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Onetime maker of Matchbox cars / TUE 3-5-19 / Where Johnny Cash shot a man in song / Yellow white meadow flower / Quite contrary girl of rhyme / Home with dome in Nome
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Constructor: Joe Deeney
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (4:11)
Theme answers:
- PARKING LOT (16A: It has spots)
- LEOPARD PRINT (22A: It has spots)
- COMMERCIAL BREAK (35A: It has spots)
- DOGGY DAYCARE (48A: It has Spots)
- TEASER VICE (57A: It has spots)
noun
• • •
["VICE" TEASER]
The grid is weirdly choppy and conspicuously black-square heavy, with two cheater squares* in each of the weird giant "S"-shaped blocks of black. This results in an unpleasantly segmented grid, laden with short fill. IONE is crosswordese, and she crosses tilde-less ANO, which is also crosswordese. That cross is kind of an emblem for the grid. I mean, check the symmetrical cross: OKRA / EKE. See what I mean? Iconic crosswordese ... crossing. What is with that QURAN spelling? It's a valid spelling variant, but that is an astonishingly gratuitous "Q." Somewhere Roberto DURAN is shaking his head going "Come on!" There are so many different ways to go up there without having to resort to an alt-spelling of KORAN. And again, any time I see aspirational "Q"s and other Scrabbly letters mucking up a grid, I wonder about the constructor's priorities. I'm AT A LOSS. Also, all things "IQ" irritate me. Racist nonsense, that test. And don't get me started on the puzzle's love affair with *&$^ing MENSA. But I digress. I knew DOLMA but couldn't spell it (DALMA!) (like the DALMAtian ... which has spots!). Literally no idea who this LIAM guy is. I tried SEAN and SIAN and then just gave up (22D: Writer O'Flaherty). Is TYCO a toy company? Are they bygone? Yyyyyyup. Throw another answer on the ash heap of history. Sigh. (60A: Onetime maker of Matchbox cars)
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*cheater squares = black squares that don't affect word count and are only there to make filling the grid easier. Here, the black squares above "25" and "15," as well as their symmetrical counterparts
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140 comments:
One of our dearly departed cats was named spot.
Yikes! Late to the party! Just got TEA service. Even after Rex pointed it out.
I never notice when a puzzle is "musty" when I'm solving, as Rex puts it. I suppose that means I am musty myself? Hmmph, I still feel young. I mean, yeah, I have hearing aids, and I have in the last few months switched on to the joys of fiber, but, you know, I'm not dead yet, I think I'll go for a walk. Plus I'm not that old.
Speaking of DIAL .. I just saw this video the other day... it was one of those "things [actually, like, 70+] old people send you" emails, and yet, this one made me really chuckle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HyyAlcoUXo
You are now either giggling, or frowning with a perplexed look, or rolling your eyes. Me, I giggled. Or chuckled. Perhaps I chortled.
I liked this puzzle just fine. DOGGY DAY CARE was just fine, pshaw, Rex. TEA SERVICE more of a reach, yes, but it worked. PARKING LOT was the best though.
I like OKRA. I like DOLMAs. I think I'll go have a snack.
Dosagree on Quran. It’s a much, much better spelling that Koran, based on any logical system of transliteration from Arabic. Koran is nonsense, and should be on the ash heap.
Really not much to say. The theme was a low high spot for the puzzle. Got a smile from PARKING LOT and COMMERCIALBREAK. Might have enjoyed TEASERVICE except that I had TEASER in and finished that corner last and saw only TEASER VICE. Me dumb. I guess I agree with a lot of the Rex on this one.
But I like the Quran spelling. Looks better, sounds better. Long live Q,
prankster of the universe.
I still don’t understand TEASER VICE. I finished with a minor typo hiccup in 8’43” (which is just under my Tuesday average), so not complaining per se...but...but wtf does that even mean?
Agree with OFL that choppiness is this puzzle's problem, not just in the corners, but all over the place. It's a NYT Tuesday puzzle and the review grumbles; film at 11:00.
At least, the spots theme didn't trigger our old friend ACNE. Also, if the clue answer includes the words soil and fertile, pretty sure LOAM is your answer. Nice puzzle, Joe.
Years ago when I was teaching junior high school, somebody gave me a wood grained Cross pen. Damn! That was a great writing implement. I loved that pen and almost every period during the day a kid would ask to borrow it and remarkably it never disappeared. I finally retired it when the refills became harder to find.
Riff on Folsom Prison Blues: I like Johnny Cash and people love that song. For years, my wife sang in a small-town cover band and I saw most of their shows. Every time the song started, folks perked up. The lyrics express the sincere lament of a guy who is hopelessly incarcerated, which is a very sad predicament. Yet, the tempo is jaunty and the guitar licks are comically spirited, Listen to the live version recorded at Folsom Prison. Cash seems as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs as he entertains an audience of hard core felons. He sings the line, "I shot a man in RENO, just to watch him die." Listen to the blood curdling guttural response from the crowd. It scares me every time and it certainly got Johnny's attention.
Ha ha this was classic Rex, he's angry at the puzzle for using words he doesn't know. Man oh man.
Also, you're five years younger than me how the heck do you not know TYCO? They made HO trains and SLOT CARS! They must have had slot cars in Fresno there couldn't have been anything else to do there, except mope maybe.
Speaking of the Central Valley sticks, here's the great "Folsom Prison Blues" mystery: If the protagonist shot a man in RENO just to watch him die, why did they lock him up in California?
Hmm, I think of Quran as the main spelling and Koran as an alternate. I agree with you on the choppiness of the grid though.
You are right, Rex. I thought what the hell is a TEASER VICE, I’ll have to Google it. The theme answers are such a stretch, LEOPARD PRINT is the only one that really worked for me. Oh I can see TEA SERVICE now as spot of tea if you want to go all British, but really? Commercial break isn’t a spot, it’s a commercial break.
I did like 64A Parker and Cross, I solve all my puzzles with my trustworthy Cross pen, medium blue ink. God help anybody who borrows it and doesn’t return it immediately.
Wait - how does a tea service have spots? (Sorry, dense.)
Medium. Yep, Tuesday.
Liked it a lot, corny or not.
I'm there with JOHN X. References to Matchbox cars, oh yeah! And HO trains, OMG!
So, yeah, maybe it was bit choppy, but plainly not enough to slow down my solve. Theme, not ba, and OMG, no theme explainer, TYG!
Even so Rex, what do you expect from a Tuesday? Angels singing on high. (Really? Every day?)
Finished in under 6:00. Okay time for me on a Tuesday, although I'm sure Rex could boast a 6 msec solve.
Very nice that Joe chose five totally different takes on the word spot. Totally. A place with openings, an animal’s fur, the 10-minute breaks every 2 minutes on TV, a kennel, and tea. This is very cool, imo, just to be forced to see that word in some of the places it surfaces out in the wild. So I thank my lucky stars that this fascination distracts me from seeing only the blemishes (spots!) on a puzzle. I watch people here nit and pick over a puzzle, and I just want to stage a Zen-Linguist-Just-Breathe-And-Take-It-In Intervention.
This grid can’t even begin to visit the other connotations of spot – spot a movie star, find yourself in a spot ‘cause you’ve been caught in about 10,000 lies, spot some BIG APE about to try to bench 650, spot a student $40 for gas…
Spot is a real work horse of a word. Well, it’s not in the league of, say, get and go… [pause to look into this…] ok, here are some more: set, run, turn, take, break. I wonder now and then how we can have so so many ways to communicate something (terse, short, laconic, succinct, concise, pithy, curt. . . ) and yet we have so many words that we’ve saddled with multiple jobs. I bet there’s some kind of _ _nym label to describe such words. If not, I say we call’em oxenyms.
My favorite themer was, in fact, DOGGY DAY CARE. Overthinking that is a little stinker of a buzzkill.
@Deep Mac - You sit down for a “spot of tea.”
Rex – I’m glad you finally brought up the fact that the ANO has no tilde. It’s about time! I’ve never wanted to say anything, but this problem is something I think bears discussion here. Let’s talk about that after the 33 people chime in to explain the parsing of TEA SERVICE.
I really, really got in to sitting there and thinking about all our myriad of things that have spots. Kids with measles, an administration filled with TEMPs and acting heads, the appointment calendar of a hair dresser who starts drinking at 2pm (and yes, there’s a story there), my go-to black pants whose little bleach incident areas I fill in with a Sharpie…
@Deep Mac - You sit down for a “spot of tea.” I separated this out and repeated it ‘cause it’s lost in all my blah blah blathering above. Maybe this’ll stop the avalanche of similar questions. Maybe.
I enjoyed the theme - especially DOGGY DAYCARE which made me laugh out loud. Am sure its a great violation of constructing rules to have the capital S, but c'mon Rex - exeryone knows Spots as shorthand for a generic dog even if few dogs still have the name.
For some reason, tea service was the first thing I thought of soon as I had TEA - but refused to write it in until I got 3 more crosses since it seemed such a weak answer compared to the others. Maybe being British helped. Given its weakness, I can see why it was hard to parse for others.
@JOHN X - Great observation on Reno/Folsom. Never thought of that! Perhaps he neglects to mention a previous crime committed on the way up I80?
TYCO hasn’t existed since 1997! We have constructors younger than its nonexistence. I don’t find the expectation that a company should not have been defunct for the past 20 years to be unreasonable. I mean, I’m 30, totally within the “actually an adult” stage of life and it disappeared when I was 8. The only quasi-acceptable answers that I can think of for “companies that haven’t existed since around the millennium” are ENRON and... that’s it.
Hah! How tastes differ. My favorite answer -- the one answer that turned my lips up into a smile was DOGGY DAY CARE, and not far behind was TEA SERVICE. Usually I fly through Tuesdays, but this one had some hiccups, which will hopefully give new solvers some motivation to up their game.
Yes, in looking over the grid, TEASER VICE jumped right out at me, and I flashed on the face of Don Rickles, who still makes my heart smile.
I think this was my fastest Tuesday ever even with having to detach the SER from TEA and attach it to VI_E so that I could see that I needed to plunk a C into that last remaining empty spot.
Slowish for me, but I liked the theme. I thought a pair of dice had spots for a while. I have a couple of granddogs in Vegas that stay in a doggy hotel with TVs in their rooms. No VCRs.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Mr Data has a cat named spot.
It’s Tea Service, as in “I think I’ll have a spot of tea”!
I’m not a pet person so I didn’t think of Spot as a dog name. I thought of it as an appointment or opening. Is there a spot at the kennel for Asta, Fido and Fala? Loren is right. Spot is one of those words with a thousand uses. In England, Spots means Zits. And at the gym it’s someone who is a sort of AIDE during your workout. A spot is also a guest role in a TV show. Think Bert Convy. Etc. I don’t think of “abut” as “border.” It implies lying next to something or more precisely rubbing up against. But I guess it’s in how you use it. Nuance is key. I liked the clue for the Tate Museum. Made me think of Sherlock Holmes and his visit to the crime museum at Scotland Yard. And wait is that a blood spot!?
Nice idea for a theme, and overall execution is good, but ... two WoEs is the entire puzzle: IONE and DOLMA. Bad form to cross the two hardest answers on a Tuesday.
I did briefly consider 'Dick and janes' for DOGGY DAY CARE.
Don’t understand Rex’s complaint about QURAN … isn’t that how it is always spelled? Hmmm ... after further research, it appears they are about 50/50 (or were as of 2000). Maybe regional? We have a largish Muslim population here, and where we lived on London ever-so-much-more-so, for whatever that's worth.
@Christy
Try these, which includes our crossword favorite TWA. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41027460/ns/business-us_business/t/most-memorable-companies-vanished/#.XH5nfBpOmhA
I’m confused by all the negatives in your comment. If I read you correctly, you say that no businesses defunct before 2000 are fair game for puzzles. Does this include art, music, literature, etc., prior to the same year?
Not my fastest Tuesday but darn close. It may not earn a SPOT in the Puzzle Hall of Fame, but I liked it!
A nice Tuesday. Couple of bumps made it interesting.
I enjoy crossword puzzles as they force me to infer. If it fits, it is prolly right. Parsing clues for their correctness, politically or whatever, detracts from the gleeful challenge of solving the puz.
I'm an avid fan of AVCX and gladly pay $20/year for that weekly series and give it as gifts to my children.
But there is this incessant carping about the quality of the nyt solving experience. I get a boatload of enjoyment from my $40/year nytxw subscription.
If someone can edit and deliver another 365 puzzles a year for about $40 or $60 or even $100, I'd do it. But, we're paying AVCZ one half what the NYT charges, for one-seventh of the fun.
Rex, why don't you and AVCX and the other Rex haters start your own daily crossword? Then you could devote the time you spend carping about Will to, e.g., suggesting DURAN is a better entry than QURAN.
All thoughts welcome.
I seem to be the only commentator so far who has heard of Liam O'Flaherty. He is the author of a fun read titled, "The Informer," which I read when I took an Irish Literature class at Hamline University.
Anyone know anything about oxeyes?
Challenging? Well, if you say so.
Oldy moldy is about right. Bill Shortz needs to up the ante.
I think Spot of TEA is used more by the SNL group when they want to make fun of stuffy Brits. I think this is more of an Americanism. Brits say "cuppa" TEA. However, if you're having a spot of TEA then it's usually around 4:00 and you have food with it. I guess you'd call it supper. Notice ICE T crossing TEA SERVICE? Hahahah.
LEOPARD PRINT made me think of all the animal print clothing I can't stand. Just me. Snake skin is making a comeback in the shoe department. The real stuff. I suppose if you hate snakes and crocodiles, then you can spend big bucks on something ugly. Just me.
My good friend is still grieving the loss of her little runt of the cutest dog in Sacramento thanks to a careless DOGGY DAY CARE center. Oops, who let the adorable pit bull out to run with the flock? If I need to, I only have friends or family pet sit at my home. If I can't find anyone, I just bring them along with me. Plenty of hotels allow pets.....
HI HO belongs with the 7 dwarfs. DOLL belongs out of the mouth of Cagney. VCR and DIAL.....? What's that? I'm afraid this is A NO for moi. Waiting for you, Wed.
I never realized aging could be such an advantage. The “older” OFL finds a puzzle and the “staler” he finds them, the better for me. Personal bests yesterday and today for example. Love seeing the “dated” answers that are before new solvers’ times. Ditto @LMS on tildes and umlauts and graves and acutes etc. etc. Love also the “Britishisms” like spot of tea and then running to the loo. My wheelhouse. Yeah!
I kept looking for a clue about Lady Macbeth.
Just wondering, am I the only one who finds the weekly (sometimes daily) inclusion of obscene, disgusting, hate-mongering rap musicians to be offensive and totally inappropriate ? I suspect that Rex has to tread lightly, since he works in academia where any student can feiign outrage about any perceived slight - maybe he is concerned about the “volation of free speech” angle. I would suggest that advocating the “violation of women” is much, much more discusting and has no place in the NYT or any other publication. Talk about misogynistic - this guy is Misogynistic with the capital M. Would anyone who posts here read the lyrics of “Pimp or Die” to any of their family or loved ones ?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vHWCpa8_SNQ
@TomAZ
I literally laughed out loud every single time they "rebooted" the phone by quickly lifting and returning the handset to the cradle!
Quran is to Koran is what Beijing is to Peking. The King of Political Correctness gets a fail on this one. For shame!
Any theme that actually makes sense is fine with me. Here's the kind of theme makes me think ugh or much stronger, no matter how good the fill is. Clue: Flaw in the movie trailer. Answer Teaser Vice.
Shout out to the NorCal oldies among us. Cal Worthington and his dog.
To Rex and all of those griping about the lack of a tilde in ANOS:
Print the grid, enter the word with a tilde, and shut up.
I say this with love.
Pretty good Tuesday if you just relax and go with the flow. Geez Rex.
The clue for piano cracked me up because it sounded like it was asking for the role Sam played. Liked that one.
Minor nit re: stent. Those are usually put in place by a cardiologist not a heart surgeon.
Oh joy, a Star Wars clue.
Doggy day care is what those places are called. I don't know why that irritated Rex so much.
6A made me smile because yesterday the puzzle was B-day!
The puzzle’s constructor is a white guy who is not a friend of Sharp’s and its editor is Will Shortz. It never had a chance.
Spent the first 30 years of my life in the U.K., and nobody ever said a spot of tea.
How insensitive was this puzzle towards people with birthmarks? Calling them spots is a slur akin to hate speech.
I almost quit in rage when I saw the inclusion of IQ. Are we sure Joe Deeney isn’t an alias for David Duke?
And can we talk about the inherent white supremacy of crosswords themselves? Black spaces don’t matter. Crossword puzzles are another tool of oppression used to normalize the idea that people of color are only fit for the margins of society.
March blogger gender watch:
Male: 4
Female: 1
If I was able to have a dog, I'd definitely name him or her, FIDO. Why is that a dog's name...specifically? FIDO? Rover, I get. Spot, I get. FIDO? For the record, I have a cat named Matilda because she's small, magical, and gets into trouble.
In my town we have a pet grooming/boarding place called "Spots," and they've be investigated for all kinds of abuse, neglect, and general mayhem. When I first saw the clue and answer, I thought maybe "Spots" was a national chain of doggy day care places and the ones here just happen to be terrible. I didn't even see the Spot-name connection.
I see Q'URAN everywhere now instead of KORAN. So, Rex is wrong there. But he's right about IQS. Can't win 'em all, I guess.
Lummox, big ape, oaf, galoot, etc. Does anyone use these words anymore?
What the heck is a teaser vice? Oh...tea service. 😝
Would’ve liked it better if all the clues had begun with the same letter. Feel bad for the constructors who have to be collateral damage in Rex’s mission to remove Shortz from his job.
Could the doggy daycare "spot" have a double meaning, not only a dog or two named Spot, which I agree is unlikely, but "spots" meaning, open slots -- room for a certain number of dogs? I have certainly heard this used in human daycare, availability referred to as number of spots open.
My dog is named, in the best literary tradition, Spot.
I like a puzzle with a sense of humor, so you had me at DOGGY DAY CARE, puzzle. Even though I had the exact same reaction as Rex: No one names their dog Spot anymore. It would be like having two children that you name Dick and Jane.
Oh, dear, I hope no one here has two children named Dick and Jane.
For a Tuesday, this is pretty good. I like puzzles that make you think in different directions for different theme answers. It doesn't make the puzzle crunchy, exactly, but it makes it crunchiER. Also, there are just about no proper names -- a very good thing.
But what are TEASER DICE? I've never heard of them. And, anyway, all DICE have spots. Seems like TEASER DICE would be DICE without spots. That would be a real tease, wouldn't it? I think there was a movie with a gambler who"knew" where the invisible spots were located on the dice he brought out of his pocket, but I can't remember the movie. Was it Guys and Dolls? If not, what movie? Anyone?
Or, like nearly a third of all homicides, the one in Reno was never solved and he was imprisoned for some other murder in Cal. Creepy either way.
Fun puzzle. Pretty easy. Thanks very much, Mr. Deeney. Happy Tuesday!
Let It Be is the twelfth and final studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 8 May 1970, almost a month after the group's break-up. Wikipedia
The spots were obvious though the answers were not. DOGGYDAYCARE was terrible. TEASER VICE was worse. Yeah, I figured it out, but I'm with Rex on how it read. Otherwise puzzle went fast except for the northeast corner, which was a bear.
By the way, the clue on TYCO was terrible. Mattel competed with Matchbox. TYCO entered the biz only after acquiring Matchbox in 1993. Mattel acquired Tyco in 1997. Tyco was well known for a variety of other toys. Sure, this is classic fill, but at least give clues that tell am interesting story about toys. This isn't one.
Spot is a metaphorical name for a dog. The fact that there are more Bellas and Baileys at the current time doesn’t matter.
https://youtu.be/Vi_BHHY5A8M
Thank you for that fun trip back to Cal Worthington’s commercials! As kids we used to eagerly await seeing his next “dog”.
Fido is Latin for I am faithful. Moderators: if someone else answered this already feel free to not include my comment. Woof.
@Muse - Geez... Don’t be an ass.*
Koran or QURAN?
@Christy - Could not agree more. I owned some TYCO toys, but defunct for 20+ years makes a puzzle dated unless one really balances it out with some freshness. Do APPS and ALAN Jackson provide enough balance to Say Anything (1989), ICE T (debut album 1987), Star Wars (1976), Casablanca (1942), Folsom Prison Blues (1953). I think all of these are more crossworthy than TYCO, but it continues to amaze me that the NYTX plays so old. It’s the crossword equivalent of publishing Mary Worth, Peanuts, and For Better or Worse in the comic pages and then wondering why young people prefer getting their news online.
*I’m guessing someone doesn’t get it.
Been nice not reading this blog. Popped back after a few months away, and see Rex rambling about IQ being "racist"?
What a miserable life you must lead to complain about nonsense like this. I feel bad for your family.
I’m with @TomAz, maybe I am musty but that doesn’t make me old. It did, however allow me to blaze through this very easy puzzle in not just record Tuesday, but record Monday time (for me). I thoroughly enjoyed (thank you for the lengthy blathering @LMS) the “spot” concept, especially the “spot” of tea. That was clever people!! I always find that when I have difficulty understanding the theme and come here for the “aha,” it make the theme that much better. Even on the days (like yesterday) when everyone but me seems to think the puzzle is easy and I am not on the constructor’s wavelength, I do puzzles for fun. Sure, I can recognize weaknesses, but why carp? If I think I can do better I ought to hunker down and send in a puzzle. To be fair to OFL, he does construct, he does teach crossword construction and I often see the “professor” in his frustration (having grown up as a “faculty brat”). So to each his own. Fun day for me.
Holy cow! No wonder I never heard of TEASER dICE!!! This is my worst DOOK error of the year!!!! When I looked at the answers and saw TEASER VICE, I thought: TEASER VICE is even more obscure than TEASER dICE. What on earth is it???? Oh, I see. TEA SERVICE. I bet I'm going to get TEASED today...and then some!!!!
Seems like a missed opportunity - "Dick and Jane book" has 15 letters. Although I guess that would have Spot, singular, rather than Spots.
Another hand up for the ridiculously long amount of time starting at "TEASER VICE" and wondering what the....
I wrote more on this below. But I do so agree!!!!
Having a high IQ is similar to having a Ph.D.: it indicates that the owner excels at taking standarized tests. Any other properties are accidental.
Every time Rex correctly points to words and terms that represent systemic racism, he's taken to task. He's also taken to task for not complaining about Hip Hop artists.
The concern trolling reaches its peak when we get the usual litany of complaints about mysogeny in hip hop (lovely how our concern rises when black artists are involved.) Of course this is the same crowd that protects their families from all things "dangerous." It reminds me of how Mike Pence protects women and respects then (as delicate flowers) from what he (and they) believe are natural male urges (to ravish and own women's bodies) by not inviting women to meetings at night -- unless, of course, appropriate women, in the firm of subservient wives, are present. And, of course, this same crowd conveniently ignore the systemic ways in which the language and clueing and constructing of puzzles fails the most basic gender analysis.
And no, this is not a defense of IceT. His music has elements of mysogeny. But then again so too does the crossword obsession with bra cup size.
Finally, I'd note that if you want to remove all the offending artists, sports icons, and political leaders who are offensive, then I'm all for it. But the convern trolling of hip hop and hip hop artists gives your game away.
I guess there is much more specialization in University English departments today if Irish writers are of minor importance. LIAM O’Flaherty doesn’t seem overly obscure to me but if it helps @Rex to recall him, I’ll share that John Ford the film director was his cousin. Who doesn’t love a western?
If you started solving from the SE for no good reason and had ICE for the first three letters of 57a, I can almost guarantee you entered pairofdICE without a second thought.
Hey All !
I ADMIT this puz didn't put me in a SPOT. I SPOTTED TEA SERVICE right away, didn't parse it the wrong way. High IQ? Probably not...
Does an OXEYE have SPOTs? A HIHO cracker has SPOTs (well, holes, actually). A Raggedy Ann DOLL has SPOTs, I BELIEVE SO. And
(Warning:This Won't Pass The Breakfast Test)
A TOILET after the TROTS might have SPOTS. Ewwwwww, right? (Sorry about that, but it was right there.) Sorry, again, if you're AT A LOSS after that!
Anyway, liked this puz. Good for NOOBs. A bit crunchier feel than an average TuesPuz, but HEY, that's no PROB.
ABUT DIAL
RooMonster
DarrinV
My five favorite clues from last week:
1. 70's rock? (3)
2. Illegal sweeteners (6)
3. Not true (5)
4. Something round that may have more than one side (11)
5. Red Rose (4)
PET
BRIBES
ATILT
DINNER PLATE
PETE
Thanks. I just got it despite the fact that I had tea service.
I saw portions of the BBC documentary on Johnny Cash’s visit to Folsom Prison when I visited the Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville. It gives you a sense of how tough penitentiaries are. Like Larry Gilstrap noted, the audience reaction to Cash’s line about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die is really creepy—the video shows their facial expressions (which are not pretty). A tip of the hat to entertainers who go to penitentiaries.
I love the name Fido. If I ever got a male dog I’d name him Fido (it would have to be Fida for a female). Alas, my cats refuse to alllow pets in the house.
Even the animated version of 101 Dalmatians does not have a SPOT; it does have a Spotty, though.
@Hartley70
Did Liam O'Flaherty write any comic books?
I don’t know whether IQ tests are racist. Seems like a discussion for another forum. I do know that the median IQ score is 100; i.e. , the clue and answer are accurate, so it works for me.
The theme and fill are fine for a Tuesday, but I would have liked it better were it tied together by a revealer rather than by the clues. There would have been more of an element of surprise.
The puzzle may skew old (whatever) but here's what's really old: political screeds on a crossword blog. The fact that many are well-written doesn't make them any more compelling or interesting. I always wonder whether the authors carry on like this in all aspects of their lives, or just here?
See you tomorrow.
I always have to have a chuckle when I see ANO get used...Google "ano Spanish" (no tilde) if you don't get it.
Rex, have to admit I don't understand the complaints about this puzzle being "musty" while also suggesting that they use Roberto DURAN as an answer rather than a perfectly fine spelling of QURAN.
@LMS — Enjoyed your SPOT of blather as usual today. Thanks for ‘splaining about the tea service. I was one of the LUMMOXes who didn’t get it but I wasn’t going to risk sounding like a crossword NOOB by asking, Actually what I wanted to say was I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who does that with the Sharpies. ;-]
@GILL — No, not just you. I can’t stand animal print fabrics, especially in the form of yoga pants or anything tight fitting. Ghastly. And same here on doggy care. My precious babies will never be left with strangers nor will they ever be taken anywhere near a dog park either.
Amy Yanni : Oxeye is short for oxeye daisy, so the clue is like "a field of orange", instead of "orange milkweed". Anyway, oxeye daisies are the standard, yellow center, white petals flower.
Sure, nobody actually names their dog Spot, but does that really matter? It's a very well-known generic dog name. Not sure I buy the complaint, there.
Had never heard of DOLMA; learned something today.
Finally: Commenting on a crossword puzzle blog that you hate just to complain about the proprietor of said blog, who does not read the comments, is a hilarious waste of time.
I come from an Italian speaking, hand-waving family from Italy. When I was a kid we had a dog named Faedo (that's how the family pronounce it). After I grew up, I realized they'd named the dog FIDO but pronounced it with an Italian accent. Kinda makes me wonder what they would've done with Spot. Probably something like Spotche.
I did today's puzzle during lunch, so drew it out over 45 minutes. Not much to say about it. Fairly clean fill in the north and west, with not too high of a PPP count, but I, too, wondered what the spot connections were with DOGGY DAY CARE (I first thought, is this a company name that uses a Dalmatian in its logo?) and TEA SERVICE. Now I know.
But I do have to shine a spotlight on @LMS's contribution. This paragraph made me laugh out loud:
Rex – I’m glad you finally brought up the fact that the ANO has no tilde. It’s about time! I’ve never wanted to say anything, but this problem is something I think bears discussion here. Let’s talk about that after the 33 people chime in to explain the parsing of TEA SERVICE.
And, HEY, we weren't disappointed.
I did appreciate the cluing to 47D. I've never liked clues that treated Noah's ark and its purported final resting place as an historical fact. At least today's puzzle simply refers to its reference in the Old Testament. On that score, I checked three versions of the Old Testament, from an 1853 King James to a 1986 Good News Bible. None of them refers to Mt. ARARAT. All refer to a mountain "in the Ararat range", which includes several other peaks. As the entry in Wikipedia notes, "early Syrian and Eastern tradition placed the ark on Mount Judi in what is today Şırnak Province, Southeastern Anatolia Region, an association that had faded by the Middle Ages and is now mostly confined to [the] QURANic tradition."
Advice of the day: don't eat too much OKRA at the same meal or you might end up with the TROTS.
@John X:
slot cars? racing for money, at least, pretty much gone by 1970. the real deal were 1/24th scale cars, not the teeny HO ones made by Tyco and someone else (I had the someone else kind, but can't remember the name; Aurora, thanks to the wiki). in any case, big size. loaf of bread size. I recall a photo of pimply 20-something guy engulfed in cigarette smoke racing. I don't recall the proper spelling, but he was called out as 'Soooo Kress".
Spot is a stereotypical name for a dog. Therefore, a doggy daycare has spots. Sometimes it's helpful to not over think it.
got it almost right:
"American slot car racing legend John Cukras (pronounce “Soo-Krees”) did much to glorify pro-racing when this car won the first Car Model magazine series race in 1967."
here: http://lascm.com/Vintage-Slot-Car-Blog/vintage-slot-cars/john-cukras-most-famous-car/
memory isn't entirely shot.
@Hungry Mother:
Having a high IQ is similar to having a Ph.D.: it indicates that the owner excels at taking standarized tests.
anyone who's been within shouting distance of a Ph.D. will tell you that standardized tests have not a thing to do with earning the piece of paper. you have to write something original, and then defend it, in person in front of some number of experts in your field. getting into a program, generally, requires getting a decent GRE score, but that's the same as a decent SAT to get into undergraduate college.
I usually agree with Rex's Relative Difficulty assessment, but not today. This was an easy Tuesday. At least it seemed much closer to Easy than Medium and certainly nothing like Challenging.
@Banana Diaquiri: I’ve been within thinking distance of a Ph.D.
Quran or Qur'an has been the preferred spelling for at least the last 30 years according to numerous sources. And since Google search results seem to be an accepted benchmark here, I'll share the following numbers:
"Quran" (in quotes): 174,000,000 results
Quran: 219,000,000 results
"Koran": 48,500,000 results.
Koran: 50,200,000 results
C'mon Rex, join the rest of us here in the 21st Century! :-)
Lots of you have already said what I'd say; the price I pay for doing the puzzle when I get up in the central time zone. I did see TEASER VICE, but quickly read it with another area of my brain, so that was okay. But my Flaherty was seAn, and I struggled with NO—, so it took a while to get LEOPARD PRINT. I, too, hate animal prints; those spots and stripes look much better on their natural owners than they'd look on me. But my dogs go to a wondeful kennel that we've used for twenty years. They are treated like royalty, are safe and secure. Our challenge in travel is that all our family members have dogs of their own and my girl does not play well with others. So they go along if it’s hotels and go to the kennel otherwise.
Yup, IQ is correlated with how well you take standardized tests (which correlates with ethnicity and SES), but I don't think it has nearly the effect on getting a PhD as just being as tenacious as hell does. Also tolerance of abuse helps. But that's just my take. Lots of fellow grad students smarter than I are ABD (all but dissertation) because they got distracted or discouraged or worn down or exploited once too often. Me, I just put my head down and rammed through like the little engine that could.
Do you know what happens when you bring in the bird feeders at night in hopes that the resident raccoon will RELO? Mice; they also RELO. Pretty predictable, right? This is probably evidence that you don't need an off-the-chart IQ to get a PhD.
That IQ thing is funny. So is @Rex's response - especially calling it racist.
When I first came to the USofA as a very young teen, my school in Dade, Miami gave me an IQ test because my eeengleesh was no good. Man, did I hate speaking it. Anyway, I don't know what my score was but it had to have been pretty low because my mom was alarmed. They didn't have Special Ed in those days, so my grandmother took it upon herself to teach this "heathen" the right way to speak and learn by rote to never end a sentence with a preposition. She also admonished me on run-on sentences and too many commas. I guess she did her job because I've taken those IQ tests that Facebook lets you try and I now score around 200 or so. Sometimes even higher - especially when I've had a scotch or two. I know things like where Noah landed his craft and that stuffed grape leaves are called DOLMAR.
I never read Dick and Jane.
@Nancy: Yes, Guys and Dolls. Big Jule from Chicago knew where the spots were on his dice which were rubbed out.
Solved 'downs-only' except I used what I learned as the standard "koran" instead of the newer "quran". (I also learned 'Peking' as the standard for Beijing"; so I learned something from this puzzle") This kept me from figuring out 10D. I had to cheat and read the 10A clue to finish the grid.
I liked the puzzle. Maybe because nearly finishing using downs-only is an accomplishment for me. I came because I could not figure out the theme.
I agree with the commenter above that our Rex seems to hate the puzzles that teach him new words or ideas. And the puzzles that expect a breadth of knowledge that antedates the internet.
Note to LMS: Thanks for all your "blah blah blathering". Without it, why would anyone bother to deal with Rex's negativity on a daily basis.
@Mark Tebeau - lurn two spel
Lots of comments about IQ tests, but none has mentioned that the single biggest factor is age.
Z,
Dissing Peanuts is ok by me. I alwats thought it stunk. But your pal Rex thinks its great. Check his twittwr feed and see how often he invokes it as an answer or antidote to some greivance of his.
as to IQ and 'intelligence', let your fingers do the walking through the yellow googles. there have been a number of attempts to devise a context/language free test. some think it's been done. others, not so much. the fervor around AI makes it clear that most folks view 'intelligence' as the ability to retrieve facts from memory. computers are really good at that. so is Ken Jennings. Einstein, not so much.
Yes, I got up from finishing this puzzle to get my lunch and continued to try to parse TEASER VICE. I was ticked off because I liked the puzzle and to have that one be the last theme answer and not make any sense ruined my positive view of it. Once I got here and saw my error, a head slap knocked me back into the right spot for enjoying this.
Before 35A came into view, I had entered LAmE for 26D and wondered what kind of wedding we were talking about. Maybe in RENO? And my NewB at 17D certainly didn't help that area but LOAM and 22A helped me make the LEOP to NOOB.
DOLMA-eating DOLLs, no PROB. Mr. Deeney, nice second puzzle.
My posts are always wildly unpopular and inspire a lot of snide ire (which is why I stopped posting here) but I feel compelled to respond to Rex's comments on IQ tests.
Mensa is racist. Mensa is classist, elitist, and in many other ways ridiculously non-inclusive. However, Mensa does not really administer IQ tests for admission. They administer a modified, nonsensical version of a shortened SAT test. It is designed to screen for a very specific type of education. No, I am not bitter for my failure to pass this test. It's not that hard to pass if you have a good command of English and Mathematics and pattern recognition and can think quickly. It is flawed on SO many levels. It actually screens OUT certain types of intelligence because it asks for a specific type of answer rather than specific type of thinking or creative problem solving, which are the hallmarks of actual intelligence.
However, properly designed and administered IQ tests do not rely on education, knowledge, or experience. They are designed to determine how people think. People of any race or socio-economic class should be able to take such tests regardless of whether they went to school or where they went to school or for how long.
Unfortunately, those types of IQ tests got lumped in with the ridiculous Mensa test and other badly designed tests and they all fell out of favor at around the same time. I suspect this is partially due to the fact that people in power found out they weren't quite as smart as mommy told them they were and cried "FAKE TEST!"'
In any event, not all IQ tests are the same. I think they still haven't come up with a truly accurate test, but they're not all bad. Calling them all bad is part of the same mentality that complains about intellectual "elitism" and all the other popular phrases designed to invalidate intelligence and popularize banality so people keep voting and acting based on fear and ignorance rather than measured analytical thinking. We liberals fall for a lot of the same sound-bytes being fed to conservatives and we spout them like axioms without really thinking them through.
There has been a war against intelligence for many years now. Telling every child they are smart invalidates smart. Smart people on television are portrayed as socially awkward and mildly ridiculous, doing work nobody really cares about and failing to properly communicate or connect with "normal" people. We socially castrate intelligence to make it seem foolish and not really "real" or important. To what end? I think we see the answer to that playing out on the news every day.
Feel free to respond with snide ire.
PS I'm still not grasping how a tea service has spots. Perhaps I'm not very intelligent.
Weird. Kinda liked a lotta stuff that @RP didn't …
* Cool zig-zaggy black blocks in the NE and SW. Gives the puzgrid some unique character.
* Spotty theme mcguffin. Seemed reasonable, and was creative in its scope. M&A didn't know LEOPARDPRINT, but was able to chisel it out of the crossers. No extra thanx to crosser QURAN, however.
* DOGGYDAYCARE was funny, as a Spot haver. The capitalization of Spot definitely helped m&e out.
* Some TOILETS can also have spots. See our local movie theater.
* TEMPAGENCY has spots for temp workers to fill.
* IQS. staff weeject pick. Plural abbrev meat. Didn't know it was racist. My research indicates that IQtest questions showin bias to certain groups are usually removed, when detected. But maybe @RP knows somethin I don't -- which is always highly likely.
Only slight solvequest prob at our house: The DOLMA/ANO/IONE region.
Thanx, Mr. Deeney.
Masked & Anonymo1U
biter alert:
**gruntz**
@GILL — Re prepositions, my high school English teacher long ago impressed that lesson upon me with a story about Winston Churchill. He once drafted a speech, and the aide assigned to edit it made a correction with a notation telling Churchill he had improperly ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill responded with a note back to the aide: “This an impertinence up with which I will not put!” I have always remembered that and it still makes me smile.
I found the puzzle easy, enjoyable, and clever. I think the IQ kerfuffle is just a kerfuffle. Anything can be used by racists! Francis Crick and James Watson certainly were racist in their interpretation of IQ scores, DNA, and race. Francis Crick is an unreconstructed racist, still defending his findings. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, with which he has been affiliated, removed his honorary titles and condemned him for his bigotry. This is their statement: "The Laboratory condemns the misuse of science to justify prejudice". Obviously there are problems with IQ tests, including the possibility that the tests are not sufficiently culturally neutral, or if the person taking the test is not fluent in the language of the test. Whatever IQ tests actually test, the results always are on a spectrum. Some people within any cultural "category" may do well, while others may do poorly. When people attribute achievements and talents to "race", or "ethnicity", or "nationality", or "culture", and privilege some at the expense of others, they are misusing concepts, often to fit their "preferences", or prejudices. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. In the 1950's, when I was a child, two IQ tests I took came out in the 180's. Okay, I do well on IQ tests. I certainly have met many people who were very knowledgeable, who had expertise in many areas I know nothing about, who were highly capable, pragmatic, imaginative, creative, and interesting.
@Kimberly:
Feel free to respond with snide ire.
our comments likely crossed unseen. no snide ire from me. may be next time? :)
Um, VCR’s didn’t take over the land until 1976, the year the Video Home System (VHS) was released. Let it Be (who must be described by Rex as an obscure British band) was released in 1970. Rex, if at 68 I know the word “noob” you, Dear Professor, need to know more about the 70’s.
Amazing Fact:
“Late fees were Blockbuster’s bread and butter: In 2000, the chain took in a stunning $800 million in late fees, 16 percent of its revenue for the year.”
the DOGGY DAYCARE answer is made worse by the fact that it just makes no sense
What is with that QURAN spelling?
I knew DOLMA but couldn't spell it
Literally no idea who this LIAM guy is
Is TYCO a toy company?
Are you sure you're qualified to write a crossword blog? Anyway, I enjoyed this puzzle quite a lot. DOGGY DAY CARE is brilliant, imo. And I love BIG APE. "Get yer paws offa me, ya big ape!" TEMP AGEÑÇY is also nice.
Puzzle Earworm of the day:
"Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell.
Real Earworm of the day:
"Iko Iko" by (take your pick).
Happy Mardi Gras!
I read your write-up. I noted tea-service in your write-up. I then looked back at my completed grid and still couldn't see tea-service right away. I don't even get the answer. This puzzle sucked.
I just saw a video showing an octopus figuring out how to unscrew a jar to get the crab inside. Since there is nothing that resembles a screw top in the oceans, that seemed really clever. I'd like to see an IQ test for the octopus. That sort of problem solving skill must indicate something.
You might have Watson and Crick mixed: Watson’s the one still with us, I believe. Crick’s been gone, if memory serves.
A tea service has pots. It’s.a.pun. Capeesh? Oh, good. You’re welcome.
Abrazos amigos,
juanito
Quran is much better than Koran. Now if it would just adopt Pinyin (Laozi), the NYT puzzle would be approaching the 21st c.
@Kimberly, et al:
PS I'm still not grasping how a tea service has spots. Perhaps I'm not very intelligent.
if you watch TCM, or any source of pre-WWII Brit flicks, 'have a spot of tea' pops up at least once per film.
I tried to leave a comment twice via my iPhone, each time without apparent success. Will try a third time from my laptop:
TEA SERVICEs are traditionally silver, and silver notoriously gets spots -- tarnish spots. That's why the butler's always polishing the silver in old movies.
Medium-Challenging NYT Tuesday (5:18, 9% above my 6-mo Tuesday average, 1.3 Rex Parkers) ... This went a little faster than yesterday's solve, but still seemed rather crunchy for an early-week puzz. I stared at TEASER VICE (57A) for about 45 seconds at the end and didn't want to hit the submit button. Doh!
DOLMA (7D), LIAM O'Flaherty (22D), TYCO (60A) and the cluing seemed a little tough for Tuesday. I had tons of Matchboxes when I was a lad, so TYCO wasn't trouble for me, but since the brand was bought by Mattel 20 years ago, that might be pretty tough for a lot of folks. I also stumbled over the spelling of QURAN (11D), although it's more correct these days than the koRaN spelling I'm accustomed to in English.
Me, too, with the Sharpie for clothing "malcolorations!"
@Malsdemare, I totally agree on your take on PHDs.
@Banana Diaquiri, getting a PhD has nothing to do with standardized test taking. It is merely an endurance contest of years of data analysis and writing, along with two oral exams in a closed room with four people who are determined to trip you up. Nothing about it is standardized. After reading the detrpailwe definitions of what now constitutes hazing at my alma mater I concluded that many graduate students could easily make a case from their standards that they had been hazed. Of course my alma mater has some confusing contradictions such as suggesting that scavenger hunts are perfectly appropriate alternatives to hazing, but elsewhere concluding that scavenger hunts do constitute hazing.
I actually do think that IQ tests can be misused for such things as entrance into some of the public elementary schools in NY City. These tests are administered children who are 3-5 years old and there are some parents (not us) who fork over thousands of dollars to train their kids to take these tests. I’ve talked to enough parents that did this to believe that they are biased towards kids whose parents prep their kids for these tests. The IQ tests at these early ages are not all that reliable either. I was told by a friend who worked in a private school that the IQ test administered at age 4 is even more culturally biased than at age 5, so children of middle class parents often appear to drop in IQ merely because by age 5 some of the less privileged children catch up a little bit on some of the items that are tested. True to her prediction, there was a 16 point drop in the scores on the tests my son took at age 4 to his scores at age 5. He’s turned out just fine regardless of his apparent loss of IQ points.
Oops, @Banana Daquiri, I misread your post. I see you copied a comment from @Hungry Mother were merely responding to it.
Koran vw. QURAN In my experience using “Koran” is dated, but using “Moslem” marks you as a bigot. This has more to do with the history of who uses the terms than any sort of “this transliteration more accurately represents Arabic pronunciation” concerns. Arabic is as varied as British, Australian, and American English. At least, that’s what my professionally trained translator (and Doctor of Sociology] taught me.
@anon12:45 - I didn’t diss Peanuts. Following a daily Peanuts account on Twitter is not the same thing as running 50 year old reruns in the local paper.
@Kimberly - IQ tests are a classic mechanism of systemic racism. Sure, some tests are more explicitly racist than others, but I don’t think IQ will ever shed it’s eugenic origins. I used different measures of intelligence and learning professionally and did my best to mitigate the negative aspects. But I don’t think society is at a point where a race/ethnicity neutral test is possible. I guess what I’m saying is I’m still far more cynical than you regarding intelligence testing.
@Whatsername: Oh how I wish we had the likes of Winston in this day. My husband likes to quote him when he wants to feel all politically smart...after his "Spot" of TEA.... One of his favorites was when I made him his first sandwich: "A gentleman does not have a ham sandwich without mustard." I can't help but say that every time I make him a ham on rye.. ;-)
@Suzie Q. I've seen those videos of the squid. Now I can never eat calamari again......
Fido is from Latin. "I trust."
I like your cat's name.
Agreed. I have a tremendously high fever and I still managed it in minutes. There were a couple of guessed boxes (the E in RHEA/RELO and the O in IONE/DOLMA), but on the whole I thought this was easy.
@Z:
IQ tests are a classic mechanism of systemic racism.
well... it'd be interesting to see how IQ numbers vary, or don't, in countries with (nearly) homogeneous population. UK comes to mind, not to say theren't Brits of color. but one could easily find areas that are pure white and poor while others are pure white and rich. does IQ follow color (shouldn't vary) or wealth (should vary). I leave it as a thought experiment.
wealth, may be, just as correlated with race in heterogeneous populations, of course.
Z,
Eugenic origins? Why thats the sine qua non of Planned Parenthood, one of your favorite outfits.
Hope you feel better tomorrow, @Suzie (6:23 p.m.) But @Fido (9:22) is right: FIDO means "I am faithful", not "I trust."
That's it! Big Jule from Chicago! I remember now! Such a funny scene in one of the greatest musicals of all time! Thanks MJB!
"An impertinence up with which I will not put." Aha! I've always known how Churchill made his point about split infinitives, but I either didn't know or had forgotten the exact words he used to make that point. Thanks, @whatsername (1:43).
Oof, that's right of course. Getting my Latin vocabulary mixed up. It's been a while. (And thank you.)
My recently dead (ok, it's over a year, but she was the best dog) dog was named Rover. And yes, she was a female. We've discussed whether our next dog will be named Spot, Snoopy or some other stereotypical dog name. Probably so.
I didn't love this puzzle. Two greetings (HIHO and HEY) seems a little sad to me. That said, IONE Skye turns out to have acted in a movie that still holds up 30 years later, to my grateful surprise. They navigate consent in lovely ways, and the John Cusack character turns out to be the one surprised by how much his relationship with Diane Court changes him. Highly recommended.
Yeah. And dogs have spots! Right? So lots of spits at doggy day care. What's not to like about that ? Great puzzle
Ah! "A spot of tea". Finally got it.
Same here
Maybe we can call them "proletari-nyms"
I had pair of dice too
A commercial break *has* spots, just like the puzzle says.
"Spot of tea, love?"
@Vernon's dad & @Mark
It appears that you're reading/commenting on you phone.
People on other platforms (lap tops, iPads) don't know who you're responding to unless you tell us. You can do this by using the @ sign followed by their name, as I did above.
Thanks.
SLY HIHO
That DOLL MARY just can’t LETITBE,
and it’s a PROB for the TEMPAGENCY.
HEY, she ADMITs she ACTSAS a disgrace,
YET she HORDE around in LEOPARDPRINT LACE.
--- EDDY TATE
BDAY was the first nose-wrinkler, but I determined to stick this one out, having DNBTFed yesterday's; I don't want to make it a habit. And stick it out I did, to my chagrin. BDAY was but the first of a slew of shortspeak answers: NOOB PROB RELO. TKOS, ISTO and EKE (won't that one EVER go away?) didn't help.
Then there's the strange stuff: DOLMA? You're gonna throw that one at me on a TUESDAY??? Plus, Tuesday's LIAM is Mr. Neeson; Friday's might be this O'Flaherty fellow. And 53-down? Only one person in the world ever gave that greeting: one of Steve Allen's trio of Men on the Street, Louis Nye. "HIHO, Steverino!" Now that's OLD.
So, "Honeycakes" (who says THAT??) is simply another term of "endearment," and therefore can be the clue for another, DOLL. IBELIEVESO, if you say so. Weird clue for the day, though.
Yes, I stuck it out. Why? I am ATALOSS. The solve wasn't all that challenging, despite DOLMA, nor was it all that pleasant. I have not seen this name before, so if a debut: Joe, keep your BDAY job. Double bogey.
I agree with @spacey that DOLMA is not your normal Tuesday fare for 99% of solvers, but that DOLMA was a flat out gimme for me. Only because I tried several variations of it in Baku, Azerbaijan whilst in the company of the most attractive journalist that country has to offer. Good EATS. That’s my DOLMA story and I’ve got pictures to prove it. I guess the rest of the puz is what ISTO be expected on Tuesday.
As I was kinda getting ahead of myself going down the west side I saw the TE_P______ and thought “Wow, are we gonna have TEaPotdome on a Tuesday?” It woulda fit, but WE’RE stuck with a mere TEMPAGENCY. But I did fill in IGLOO with only the LOO filled in. Never did read the clue. Sometimes getting ahead of yourself is OK.
If yeah baby IONE Skye just had another y at the end of her surname . . .
I’m ATALOSS for more words, so let’s take this COMMERCIALBREAK.
O.K., it's clear now - no Tuesday puzzle will ever please OFL. Perhaps he was traumatized by a long past Tuesday puzzle that contained NRA, beaner, and IQ in one line.
Regarding "Folsom Prison Blues," the city limits of Reno extend all the way to the Nevada-California border. Hence, the narrator could potentially have shot a victim who was in Reno while he, the narrator, was in California.
Had some PROBs with prickly SPOTS all over this puzzle. Rex covered them all and then some.
Among the notable prickles: DOLMA, DOLL, TYCO, LIAM.
Unusually challenging Tuesday, suffering a few pricks in the process.
Hey, I spotted a number of different ways to use the term "spot". Did anyone else notice that? Har.
I liked the puzzle, and actually guffawed, or at least let out a shy chuckle at TEA SERVICE which I originally parsed as, well, you know what.
Looking back at the good ol' days, my family had a dog named Spot, and when I was about 20 years old, I raced a TYCO slot car at a local venue. Addictive fun for a month or so when the motor burned out and I was too lazy to rewind the coils.
Like @Spacey, I recall "HIHO Steverino" on the brilliant Steve Allen show, but I remember it being Tom Poston who used to say it. And, why is it DOLMA and not DOLMAthes as the stuffed grape leaves?
@rainforest -- I was a Steve Allen fan, too, and I'd swea (with @spacey) that Louis Nye was the "HIHO Steverino" guy.
@leftcoastTAM - You and @Spacey are of course correct. Louis Nye. How could I blow that?
October 11, 2005
Comedian Louis Nye, who created a national catchphrase by belting out "Hi-ho, Steverino!" as one of the players on Steve Allen's groundbreaking 1950s TV show, has died. He was 92.
On "The Steve Allen Show," which ran until 1961 under various names, he quickly endeared himself to audiences as Gordon Hathaway, the effete country-club snob who would welcome Allen's arrival with the "Hi-ho, Steverino!" salutation.
Oops - I forgot to comment.
Well...IONE and DOLMA were my Natick area, but I guessed (remembered?) correctly. So got it all, and the rest twas easier than yesterday, for me.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
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