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Material for Book of Dead / FRI 3-1-19 / Second longest US #1 hit after American Pie / I.Q. test pioneer / World's most powerful person per 2018 Forbest list
Friday, March 1, 2019
Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (6:54)
Word of the Day: HYACINTH (37A: Bloom with showy clusters) —
Hyacinthus is a small genus of bulbous, fragrant flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae. These are commonly called hyacinths /ˈhaɪəsɪnθs/. The genus is native to the eastern Mediterranean (from the south of Turkey through to northern part of the region of Palestine).Several species of Brodiea, Scilla, and other plants that were formerly classified in the lily family and have flower clusters borne along the stalk also have common names with the word "hyacinth" in them. Hyacinths should also not be confused with the genus Muscari, which are commonly known as grape hyacinths. (wikipedia)
• • •
So in addition to the three consecutive Down mistakes I made in the NW, I also did TSK / JAKARTA instead of TUT / ANTIGUA (I know I know I know JAKARTA is not in the "West Indies," it was the "K" from TSK that got me, man, the "K," I'm only human) (48A: When doubled, "For shame!" / 39D: Island in the West Indies). Also GET BACK before HIT BACK (37D: Retaliate). Also I could not have picked a HYACINTH out of a line-up before today and needed the "Y" before I could see it. Also, How *you* DOIN'? :/
[54: "How you ___?"] (BEEN)
See you tomorrow.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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115 comments:
Rex – me, too, for “bankers” and “tsk” first.
FOX CUB right next to IDIOTIC. I mean seriously – those young whippersnappers are capable of some disturbing antics.
I’m not sure, but I think that the people who can afford to vacation there pronounce ANTIGUA as an-tee-ga and not an-tee-gwa. At least Kelly Rippa always pronounces it an-tee-ga when a trip there is the prize for answering a question about the movie star guest the day before. I’ve made mental notes to pronounce it that way, too, so I can seem all well-traveled and in-the-know.
A couple other things I looked into:
1) SLOVEN and slob have different etymologies. I was thinking maybe there was some kind of secondary Grimm’s Law shift between that V and that B, but, nah.
2) HOI polloi – Ok. I’ve been corrected a couple of times for using the article the in front of this Greek phrase meaning, literally, the masses. I guess that OI is itself the word the in Greek (rumor has it that English speakers added the initial H for some reason that will come out in the Mueller report).
From Meriam Webster:
Since hoi polloi is a transliteration of the Greek for "the many," some critics have asserted that the phrase should not be preceded by the. They find "the hoi polloi" to be redundant, equivalent to "the the many"—an opinion that fails to recognize that hoi means nothing at all in English. Nonetheless, the opinion has influenced the omission of the in the usage of some writers.
Hey. We say the lacrosse stick - redundant (on both ends!); that initial la is the French definite article. We say the alcove, and that initial al is an Arabic article.
Anyway… back to HOI polloi -in checking my facts here, I read in several places that HOI polloi’s meaning is shifting to mean also hoity toity. Makes sense to me. So all you purists who think language change shoulda stopped somewhere around the Norman invasion, buckle your seatbelts. The hoi polloi is about to go hoity toity on you.
I leave you with this heart-warming story about a chunky little RAT that got stuck à la Winnie the Pooh in a German manhole. Yay German firefighters! A la pièce de résistance indeed.
I smiled when thinking how Trump would react upon reading the clue for 17 across.
This whole week has been easier than what I expect from the NYT crossword puzzles. While this one had a few good clues and answers, it didn't pop.
I’m shocked Rex called this Medium-Challenging. I found this to be one of the easiest Friday puzzles ever. I don’t time myself when I do puzzles but I finished this one fairly quickly. Strange.
CARA MIA takes me straight back to Morticia Addams. " Do you mind if I smoke?" That was followed by I Dream of Jeannie. I know what you must be thinking " TUT TUT"
I gotta believe a Condo made of Stona clue got edited out for 48A, especially since it’s immediately followed by PAPYRUS. If I were Rex I definitely would have gone SNL over Jay and the Americans.
I liked this lots more than Rex. From BINET of Stanford-BINET infamy and ARTEMIS playing on an ATARI 2600, to XI JIN OING and his LEWD POSSES decked out in RON JON surfing clothes, I thought there was a lot of fun going on. Not real happy with UTA Hagen and Len Deighton hanging with Bil KEANE, but all-in-all a fun solve.
David Ogden Stiers
Thanks for the Cara Mia video. Priceless!
A typo on YOURULi caused me to flounder in the NE a bit before I saw it. Otherwise, a smooth solve.
I thought this was very clean, despite SAPOR and ATILT as @Rex mentioned, but not very interesting. It’s too bad that HYACINTH didn’t get a BritCom clue. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZGHxb4caA
SAPOR is ridiculous. Fails the ‘skyey’ test, and there is a perfectly good word SAvOR, which matches the clue and four of the five letters. And the missing letter is part of a foreign name. I call shenanigans.
Probably took half the time of yesterday’s puzzle – probably about the same as Wednesday’s. Alas, a DNF at the SA_OR/XIJIN_ING cross.
Of course, all my fault as I should know XI. I mean, I knew the XI part but not the JINPING part. Even if I had known it, I would have talked myself into SAbOR (Spanish for flavor) and figured ‘b’ versus ‘P’ in a name translated from Chinese is variable (e.g. Peking, Beijing).
Overall, the puzzle was a delight. Should have been toughened up for a Friday, but the fill is first rate (HYACINTH, CARA MIA, ANTIGUA, ARTEMIS, SLOVENS) and there was some nice cluing. It’s just a shame about SAPOR.
Hand up for teNniSAcE, bankERS and doiN.
Got the whole west half, then struggled with the east. Finally getting DISCS for cookies got me jump-started. Once I got them, liked the SE triple stack. Happy Friday. We moved office one year ago so we're having a lunch potluck today at work. And yesterday was payday.
Unlike Rex, I flew through this puzzle (after staring at the NW for a good minute). Once I got a foothold, zooooom! Nice and clean puzzle overall (minus some aforementioned dreck like ATILT).
Ages ago when the very staid investment bank where I was working introduced casual Fridays some people took it to mean that one could wear whatever they wished. There were people wearing T-shirts and shorts on the trading floor.
Immediately after the first go around a memo was issued which spelled it out for the less socially ept --- casual does not mean jeans, t-shirts, and shorts. Suggestions were khaki pants, blazers, collared shirts. Ties were not necessary. Shoes were (not sneakers). Great detail.
I just kept wearing the same rotation of suits I always had. No sense in acquiring another wardrobe for just one day of the week.
Oh, the Anteegwa/Anteega thing. In England, we always said Anteega. Anteega is a former British colony and still in the commonwealth, and they say Anteega. But for reasons unknown, in the US we say Anteegwa. For Kelly to say Anteega is like saying "madagaskuh" for "madagascar" or "shree lanka" for "shree lahnka".
Pastrami goes with SWISS about as well as anchovies and chocolate cake. I had KNISH at first, which at least wouldn’t have gotten me thrown out of any respectable Jewish Deli.
I had how you DOIN for so long haha
SAPOR and SAvOR have really different meanings. No way the latter fires the clue.
Any time I finish in less than double Rex's time I consider it a victory. Today was such a day. A rare occurrence. Count me among those surprised at the "medium-challenging" rating.
As someone who usually finds this constructor’s puzzles somewhat ARID, I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining I found this one. Maybe it all comes down to mood. But there’s very little dreck here and not even that many abbreviations, save TBS and CSPAN among other inoffensive fill. So I give it a big thumbs up. I almost gave up and googled the Chinese leader’s name, for spelling reasons only, but persevered and finished without having to rely on crutches.
Yes, @Loren I have always heard that the island is AnteeGA, and the city in Guatemala, which I have visited and loved, is AnteeGWA. @Rex, Jakarta isn’t even an island. Sheesh.
I thought the clue for FINAL SALE was clever. And as an ex-picker at estate, yard, garage sales, not to mention auction house junkie, I can assure you Final Sale is a commonly used term.
I also liked finding that The Book of the Dead answer was PAPYRUS. I was afraid it was going to be some reference to a Zombie flick or a Stephen King novel. Which reminds me I had GORY for R-rated before LEWD. That was one answer that made me scratch my head since nearly everything is lewd these days. Someone recently suggested I watch The Americans, a popular TV show. I found a copy at the library and watched it on dvd. Or tried to. I had to turn it off after twenty minutes. It gave LEWD a bad name.
This is the first time in recorded history that I've made every single mistake that Rex confesses to making. I feel as if I've graduated to a higher level.
I tried tsk and St Kitts which is at least in the West Indies.
It’s true that the Greek word is OI, but that’s because Greek has no letter for the “h” sound. The ancient Greeks just knew when to put in this rough breath, so they probably pronounced it HOI. Later, when there was concern that these words were being pronounced wrong, a diacritic was added to indicate the sound (as in Arabic and some Hebrew).
Once I changed "TSK" to "TUT" I was home free. Nice puzzle, not too hard for a Friday.
What is the problem with jeans? Maybe back in the day when you dressed up to go to the grocery store, when men wore hats and ties to sporting events, when women never wore anything but dresses in public...but these days are different. Jeans have come a long way...and seeing them everywhere has normalized them on men AND women.
As for them being "unprofessional," (what is "professional?"), I remember Sam Walton wearing jeans to work. It was scandalous at the time, but he was clearly professional and even successful in spite of his denims.
And this goes for tee-shirts too. Seriously...a collar maketh the professional?
Yeah, I suppose some people mourn the loss of that formality. But do we also mourn the loss of women getting berated for not being sexy enough for their husbands when he comes home from a long day of work (poor thing), or women needing their own cigarettes, or the restriction on wearing white pants between Memorial Day and Labor Day? Things come and go...NYC just passed a law that says you can't discriminate against hairstyles, specifically dreadlocks.
Turns out, professionalism exists between the ears. But apart from that scurrying down that rabbit hole, the real question is why jeans are specifically considered worse than other pant materials that are even more egregious...double-knit slacks, anyone?
This one was not the most exciting puzzle but it did have it's moments of fun.
You Rock felt more natural than You Rule although I don't think I've ever said either.
Slovens as a noun was interesting. SpellCheck doesn't like it.
Hmm, what does the moon have in common with olives? Liked that one.
Artemis reminded me of Wild Wild West which I loved. I did wonder at the time if the writers knew Artemis was a girl.
Like @ John Child, Britcom with Hyacinth was my first thought.
I liked this more than Rex (as usual!), but I had a big fat DNF in the NW, even with IDIOTIC and NOJEANS and ATILT and FINAL— and COED and UTA and BINET in place. Maybe if I had put it down and come back later it would have helped, but I don’t think I ever would have gotten FOXCUB — I couldn’t get it even when I was staring and staring at FOX-UB. Also had taste and doin and false and tsk and get back. Somehow it feels gratifying to make the same mistakes as Rex! I also love this constructor’s work, and this one beat me up real good up in that corner.
Hey All !
What is it with these NW corners lately? Toughest part of puz today. SAPOR was tough, had to Reveal Word for LEN just to get some traction up there. I should've know that, though. It's common crossword author-ese. After that, saw ODOR EATERS, IDIOTIC, FINAL SALE, FOXpUp, in that order. So, not only a cheat DNF, but a few other wrong answers. Aforementioned FOXpUp, pOED (har, well read dorms?), pINET. Also geTBACK/eONS, with gYACINTH, which I knew was wrong, but the H was escaping me. One other, UpLIT/JOp. Funny that, had litup first, then chuckled when it was (or so I thought) UpLIT. UNLIT. I guess I was thinking the security angle.
Liked some of the clues better than the fill. What I call third meanings. Like BRIBES clue, e.g.
But, a puz with NINJAS can't be too bad. :-)
FULL TIMER AD LIBBING
RooMonster
DarrinV
Sometimes I think @Rex and I inhabit different planets. On my planet:
-- This puzzle is a complete joy, anything but STALE. Lots of Scrabbliness (missing only the two highest-value letters in the constructor's first name) and very clean fill.
-- ATILT for Not true is fabulous, while FALSE would be quite sad on any day but Monday.
-- SAPOR is fine. Jeez, it's Friday, how much spoon-feeding is required?
-- FINALSALE is seen all the time, but no one has ever said YOURULE ("You rock" sure, "I rule" definitely, but never YOURULE).
To a James Bond movie nut like me, AUGER can only mean Claudine.
Errors: Tsk for TUT, YOURock for YOURULE, CHAsm for CHAOS.
@Z -- Outstanding call on the Condo Mada Stona. Never crossed my mind until you noted it. Good lord, did I wear out the grooves of my "Wild and Crazy Guy" LP.
Cryptic clue du jour (and I swear I thought of it before seeing @Rex's map):
Ljubljana residents lose last of alpine pigs (7)
When CC goes themeless, she gets tough! I was doing okay on this until the very end, where I kept thinking the most powerful person in the world was jI JIN PING. This made FOX CUB (I had FO_CU_ in place) very hard to see. Finally I realized that "Kit" was not going to have anything to do with camping or shaving.
I didn't have a lot of writeovers. Wanting the popular TskTsk at 48A briefly stopped my progress. "SITS on it" did not SITS IDLE for very long.
CHAOS, HYACINTH, LEWD, GAVE for "Buckled" all very nice. Thanks, Zhouqin Burnikel!
@Anon at 6:26 AM - HA HA - Trump reading a crossword puzzle ! ? ! That is too funny. Yea, right - that will happen when fish learn to fly !
Well, as a relative newbie to Friday level puzzles, I
rsther liked this one. I made all the mistakes that Rex made with the exception of Jakarta. However, to me that's what makes a good puzzle: taking your expectations and turning them sideways. But I will concede, "Hackneyed" twice is an open invitation!
Why so binary with the male/female constructor count?
Rex needs to be inclusive and include ALL 63 genders.
For someone who claims to be woke, I find his binary tally to be offensive.
Easy for a Friday but not a whole lot of fun.
At least we have Rex and not those girls!
I loved ATILT as "Not true"; very clever.
Terrific work loved it hats off to the constructor!
Found this to be the easy Friday end of an easy week. CARAMIA has that ear worm quality that has me wondering if I can still sing along with Jay and hit the high notes (turns out I can).
Fun seeing AUGER as the hole maker instead of my recently cited ICE AUGUR which almost made sense in context. XIJINPING was a product of crosses, don't pay much attention to the ultra-wealthy unless they're my friends.
Smooth enough, but I'm hoping for a Saturday that is good at saturdaying.
@Dorothy Biggs - well said. Would you mind telling that to my employer?
@Dorothy Biggs, I agree with you on clothes not making the professional. I worked for a company that had a very casual clothing policy. It was bought out and the new owners made dresses for women and ties for men mandatory. One week we had a run of very cold, below zero temperatures and they said women could wear pants while it was cold. I wore a miniskirt to work in protest of such IDIOcy.
RE: redundant articles - In Sweden, there is a house spirit called Tomte. It has been co-opted into becoming a sort of Santa Claus figure (Jultomte). To say "The Tomte" in Swedish, you add an N (Tomten). The children's book I saw translated into English was titled "The Tomten" which the clerk in the bookstore in the Swedish Institute (Mpls.) pointed out as being The The Tomte. I'm not sure whether I feel annoyed by that or not.
I'm in a hotel in Scottsdale, AZ, and I think there should be a law against allowing the garbage trucks to do their thing outside a hotel before 9 AM. (It's 7:35 here.)
Had TSK for TUT as well and wrote in St Kitts. Could not see the mistake and it cost me about 6 minutes to figure that southwest corner out....
Nah, not so much...
Well, at least it's a crossword puzzle.
"Tut-rut"/"for shame"? "sapor"?
Others...
Whatever.
Complete opposite of @Rex. This was wheelhouse nice. Very satisfying Friday, CC.
For once.....I knew all the names in the attic. UTA LEN BINET HOWIE, thank you for your service. I had CUB at 1D and added my FOX. The X led me to believe it was the current Chinese president. Now...how to spell his name. Just wait for the downs to fall. And so it went. Today's proper names led me to a very enjoyable Friday victory.
Same TSK error. I had the Y from HYACINTH because I know my flowers, so it had to be YOU something. AHA, change it to TUT and sneak in that ANTIGUA (pronounced An-tee-ga by moi) and that took care of that.
@kitshef and @Loren....Speaking of Islands and all, why do Americans pronounce Anguila as "an-guil-ah?" I've always said "an-gee-ah." Then I go and watch the real Housewives of Atlanta and they're off to that island, fighting and calling it all wrong to my ears. Hey, at least I learned something from them.
Speaking of @Loren's redundant list: Feel free to add the very wrong YO TE AMO.
Lots here made me smile and think. First, do you really ruin perfectly good Pastrami by putting some SWISS on it? Talk about redundant. Who thought it would be yummy to add the Italian pastrami with the Swiss SWISS?
I thought for sure that second longest hit song in the world would be a Dylan number. That man could go on for so long you could shower and put on you clothes and makeup before his song was half-way through. Nope...it's The Beatles with the JUDE.
NO JEANS Hah!. I'm convinced that wishing to never ever have to wear another suit and pantyhose again, made me take early retirement. I only had one pair of jeans for my week-end ensemble. They soon filled my closet - along with gauchos.....
Still can't understand why @Rex thought this dull and sloggy. He says Fridays shoulda glisten and sparkle. Maybe I'm just not of the HOI polloi crossword OFL group, but this has all the sparkle I want for Friday. I'm also a cheap date except when ordering Scotch.
You have too much time on your hands!!
NW whupped me, even with FOXCUB, COED, BINET and UTA.
Good Friday, not too difficult but a challenge here and there. Thank you ZB.
@Anonymous at 6:26 - I had exactly the same thought about 17A. LOL. Stand by for a Most Powerful tweet-storm rebuttal.
@Dorothy Biggs: While they may be a bit bourgeois, I’d personally rather see double knit slacks than yoga pants. Fashionable does not always equal tasteful. And please, oh please, leave the pajamas at home. Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen that on casual Friday and on kids going to school.
@Sir Hillary: I was right there with you on your error list. CHASM for abyss seemed so much more logical than CHAOS.
Lesson to all novice solvers: On a Friday, two solid crosses for a 9-letter word aren't good enough. For "Point of no return" at 1A, the answer TENNIS ACE (so seemingly obvious to this tennis player) was confirmed by the first "N" (for NO something-or-other) and the final "E" for ERG. But I couldn't confirm any other letter and therefore refrained from writing it in. And therefore didn't fall into the trap -- a pretty good one, btw.
And this is a pretty good puzzle. It offered the resistance I look for on a Friday, required thought, and had some good CLUES -- the clue for CLUES (60A) not being one of them. (Mine might have been: "You're looking at them right now.") The clues I did like: POSSES (21A); CSPAN (30A); CHAOS (very interesting info); PITTED (21D); and believe it or not, I liked the clue for HEY JUDE (40D). I normally hate all pop music ephemera, but this piqued my curiosity: There really is a pop song that lasts 7 minutes, 11 seconds? What on earth is it?
All the puzzle lacked was sparkle. In a week as sparkling as this one has been -- a week full of cleverness, surprise and ingenuity -- this puzzle won't be anyone's Puzzle of the Week. But I thought it to be one of this constructor's best offerings.
Or possibly adding the breath sound so as not to confuse the hoity toity Greek OI with the Jewish mother’s exclamation “Oy!” (As in “Oy vey!”). Just kidding.
And how he would mispronounce it!
I adore “Keeping Up Appearances,” and when I got HYACINTH that’s exactly where I went as well. Would have been a much better clue and IRIS could easily have been re-clued.
I made all the same mistakes as @Rex, but unlike him, I toughly enjoyed this puzzle and had a normal Friday solve time. FINAL SALE was not clued as a phrase but as a noun with an adjective defining the type of sale....in other words the point of no return. It was clever and did in fact hold me up.
I entered the grid at ASANA, POSSES, HOI and was off and running. I call 100% foul on ATILT but that is the only one (to me) in the entire grid. When I look at all the cleverness, especially liked LENDERS and BRIBES and even the singular ODOREATER because the misdirect to food was excellent and so kept thinking of all the different Sole dishes I have cooked and eaten and just did not see the real answer until the very end. What fun.
I failed at the XIJIPING / SAPER cross. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I honestly thought it was asking for a weightlifter or such and as such, XIJIvING worked fine for me. Otherwise, I hit severeal of the potholes other fell into — Tsk, YOURock, CHAsm, etc. But I finished (with my stupid error) pretty quickly for me. So I'm good with this one.
@Z thanks for the trip down memory lane with Steve Martin. I remember seeing that when it ran the first time and laughing like a lunatic.
@Gill. Yeah, my wardrobe is almost completely jeans, with a few very casual pants that are a step up. But something happens when NOJEANS is the rule. People just look a little nicer and I wonder if perhaps they behave a little better? We are headed for a cruise later this month and jeans are banned in most public spaces onboard ship after 6. To cope, I've borrowed clothes from my granddaughter, friends, and in one case a woman I had just met (no, I didn't mug her; upon hearing of my dilemma, she graciously offereded me this absolutely stunning wrap that I will hate to return). We've cruised with this line before so we've seen the effect of the ban. No ball caps, torn tee shirts, ripped jeans in the bars and restaurants. Everyone looks lovely like the setting. I get to wear my jeans and tees on the excursions, but come 6, we'll clean up. I guess I'm a snob but I can manage for two weeks.
@LMS My ears hurt with "I'd like prime rib with au jus." Yeesh.
Thanks, CC!
@GILL, I have a friend from there and he pronounces it An-GWIL-la. Maybe it's because of the island's British phonetic influence, given how they pronounce words such as buffet or marquis.
@LMS, loved your disquisition on the redundant THE's. It goes along with how I wince when I hear ATM Machine, PIN Number, etc.
I found it an interesting puzzle. I had most of the same errors as Rex, but they didn't really slow me down, I'm used to overwriting when I see something is not going to work. Had the west pretty much filled before the east.
Not true, if you've ever been a carpenter for instance, is atilt; neither sad nor bad, but I can't countenance sapor as a "flavor" any more than I would use "proximate cause" to mean "cause". And OMG, who bastardizes a pastrami sandwich with swiss cheese? Not in my town (and, presumably, cold-cut pastrami from cryovac packaging rather than the real thing).
Had "ad libitum" before "ad lib line" before "ad libbing", loved the key for "papyrus" as well as its proximity to "tut". For me, the sport stack in the NE was a slog but both iris and hyacinth were gimmes. Cara mia was also, off the c and the m. I always hear that in John Astin's voice (I had a wicked crush on Carolyn Jones when I was a kid).
@anon at 6:26, keep smiling but he'd have to A) look in the NYTimes, and B) read. He does neither.
As for Jeans and "casual Friday", I would hope that's a thing of the past, but I suppose, in a country where a photo of a president working in shirt sleeves or wearing a tan suite sets off alarm bells (well, if he's a Black Democratic president anyway), it's probably still a thing out there somewhere. As for me, I was once offered a job at a prep school and my response was, "I'm sorry; I don't own any chinos or blazers." I've been wearing jeans to work since my hippy days of yore.
Overall, liked it much more than Rex did.
@mmorgan-How about MLB Baseball?
@Nancy-If you're looking for a REALLY long pop song, I'd suggest Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant", which comes in at a tidy 18:34. The clue wanted a #1, so this one never made the cut.
Kvetching Korner: too easy for a Friday.
Positive Spin Sector: the lovely HYACINTH, ARTEMIS, PAPYRUS and those piggisch SLOVENS, which for me were almost hoof-related cLOVENS.
"You're not all thatsmart" Department: needed crosses for the JINPING part; didn't know Apollo's sister, couldn't think of a word that fit SW??S.
Help from previous crosswords: SAPOR, KEANE.
Speaking of Apollo: "HYACINTH,...in Greek mythology, beautiful youth loved by Apollo. He was killed accidentally by a discus thrown by the god. According to another legend, the wind god Zephyr, out of jealousy, blew the discus to kill Hyacinth. From his blood sprang a flower which was named for him." (encyclopedia.com). IRIS is a mythologic figure, too - goddess of the rainbow and messenger of he gods to HOI polloi (just kidding about the last part)..
I have to smug laugh at Rex's "Medium-Challenging" Oh, yes it took me longer than 7minutes, but 11 minutes less than my previous best! Slow start but things fell in line after I got into it.
For your medium challenging, I offer a smooth and pleasant journey.
Nice, challenging Friday puzzle. Thanks very much, Mr. Burnikel!
Love the fashion (or lack thereof) discussion today. Yes, @GILL, I remember skirts and pantyhose at the office too -- brrrr --and couldn't wait to get into something warmer in winter. And I didn't. Wait, that is. I'm pretty sure that by the early 1970s I was wearing pants to work in winter. I owed the ability to do this to two things: 1) We editors in the publishing world were considered more "creative" types than "managerial" or "executive" types, and so we had more leeway to be "quirky" and non-corporate. Second -- thank heavens for the pants suit, which enabled me to look more "coordinated" and less like a complete SLOVEN.
@Whatsername (9:52) -- Amen to "fashionable does not always equal tasteful". I couldn't agree more. I'm often GOBSMACKED by what is considered fashionable and how awful most people look in it. I agree with you about double-knit pants being infinitely better than yoga pants. Back in the day, knits were made from pure wool, not from polyester, they were made by reputable designers (if not by the big names) and were therefore quite attractive and boasted a shape that was -- gasp! -- actually becoming. I have held onto my collection for decades; they are simply not replaceable by the junk made today.
As for JEANS -- they look great on many people, but I can't wear them. In fact I've never even owned a pair. If a woman is short, and even more problematic, short-waisted, JEANS are out of the question. I would say that knowing your own body and having a full-length mirror are the main requisites of dressing well, regardless of current fashion.
But life isn't fair, of course. A tall woman with a fabulous body can rock any garment. Yoga pants. Gauchos. The Maxi dress. A burlap bag, if she wishes. And then make you drool because you wish you had a burlap bag just like it. Sigh.
SouthsideJohnny @9:17, maybe the prez already does xwords, cuz fish already do fly. Here are some doing it on YouTube.. Now pigs flying....still looking for that.
Wanted PAJAMAS for NO JEANS.
I can sort of get behind "no pajamas," but "no jeans" is just one stuffy bridge too far for any job I would ever want.
TIL that BINET (Alfred) is pronounced BEE-nay. OK then.
Re: HOI polloi and “hoity-toity”: “polloi” is the same Greek word ( meaning “many”) that gives us the prefix “poly-“, as in “polynumeral”, “polymath”, etc. I suspect the connection with “hoity-toity” comes from using a Greek term to refer to the masses, usually with disdain.
So many snappy clues and answers! SAPOR takes TASTE to a whole new level (but maybe only we hoity-toity classicists would dare use it.)
I agree about not being on the puzzle's wavelength, kept having words where I had all but one letter and still couldn't figure it out what it was going for.
As someone who knows his Greek, I'd like to put the 10D record straight, please.
Abyssus (Latin) is borrowed by Greek ábyssos, itself formed by the alpha privative and byssós probably deriving from bythós (=bottom, depth).
So, "Word from the Greek for abyss" is abyssos and chaos has nothing to do with the whole thing, etymologically at least.
SWISS is a horseshit answer (I needed all the cross to figure out what this abomination of a combination). Otherwise, I enjoyed this puzzle a lot. Best Friday in weeks, if not months.
You must be kidding...
"Hoity-toities" is a rhyming compound from English dialect "hoit" = to play the fool.
Coming from someone who knows his English...
The clothing comments are very interesting.
@pabloinnh. LOVE Alice, the whole 18+ minutes. Arlo Guthrie was stopping in the town where I taught years ago to pick uo a car a local had restored, and he did an impromptu concert — SOLO — for us in our concert hall (I taught at a small university) He said he couldn't do Alice, despite an imminent insurrection if he didn't, because he didn't have backup. But, he promised he'd return and do it then. And he did! It’s quite a bit longer if he's there riffing on life, drugs, music, and bars, and we ate up every syllable. Good memories!
I have a choice today between shopping for upcoming cruise (another item that went to Good Will when I retired, beside suits, dresses, and skirts, were bras; but dressy clothes require undergarments), which I loathe, and training the dogs. Guess what's winning!
I think OFL really loved this puzzle, but was critical because (1) it's his job to be critical and (2) he always blames the constructor when there are answers that mislead him. But I would not have him be any other way. He needs to both amuse and give out pro tips, and succeeded today, and his personal quirks are part of what makes the blog so interesting.
I thought this was a great puzzle precisely because I was cleverly led astray so often (Writeover City today for me).
Kudos to @LMS for getting in first last night. And what I want to know is, is the breath mark, usually transliterated as an H, in the original Greek?
Now I suppose the Brits to say An-tee-ga, but they really ought to say An-tig-you-a to be consistent with how they pronounce Nicaragua.
I'll just add that if I were at a hotel in Scottsdale at this time of year, I would be watching my Giants for Spring Training, and having a last beer at that famous bar there that is closing forever.
@Karl Grouch - Etymologically speaking, the clue is fine. The two notions are very close, so I’m presuming Shortz went with something a little less obvious while writing the clue. Of course, this is one of those fine differentiations that most of us missed but was sure to irk someone who actually had some expertise.
Couldn’t agree more re: with au jus, ATM machine, PIN number, SSN number, irregardless, and preventative: AARRGGHH!!
Enjoy fashion police revisit to gauchos, surely to stir some juices.
Speaking of long songs, alot of Yes songs were entire sides of albums. Talking 22-23 minute songs, or so.
I was big into Yes in my younger days. Still have every album up to Big Generator.
RooMonster
Len Deighten IS NOT A MYSTERY WRITER, for Crissake. He is a spy novelist, ala John LeCarre. Also non-fiction history. An editor should not make this mistake. Otherwise, I liked this effort, finished it within 3 rex's.
Pastrami and Swiss? This is the NEW YORK Times. Ugh
More on long songs:
Meat Loaf's I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) was twelve minutes long on the album, and the video was 7:38, but the single version that went to #1 was only 5:13.
And some long ones that did not hit #1
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly (or In the Garden of Eden by L. Ron Butterfly) goes 17:05.
The aforementioned Alice's Restaurant Massacree ran 18:34.
But the longest in my collection is Autobahn by Kraftwerk - 22:34.
The pastrami clue for "Swiss" in inexcusably awful. Otherwise, though, a very fine puzzle, continuing the trend of the past couple of weeks of avoiding acronyms, hip-hop slang, and other obscure (to me) pop culture. These things seem to occur in waves - there have been weeks where I had 3 DNF, but lately I gone three weeks without one.
Longest song...One of my friends subjected me to something called "Layla," which seemed interminable... Had the space been 5 letters, I'd have tried it.
@old timer: And Jag-u-ar
@Nancy (11:22)--Had to smile at your tall woman/fabulous body comment. Neither would accurately describe me and I therefore do not own any yoga pants, gaucho pants or burlap bags. I occasionally wear a maxi dress though. I figure at this point in life, the more coverage, the better. And I confess to having a few knit suits in the back of the close too. You never know when you might need one.
@Karl Grouch, glad you finally mentioned the problem with "abyss". I stared at that clue for ages, thinking: I'm positive that the greek for "abyss" is something like... "abyss". And it is!
I had a classmate from Antigua and he pronounced it an-TEE-ga (with a lovely Caribbean lilt at the end!)
Okanaganer
@ Roo, Yes Yes!
Just to clear up the misunderstanding:
I agree that the two notions are very close but that's semantics, not etymology. Etymology is about the origin or source of a word.
My comment was referring to the latter.
@What @ 1:10, et al re the swiss. at, was the Reuben sandwich not invented by a Jew? That what wikipedia says.
I'm just going to bounce in here and defend JEANS.
I'm in total agreement with @Amelia 12:12. the NO threw me for a bit since I think of casual as a pair of nicely washed (no holes) pair of jeans. My husband who was quite the dapper, handsome man (still is) when I met him would always wear a pair of jeans with a nice shirt and a blue blazer. He only wore a suit at a wedding or a funeral. You can always look shitty in a pair of trousers if they are wrinkled and ill-fitting. You really can't mess up JEANS unless you want to and like the made-up rips that cost about $250 a pair.
As for short women and, well, women of all sizes, I think you can wear anything at all. Who says someone who is 5'2 can't wear mini or gauchos or maxi. My daughter is teeny tiny and she wears what she wants and looks fabu.
What I don't particularly like is that when women get older, they tend to give up on how they look. I have so many friends who just drag anything out of the closet that's comfortable to wear and drag a comb through their hair and that's it. I buy these lovely friends lipstick for gifts - none wear them. Alas.
So...remember, when you wear something nice and clean and doesn't shout "LOOK AT ME" then you're good to go and you will feel better. Lecture over....
@Anon 11:19 -- it's Ms. Burnikel. Not that anyone here is keeping track of women or anything like that.
Richard Harris's original version of "MacArthur Park", which came out a few months before "Hey Jude", had a timing of 7:20. It only went to #2 though (the evil "Mrs. Robinson" kept it at bay).
I thought this was absurdly easy for a Friday. The Friday puzzles never seem hard anymore. I remember Fridays being virtually indistinguishable from Saturday in terms of difficulty.
Apropos of that, why are there clues such as 21d - Like the moon's landscape and many olives? Would nobody figure out this answer with only one of those items in the clue? This is **FRIDAY**, editors! Stop dumbing everything down!
@Karl Grouch - Yep, I think we all understood what you were saying. Just to be extremely explicit, CHAOS is from the Greek word khaos,”* a synonym for the Greek word abyssos from which we get the word “abyss.” Both khaos and abyssos mean deep, bottomless pit, or “abyss.” So one could say that CHAOS is from the Greek word for “abyss,” although it might be less misdirectional to say that CHAOS is from A Greek word for “abyss.” Shortz seems to love misdirections that irk experts, so I imagine him chortling as we write.
I’m wearing JEANS because wearing NO JEANS is a step too far beyond casual.
*Not even going to try to find the actual Greek spelling.
NW was absolutely brutal. A final sale is not a "point" of no return. A sale is not an instance in time, it is a span. So boo to that. And have never heard of an odor eater though I can imagine what it's for. Names (Len, Uta) are always brutal for me. Also unfamiliar with binet and sapor. So alllllll of that corner was just the worst.
The rest of the puzzle fell together beautifully though
Rex.. maybe you buy all your clothes at full price, but for the rest of us, a FINAL SALE is the point at which an article of clothing has been marked down as far as it will be, and for which no returns are accepted, so the clue definitely works.
NOT!
I wish I were smart. Wish I were multi-lingual. Because then I could find all the mistakes in the clues and write about them. Not only that, I could participate in the bickering and at the end of the day I would still know I was right. Then I'd be like everyone else.
7 Down = puzzle’s best, in my humble opinion (egad, STALE/OLD) ATILT means out-of: round, vertical, horizontal & square, as carpenters & builders the world over would say, doncha know. Sometimes it feels good to get out of the box. You’re welcome.
Best,
john
Wow. Rex, you may be the first person who ever wanted one of the classic Beatles songs to end.
'Like "HEY, JUDE," it just kept going when I wanted it to be over.'
And on the subject of female constructors, I agree with your position. Perhaps you can talk to the leaders at your university:
Binghamton University Board of Directors
Officers: Men 5; Women: 0
Directors: Men: 18; Women: 6
Long song storyies, cont'd.
Stoner at a Doors concert to other guy: How many songs have they played, man?
OG: One.
(Time passes.)
S: How many now?
OG: Still one.
(More time passes)
S: How 'bout now, man?
OG>: Same one, buddy.
S: Far out. You gonna eat that?
(Stolen, more or less, from A Child's Garden of Grass. Also applies to Allman Bros. concerts.)
The nerve
I may be an HR nerd but...
FULL TIME is definitely not the opposite of a TEMP. They are 2 completely different concepts- one pertains to how you are employed (short term, long term, etc) and the other is how many hours you work. One can be a temp working full time.
Also no jeans is much less common as a dress code prohibition than no sweats, shorts, or graphic t shirts
A pretty routine Friday solve. I had a few write overs, BENET/BINET, ANTILLE/ANTIGUA and MAPS/MAIL. None of these managed to slow the solve down much.
The ASANA clue put me off for a while. I guessed POSSES off the P and figured 10D must be CHAOS. Normally ASANA would have gone right in. However the "Crane" part of the clue had me thinking of "The Karate Kid". I figured a "Crane pose" must involve standing on one foot also. This didn't jive with my impression of ASANA from previous clues. Later on SEASIDE made me realize ASANA was a forgone conclusion. That was about as tricky as it got. No real challenges.
I'm new to this site -- what is the significance of the highlighted and red letters?
I actually said out loud as I wrote it in, "I can't believe the New York Times would allow this nonsense."
Took many of the wrong turns that Rex did, starting withTennis Ace for 1A. TSK, get back....but it was satisfying to fix, after I walked away for 1/2 hour & restarted fresh
@Kimba
@REX solves in AcrossLite and 63A was the last word he filled in (so it's shaded) and the R was the last letter he entered (so it's red).
“Jakarta” ain’t even an island
Pretty much what @Rex said, except for the medium-challenging part. I’m with the contingent that found this on the easy side for a Fri., perhaps because I avoided the errors that Rex made. Solid and bland seems right, a qualified liked it.
Funny about this puzzle. I am improving at my advanced age and am solving the Friday’s and Saturday’s but not today’s. However, unlike Rex l loved the clues and the answers and made the same initial mistakes as Rex. When it was done I remarked how much I loved this puzzle. It’s all a matter of taste.
Beat you by two seconds! This was my second-fastest Friday ever (in 40 years of solving; and might have been my quickest before a TGIF Manhattan cocktail), so it must have just been in my wheelhouse. Normally I'm a little over twice your time, and this was the first time I've nipped under. I found it a solid puzzle.
Meh
Good one! Loved seeing hyacinth and papyrus in the same puzzle.
@Loren Muse Smith
Words and phrases tend to come into English in their nominative form (from the source language) and then get used in English without inflection. "Hoi polloi" is taken up as a fixed and recognizable unit, and we use it uninflected. There is nothing wrong with that. To the hoi polloi, of the hoi polloi, . . . If someone insists on dropping the "hoi" then they should also inflect the "polloi." If you said "to the pollois" instead of "to the hoi polloi" or "of the pollon" instead of "of the hoi polloi" no one would understand you.
I think you should feel comfortably superior to anyone who looks down at you for saying the hoi polloi.
Late solving and DNF on KEeNE
Anyway had to come on and without reading other comments have to tell my brilliant entry of BREAKEVEN for point of no return.
TADA.
About as well as white bread and mayonnaise go with pastrami! Do me a favor.
MAID MAIL: HOWIE ROLLS
Thus FAR IWASHAD by a LEWD OLD COED,
a FULLTIMER who SITSIDLE and preens.
It’s IDIOTIC she just RESTSEASY in bed,
and CARAMIA! She wears NOJEANS!
--- JON BINET
Gimme HEYJUDE launched a surprisingly successful solve. After looking at the completed grid, I thought: did I really KNOW that stuff? Well, I sure didn't know 17-across. Maybe I'm living under a rock, but I have no CLUES at all who this is. Can't be all THAT powerful!
Anyway, the H of HEYJUDE also suggested HYACINTH; not all that many flowers end in that letter. And so off and running (I remember running!) Stumbled over Tsk, joining many, and CHAsm for abyss. Those were soon written over, and guess what remained? You got it: the NW. Thought of FOXCUB early on, but a name starting with X? Yikes. I have to agree with OFL about FINALSALE; this is about as awkward a phrase as you'll see. Maybe "Last event before closing" or something. Still, overall, a satisfying solve, with typical Burnikel charm. No direct DOD; perhaps any of the 26 case holders on HOWIE Mandel's Deal or No Deal show. Birdie.
I started with "tennisace" instead of FINALSALE for quite a while. That "slowed me down" significantly. Personally, I thought TENNIS ACE would have been a brilliant answer - don't you think so?
Lady Di
@D,LIW – Yes, I did think so, and that’s exactly why I didn’t fill it in. Shoulda followed the same logic with tenS in the LOSS column and the sExy to LEWD mistake. And baNkERS as the early LENDERS. Darn Friday CLUES. Inkfest in the north.
And you are usually warned when SALEs are FINAL. And speaking of FINAL, those Four are in town for hoops this weekend. Watch for CLIPS of the Twin Cities.
Ever go to a RON-JON surf shop? I did.
So I googled oft-appearing UTA Hagen. Seems like she coulda passed for a yeah baby years before I was born.
Pretty decent stuff from acquaintance CC. Thanks for getting RON in there.
Like many, made the same mistakes as OFL, except the one of hating on the puzzle. Feels like I have made the SAPOR / SAvOR mistake before, so dnf, even though vING was obviously not Chinese.
Also had jIBE instead of GIBE and did not wince at jAVE.
Otherwise, not too much trouble after the initial chasm of empty squares. Order out of CHAOS finally emerged.
Finished without any w/o's, mainly because I demurred at several places (tennis ace, chasm, tsk, dough, st. kitts, bankers, and the always popular nissei). Of course all those balks ate up time, but it was worth it for the clean solve.
I liked the puzzle, as I usually do a good CC effort. Very little -ese or dreck here. Nice mix of easy and challenging.
XI JINPING, the president of China, has got Trump's number, but that's a low bar anyway.
Good one.
@D,LIW - TENNIS ACE would be great, other than messing up my USURERS at 8d.
Put in Howie first and zowie it was off to the races.
Diana - I was also thinking along the lines of tennisace, but then the lenders wouldn't allow it.
And I couldn't help but peek at Family Circus right next to the puzzle in my dead tree edition.
Loved / hated this puzzle, as with most puzzles.
Pumped for Saturday.
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