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1962 hit for Ikettes / SUN 2-17-19 / 1966 Donovan hit with rhyming title / Longtime Steelers coach Chuck / Original edition of this puzzle's theme / Spanish ouzo flavoring / Princess seduced by Zeus / Living to Livy
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Constructor: David Kwong
Relative difficulty: Medium (12-something minutes)
- 22A: What kind of tree ALWAYS HAS FOLIAGE / EVER[GREEN] (33A)
- 66A: What 1986 HIGH SCHOOL romantic comedy got its title from a song by the Psychedelic Furs? / PRETTY IN [PINK] (85A)
- 68A: Who wrote a 2003 best seller about a SECRET CODE / DAN [BROWN] (82A)
- 113A: What DELAWARE NICKNAME comes from a farm bird? / [BLUE]HEN STATE (46A)
- 13D: Where were battleships sunk in an 1894 JAPANESE VICTORY (!?!?!?) / [YELLOW] SEA (48A)
- 39D: What annual game have the OKLAHOMA SOONERS won more than any other team? / [ORANGE] BOWL
DeWitt Clinton (March 2, 1769 – February 11, 1828) was an American politician and naturalist who served as a United States Senator, Mayor of New York City and sixth Governor of New York. In this last capacity, he was largely responsible for the construction of the Erie Canal. Clinton was a major candidate for the American presidency in the election of 1812, challenging incumbent James Madison. (wikipedia)
• • •
EVAH is basically the same word as EVER, and yet somehow they cross (!???) in this grid (30A/30D). NO USE and USE TO are practically next door to each other (83D & 103D). The proper nouns are weirdly dated, including TOM [GREEN], whom I haven't thought of in ... 15 years? Does he still do things. The RONELY / BORAT / TIMON / TAYE section felt particularly densely dated to me. I get that if you like Trivial Pursuit (I liked it fine as a kid) and you did it on the app and got a zingy colorful effect, you might enjoy this, but for me it was all the things I don't want puzzles to be wrapped into one. I do recognize that the final design, with the colors all in their proper places, is a very nice touch. A great way to end—if you've got the computer doing the coloring for you. If not, not. Extremely not. *ON* RICE? (44D: How chicken teriyaki is usually served). YECCH. Phrasing (it's "over"). People know the song "I'M [BLUE]"??? Not me. Had to run the colors until I remembered to look back at what the HEN answer was an answer to (again, so much fussiness, working backward, etc.), and I actually knew [BLUE]HEN. I definitely had to run the colors for DAN [BROWN], whose work I have never and would never read. Totally forgot his name. The bread clue was oddly totally unhelpful, as virtually every bread I've ever eaten is some shade of brown and I honestly have never heard of the category [BROWN] BREADS. I was prepared to put [WHITE] BREADS in there, which *is* a category I've heard of. But then BROWN came to me.
INESSE NOLO AMAT ANIS SHH. The non-theme stuff provided no entertainment, and was barely keeping its head above water acceptability-wise. Solving pleasure just can can can can *not* be sacrificed for the Big Gimmick. I mean, it can, but I'm never gonna like it. ETAPE!?Sakes alive ...
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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146 comments:
I felt like I zipped through this thing even though it took me awhile to catch onto how it worked. In the end, I was stuck on two final squares that would have Naticked me -- the [BLUE] in 46A and the [ORANGE] in 104 A/D -- until I remembered the colors of those wedges/categories in Trivial Pursuit — Genus edition, of course! Wow... talk about a theme helping! Very rare occurrence!
EVAH was a gimme (I’m a Cole Porter freak), but I was briefly afraid it was going to turn out to be “ever”. Whew.
The puzzle itself felt largely nondescript but as usual I had a pleasant solving experience and, as usual, I liked it more than Rex.
Solved in the magazine. Got the theme pretty earlier. Slogfest after that. Definitely not my cuppa.
On iPhone, after completion, the rebuses ¿rebi? become colored wedges. Pretty easy puzzle.
Not quite sure why Rex is laying the hate down on this. It wasn't great, but it wasn't so terrible. I thought the theme was fine — caught onto it quickly enough with (YELLOW)SEA.
Having got that. the rest of the themers were generally pretty easy. Including DAN(BROWN), because though I haven't read any of his trash, I know he's a hugely successful author sitting on a pile of cash I'll never attain.
I will agree with the plaint about GENUS. I have no clue what the game is. I originally tried to work REBUS into that spot, because it would have made some sort of sense, but unfortunately didn't work.
My biggest complaint was just choppy fill, out to what seemed a broken-up grid.
I liked this one just fine. I forgot I was solving a Sunday and so forgot to look at the title, which would have helped me a bit I think. I got the whole color-rebus thing early, but I didn't cotton to the whole Trivial Pursuit thing until I was done.. I used to be pretty good at TP back in the 80s, early 90s. I mean, like, I would absolutely destroy people in Geography, and I was well above average in... oh never mind.
When I filled in 50A I thought aha, there's a good song for Rex to put in his blog.. right in his (and my) wheelhouse.. alas..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5XJ2GiR6Bo
I see stuff like that now and I think, man, the 80s were cheesy, but that was fun!
I dropped in OKLAHOMA SOONERS just off the O, even before I knew what game they were talking about ... and that was because 'Ohio State Buckeyes' didn't fit. But getting that relatively early made the puzzle play a bit easier for me.
All the nits Rex picks are valid. And yet I found the puzzle relatively engaging for a Sunday. I liked finding the colors. I liked most of the answers. Almost nothing here that I resented being expected to know, and that seems important in some puzzles these days.
Does it make it better that the rebuses form a circle, a la trivial pursuit wedges?
I enjoyed the puzzle and the fun reveal at the end, so I came here expecting Rex to hate it and was not disappointed.
My two notes are: yes, answers like ALWAYSHASFOLIAGE and JAPANESEVICTORY are not your usual crossword fare, but this is a Trivial Pursuit themed puzzle so deal with it. And yes, here in Seattle where teriyaki has been a staple for decades, I can confirm that it is best enjoyed ONRICE. There are plenty of other foods that east coasters claim dominion over, so please confine your comments to those.
Definitely not a puzzle for the speed solvers, which I am not, with all the back and forth clueing. I absolutely loved this puzzle, took me forever to wrap it up, but I enjoyed every minute. Had a little trouble in the SE when my Hot item was a tamale before UBER made me change it to WASABI. I wanted OKLAHOMA mud hens at 39D, didn’t work and then (BLUE) HEN STATE shows up at 46A, what’s with all the chickens?
Filled in 81A and thought of Rex as MOIST is one of his least favorite words. Thought also of a very dear friend who pronounces FOLIAGE as FOILAGE, drives me sideways, but thinking of her made me smile.
Had a great time with this, thank you David Kwong.
This was a pretty good Sunday puzzle. I liked how everything tied together, and I was jumping around solving this clue and rebusing that answer and so on and so forth. I thought it was a lot of fun.
Not sure I like the dissing of DANBROWN, particularly if you've never read his book. Maybe Rex was too busy writing a dissertation about Archie & Jughead, but I did read The DaVinci Code and that book is absolute genius story telling. It is the most preposterous plot ever, yet I couldn't put it down. I had to know what happened next, and something huge happens every other page. It's crazy awesome. In the beginning it's like a Hardy Boys mystery where they're in The Louvre, at night, solving these clues drawn on the Mona Lisa while twenty feet away there's a dead naked old man spread-eagle on the floor like a snow angel (I don't remember but he might have been nailed to the floor too) who also happens to be the grandfather of the beautiful young female police something-or-other and she and the Harvard "symbologist" (is that a thing?) escape and are chased across Europe by the police and Opus Dei and they solve a Swiss bank account code and go to Westminster Abbey and then Scotland and they're solving clues everywhere and they're gonna find the Holy Grail and prove Jesus was a woman and it all reads in real time and there's no time jumps like "Later that day" or "After a good night's sleep" no this is in REAL TIME without a gap yet not once does anyone go to the bathroom, in fact I kept turning the page to see if they ever would go to the bathroom ("Sophie, I'm just about to solve this mystery Sir Isaac Newton left us but if you'll excuse me for a moment I really have to take a crap. Also, I love you. Don't go anywhere."). I'm tellin' you it's great. I never saw the movie.
If you ever want to learn how to write a story you need to read that book and dissect it. It is FIVE STAR storytelling. It's the definition of a "page turner." If you haven't read something, then your only opinion should be "I haven't read it." If you haven't read something and you think it's bad because someone told you it's bad, then you're ignorant. And if you haven't read something and think it's bad and you're proud that you haven't read it, well that's George W. Bush proud ignorance.
I read The DaVinci Code because a girl I was dating gave it to me, and I thought that if I read it maybe it would help me crack her code and I'd get laid. DONE and DONE.
Medium-tough. Mixed feelings. Amazing theme idea that made me smile but the fill trade offs plus the sloggy solve...not pleasant. I did like it.
@JOHN X, have a beer.
Loved this puzzle. Not every puzzle has to be a clue-gets-you-answer affair. This one works on so many levels. Joy.
Wowser. Just. Wowser. Yeah – a ton going on here, and half of it went right over my head. I mean, I solved the whole thing, but since my first rebus themer was EVERGREEN, I just vaguely thought that this little fact came from a magazine called Science and Nature, and I paid absolutely no attention to the other words in the brackets. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was mystified about the color rebus squares, but I think if I had focused and settled in, I would’ve seen the brilliance of this grid. Here’s what David had to do:
1. Find six trivia questions whose answers include a color word whose color matches the Trivial Pursuit color of the category. (Rex – I didn’t care that PINKIE and BROWN BREAD were not part of the theme.)
green Science and Nature
blue (Geography): state nickname
pink (Entertainment): movie
orange (Sports): college team
yellow (History): sunken battleships
brown (Arts and Literature): book
2. Make sure these six rebus color answer squares can be paired up symmetrically.
3. Word questions so as they, too, are three symmetrical pairs.
4. Because he’s a constructor badass, cross two of the questions, each with another question and an answer (OKLAHOMA SOONERS/HIGH SCHOOL/DAN BROWN… JAPANESE VICTORY/ SECRET CODE/YELLOW SEA.)
5. Oh, and make sure that the color rebus squares form a circle, akin to the way they work in the actual board game (my avatar).
Jeez Louise this is a magnificent feat. I’m really, really disappointed that I wasn’t paying enough attention to get the aha moment coiled up within – I think I would have whooped.
David Kwong was the head magic expert for (MORGAN Freeman) movie Now You See Me. Your day is now complete. He’s also a grid magic beast. I know I post this every time one of his puzzle run, but there might be someone new who hasn’t seen it.
For me, one LAP in the pool is not down and back; it’s just down. So a 200 IM (my event back in the day) is 8 laps in a 25-meter pool. We’ve had this discussion before, but I was right and everyone else was wrong.
The funniest scene in Borat. If you’re not familiar with the movie, Sasha Baron Cohen plays a reporter from Kazakhstan, but the people he’s interviewing and filming are real people having real reactions. These hapless souls have no idea they’re being pranked. The look on the Georgia Congressman’s face in this clip…
Liked TRUANTS over HIGH SCHOOL. Our school does not have a system in place whereby I get any kind of master absentee list for the day. So when I call roll and one someone isn’t there, I have to rely on the kid being cheerfully thrown under the bus by classmates – I saw her, Mrs. Smith. She’s here. Or maybe I saw her earlier, too. I dunno. Another English teacher, Ms. W, will get someone to cover her class and go hunt the truant down. I take the cowardly approach: usually the one who skips is the one whose absence makes for a happy Zenlike learning environment. I’m grateful for the respite, grateful to be able to flex my teaching muscles and actually impart some knowledge. (@Z – I know you’re gonna tell my why I’m remiss, but I tell ya – if the Powers That Be aren’t choosing the skipping battle by furnishing a master absentee list, why should I?)
One of the best Sundays for a long while. I love trivia and love(d) Trivial Pursuit (we used to play it at the annual departmental picnic every year). The theme really helped me solve it (in record time, 30% better than my average). The design was clever, the clues all spot on and unambiguous (it would be really cool if they were actual Q&As from TP, GENUS edition). The rebus crosses are all legit.
There’s some short stuff I could do without, but that’s always the case.
Trivia plus a rebus: what’s not to love?! The additional answer, GENUS, and the rebuses forming a circle ala the Trivial Pursuit game board made this even more impressive! And, in my app, the rebuses magically becoming colored wedges was the pièce de résistance!
The fact that you have to work back and forth, uncover rebuses and know a little trivia, requires having several skill sets, some degree of cognitive ability, flexibility, a bit of cleverness and the willingness to overcome one’s neophobia. This is why I loved this puzzle and why I knew Rex (and several of the regular curmudgeonly contributors to this blog) would hate it.
Naticked with the meercat and actor. Very cute puzzle spoiled by trivial crap. Oh, that was the theme, wasn’t it?
I AM back! We went on our annual long-weekend to Venice* last week, and then Mrs. @mericans took the iPad. So only got back into doing the NYT crossword this weekend.
We had fun completing this one, but had I'M red and red HEN STATE, so DNF. I thought I knew my chickens, but have never heard of a BLUE HEN. So I learned something new.
Filling in ["They call me"] MELLOW YELLOW brought back fond memories. I was a young teenager when singer-songwriter Donovan was at his peak, and loved his tunes, especially "Sunshine Superman", as I was still into DC comics at the time. I recall my Dad MOCKing the lyrics to another song, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is" as the most banal he had ever heard. Wikipedia classifies Donovan's genre as "neo-folk", but I'd have characterised it more as "proto-psychedelic".
Got a chuckle reading @JOHN X's defence of The DaVinci Code. It's true that most books don't discuss bathroom visits, and when there are references it's usually a male character, and usually No. 1 is intimated. The great exception is Richard Fariña's Been Down so Long it Looks Like Up to Me (1966), which is based on Fariña's time as an undergraduate at Cornell University in the 1950s, during which he imbibed in numerous chemical substances, including (or so he writes) a cigarette laced with camphorated tincture of opium called paregoric. One effect of paregoric is it stops you up. Bigly. His several-page description of what happens when the dam finally breaks is a classic of modern literature. OH MAN, AZTEC two-step doesn't even begin to describe it.
There are a couple of answers we don't get. What's the connection between SODA and slice, for example?
*If you think visiting Venice must cost a bomb, it needn't. In Europe, with its much more competitive airline industry, getting there can cost less than $100 per person round trip from Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Paris, whatever. We stay in a small, family-run hotel with lots of charm (and VERY quiet at night) that with all taxes included costs less than $90 a night, including breakfast. The trick is to visit during the period between New Year's Day and the start of Carnival. You'll have the whole serene, other-worldly city to yourself.
I liked this one just fine for a Sunday puzzle. Yes, lots of nits to point out (for me, it was CHOOSEUP . . . sorry, but as a DI college athlete, never in my life have I used or heard that phrase when picking sides for a scrimmage (let alone an actual "game") . . . it's the type of word choice that only exists in crosswords).
Overall, though, I liked the theme . . . it brought me back to my childhood, playing the original GENUS version of the classic board game with my parents. (For some reason, they never understood the enormous advantage the game gave them (pink and blue categories) just because they were alive in the 50s and 60s and I was not...)
Oh, that was one huge payoff for me, when (on the NYT app) after filling in the last square, those rebus colors transformed into Trivial Pursuit piece-filling wedges in a circle, no less. "Hah!," I thought, and my jaw actually dropped. "David is up to his magic again!" Truly, a proud-to-fill-in-a-NYT-Sunday moment turned into an inner fiesta, and then, after a bit, came the amazement: How the heck did he do that, make that work, make it happen at all? Any side-eye that may have flitted through my solve vanished in a ball of amazement. Then I saw that if you ignore the block after HIGH SCHOOL, it looks like a sash in the shape of an S traverses the grid from top to bottom, and, given this puzzle's legerdemain and payoff, the Superman reminder, IMO, was most appropriate!
I loved this. I love Genus Edition Tricial Pursuit and on the iPad they all turned into pie pieces at the end and it was just the right level of hard for my skills and so generally it was great.
No idea what any of it meant but I filled it all in except ended up with a Naticky DNF at TIMON crossing TAYE. Simon seemed like a good name for a meerkat. YECCH!
If I knew someone iwho said that they nearly “ragequit” this puzzle, I would conclude that they had major anger issues and try to avoid them. Is Rex as bitter and rage driven in real life as he comes across in his blog? I hope for his family’s sake that this an act.
Haha! Hilarious and righteous diatribe on snobbery.
With all the complaints about appropriate material in puzzles... no complaints about ENOLA? It carried the bomb that killed tens to hundreds of thousands of people. Is it inappropriate that it crosses the answer to the teriaki clue?
Slice -> SODA. Head-shaker for me too... think PepsiCo branding. Your Donovan-dismissing dad had a diminished poetic sense in that pronouncement, or tot few psychedelics.
I’m with this guy.
Most fun Sunday in ages, but quite easy!
Clinton was DeWitt but John Greenleaf was the Whittier.
Taye crossing Timon in square 109 was a first-class annoyance.
Wow! How cool was that? Rex, you are waaay too grumpy. I loved this, and seeing the rebus squares turn into the wedges from Trivial Pursuit was beyond cool. @JohnX, I agree about The DaVinci Code. Ok, so it’s not fine literature, but what a great read!
I’ve gotten into the habit of coming here simply to see in what way and how vehemently Rex will dislike each puzzle. True to form, he joylessly rips apart what was, for me at least, a very enjoyable and “joyfully challenging” Sunday outing. Lighten up, slow down, smell a rose once in a while instead of seeking out the thorns! Clever theme, done well, with talent and joy.
Song of the day: https://youtu.be/J8hjEYTpwE8
Not YECCH but no better than Meh
Hey All !
I believe you have to be magic to create this. Holy COLorS! To have 6 questions, with 6 appropriate answers in the 6 categories of the GENUS Edition of Trivial Pursuit, with the answers placed in the grid symmetrically in order to get the Circle of colors that completes the holder, and have the answers actually fit each category (ala Sports), plus put in the questions and end up with not too much dreck, is amazing. I wonder how many questions/answers David went through to find this set. Had to be quite a bit.
This was a masterful feat of constructineering. Wow. If you haven't clicked on @LMS's link of David's puz/magic trick, it's well worth it to watch. Twist your brain for a bit.
For Rex to not like this puz is absurd. So you have to bounce around the grid a bit. Not everyone solves a puz in the strict sense you do. I bounce around the grid anyway, so going from one spot to another is what I'd be doing anyway. I'm sure others are the same.
I left the Rebus squares blank, and wrote the Square number and matching color on the margin of my paper. No way was I going to try to squeeze ORANGE in that little space!
Very cool puz, David. OH MAN!
CHOOSE UP
RooMonster
DarrinV
In my ignorance of sports, ORANGEBOWL crossing ORANGEMAN was a Natick for me. I could only think of ROSE.
If a constructor is going to do a Natick, shouldn't they at least do it in different areas of knowledge? ORANGEMAN could have been clued with something from Ulster or even based on our beloved President, just so that they weren't both sports-related.
Choose up sides was what we called, well, choosing up sides for tag football when I was in high school or organizing a game of stickball when I was a kid in Brooklyn. Definitely a thing.
Rex, you feel terrible for not liking it? Puhlease.... you hate every puzzle! What else is new?
I’m with Loren; this was fun and enjoyable, and quite a feat construction-wise. The colors at the end were a cute cherry on the cake, too (or a mascarpino in your Rob Roy).
Now you see the clue and now you don't. Now you think you know where the answer should be entered and now you don't. Just the kind of Never-Be-Exactly-Where-Everyone-Thinks-You-Are puzzle you might expect from a professional magician.
I found it clever but confusing. And, partly because I was confused (and a little bit dizzy) and wasn't quite sure what I was responding to at 48A, I wrote in aSEA and failed to correct it. This gave me U-YANOV for Lenin's real name and ME-LOWa for the rhyming title hit. It was so frustrating. I'm a lyricist and I couldn't find a way to make ME-LOWa rhyme -- no way, no how. And this well after I had the BLUE and the BROWN and the PINK and the GREEN and the ORANGE. But I just couldn't, couldn't see the YELLOW. Bad, bad me. Good, good puzzle.
Me too!
Rex, your curmudgeonliness here is way over the top even for you. What the heck is wrong with ONRICE? Or with the EVAH/EVER crossing (kinda cool in my book)? I could go on. The way the themers all fit together is really rather genius, and though I feel for those who missed out on the closing color trick, how does the missing of said trick take away from the feat of having those rebus squares align as they do? This big admirer of yours has come to accept the frequent negativity (and when of like mind really enjoys it), but today’s mudfest is so free-floating one can’t help but wonder if it’s really about something else. Anyhow, today a big Bah Humbug to you, dear one.
Tom Green was on this season of Celebrity Big Brother and won America’s Favorite Player. Not sure if that justifies putting him in here, but he’s /semi/ relevant rn
As a proud Univ of Delaware alum, I was tickled to see BLUE HEN STATE!
Nice puz.
I hated Trivial Pursuit, games would last hours and hours and I'd be asleep before the the wheel had six colors. Boooooooring.
Absolutely loved it. The already-fun color theme moved up to GENiUS once I got the Trivial Pursuit angle, and into POY land with the placement of the colors.
Does anyone remember Ubi? The follow-up game to Trivial Pursuit? All geography. Questions were all bizarrely worded. I liked it, but no one else did.
From yesterday -- I just caught up with some of the very, very nice comments written about my letter that appeared after I had thanked everyone who had commented earlier. So just to let you know that I have now read all the comments, am touched and gratified by each and every one of them, and I thank you all for your lovely words and thoughts.
No middle ground today, apparently. It does seem that online solvers, especially those using the NYTX app, like this more than us dead-tree solvers. So, is it good or was the software coder’s little bit of sparkle so surprising that that little bit of charm overshone the slogginess? I’ll grant that the construction is impressive, but the solving experience? Blrrgh. These days “blrrgh” is my baseline for 21x21 puzzles so I may not be a fair critic.
Hand up for having never read anything by DAN BROWN. I did, however, read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail back in the day. I just had to do a little googling to find that title and see that DAN BROWN claims that it wasn’t used as a resource. Well, I’ve read the plot summary of The DaVinci Code and that seems unlikely.
@LMS - Huh. 25 years ago we had a master list of absences out to teachers by 2nd hour. 15 years ago we upgraded from 1970’s software (I swear when my generation of admins dies all knowledge of “Job Command Language” dies with us) to something modern so that anyone the school knew was absent was already marked that way when the teacher took attendance. Without knowing particulars it’s hard to judge, but it should be easy to know when little Johnny and Juliette are off canoodling.
Having said that, let me recount a story that puts the whole attendance thing in perspective. My B.i.L. is a wealthy retiree now with quite a few more zeros in his bank account than I. Back in HS my in-laws went to parent-teacher conferences and were more than a little confused at the sympathetic questions about my B.i.L’s illness since he wasn’t sick. It turns out he was missing quite a bit of school but it was all being “excused” by his girlfriend (now ex-wife) who was a student worker in the attendance office. Granted, most TRUANTS don’t end up being millionaires, but I never lost sleep over a kid choosing canoodling over history or algebra.
I figured the theme, colors, out rather quickly, so I was proud of myself as I usually don't figure this out at all. The connections to trivial pursuit came only after the puzzler was done on the app and we got little trivial pursuit pies. So perhaps there could have been a bit more guidance in that direction. All in all a magnificent feat, though. And a fun puzzle.
This was great.
For me it was a slo-mo Aha, first recognizing the rebus at YELLOW, then realizing it was different colors, then the growing realization that the clue style and color set and categories were... hey, this is like Trivial Pursuit! Followed by “Rex is gonna hate this because it’s a puzzle superimposed on a puzzle, and he can’t stand anything that’s not just straight-up fill-in-the-blanks so he can go fast.” And, nailed it.
I love a puzzle that takes a creative genius to construct and makes me think all twisty to solve. Great Sunday. More, please.
@Loren, the Apple watch workout app agrees with your definition of lap. It counts each pool length as a lap.
Not that you needed Apple to convince you that you were right all along.
Steve from Raleigh (one of your many fans)
Not a board game person, I guess. I play Cards Against Humanity, I used to play Scrabble with me mum, and maybe some app games on my phone, but the others, including Trivial Pursuit, not so much. I think I played it when it first came out, but that was a long time ago. I know there are several different incarnations of it. I just never thought knowing weirdly arcane facts about something is a fun competitive endeavor.
So, all I get is GENUS as a revealer and a bunch of colors in triangle shapes in a circle around the center of the puzzle. Rainbow? Nope. Gay Pride? Nope. Just varying colors of pie pieces...none of them red, which I did think was weird. Why isn't the PINK one red?
So the theme itself dropped as flat as bird poo on my windshield. Even after discovering the theme with Rex's blog, I really didn't care given my lackluster YECCH to TP.
Only real hang up was my insistence that "will" is the [singular] word that precedes "do." IT'LL is two words by my count. Two words united into a contraction. That contraction may occupy a single word's space, but it's still two words. Had I known the Yellow Sea thing was a "victory" and not just a Japanese "story" I would maybe have done better. I knew VSOP well enough, but I thought maybe there was a Japanese VW story or something. That cognitive dissonance led me to finally abandon a few squares and I finally saw that it for what it was.
TRUANTS above HIGHSCHOOL...I've never been a fan of these little inside jokes that are non-themers. They always appear too random/accidental to me. It's like those vulgar words you sometimes find in WordFinder puzzles. The chances of things lining up are pretty good the more words you have in the grid and given our natural propensity to find patterns. That the constructor would have seen HIGHSCHOOL and thought to himself, "hmmm...you know what I need there above HIGHSCHOOL? TRUANTS, that's what!!" is a stretch.
Also, for a long time I wanted the answer to 40D (Too) to be THECLUINGINTHISPUZZLE. But, of course that didn't fit.
It felt like a slog to me with all the cross referencing and then the colors. It took me a while to get the color thing. I finished in about an hour which is a usual time for Sunday for me but, it felt longer.
OK my nit. Years spent in Japan and a lifetime eating in Japanese restaurants; Never seen teriyaki served (44D) ON RICE. With rice, eaten on rice, sure. Maybe someone has, but not usually.
Lots of fun. I love you Rex...and you are often such a buzz kill. Hard to imagine that creating a puzzle like this doesn’t take a lot of skill. I’m tipping my hat to the constructor. Happy Sunday y’all.
Not much pleases Rex anymore. Jaded? Effete? And he pans any answer he isn’t familiar with. Too bad. I enjoyed the puzzle. It was very different, but that’s OK for me.
I don't think I've ever played Trivial Pursuit using the game board so the colors were lost on me, as was the GENUS answer. Solving online made keeping track of where the rebopodes were hard, thus I didn't see the final BLUE answer. I had the DELAWARE NICKNAME as the wHEN STATE (hey, there's the Show Me state, why not?), failing to tie it into a bird name. I finally revealed square 46 and didn't know what the B stood for. I figured it wasn't BROWN because Dan Brown was in a different spot. 35D Song title "I'm Black" in 1962? Who knew? Oh, BLUE, makes sense.
So I see what a lot of work went into this puzzle but it wasn't my cuppa tea.
Never played trivial pursuit so had no idea why those particular colors were chosen. Only got ORANGE MEN (which gave me the color of the not rose BOWL) and BLUE HEN because I remembered those two from prior puzzles.
Are pine needles foliage?
Merrimam Webster says ‘leaves’.
Rex sure is getting crusty. I liked it and thought it was hard until I figured out the color angle. Knew there was something going on with Mellow Yellow and got it with the Dan Brown clue (who unlike crusty Rex, I do read).
Now this is my idea of Sunday puzzle! The rebus alone would have made me hum and I cottoned on to the jam packed squares at DANBrown. @JohnX I got a real kick out of your defense of The DaVinci Code. I ask again why there isn’t a like/love/weep button for comments only. If Rex had one it would be exploding flames of fury only.
Of course I was jumping all over the grid like most solvers but that only ups my pleasure. Books and movies that play with realities and time are my favorites, think Starz’s “Counterpart, or “Memento” running in reverse.
I didn’t grasp the Trivial Pursuit theme until the end. GENUS didn’t mean anything until I saw the colors. It’s just been nearly 40 years since I played but it was great fun in the 80s after a dinner party. Did I mention the colors? Wowza from this app user! Now you’re talkin’, Will!
Sadly I was tripped up by one letter, R. Was it TIMOr or TIMON? I parsed ROrELY/RONELY as a one word last name. What a dope.
@LMS, the Kwong link was much appreciated. I’m in awe.
You know, I enjoyed this one. I loved Trivial Pursut back in the day. Pretty in Pink was a fav movie. And I’m a baker and yes BROWN breads is a thing. It was a fun start to a snowy Sunday.
Just because clues are out of your subject matter expertise and experience, doesn’t make them bad.
I always find it interesting when there’s criticism toward “pop culture” clues. I endure endless obscure baseball references on a regular basis, but I recognize that clues out of my wheelhouse are part of the puzzle process.
On the easy side, for me.
Okay for a Sunday with a cup of good coffee and an almond croissant from Panera...
Time posted by Arkansas girl who has been solving for a year and a half: 1:29:22
Just saying, classic New England is Saturday night baked beans and BROWNBREAD in a can by B&M out of Maine. Add franks and please God, a green vegetable, and it was on in every house in town in the 1950s.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. I remember playing Trivial Pursuit back in the day with friends and family. Always loved those nights together around the dining room table with some snacks, wine, booze, and beer.
I also loved The DiVinci Code and read all of Dan Brown's books as well. Sometimes I read for knowledge, sometimes for fun, sometimes for both. One of my students, a senior, got involved with investigating the Catholic church, of which she was a member. Reading Dan Brown's book(s) made her smarter and curious and thoughtful. It's too bad that Rex has to dis the work without having read any of it.
I solve on paper, and I actually got out markers and filled in the squares with the colors. FUN!
You are right. I swam the 1650/1500. 1 lap=1 length. To keep track of alternate lengths, I would have had to retain that tidbit of info too long. I needed to focus on the race. Counter boards were for the crowd but the numbers were all even. I think the alternate concept came from runners who were accustomed to ovals. P.S. Loren, you always brighten my crossword day.
@Kitty - And what is “foliage?”
I’m team “no titles” because I feel like they mostly act as big spoilers. But the number of people who didn’t even notice there was a title let alone that it was a giant flashing neon sign pointing to the theme makes me feel as though the Sunday title is largely irrelevant. Unfortunately for me, I have this ingrained training where it is nigh on impossible for me to ignore the title, so the Sunday theme is often spoiled early.
@MonWillow - There are two types of Pop Culture complaints. I agree, bemoaning not knowing something gets minimal sympathy. But I do think excessive pop culture, especially crossing two unusual names like TAYE and TIMON, deserves some opprobrium. Even common names are oft randomly spelt, so how, exactly, is one to infer or deduce what letter goes before -AYE/-IMON. It’s probably not a vowel or a Q so that gives the solver a 5% chance of guessing right. I think that’s a fair complaint.
Hilarious! Great comments-had my code cracked by a few times by considerate men who followed my suggestions. Good work.
@Nancy, I went back and solved Friday’s puzzle and then read the comments section so I could find out what you wrote. Great succinct letter!
Way, way, way back in the day I played "Trivial Pursuit". Do I remember what the cards looked like? That they had colored triangles next to the questions, much less what the colors were and for which categories??? Fuhgeddaboudit! Add to that the fact that I don't do the puzzle online and therefore I didn't have anything in my grid bursting into either colors or triangles. My grid just sat there -- boringly black-and-whaite. And so, I didn't understand the title "TRIVIAL MATTERS" at all. The raison d'etre behind the puzzle went right over my head -- even though I enjoyed the puzzle, anyway.
I had to Google Trivial Pursuit and look at a close-up of the cards to see what everyone was talking about. Shockingly, it brought back no memories at all. I did not say: Oh, of course, I remember those cards now! Because I don't remember those cards now. Maybe if I had owned the game...but I always played it at someone else's house. So maybe I didn't play it all that often.
At any rate, to all of you who did remember the cards: Either you played this game more recently than I did (a very low bar) or you have a better memory than I do (an even lower bar).
I used to love Trivial Pursuit, but then no one wanted to play with me because they said I had gone through the game when no one was looking and looked at all the questions and memorized the answers. Sore losers. So this was a blast from the past and those of you who don't read titles do not have my sympathy.
This was so much fun I went and got the grandkids' crayons and colored in the appropriate squares without going outside the lines and when's the last time you colored something?
In short, bravo, bravissimo to Mr. Kwong. I stand in awe.
Rex: Is it REALLY humanly possible to even READ 140 clues and WRITE 190 letters In “12- SOMETHING MINUTES”? I don’t think so. In addition, you said you were stuck with some of the answers. That takes time too. So, why don’t you report your solving time more accurately? Most of us solvers don’t give a hoot how long it takes us or anyone else to solve, so it’s really not worth your overinflating your times.
@Hartley70:
still is, in my house.
(sniff! wanted to be the one to finger OFL as a West Coast Weeney)
I never played Trivial Pursuit except once by accident in a burger joint. I have played Cards against Humanity last summer and found it frenzied fun. Speaking of word games, does anyone here remember “My Word!” I’m looking for a copy if you know where I can find it.
Did anyone else think that “eely “ was one of the weirdest words ever?
I agree wholeheartedly with @Rex. I played Trivial Pursuit, although God knows I have no idea what version of the game was what, after they started releasing pretty much a version a year. And honestly, as far as I can recall we rarely played with the board or pieces or moving around, so the placement of the colors was totally lost on me. AND I solve on paper, so I had to write really small to get the color words in their squares.
Given the broad audience, the puzzle should be platform-agnostic -- it should work no matter whether you're solving on paper, in the Times app, in AcrossLite, or in any other medium. For the theme to "work" in only one is just poor design and lack of imagination.
Feh.
Had etage for a stage of the Tour which gave me Saigon instead of Taipei. Since I had worked on paper I put my answers into the computer and didn’t get the happy sound. I turned on auto check, found my error and worked out the correct answers, I know that’s a form of cheating but I submit it is not as offensive as declaring a phony national emergency.
@Anon7:40 -- re your upset comment about ENOLA Gay. Sorry about the extended commentary on this difficult subject, but ...
I'm of two minds on this. To agree with you, killing hosts of mostly-innocent civilians in Japan and Germany (though many of them did put Hitler in place, and countenanced a government that put Tojo in place), would have been prosecuted as War Crimes, but for the fact that the US won.
On the other hand, the shock of the atomic bombs went a long way to convincing the Emperor to accept an Unconditional Surrender, which undoubtedly saved millions of Japanese and Allied lives. (He said to his people "We must bear the unbearable," to help them accept this.). Remember in the American island-hopping campaign across the Pacific, nary a Japanese soldier ever surrendered ... They fought and died to the last man, rather than shame the Emperor by surrendering. Good thing for me, too; my father-in-law was a newly-commissioned army communications Lieutenant who would have been among the first ashore, stringing communications lines, in an invasion.
But back to your point, I wonder if the bombs were exploded offshore Tokyo, causing flooding but few deaths (as an example of what would happen absent Surrender) would have been sufficient. Of course, the US only had enough nuclear material at that time for the two bombs (though few Americans and no enemy knew that at the time), so the safest course was to use the "shock and awe" of the destruction of two cities.
This was such an interesting experience for me-a tale of two puzzles. I could not get a toehold in the NW, but wandered over to the NE and burned through that 1/3 including MELLOW YELLOW (which I entered via Rebus function in the app). Played GENUS edition just last weekend so bingo! The whole theme fell. Except how to get the colors in the squares...just kept using rebus. At the end, the little pie pieces magically appeared. Kind of liked that reward. Ok, so I’m easy.
Like @LMS, I really enjoyed TRUANTS over HIGH SCHOOL. Once a quarter, I have to help out with our truancy court. Chronic truancy is reported to the prosecutor and the parents are charged with misdemeanors representing the child or children’s absences. The most problematic, of course are the HIGH SCHOOL TRUANTS. By then, the parents can’t really make them stay, and we try to figure out where to send the family and kids for services that might actually keep the child or children from a life of crime or drugs or both. The whole experience is frustrating and sad.
In the communities I serve (as legal counsel through the DA’s office to county elected officials in 3 counties-all civil law), education is the key to a life of choice: family farming, vocational or professional career, nothing is off the table but school is the catalyst. When we don’t successfully engage a student we fail him/her. And it needs to happen early. My only Truancy Court “success stories” occur when chronic truancy occurs by about 10-11. After that, we lose more than we wil and I end up reading the reports about the kids that went from truancy to juvenile court and on to “grown-up” crime and prison. Maybe if I keep thinking and reading and speaking to the professionals who can and do make such important differences for kids and families, some new ideas will manifest themselves. Help engage a child in learning. Stimulate and reward creative and critical thinking. My parents and grandparents gave me such incredible opportunities to explore. Kids need guides and role models.
Enough with the soapbox, already. As @LMS expertly presented, this was an amazingly successful and difficult effort. I found the theme very complete (if obvious to me) and well-executed. Don’t have any idea how to fix the frustration for on-paper solvers.
Spoiler alert! Refers to a Saturday answer. I thought that there was some convention about not having answers which are an article followed by a noun. EG, APUMPKIN or THEAMISH. Am I imagining this?
I don't care how skill much a puzzle like this takes to construct, if that skill isn't expended in making actual N minutes of my solve fun, it's wasted, and those N minutes last night weren't pleasurable. The endless back and forth between the clue answers and the clue questions wasn't fun. Didn't involve wordplay. This puzzle was a quintuple gainer with a half twist belly flop off the high board. Difficult as hell to pull off, painful to watch. Also, the app totally screwed with my solution. After I filled in the last square, I got the "you're almost there.." notice. I didn't care that I had a square or two wrong, so I put down the tablet. A few hours later I picked it up, and my rebus entries had turned to colored slices, and I had my congratulations, with no intervening effort on my part.
Also, I have next to no knowledge of Trivial Pursuit, other than I'm way too much of a douche bag to play Trivial Pursuit. When it first came out, my wife and I played with friends we were visiting in VT. I was having a good old time with the "I'm Daryl and this is my brother Daryl" jokes our whole visit. Around 10PM we started a game of Trivial Pursuit and I was cleaning up. At one point my wife asked how I knew an answer that she didn't and I said something along the lines of "Damn, even the Daryls around here know that!". It's a long ride from VT to NJ at midnight in total silence.
Enjoyed the 90 minutes it took me to untangle this puzzle while recovering from an illness. Never played trivial pursuit so I missed the significance of the colors, but YELLOW sea and Dan BROWN gave them away. Someday I must familiarize myself with the Lion King, because the TIMON/TAYE crossing Naticked me.
@Wm. c.:
They fought and died to the last man, rather than shame the Emperor by surrendering.
it's generally believed that such folks and times are long past. we'll see.
Talk about theme density! In the mag, I circled all of the theme answers AS WELL as the squares with the colors. Amazing. I liked playing the puzzle's trivia game but have to admit to not understanding 1) why the colors were squeezed into one square, 2) the significance of the circular arrangement of those squares and 3) the association of the colors with particular game categories - I can remember playing TP only a couple of times, and that was long ago. Anyway, wowza on the constructing feat and a solid GREEN on the Solving Delite Meter.
On Dan BROWN, yes, ridiculous but tons of fun to read. I'm a fan.
I usually agree with you, but not this time. I found the theme enjoyable, both due to the trivia questions and the tie to the Trivial Pursuit colors. And, since I use the app, I enjoyed the colorful cheese reveal (can’t recall them ever making such a clever use of a reveal in a rebus before).
Don't recall Trivial Pursuit ever havin so many fill-in-the-blank questions. Other than that, I thought this SunPuz was well-made, clever, and worth solvin. Not especially humorous, tho -- just … well … magically trivial.
12 themers and a (short) revealer is a lot. What this does to yer grid is probably what @RP was mostly honkin about. Namely, …
1. Eats up most of the space for non-themer longballs. CHRISTENDOM & STAYINALIVE did manage to sneak in, around the margins. M&A also kinda liked ANGELIC & COUGHED (up).
2. Allows for lotsa desperation potential. @RP named six lil alleged desperate darlins: INESSE. NOLO. AMAT. ANIS. SHH. ETAPE. M&A is not overly impressed by that there list, however. First of all, that's only 6 small fillins, out of 140. And one of em even has Patrick Berry Usage Immunity (the SHH one), too boot.
3. Only six U's in the puzgrid. @RP subliminally worries about this, a lot -- and sorta has a point, there.
Kinda liked that this was a rebus theme, plus lotsa other stuff also lumped in as part of the same theme mcguffin. Feisty & different.
Well played, Mr. Kwong dude. That Science & Nature question coughed up a green piece of pie awful easy, tho.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
Hats off to the constructor for this one. I’m not one for overly gimmicky puzzles, but this one is hard to beat. I mean, you end up with a nearly perfect circle of colors after finishing?? Even without the fancy computer trick at the end, that’s damn impressive. And if the fill gets a bit iffy here and there (and I’ve seen WAY worse), it’s in service to a suitably ambitious grid. Just the right amount of challenge and fun for a Sunday, IMHO.
Started the puzzle late last night. First thought: This is going to be a quip puzzle. Did my MEH for the evening - went to bed.
Good cup of coffee - favorite chair. Ooh, what do we have here? You gotta have some colors. That's it! Exhausting? Maybe...but in such a lovely way. Like running and finally reaching the wall and feeling soooo satisfied. Boy did I enjoy everything about this puzzle. My only trouble spot was the ULYNOV/MELLOW (Y) section. I had the EVER (G) in place so I figured color rebus was going to play major here. Didn't even think about Trivial Pursuit because I've never played it, but it didn't matter. I was having fun.
I read The DaVinci Code and like JOHN X, I couldn't put it down. I didn't think about potty breaks. I think I even finished the book without one. I, too, couldn't put it down. Then I remember when I first started reading this blog and participating, some intellectuals went on and on about how badly it was written and the plot was awful and how could you believe the utter nonsense. Until this very moment and because JOHN X has outed himself, I'm going to agree with him and say to all you people who never even read the book but want to sound all uppity and smart by bloviating about syntax rhetoric,...pffffft and pbbbt - and then some.
This was a fantastic puzzle, David. It shows imagination and lots of talent. Too bad @Rex was not in the mood to enjoy it. Maybe seeing Dan BROWN's name got his nickers in a twist he couldn't untangle.
I am just really blown away that people are thrilled by some colors appearing on a screen.
I feel like repeating “INESSE NOLO AMAT ANIS SHH” three times will summon the Ancients...
If Rex hated this is much then maybe he doesn’t enjoy crosswords as much as he thinks he does. This was clever and well done.
Oh lordy, there are a bazillion comments here and I haven't read them all yet. But I have to thank JOHN X for his wonderful roller coaster reprise of "The Da Vinci Code." It brought back great memories, to the extent that I immediately downloaded it from my library to read today, a snowy, cold Sunday, in front of the fire with a dog keeping my feet warm. Yeah, I've read it, but that was fifteen years ago and a rollicking good read, even if a repeat, especially when the details got DISPELled ages ago to make room for the questions I need to ask my doctor, the hard drive I need to return to a friend, and the list of what I need to pack for an upcoming trip (not to Venice, 'mericans) . . . Um, where was I? Oh yeah, I'm so PUMPed for this replay of a fun book. Rex, don't knock it if you haven't tried it.
Trivial Pursuit is another victim of old memories recently displaced, so the creativeness of the colored wedges was lost on me, but that's okay; the layers of intricacies even without the wedges were tons of fun, though I did have rose BOWL in pstead of ORANGE, so a technical DNF. But I didn't turn to Mr. Google for TIMON; managed to dredge that up all on my lonesome.
Now to see what the rest of you have to say.
Love a rebus. Sunday rebus in particular. Found this clever, not annoying.
Figured out the theme almost immediately and from then on it was all about trying to see if I could set a new personal best. And I did! As a kid we played trivial pursuit all the time so this was so much fun for me.
Drive thru Delaware and you'll know why. Chicken farms everywhere!
@Anon11:39 - Can you run a four minute mile? Can you hit a 95 mph fastball? Can you type 217 wpm? Rex isn’t even top echelon in speed solving. And whether you can best Rex or if you take 1:29:22, it is fine. There are videos on YouTube of the truly fast. Here’s a video of Rex’s first NYTX being solved in 2:17, “tough for a Tuesday.”
@Adam Frank - Even though I prefer solving in the paper, I think it’s fine to use the technology to good effect. People pay the NYTX for their online subscriptions distinct from a paper subscription and online news access, so I think it is good business practice to use the technology in new and creative ways. Still not my cuppa tea, but not everything they publish has to be for my enjoyment.
@CDilly52 - Yah, big difference between elementary and middle school students and high schoolers. At younger ages the issue is most definitely always the parent or parenting. If it develops as an issue at high school it is usually either a clinical issue or a social issue.
@paulsfo - i think omitting articles is preferred but has never been a hard and fast rule. I do think Rex and others have ranted about it in the past.
Okay - that’s four even though #1 didn’t say much, so until tomorrow.
FIRST there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is. FIRST there is a mountain then there is a mountain THEN there is. Donovan created the original earworm, or so it seems to me.
Obviously I am inspired today by Mr @mericans. If I ever get back to Europe Venice is on my revisit list. It is as you know a city that reveals unlikely joy down every street. My favorite memories are culinary. The best pizza I can remember was at a caffe at the end of one of those long streets that ends at a boat landing. And by far the best pasta I ever had was spaghetti con vongole, but the vongole were those tiny clams from the Lagoon. And the entire ingriedient list was spaghetti, olive oil, and those clams.
I'm with OFL on the puzzle. A horrible cross-referenced slog. Plus I got the colors wrong, having somehow forgotten about DAN BROWN, and not knowing TIMON from Simon.
No colors in the app for me :-(
Cool Magic Grid video. Wow!
@Wm. C. 12:06
(Though many of them did put Hitler in place)
Yea, just like many Americans put Trump in place. Bunch of idjits.
Here's another David King trick , this time with Scrabble. Man, this cat is good!
RooMonster
@Roo:
Yea, just like many Americans put Trump in place. Bunch of idjits.
just recall that it warn't all that 'many', just 78,900 in three states put him in place. that's it. massive mandate (you read that as two words, too. :) ).
I thought this was clever, but I didn't find it fun. An unusual number of clues had multiple possibilities that would fit, and I chose the wrong one many times. This could be a fun challenge, I suppose, but I'm not skilled enough to enjoy that (yet?). If this was done intentionally, in addition to the color theme, it's doubly impressive puzzle-making.
I don't like that the key to the puzzle, GENUS, is so obscure. I played Trivial Pursuit when it first came out, but have never heard of the "Genus" edition. Had to Google it.
What Loren said! Great puzzle.
I think it is a fine C+ puzzle. Not bad, but not good either. There were no points where I thought that the clue/answer was really noteworthy.
The tilting point into C+ from B- was the YECCH/OHMAN cross. I really hate any answer like YECCH that, if you just asked me to spell other than in a crossword, could be YECH or YECK or YECCK or YECCK or YEECH or YEECK or other things.
And to cross it with OHMAN was really weak.
My solve was held up because I had the perfectly correct alternate answer of YECCK and OKMAN. It took me several minutes to randomly try H instead of K.
@roomonster. OH MAN, this is driving me nuts. I watched the David Kwong scrabble trick, and HE HAS A MATH ERROR. The second digit from the left adds to 9, not 8 (3+4+1+1). Someone watch and tell me I'm wrong, please!
I hadn't even noticed that the color rebuses are symmetrical -- that's a nice touch. It was OK, but like @Rex I thought it was overly fussy, with the tangled cross-referencing. If MELLOW YELLOW hadn't been so obvious I might never have figured it out.
Some random points.
*I don't know how you serve chicken teriyaki at home, but in a Japanese restaurant it will not be served ON RICE -- it will be served with a bowl of rice that you can combine as you wish.
* I really wanted Fenway to be the OdDEST major-league ballpark. But it's only the OLDEST because it is so odd that everyone loves it.
*EELY? Reely?
BROWN BREAD is a thing, but not the thing clued. It is either something you buy in a can (usually found next to the canned bake beans), or a specialty of the Cheesecake Factory (which puts cocoa in it). Either way, it is sweet and distinctive -- not just "whole grain."
TIMON/TAYE is tough. I'm not good on my meerkate names. Vaguely heard of TAYE Diggs, whoever that is, and I would have known TIMON of Athens, but this one was almost a guess.
Very late in the day, due to ongoing family drama (it's OK, though), so I'll post this now, read the comments later (ok, skim the comments). I should be here earlier tomorrow, provided the paper gets here through the snow storm.
Also -- Spanish ouzo??? Is there Greek Jerez?
And I've never read Dan Brown either, but c'mon -- he certainly crossworthy, and the book that made him famous has CODE in the title, which is all you need to know.
The math is correct. There are only 3 digits, 3+4+1. You must be counting the letter I in highbrow as a digit.
Just writing in to say I really enjoyed this puzzle. Easy for a Saturday of course but I had fun moving back and forth between the trivia questions and the coloured answers.
(I meant a Sunday ;) )
Solved this on a trip out to ASTORIA for Fort George’s Festival of the Dark Arts— all the stouts you can drink! — so that was a fun coincidence.
@anonymous 3:09. You are right! Whew! Mea culpa, Mr Kwang.
@Malsdemare: The math is correct. There are only 3 digits, 3+4+1. You must be counting the letter I in highbrow as a digit.
@Roo (1:58) -- How the hell did he do that????????? Will someone who knows something about magic tricks please tell me HOW THE HELL DID HE DO THAT???????????
For @americans in Paris: Slice is a brand. My daughter, when young, asked me to get her some “orange Slice” at the store, and I came back with a can of mandarin oranges.
Reminds me of when my mother put “cold duck” (when it was popular) on the list, and my brother came home with a frozen duckling.
Of course, Dan Brown’s stuff is not great literature (the characterization is non-existent), but I too couldn’t put down The Da Vinci Code!
Just finished reading last Sundays blog and can't keep still. How could so many bright people be looking for Unique to be a place when the clue saidHome of the world's ONLY etc. obviously unique is describing New York as the only home of a 14 land suspension bridge.
for those who complained it leaves out New Jersey on the bridge's other end. I get that.
I don't know but I suspect the dollar bill was a plant. It would have been slightly more impressive if Melanie had chosen the dollar from among the three collected. Somehow it was all pre-arranged. How? It's magic!
This was my idea of a very enjoyable Sunday outing. Even after elements of the theme started to land, it took awhile to figure out. Colors? I see that, but they aren't roygbiv. So what colors are they, and why? It required time and concentration, which I like on Sundays, rather than a puzzle that can be zipped through on virtual autopilot.
I liked this one. A relative breeze. Should have been titled "Trivial Pursuits."
44D reads: How chicken teriyaki is USUALLY served. There is no way to say this is wrong without a detailed scientific survey of how this dish is served. Oh, unless you just want to sound smart.
@Mals
What you Talkin bout Mals?
Har.
It's 3+4+1, where are you getting the extra 1?
Roo
I am with those who think the puzzle was terrific. I can only imagine the difficulty of constructing such an intricate puzzle. I generally like a rebus, and this one was even better than usual. Thank you kindly, Mr. Kwong.
Once again, the puzzle did not live up to Rex’s expectations. Why am I not surprised? He obviously judges puzzles by a secret set of rules and procedures only he has access to. Those guidelines apparently give no credit whatsoever for creativity and intricate constructions. A single violation of the code apparently is enough to make him want to stop solving and just toss the puzzle. It must be hellish for him to write a blog about an activity that fills him with disgust and rage practically every day.
I, on the other hand, have no access to such a code. It is my lot to continue to be awestruck at puzzles like today’s and to appreciate that: (a) there are such things in life as crosswords, and (b) that there are constructors like Mr. Kwong, who elevate the craft of crossword construction to something like art.
Rex can keep his codes/guidelines.
Perhaps Melanie was a plant. He might have known the serial number in advance.
Funny how this puzzle generates extreme reactions. I'm in the appreciate-the-skill-but-found-it-boring camp. There were so many dated clues (Donovan? And I'm no spring chicken.) I actually looked up the constructor expecting him to be ancient and was shocked to see the opposite -- guess that's what I get for stereotyping. Didn't bother finishing, which rarely happens. Came here for the reality check.
@John X ... Bravo and hear, hear! The DaVinci Code sure ain't Shakespeare, but I loved the ride so much I also read Angels & Demons.
How the scrabble trick was done?
Assuming the girl was not a plant,
the second or third comment on the link given for the trick explains it fairly completely. Maybe better not to know?
But you do learn where the skill of the performance actually is.
@Anon (5:43) -- Yes, I'm sure she was a plant. And I'm sure there was some sleight of hand that enabled him to "palm" the $ bill with that particular serial number. And I'm sure he already knew what his three 7-letter words would be (even though he tried to make it look spontaneous) so that they would add up to the serial #. BUT....
The Scrabble tiles were chosen blindly by 5-6 different people. He couldn't know what they would be or if they would even contain the letters to make those particular 3 words. Then he had to make all those other words to fit on the Scrabble grid with exactly 2 letters left over. And they had to be an A and an E. I don't see how it was done. Although there was one place in which I thought he might be cheating. He made the word "DE" and said: "That's an accepted Scrabble word." And I'm thinking: No, it's not! I looked it up. In my Webster's it's listed as a prefix, and I didn't think prefixes were allowed in Scrabble. But who knows what's allowed in Scrabble these days? Or what a "Scrabble Dictionary" looks like. (I shudder to think). Anyway -- huge roadblocks to pulling off the trick that I can't figure out. But I guess that's why he's a magician and I'm not.
@Blue Hen Google "Chicken Teriyaki", look at a couple hundred of the images and report back on 'most'
Freaking mess of a puzzle. Rex didn't even mention the near-juxtaposition of down answers "NOUSE" and "USETO." This puzzle violated almost every rule of good puzzle conception/construction and not in a good way. YECCH (a term I last read in Mad Magazine ca. 1966, when I was a kid, and heard on "Dick Van Dyke" reruns when Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon) would address the term to Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) after enduring another one of Buddy's insults) indeed.
@CDilly ... Thanks for sharing your thoughts (folks are right ... this space needs thumbs-ups)
Oh, and BTW, it's "pinky," not "pinkie." I hate this puzzle, and I solved it (in print, in the magazine) with no help. YECCH again.
Ugh. I tried to read The DaVinci Code, and found the three page chapters and aha! moments every 30 seconds tiresome in the extreme. I gave up pretty quickly. I thought perhaps your post might make me second guess that decision, but by the time I’d finished your post I felt remarkably vindicated. Good job reproducing perhaps the most tedious literary style I have ever encountered. I would advise would-be writers to steer clear of Mr. Brown.
I’m probably being dense here, but your second paragraph seems to suggest that you believe an atom bomber was dropped on Germany. Sorry if my reading comprehension is lacking.
First post from a guy who does puzzles just to finish them with as few mistakes as possible and never times a solve. I read Rex's Rants because sometimes they're more than just over-the-top intellectual snobbery, because the site is a great way to check my solves a day early, and because, IMO, there are a lot of posters here whose comments are worth the reads, including those whose self-absorption and preening almost suffocate their wit and wisdom.
But sometimes, like w/ this puzzle, I have to wonder whether the anti-intellectual factions in this country aren't on to something.
This puzzle is an amazing feat of almost everything-- symmetry, clever/thought-inducing clues/answers, and, overall, a beautiful gift on a Sunday. Is it perfect, maybe not, but neither are the posts from those throwing stones from their glass houses, or dropping the stones from their ivory towers.
There is likely more than some truth that I, and ?? many others here, are here because we don't have as full lives as we might-- or have that judgment of themselves, fairly or un-. But, golly-gee, perhaps restrain the urge to compensate by puffing oneself up in the faux highbrow nit-picking that passes for critiquing of cross-word puzzles (which, hello, are games) and particularly of a puzzle that is spectacular in its execution and overall beauty. Plus, I never got the feeling that the constructor was showing off or taking himself too seriously. I can't say the same for Rex's comments and those of all too many of the above posters.
Yes! And the colors match the category colors of the original game. Sorry haters, I thought this was really cool.
Pretty quick, easy puzzle but boring. I never played Trivial Pursuit but I guess if you did the craftiness was sort of impressive.
I figured from Mellow Yellow that there would be rebuses.
Never heard of the Ikettes, blue hens or brown bread and the only orange man I know of is Trump.
Didn't like yecch at all. It's yuck.
Was just talking about Taye Diggs (who starred in RENT on Broadway) so that was weird.
I loved reading the DaVinci Code and I sell signed first edition books and Dan Brown was extremely lucrative for me.
See you next week!
Oh boy, Northwest killed me so had a big DNF.
Of all things, I spelled SHH incorrectly (5D - spelled it SSH). For whatever reason, this threw me off so much that 18A - Christendom - became impossible for me to suss out - along with the themer question re: evergreens (22A). I did get a kick when I came here to find that it's DEWITT Clinton (3D)
This was a bit of a slog for someone like me who likes to be lazy on Sundays (a lot of back and forth from the question clues to the answer clues, etc...)but I still had some fun and appreciated the small bit of elegance it offered. I think Rex was a bit too hard on it...
We love you, Loren! Excellent clips, both Borat and David Kwong. Thanks for broadening my horizons AND making me laugh. )Had to share both with the hubby.)
JOHN X for the Sunday win!
I seldom do a Sunday puzzle but was just in the mood this day. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Simply genius. I loved it and had a ball.
The only challenging part of this puzzle was that the Chicago Sun Times printed it such that the far right column wasn’t there! So, 16 D, 57D, and 101 D had to be written in...whatevs, easy puzzle if somewhat wonky having to go back and forth.
OHMAN, if EVAH there was a day to skip OFL, today's it. I thought this eminently clever and too cool for words. Having the color rebi appear in perfect symmetry, pie-wedge style, was the topper.
If I wanted to pick a nit, I'd say that the clue for IT'LL should read "words," plural. IT WILL, two words. So there. My, how that ruins everything...NOT!
Once the gimmick comes to light, this baby is Monday-easy--and the straightforward clues facilitate its coming to light. I don't mind an occasional break from the brain-twistings of late-week NYTXW-dom, for a change of pace. It was a fun do. DOD Molly Ringwald was indeed PRETTYINPINK--as in any other color. Give it a birdie, and make OFL go stand in the corner.
OLDEST ACTS ALLINONE
OHMAN, I'VE NOUSE for AMINOR,
and ASTORIA HIGHSCHOOL jive,
ORA PRETTYINPINK LACE whiner,
IT'LL be as CORNEAS STAYIN'ALIVE.
--- LEDA VAN ULYANOV
I found this a blast to solve, even though I DNF at the _AYE/_IMON crossing. It came down to a K or a T, and I chose the K. Ah well, I enjoyed the puzzle throughout with all that was going on, being coordinated between questions and answers, being symmetrical, accurately colour-coded, and extensive. Simply, WOW.
I have to admit I read The Da Vinci Code, and you must admit the guy is a talented storyteller, but when I finished I felt sort of dirty, much the way I've felt reading Grisham or Ludlum. Call me an effete snob.
I gather that @Rex didn't like this. What's new? I call him an effete snob, har.
YIPES! Trivia meets xwords with rebi in a big way, ALLINONE, actually. Found the first color with gimme MELLOWYELLOW. Just kept plugging away after that. ASFOR OFL, why is he so snobbish re: DANBROWN? If not for his SECRETCODE business I may never have visited Edinburgh or Rosslyn Chapel (a request from the missus before she was the missus).
OLE and no Sven. NOUSE is a DOOK to me.
Right here in west side of the puz we have ANGELIC yeah babies Joyce DEWITT and MORGAN Fairchild - the OLDEST is 69, the youngest is 69 ASWELL.
IBET it depends if you like this TYPE of puz. Good thing I kept an OPEN mind, almost tossed it early on.
Solving this puzzle was like listening to jazz music. I can appreciate the cleverness and I bet it was a challenge to put together - seriously, I'm impressed. It doesn't actually sound very good though.
Got the idea - may finish...in a while...
On to the Oscars?
Lady Di
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