ER role for Paul McCrane / THU 3-21-19 / Soothing succulents / 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen Frank Langella / Swimmer Ian who won three godl medals in 2000 olympics
Constructor: Christopher Adams
Relative difficulty: Easy (5:03 just out of bed, which is like a normal 4:00, I think)
THEME: SLASHER FILM (25D: Movie with graphic violence.... or what 17-Across, 22-Down or 39-Down each is?) — DESCRIPTION
Theme answers:
VICTOR / VICTORIA(17A: 1982 movie starring Julie Andrews)
FROST / NIXON (22D: 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella)
FACE / OFF (39D: 1997 movie starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage)
Word of the Day: Ian THORPE (32A: Swimmer Ian who won three gold medals in the 2000 Olympics) —
Ian James Thorpe, AM (born 13 October 1982) is a retired Australian swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian. With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. (wikipedia)
• • •
Gotta be quick as I fell asleep before 10pm last night and have a 7am appointment this morning, wheeee! This puzzle was great. It's always easy to love an easy puzzle, true, but the revealer on this one works mwah, perfectly. "SLASHER" is repurposed, literalized, resulting in what you would otherwise Never refer to as SLASHER FILMs. And the grid has been shaped (and the revealer designed) in such a way that the three films of disparate lengths can still come together in a symmetrical arrangment. The stuff I don't like is small and infrequent and sort of in the "who cares?" category. I'm not spending my time complaining about plural ALOES, is what I'm saying. Damn, I just did! ANYway ... I spelled SAOIRSE correctly, first try, and I think I lost like five valuable seconds doing a little chair-dance of victory! Didn't recognize the actors in FROST/NIXON, so that was the themer that took the longest to come to me (didn't take long, tbh). Totally forgot who Ian THORPE was, and hadn't watched "E.R." since the '90s and didn't recognize the name Paul McCrane and so struggled to come up with DR. ROMANO. "Struggled" is hyperbolic. But I struggled comparatively. Compared to what I did with most other answers. Also, I couldn't get into the SW corner easily, mostly because I didn't look immediately at the clue that finally cracked it all open: 53D: Annual Austin festival, for short (SXSW) (which stands for South By Southwest). Nice to run this puzzle so close to the event (though that's surely a coincidence) (it was last week), and also nice to put SXSW in the actual southwest of the grid.
The only thing that troubles me about this puzzle is why "each" is in the revealer clue. Pretty sure it's grammatically unnecessary. Other trouble spots? Well, MAD DASH was probably the answer that took me the longest, but it was also in the first section I solved. I had UTE for MAV (1D: Western Conference player, informally). I guess butterscotch is ORANGE, but I actually had to go into the SE corner and get some 4s before I could see that OR---- was ORANGE. I solved in AcrossLite, which doesn't do slashes, so that was awkward. But the overall experience was enjoyable. This puzzle had the perfect revealer, which gave me the perfect revealer reaction: "Nice. Good one." That Is All I Want From My Themed Puzzles!!! Good day.
apparently it’s a briticism. i also was stuck on that for a while since it didn’t look right at all. unfair to clue it without the reference to british i think.
Entered MADDASH right off the bat, and that described the rest of my journey through the puzzle. Loved it, and glad Rex did, too. He needed a good start to his day I suppose. Only glitch/amend was having MCA instead of RCA, but that was easy to catch as Dr Momano made little sense. Hope you all enjoyed as well.
If you haven't seen Victor/Victoria (and can stomach an 80's depiction of "being okay with" homosexuality) see it. Some amazing performances in a wonderful Blake Edwards comedy.
I'm not a fan of themes. This one played Saturday hard. With the slashes and exes it was a bit of a non word crossword. It didn't help that I kept trying to make SLASHERFIL- end with FLIC or FLIK. I wrote the I and the L in there myself and I still read them backwards. It was one of the most dyslexic things I've ever done and it really slowed down getting EMMY.
In the middle I completely missed the "Portman, by birth" portion of the 43A clue until ISRAELI was almost completely in so that was needlessly difficult.
I'm just happy that SXSW is so familiar because that "sign-off" portion of the 60A clue went right over my head.
Everything in the puzzle was clear as a bell when I was finished but there was definitely some confusion on the way.
A clever theme idea, and I like the mini forward-slash/backslash made by the black squares in rows five and six. The grid is clean, and the cluing, as with yesterday's puzzle, easy for the day, IMO. I went bLUe➛GLUM, and shah➛AMIN, and didn't know the doctor, but otherwise, it was a smooth and fun ride, with a lovely happy-flash when the theme hit me.
The theme got me thinking about forward and backward slashes, which got me wondering when backslashes were used, which led me to finding out that back slashes are also called hacks whacks and bashes. And here's a new fact of the day for me (and if it is for you too, you're welcome!): Another word for forward slash is "virgule" (and a backslash is also called a reverse virgule). VIRGULE -- coming to a weekend crossword puzzle, no doubt, up the road.
Finished without errors, but there were several unfair crosses, in particular SAOIRSE, who I know but had some trouble spelling, crossing whatever ARR means + the uninferrable if you don’t know it CSI + Spill the TEA, which I have never in my life heard.
AND someone named DRROMANO crossing RCA, another uninferrable string of letters. You really need to be careful wit the crosses on non-words..
Better clues for ARR and TEA would have gotten rid of two of the issues and made this a first-rate puzzle, rather than … a darn good one. Not sure if it was Mr. Adams or Mr. Shortz who is responsible for those clues. If Will did it, that’s a real shame.
Had NUTTIER for 4Down. I think DOTTIER should have been flagged as British. (No, I haven't looked it up). 16 Across would have been a gimme if I knew the show. Wanted "TOTE UP" for 10 Down, and looked for a rebus for a while.
I said it before and I'll say it again: One person's GIMMEE is another's DNF.
My wife and I haven't used Across Lite in years. I print two paper copies and we solve jointly over breakfast. So we never saw the zig-zag slash. Neither of us heard of spilling the tea.
My wife remembers LOESS from teaching sixth grade, and I remembered Virgule from introductory French class a million years ago. (Wasn't in the grid, but did appear in Lewis's comment.)
Had MADRUSH instead of MADDASH at first, but when I got to 1982 Julie Andrews film, I knew right away it was VICTOR VICTORIA. Except it wasn't. At first. Because I missed the /. So going back through 123 down, I figured the middle was blank but only got it after AC/DC. TOTUP was terrible, but I guessed it abd LOESS was last because I never heard the word, and was expecting a slash. Seen all 3 movies mentioned, and I would give each 2 big thumbs up.
The theme makes no sense. These films have slashes and one could infer that they are slashed, but they aren’t slashers themselves. Zorro, yes. He went around slashing things. But Frost/Nixon just sat there for a couple of hours boring people to death. Dumb idea that gets a rave from Rex. Must be a friend.
It would be nice if Across Lite accepted dashes or slashes. Since 1A was mad DASH I used dashes in all the intervening squares, so didn't see the error until the revealer. Doh!
Never heard the phrase "spill the tea," so I agree, that could have been clued better, so I agree with @kitshef.
And no, butterscotch is NOT orange, it is light brown, caramel colored or simply "butterscotch."
My usual — near-daily — experience is that I like a puzzle, and I come here and Rex hates hates hates it. Today I made a long list of things in my head that I expected Rex to criticize about this puzzle. Instead, we get “This puzzle was great.” Aaughhh!!! He does this expressly to drive me out of my mind.
Pretty sure this puzzle was written for ‘mericans.
My biggest slowdown was the THORnE/THORPE question, and not coming up with PRICE until I had ICE in place. Otherwise, this was as easy as a Summer Breeze. Hand up for arching the eyebrow at Spill the TEA. Fortunately, no time wasted trying to cram Spill the beans into those three squares since I’d already sussed out the theme so I was no longer on Thursday Rebus Alert.
@lizz - Just file it. “TOT” for “sum” is a too common crossword thing. You will see it again.
I think Rex is wrong. The “each” is fine, it is the “is” that is wrong. It should read “...or what 17-Across, 22-Down, or 39-Down each are?* The “each” is needed to indicate the singular answer for the plural subject.
*And don’t get me started on a puzzle with TOT UP and Spill the TEA omitting the Oxford Comma. The NYT Style Manual has apparently drunk the Kool-Aid.
Sitting here at the dealership waiting for the recall problem to be corrected, and wondering if I could finish before they did. Except the jig was up with VICTOR/VICTORIA and HE/SHE and then it went way too fast, so here I still am. Interesting when one square with a slash in it can reveal the revealer, but that's what happened.
Hand up for never having heard SPILLTHETEA. Who says that?
Otherwise fun stuff. I always wonder how to pronounce SAORISE and doubt that Ian THORPE is more famous than Jim, but that may just be a function of age.
Well Rex is surprisingly sunny today. He certainly enjoyed this way more than I did. The whole thing was too heavy with the names. If you like symmetry as I do the arrangement of slashes is annoying. The SE would have been a lot easier if I had not read it as "universal donor" which had me thinking blood type. What are you putting in your butterscotch to make it orange? Which reminds me, where is @ chefbea? Spill the tea? First I've ever heard that one. Clues like "holder of many cones" irritate me. We see it sometimes with things like "holder of many needles" for pine or fir. Grr. Wasn't there a rant recently about slashes? @'mericans perhaps? Anyway, I feel cheated today.
Those who think butterscotch is ORANGE also think that those orange hard candy discs called butterscotch are actually butterscotch. Not. Think butterscotch sundae, caramel-colored gooey and delicious. Orange hard candy ersatz from B————‘s, nope.
Whenever I see a very positive review from Rex, I'm reminded of the old Life cereal commercial where they said, "Let's Get Mikey to try it, he hates EVERYTHING!".
I liked it a lot too, Rex... sometimes we actually agree on something. :)
P.S. I always remember that commercial because my hubby's name is Michael, but I call him Mikey!
I don’t know what “bottom left 3 dots box” means. I pressed “more” the bottom left key then rebus then /. No dice. It looks like my streak is over. 😕
There's no slash in the movie Victor Victoria. It doesn't exist. There's also, typically, no slash between AM and FM. So two of the themers are just made up.
@Suzie Q - I was wondering about the PPP. It is only 28% (21 of 74). What makes it seem high is the the theme is PPP,*so it takes up extra grid space. And, of course, theme answers are stand out more than PPP like HRE or RCA.
*Pop Culture, Product Names, and other Proper Nouns. 33% seems to be the level at which it unfairly effects some peoples’ solves. ** Just for you, @Gill I, I’m working hard on being a law-breaker.
Minor peeve. Switches aren’t AC or DC. They simply interrupt the flow of current regardless of the type. Better clue? Australian rock band references or something about Edison vs. Tesla.
And there sits Mr. Amin...just waiting patiently waiting for a row. The 7am meeting Rex had must be a good one because he was too chipper to even mention it.
16A...whatever clusterf*ck of letters that is, I didn't care, since I filled them all in with the crosses. Glad that happened because there's no way I know that name, and even if I did, I wouldn't know how to spell it.
I gotta say I really like a puzzle that uses characters that aren't just letters. I mean, why not? The apostrophe, tilde, ampersand, even the at (@ that's what they call that, right?) should be fair game. I've seen number grids before and those are cool too. So kudos to Mr. Adams for integrating more of my keyboard into this puzzle.
I don't quite understand the wording of the clue to 62A. Seems kinda tortured to me.
@Cookie Monster - IMDb, Wikipedia, Amazon, and RogerEbert.com (among others) disagree with you. AM/FM is ubiquitous (shopping site picked because it came up first - there are more). Seriously, use the google machine before posting something so egregiously erroneous. In your defense, the slash doesn’t appear in the movie posters I found.
I just checked through all 269 of the Shorts era entries for TEA and this is a debut clue for that word. It was not hard to infer once I had the T and the A but usually I use the shorter answers to get the longer ones. Add me to the list of people who have never heard this phrase before.
ARR as a musical term has somehow slipped through the cracks for me. However I knew SAOIRSE had an R in it somewhere and that was the last space so R it was. I now get it that ARR would be used as an abbreviation for arrangement as in "arr. by so-and-so". While solving I was wondering what Italian word could be abbreviated as ARR since most musical direction entries are Italian words.
Maybe not everything was completely clear when I finished but the grid was clean anyway.
This was a very quick Thursday but I found the theme interesting because I haven’t seen one with slashes before. Mine worked with just forward slashes, virgules I now know. Thank you @Lewis.
My only nit is with the revealer description of SLASHERFILMS. Yes, they are graphically violent, as are many films that are not SLASHERs. I won’t say more. Personally, I can’t handle them and prefer not to think of them at all.
Let's see 1A: Lunatics? Nope....Madness? Nope....Idiocy doesn't fit. Oh, so it's MAD DASH....OK, moving right along. So I get the SLASHER FILM thingie and went back up to fill in VICTOR/VICTORIA. Did I jump for joy? Nope. First, the film has no slash in it. Second, the movie wasn't of the graphic/violence genre. Third, none of the films - all of which I have seen - have that dastard slash in its title nor are they violent. What gives, sez I. The crossword was fairly easy but I so disliked a few things. The first, like many of you, was Spill the TEA. What happened to our frijoles? Ay, chihuahua. Didn't like that. Then I get to the clue for butterscotch and I couldn't justify caramel. ORANGE? You clue ORANGE that way? Where do you buy your butterscotch? ORANGE is the new black? Que pasa? I've seen TOT UP - British, you know. I remember how to spell SAOIRSE because I think of SAO Paulo. I'm about 40% Irish and my husband is about 80% and yet (forgive me God) her accent drives me to drink. There are some gentle and sweet Irish accents; you want to roll the R's with the best of them, but sweet dear Ronan makes me think of a pirate in need of his rum. Haha. Sorry to be so GLUM. Glad OFL liked it. Was happy to see my favorite rat, REMY and the ETHNIC TACO. Bye.
@Shari, try using just S in the "slash" square. That's what my CROSSWORDS app wanted. I don't think the editors pay enough attention to how the various digital solving methods react to these kinds of situations.
Clever idea! This would have been easier for me if I'd remembered that these movies all had a slash. But I didn't, so all I knew was that VICTOR VICTORIA and FROST NIXON were one letter too short. I also didn't have a clue how Ronan's last name was spelled. And I was thinking of MOB RUSH before MAD DASH at 1A. But all of it got TEASED OUT eventually and I had a very good time.
No time to read y'all this a.m. Hopefully I'll catch up tonight. The workers are overhead right now -- no hammering yet, but a lot, a lot of thumping of furniture. Bye.
Two great Thursdays in a row; this one much easier than last week. VICTOR VICTORIA had to wait until I saw the theme conceit, but otherwise this was fill-it-in, fill-it-in, fill-it-in... nice puzzle Mr Adams. Thanks.
I have heard "tea" as a synonym for gossip only recently, probably on Twitter. Urban Dictionary has an entry for "spill the tea" from 2008. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spill%20the%20tea
From www.knowyourmeme.com: "The Tea is a slang term meaning "gossip" that originated in black drag culture before being popularized by memes such as But That's None of My Business."
Yes, this was quite enjoyable. Quite a diverse trio of SLASHERFILMs: -- Haven't seen VICTOR/VICTORIA for well over 30 years, so my memories of it are hazy, but I think it was about that time that I first realized Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews were married. -- FACE/OFF is one of the most hilariously over-the-top good/bad films ever. Watching Nic and John ham it up for John Woo is almost indescribable. -- I really liked FROST/NIXON. Langella and Sheen are such pros, although I can't imagine them (or their characters) intersecting with AC/DC except in a crossword puzzle.
I like the LEADFREE/NOFEE cross. PASTS...not so much.
MADruSH for a hot second. Initially went with SoaIRSE, and I was happy to get five of seven correct.
Never heard of LOESS. Still don't know how it's pronounced, so depending on that I'm either at a LOESS or GLUM that I have LOESS knowledge than I wish.
Paul McCrane first became known to me in "Fame", the 1980 film. My wife was attending that school at the time and has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene as an extra.
Ugh. Z has poste 4 times before nine AM?!! Gonna be a long day. I'm with mmorgan. I was certain rex would hate this. Call it Tuesday or even Monday easy.
Is there another site to view correct answers and explanations for the NYTimes crossword puzzle? Since “WEB” is no longer available, I have had to use this site. But I can’t tolerate Rex Parker’s egotism anymore.
Found myself much in agreement with @Rex/Dr. Jekyll today. Surprised that for once the commentariat seem to view the puzzle more negatively than OFL. I particularly liked that the crosses for the slash squares were all nicely legitimate slash words.
Re the color of butterscotch, I would call it tan. But in spectral terms, brown and tan are really the same as orange, the former colors having lower saturation and relatively lower luminance than the latter. They are in the general category of "dark colors", analogous to dark green, dark blue, and dark red (more usually called maroon), all terms applied only to areas seen in the context of a broader image, not to uniformly luminous sources seen against a black background.
I sometimes feel like I must be one of the only millennials that reads this blog based on how many folks comment on clues/answers that are 100000% obvious to me. Today it was Spill the (TEA). Spill the tea = gossip*~= dragging someone. I'm relatively new to puzzles so getting a Thursday (25:02) is a very exciting achievement for me!
That being said, I barely remember the 2000's olympics, let alone any swimmer before Michael Phelps -- except Summer Sanders but that's only because she was on some Nickelodeon shows when I was a kid.
*You can also say "hot goss" instead of gossip - try it with your kids/grandkids ;)
@mbr, trying to think about this also. BOGGLE not really a board game. Thinking CHESS, though timer not essential. I would love a timer for MONOPOLY, TRIVIAL PURSUITS, or CANDY LAND:) Clue probably just was using board game loosely as any parlor game.
This was a good Gimmick Puzzle. I don't like Gimmick Puzzles. Trix are for kids and squares are for letters. Solving it was OK but theme was meaningless, added nothing.
As a fan of Saoirse Ronan (and her accent, and tea), I enjoyed that video a lot. I can pronounce--and spell!--her name, but I'd have gotten a couple of those others wrong!
"Indeed, the film is based upon a 1933 German film titled Viktor und Viktoria and Edwards’ replacement of the conjunction “and” with the graphic slash mark is a testament to the modern concern with the border between the masculine and the feminine, the S and the Z." Wide Angle vol. 5 no. 4 1983.
Given the above, the "switch" in the clue for 45A is likely wordplay that works on several levels -- not just vis-a-vis V/V. Does anyone else remember "Flick of the Switch." At any rate, there are also more mundane AC/DC switches. https://www.mouser.com/blog/which-switch-who-cares-if-its-ac-or-dc
It isn't often that I'm 180 degrees from OFL. I found this one unimaginably awful. Where do you find the slasher character that's in the answer here? I got the themer, but had absolutely no idea, no clue at all, what to do with it. This is not a crossword puzzle but some other kind of Shortzian shambles.
I remember one or two of these, but they are mostly pretty obscure. Well, obscure to a guy in his fifties. I suspect some tournament chess sets come with timers, but that's not the sort of thing that typically comes to mind when thinking of board games. I think the clue is a fair stretch.
Had Mad Rush, but was amazed to find Victor/Victoria, which I first entered without the slash, then with; and confirmed with He/She because just a few months ago I took the kid to U Buffalo and had to sit through a day of young people lecturing me on pronouns and other rather useless information, but that was an excellent cross.
After that, it was incredibly fast. And I do thing Face/Off is something of a slasher film, but that doesn't matter because the reveal refers to the "slash" and not to the film.
Better clue for 45A would be "some power supplies" perhaps. I really liked the clue for 29A.
At the risk of being becoming a lightning rod for Rex's acolytes, I'm genuinely curious. Why do oblique references to Trump (Ivana, Mara) in a crossword puzzle generate such outrage, when Amin is met with crickets? A despot who committed unspeakable acts of depravity and murdered hundreds of thousands of his countrymen... nothing? We live in strange and hypocritical times.
TOTUP was annoying, but generally accepted crosswordese. Butterscotch is most decidedly not ORANGE. And if I found one that was, I would not eat it. Apart from those, had a fun time with it.
I agree with OFL, this was a fun solve. I had the pleasure of seeing Sheen and Langella perform "Frost/Nixon" on Broadway, and it was one of the most electric nights of theater I've ever seen. Both men inhabited their roles, and while Sheen did not really resemble David Frost, he had his mannerisms and speech patterns down. Langella WAS RMN.
Strictly speaking, a DNF for me -- under the influence of 1A, MAD DASH, I put dashes where I should have put slashes -- even after getting the revealer, which I thought was just sloppy when actually it was just correct.
Is there really such a thing as an AC/DC switch? How does it work?
I finished in the SE corner, where the Y was a guess-- I never knew there were EMMYs for particular time SLOTs, but it seemed better than EMMo.
No, there’s no AC/DC switch. Methinks the editor’s brain has a Shortz Circuit, mixing eclectic and electric. Technical literacy is like common sense - - uncommon.
Completely agree with CDilly52 about those odious hard candies in the yellow wrapper. And yet, the fact that they exist makes the clue fair. The candy remains foul.
FACE/OFF particularly apt since SLASHING is a penalty call in hockey.
I always thought a virgule is French for a comma. Just looked it up, and I was right. Somehow it became translated into English usage as a slash. Also related from the French is pointe-virgule, which makes literal sense as a semi-comma. To add to the confusion, they use periods and commas backward from what we do mathematically.
just because one is far away in time and space while the other is here and now.
BTW, apropos yesterday's TRIBE, the dead trees version (may be the innterTubes, too?) today has a story about correcting yellow hair depictions of Native peoples in one NYC museum dioramas. a day late and a dollar short, mayhaps?
Hey All ! Figured out the conceit after putting in FACEOFF, leaving the last square blank, scratching my head for a bit, then managing to solve the East side of puz enough to suss out SLASHER FILM, and went back to South Center, put in the /, said "Neat!", and then was able to INFER that SHAH was wrong.
Puz got easier after that. Fell into the TOTal/TOTUP trap like some of y'all. Able to TEASED OUT the remaining answers.
Respectable 6 F's today. Glad to see them getting used lately. FACE/OFF is the winner with 3 of 'em! XOXO :-)
This puzzle was a lot of fun. In 25D, "each" is okay--if a bit awkward-sounding. But @Z: use of the singular verb "is" is correct since it's governed by the "or" in the series--"17-Across, 22-Down, or 39-Down"--that precedes it.
Fast solve, for me…I read here that TOTUP is a ‘briticism’, so perhaps Spill the TEA is as well. Never heard either, but I’m all for a mini British theme. Oh, and they both cross an answer clued with reference to Julie Andrews. She’s British, or at least of English heritage.
I'm enjoying the rather tame blog today. You know it's a smooth day when the biggest rants are about the color of butterscotch. BTW, what rhymes with butterscotch?
On the easy side for a ThursPuz at our house, probably partly becuz of the revealer. ThursPuzs usually just let U figure out the theme mcguffin, w/o telegraphin it via a revealer. But, a good solid WedPuz, for sure.
Always luv this type of grid symmetry -- makes M&A holler EW. It just opens up all kinds of seldom-seen twists and turns, in navigatin thru the grid. Sometimes there's even hidden pics, drawn up by the shady squares. No slash pic today, unfortunately -- but real hard to do, with yer EW symmetry.
staff weeject pick: ARR. Must be an abbrev. in *pirate* sheet music, I reckon. Part of the primo weeject stacks in the NW & NE.
Enjoyed such longball fillins as: LEADFREE. RIOTACT. REDFLAG. MADDASH. The scrabblier-than-snot SW. Had a mad dash of trouble with: SAOIRSE/TOTUP/ARR. TEASEDOUT/TOTUP. THORPE. TATAMI. DR(who)ROMANO. REMY. Knew all the SLASHERFILM titles, so that sure helped protect the precious nanoseconds from bein slashedup.
No "?" clues (QMCs) for our ThursPuz, Mr. Shortzmeister? In. con. ceivable. Surely M&A's oldst(ink)er eyes are overlookin a few?
Thanx for the easy solvequest, Mr. Adams. Congratz on yer puz #2, and somehow gettin @RP to hanker to it.
A day without LMS is like a meal without wine. A strange side effect is it seems to make each of our beloved regulars DOTTIER than the next. I don't think I have ever seen so many inaccurate assertions. Maybe the SLASHES are driving folks crazy. (BTW, I Googled the movie and it has a slash in VICTOR/VICTORIA which I remember from back in the day).
@Linda - Hmmm, You’ll find a lot of support from grammarians for the “and = plural, or = singular” shortcut. Like many grammar “rules” though, there are always exceptions. Here’s the test, is the subject of the sentence a series of single things, separately the subject of the verb, or are they a plural subject? Remove the “each” as Rex suggested and I’ll buy the “is.” But the “each” indicates the writer was treating the subject as plural, so the verb should be “are.” OTOH, remove the “each” and we would see complaints that the answer needed an S. Either way, clunk. (And if it isn’t grammatically clear time rewrite for clarity)
“Spill the TEA” for gossip is heard frequently on the Bravo channel reality shows as is “throw some shade”. @LMS could have told you that too, I’m sure.
Spill the TEA is a popular phrase on Twitter. Hang out there a few days and you'll see it referenced a lot in re: people getting called on their crap. I'm not sure I've ever seen it used in the context of gossip, tbh.
I enjoyed this theme. FACE/OFF I initially entered without the slash and then took out, thinking that maybe I missed a Travolta/Cage movie at the time. Then I got VICTOR/VICTORIA and understood. Everything went pretty quickly after that, except for some hangups in the fill. (Like almost everyone, TOT UP messed me up for a bit. I was actually wondering if TOTUm was a term.
I had MAD ruSH for about 10 seconds, but when I got ALOES, I was able to get DASH. It took me WAY too long to figure out SKIM in the bottom left, though. Felt a bit stupid after that.
Maybe not as challenging as I usually like my Thursdays, but I had fun.
I differ with @Gill I; I love SAOIRSE's accent - I think she's adorbs. I really enjoyed her Saturday Night Live monologue where she explains how to pronounce her name.
I agree with the easy rating (especially for a Christopher Adams puzzle) - I got the trick at 17A/7D. At 7D, with HE____ in place, I was expecting one of the new pronouns to emerge. HE/SHE always makes me think of the sci-fi saga by Frederik Pohl about the Heechee alien race.
I thought 45A would be an on/off switch but there wasn't enough space for the SLASH.
Oh my God. @Z Please stop. The word each is singular. Always. It's true that each is often followed by a prepositional phrase ending in a plural word e.g., each of the cars is a grand prix winner. That seems to confuse a lot of people about the verb choce. it shouldn't. Each is always singular and requires a singular verb. This means that the word is singular and nothing will change that.
By the way, this applies to none as well. Yeah, I hear folks use the plural verb are with it all the time; they're wrong.
@Gayle - Or you could try entering something like “is or singular or plural” in the google machine and see what it spits out. You know, like an adult. And seriously dude, get a life. Your obsession with me is unhealthy.
@anon- Six now. I’ll probably rot in hell for all this sinning. Why, oh why, would I post so many short posts rather combine them into one longer post? It’s a mystery.
@Ethan Taliesin - Lilt. That’s a lilt. If I tried to imitate her then it would be a brogue.
@Giil I - Just busy providing cover for my fellow law-breakers, even if we disagree about a SAOIRSE’s accent. Also, I don’t need to be driven to drink. I just walk.
@oldtimer - @LMS will be back. I was emailing with her and she’s been especially busy. I can’t guarantee we’ll be any less DOTTIER when she returns.
I was going to chime in that the revealer clue is grammatically correct without "each", as Rex opined, but, you know, dead horse and all that...
DR. ROMANO is jaw-droppingly atrocious. And I don't consider butterscotch to be orange in color, but I guess it's better than saying it's teal. But the main problem I have with this puzzle is that the concept is intrinsically faulty, as someone above also pointed out. Having a slash in an expression does not equate it to being a "slasher," even in an attempted clever sense. It's like apples and butterscotch. It just doesn't work.
You make fifty pronouncements on this blog daily, like a schoolmarm lecturing fourth graders, yet you never give a reasonable citation to back up your statements. "Grammarians?" What does that even mean? Some internet bloggers?
And I've never replied to you, but I've read all the others who have. You have a talent for irking people.
Given that TOTUP and spill the TEA and SAOIRSE may all come from the British Isles, I need to say that my favorite pluralism is one I've heard only in British/European sport commentary -- "Chelsea are an appallingly-coached football club" or thereabouts. I absolutely love this, and I now apply it in US contexts, which to most Americans sounds super pretentious or just off -- "Detroit are horrible, and Miggy seems to have aged really quickly."
@Laker -- I'm also on the millennial end of the spectrum, and was really happy to see "spill the TEA." It's what the kids are saying, y'all, and it's high time to recognize this in crosswords. If I'm expected to be able to insert the names of baseball players whose careers ended before I was born, then we can definitely have some spilled tea in these puzzles.
Also, as a professional musician, ARR was accurately, if vaguely, clued. It is a standard abbreviation for "arranger" and, contrary to some of the speculation above, is actually used to credit people for their legitimate work, not to aid and abet music piracy. Pay your arrangers, people. They're worth it.
At the risk of eliciting "Oh, get over it," I didn't think the theme quite worked: the movie titles have slashes, but since when is a slash the same as a slasher? I can understand how tempting the idea was and appreciate how close it comes, but for me, it's a miss.
Like some others, I caught on early with HE/SHE and VICTOR VICTORIA, which helped me a lot with the two other movie titles. I needed almost all of the crosses to sort out SAOIRSE's vowels and ground to a momentary halt in the RCA area (hi, @kitshef), since I didn't know DR ROMANO or FACE/OFF.
@Unknown 6:56 - Thanks for pointing out that bonus image. @Cookie Monster - Thanks for reminding me why I didn't think VICTOR VICTORIA had a slash: my memory is of the poster.
For those not suffering from VICTOR/VICTORIA fatigue - In the meantime, I thought about what ultimate authority might rule on slash v. no slash and decided on the Library of Congress. Googling "library of congress victor victoria" brings up two entries for the film: "VICTOR Victoria" (1982) | Library of Congress" and "VICTOR/VICTORIA | Library of Congress."
@Z - As some others have also said, the singular verb "is" in the clue is correct. Neither your explanation for why it should be plural nor Rex's is correct. Also, the constructor doesn't want us to think of the items in the plural sense. If he did, he would have said "and" and then "are" and the answer would have been plural too.
@Z....oooo, Who's pup pooped on the lawn? You've got the cops out after you today.... Don't forget the "whom" omission. ;-) @Teedmn: She is absolutely adorbs. I agree. My fault....Some accents and pronunciations and pitches (mainly) drive the ear drums of my mind into overload... @KR Munson. I remember how to spell her name by thinking SAO (Paulo). Can't help you with remembering the IRSE. Maybe IRS and then E for England or Eire? My flight to Long Island was not to be this year. Wishing all at the ACPT lots of fun. No gauchos in sight - I'm sure. Aren't you lucky.
Go to imdb Victor Victoria. No Slash. See the poster on the left. No Slash. Now enlarge the poster by tapping on it. Look at the writing at the bottom. Official looking credits clearly say: BLAKE EDWARD'S "VICTOR/VICTORIA". Conclusion: Official legal name has a slash. Artistic poster does not.
Dig the HE/SHE cross considering the film's theme: A woman playing a man playing a woman. Probably the inspiration for the puzzle. Not sure how to interpret AC/DC for FROST/NIXON. All were very good movies in different over the top ways. All 3 were slasher movies because of slashes. That's the joke, not a failure of the theme.
Curious if anyone else thought that orange was intended as an example of those words that cannot be "rhymed with"? Scotch rhymes with other words of course, but butterscotch? Anyway, that was my take.
Glad to see a happy Rex, and in full agreement...this was a fun puzzle, if a tad on the easy side for Thurs. Knowing movies, and with a / being fairly rare in movie titles, all theme answers fell very easily with no crosses. Not sure how some commentators aren't getting the pun of Slasher Films, but I thought it was cute.
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Hard time getting started; giving film years means nothing to me; I am the world's worst timeline person. It took a while to realize that a slash actually occupies a square in the grid; once I got that, the road smoothed out...
Except for 16 across. My word, -AOI- in the middle of a name?? How on earth could you even SAY such a thing? I "knew" I had made an ERRor somewhere, but the crosses wouldn't budge, so I left it. No one more surprised than me to see it was right!
So now I have to put this vowel-fest into my memory bank, along with the consonant-fest of SXSW. Maybe we could combine them: SAXSOSWIRSE? Yeah, that's better.
Confused by the theme/revealer. The [MAD]DASH in 1A was a distraction, and the the three movies weren't SLASHER FILMs. Thus tried M A D as theme letters instead of the slashes the movies called for. DOH.
Very clever, a bit too clever for my fogged up mind.
Had to write-over MAD ruSH, and TOTal. Otherwise no prob. ARR is short for "arranged" or "arranger.
Never heard "spill the TEA". The game was up when the first themer and FROST NIXON were each a letter/space short. I'm not sure if there is such a thing as an AC/DC switch.
Hated "totup" and "spill the tea" but otherwise this puzzle was IMHO very good.
I believe a 15 year old Michael Phelps debuted at the 2000 Olympics and finished 4th in the 400 IM, or was it third ? He then went on to shatter practically every freestyle and IM record from 100-400 meters, and set a medal record that will live for a long time. And Ian Thorpe will always be remembered as a silky smooth gold medal swimmer with a lot of class. And he and the great Grant Hackett and their fellow Australians dethroned the Americans in the 800 freestyle relay setting a world record. Great Summer Olympics that year 2000.
@Lewis -- Nice work! And, SOLIDUS is another term for SLASH or VIRGULE.
@Heather -- Thanks for SPILL THE TEA info. (I too had assumed it was British, but I'd never heard it despite reading/watching UK fare daily.) Initially agree with all who think the clue was a questionable choice for this puzzle, but now am glad it was included so we olders will know it.
FPBear -- NEE: Anything that gets Shortz to stop using the sexist "maiden name" (as in "She still has her maidenhead, fellas! She's pure and marry-able!") is to be praised.
VICTOR/VICTORIA: The movie posters omit the slash because the names are presented over two lines, but when the title is used in running text, the slash is present; when in doubt, check The New Yorker website -- best copy desk in the biz.
@Anonymous 9:46 AM -- crosswordfiend dot com.
@Laker -- Believe it or not, you too will one day be a person who says "Hunh?" to a clue that's obvious to a young 'un. (I mean that playfully, as I think you meant it for us.)
Anonymous 10:39 AM -- The objection to "Mara" was largely the clueing -- it isn't a prez retreat, it's a biz that DJT is wrongly profiting from bc he holds office.
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Can someone explain TOTUP instead of TOTAL for the "figure, as sum"?
ReplyDeleteapparently it’s a briticism. i also was stuck on that for a while since it didn’t look right at all. unfair to clue it without the reference to british i think.
DeleteEntered MADDASH right off the bat, and that described the rest of my journey through the puzzle. Loved it, and glad Rex did, too. He needed a good start to his day I suppose. Only glitch/amend was having MCA instead of RCA, but that was easy to catch as Dr Momano made little sense. Hope you all enjoyed as well.
ReplyDeleteExtra Extra Bonus! The placement of black squares in the grid looks like a person after meeting a SLASHER!
ReplyDeleteNice Thursday.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't seen Victor/Victoria (and can stomach an 80's depiction of "being okay with" homosexuality) see it. Some amazing performances in a wonderful Blake Edwards comedy.
I'm not a fan of themes. This one played Saturday hard. With the slashes and exes it was a bit of a non word crossword. It didn't help that I kept trying to make SLASHERFIL- end with FLIC or FLIK. I wrote the I and the L in there myself and I still read them backwards. It was one of the most dyslexic things I've ever done and it really slowed down getting EMMY.
ReplyDeleteIn the middle I completely missed the "Portman, by birth" portion of the 43A clue until ISRAELI was almost completely in so that was needlessly difficult.
I'm just happy that SXSW is so familiar because that "sign-off" portion of the 60A clue went right over my head.
Everything in the puzzle was clear as a bell when I was finished but there was definitely some confusion on the way.
A clever theme idea, and I like the mini forward-slash/backslash made by the black squares in rows five and six. The grid is clean, and the cluing, as with yesterday's puzzle, easy for the day, IMO. I went bLUe➛GLUM, and shah➛AMIN, and didn't know the doctor, but otherwise, it was a smooth and fun ride, with a lovely happy-flash when the theme hit me.
ReplyDeleteThe theme got me thinking about forward and backward slashes, which got me wondering when backslashes were used, which led me to finding out that back slashes are also called hacks whacks and bashes. And here's a new fact of the day for me (and if it is for you too, you're welcome!): Another word for forward slash is "virgule" (and a backslash is also called a reverse virgule). VIRGULE -- coming to a weekend crossword puzzle, no doubt, up the road.
Really enjoyed/loved this.
ReplyDeleteI'm a movie/language buff, so breezed through this elegant grid/fill.
I don't care at all about speed/competitive solving which, I find, added to today's fun/pleasure.
One of my favorite/sweetest Thursdays, thanks a lot for the happy/smooth ride Mr Adams!
@lizz 6:23, tot up is british informal for total.
Superb.
ReplyDeleteFinished without errors, but there were several unfair crosses, in particular SAOIRSE, who I know but had some trouble spelling, crossing whatever ARR means + the uninferrable if you don’t know it CSI + Spill the TEA, which I have never in my life heard.
ReplyDeleteAND someone named DRROMANO crossing RCA, another uninferrable string of letters. You really need to be careful wit the crosses on non-words..
Better clues for ARR and TEA would have gotten rid of two of the issues and made this a first-rate puzzle, rather than … a darn good one. Not sure if it was Mr. Adams or Mr. Shortz who is responsible for those clues. If Will did it, that’s a real shame.
[Oh, and that clue for ORANGE is just terrible]
Started with MADruSH. Improved from there.
ReplyDeleteHad NUTTIER for 4Down. I think DOTTIER should have been flagged as British. (No, I haven't looked it up). 16 Across would have been a gimme if I knew the show.
ReplyDeleteWanted "TOTE UP" for 10 Down, and looked for a rebus for a while.
I said it before and I'll say it again: One person's GIMMEE is another's DNF.
My wife and I haven't used Across Lite in years. I print two paper copies and we solve jointly over breakfast. So we never saw the zig-zag slash. Neither of us heard of spilling the tea.
My wife remembers LOESS from teaching sixth grade, and I remembered Virgule from introductory French class a million years ago. (Wasn't in the grid, but did appear in Lewis's comment.)
Had MADRUSH instead of MADDASH at first, but when I got to 1982 Julie Andrews film, I knew right away it was VICTOR VICTORIA. Except it wasn't. At first. Because I missed the /. So going back through 123 down, I figured the middle was blank but only got it after AC/DC. TOTUP was terrible, but I guessed it abd LOESS was last because I never heard the word, and was expecting a slash. Seen all 3 movies mentioned, and I would give each 2 big thumbs up.
ReplyDeleteThe theme makes no sense. These films have slashes and one could infer that they are slashed, but they aren’t slashers themselves. Zorro, yes. He went around slashing things. But Frost/Nixon just sat there for a couple of hours boring people to death. Dumb idea that gets a rave from Rex. Must be a friend.
ReplyDeleteChristopher Adams has filled in for Rex.
DeleteSee 7/3/18.
Must be a friend? Evidence suggests that, yes, he is a friend.
Got the theme quickly and then slogged out the rest. A couple of lucky wags helped me to a faster than average time.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if Across Lite accepted dashes or slashes. Since 1A was mad DASH I used dashes in all the intervening squares, so didn't see the error until the revealer. Doh!
ReplyDeleteNever heard the phrase "spill the tea," so I agree, that could have been clued better, so I agree with @kitshef.
And no, butterscotch is NOT orange, it is light brown, caramel colored or simply "butterscotch."
My usual — near-daily — experience is that I like a puzzle, and I come here and Rex hates hates hates it. Today I made a long list of things in my head that I expected Rex to criticize about this puzzle. Instead, we get “This puzzle was great.” Aaughhh!!! He does this expressly to drive me out of my mind.
ReplyDeletePretty sure this puzzle was written for ‘mericans.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest slowdown was the THORnE/THORPE question, and not coming up with PRICE until I had ICE in place. Otherwise, this was as easy as a Summer Breeze. Hand up for arching the eyebrow at Spill the TEA. Fortunately, no time wasted trying to cram Spill the beans into those three squares since I’d already sussed out the theme so I was no longer on Thursday Rebus Alert.
@lizz - Just file it. “TOT” for “sum” is a too common crossword thing. You will see it again.
I think Rex is wrong. The “each” is fine, it is the “is” that is wrong. It should read “...or what 17-Across, 22-Down, or 39-Down each are?* The “each” is needed to indicate the singular answer for the plural subject.
*And don’t get me started on a puzzle with TOT UP and Spill the TEA omitting the Oxford Comma. The NYT Style Manual has apparently drunk the Kool-Aid.
So then: “Each movie are a slasher film”
DeleteI don’t think so...
Sitting here at the dealership waiting for the recall problem to be corrected, and wondering if I could finish before they did. Except the jig was up with VICTOR/VICTORIA and HE/SHE and then it went way too fast, so here I still am. Interesting when one square with a slash in it can reveal the revealer, but that's what happened.
ReplyDeleteHand up for never having heard SPILLTHETEA. Who says that?
Otherwise fun stuff. I always wonder how to pronounce SAORISE and doubt that Ian THORPE is more famous than Jim, but that may just be a function of age.
Thanks for a nice Thursdito, Mr. Adams.
Way fun puzzle. Pretty easy. I object to the clue for nee. I suppose implicitly it means once(named)but born would be better.
ReplyDeleteWell Rex is surprisingly sunny today. He certainly enjoyed this way more than I did. The whole thing was too heavy with the names.
ReplyDeleteIf you like symmetry as I do the arrangement of slashes is annoying.
The SE would have been a lot easier if I had not read it as "universal donor" which had me thinking blood type.
What are you putting in your butterscotch to make it orange? Which reminds me, where is @ chefbea?
Spill the tea? First I've ever heard that one.
Clues like "holder of many cones" irritate me. We see it sometimes with things like "holder of many needles" for pine or fir. Grr.
Wasn't there a rant recently about slashes? @'mericans perhaps?
Anyway, I feel cheated today.
Those who think butterscotch is ORANGE also think that those orange hard candy discs called butterscotch are actually butterscotch. Not. Think butterscotch sundae, caramel-colored gooey and delicious. Orange hard candy ersatz from B————‘s, nope.
Delete@pabloinnh - Sir Sha , but with a beautiful Irish lilt.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I see a very positive review from Rex, I'm reminded of the old Life cereal commercial where they said, "Let's Get Mikey to try it, he hates EVERYTHING!".
ReplyDeleteI liked it a lot too, Rex... sometimes we actually agree on something. :)
P.S. I always remember that commercial because my hubby's name is Michael, but I call him Mikey!
NYT app won’t show complete. The slash squares don’t accept backslash. Help!
ReplyDeleteSame issue; you cannot spell it out. You have to press bottom left 3 dots box and then the / key.
DeleteI don’t know what “bottom left 3 dots box” means. I pressed “more” the bottom left key then rebus then /. No dice. It looks like my streak is over. 😕
DeleteI have put the / in. No go.
DeleteThere's no slash in the movie Victor Victoria. It doesn't exist. There's also, typically, no slash between AM and FM. So two of the themers are just made up.
ReplyDeleteTIMERS are “game board equipment”? Please name some board games that come with timers.
ReplyDeleteNoel Coward, "Shadow Play":
ReplyDeleteVicky: What do you do?
Simon: I’m in a bank.
Vicky: High up in the bank? Or just sitting in a cage totting up things?
Simon: Oh, quite high up really — it’s a very good bank.
Vicky: I'm so glad.
@Suzie Q - I was wondering about the PPP. It is only 28% (21 of 74). What makes it seem high is the the theme is PPP,*so it takes up extra grid space. And, of course, theme answers are stand out more than PPP like HRE or RCA.
ReplyDelete*Pop Culture, Product Names, and other Proper Nouns. 33% seems to be the level at which it unfairly effects some peoples’ solves.
** Just for you, @Gill I, I’m working hard on being a law-breaker.
Minor peeve. Switches aren’t AC or DC. They simply interrupt the flow of current regardless of the type. Better clue? Australian rock band references or something about Edison vs. Tesla.
ReplyDeleteThought this was challenging but fun. Don’t buy Rex’s excuse for taking a full minute more than easy because he just got out of bed. C’mon.
ReplyDeleteAnd there sits Mr. Amin...just waiting patiently waiting for a row. The 7am meeting Rex had must be a good one because he was too chipper to even mention it.
ReplyDelete16A...whatever clusterf*ck of letters that is, I didn't care, since I filled them all in with the crosses. Glad that happened because there's no way I know that name, and even if I did, I wouldn't know how to spell it.
I gotta say I really like a puzzle that uses characters that aren't just letters. I mean, why not? The apostrophe, tilde, ampersand, even the at (@ that's what they call that, right?) should be fair game. I've seen number grids before and those are cool too. So kudos to Mr. Adams for integrating more of my keyboard into this puzzle.
I don't quite understand the wording of the clue to 62A. Seems kinda tortured to me.
@Cookie Monster - IMDb, Wikipedia, Amazon, and RogerEbert.com (among others) disagree with you. AM/FM is ubiquitous (shopping site picked because it came up first - there are more). Seriously, use the google machine before posting something so egregiously erroneous. In your defense, the slash doesn’t appear in the movie posters I found.
ReplyDeleteI just checked through all 269 of the Shorts era entries for TEA and this is a debut clue for that word. It was not hard to infer once I had the T and the A but usually I use the shorter answers to get the longer ones. Add me to the list of people who have never heard this phrase before.
ReplyDeleteARR as a musical term has somehow slipped through the cracks for me. However I knew SAOIRSE had an R in it somewhere and that was the last space so R it was. I now get it that ARR would be used as an abbreviation for arrangement as in "arr. by so-and-so". While solving I was wondering what Italian word could be abbreviated as ARR since most musical direction entries are Italian words.
Maybe not everything was completely clear when I finished but the grid was clean anyway.
Rather queer but interesting.
ReplyDeleteBarry Frain
East Biggs, CA
I’m damn sick of @Cookie Monster’s misinformation.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very quick Thursday but I found the theme interesting because I haven’t seen one with slashes before. Mine worked with just forward slashes, virgules I now know. Thank you @Lewis.
ReplyDeleteMy only nit is with the revealer description of SLASHERFILMS. Yes, they are graphically violent, as are many films that are not SLASHERs. I won’t say more. Personally, I can’t handle them and prefer not to think of them at all.
Let's see 1A: Lunatics? Nope....Madness? Nope....Idiocy doesn't fit. Oh, so it's MAD DASH....OK, moving right along. So I get the SLASHER FILM thingie and went back up to fill in VICTOR/VICTORIA. Did I jump for joy? Nope. First, the film has no slash in it. Second, the movie wasn't of the graphic/violence genre. Third, none of the films - all of which I have seen - have that dastard slash in its title nor are they violent. What gives, sez I.
ReplyDeleteThe crossword was fairly easy but I so disliked a few things. The first, like many of you, was Spill the TEA. What happened to our frijoles? Ay, chihuahua. Didn't like that. Then I get to the clue for butterscotch and I couldn't justify caramel. ORANGE? You clue ORANGE that way? Where do you buy your butterscotch? ORANGE is the new black? Que pasa?
I've seen TOT UP - British, you know. I remember how to spell SAOIRSE because I think of SAO Paulo. I'm about 40% Irish and my husband is about 80% and yet (forgive me God) her accent drives me to drink. There are some gentle and sweet Irish accents; you want to roll the R's with the best of them, but sweet dear Ronan makes me think of a pirate in need of his rum. Haha.
Sorry to be so GLUM. Glad OFL liked it. Was happy to see my favorite rat, REMY and the ETHNIC TACO.
Bye.
@Shari, try using just S in the "slash" square. That's what my CROSSWORDS app wanted. I don't think the editors pay enough attention to how the various digital solving methods react to these kinds of situations.
ReplyDeleteThanks! It did not work, but I appreciate the suggestion.
DeleteClever idea! This would have been easier for me if I'd remembered that these movies all had a slash. But I didn't, so all I knew was that VICTOR VICTORIA and FROST NIXON were one letter too short. I also didn't have a clue how Ronan's last name was spelled. And I was thinking of MOB RUSH before MAD DASH at 1A. But all of it got TEASED OUT eventually and I had a very good time.
ReplyDeleteNo time to read y'all this a.m. Hopefully I'll catch up tonight. The workers are overhead right now -- no hammering yet, but a lot, a lot of thumping of furniture. Bye.
Two great Thursdays in a row; this one much easier than last week. VICTOR VICTORIA had to wait until I saw the theme conceit, but otherwise this was fill-it-in, fill-it-in, fill-it-in... nice puzzle Mr Adams. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI have heard "tea" as a synonym for gossip only recently, probably on Twitter. Urban Dictionary has an entry for "spill the tea" from 2008. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spill%20the%20tea
ReplyDeleteFrom www.knowyourmeme.com:
"The Tea is a slang term meaning "gossip" that originated in black drag culture before being popularized by memes such as But That's None of My Business."
Yes, this was quite enjoyable. Quite a diverse trio of SLASHERFILMs:
ReplyDelete-- Haven't seen VICTOR/VICTORIA for well over 30 years, so my memories of it are hazy, but I think it was about that time that I first realized Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews were married.
-- FACE/OFF is one of the most hilariously over-the-top good/bad films ever. Watching Nic and John ham it up for John Woo is almost indescribable.
-- I really liked FROST/NIXON. Langella and Sheen are such pros, although I can't imagine them (or their characters) intersecting with AC/DC except in a crossword puzzle.
I like the LEADFREE/NOFEE cross. PASTS...not so much.
MADruSH for a hot second. Initially went with SoaIRSE, and I was happy to get five of seven correct.
Never heard of LOESS. Still don't know how it's pronounced, so depending on that I'm either at a LOESS or GLUM that I have LOESS knowledge than I wish.
Paul McCrane first became known to me in "Fame", the 1980 film. My wife was attending that school at the time and has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene as an extra.
Ugh. Z has poste 4 times before nine AM?!! Gonna be a long day.
ReplyDeleteI'm with mmorgan. I was certain rex would hate this. Call it Tuesday or even Monday easy.
Is there another site to view correct answers and explanations for the NYTimes crossword puzzle? Since “WEB” is no longer available, I have had to use this site. But I can’t tolerate Rex Parker’s egotism anymore.
ReplyDeleteMy comment is in This Video
ReplyDeleteFound myself much in agreement with @Rex/Dr. Jekyll today. Surprised that for once the commentariat seem to view the puzzle more negatively than OFL. I particularly liked that the crosses for the slash squares were all nicely legitimate slash words.
ReplyDeleteRe the color of butterscotch, I would call it tan. But in spectral terms, brown and tan are really the same as orange, the former colors having lower saturation and relatively lower luminance than the latter. They are in the general category of "dark colors", analogous to dark green, dark blue, and dark red (more usually called maroon), all terms applied only to areas seen in the context of a broader image, not to uniformly luminous sources seen against a black background.
I'm in the puzzle three times -- awesome! Especially since Axl seems to make it in at least once a month.
ReplyDelete@G.Weissman : How about BOGGLE?
ReplyDeleteI sometimes feel like I must be one of the only millennials that reads this blog based on how many folks comment on clues/answers that are 100000% obvious to me. Today it was Spill the (TEA). Spill the tea = gossip*~= dragging someone. I'm relatively new to puzzles so getting a Thursday (25:02) is a very exciting achievement for me!
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I barely remember the 2000's olympics, let alone any swimmer before Michael Phelps -- except Summer Sanders but that's only because she was on some Nickelodeon shows when I was a kid.
*You can also say "hot goss" instead of gossip - try it with your kids/grandkids ;)
G. Weissman: oops (sorry) BOGGLE isn't a board game, but it does have a timer.
ReplyDelete@mbr, trying to think about this also. BOGGLE not really a board game.
DeleteThinking CHESS, though timer not essential.
I would love a timer for MONOPOLY, TRIVIAL PURSUITS, or CANDY LAND:)
Clue probably just was using board game loosely as any parlor game.
This was a good Gimmick Puzzle. I don't like Gimmick Puzzles. Trix are for kids and squares are for letters. Solving it was OK but theme was meaningless, added nothing.
ReplyDeleteIf you like Saoirse Ronan, her accent, difficult-to-pronounce names, and TEA, you may want to check out this video. Good for a chuckle.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRdsL1z7Ml4
As a fan of Saoirse Ronan (and her accent, and tea), I enjoyed that video a lot. I can pronounce--and spell!--her name, but I'd have gotten a couple of those others wrong!
Delete"Indeed, the film is based upon a 1933 German film titled Viktor und Viktoria and Edwards’ replacement of the conjunction “and” with the graphic slash mark is a testament to the modern concern with the border between the masculine and the feminine, the S and the Z." Wide Angle vol. 5 no. 4 1983.
ReplyDeleteGiven the above, the "switch" in the clue for 45A is likely wordplay that works on several levels -- not just vis-a-vis V/V. Does anyone else remember "Flick of the Switch." At any rate, there are also more mundane AC/DC switches. https://www.mouser.com/blog/which-switch-who-cares-if-its-ac-or-dc
It isn't often that I'm 180 degrees from OFL. I found this one unimaginably awful. Where do you find the slasher character that's in the answer here? I got the themer, but had absolutely no idea, no clue at all, what to do with it. This is not a crossword puzzle but some other kind of Shortzian shambles.
ReplyDeleteSome games have a small "hourglass" type timer.
ReplyDeleteGill,
ReplyDeleteFrom your posts, I would've sworn Michael Cohen was your favorite rat.
https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/6549/games-include-countdown-timer
ReplyDeleteI remember one or two of these, but they are mostly pretty obscure. Well, obscure to a guy in his fifties. I suspect some tournament chess sets come with timers, but that's not the sort of thing that typically comes to mind when thinking of board games. I think the clue is a fair stretch.
Had Mad Rush, but was amazed to find Victor/Victoria, which I first entered without the slash, then with; and confirmed with He/She because just a few months ago I took the kid to U Buffalo and had to sit through a day of young people lecturing me on pronouns and other rather useless information, but that was an excellent cross.
ReplyDeleteAfter that, it was incredibly fast. And I do thing Face/Off is something of a slasher film, but that doesn't matter because the reveal refers to the "slash" and not to the film.
Better clue for 45A would be "some power supplies" perhaps. I really liked the clue for 29A.
Fast, fun Thursday for me.
At the risk of being becoming a lightning rod for Rex's acolytes, I'm genuinely curious. Why do oblique references to Trump (Ivana, Mara) in a crossword puzzle generate such outrage, when Amin is met with crickets? A despot who committed unspeakable acts of depravity and murdered hundreds of thousands of his countrymen... nothing? We live in strange and hypocritical times.
ReplyDeleteTOTUP was annoying, but generally accepted crosswordese. Butterscotch is most decidedly not ORANGE. And if I found one that was, I would not eat it. Apart from those, had a fun time with it.
ReplyDeleteButterscotch is not orange. Period. The hard candy discs that are bright yellow/orange and labeled “butterscotch” aren’t. Period.
ReplyDeleteThis took me not so long to solve but an hour to figure out in the app how to get the $!#%! slash in!!!
I agree with OFL, this was a fun solve. I had the pleasure of seeing Sheen and Langella perform "Frost/Nixon" on Broadway, and it was one of the most electric nights of theater I've ever seen. Both men inhabited their roles, and while Sheen did not really resemble David Frost, he had his mannerisms and speech patterns down. Langella WAS RMN.
ReplyDeleteStrictly speaking, a DNF for me -- under the influence of 1A, MAD DASH, I put dashes where I should have put slashes -- even after getting the revealer, which I thought was just sloppy when actually it was just correct.
ReplyDeleteIs there really such a thing as an AC/DC switch? How does it work?
I finished in the SE corner, where the Y was a guess-- I never knew there were EMMYs for particular time SLOTs, but it seemed better than EMMo.
Gotta run, no time to read comments.
No, there’s no AC/DC switch. Methinks the editor’s brain has a Shortz Circuit, mixing eclectic and electric. Technical literacy is like common sense - - uncommon.
DeleteJimG
Completely agree with CDilly52 about those odious hard candies in the yellow wrapper. And yet, the fact that they exist makes the clue fair. The candy remains foul.
ReplyDeleteEasy because I’ve seen all the films.
ReplyDeleteNever heard “spill the TEA”, beans however...
Xwordinfo has an interesting discussion of why this was tricky to construct.
Fun but a tad too easy for a Thurs., liked it.
FACE/OFF particularly apt since SLASHING is a penalty call in hockey.
ReplyDeleteI always thought a virgule is French for a comma. Just looked it up, and I was right. Somehow it became translated into English usage as a slash.
Also related from the French is pointe-virgule, which makes literal sense as a semi-comma.
To add to the confusion, they use periods and commas backward from what we do mathematically.
Hey, Laker...I’m on the very precipice of 54 and find myself asking the same questions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ReplyDeleteOverall, easy and fun puzzle. The revealer was maybe too revealing because once I had that sussed, any other stumbles I had cleared right up.
@anon/10:39
ReplyDeletejust because one is far away in time and space while the other is here and now.
BTW, apropos yesterday's TRIBE, the dead trees version (may be the innterTubes, too?) today has a story about correcting yellow hair depictions of Native peoples in one NYC museum dioramas. a day late and a dollar short, mayhaps?
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteFigured out the conceit after putting in FACEOFF, leaving the last square blank, scratching my head for a bit, then managing to solve the East side of puz enough to suss out SLASHER FILM, and went back to South Center, put in the /, said "Neat!", and then was able to INFER that SHAH was wrong.
Puz got easier after that. Fell into the TOTal/TOTUP trap like some of y'all. Able to TEASED OUT the remaining answers.
Respectable 6 F's today. Glad to see them getting used lately. FACE/OFF is the winner with 3 of 'em! XOXO :-)
Nice ThursPuz, HE says.
SKIM TACO
RooMonster
DarrinV
I'm guessing the word EACH is there, because otherwise the revealer would be slasherfilmS.
ReplyDeleteLoved this puzzle
This puzzle was a lot of fun. In 25D, "each" is okay--if a bit awkward-sounding. But @Z: use of the singular verb "is" is correct since it's governed by the "or" in the series--"17-Across, 22-Down, or 39-Down"--that precedes it.
ReplyDeleteI liked it a lot - thank you, Christopher!
ReplyDelete@jberg.
ReplyDeleteThere is an AC/DC switch on my air compressor. It can run on 110 or 12 volt(auto).
Fast solve, for me…I read here that TOTUP is a ‘briticism’, so perhaps Spill the TEA is as well. Never heard either, but I’m all for a mini British theme. Oh, and they both cross an answer clued with reference to Julie Andrews. She’s British, or at least of English heritage.
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying the rather tame blog today. You know it's a smooth day when the biggest rants are about the color of butterscotch. BTW, what rhymes with butterscotch?
ReplyDeleteCuts a notch?
DeleteOn the easy side for a ThursPuz at our house, probably partly becuz of the revealer. ThursPuzs usually just let U figure out the theme mcguffin, w/o telegraphin it via a revealer. But, a good solid WedPuz, for sure.
ReplyDeleteAlways luv this type of grid symmetry -- makes M&A holler EW. It just opens up all kinds of seldom-seen twists and turns, in navigatin thru the grid. Sometimes there's even hidden pics, drawn up by the shady squares. No slash pic today, unfortunately -- but real hard to do, with yer EW symmetry.
staff weeject pick: ARR. Must be an abbrev. in *pirate* sheet music, I reckon. Part of the primo weeject stacks in the NW & NE.
Enjoyed such longball fillins as: LEADFREE. RIOTACT. REDFLAG. MADDASH. The scrabblier-than-snot SW.
Had a mad dash of trouble with: SAOIRSE/TOTUP/ARR. TEASEDOUT/TOTUP. THORPE. TATAMI. DR(who)ROMANO. REMY.
Knew all the SLASHERFILM titles, so that sure helped protect the precious nanoseconds from bein slashedup.
No "?" clues (QMCs) for our ThursPuz, Mr. Shortzmeister? In. con. ceivable. Surely M&A's oldst(ink)er eyes are overlookin a few?
Thanx for the easy solvequest, Mr. Adams. Congratz on yer puz #2, and somehow gettin @RP to hanker to it.
Masked & AnonymoUUs
**gruntz**
Loved it — probably bc it was my fastest Thursday solve ever.
ReplyDeleteA day without LMS is like a meal without wine. A strange side effect is it seems to make each of our beloved regulars DOTTIER than the next. I don't think I have ever seen so many inaccurate assertions. Maybe the SLASHES are driving folks crazy. (BTW, I Googled the movie and it has a slash in VICTOR/VICTORIA which I remember from back in the day).
ReplyDelete@Linda - Hmmm, You’ll find a lot of support from grammarians for the “and = plural, or = singular” shortcut. Like many grammar “rules” though, there are always exceptions. Here’s the test, is the subject of the sentence a series of single things, separately the subject of the verb, or are they a plural subject? Remove the “each” as Rex suggested and I’ll buy the “is.” But the “each” indicates the writer was treating the subject as plural, so the verb should be “are.” OTOH, remove the “each” and we would see complaints that the answer needed an S. Either way, clunk. (And if it isn’t grammatically clear time rewrite for clarity)
ReplyDelete“Spill the TEA” for gossip is heard frequently on the Bravo channel reality shows as is “throw some shade”. @LMS could have told you that too, I’m sure.
ReplyDeleteDifficult for me: HRE = Holy Roman Empire
ReplyDeleteThanks for the explanation. I was wondering!
DeleteSpill the tea is really spill the "T", which stands for truth. It could also be gimme the "T" and is used for all sorts of truth.
ReplyDeleteSpill the TEA is a popular phrase on Twitter. Hang out there a few days and you'll see it referenced a lot in re: people getting called on their crap. I'm not sure I've ever seen it used in the context of gossip, tbh.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this theme. FACE/OFF I initially entered without the slash and then took out, thinking that maybe I missed a Travolta/Cage movie at the time. Then I got VICTOR/VICTORIA and understood. Everything went pretty quickly after that, except for some hangups in the fill. (Like almost everyone, TOT UP messed me up for a bit. I was actually wondering if TOTUm was a term.
I had MAD ruSH for about 10 seconds, but when I got ALOES, I was able to get DASH. It took me WAY too long to figure out SKIM in the bottom left, though. Felt a bit stupid after that.
Maybe not as challenging as I usually like my Thursdays, but I had fun.
1A was Ratrace at first. The A's made me do it.
ReplyDeleteThen "The Sound of Music" went in with no crosses...it fit perfectly.
I've worked several times with Langella....he's a DEAR!
I made the #NYTXW (6D) and tied—TIED—to the second my best Thursday time. Thought 53A was clever. Had mad rush instead of mad dash initially for 1A.
ReplyDeleteI differ with @Gill I; I love SAOIRSE's accent - I think she's adorbs. I really enjoyed her Saturday Night Live monologue where she explains how to pronounce her name.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the easy rating (especially for a Christopher Adams puzzle) - I got the trick at 17A/7D. At 7D, with HE____ in place, I was expecting one of the new pronouns to emerge. HE/SHE always makes me think of the sci-fi saga by Frederik Pohl about the Heechee alien race.
I thought 45A would be an on/off switch but there wasn't enough space for the SLASH.
Nice job, Chris Adams.
@Z
ReplyDeleteWho are these "grammarians" of who you speak? Can you cite a reference (beyond "the wiki") to back up your pronouncement?
SAOIRSE is pronounces SIR-sha. She pronounces it with an Irish brogue.
ReplyDeleteI certainly did not know that.
Oh my God. @Z Please stop. The word each is singular. Always.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that each is often followed by a prepositional phrase ending in a plural word e.g., each of the cars is a grand prix winner. That seems to confuse a lot of people about the verb choce. it shouldn't. Each is always singular and requires a singular verb. This means that the word is singular and nothing will change that.
By the way, this applies to none as well. Yeah, I hear folks use the plural verb are with it all the time; they're wrong.
Well @old flappy, here's a picture of the movie poster and I don't see a slash.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084865/
@Gayle - Or you could try entering something like “is or singular or plural” in the google machine and see what it spits out. You know, like an adult. And seriously dude, get a life. Your obsession with me is unhealthy.
ReplyDelete@anon- Six now. I’ll probably rot in hell for all this sinning. Why, oh why, would I post so many short posts rather combine them into one longer post? It’s a mystery.
@Ethan Taliesin - Lilt. That’s a lilt. If I tried to imitate her then it would be a brogue.
@Giil I - Just busy providing cover for my fellow law-breakers, even if we disagree about a SAOIRSE’s accent. Also, I don’t need to be driven to drink. I just walk.
@oldtimer - @LMS will be back. I was emailing with her and she’s been especially busy. I can’t guarantee we’ll be any less DOTTIER when she returns.
After UNCCH’s loss to BLUE DEVILS last Sat, she’s probably like proverbial golfer who gives up on a hole: BIPSIK = “ball in pocket, sulking in kart.”
DeleteThe 1933 German film did not have a slash. Blake Edwards added the slash for the Andrews film.
ReplyDeleteI was going to chime in that the revealer clue is grammatically correct without "each", as Rex opined, but, you know, dead horse and all that...
ReplyDeleteDR. ROMANO is jaw-droppingly atrocious. And I don't consider butterscotch to be orange in color, but I guess it's better than saying it's teal. But the main problem I have with this puzzle is that the concept is intrinsically faulty, as someone above also pointed out. Having a slash in an expression does not equate it to being a "slasher," even in an attempted clever sense. It's like apples and butterscotch. It just doesn't work.
@Z
ReplyDeleteI'm not a "dude" so don't call me one.
You make fifty pronouncements on this blog daily, like a schoolmarm lecturing fourth graders, yet you never give a reasonable citation to back up your statements. "Grammarians?" What does that even mean? Some internet bloggers?
And I've never replied to you, but I've read all the others who have. You have a talent for irking people.
pabloinnh said...
ReplyDeleteI always wonder how to pronounce SAORISE
https://youtu.be/9xCr6IQtYqk?t=35
Given that TOTUP and spill the TEA and SAOIRSE may all come from the British Isles, I need to say that my favorite pluralism is one I've heard only in British/European sport commentary -- "Chelsea are an appallingly-coached football club" or thereabouts. I absolutely love this, and I now apply it in US contexts, which to most Americans sounds super pretentious or just off -- "Detroit are horrible, and Miggy seems to have aged really quickly."
ReplyDeleteAgain, @Z (in your usual fake I'm-an-ass voice because any attention is good attention) google the poster. THERE IS NO SLASH. None, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteA poster is stylized and not really representative. When the title is written out in text, it's almost always got the slash.
DeleteAnd even if it didn't, in the original review, the NYT used it, and since this is their puzzle...
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/19/movies/victor-victoria-a-blake-edwards-farce.html
I love crosswords, reminds me of newspaper days. SO old school
ReplyDelete@Laker -- I'm also on the millennial end of the spectrum, and was really happy to see "spill the TEA." It's what the kids are saying, y'all, and it's high time to recognize this in crosswords. If I'm expected to be able to insert the names of baseball players whose careers ended before I was born, then we can definitely have some spilled tea in these puzzles.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as a professional musician, ARR was accurately, if vaguely, clued. It is a standard abbreviation for "arranger" and, contrary to some of the speculation above, is actually used to credit people for their legitimate work, not to aid and abet music piracy. Pay your arrangers, people. They're worth it.
I need a mnemonic to help remember how to spell Saoirse. Someone please help!
ReplyDeleteMaybe Saoirse drives a Porsche. Now, what’s a good mnemonic for Dr. Ing. h.c. Ferdinand Porsche?
DeleteAt the risk of eliciting "Oh, get over it," I didn't think the theme quite worked: the movie titles have slashes, but since when is a slash the same as a slasher? I can understand how tempting the idea was and appreciate how close it comes, but for me, it's a miss.
ReplyDeleteLike some others, I caught on early with HE/SHE and VICTOR VICTORIA, which helped me a lot with the two other movie titles. I needed almost all of the crosses to sort out SAOIRSE's vowels and ground to a momentary halt in the RCA area (hi, @kitshef), since I didn't know DR ROMANO or FACE/OFF.
@Unknown 6:56 - Thanks for pointing out that bonus image.
@Cookie Monster - Thanks for reminding me why I didn't think VICTOR VICTORIA had a slash: my memory is of the poster.
For those not suffering from VICTOR/VICTORIA fatigue - In the meantime, I thought about what ultimate authority might rule on slash v. no slash and decided on the Library of Congress. Googling "library of congress victor victoria" brings up two entries for the film: "VICTOR Victoria" (1982) | Library of Congress" and "VICTOR/VICTORIA | Library of Congress."
@Marc-Thanks for taking the time to post a link. I'll check it out. Some folks seem to know this stuff already, and are happy to prove it.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I entered the word SLASH into the cells in question in Across Lite and got the happy pencil.
ReplyDelete@Z - As some others have also said, the singular verb "is" in the clue is correct. Neither your explanation for why it should be plural nor Rex's is correct. Also, the constructor doesn't want us to think of the items in the plural sense. If he did, he would have said "and" and then "are" and the answer would have been plural too.
ReplyDelete@KRMunson
ReplyDeleteHow about Stunning Age Old Irish RoSE?
@JCC66 Nice! Thanks!
Delete@Z....oooo, Who's pup pooped on the lawn? You've got the cops out after you today.... Don't forget the "whom" omission. ;-)
ReplyDelete@Teedmn: She is absolutely adorbs. I agree. My fault....Some accents and pronunciations and pitches (mainly) drive the ear drums of my mind into overload...
@KR Munson. I remember how to spell her name by thinking SAO (Paulo). Can't help you with remembering the IRSE. Maybe IRS and then E for England or Eire?
My flight to Long Island was not to be this year. Wishing all at the ACPT lots of fun. No gauchos in sight - I'm sure. Aren't you lucky.
AREOLAE
ReplyDelete@KRMunson Sad and old Irish rogue saw England
ReplyDeleteShe Acts; Oscar Interest Really Starts Elevating.
ReplyDeleteBest I could do.
(PS -- Just saw @JC66's idea. Love it.)
@Linda - Give it up. Z is often wrong but never in doubt and will never admit a mistake. He reminds me of my fourteen year old daughter.
ReplyDeleteGo to imdb Victor Victoria.
ReplyDeleteNo Slash.
See the poster on the left.
No Slash.
Now enlarge the poster by tapping on it.
Look at the writing at the bottom.
Official looking credits clearly say:
BLAKE EDWARD'S "VICTOR/VICTORIA".
Conclusion: Official legal name has a slash.
Artistic poster does not.
Dig the HE/SHE cross considering the film's theme: A woman playing a man playing a woman. Probably the inspiration for the puzzle. Not sure how to interpret AC/DC for FROST/NIXON. All were very good movies in different over the top ways. All 3 were slasher movies because of slashes. That's the joke, not a failure of the theme.
Sadly Again Only I Receive Spelling Errors.
ReplyDeleteSo Again Only I Receive Spelling Errors.
ReplyDeleteTTWO
Think twice write once.
G. Weissman at 8:35: Scattergories and Outburst come to mind.
ReplyDeletePictionary
ReplyDeleteSome airlines offer in-flight "Rashomon" screenings endlessly.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 8:34 PM - Yeah, I was done at my 6:15 comment but I appreciated your thoughts and the comparison.
ReplyDeleteCurious if anyone else thought that orange was intended as an example of those words that cannot be "rhymed with"? Scotch rhymes with other words of course, but butterscotch? Anyway, that was my take.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see a happy Rex, and in full agreement...this was a fun puzzle, if a tad on the easy side for Thurs. Knowing movies, and with a / being fairly rare in movie titles, all theme answers fell very easily with no crosses. Not sure how some commentators aren't getting the pun of Slasher Films, but I thought it was cute.
ReplyDeleteAre you tired of being human, having talented brain turning to a vampire in a good posture in ten minutes, Do you want to have power and influence over others, To be charming and desirable, To have wealth, health, without delaying in a good human posture and becoming an immortal? If yes, these your chance. It's a world of vampire where life get easier,We have made so many persons vampires and have turned them rich, You will assured long life and prosperity, You shall be made to be very sensitive to mental alertness, Stronger and also very fast, You will not be restricted to walking at night only even at the very middle of broad day light you will be made to walk, This is an opportunity to have the human vampire virus to perform in a good posture. If you are interested contact us on Vampirelord7878@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteOr Add up on Whats-app +233248104710
RE:MY TEASEDOUT PASTS
ReplyDeleteI make a MADDASH real frequent, to SPICE up my AREOLAE,
and at VICTORIA’s SECret, no PRICE or NOFEE is to HIE.
--- SAORISE “SARA” THORPE
Hard time getting started; giving film years means nothing to me; I am the world's worst timeline person. It took a while to realize that a slash actually occupies a square in the grid; once I got that, the road smoothed out...
ReplyDeleteExcept for 16 across. My word, -AOI- in the middle of a name?? How on earth could you even SAY such a thing? I "knew" I had made an ERRor somewhere, but the crosses wouldn't budge, so I left it. No one more surprised than me to see it was right!
So now I have to put this vowel-fest into my memory bank, along with the consonant-fest of SXSW. Maybe we could combine them: SAXSOSWIRSE? Yeah, that's better.
Mini-theme: VICTOR/VICTORIA, HE/SHE & AC/DC? Let's make Julie Andrews our DOD.
The fill strains at times, but the theme is fairly cool. Requisite toughness for a Thursday; par.
ReplyDeleteConfused by the theme/revealer. The [MAD]DASH in 1A was a distraction, and the the three movies weren't SLASHER FILMs. Thus tried M A D as theme letters instead of the slashes the movies called for. DOH.
Very clever, a bit too clever for my fogged up mind.
In French, the word "virgule" means "comma".
ReplyDeleteHad to write-over MAD ruSH, and TOTal. Otherwise no prob. ARR is short for "arranged" or "arranger.
Never heard "spill the TEA".
The game was up when the first themer and FROST NIXON were each a letter/space short.
I'm not sure if there is such a thing as an AC/DC switch.
I liked this puzzle just fine.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!
ReplyDeleteI got it all but the very far NE corner. Got the rebus! Got the movies! But no cigar for me. SAOIRSE was my downfall.
Diana, LIW
Rex is happy - All is right with the world !
ReplyDeleteHated "totup" and "spill the tea" but otherwise this puzzle was IMHO very good.
I believe a 15 year old Michael Phelps debuted at the 2000 Olympics and finished 4th in the 400 IM, or was it third ? He then went on to shatter practically every freestyle and IM record from 100-400 meters, and set a medal record that will live for a long time. And Ian Thorpe will always be remembered as a silky smooth gold medal swimmer with a lot of class. And he and the great Grant Hackett and their fellow Australians dethroned the Americans in the 800 freestyle relay setting a world record. Great Summer Olympics that year 2000.
Thank you Mr Adams !
Clever puzzle and a fun solve.
ReplyDelete@Lewis -- Nice work! And, SOLIDUS is another term for SLASH or VIRGULE.
@Heather -- Thanks for SPILL THE TEA info. (I too had assumed it was British, but I'd never heard it despite reading/watching UK fare daily.) Initially agree with all who think the clue was a questionable choice for this puzzle, but now am glad it was included so we olders will know it.
FPBear -- NEE: Anything that gets Shortz to stop using the sexist "maiden name" (as in "She still has her maidenhead, fellas! She's pure and marry-able!") is to be praised.
VICTOR/VICTORIA: The movie posters omit the slash because the names are presented over two lines, but when the title is used in running text, the slash is present; when in doubt, check The New Yorker website -- best copy desk in the biz.
@Anonymous 9:46 AM -- crosswordfiend dot com.
@Laker -- Believe it or not, you too will one day be a person who says "Hunh?" to a clue that's obvious to a young 'un. (I mean that playfully, as I think you meant it for us.)
Anonymous 10:39 AM -- The objection to "Mara" was largely the clueing -- it isn't a prez retreat, it's a biz that DJT is wrongly profiting from bc he holds office.
[syndie solver 5-2-19]