO the great quickly, because there's a St. Leo the Great church near me in Bonita Springs, FL.
It has been the subject of some controversy lately because its priest was identified as the father of a child, then the year after was accused of embezzling a large amount of church funds (though the latter has been the subject of debate by opposing groups in the church).
One of the parishioners actively involved in the debate is Richard Schultz, founder of Best Buy.
I’m sorry not sorry to say this was an easy puzzle that missed the mark on theme for me. I got it last night, still get it this morning and don’t like it any better. Wacky is good. The FLYING BUTTER tickles me to no end, but the gender pronunciation is just off.
ADREPS are popular this week. A job that has you out of the office, exploring NYC, and taking clients to lunch on an expense account is a very good thing.
I'm an atheist. I have zero belief in a god. But I believe a lot of other things. I believe that WS is getting tired and should maybe think about retiring. I believe that the theme in this puzzle was a very large stretch. I believe the Patriots are probably going to win the SB and that Tom Brady will eventually be crowned football god (I hate the patriots so that is definitely not confirmation bias). And I believe that the clue on 4D was utterly wrong.
Is that what people think of atheists? That they are sure of everything? Atheists are sure of nothing...which is what makes us atheist, and perhaps agnostic.
Also, I appreciate the shout out to the T-folk. My son is trans and has come to understand his existence in a far more gender non-specific sense. Even the male pronoun isn't satisfying. Gender is a social construct and one day (I believe) we, as a species, will realize that there is a lot more on heaven and earth than our philosophies about gender can tell. We assume a lot of things about gender...and now, finally, we are starting to have those assumptions challenged. Are the challenges slam dunk counters to what we've always accepted to be true? Nope. But we are finding that there are alternatives...that is a starting point...and we should all be glad of it.
21A Radio dial reminded me of a video I saw where two teenagers were in a room with a rotary phone. They were given the challenge to figure out how to use it in a set amount of time. Very interesting to watch. It reminded me of a recent visit to an antique shop with the neighbor kid. She was fascinated as I had to explain how a typewriter worked. Hey, that's the sort of mental tangents that a puzzle like this causes. If it has any redeeming quality that would be it.
@5A is WRONG! crew- go buy a protractor, $5 at Walmart, $475 at Tiffany's. Put it in a flat surface and move a pencil along whatever portion of the curved edge you want. Congratulations, you drew an arc!
I learned that "let on" is a synonym for "pretend" when I read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck uses the phrase a lot. Not sure if it is in current use in the South or not.
Sorry, this was a fail. Laudable intentions are not enough; the execution has to be better than this.
To start, every single one of @Lewis's suggestions are more interesting than the themers we got.
Then we have some terrible cluing. I slammed @Rex's Twitterati yesterday, so I have to be fair and say the tweets he shared today are spot on -- the clue for BELIEF is ignorant at best (aggressive at worst), and the clue for ARCS is just flat-out wrong. Also, I share the bafflement of anyone who can't figure out how Pretend gets you LETON.
And finally, we have the fill. Having STLEO, AONE, SSS, ENS, CNN, NNE, SYN, ACAI, NYSE, LAV, EWE, ATALL, VOL, APU (Matt Groening should get permanent royalties from every constructor ever), YEP, PHD, MEEMAW, DEB, TNT, EMU, OWIE, TAC and EKE in the same puzzle is too much.
I did find it humorous that TNT crosses an entry clued as Dynamite? So there's that.
Thank you, as always, ReX and commenters. You're all faster and cleverer than I am. But I do have my aspirations. I keep coming here to enjoy a bit of snark, but always leave a bit wiser. Thank you especially @Ellen. Today's theme had my head spinning a bit until i read you comment--which perhaps made me less of a CRAB.
Oy....I was enjoying this...seriously. CLODS and CRAB and PERP to begin with. Getting my first theme: DELIVERY ADDER and thinking is there a PUFF somewhere. Got to my GENDER NEUTRAL reveal and gave my head a horrible scratch. So we have to add a DRESS and two TRESS. I know the most common feminine suffix in English is TRESS. DELIVERY ADDER needed a DRESS. Is dress a feminine version on a noun? Like @chefwen, I wasn't going to spend any time wondering if I wanted to analyze it further. OK, lets go look at some of the entries...@Quasi: The APSE is behind the main altar; it's where the clergy are seated. Most clergy pray. In this day, I can imagine what they are praying for. Maybe for the BLOW UP MATTER to just go away. Hahaha. Just kidding. I still want to go to heaven. @Larry G. Love reading you and your posts always seem to amuse me. Here's the thing. TITO Puente is actually an American born of Puerto Rican parents. Because he played the absolute best Afro-Cuban rhythms, people assume he's Cubano. By the way and you probably don't care, TITO is short for ErnesTITO. Latinos are great at adding an ITO/ITA at the ends of names. Hi @Tita.... I'm not so sure about the agnostic's lack but this puzzle did run a little religious today with BELIEF, ST LEO, AMEN and ATE CROW. Fun stuff. My last thought on this puzzle. I love learning new things from puzzles. KREWE is new but I'll forget that word instantly. MEEMAW, on the other hand, is something I learned from our very own @Loren. She was telling one of her usual amusing stories and was talking about a grandmother somewhere in the South and she used that very own word. I had to look it up because I couldn't believe any grandmother in her right mind would want to be called that. (Please, I hope I haven't offended anyone). It sounds like a cat call. Say it out loud - go ahead. I'm a Nonie.
shouldn't antennas be antennae? i didn't even think that antennas was a possible answer and ended up stuck with -EeT for Russian foe. Meemaw? Okay, whatever. And KREWE? What the sh-t is that? Well, a DNF and I agree with REX that this was not easy. After a clean sweep last week, and a fast one at that, this one really caused me to stumble hard. on to Thursday.
A very cute idea. I imagine if this sort of thing has been done before, it would be by adding the ESS rather than taking it away. This feels more imaginative. And the complete GENDER irrelevance of all of the theme answers -- with and without their ESSES -- also makes it more playful and unexpected. I had fun with this, even though it was pretty easy, even for a Wednesday.
I should be inferred that agnostics have no belief in God not that they have no belief in anything. Don’t be a crab. Lighten up. This new phenomenon of people whining about puzzle clues is becoming wearisome.
Hey All ! I'm standing in the crowd of easy-not-getting-theme people. Hey everybody! Whassssssup?
I thought maybe it had something to do with taking off the ER sound from the end, then the remaining phrase was wiman-related? DELIVERY ADD? FLYING BUTT? (Which is funny...) BLOW UP MATT? Wha??
Oh well. Also had LET ME first, giving me a STRONG TAN. Har. Clue could've been "Got off the beach right before turning red?" OK, maybe not...
Laughed at ST LEO. Which one? Usually it's LEO(RRN). One F. YEP.
@ mmbeitlermd - One might use the phrase LETON to give a false impression. “I let on like I didn’t care when we broke up” or “I didn’t let on that I knew they broke up.” I like to think of it as alternative facts.
The fill on this felt like a Monday; the theme made no sense, and the revealer was no help at all. I started to get a headache trying to figure out what is female-sounding about ADDER, BUTTER and MATTER. And BTW, shouldn’t that be FEMININE sounding? I know constructing a crossword worthy of the NYT is the work of people who are way above my grade level so I appreciate the effort it took. However, the experience of solving it ... not so much.
THEIST: Hey, friend, do you believe in God? AGNOSTIC: I'm not sure. I guess I lack that belief. THEIST: Oh. Please tell me again, what do you lack? AGNOSTIC: I lack belief. Look at 4-Down, and you'll see what I lack.
@chefwen -- So glad you ordered "Lad: A Dog." If it proves to be too very, very, very Young Adult for you, there's a grown-up dog novel that you absolutely have to read if you haven't already read it. You, too, Mals. It's called "The Art of Racing in the Rain" -- which sounds very un-doggy, I know, but the title, while apt in one way, is misleading in others. I know I mentioned it before on the blog, but I'll mention it again. It's not only the best "dog book" I've ever read, but perhaps the most beautiful novel I've read in 20 years. I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone who thinks of their dog as "a wise old man in a dog suit." It would be a crime for any dog lover to miss it.
@Larry G. -- Let me join @GILL in saying how amusing I always find your posts. Today's was especially enjoyable.
@GILL -- Yes, I think MEEMAW is something I wouldn't want to be called either. As far as "Latinos are great at adding an ITO/ITA to the ends of names," this is not the only culture that does something of this nature. I'm thinking of writing a book about the contemporary women's professional tennis tour. It will be titled: "ALL THE -OVAS".
I'm writing this before reading Rex’s write-up and other comments. On purpose.
I enjoyed this and found it pretty easy (those two things are not always related). I easily knew KREWE but I had some trouble with LET ON for Pretend. Still do.
But I’ve been staring and staring at it and just can’t figure out the theme. Auggh!
I first got FLYING BUTTER and thought we were going to have quasi-spoonerisms (as in BUTTERFLYING) but that didn’t work.
Then for a while I had DELIVERY uDDER and thought, "Well, maybe...", but ADDER made more sense with the clue.
Then I thought that MATTER had something to do with MATER... but no.
So I’m still baffled as to why I just can’t see the theme and confused as to why I just can’t find any “female sounding phrases” in ADDER-BUTTER-MATTER.
But I give up and now I’ll go read Rex’s write-up and the comments to find out what’s going on.
--------
After reading Rex and comments:
Humph. Okay, I kinda see it, but it's not great.
Strange to enjoy and fairly easily finish a puzzle while being completely unable to decipher the theme... I was wondering if it's me or the theme, and I see that others had the same problem. So maybe it's some of both...
The bitching about female constructors got old the second time. If women want to make puzzles, they will. If they don't, they won't. So kwitcher bitchin.
While I may not be with @anonymous 8:22 politically, I believe I posed the same question about the number of male vs. female constructor submissions to the NYT. How can you claim bias if you don't have this information? @Res have you ever asked?
As for the puzzle, the theme had me mystified 'til I came here and saw the correct explanation from our bloggers. Good work guys (and gals!).
Surprised I'm not seeing more complaints about STRONGMAN being the answer for the clue "Dictator". It's not the worst clue/answer that's been published as of late, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.
Thank God (if she exists) that I subscribe to the Boston Globe as well as the NYT, so that I get to read the comics every day. If Pasquale in "Rose is Rose" didn't call his grandmother MEEMAW, I'd have been lost. So I knew the word, though I didn't think of it as southern -- after all, Jimbo in the same strip lives to shovel snow (among other things).
I liked the theme (as explained by @Carola); I think the problem is that ER can be either generic or masculine as an ending. The whole thing is encapsulated in the replacement of "waiter" with "server," per @Ellen S. We have the same ending both times, the first as gendered, the second not. In the puzzle, though, ADDER as one who adds, BUTTER as one who butts ("look out for that nanny goat, she's a BUTTER"), and MATTER (down at your local frame shop), so the revealer works in that sense.
OTOH, I've never heard anyone say CAR RACE. Racing car, yes, but isn't it an auto race? Or have I not gone to enough of them. (You do say "sports car race" though).
M&A got the theme right away -- worries the M&A, that my initial take on the mcguffin mighta been full of mcpoopin. Here was my reasonin …
1. Several people-related terms can end in -ER or -RESS, depending on yer gender preference. [Waiter vs. Waitress is indeed a real good example. Acter vs. Actress is also apt, if U can't spell real good. Not sure about what's up with Stewarder and Stewardress, tho.]
2. The usual way those in the know [The Word Krewes] make this situation gender-neutered is to toss out them endings, and go with a -person endin, instead. Sooo … Waitperson. Actperson. Stewperson. Funny, tho -- that stuff don't hardly ever catch on real great.
3. What others in the know [The Word Krowes] do is they just go with the original male endin, for everyone. Everybody's a Waiter. An Acter. A Stewarder. A Soldier. A Solver. A Gender. A Krower. Keeps things simple-r. Plus, it's real easy to say WaiterWaiterWaiter fast fifty times, if U ain't gettin any day-um service at yer table (yo, @muse). What exactly do I have to do to get some ketchupketchupketchup around here?
I think #3 solution is what the WedPuz constructioneer folks went with, in their themers. Adders & Addresses? Go gender-neutered, and just make em all Adders. QEDer.
staff weeject pick: SSS. Plural of convenience on steroids. Honrable mention to: YEP; has a nice, positive ring to it. CRAYONS: Have never ever been used, during the Shortzmeister Era. About time. Gotta make yer puzs more colorful, when U get the chance. The letter U is very colorfUl, by the way: Let's go with SPRUNG, and let the bloggers figure out DELIVERYUDDER, after we've made a run for it. STRONGMAN: Don't sound quite gender-neutered, somehow. Let's go with STRONGMANNER. yep. Betterer. MEEMAW: Also might have gender problems. Not sure, tho. Is PEEPAW a separate thing? Kinda confuses the krewpe outta M&A.
Thanx Amanda (darlin) & Karl (dude) for gangin up on us and neuterin everythemerthing that moves.
Credulity. Or maybe faith. But BELIEF is wrong, even in a strict “do you believe in gods” sense. I realize some of you use “faith” and BELIEF interchangeably, but that’s a pretty black and white interpretation of others’ far more nuanced takes on existence.
@Muse and @Carola and @JC66 - The constructor’s notes over at xwordinfo.com lines up with Rex’s explainer. I do think “waiter/waitress” example shows what’s going on then either the constructor or Rex. Of course, I read these various takes and they feel like we’re all groping in the dark a little.
This is probably a waste of recycled electrons but tilting at windmills just seems to be in my Dutch/Spanish genes. That there are fewer submissions from women is not a defense against an accusation of sexism. Rather, it is evidence that the sexism is systemic. If you believe that more diversity in constructors will lead to better, more entertaining, and higher quality puzzles then the important question is not “is there systemic sexism.” That’s self-evident. The important question is “what can be done to change the status quo?” Where I see lots of frustration on the edges of the crossword universe I touch is the “women should submit more” responses. Basically, that response is “I didn’t do anything wrong so you solve it.” That’s like telling women to fix rape. Yes, that’s hyperbole but it really feels like if you don’t smack people upside the head with a 2x4 they don’t get it. If the NYTX wants to remain the gold standard for crossword puzzles (and it does because it’s a money maker) then it needs to fix this. And maybe also the African-American issue and Hispanic-American issue and ....
Let me finish with I’m not bothering with the bad faith responses that are sure to follow.
An APSE is the space created by a curved rear of a church. Now if you have been to many churches (if only too attend weddings, for you atheists) you will notice that the back wall of most churches is straight so there is no APSE at all and in most cases no need to refer to a nave, which is the area in the center between two aisles, and many churches only have one central aisle.
Where you most typically find an APSE is in a great cathedral, which has a central nave, usually with a much higher roof than you find at the sides, and usually has an APSE behind the high altar, created by the curved outer walls at that end of the building. And -- here at last is the point -- the APSE in a cathedral almost always has its own little altar, where masses may also be held, and in any case where people can and do go to pray. In fact, during most of the day on most days of the week, more praying takes place there than in the nave, which is used as a place of assembly and worship mainly on Sundays and holidays.
(The puzzle was OK and certainly easy, and like many of you I did not grok the theme before coming here).
Z, You're assuming the validity of your claim. It's possible that systemic sexism causes a discrepancy in distaff submissions. But's an assertion. You go off on a strange flight of fancy, but never proof your initial claim Respond or not, I don't give a fig. But any reasonable reading of your answer reveals its weakness.
Second fastest time for a Wednesday. Would probably have been faster if Wednesday Dog (I’ll explain that some day) hadn’t wanted to go out to chase birds from the feeders every other minute. Lots of this was in my/our (I solve with hubby) wheelhouse. Remembered Manx cat from a poster of cat breeds I had as a kid. Despite having one of my life’s best vacations in NOLA, I just learned KREWE (27D) a few weeks ago from another NYT xw. Know APU (39D) (and anything else Simpson related) only from commercials for the program and xword. Totally agree with your comment @Larry Gilstrap. Yup…. Right after Seinfeld. …. Never gonna happen, my friend.
@LMS, I also saw an adder (snake) in the delivery room and chuckled. First thought the answer was terribly tortured, but grokked the theme with FLYINGBUT--- and liked it. Hubby is an architecture fan so he immediately saw what was going on. By the time we were at the MATTER, and still chuckling, I actually wanted more themers. Hands up on the ARCS (5A) issue with protractors and not a fan of LETON at 26D. @Whatsername, your example for LETON is the best one that helps me swallow that clue. Thanks. Also no idea how to spell MEEMAW despite being a huge fan of Big Bang Theory. And apt timing… just yesterday we were talking with our pseudo-sister (J---e) about her becoming a grandmother and what granny name she should choose. Nana J seems to be an early leader as J---e is pretty hip, very athletic, and I keep seeing that octogenarian DJ from the commercial (“Dropping sick beats…they call me ‘DJ Nana’ “). (Not even sure what the ‘product’ is. E-trade? But I love her!) Only write-over was at 21D (Radio dial: Abbr.) VOL. I was flying through this so fast that I didn’t finish reading the clue and had started nOb before hubby pointed out that we needed an abbreviation.
Didn’t mind the usual xword dreck (SSS, LAV, etc.) because, having only puzzled regularly for the last 2 years, I have ‘grown up’ on/with that stuff, so I just expect it. Not an issue for me unless it really detracts or is stacked 3 + deep.
just a point of clarification. @z would have you believe that Rex's take on the puzzle is correct and corroborated by Word Play. I say that's bunk. Check out Rex's twitter feed to for Matt Levine's take. He says Rex's criticism is "a little unfair" and provides something to underpin his claim ( looking at you Z):
"It's not just "add-ESS," it's that in English a lot of words take a masculine form in -ER (or OR) and a feminine form in-RESS. Waiter/waitress, actor/actress, master/mistress. It's not an extra syllable'. It's how words are actually formed."
Easy, but add me to the list of those who did not get the theme without an explanation. I went down the same GRIMY path as @Quasi, thinking BLOW UP doll? EWE!
That would make 20A a DELIVERY nurse (already gender-neutral in fact but not always in perception) or DELIVERY man? 28A would be a FLYING ace? (also gender neutral). Wallenda? Wha?
After seeing MEEMAW and with the GENDER NEUTRAL theme (think pronoun "they"), I was ready to see @LMS's name as constructor :-).
I was excited to pull out KREWE from my brain due to a book I read in my teens set in NOLA during Mardi Gras.
The puzzle was fine, the theme a tad tortured, but I had fun trying to wrap my head around it, so thanks, AC and KN.
As a Yankee living in southern Louisiana for the past 20 years, I surely should have remembered that it’s “krewe,” not “crewe.” Cost me a DNF for a solution that otherwise would have been fairly easy.
The puzzle was what I want every morning, a little jumpstart to my brain along woth my coffee. I needed to squint and tilt my head a little to make the theme work, but that's okay. A little imagination in the mrorning is good. I see "er" endings as gender neutral — worker, miner, housekeeper, server, farmer — so changing the 'ress" worked for me. I liked MAGMA and MANX, didn't know Senor TITO but that's on me. All in all, it was just fine.
@Nancy, "The art of racing in the rain" was wonderful. I read it ages ago, perhaps on your recommendation.
Post-party ennui; lots of junky stuff to do so I think I'll lie around a read all day.
well... if you want to draw an arc of precise (to a degree or less) size, you need a protractor to do that. you might dot the end points and then use a compass, but why bother?
the clue does say, "some lines", not usual or commonly or frequently or etc.
It isn't. Neither is a buttress or an address. The revealer clue posits that those words are female-sounding, and that the theme answers turn those words into gender-neutral-sounding versions of the same thing.
Really, any puzzle gimmick that takes this long to explain by so many people must completely suck.
This puzzle had me thinking far too hard about the theme. I am underwhelmed now that I get it.
@LMS - I always read your comments when I tune in here, and always enjoy them. Today, I am validated to know there is at least one person in my corner. The word 'nuclear' has one 'u'. That's it. The mispronunciation of it irks me even more than when a youngster responds to 'thank you' with 'no problem'.
Mispronunciation of nuclear is one of my pet peeves, too. I used to get upset about "no problem" until I realized that's just how younger people say "you're welcome".
I mostly draw arcs with circle templates or door templates. Sometimes when I need a bigger arc I use a bowl or a plate. Sometimes I even get out my compass. But I never have used the protractor, since it only provides one radius size and not generally a useful one.
I didn't mind the way the theme was structured. At least it was consistent.
@Gill... The Portuguese love the diminutive. For me, it carries over to English - "the little man at the cornet store..." We also have an "augmentative"? One branch of cousins has a Gonçalo. His son who used to be Gonçalinho, but has now become Gonçalão with the arrival of HIS son, who now is the Gonçalinho of the family.
I'm Terezinha. Tita comes from my nieces being unable to say Tia Tereza. To my granddaughter, I've become Titi, and it just melts my heart to hear her say that. (Talking's a pretty new thing to her...!!)
@lms - do go on - why is toy boat so hard to say? Is it something to do with the position of the tongue at the end of boat, and where it should be for being able to make the t-OY sound next?
@mmorgan - DELIVERYuDDER!!!!
@woman something..my daughter cringes every time her father-in-law says something like "Today my plane was flown by a lady pilot."
@m&a - I may have to frame your post today.
Theme did seem a but tortured, but I liked it anyhow.
Spanish has at least three augmentatives. A very popular one these days describes a gol in futbol (no, not gooooooooooooooool!!!), but "golazo!. which is a goal of singular beauty and power and elegance and I wish we could say that with one word in English.
Also, I have two granddaughters, and either one can melt my heart without half trying.
@tea73: since it only provides one radius size and not generally a useful one.
well... since a radius is of infinite length, just anchor a straight edge at the center point at one end and the end point of the protractored arc at the other and set the radius to your heart's content and then use your compass. only if the degree of arc matters, of course. if you want, essentially, arbitrary arcs you don't use either, you use a French curve.
I came here to discover the theme. No amount of scanning the three theme answers yielded any insight for this feeble brain. Thanks for expr-xxx-ing a reasonable explanation. Other words that don't bring feminine gender or roles to (my) mind: distress, duress, compress, less, dress, caress, success, confess, coalesce XXXX, ness. Sigh.
I'm not a regular reader, but kind of mystified by the theme today and wanted to get read from the crossword literati. LMS, that is some funny, funny, really good stuff. Thanks
Non-belief: I believe a lot of things. What I might claim to lack is faith. In the sense meant by religious teachings, I would label faith as "proof by vigorous assertion," not a particularly valid scientific approach.
Quasimojo: In many churches, the choir loft is located behind the altar, and thus must of necessity reside in what would be called the Apse. Presumably this is not true of the cathedrals from which the names sprung, however?
@GILL I - I knew MEEMAW from the Holly Hunter series “Saving Grace” set in Oklahoma and “The Big Bang Theory” off shoot series “Young Sheldon” set in Texas, where Sheldon’s MEEMAW is played by the delightful Annie Potts.
Thank you Digital Dan. Every article online I’ve looked at, including various dictionaries and Wikipedia, says very clearly that the apse includes the altar. It is not outside it or before it. It is part of it. It may be in the front of it, but it is not usually separate. Yes @Gill the clergy sometimes is placed there but to participate in the mass. If they pray it is part of the mass, not the sole reason they are placed there. Praying in church in my book, a devoted lapsed Catholic, involves kneeling, and that activity happens primarily in the nave. Hail Mary!
This made me think of “-ix” as another feminine ending, most commonly seen in words like aviatrix and, of course, dominatrix.
A quick glance on OneLook.com revealed an archaic word that I think is equal parts catchy and aggravating, like an earworm: “rixatrix”, which means an old female scold.
(Would a “Rexatrix” be an old female crossword puzzle scold, then?)
@pablo...Don't forget the "ona" > MUJERONA, the "ote" > GRANDOTE and my favorite "requete bueno." @Titi....My heart melts too...Hadley Rose only says "CA". She's not quite there yet. I pray she doesn't add the other CA. :-). Sorry for the off topic, folks....but, you know, words and all!
I am agnostic as to the merits of this puzzle and theme although I did like a lot of the fill.
When I was an undergraduate I babysat for the four children of two science professors. They were 12-10-8 and 6 at the time. I stayed with them one weekend and at dinner Saturday asked if they went to Church on Sunday. The 8 year old responded and said no they did not "because they were agnostic ". Smugly thinking he was merely parroting his parents, I asked if he knew what that meant. He immediately told me they did not know whether they believed in God or not. We went to breakfast at Denny's the next morning.
Puzzle was easy, the theme answers were preposterous.
Why do women complain that there are not enough constructors, and THEN complain when the puzzle is criticized? It goes with the territory, Toots. You can't have it both ways. Personally, I don't care if the constructors were all male, all female, all poodles.
Yeah, totally failed to get the theme. “What’s the gender neutral version of ‘delivery adder’? ‘Delivery woman’?” And ‘flying nun’?? And ‘blow up doll’???
LEMME be frank today. I'm with the resident CRAB - again! BLOWUPMATTER? The theme was like a joke that bombs and the comedian has to explain it. So YEP. It blowed up real good. Like a cigar loaded with TNT. Will Shortz should have NIXED the idea. SADLY, he did not. I expect AONE-level puzzles from the NYT. One STAR is all this gets.
PS - I'm not ALONE HERE to feel this one went over like a LED balloon. Even Jeff Chen didn't get it:
For the bajillionth time I couldn't get going in the NW, so I went straight to the opposite corner with NYSE and worked up--which means I got the revealer before any of the themers. And: I STILL didn't get it! I sat there staring at the (easily) completed grid for many seconds before the light dawned. It was not a brilliant light.
Problem with dictator = STRONGMAN. Not necessarily a SYN in my book. Also MEEMAW isn't exclusively southern. I more or less agree with OFL and the majority: this was basically a dumb puzzle. Lots of fill detritus...or would it be detrita? Detritum?? Bogey.
As was pointed out way above, OFL had it wrong about taking the -ESS out (and went on and on about it), when it’s actually taking the –RESS out and replacing it with –ER. Example: Eel’s abode – HOUSEOFCONGER If you’re going to complain, at least get it right. Worse than when @Rex completely missed the LIONS and TIGERS and BEARS, OH MY theme some Fridays ago.
Re: 5a - Drafting 101 (or 7th grade shop class) – use the compass to draw the arc to the number of degrees you measured with your protractor. So many supposedly intelligent people got this totally wrong, including the editors at the NYT and a bunch of commenters, notably @Banana Diaquiri, twice plus.
If you’ve never heard the sweet music of Harry MANX you really should give it a try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo8ftEAvZXg
If I’m not over, I’m in a STATEOFUNDER. I hadn’t read many comments, but now I see these have already been done. Sorry for the repeats.
With @Diana, thought the theme was weak, and I would add, pretty shaky.
Adding the ESS to the themers suggests something GENDER NEUTRAL about them? Maybe so, but I don't get it, without some stretching. And the tneme entries themselves, before adding the ESS's, are not impressive.
Took a bit of time to see AD REP, and MEEMAW was definitely a new one for me.
Oh my gosh, so many people regularly post comments like "too much trivia - I do puzzles for the wordplay". This was wordplay. It was fun, and calling the themes GENDER NEUTRAL was funny. (As in "funny, ha-ha".)
The RESS/ER swap has been bugging me: It requires some contortions, or at least some stretching, to make good sense of the theme and its GENDER NEUTRAL revealer.
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Yea. I still don’t get the theme
ReplyDeletedon't worry - it's not worth trying to get it. when I can't get a theme I at least want to be able to enjoy how clever it was - this one ain't
DeleteHad a comical DNF...I too wrote SPRUNG (not SPRANG), and solving downs only, I saw DELIVERYUDDER and FLYING BUTTER...then glancing at the clue for the revealer - my brain didn’t fully process any of the information, I assumed the gender neutral bit had something to do with utters (as in breasts), and second-guessed blow up matter because CARRACE is so horrible, that maybe it was currice or something (MANX? Not minx?) so yeah - that was ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI understood how the theme answers work a bit differently from @Rex, namely, that -RESS (not just -ESS) is subtracted and replaced by -ER. In trying to come up with words that have -RESS as a feminine suffix, I could only think of "seamstress," which indeed has its counterpart, seamster. I'm just not sure that an -ER ending = GENDER NEUTRAL. Anyway, I caught on to the substitution halfway through the FLYING BUTTER and got a kick out seeing the BLOW-UP MATTER come into view.
ReplyDeleteYes, this. Same for waiter and waitress. If adder is the male thing then address is the female thing.
DeleteActress...
DeleteYes, this was very easy, and also nonsensical.
ReplyDeleteUnbelievably, I had SPRUNG for 8Down and took and extra 5 minutes to proof read it out! Should have been a romp.
ReplyDeleteI got the theme pretty early. I had BLOW UP _ATTE_ and figured out what the theme was, and then that made the rest of the puzzle pretty easy. That said, even having somehow intuited the theme early, I still don't see how it works at all.
ReplyDeleteEasy and yes, I need more than a few (m&a) nanoseconds of grid staring to grok the theme. Didn’t not like it...
ReplyDeleteNot sure what was worse, the theme or OFL trying to explain the theme. He's trying to make sense of this and I'm over in the corner dusting off my hands after filling a grid. I think I understand the GENDER suffix thing going on, but rear view mirror and all that.
ReplyDeleteWhen I go to pray, it's that ever present APSE/navE dilemma. The latter is noisier, what with the choir and all. Lately, the puzzle has been favoring the former, so I confidently threw that one in.
The Monkees sang "I'm a Believer", but personally, I'm not quite sure where I identify on the BELIEF spectrum. Anyway, 4D seems too matter of fact for a Wednesday puzzle. I'd Google agnostic, but it's late.
Of all the Popes, ST. LEO was pretty great. He was so great that he was above having a Roman numeral attached to his name. No JR. or III or any qualifier. Apparently, sainthood is enough.
I have never seen a complete episode of the Simpsons. It's on my bucket list, right after all the Seinfeld episodes. Is APU's characterization demeaning and stereotypical, or have we already had this discussion?
TITO clued as an Afro-Cuban band leader as opposed to a tyrant; thank goodness for these options.
We had a great eclipse event in these parts and tomorrow morning we get a terrific conjunction of Venus and Jupiter before sunrise. Drink an extra glass of water before bedtime for nature's wake up call.
Finished It rather quickly, but the theme was another MATTER. Wasn’t making too much sense to me and I was too lazy to analyze it. Now that it’s been explained I’m still not thrilled. Oh well.
ReplyDelete@Nancy, I loved your comments on my Skippy story of yesterday’s puzzle. I alway refered to him as a wise old man in a dog suit. I also ordered LAD: A DOG, I’ll have it by January 30th. @Mals, sound like Prudence and Skipper were cut of the same cloth.
Fingers crossed for a lovely Rebus tomorrow.
Yeah –@Carola’s succinct explanation of how the trick works is spot on; to wit – lose the RESS and replace it with ER.
ReplyDeleteAfter yesterday, I kept seeing some kind of ADDER snake in a delivery room. Good fun. Can you even imagine? Bet it’s happened somewhere. When I was the event planner at a country club, we had a copperhead that showed up in the ballroom during a business meeting. Two of the cooks dispatched it forthwith, and no one was the wiser. I swear. And these two guys were outdoorsmen who know their snakes – not regular people who call Any snake they see a copperhead when it was probably a garden snake, but “copperhead” makes it a better story they almost died so there.
I stared off thinking about BLOW UP MATTER. In my marriage, there are two:
1) anything involving linguistics because, just like everyone else on the planet, my husband is an expert on all things having to do with language, and I still haven’t learned to ignore him, dismiss his mystifying comments.
Me: Say toy boat really fast three times.
Him: tauh bauh tauh bauh…. (He can’t)
Him: You know why that is, right?
Me: Oh? So why can’t it be said quickly?
Him. Because of the T.
I should just shrug and say Wow. Cool. But no. I have to say, What about tar pit? You can say that fast… and then it escalates to a nasty argument. Our most recent one was on the pronunciation of nuclear – he was all pissy about the fact that noo kyoo lar is accepted now and kept focusing on the spelling and I kept arguing that the language change genies never get the spelling memos…. Another BLOW UP.
2) charcoal grills. I’ll spare you the back story, but I can’t count how many times I’ve sat down to a lighter-fluid flavored filet mignon.
TAX RETURNS/NIXED. Ouch.
DEB/A-ONE. Deb Amlen over at Wordplay is a jewel.
An açaí bowl is the culinary equivalent of the good-looking high school It Guy – gorgeous, sexy appearance but a one-dimensional, forgettable, disappointing essence. I could never be a “clean” eater. Zero joy.
I liked the startling themers - duh, but I scratched my head at the conceit since, @Carola notes, ER is arguably the masculine counterpart of RESS. Waiter/waitress, mister/mistress… But BUT… Amanda and Karl went with words whose RESS suffix is not the feminine one. So I get the joke. Hard to think of others… Our esteemed UNITED STATES CONGER comes to mind…
You should get your husband a chimney starter for his charcoal. It uses newspaper to light your coals, no fluid required.
DeleteAbsolutely
DeleteAnd when you castle your king, or sacrifice a knight, have you merely been playing ch? What a m! Count your blings, and if guilty of some m, 'f up.
DeleteSuccess and sucker?
ReplyDeleteI kind of liked the theme, and got it right away, or thought I did until I read @Loren’s post. Loren, I think you gave up too quickly - yes, the RESS suffix is not feminine when attached to the theme words, but then if you accept that, they were gender neutral in the first place. And ER is the masculine suffix, as in waiter/waitress, so the words are now, not neutral but, I dunno, trans. I guess we can watch and see what LAV they use. Actually, I think the ER suffix is just a pronunciation aid: unlike OFL, I would pronounce ADDR as “ADDur”, which could be as easily spelled ADDER. But WAITER isn’t the gender neutral term for the person who brings your meal. Restaurant workers use Waitstaff, I believe; I use “server”. Person who isn’t a Stewardess bringing you in-flight pretzels is a Cabin Attendant. Firefighter. Letter Carrier. to isn’t that hard. Oops - so now I’ve talked myself into being a CRAB. Sorry, Amanda and Karl.
ReplyDeleteAh, women constructors . . .
ReplyDeleteAm I the only 9ne confused by 26 Down? How do you get from “Pretend” to LETON?
ReplyDeleteIf you let on that you're sonething you're not ...
DeleteMaybe if it was “led on”, otherwise not really. I had the same reaction. Huh?
DeleteAgreed!! This kept me from seeing ELK since I was so unsure of the L -- although eventually nothing else seemed to fit -- which then messed me up on KREWE, which I have never heard of.
DeleteWhat's the masculine of ACTRESS, TIGRESS, WAITRESS, CONDUCTRESS? Is it ACTR-, TIGR-, WAITR-, CONDUCTR-? No. So Rex and others should just consider the theme for a moment before moaning. Heaven knows why more women don't want to wade in as constructors and just get randomly criticized.
ReplyDeleteRandomly criticize? Rex criticizes all puzzles- that’s the point of the blog. And he is gender neutral in his criticism. Also the gender neutral form of actress is actor, not acter...so what’s your point?
DeleteJust started reading an awesome new steampunk comic series called MONSTRESS, where the heroine is... well, that.
ReplyDelete5A said SOME lines.
ReplyDeleteMost protractors measure angles in degrees (°). Radian-scale protractors measure angles in radians. Most protractors are divided into 180 equal parts. Some precision protractors further divide degrees into arcminutes.
https://physlets.org/tracker/help/protractor.html
Of course, compasses are the usual measuring tools for arcs.
Totally agree with Magoo! I thought the theme was amusing.
ReplyDeleteAny puzzle that makes my brain wander makes me happy, and here four possible themers came to mind: STATE OF UNDER [Australia?], MOTION TO SUPPER ["Let's eat!"], BENCH PER [Start using "for each"], and LIBRARY OF CONGER [Place for the eel at ease].
ReplyDeleteThis was really super easy, like doing the 11x13 in my local paper. The theme is almost there but not quite. APU has been mentioned and I hope it doesn't become a "thing" today. 40A was fun. Thought of 4 & 20 blackbirds baked in a (humble) pie in conjunction with eating crow**.
ReplyDelete**Although crows are black birds, blackbirds are a different, distinct family.
Truly frustrating and annoying puzzle, sorry. One of my slowest Wednesday times. Had SETOFF and then SPRUNG, so I got uDDER, which can’t really be more feminine. Never had an inkling about the -ess suffix because when one thinks of feminine suffixes one tends to think of -ette -enne -trix and -esse or -essa, but maybe that’s just me being super Romance Language oriented.
ReplyDelete15A had me completely stumped and my aforementioned 8Ds didn’t help that much. Plus, agreed that 5A was totally wrong as a clue...and, why do we have RATTAN (huh?? People use that word?) and TITO (couldn’t we have a Mozart, Vodka, or Roman Emperor clue instead??) crossing. No no no. And I could not for the life of me get KREWE. Never heard of it. Word of the Day explanation doesn’t make it more relevant. And LETON?? I had ACTAS and PUTON for a while, which was making me think they were trying to be overly cute to write BUTTuh. Oy vey!
And if this is a gender neutral, or feminist puzzle, why even clue STRONGMAN or ELK? Why bring things that are so overtly masculine, unless maybe it was to balance it all out? Seems that the theme was forced to me.
This was a fail. Next, please.
I also don't see how the answer to pretend is let on, maybe led on but not let on.
ReplyDeleteOne of the least enjoyable puzzles I’ve ever done, and since I often do five a day and have for many years that’s saying something. I’m sure I’m wrong but I can’t see how Sprang fits the clue as written. The past tense of spring in this context, grammatically speaking, is Sprung. “The trap was sprung.” Plus Udder seemed to fit the dairy theme.
ReplyDeleteI also was thinking that the theme was attempting to invent new gender non-specific words so I thought maybe they were going for a twist on Blow Up Doll. Matter vs mater. I was befuddled, but sadly not amusingly so. I guess this one was out of my chauvinistic wheelhouse. Remember I once spent the better part of a day on here defending the word seeress. “Delivery Address” is also a pretty dull opener to begin with. A paintress might use it for green mail.
Also I am an atheist but I do believe that an apse is where the altar is so it is not really the place in a church where people pray. Okay a priest might say a prayer in one but most of the praying in a church is done in the nave. Excuse me. I’m going to the library now to find a copy of Muriel Spark’s “The Abbess of Crewe.”
According to the NY Times, I DNFed at SPRuNG/DELIVERY uDDER. But I think the U works there in both directions. ‘Address’ is pronounced with a schwa at the beginning, so could be an A or a U. And SPRUNG is a possible correct answer to 8D. The trap had been activated – the trap had been sprung.
ReplyDeleteSo, I’m going to count this as a successful solve and the Times be damned.
I was sure my DNF would be at KREWE, which I’ve never heard of and which looked ridiculous. Still does.
But it wasn't
DeleteQuick for me this morning. Had coNeS instead of VENTS for a moment. Got the theme right away, but it didn’t help the solve.
ReplyDeleteBetcha krewes devour Krispy Kremes with their Meemaws.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 4.55: no, you're not.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was easy and unusually unenjoyable, not particularly clever... kind of a "okay, that was a waste of time."
@LMS - “tar pit” is a good counterexample, but if you really want to win that fight, have him try to do it with “boy road,” which has no t’s but the same challenge. That makes it clear it’s the vowel sounds that are the problem.
ReplyDeleteGot the theme with FLYINGBUTTER-ER replaces RESS, but why? Revealer was kind of a, oh.
ReplyDeleteKREWE is another of those words that you don't forget after you've seen it once or twice, which I had, but never in a crossword. Patience rewarded.
OK Wed., but not my favorite ever.
I would have enjoyed the puzzle a lot more with different theme clues. For instance, 20A: "Mail-Order Snake?" or 28A: "Spread on Southwest rolls?"
ReplyDeleteThis theme was a stretch, to put it mildly. Had to come here to understand what was intended. Not a bad grid, but the theme leaves me cold.
ReplyDeleteI had LEDON before LETON and thought the latter was completely wrong and griped mightily to myself: Letting on is the the ending of pretending. Then it occurred to me that what you are letting on does not have to be true. The snobby hotel gave me lousy service until I let on I was connected to Saudi royalty. I was cook in a Saudi owned business. Too much of a stretch? Maybe for a Monday or Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteI'm with @ Quasi today. Just terrible.
ReplyDeleteMeemaw is nails on a chalkboard to me.
Misread 2D as "stud IN a pair of jeans" which gave me a beefcake thrill for a moment.
Scabs? Eww.
No joy in crossworld today.
sexist pigress
DeleteAgnostic or not, everyone who wants to claim to be educated should be familiar with the basics of the major world religions, from architecture, to daily practice, to holidays, to the fundamental precepts. So no whining about AMEN or APSE.
ReplyDeleteALERT THE MEDIA! I agree with Rex. This puzzle/theme was a hot mess. That said, the protractor clue was ok because it was asking for the types of lines "drawn" - as opposed to measured - by the device. It may not be the primary purpose of a protractor, but as one who has done some drafting in his life I can attest to its use (limited as it may be) in this regard.
ReplyDeleteI’ve always thought arcs are drawn using compasses and measured by protractors.
ReplyDeletewelcome
Delete
ReplyDeleteI got ST LEO the great quickly, because there's a St. Leo the Great church near me in Bonita Springs, FL.
It has been the subject of some controversy lately because its priest was identified as the father of a child, then the year after was accused of embezzling a large amount of church funds (though the latter has been the subject of debate by opposing groups in the church).
One of the parishioners actively involved in the debate is Richard Schultz, founder of Best Buy.
I’m sorry not sorry to say this was an easy puzzle that missed the mark on theme for me. I got it last night, still get it this morning and don’t like it any better. Wacky is good. The FLYING BUTTER tickles me to no end, but the gender pronunciation is just off.
ReplyDeleteADREPS are popular this week. A job that has you out of the office, exploring NYC, and taking clients to lunch on an expense account is a very good thing.
I'm an atheist. I have zero belief in a god. But I believe a lot of other things. I believe that WS is getting tired and should maybe think about retiring. I believe that the theme in this puzzle was a very large stretch. I believe the Patriots are probably going to win the SB and that Tom Brady will eventually be crowned football god (I hate the patriots so that is definitely not confirmation bias). And I believe that the clue on 4D was utterly wrong.
ReplyDeleteIs that what people think of atheists? That they are sure of everything? Atheists are sure of nothing...which is what makes us atheist, and perhaps agnostic.
Also, I appreciate the shout out to the T-folk. My son is trans and has come to understand his existence in a far more gender non-specific sense. Even the male pronoun isn't satisfying. Gender is a social construct and one day (I believe) we, as a species, will realize that there is a lot more on heaven and earth than our philosophies about gender can tell. We assume a lot of things about gender...and now, finally, we are starting to have those assumptions challenged. Are the challenges slam dunk counters to what we've always accepted to be true? Nope. But we are finding that there are alternatives...that is a starting point...and we should all be glad of it.
21A Radio dial reminded me of a video I saw where two teenagers were in a room with a rotary phone. They were given the challenge to figure out how to use it in a set amount of time. Very interesting to watch. It reminded me of a recent visit to an antique shop with the neighbor kid. She was fascinated as I had to explain how a typewriter worked.
ReplyDeleteHey, that's the sort of mental tangents that a puzzle like this causes. If it has any redeeming quality that would be it.
@5A is WRONG! crew- go buy a protractor, $5 at Walmart, $475 at Tiffany's. Put it in a flat surface and move a pencil along whatever portion of the curved edge you want. Congratulations, you drew an arc!
ReplyDeleteThose are good! With clever clues. The actual puzzle ... not so much. I find myself in rare agreement with Rex.
ReplyDelete@Anon 4:55 you aren't the only one.
ReplyDeleteI learned that "let on" is a synonym for "pretend" when I read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck uses the phrase a lot. Not sure if it is in current use in the South or not.
ReplyDeleteSorry, this was a fail. Laudable intentions are not enough; the execution has to be better than this.
ReplyDeleteTo start, every single one of @Lewis's suggestions are more interesting than the themers we got.
Then we have some terrible cluing. I slammed @Rex's Twitterati yesterday, so I have to be fair and say the tweets he shared today are spot on -- the clue for BELIEF is ignorant at best (aggressive at worst), and the clue for ARCS is just flat-out wrong. Also, I share the bafflement of anyone who can't figure out how Pretend gets you LETON.
And finally, we have the fill. Having STLEO, AONE, SSS, ENS, CNN, NNE, SYN, ACAI, NYSE, LAV, EWE, ATALL, VOL, APU (Matt Groening should get permanent royalties from every constructor ever), YEP, PHD, MEEMAW, DEB, TNT, EMU, OWIE, TAC and EKE in the same puzzle is too much.
I did find it humorous that TNT crosses an entry clued as Dynamite? So there's that.
Thank you, as always, ReX and commenters. You're all faster and cleverer than I am. But I do have my aspirations. I keep coming here to enjoy a bit of snark, but always leave a bit wiser. Thank you especially @Ellen. Today's theme had my head spinning a bit until i read you comment--which perhaps made me less of a CRAB.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good puzzle!
ReplyDeleteI didn't get the theme until the end.
God Bless Our Troops, except for the Navy.
Oy....I was enjoying this...seriously. CLODS and CRAB and PERP to begin with. Getting my first theme: DELIVERY ADDER and thinking is there a PUFF somewhere. Got to my GENDER NEUTRAL reveal and gave my head a horrible scratch. So we have to add a DRESS and two TRESS. I know the most common feminine suffix in English is TRESS. DELIVERY ADDER needed a DRESS. Is dress a feminine version on a noun?
ReplyDeleteLike @chefwen, I wasn't going to spend any time wondering if I wanted to analyze it further. OK, lets go look at some of the entries...@Quasi: The APSE is behind the main altar; it's where the clergy are seated. Most clergy pray. In this day, I can imagine what they are praying for. Maybe for the BLOW UP MATTER to just go away. Hahaha. Just kidding. I still want to go to heaven.
@Larry G. Love reading you and your posts always seem to amuse me. Here's the thing. TITO Puente is actually an American born of Puerto Rican parents. Because he played the absolute best Afro-Cuban rhythms, people assume he's Cubano. By the way and you probably don't care, TITO is short for ErnesTITO. Latinos are great at adding an ITO/ITA at the ends of names. Hi @Tita....
I'm not so sure about the agnostic's lack but this puzzle did run a little religious today with BELIEF, ST LEO, AMEN and ATE CROW. Fun stuff.
My last thought on this puzzle. I love learning new things from puzzles. KREWE is new but I'll forget that word instantly. MEEMAW, on the other hand, is something I learned from our very own @Loren. She was telling one of her usual amusing stories and was talking about a grandmother somewhere in the South and she used that very own word. I had to look it up because I couldn't believe any grandmother in her right mind would want to be called that. (Please, I hope I haven't offended anyone). It sounds like a cat call. Say it out loud - go ahead. I'm a Nonie.
shouldn't antennas be antennae? i didn't even think that antennas was a possible answer and ended up stuck with -EeT for Russian foe. Meemaw? Okay, whatever. And KREWE? What the sh-t is that? Well, a DNF and I agree with REX that this was not easy. After a clean sweep last week, and a fast one at that, this one really caused me to stumble hard. on to Thursday.
ReplyDeleteA very cute idea. I imagine if this sort of thing has been done before, it would be by adding the ESS rather than taking it away. This feels more imaginative. And the complete GENDER irrelevance of all of the theme answers -- with and without their ESSES -- also makes it more playful and unexpected. I had fun with this, even though it was pretty easy, even for a Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteI should be inferred that agnostics have no belief in God not that they have no belief in anything. Don’t be a crab. Lighten up. This new phenomenon of people whining about puzzle clues is becoming wearisome.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteI'm standing in the crowd of easy-not-getting-theme people. Hey everybody! Whassssssup?
I thought maybe it had something to do with taking off the ER sound from the end, then the remaining phrase was wiman-related? DELIVERY ADD? FLYING BUTT? (Which is funny...) BLOW UP MATT? Wha??
Oh well. Also had LET ME first, giving me a STRONG TAN. Har. Clue could've been "Got off the beach right before turning red?" OK, maybe not...
Laughed at ST LEO. Which one? Usually it's LEO(RRN). One F. YEP.
SPRANG AWAKE
RooMonster
DarrinV
@ mmbeitlermd - One might use the phrase LETON to give a false impression. “I let on like I didn’t care when we broke up” or “I didn’t let on that I knew they broke up.” I like to think of it as alternative facts.
ReplyDeleteThe fill on this felt like a Monday; the theme made no sense, and the revealer was no help at all. I started to get a headache trying to figure out what is female-sounding about ADDER, BUTTER and MATTER. And BTW, shouldn’t that be FEMININE sounding? I know constructing a crossword worthy of the NYT is the work of people who are way above my grade level so I appreciate the effort it took. However, the experience of solving it ... not so much.
THEIST: Hey, friend, do you believe in God?
ReplyDeleteAGNOSTIC: I'm not sure. I guess I lack that belief.
THEIST: Oh. Please tell me again, what do you lack?
AGNOSTIC: I lack belief. Look at 4-Down, and you'll see what I lack.
@chefwen -- So glad you ordered "Lad: A Dog." If it proves to be too very, very, very Young Adult for you, there's a grown-up dog novel that you absolutely have to read if you haven't already read it. You, too, Mals. It's called "The Art of Racing in the Rain" -- which sounds very un-doggy, I know, but the title, while apt in one way, is misleading in others. I know I mentioned it before on the blog, but I'll mention it again. It's not only the best "dog book" I've ever read, but perhaps the most beautiful novel I've read in 20 years. I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone who thinks of their dog as "a wise old man in a dog suit." It would be a crime for any dog lover to miss it.
ReplyDelete@Larry G. -- Let me join @GILL in saying how amusing I always find your posts. Today's was especially enjoyable.
@GILL -- Yes, I think MEEMAW is something I wouldn't want to be called either. As far as "Latinos are great at adding an ITO/ITA to the ends of names," this is not the only culture that does something of this nature. I'm thinking of writing a book about the contemporary women's professional tennis tour. It will be titled: "ALL THE -OVAS".
Easy fill. Dumb theme.
ReplyDeleteI'm writing this before reading Rex’s write-up and other comments. On purpose.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this and found it pretty easy (those two things are not always related). I easily knew KREWE but I had some trouble with LET ON for Pretend. Still do.
But I’ve been staring and staring at it and just can’t figure out the theme. Auggh!
I first got FLYING BUTTER and thought we were going to have quasi-spoonerisms (as in BUTTERFLYING) but that didn’t work.
Then for a while I had DELIVERY uDDER and thought, "Well, maybe...", but ADDER made more sense with the clue.
Then I thought that MATTER had something to do with MATER... but no.
So I’m still baffled as to why I just can’t see the theme and confused as to why I just can’t find any “female sounding phrases” in ADDER-BUTTER-MATTER.
But I give up and now I’ll go read Rex’s write-up and the comments to find out what’s going on.
--------
After reading Rex and comments:
Humph. Okay, I kinda see it, but it's not great.
Strange to enjoy and fairly easily finish a puzzle while being completely unable to decipher the theme... I was wondering if it's me or the theme, and I see that others had the same problem. So maybe it's some of both...
@mmorgan
ReplyDelete@Rex didn't get the theme either. @Carola 12:19 provided an inaccurate description:
"I understood how the theme answers work a bit differently from @Rex, namely, that -RESS (not just -ESS) is subtracted and replaced by -ER.
The bitching about female constructors got old the second time. If women want to make puzzles, they will. If they don't, they won't. So kwitcher bitchin.
ReplyDeleteI think that the term women constructor is sexist. I'll ask my woman doctor if she agrees.
ReplyDeleteWhile I may not be with @anonymous 8:22 politically, I believe I posed the same question about the number of male vs. female constructor submissions to the NYT. How can you claim bias if you don't have this information? @Res have you ever asked?
ReplyDeleteAs for the puzzle, the theme had me mystified 'til I came here and saw the correct explanation from our bloggers. Good work guys (and gals!).
Here's the theme.
ReplyDelete(insert wind whistling)
Here's the top of OFL's head.
Is your doctor a female or an OB/GYN?
ReplyDeleteSurprised I'm not seeing more complaints about STRONGMAN being the answer for the clue "Dictator". It's not the worst clue/answer that's been published as of late, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth.
ReplyDeleteMISTER MISTRESS
ReplyDeleteWAITER WAITRESS
TIGER TIGRESS
HUNTER HUNTRESS
“Er” to “RESS” is not an uncommon feminization of nouns
Thank God (if she exists) that I subscribe to the Boston Globe as well as the NYT, so that I get to read the comics every day. If Pasquale in "Rose is Rose" didn't call his grandmother MEEMAW, I'd have been lost. So I knew the word, though I didn't think of it as southern -- after all, Jimbo in the same strip lives to shovel snow (among other things).
ReplyDeleteI liked the theme (as explained by @Carola); I think the problem is that ER can be either generic or masculine as an ending. The whole thing is encapsulated in the replacement of "waiter" with "server," per @Ellen S. We have the same ending both times, the first as gendered, the second not. In the puzzle, though, ADDER as one who adds, BUTTER as one who butts ("look out for that nanny goat, she's a BUTTER"), and MATTER (down at your local frame shop), so the revealer works in that sense.
OTOH, I've never heard anyone say CAR RACE. Racing car, yes, but isn't it an auto race? Or have I not gone to enough of them. (You do say "sports car race" though).
Let on ????? Really
ReplyDeleteM&A got the theme right away -- worries the M&A, that my initial take on the mcguffin mighta been full of mcpoopin. Here was my reasonin …
ReplyDelete1. Several people-related terms can end in -ER or -RESS, depending on yer gender preference. [Waiter vs. Waitress is indeed a real good example. Acter vs. Actress is also apt, if U can't spell real good. Not sure about what's up with Stewarder and Stewardress, tho.]
2. The usual way those in the know [The Word Krewes] make this situation gender-neutered is to toss out them endings, and go with a -person endin, instead. Sooo … Waitperson. Actperson. Stewperson. Funny, tho -- that stuff don't hardly ever catch on real great.
3. What others in the know [The Word Krowes] do is they just go with the original male endin, for everyone. Everybody's a Waiter. An Acter. A Stewarder. A Soldier. A Solver. A Gender. A Krower. Keeps things simple-r. Plus, it's real easy to say WaiterWaiterWaiter fast fifty times, if U ain't gettin any day-um service at yer table (yo, @muse). What exactly do I have to do to get some ketchupketchupketchup around here?
I think #3 solution is what the WedPuz constructioneer folks went with, in their themers. Adders & Addresses? Go gender-neutered, and just make em all Adders. QEDer.
staff weeject pick: SSS. Plural of convenience on steroids. Honrable mention to: YEP; has a nice, positive ring to it.
CRAYONS: Have never ever been used, during the Shortzmeister Era. About time. Gotta make yer puzs more colorful, when U get the chance. The letter U is very colorfUl, by the way: Let's go with SPRUNG, and let the bloggers figure out DELIVERYUDDER, after we've made a run for it.
STRONGMAN: Don't sound quite gender-neutered, somehow. Let's go with STRONGMANNER. yep. Betterer.
MEEMAW: Also might have gender problems. Not sure, tho. Is PEEPAW a separate thing? Kinda confuses the krewpe outta M&A.
Thanx Amanda (darlin) & Karl (dude) for gangin up on us and neuterin everythemerthing that moves.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
Credulity. Or maybe faith. But BELIEF is wrong, even in a strict “do you believe in gods” sense. I realize some of you use “faith” and BELIEF interchangeably, but that’s a pretty black and white interpretation of others’ far more nuanced takes on existence.
ReplyDelete@Muse and @Carola and @JC66 - The constructor’s notes over at xwordinfo.com lines up with Rex’s explainer. I do think “waiter/waitress” example shows what’s going on then either the constructor or Rex. Of course, I read these various takes and they feel like we’re all groping in the dark a little.
This is probably a waste of recycled electrons but tilting at windmills just seems to be in my Dutch/Spanish genes. That there are fewer submissions from women is not a defense against an accusation of sexism. Rather, it is evidence that the sexism is systemic. If you believe that more diversity in constructors will lead to better, more entertaining, and higher quality puzzles then the important question is not “is there systemic sexism.” That’s self-evident. The important question is “what can be done to change the status quo?” Where I see lots of frustration on the edges of the crossword universe I touch is the “women should submit more” responses. Basically, that response is “I didn’t do anything wrong so you solve it.” That’s like telling women to fix rape. Yes, that’s hyperbole but it really feels like if you don’t smack people upside the head with a 2x4 they don’t get it. If the NYTX wants to remain the gold standard for crossword puzzles (and it does because it’s a money maker) then it needs to fix this. And maybe also the African-American issue and Hispanic-American issue and ....
Let me finish with I’m not bothering with the bad faith responses that are sure to follow.
Easy to fill but theme is ugh. Where is an editor when you need one?
ReplyDeleteI didn’t really think that delivery udder was gender neutral!
ReplyDeleteAn APSE is the space created by a curved rear of a church. Now if you have been to many churches (if only too attend weddings, for you atheists) you will notice that the back wall of most churches is straight so there is no APSE at all and in most cases no need to refer to a nave, which is the area in the center between two aisles, and many churches only have one central aisle.
ReplyDeleteWhere you most typically find an APSE is in a great cathedral, which has a central nave, usually with a much higher roof than you find at the sides, and usually has an APSE behind the high altar, created by the curved outer walls at that end of the building. And -- here at last is the point -- the APSE in a cathedral almost always has its own little altar, where masses may also be held, and in any case where people can and do go to pray. In fact, during most of the day on most days of the week, more praying takes place there than in the nave, which is used as a place of assembly and worship mainly on Sundays and holidays.
(The puzzle was OK and certainly easy, and like many of you I did not grok the theme before coming here).
Z,
ReplyDeleteYou're assuming the validity of your claim.
It's possible that systemic sexism causes a discrepancy in distaff submissions. But's an assertion. You go off on a strange flight of fancy, but never proof your initial claim
Respond or not, I don't give a fig. But any reasonable reading of your answer reveals its weakness.
Second fastest time for a Wednesday. Would probably have been faster if Wednesday Dog (I’ll explain that some day) hadn’t wanted to go out to chase birds from the feeders every other minute. Lots of this was in my/our (I solve with hubby) wheelhouse. Remembered Manx cat from a poster of cat breeds I had as a kid. Despite having one of my life’s best vacations in NOLA, I just learned KREWE (27D) a few weeks ago from another NYT xw. Know APU (39D) (and anything else Simpson related) only from commercials for the program and xword. Totally agree with your comment @Larry Gilstrap. Yup…. Right after Seinfeld. …. Never gonna happen, my friend.
ReplyDelete@LMS, I also saw an adder (snake) in the delivery room and chuckled. First thought the answer was terribly tortured, but grokked the theme with FLYINGBUT--- and liked it. Hubby is an architecture fan so he immediately saw what was going on. By the time we were at the MATTER, and still chuckling, I actually wanted more themers. Hands up on the ARCS (5A) issue with protractors and not a fan of LETON at 26D. @Whatsername, your example for LETON is the best one that helps me swallow that clue. Thanks. Also no idea how to spell MEEMAW despite being a huge fan of Big Bang Theory. And apt timing… just yesterday we were talking with our pseudo-sister (J---e) about her becoming a grandmother and what granny name she should choose. Nana J seems to be an early leader as J---e is pretty hip, very athletic, and I keep seeing that octogenarian DJ from the commercial (“Dropping sick beats…they call me ‘DJ Nana’ “). (Not even sure what the ‘product’ is. E-trade? But I love her!) Only write-over was at 21D (Radio dial: Abbr.) VOL. I was flying through this so fast that I didn’t finish reading the clue and had started nOb before hubby pointed out that we needed an abbreviation.
Didn’t mind the usual xword dreck (SSS, LAV, etc.) because, having only puzzled regularly for the last 2 years, I have ‘grown up’ on/with that stuff, so I just expect it. Not an issue for me unless it really detracts or is stacked 3 + deep.
hey everybody,
ReplyDeletejust a point of clarification. @z would have you believe that Rex's take on the puzzle is correct and corroborated by Word Play. I say that's bunk. Check out Rex's twitter feed to for Matt Levine's take.
He says Rex's criticism is "a little unfair" and provides something to underpin his claim ( looking at you Z):
"It's not just "add-ESS," it's that in English a lot of words take a masculine form in -ER (or OR) and a feminine form in-RESS.
Waiter/waitress, actor/actress, master/mistress. It's not an extra syllable'. It's how words are actually formed."
Easy, but add me to the list of those who did not get the theme without an explanation. I went down the same GRIMY path as @Quasi, thinking BLOW UP doll? EWE!
ReplyDeleteThat would make 20A a DELIVERY nurse (already gender-neutral in fact but not always in perception) or DELIVERY man? 28A would be a FLYING ace? (also gender neutral). Wallenda? Wha?
After seeing MEEMAW and with the GENDER NEUTRAL theme (think pronoun "they"), I was ready to see @LMS's name as constructor :-).
I was excited to pull out KREWE from my brain due to a book I read in my teens set in NOLA during Mardi Gras.
The puzzle was fine, the theme a tad tortured, but I had fun trying to wrap my head around it, so thanks, AC and KN.
LETON, KREWE, the theme. Nope.
ReplyDeleteI still like the nonsensical "DELIVERY UDDER" better, which I had typed in first.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I thought the grid stunk--or would that be stank? Now I'm confused.
As a Yankee living in southern Louisiana for the past 20 years, I surely should have remembered that it’s “krewe,” not “crewe.” Cost me a DNF for a solution that otherwise would have been fairly easy.
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle was what I want every morning, a little jumpstart to my brain along woth my coffee. I needed to squint and tilt my head a little to make the theme work, but that's okay. A little imagination in the mrorning is good. I see "er" endings as gender neutral — worker, miner, housekeeper, server, farmer — so changing the 'ress" worked for me. I liked MAGMA and MANX, didn't know Senor TITO but that's on me. All in all, it was just fine.
ReplyDelete@Nancy, "The art of racing in the rain" was wonderful. I read it ages ago, perhaps on your recommendation.
Post-party ennui; lots of junky stuff to do so I think I'll lie around a read all day.
well... if you want to draw an arc of precise (to a degree or less) size, you need a protractor to do that. you might dot the end points and then use a compass, but why bother?
ReplyDeletethe clue does say, "some lines", not usual or commonly or frequently or etc.
Solved it perfectly, but I still have no idea what the theme clues have to do with gender. How is a mattress feminine?
ReplyDelete@Bob Mills --
DeleteHow is a mattress feminine?
It isn't. Neither is a buttress or an address. The revealer clue posits that those words are female-sounding, and that the theme answers turn those words into gender-neutral-sounding versions of the same thing.
Really, any puzzle gimmick that takes this long to explain by so many people must completely suck.
never heard of Krewe, but knew meemaw from Big Bang Theory. Didn't understand the theme until I came here, and thought it to be VERY weak.
ReplyDeleteI am not at all interested in the race, gender, or sexual preferences of crossword constructors, and don't see why there should be any issue.
This puzzle had me thinking far too hard about the theme. I am underwhelmed now that I get it.
ReplyDelete@LMS - I always read your comments when I tune in here, and always enjoy them. Today, I am validated to know there is at least one person in my corner. The word 'nuclear' has one 'u'. That's it. The mispronunciation of it irks me even more than when a youngster responds to 'thank you' with 'no problem'.
Bless you for making my day.
Mispronunciation of nuclear is one of my pet peeves, too. I used to get upset about "no problem" until I realized that's just how younger people say "you're welcome".
Delete@Teedmn, great minds think alike! 😂
ReplyDeleteI wonder if systemic sexism accounts for the dearth of female trash collectors.
ReplyDeleteI mostly draw arcs with circle templates or door templates. Sometimes when I need a bigger arc I use a bowl or a plate. Sometimes I even get out my compass. But I never have used the protractor, since it only provides one radius size and not generally a useful one.
ReplyDeleteI didn't mind the way the theme was structured. At least it was consistent.
@Gill... The Portuguese love the diminutive. For me, it carries over to English - "the little man at the cornet store..."
ReplyDeleteWe also have an "augmentative"? One branch of cousins has a Gonçalo. His son who used to be Gonçalinho, but has now become Gonçalão with the arrival of HIS son, who now is the Gonçalinho of the family.
I'm Terezinha. Tita comes from my nieces being unable to say Tia Tereza. To my granddaughter, I've become Titi, and it just melts my heart to hear her say that. (Talking's a pretty new thing to her...!!)
@lms - do go on - why is toy boat so hard to say? Is it something to do with the position of the tongue at the end of boat, and where it should be for being able to make the t-OY sound next?
@mmorgan - DELIVERYuDDER!!!!
@woman something..my daughter cringes every time her father-in-law says something like "Today my plane was flown by a lady pilot."
@m&a - I may have to frame your post today.
Theme did seem a but tortured, but I liked it anyhow.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA second sad farewell to Russell Baker.
ReplyDeleteThe first was when he retired from his "sunday Observer" column.
Here are three of my favorites - thanks to the archives, I can read them again.
My favorite ever:
"Egg on the Face"
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/30/magazine/sunday-observer.html
And maybe I remembered the Nantucket one because he actually did a few - but the first is my fav...
The Taint of Quaint
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/07/magazine/sunday-observer-the-taint-of-quaint.html
Quaintness
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/07/magazine/sunday-observer-quaintness.html
Thanks for all the insights and laughs.
If you want more, just search the NYT archives for Russell Baker Nantucket
@Tita-
ReplyDeleteSpanish has at least three augmentatives. A very popular one these days describes a gol in futbol (no, not gooooooooooooooool!!!), but "golazo!. which is a goal of singular beauty and power and elegance and I wish we could say that with one word in English.
Also, I have two granddaughters, and either one can melt my heart without half trying.
@tea73:
ReplyDeletesince it only provides one radius size and not generally a useful one.
well... since a radius is of infinite length, just anchor a straight edge at the center point at one end and the end point of the protractored arc at the other and set the radius to your heart's content and then use your compass. only if the degree of arc matters, of course. if you want, essentially, arbitrary arcs you don't use either, you use a French curve.
I came here to discover the theme. No amount of scanning the three theme answers yielded any insight for this feeble brain. Thanks for expr-xxx-ing a reasonable explanation. Other words that don't bring feminine gender or roles to (my) mind: distress, duress, compress, less, dress, caress, success, confess, coalesce XXXX, ness. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a regular reader, but kind of mystified by the theme today and wanted to get read from the crossword literati. LMS, that is some funny, funny, really good stuff. Thanks
ReplyDeleteNon-belief: I believe a lot of things. What I might claim to lack is faith. In the sense meant by religious teachings, I would label faith as "proof by vigorous assertion," not a particularly valid scientific approach.
ReplyDeleteQuasimojo: In many churches, the choir loft is located behind the altar, and thus must of necessity reside in what would be called the Apse. Presumably this is not true of the cathedrals from which the names sprung, however?
@ Digital Dan: “faith ...not a particularly valid scientific approach. “ That’s some scoop you have there pal.
ReplyDelete@GILL I - I knew MEEMAW from the Holly Hunter series “Saving Grace” set in Oklahoma and “The Big Bang Theory” off shoot series “Young Sheldon” set in Texas, where Sheldon’s MEEMAW is played by the delightful Annie Potts.
ReplyDeleteThank you Digital Dan. Every article online I’ve looked at, including various dictionaries and Wikipedia, says very clearly that the apse includes the altar. It is not outside it or before it. It is part of it. It may be in the front of it, but it is not usually separate. Yes @Gill the clergy sometimes is placed there but to participate in the mass. If they pray it is part of the mass, not the sole reason they are placed there. Praying in church in my book, a devoted lapsed Catholic, involves kneeling, and that activity happens primarily in the nave. Hail Mary!
ReplyDeleteThis made me think of “-ix” as another feminine ending, most commonly seen in words like aviatrix and, of course, dominatrix.
ReplyDeleteA quick glance on OneLook.com revealed an archaic word that I think is equal parts catchy and aggravating, like an earworm: “rixatrix”, which means an old female scold.
(Would a “Rexatrix” be an old female crossword puzzle scold, then?)
@pablo...Don't forget the "ona" > MUJERONA, the "ote" > GRANDOTE and my favorite "requete bueno."
ReplyDelete@Titi....My heart melts too...Hadley Rose only says "CA". She's not quite there yet. I pray she doesn't add the other CA. :-).
Sorry for the off topic, folks....but, you know, words and all!
Hola @ GILL I- fer shore. And -ito and -illo -ico, to go the other way. As for -ona, still like to play and sing "La Llorona". Fun stuff.
ReplyDeleteApologies for being off topic, but as she says, words.
Executrix is world's more common than either aviatrix or dominatrix.
ReplyDeleteI am agnostic as to the merits of this puzzle and theme although I did like a lot of the fill.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was an undergraduate I babysat for the four children of two science professors. They were 12-10-8 and 6 at the time. I stayed with them one weekend and at dinner Saturday asked if they went to Church on Sunday. The 8 year old responded and said no they did not "because they were agnostic ". Smugly thinking he was merely parroting his parents, I asked if he knew what that meant. He immediately told me they did not know whether they believed in God or not. We went to breakfast at Denny's the next morning.
@Anon 7:37
ReplyDeleteDepends on which world you live in. ;-)
Count me in on Team Baffled - I had to go to (ahem) the other leading crossword blog to find out what the theme was; haven't done that in a long time
ReplyDeleteSorry, not buying CARRACE.
Time posted by Arkansas girl who has been solving for a year and a half: 21:47. Close to my best time for a Wednesday.
ReplyDeletePuzzle was easy, the theme answers were preposterous.
ReplyDeleteWhy do women complain that there are not enough constructors, and THEN complain when the puzzle is criticized? It goes with the territory, Toots. You can't have it both ways. Personally, I don't care if the constructors were all male, all female, all poodles.
Yeah, totally failed to get the theme. “What’s the gender neutral version of ‘delivery adder’? ‘Delivery woman’?” And ‘flying nun’?? And ‘blow up doll’???
ReplyDeleteLEMME be frank today. I'm with the resident CRAB - again! BLOWUPMATTER? The theme was like a joke that bombs and the comedian has to explain it. So YEP. It blowed up real good. Like a cigar loaded with TNT. Will Shortz should have NIXED the idea. SADLY, he did not. I expect AONE-level puzzles from the NYT. One STAR is all this gets.
ReplyDeletePS - I'm not ALONE HERE to feel this one went over like a LED balloon. Even
Jeff Chen didn't get it:
For the bajillionth time I couldn't get going in the NW, so I went straight to the opposite corner with NYSE and worked up--which means I got the revealer before any of the themers. And: I STILL didn't get it! I sat there staring at the (easily) completed grid for many seconds before the light dawned. It was not a brilliant light.
ReplyDeleteProblem with dictator = STRONGMAN. Not necessarily a SYN in my book. Also MEEMAW isn't exclusively southern. I more or less agree with OFL and the majority: this was basically a dumb puzzle. Lots of fill detritus...or would it be detrita? Detritum?? Bogey.
GRIMY VENTS
ReplyDeleteLEMME say that his HOTEL CATNAPS
were of GENDERNEUTRAL USE by the satyr.
SADLY HERE, he LETON that perhaps
he MATES ALONE with a BLOWUPMATTER.
--- DEB WEST, PHD
This was easy, but dopey. Definitely a dud, theme-wise. Disappointing.
ReplyDeleteWell I thought the puzzle itself was fine and reasonable for a Wednesday. The theme, however, was rather weak - in my opinion. For what that's worth.
ReplyDeleteLay Di
As was pointed out way above, OFL had it wrong about taking the -ESS out (and went on and on about it), when it’s actually taking the –RESS out and replacing it with –ER.
ReplyDeleteExample: Eel’s abode – HOUSEOFCONGER
If you’re going to complain, at least get it right. Worse than when @Rex completely missed the LIONS and TIGERS and BEARS, OH MY theme some Fridays ago.
Re: 5a - Drafting 101 (or 7th grade shop class) – use the compass to draw the arc to the number of degrees you measured with your protractor. So many supposedly intelligent people got this totally wrong, including the editors at the NYT and a bunch of commenters, notably @Banana Diaquiri, twice plus.
If you’ve never heard the sweet music of Harry MANX you really should give it a try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo8ftEAvZXg
If I’m not over, I’m in a STATEOFUNDER. I hadn’t read many comments, but now I see these have already been done. Sorry for the repeats.
With @Diana, thought the theme was weak, and I would add, pretty shaky.
ReplyDeleteAdding the ESS to the themers suggests something GENDER NEUTRAL about them? Maybe so, but I don't get it, without some stretching. And the tneme entries themselves, before adding the ESS's, are not impressive.
Took a bit of time to see AD REP, and MEEMAW was definitely a new one for me.
SADLY, just an okay Wednesday
Oh my gosh, so many people regularly post comments like "too much trivia - I do puzzles for the wordplay". This was wordplay. It was fun, and calling the themes GENDER NEUTRAL was funny. (As in "funny, ha-ha".)
ReplyDeleteThe RESS/ER swap has been bugging me: It requires some contortions, or at least some stretching, to make good sense of the theme and its GENDER NEUTRAL revealer.
ReplyDelete