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Combination in the card game bezique / FRI 3-29-19 / Comic Brennan / City that was the first capital of French Louisiana
Friday, March 29, 2019
Constructor: Martin Ashwood-Smith
Relative difficulty: Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: GLISSANDI (50A: Dramatic musical effects) —
In music, a glissando (Italian: [ɡlisˈsando]; plural: glissandi, abbreviated gliss.) is a glide from one pitch to another (
Per Wikipedia, this is a GLISSAND[O] Play (help·info)). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the continuous portamento.
• • •
Hi all, Rachel Fabi filling in for Rex tonight.Oh man, this puzzle was so not my speed (which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it!). Between the comedians I was only passingly familiar with (MEARA, BRENNAN), the weirdly Louisiana-specific trivia through the middle (DIXIELANDJAZZ, MOBILEALABAMA), the retro office equipment (DOTMATRIX, apparently a kind of printer?), and the 20th century athletes (DIZ, EDBERG), I really struggled with this one. I also have some serious gripes with the fill.
The puzzle definitely skewed older; in addition to the DOTMATRIX printer, we had a 1929 Gershwin title girl (LIZA), a play from an obscure card game that is related to another obscure card game that is maybe related to Pinochle? (MELD - 23A: Combination in the card game bezique), and plenty of other things that were just so far beyond my own cultural universe that I really struggled to unravel them. Which is fine! Possibly even the point of crossword puzzles! I do not begrudge the constructor his less-than-current fill, any more than other solvers in whose wheelhouse this puzzle comfortably fit might resent a puzzle filled with the neologisms characteristic of younger constructors. Speaking for myself, I do crossword puzzles to learn new (or old) things, so I am definitely not irritated by the things I didn't know. What I cannot forgive, however, is sticking those things together with the fill we have here.
 |
| Moe does not approve of your fill |
The most egregious of the fill is DERE (38A: In dat place). Absolutely. Not. If you get to a place where you are making up words to put in the clue for a made up word, you need to reevaluate your grid and tear some things out. There will just never be a time when you should be filling your puzzle with non-words (and/or potentially offensive riffs on accents). Also terrible: RIS, an obscure partial from the name of a French dish that really does not google in English; MOE, as in eeny-meeny-miny-moe; LAE (32D: Ka ___ (southernmost point of Hawaii)); the aforementioned DIZ; and DAH, which is a morse code noise.
I appreciated the challenge of this puzzle, and I think the stair-step grid design is funky and interesting with those little YES/MOE cutouts. While the content often escaped me, I don't think anything in the puzzle was unfair; everything I struggled with had reasonable crosses, and I was able to finish only slightly above my average Friday time. Overall, despite my gripes with the fill, I enjoyed it.
Bullets:
- OATEN (42D: Like some straw)— It seems that OATEN is the adjective form of oat, so OATEN straw is straw from oats? Learning new things about agriculture!
- DIXIELANDJAZZ (31A: New Orleans entertainment) — Have to admire the constructor for really going for it with the X, J, and double Z here.
Thanks to Rex for letting me stop by!
Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld
[Follow Rachel on Twitter]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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121 comments:
Should have clued DERE with Tsun____ to skew way younger than the NYT standard.
Easy. No real problems with this one. Faster than yesterday’s. Perhaps @Rachel because I skew older.
A few more cringes than I’d like...VISED, FOXILY, XII, DERE, DIZ...but mostly OK, liked it.
Luckily, I managed to get all the proper names right for a change, so it wasn't that bad. I think VISED is ill advised, but this was a good workout anyway.
DERE are a few nits to pick - a pileup of proper names in the west and isolated NW and SE corners - but I enjoyed this a lot. It’s great to have MAS back!
I praised yesterday's puzzle for being clever and not being a trivia contest. Today, we have trivia out the wazoo. ADLER MEARA BARRYGIBB LIZA DIZ NEAL JLO JAREDLETO EDBERG LARA DRDRE, et alii. Most of them crammed into the top half, which did not make for a good start. Now ladle in a cupful of LAE MELD DERE CTEAM VISED XII .. and maybe RIS, I dunno, I cook, I like French food, it was a gimme for me, but I could see how others would find it unfair. (Sweetbreads are delicious, by the way)
At first, I was muttering "#$%* this puzzle" as I "solved" the top half. DIXIELAND JAZZ opened it up for me and I was able to relax a bit and enjoy. The bottom third wound up being quite easy.
This is not a puzzle I would recommend to a newcomer to Friday solving, but in the end the crosses were fair and relatively Natick-free (LETO/LARA was at least guessable). On to Saturday.
A very average Friday. The NW was easy to fill. I blanked on GIBB though. That tells you how much of an impression the Bee Gees made on me.
Restarting in the NE was no problem 7D thru 10D we're all low hanging fruit. 20A's clue seems to be a debut for this entry. He's certainly unknown to me. I partially filled in the very east end of the middle stacks before going over to their west end to really start them.
Other than reading the 35A clue as a verb and hesitating on DEALERS the middle was the easiest part. I didn't fix my TOE/MOE write over until I came around the SW corner. The only hesitation there was not putting in VISED until I'd confirmed every letter. There was nothing else it could be but it was just that bad.
The only thing I questioned when I finished was the OATEN /LARA crossing. Did I think oats grew on trees? Strange.
Pardon the excessive details I haven't commented in a few days.
Wow, thanks Rachel. Way to make a 40-year-old feel ancient. What with my Dr. Dre tapes and my dot matrix printers and my Stefan Edberg tennis shorts.
I will say that the key to this one was knowing DIZ(zy Dean) which led to DIXIELANDJAZZ, and from there it all fell into place.
Definitely one of the worst crosswords I've ever seen. They must be really getting desperate. DERE? Really?
I’ll fess up to a couple of little Googles to help me out on a very slow start. Once I got those in place, thank you JARED LETO and WONKY, things go a lot easier. Still had to chip away at it for a while. FOXILY I thought was a little odd, but now that I think of it, I picture of our Border Collie, Robby, stalking Rice, the kitty. He’s still a puppy and hasn’t figured that Rice doesn’t need to be herded. A couple of swats to the nose should halt that behavior.
Two thumbs up, even though I had to do a little cheating.
Well my dream came true. The NOMAS (dook) drought I whined about last week is finally over! In a perfect world the grid would be solid stacks but I’ve never met a MAS puzzle that didn’t interest me and today’s is no exception. I find that both MAS and Patrick Berry create end week crosswords that appear unsolvable at first, but with a bit of perseverance come together beautifully. When I look back at the completed grid, I want to press the “that was easy” button.
MOBILEALABAMA was my favorite answer. Now the America’s Junior Miss Pageant won't be the first thing that comes to mind when I think of that surely fair city. Don’t even ask how I know that, but a very belated congrats to Diane Sawyer.
Agree. Found it pretty easy for a Friday.
He’s baaa-ck! I agree with @Hartley - MASes start out seemingly impossible but then after chipping away here and there bam you’re done.
I have to vehemently disagree on the DERE hating. De ting is, dat dere phonological shift from an interdental fricative to an easier alveolar plosive is fun, colorful, and not at all potentially offensive in my Most True and Correct Way of Dialect Appreciation. And MAS foxily included DERE as a wink-wink to its common use in dialects of Louisiana. DIXIELAND. You also here it in Newfoundland... Brooklyn, NY... Won, KY. I get that since those who may pronounce it DERE will be judged as dumb (read - not, ahem, one of Us, the enlightened). But I would venture to say that some grammandi out there are running around saying heighth for height. What. Do TH sounds just make people seem more educated?
And, yeah, I totally went all fancy linguistics vocab on you because interdental fricative might just impress the hell out of someone. Or not. Hey- I try.
I bought an Us Weekly yesterday to feed my rage on the monster moms college cheatgate. So SAT SCORES was timely. On a side note, J LO’s picture was on every other page, and I’ve decided to look like her instead of Audrey Hepburn. It’s my plan, though, to smile more and not look so stuck-up.
Glad to have you back, Martin. You da man.
Someone please explain ATEAT to me.
The combination of vague cluing and names I didn't immediately know made for a bit of a battle, but through the skill of Martin and the editors to fairly cross/clue difficult answers, the puzzle, albeit hesitatingly, fell. I was taken aback by the initial toughness, then taken aloft through victory, and that, combined with answers like MALADROIT, GLISSANDI, and WREAK, is what I love in a puzzle. Thank you for a MAS-produced beauty!
@TokyoRacer- it’s a dook. The problem ATE AT me.
Raced through this in record time. For me. 12 minutes. No cheating. I’d missed this guy’s puzzles. I knew Mobile because it has the oldest Mardi Gras in the States. I think. DEREfore I am.
For those of you griping about DERE, please look up the inspiring Lou and Peter Berryman song “Dem Deer”, which has the wonderful chorus:
Dem deer dey’re here
Den dey’re DERE
Dey’re here dey’re DERE
Dey’re everywhere
- Jim C. in Maine
As I read the blog I was so pleased that Rex had finally expressed some generosity (“I do not begrudge the constructor...”) — but then got to the end and saw that it was written by someone else. Oh, well. But thank you, Rachel. Although I’m of the dot matrix generation, I appreciated your comments. :)
Doctors (with a few exceptions) haven't been required to take oral exams in decades.
@LMS, I appreciate your linguist insights, as always, but I have to agree that DERE, while accurately representing multiple US accents, also belongs to a long, ignoble US history of juxtaposing normative speech against the speech of an underclass, frequently but not exclusively African-Americans. Just spend a little time comparing the speech of white characters to black characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Or, to bring the conversation up to date, catch this Code Switch episode on accents: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=636442508. So while everything you say is true, US culture doesn’t tend to look at differences in speech as a source of joyful discovery but as yet another way to isolate and often denigrate people whose speech doesn’t conform to norms. DERE can be both an accurate representation of an alveolar plosives (if you say so—I don’t know linguistics the way you do) and a rendering that carries significant racist baggage.
Very quick and easy here this morning. A bit of joy after a night of bracket busting. Played like a Tuesday, but no complaints.
Don't many current card games have melds?
Count me in the pro column. The middle section was lively, even though JUBILEE is one of my least favorite words.
p.s. @Jamie C, Ph.Ds & Ed.Ds have to take oral exams.
Continuing the easiest week in memory. Only overwrite was ILL fitted before ILL AT EASE. Felt like an average Wednesday.
That said, I really enjoyed the puzzle. The three stacks are all super, and while I agree with all of Rachel's beefs, especially DERE, and she didn't even mention XII, those flaws did not bring me down as the crosses were fair.
@chefwen. Please don't hit your dog. Consult a trainer if you need a behavior change.
I'm older and this puzzle had some fun stuff (mentioned above) but all the names were ridiculous. The crosses didn't always help. annoying
💻
Thanks LMS. Dat dere post is a great way to start my day!
@Dog Lover, I think the cat will do the swatting, not gentle chefwen. Our rescued stray cat has taught us where and where not to pet using that same method. Very effective. And I liked the puzzle too!
DAT DERE is a jazz classic, written by Bobby Timmons, covered by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messangers and dozens of others. Most famously, Oscar Brown Jr added lyrics, resulting in this, perhaps the best jazz tune ever. If you want the definition by example of cultural appropriation, listen to the Mel Torme's claim that he wrote the song. You'll likely want to punch him as much as do I every time I think of it.
A FOXILY constructed and clued puzzle that was challenging but (mostly) fair and that consumed my complete attention. I was all set to say how sorry I was that it was over -- until I hit the SE and suddenly it wasn't over. Would I be DRAGged DOWN by the cross of JARED LETO/SETO and LARA/SARA? No. One twosome sounded vaguely familiar and one didn't, so I guessed right. Whew. I was almost undone in that corner by my temporary brain freeze on both the words WREAK and WONKY, but both came to me in the nick of time before I had to consult my Roget's. Whew again.
DOT MATRIX for "Laser"? Can you have DOT MATRIX eye surgery? Oh, well, I'll take your word for it, MAS, that there's a sense in which this works -- even though I have no eye-dea how. A could have skipped the four pop proper names, but other than that, I thought this was a nifty puzzle.
I’m in the older wheelhouse as wel, and found it easy for Thursday for sure.
to Jamie C.; think of PhD doctors. I believe they still sit oral exams
The comedy team of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi used the phrase "Hello Dere!" as part of their act, and it was the title of a live comedy album, FWIW.
We haven't seen an MAS puzzle in awhile so I was happy to see his name. I learned many things like the card game I never heard of and a new (to me) place in Hawaii. Which reminded me of @ chefwen and the misunderstanding of @ dog lover 7:19. Cats can be very effective teachers. Speaking of teachers, glad to have @ LMS back in good form.
Timely answer for 23A after all of the sympathetic mind melds being sent her way.
Wow, Sting looks about 12 in that video!
Chefwen... if you don't know that you don't "swat the nose" of your border collie puppy--ESPECIALLY for doing what he is bred to do--you have no business having one.
Do yourself and that pup a favor and give it to someone who knows collies.
Get another cat.
Puzzle was pretty easy for a Friday. But I skew 70...
I loved and laughed at DERE. How many friends do I have that simply cannot and don't care about how they pronounce the American th? GOBS. Well...at least two very close ones. My Filipina friend, Marietta and Yung Sook, from South Korea. And sorry, the accent is joyful to my ear and doesn't carry any racist baggage. Accents thrill me no end.
My bugaboos were in the same Rachel camp, other than the zippity quick DIXIE LAND JAZZ. Got that off the D from my favorite DOUBTFIRE. I crossed my fingers it worked, and it did.! What a wonderful name - Mrs. DOUBTFIRE and one of my all-time favorite feel good movies.
Without blinking, I penned in DOUBLE crosses at 35A. That held me up something fierce. Good ole DILL SEEDS with the D made me change my mind, but it took a while.
I love me some MAS and have missed him no menos. I know he will always have something foodie and something musical. Speaking of RIS de eau....YES @TomAz.... sweetbreads are delicious. In Argentina they eat them in the parrilladas they famously cook. They melt in your moth. Too bad they are referred as "offal" and too bad so many think they are from the lower extremities of the bull (like my husband)....
Had no Googles today other than to check my answers. Of all things, I wasn't sure how to spell TRAYFUL. I thought it had two LL's.
Love me some WONKY.
ATE AT
YES, YES and YES! Maybe I'm old, maybe I'm a trivia dork, maybe it was a wheelhouse thing -- OK, all three -- but I sailed through this. The puzzle isn't perfect, but this grid has GOBS -- dare I say TRAYFULS -- of fun stuff in it. The collection long entries are simply spectacular, with three great triple stacks and six (!) nine-letter entries knifing through them. Holy crap! LAE, RIS, ALB, DAH and DERE are crap, which on other days MIGHT bother me. Not today though. I actually love how MAS owns the cruddiness of DERE with an equally cruddy clue. Every once in a while, two wrongs do make a right.
Other thoughts:
-- CTEAM. Like DERE, it just sits there owning its badness. Awesome.
-- Yep, these days DERE's GOBS of OPEDPAGE space devoted to the efficacy of an SATSCORE.
-- Ah, the great Stefan EDBERG, one of the last truly great serve-and-volleyers. Tennis fans tend (rightly) to remember the 1991 US Open for age-39 Jimmy Connors storming to the semis before tiring out against Jim Courier. Well, Edberg absolutely destroyed Courier in the final with perhaps the most brilliant display of serve-and-volley tennis I have ever seen. I really miss players like him, but with racquet technology being what it is, those days are gone forever.
Bravo, MAS! Mas, por favor!
Quite the Friday workout. Trying to squeeze DIXIELANDBAND in gummed up the works for quite a while. I had to convince myself there was a Sid Dean in baseball history and a Gershwin tune titled “Gina.” Almost as bad as finally finishing the puzzle and thinking “Who the hell is Ed Berg?” Need more coffee...
Occasionally “skewing older”, instead of skewing Rapper is ok for us older folks. Regardless of age most baseball fans are likely to know of Dizzy Dean. And probably a couple older folks know Dr Dre. Though not me.
Believe me, sweetbreads don't melt in your moth. Damn.
And...@Dog Lover and @70 in Nampa. (sigh)...Really? My cat, Marmalade always playfully swatted our Lab, Murphy on the nose. It was the sweetest swat you ever saw. AND...@chefwen is such an animal lover that cows find a way to get lost in her back yard.
Got everything except the the SE. Didn't know "JETES" or "JARED LETO." Tough puzzle, but fair. Was Jared Leto really an idol?
To a Brit, “wonky” definitely means “crooked”. I believe it was Kiera Knightley who said “I have wonky teeth”.
@ dog lover and @ 70 in Nampa, You don't know who you are talking about with @ chefwen. She has the full support of this animal loving crowd so but out.
@70 in Nampa 9:05...er, methinks it is the cat doing the swatting and not chefwen. Perhaps think before disparaging someone.
Enjoyed DERE, as in rhat dere. Perfectly acceptable.
Amen re ERDBERG, one of last elegant real tennis players, ‘fore technology allowed pushers to take over.
DIXIEjazzband… nope.
DIXIElandband… nope.
DIXIELANDJAZZ! There it is!
And yeah, DERE can GTFO. I really liked this puzzle otherwise.
Hey All !
@chefwen's cat is doing the swatting. Reread her post, she said the pup is trying to herd the cat.
Ok puz. The SE got me my DNF. WONKY as clued is wonky. To me, WONKY means strange, out of whack. Not preoccupied with arcane details. That's ANAL. (The word, that is.)
Have to agree with the DERE opposers. Just seems off somehow. Even though there are only three X's, it seemed I kept finding them.
Apart from that SE corner, managed to get the rest of puz fairly fast. Had tOns for GOBS messing things up a bit. Also started with DIXIELAND bAnd. MALADROIT was new, ON A LEAD was tough-ish, EDBERG not known since apparently I didn't pay attention to tennis then.
DILL wEEDS would've been funnier. Har.
FOXILY NAG
RooMonster
DarrinV
Mostly easy outside of the northwest corner, which is just *awful*. I don't mind proper names/trivia in a crossword, but space it out a little, geez. ADLER/MEARA/BARRYGIBB all right next to each other is atrocious. Made worse by the fact that "BARRYGIBB" is what connects that section to the rest of the puzzle, and getting "YGIBB" from the crosses below is really useless if you don't already know the trivia fact.
The cluing on the crosses up there wasn't great either. HERR and TRAYFULS are fine, MAMBA was tough but fair, but what makes a GLARE distinctively "public"? Can you not GLARE at someone in a private room? Weird clue. And "apotheosis" is kind of related to IDEAL, I guess, but not a close enough synonym to justify the one-word clue there, imo.
Had sara and seto instead of Lara and Leto. 3 DNF in a row. 5 out of 7. And I found this one easy other than that one square. ARGHH!
Needed to google for Gibbs first name and the L in Lae and that enabled me to finish. In all other respects found the puzzle challenging but enjoyable.
@anon12:22 - I like your idea, but tsunDERE is one word everywhere I look, so I don’t think it works as a clue.
@Hartley70 - I chuckled at your last paragraph. No need to explain, not knowing makes the story better.
@Vicky Smith - I think @LMS said the same thing. The problem is the mocking, not the vernacular. This puzzle, with a pretty obvious New Orleans motif, can hardly be accused of mocking.
XII - Ugh. Isolated corners - Ugh. Otherwise I really liked this.
Regarding all the proper names, I just counted and this puzzle has a relatively low PPP of 18 of 68, a very reasonable, as these things go, 26%.
To those shaming @chefwen for her “swat” comment” - get a VISED grip on your faux indignation. She’s not going to swat the dog, the CAT is. Both animals are acting on instinct, and the whole matter will be settled after a couple of whacks to the Border Collie’s nose just as nature intended.
I worked with a gentleman from northern Minnesota decades ago, i.e. light years before DOTMATRIX printers. Practically every TH word he spoke started with a D: da, dis, dat, dere, dose, dem, etc. He claimed it was part of his Norwegian family’s dialect. So dere’s dat for what it’s woith.
I have fond memories of dose printers, as well as DIZ, LIZA and The Bee Gees, so I had an easy time of it today. Quite a pleasant Friday, thanks to MAS. I couldn’t help but notice it was one letter short of a pangram. Nice.
@LMS, @Vicky Smith, et al: regarding the word dere, you all might be interested in a film entitled “If These Knishes Could Talk”. It’s about the New York accent, which many call the Brooklyn accent. The movie is free on Amazon Prime and it’s about an hour in length. Very entertaining, and you might pick up a fact or two. Here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/If-These-Knishes-Could-Talk/dp/B014Y1ODBW. Enjoy!
Oh yeah, the puzzle... like others, I thought that Rex was trying a new, kinder approach to his crossword criticism, only to see at the end that it was by a different person. Another hope dashed...
I thought the puzzle was challenging. It took me a while to get going, but once I did get going, it went pretty smoothly. Being from Brooklyn, the word dere doesn’t bother me a bit. So dere.
Shouldn't it be TRAYSFUL
My high school English teacher would have taken me to task for using TRAYFULS instead of traysful. It was an impertinence up with which she would not put.
Didn’t you see the earlier entries? The cat is doing the swatting! Jeez, people, get a clue!
He was referring to the cat.
A JETE is a jump not a hop and can't be done at a barre
Seems here that rhat DERE is akin to rhat Chere, so ok.
I kept chipping away at it and enjoyed every second of it, but my time was abysmal..
It was a real solid grid with good cluing and I only blame myself for taking so long.
Loved the New Orleans stuff -- made me think of WHO DAT.
I'm trying to process what it means that someone can sincerely ask if a Dot Matrix is "apparently a kind of printer?" I had quite a few of them -- and it doesn't feel that long ago!
I looked at this briefly last night and struggled and only got about 3 answers and said forget it. But this morning it was smooth and pleasant -- I wouldn't say it was easy, but it put up very little resistance. Somehow, getting OPED PAGE led to filling in the whole thing, except for the SE. Had a real hard time remembering LARA, even though I spent several hours with her in South Africa some years ago. Horrible what happened to her in Egypt.
Same mistake on DIXiELANDBAND. That prevented me from seeing JEREDLETO and the whole SE corner. Still an enjoyable struggle though. Only slightly higher than average Friday time. I agree about DERE though... Made up or racist or both.
PhD doctors...
I Double..Dawg...Dere you!
Apparently a simple misunderstanding,...and it's butt.
Deez, doze, dem, dat and dare (DERE) All remind me of my uncle from Chicago. I loved to listen to him talk.
I did the side-eye to 11 Down "Things doctors need to take" when the answer turned out to be ORAL EXAMS. That implied that the "doctor" was a PhD doctor. I have a PhD and taking the ORAL EXAM was the last requirement BEFORE being award the degree. So doctors don't need to take them, PhD candidates need to take them to become a doctor.
While I'm on the subject, ORALS or ORAL EXAM appears from time to time in a grid and is usually clued along the lines of it being a "grueling" test. It doesn't have to be. It wasn't for me. If you are a graduate student seeking a terminal degree, when the time comes to do the dissertation, make sure all of your committee members are completely informed and are in agreement and approval at every step of the way, from the initial proposal, to the research methods, and down to the final dissertation copy. Then, as with me, your ORAL EXAM will be a pleasant formality where hearty congratulations are given, you're welcomed into the PhD club, and then everyone can go out for a nice lunch.
And yes, I did notice that ORAL EXAMS and DOUBLE DEALERS needed that two for one Plural Of Convenience to fill their slots.
Somewhere I read that MOBILE ALABAMA gets the most annual rainfall of any place in the contiguous 48. But with climate change all around, that may no longer be the case.
I was once on a hiring committee where one of the other members opposed hiring a candidate I thought was excellent because, "she's a dese and dose kind of person." I was appalled, but the rest of the committee thought we should go with someone we could all agree on. So I get how it can be pejorative, but I didn't think it was here.
Anyway, tough puzzle. I couldn't get a foothold until TRAYFULS, and even then I only put in the first four letters in case it turned out to be TRAYs full. (Never noticed until now that the second version needs an additional letter.) Then i put in lOtS before GOBS, and left it there for most of the solve, making me need all the other crosses to see JUBILEE, and needing that to see the G in GOBBS. I finally worked my way to the end, the LARA/LETO cross. Lucky guess, maybe I'd heard of LETO sometime.
I got RIS from the crosses without noticing. I actually had RIS de Veau once, in a bistro on the right bank of the Seine called "Trumilou." When I ordered it, I was under the impression that it involved rice. I ate it though, it wasn't bad -- and you're supposed to get organ meats in bistros, after all.
I was surprised and elated to learn that there was a star athlete (tennis? Golf has an Open, but you wouldn't call it "singles," right?) named ED BERG! (No relation, though). Then I come here to learned that it was really someone named "Edberg;" now my day is ruined.
Alternate clue:
Why did people go on the Grand Tour? TO REAP ART
What did the ancient Romans call a flirt? ILLA TEASE
Rachel, your write up echos everything in my brain...thanks for validating my gripes!
Epic fail in the SE and East Central for me today. And on a MAS puzzle, one of my favorites! It's enough to make me sad for the rest of the afternoon.
I could blame DIXIE LAND bAnd but that's only one of my MALADROIT moves. JARED LETO was a teen idol? Really? I had no idea.
I put in DERE right away from the clue, based on the German and Scandinavian accents I grew up with. Then I began to wonder if it should be DERr.
But the SE - I had NASTY crossing ATE AT and wasn't sure of either. I thought of DRAG DOWN but couldn't come up with any words starting with W that meant "unleash" which wreaked all havoc on my solve.
My straw was baled and then dried. Journalist Logan was "who?"
One thing I did manage to come up with was DOT MATRIX but not without all the crosses. I was fixated on "Laser" in the 15A clue as being related to some sort of health or beauty product so _OT______X might have been some sort of commercial usage of "botox". Har, printers!
I'm with all of the MAS fans - thanks for such an awesome Friday puzzle, Mr. Ashwood-Smith!
@ Anon 12:13, I know it's butt not but.
You try typing with paws and no opposable thumb! Grr.
Hey, DERE! Older guy [(30A.) (VI) - II] here and I had a blast with this one. Amazed at how long it took me to get to poor EDBERG. Ran thru Agassi, Lendl, Johnny Mac, Borg, and was ready to resort to Lew Hoad and Pancho Gonzalez. A shame, because Edburg could play.
Surprisingly, GLASSANDI and MALADROIT provided footholds while both GIBB and LETO were hold ups. Lots of fun longer words and mischievous clues. Perfect Friday . . . for a senior fellow. Thanks, MA-S.
And, @LMS - I have nothing against JLO, but the thought of anyone abandoning the look of the one and only AH saddens me. Please reconsider.
Well I'm the older solver and this one was brutal for me. I'm also a composer, so rather than finding glissandi "dramatic" I find them "trite", or even "boring". I love a Gershwin tune, how about you? Yet I never heard of the eponymous "Liza".
The Gibbs never did much for me, I guessed Bobby. I do know funny Anne, but I always want her last name to be Mirin. No clue about Neal Brennan; never heard of him. Had to come here to find out some guy named "Ed Berg" is actually somebody "Edberg". Odd how I never think of snakes as predators, good way to get off on the wrong foot.
This one dragged me down and tore me apart. I eventually finished but had to cheat, so DNF.
By the way, many Federal forms are required in triplicate and have that lovely coated transfer paper to fill them out on. You need either a typewriter of a dot matrix printer to use these forms, so they're not unused these days, just specifically used.
The online dictionaries all to seem to give trayfuls an acceptable rating. My 1914 or so -title pages missing - Websters New International Dictionary does not give the plural of trayful. It does give the plural of spoonful as spoonfuls.
I believe "in the glare of publicity" and "in the harsh glare of publicity" are common enough usages to justify the GLARE cluing.
I hope people knew 28D to get JAZZ. What a pity a character like Dizzy Dean could be forgotten. When English teachers (and maybe those who disdain dat dere "DERE" answer) attacked his radio playbyplay he replied in part: So what if I say he slud into third. I never finished third grade, and if I had I would of passed my Old Man.
I'm old enough and maybe 3/4 of it went very fast, but finishing up was long and drawn out. The NW SE SW corners. But any Friday finish is good for me.
Oops. I met NW corner was hard. Think I might have said NE?
Challenging? Not in the least. Some rough going here and there, but so what. Well, maybe "challenging" for someone ageist, someone who wants everything to be relevant to her generation and thinks nothing else matters. Rex, I hope Rachel doesn't fill in again for you. Although, come to think of it, you too complain about too much "old" stuff. I think Martin Ashwood-Smith maintained a fine balance between contemporary references and older references. After all, college graduates certainly should have taken history courses in high school and college that touched on the past. And college graduates are capable of reading and understanding newspapers, including the New York Times. The NYT kindly carries this crossword puzzle....
Was this puzzle too 57A "wonky" for Rachel? Glissandi should be well known to anyone who plays a musical instrument or listens to classical music. Nothing particularly arcane or "weirdly Louisiana-specific" about two clues that are about American history and American music, 34A and 36A. I am I lifelong New Yorker and I knew the answers. How? A good public school education and an awareness of the country in which I live -- and, yes, a few crosses to give my memory a boost. And it is not trivia! 19A skews young and sure is trivia. The answer is JLO, oh, so so so special? 12D, ris was a fine answer with a fine clue, not at all terrible fill. Uncommon, and, yet, easy enough, if you've ever seen his de veau on a menu, or if you have a smattering of French. And it certainly is available on Google. Duh. I never heard of Jared Leto, poor culturally deprived me, but I was able to finish the puzzle anyway. 41D, DrDre, is so common in crosswords that even though I don't listen to rap or hiphop or 21st century pop music in general, but I sure know who he is.
I get annoyed with Rex for his ageist response to "old" cluing, but this commentary by Rachel is the most inane I have read when I come to this blog.
DAT DERE
Hey Daddy, what's dat dere? And what's dat under dere?
Oh Daddy, oh hey Daddy, hey look at over dere!
And what dey doing dere? And where dey go in dere?
And Daddy can I have dat big elephant over dere?
Hey, who's dat in my chair? And what she doing dere?
And Daddy, hey Daddy, can I go over dere?
Hey Daddy, what is a square? And where do we get air?
And Daddy can I have dat big elephant over dere?
My quizzical kid!
Man, he doesn't want anything hid!
He's forever demanding to know
Who, what and why and where!
Inquisitive child!
And sometimes the questions get wild!
Like "Daddy can I have dat big elephant over dere?"
Don't wanna comb my hair. And where's my teddy bear?
Daddy, oh hey! Look at the cowboy coming dere!
Hey, can I have a pair of boots like dat to wear?
And Daddy can I have dat big elephant over dere?
The time will march, the years will go
The little fellow's gonna grow
I gotta tell him what he needs to know
Help him along so he'll know right from wrong
Gotta make him strong
As life's parade goes marching by
He'll need to know some reasons why
I don't have all the answers but I'll try
The best I can, gonna make him a plan
So he'll be a man
You give a kid your best. And hope he'll passes the test
When you finally send him out into the world somewhere
But though he's grown, I'm bettin' I never will forget
"'n' Daddy, can I have dat big elephant over dere?"
Hey why dey do dat dere? And how you work dat dere?
Oh Daddy, hey Daddy, what dey say up dere?
Hey, Daddy, what is fair? How come I gotta share?
And Daddy can I have dat big elephant over dere?
@Pete -- Sheila Jordan does a good version too. Mel Tormé claimed he wrote it? Really? Everyone knows Oscar Brown Jr. wrote the lyrics, it's on his "Sin And Soul" album.
I like any puzzle with lots of music-related clues and answers. ("GTO" was also a song by Ronnie & the Daytonas, and in "We Built This City" the Starship sang "Marconi plays the MAMBA...")
Gotta love people who come here only to tout their own superiority. Talk about inane. Are you this insufferable in real life, or only on crossword blogs?
Old and out-dated content is NOT "skewing older." It's just bad. I'm old enough to know things like MEARA and DOT MATRIX. That doesn't mean I want those words in my puzzle (and it's nothing personal toward the late, great ANNE MEARA.) It's like the constructor was simply consulting a stale word list with no effort to make the puzzle current or fun.
Thought that this one was good and crunchy, slightly north of my average time. DNFed on MOE/EDBERG because reasons. I liked DOTMATRIX, GLISSANDI, and MOBILEALABAMA in particular today. The last one perhaps because I just scored Blonde on Blonde at a used record store this weekend. OATEN crossing WONKY was a propos, because that is truly a wonky word.
My only nit to pick with the cluing was ALB, because ALB already legitimate word, so why use a non-existent abbreviation? The current postal usage for Alberta is AB, and before that it was ALTA. Nowhere at any time has ALB been the neighbour of BC. *checks wikipedia to make sure* It appears that the traditional French postal abbreviation was ALB, but that was not indicated in the clue, so my pedantic gripe stands.
My wife once asked a NYC waiter where the restroom was located. His response, "dat door dere dear." True story.
@chefwen, We had both a BC and a cat and it was so much fun. The dog picked up immediately that the cat shouldn’t be allowed to climb screens or sofa-backs, and boy, the cat learned fast from the dog. But she did swat his nose- she used to run under his legs from behind and reach up to swat on her way through, then tear outta there.
For anyone who is worried that people might try that swatting thing- rest easy. Border Collies have to get their nasal vaccines administered as injections. Nobody has quicker avoidance responses. @chefwen, I envy you.
Thought this puzzle was pretty easy for a Friday. And I did enjoy the mini themes. @Rachel's review made me wonder where we draw the line between historical references and skewing old. A contemporary memory of that Gershwin song would only be possible in an old-skewing solver who’d seen about 90 birthdays. For the rest of us, it’s just stuff we know (or don’t).
@Lassie (9:52) in your 1:16 response: Way to go, girl! That's what I call the perfect reBUTTal! (And I sort of think that you've read "The Art of Racing in the Rain" and have a real soul-connection with Enzo.)
Hurray! The blog has risen as one voice in defense of @chefwen. Way to go, blog! Anyone who's been paying the least attention for lo these many years knows that @chefwen is a cross between Old MacDonald and James Herriot. Dog-swatting would be completely foreign to her, and anyone who read her post today with the least bit of care and the slightest modicum of intelligence would have known that.
@Dog Lover and @70 in Nampa. Of COURSE I was referring to the kitty doing the swatting. I would never hit an animal. The only things I swat at are mosquitoes and flys.
Thank you to all who came to my defense.
@Joe DiPinto - there's a video of Mel Tormé somewhere on the intertubes about how he wrote it with his 5yo Timmy in mind. It was just his patter for thes audience, but still. As you seem to know, OBJ was very much about the African American experience, and particularly raising African American children, and to have friggin Mel Tormé co-opt a song about OBIII was just appalling.
It should also be noted that Jared Leto won the Oscar for best supporting actor in 2014 not 2013!
I did not understand the objection to WONKY. I knew wonky could mean crooked, but it never occurred to me not to use it as the adjective form of wonk. Is wonkish correct? I suppose you could spell it WONK-Y and sneak it by as clued. And you could object to that too. But it seems so natural to add a Y to a one syllable word ending in a K, do you really want to?
Anne Meara (I know her but never remember her name) was the husband and comic partner of Jerry Stiller, mother of Ben and Amy Stiller and acted in the 90s and 2000s and only died 4 years ago, and is not fit for a crossword puzzle today. And her name has such convenient letters. ???
Don't tell me about it. I just defended a 1940s baseball player.
The Oscars given out in 2014 were for films from 2013. He won the 2013 Oscar, like it sez.
MOE is not the end of eeny meeny miny moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers..........
Dere. Dat's my nit for today. And why not Moe Howard in the write up? Oh, yeah, too old.
@Geezer
I always heard it:
"Eeny meeny miny moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go. Eeny meeny miny MOE."
,
Okay. I'm easy.
@Joe Dipinto - I usually reference FAQ 16A, rather than explain.
anonymous @ 11:05 am
You are correct. It should be TRAYSFUL. Trayfuls is not a word. As a former consructor I am stunned that neither an experienced constructor like MAS, nor the editor WS caught that.
@Z - Ah, I see how it works: you have switch to the web view for the FAQ link. Good to know...
@anonymous 5:36and 11:05
What is your evidence or reasoning? I gave a minimal amount of evidence for trayfuls being acceptable and direct evidence of spoonfuls being correct as a parallel. @1:48
The DAT and DERE controversy depends on how you look at it. I agree, it has some old racial connotations, but it's also important to remember that English is probably in the minority in terms of using the full-blown "th" (theta) sound. It doesn't exist is German, French, Italian, and many other modern languages. As such, foreign speakers may say a "th" word with either a "d" or a "z" sound.
Like so many things today, you can look for, and find, a racial connection, but it does not always have to imply such.
That said, I agree the fill was on the atrocious side.
@sir hillary, Roger Federer was coached by Edberg and I think it has led to his late career renaissance. You will see him do the serve and volley or chip and charge: he makes it beautiful and ruthlessly .efficient
So glad to be reminded of KA LAE. Beautiful spot. You can dive off cliffs, though I was warned that you can get carried off by strong currents to the nearest land mass to the south - Antarctica! There also green sand beaches close by: due to emeraldine deposits left by volcanos and worn down to sand.
@nancy: you’re kidding? Laser printer, not dot matrix eye surgery, although that is a funny image.
So many great clues and answers today spanning subject matter and generations.
Hands up for ris de veau being delicious!
Think about the phrase "policy wonk"
Nice thing about words is they can mean more than one thing...
@David — speaking of Gershwin (I know Liza, from whence Liza Minellii was named), respectfully, how about the glissando opening of Rhapsody in Blue? Trite? Boring? Really?
Wow I haven’t had a captcha check in about a week and just had to tap about 40 images.
Complaint: Herr is Mister in Mannheim, not Man in Mannheim. Even colloquially, it would be a gentleman, not a Man.
Anybody besides me not understand BC / ALB?
@Paul
I'm not sure if you are trying to make a distinction between gender and biological birth sexuality, or feel not every man deserves the title mister. A man in Mannheim would generally be addressed as Herr soandso. But if you want to complain, go ahead.
@ycronam - British Columbia abuts ALBerta. As to the earlier comment that it’s a made up abbreviation for ALBerta, no argument here.
B.C. British Columbia
ALB Alberta.
A complaint has been made about the abbreviation Alb.
Whatsername and the rest of you sanctimoniously shaking your jowls at "dog lover" and me.
I've spent too many years working with dog rescues, fostering and finding new homes for Aussies, border collies, and cattle dogs to worry about being accused of "faux indignation" regarding mistreating dogs, or being told to "but" out in cases of animal abuse.
I reread her post and nowhere does it say the cat was swatting the pup's nose.
@70 in Nampa
Your background might explain why you misunderstood @Chefwen's post. People who have cats know that they swat.
However, there's no explanation for not apologizing (instead of attacking) after your misunderstanding was pointed out to you.
Mouthfuls, handfuls, spoonfuls. Mouths full, hands full, spoons full.
Being 82 this puzzle was easier for me than most Friday ones.
Dot matrix printers are part of a larger generic class referred to as impact printers. The reason they're still in use today is not just multipart forms. For example, they're incredibly rugged, require a lot less maintenance, and can be used in environments where laser/inkjet printers are prone to failure (e.g., unusual cold or heat, very high humidity, extreme dust, etc.). They are also the absolute cheapest printing method available, and the only type that print on paper scrolls instead of individual sheets of paper, making them a better choice for data logging. There are businesses that rely on them, and where they can't really be replaced by laser printers - not as many as in the past, but enough that a couple of printer companies such as Epson still manufacture them.
FOXILY IDEAL
GLISSANDI TOREAPART what BARRYGIBB has:
To SOLO’S an art in DIXIELANDJAZZ.
--- “MAMBA” MOE MEARA
MOBILE,ALABAMA
I TOREAPART this puz, it was soooooo easy; it felt like just a hair more difficult than a Monday. There were clues I didn’t even read, like those for RIS and DERE because everything just filled itself in. Wavelength, wheelhouse, call it what you will. IDEAL for me.
Anyone remember when LIZA came out? 1929, 90 years ago. That’s not ‘skewing old’. That’s history.
I love me some DIXIELANDJAZZ. In H.S. band I got to do a couple of trumpet SOLOS in a DIXIELAND piece. What fun!
Two circles contending with YES babies JLO and LARA Logan (fave journalist).
DERE MIGHT never be an easier Fri-puz.
I side with the straightforward and mostly fair opinions. Unfair - some people never heard of, and a French recipr
All the MELD games mentioned except...no love for canasta? C'mon. You can even call mah-jongg's combos MELDS. Or cribbage. Anyway, I was surprised to see @Z's PPP count so low; solving this seemed to be trying to dig out one name after another--including a rapper (and you're trying to tell me this skews OLD?? With JAREDLETO???) Luckily the rapper DRDRE has been used so often, mostly sans the DR, that he has osmosed his way into my brain.
...JAZZ and DIZ got me going; soon I had NE. Blanked on DIXIELAND for far too long, duh! The key was flat-out guessing Mrs. DOUBTFIRE. When that worked it keyed me into the center and SW. Then the ...BB ending gave BARRYGIBB away, and the NW fell. The SE was a bit NASTY; I've heard WONKY but never really knew what it meant. Realizing JAW/JETES broke it open, and I finished FOXILY.
Great solving experience; wonderful words like JUBILEE and MALADROIT enhanced it. A Scrabble tour de force--may de force be wit' you DERE. JLO is the unquestioned DOD; GOBS of triumph points make it at least a birdie. We can forgive the occasional XII for such a result.
Not so hard overall, but an itty bitty Natick in the SE corner messed me up, along with penciling in WIELD instead of WREAK, which, of course, is much better. I "knew" I was wrong...
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Bloomsday (Sunday), even tho I'm not in the race
I didn't find it easy, but I got 'er done. Last square to fill was #49 where any number of letters could go in there since I knew neither person.
In my lexicon, WONKY means "not working well", or "crooked", ie not straight, but then I remembered "policy WONK". So that SE section took some nanoseconds to fill.
The entire centre section was the easiest in the puzzle, thankfully, and Mrs. DOUBTFIRE was a huge entry to the SW.
For 15 Across, I was thinking of some alternative to a laser in eye surgery, so I thought that DOT MATRIX was clever.
I well remember ol' DIZ and Pee Wee Reese calling Yankee games. "He slud in there", and "Mantle was going for the downs". Good times.
Dat was a really good puzzle.
Nobody really explained it above as it relates to the "clue", so here's the deal on a WONK, used as a noun (if you didn't already KNOW):
A political WONK KNOWs all of the "arcane details" of politics backwards and forwards as in WONK<->KNOW.
Put a Y on the end and make the noun an adjective - WONKY.
I'm surprised that none of the commentariat pointed that out.
@rondo, thanks for that explanation. I knew the word but didn't know the origin.
DERE sounded Irish to me, FWIW.
This was a big DNF for me but damn I tried. I too looked at this answer and could not for the life of me figure it out. Not firing on all cylinders today.
I was probably the only one here who thought of the Chrysler Laser.
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