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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (very easy except for that damned cheese, wtf?)
Port Salut is a semi-soft pasteurised cow's milk cheese from Pays de la Loire, France, with a distinctive orange rind and a mild flavour. The cheese is produced in wheels approximately 23 cm (9 inches) in diameter, weighing approximately 2 kg (4.4 lb).Though Port Salut has a mild flavour, it sometimes has a strong smell because it is a mature cheese. The smell increases the longer the cheese is kept — this however does not affect its flavour. It can be refrigerated and is best eaten within two weeks of opening.The cheese was developed by Trappist monks during the 19th century at Port-du-Salut Abbey in Entrammes. (wikipedia)
• • •
All the other long answers are solid, and I especially like the clue on CLINTON ERA (55A: Bushes are found on both sides of it). Old trick—hide the proper noun by putting it at the beginning of the clue (where *all* words are capitalized). But a good trick. "IT BURNS!" is a nice cry, if there can be said to be such a thing. I nailed PICT (38A: Ancient dweller beyond Hadrian's Wall) because I studied medieval Scotland in GRAD SCHOOL (39A: Where you might be given the third degree), but it's possible that answer will have given some solvers trouble (38A: Ancient dweller beyond Hadrian's Wall). I'm inferring this from the fact that my friend Brian Cimmet is furious about it right now. But he knew the cheese, so we're even—1 in the knowledgeable column, 1 in the ignorant column, for both of us. UEYS, always terrible fill, delete it from your word list (I know you won't, but you should) (also UIES, which is somehow worse). Lastly, re: WINCH / WEND:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Medium. NE was the toughest part. EMBED did not come quickly.
ReplyDeleteLike I suspect many others, gAIA before MAIA...also celT before PICT.
Terrific Fri., liked it a bunch!
Having lived in France for a decade, Port Salut was a gimme.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I plopped down a G for Gaia, not Maia. Time to dust off the copy old D’aulaires “Book of Greek Myths”
A routine Friday solve. I did have a little trouble getting the SE corner due to guessing the 33D cheese to be PORTSWINE. I didn't feel confident of it and when the W and the N didn't pan out I knew I'd have to look elsewhere. Dropping in a few downs allowed me to recognize CLINTONERA and the SE became as routine as the rest of the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThis was much faster than yesterday's solve but I'm much more of a themeless person. That said I have to admit I enjoyed yesterday's puzzle.
I just solved it too late to comment. Yesterday was our first full day of having my mother-in-law live with us. Now we have our dog and six cats plus her. Tomorrow I'm having my right knee replaced. Great timing.
@puzzlehoarder, best of luck! May your MIL be a saint and your surgeon be a wizard.
DeleteGotta like a puzzle that includes a HARD ASS ARRAY of great clues and answers.
ReplyDeleteSitting down to the puzzle, PUNCHING IN some letters here and there, backing out others. Even did a couple UEYS, much as we love that non-word here.
Any time you can fit both WINCH and WENCH into your puzzle without detracting from the rest is just peachy. That was awesome.
The one that took me the longest to let go of was DocK for DESK. I use a desk every day; still haven’t had an anchor show up at/on it.
GRAD SCHOOL – har. Ever wonder what BS, MS, and PhD stand for? BullStuff, More Stuff, Piled higher and Deeper.
CLINTON ERA PYRE. The things we could do with that. AT THE LEAST we could SIPHON a SAUSAGE DOG OVER the POKER TABLE.
It was fun to see our extinct friends the PICTs show up. They bothered the Romans to no end.
Fun puzzle, had a good time solving it. What more can one ask?
JEDI PUNCHING IN
Mark, in Mickey’s North 40
Extinct? I think not. My Donegal grandmother called all Protestant Irish "Picts." Catholics were Scots or Irish, Protestants belonged to another race.
DeleteThough I have heard and used worse language (often on a daily basis) than HARDASS, I certainly hope the NYT crossword doesn’t start clueing all sorts of potty-mouth answers. Jeff Chen’s opinion notwithstanding, I like to think of crossword puzzles as one of the last bastions of civilization where hurling petty and juvenile insults is not the norm.
ReplyDeleteAs a patriotic Canadian, I am deeply ashamed to say, with the initial P in place and the length fitting, I tried for a while to make PARLIAMENT work for 29 down.
ReplyDeleteGreat puzzle except for the cluster of corporate names on the west coast (to be specific, 27D, 32A, and 35A.) Of course I had IT HURTS for 6 down for far too long.
Okanaganer
I found this challenging. Lots of PPP, and even a portmanteau word. But at least it gave me a tussle, which I appreciate.
ReplyDeleteI got Port Salut specifically because John Cleese lists it as a choice during the infamous Monty Python cheese sketch. It's the only time I'd ever heard of it, but the routine has forever been stuck in my head. And today, that was finally useful!
ReplyDeleteI have one and it IS a sausage dog!!
ReplyDeleteTough solve on a Friday, film at 11:00. I'm on board if the fill is fair. My mantra: trust the puzzle! And another thing! Sparse usage of three-letter fill seems characteristic of a good puzzle.
ReplyDeleteHARD ASS is acceptable fill these days? I hear talk about some women being Bad ASS. All these adjectives are distinguished from "bully" because the cause is just? Help me here!
Have you ever seen a volume entitled "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb"? Well, you probably should, particularly if your knowledge of the Old Testament is sketchy. His depiction of the SODOM verses is both arousing and disturbing. Shoot, the whole thing is both.
I took a graduate DONNE Seminar about the same time as OFL. My college was slightly west and closer to the freeway than his college, but c'mon Dude! The poet's declaring himself a fool for loving and admitting to whining poetry? Emily Dickinson wouldn't fit.
Brought a smile to remember John Cleese and Michael Palin in “The Cheese Shop”...
ReplyDeleteC: Brie, Roquefort, Pont-l'Eveque, PORT SALUT, Savoyard, Saint-Paulin, Carre-de-L'Est, Boursin, Bresse Bleu, Perle de Champagne?
P: No.
C: Camembert, perhaps?
P: Ah! We have Camembert, yessir.
C: (suprised) You do! Excellent.
P: Yessir. It's ah... it's a bit runny.
C: Oh, I like it runny.
P: Well,.. It's very runny, actually, sir.
C: No matter. Fetch hither the fromage de la Belle France! Mmmwah!
P: I...think it's a bit runnier than you'll like it, sir.
C: I don't care how fucking runny it is. Hand it over with all speed.
P: Oooooooooohhh........! (pause)
C: What now?
P: The cat's eaten it.
C: (pause) Has he?
P: She, sir.
After yesterday’s face plant over three little squares I came out a winner today. Woo Hoo!
ReplyDeleteLoved and was surprised at HARD ASS. The Gray Lady is getting a little bold here. Puzzle partner who studied Greek Mythology gave me MAIA so I could finally stop figuring out how that wiener DOG was going to fit and accepted SAUSAGE.
I have Kalamata OLIVE bread every morning with my breakfast, lightly toasted with a little dill onion mix sprinkled on top. Good stuff.
Wanted peckish at 43A, that’s what I call it, but HANGRY made me laugh.
Good puzzle, liked it a lot.
I did much better than yesterday. I finished. Some parts filled quickly: CLINTONERA and PUNCHINGIN went in with no crosses. ATTHELEAST following after just a few. The NW was simplified because for some happy happenstance there was the only Swift song I could name.
ReplyDeleteLoved the Donne poem. Read it after I finished. Might have thought it was Dickinson from the clue, but if it was I would have known, so I knew it wasn't. I recommend her 2 rat poems: A Rat Surrendered here and A Rat is the Concisest Tenant.
And there right in the center East is SODOM SCHOOL. I mean who would name a SCHOOL SODOM? Oh yeah, the people down the road from me where sits a historic one room school house named SODOM SCHOOL. The guy who gives lectures on it and once attended tells the story that when mad at the teacher for unjust punishments the student whose job it was to fetch the water from the well would pee in it and pass the word to students not to drink any today. Country legend? Maybe, but teachers: Beware students bearing gifts.
The puzzle: Been easier if I knew that cheese. Many good clues, many appealing answers. Many amusing moments getting answers to fit. Tired going to bed. Night.
Fascinating how wheelhouses do and don't intersect! I found yesterday's puzzle quite easy, including the central squares that seemed to cause grief for many. Today's not so much. gAIA for MAIA until the bitter end, though my daughter's name is Maya and I was aware of many other associations. Never ever heard of the PICTs (and thought Hadrian's wall must be near Rome). OTOH, PORTSALUT went in right away, even though I'm hardly a cheese connoisseur--the orange rind is very distinctive and memorable if you've ever encountered it. WINCH and WEND both came easily. Agree with @Rex about CLINTONERA and SAUSAGEDOG.
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ReplyDeleteCrashed and burned with a big old dnf. Even changing ‘”it hurts” to IT BURNS, I couldn’t recover from a confident “onion bread” instead of OLIVE BREAD. (So, “mono”gram) Pfft. Oh, and I had “Eros” crossing “punching on.” Dumb.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rex that AT THE LEAST feels off. For me, to use that THE, you need to insert “very” before LEAST.
SAUSAGE DOG is definitely a thing. We had only standard dachshunds growing up, and I did refer to them from time to time as such. Besides, it has Patrick Berry immunity.
I’ma not call PICKS A DOOR green paint and accept it as in the language a la BUYS A VOWEL. Gameshowspeak.
Loved the clue for SCAN. I never thought about the fact that it’s a Janus word like peruse: Both can mean look at something very thoroughly or just give it the once-over. People peruse some comments here but peruse others.
@Bourbon Street - I’m in the HARDASS yay camp. Take a body part, add an adjective, mix well, bam. Person. Tenderfoot. Roughneck. Add a noun – knucklehead, birdbrain, motormouth…
“Flammable structure” – I went with “nest” and then “yurt” before PYRE. By the way, inflammable is a Janus word.
IT BURNS. Ok. So. The first time my husband was left alone with our infant son, he changed his diaper and noticed some diaper rash starting. Without thinking, and just wanting to kill the bacteria, the chemist in him took the helm, and he poured some rubbing alcohol on a cloth and patted at the angry area. At this point he reports that his world became a Looney Tunes clip – my son’s mouth opened wide, and husband said he could see our son’s little uvula wagging violently before any noise came out. On the positive side, the rash went away. And rest assured that my son has gone on to lead a perfectly normal life.
On WEND – ever wonder why the past tense of our verb to go is so wildly different from its base? That’s because our went is actually the past tense of WEND. Your day is pretty much complete now.
This must have been a total wheelhouse puzzle. I disagree almost completely with the review. I SNEER at the soft city kids who have never heard of a winch. How does Rex’s friend Sam get his car onto the tow truck bed? Needed some letters for PORTSALUT, so it wasn’t a gimme, but I’ve eaten it and read the label.
ReplyDeleteThis was a nice crunchy Friday. Some great clues. Loved grad school, Clinton Era, and all the New Jersey singers. Or is she from PA? I get Taylor Swift and Tara Lipinski mixed up. Glittery makeup, overbite, youthful eagerness, early success— they seem like the same person, though usually TS is wearing pants. And if you’ve ever tried to sing her music, you know it’s way less simple than it sounds- looking at you, Style.
I SALUT the constructor. More please.
Oh and PS. Anybody who’s read Mary Poppins knows that Maia is the littlest star in the Pleiades. How can she be anyone’s mom?? But anyway, gettable.
ReplyDeleteCan someone please explain EMBED to me? Aaarrrggghh.
ReplyDeleteNo idea! Join you in needing some clarification.
DeleteThat one has me mystified as well.
DeleteDitto. Please explain clearly and simply.
DeleteThat’s what they called a journalist embedded with troops starting in the Iraq war, I think.
DeleteThank you!!! I would have been scratching my head all weekend.
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ReplyDeleteEverything I know about PICTs I learned from Pink Floyd.
ReplyDelete@Anon6:50 - As in EMBEDded reporter. Those courageous/foolish journalists who report from forward units in times of war. Seems like a term that didn’t exist until after the CLINTON ERA.
Embedded journalist. My last entry. Kept wanting EMCEE, but knew that was off. Funny how the mind works.
ReplyDeleteIt does pain me to read Rex's nit-picks. Jeez, it takes a couple of extra seconds to come up with JOHNDONNE, and that's a criticism? And ending up seeing Donne's work as "much more modern?" And that's a criticism?
People, that's not a criticism, that's a learning moment, or a teaching moment. Will Rex include "The Triple Fool" in his lectures?
It's a puzzle, it is meant to be solved.
@DeeJay - I could be wrong but I think “sing-songiness” is the metrical equivalent of calling the poem “trite.” Some things are obscure for a reason. Emo JOHN DONNE is not the best JOHN DONNE. Although add scantily dressed dancers and a solid rock bottom end and I could probably SHAKE IT OFF.
ReplyDeleteSince the NYT has eliminated the tilde and now declared open season on “ass”, can we expect “Gap year in Spain” as a clue for “a__hole” ?
ReplyDelete@Stuart: I have one too, and he is a dachshund.
ReplyDeleteIf WINCH is obscure, these are latter days.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read much JOHN DONNE but inferred the whining wit from the "J" and confirmed pretty quickly with crosses.
My daughter gave me SHAKE IT OFF before I'd finished asking the question.
I don’t understand EMBED.
ReplyDeleteWINCH and WEND are obscure? I feel like I must have misunderstood that tweet.
ReplyDeleteNot only was nowhere near the wheelhouse today, but I was somewhere lost in the Gobi Desert thousands of miles from the nearest water, let alone a boat with a wheelhouse for one to occupy! I eventually got it done in Sunday-plus time! Days like this make me so happy I solve to solve not to beat the clock.
ReplyDeleteHuge John Donne fan here, and I also enjoy the humor and clever rhymes of Ogden Nash, and (as OFL observed) Nash fit nicely but not for long. GRAD SCHOOL was clever and I thought it was correct immediately so out went Nash. Every time I think of him I think of my ornery pets who prove the point that: The trouble with a kitten is that / eventually it becomes a cat. Mine are cats and they are lovely beautiful and gentle friends who wreak havoc if I do not WEND my way home on time to attend to their needs. See my avatar. An avid reader, she spends quite a bit of time there in her library. A useful perch. When tired of reading or less than pleased with my performance as “staff,” she “checks out” all the books in at least two shelves. She can actually climb up from one shelf to the next-a gravity defying maneuver for sure.
Ok, I really have very little comment other than I enjoyed the fight today, liked the cleverness, but have no idea at all of what EMBED has to do with reporting a fight! For those here in the neighborhood for whom this was easy, I humble myself before you and laud your prowess.
OFL: you need to get out more of you have never heard of PORT SALUD cheese. It’s very mild flavor makes it very accessible to most palates. And you must never have played with trucks as a kid or have never chuckled as you watch someone’s car get towed (or mourned that it was yours) for parking in a yellow, not to know a WINCH. That and WEND were two of the few gimmes for me.
Music Festival weekend here in the land of the Sooners. Bands all over Main Street today and tomorrow. We aren’t SXSW yet, but it is quite an event. I am much more interested in hoping the OU softball team continues its historic winning streak and moves on to another NCAA title. BOOMER SOONER, kids!!
Had HOLa and couldn’t see it. I thought I had something wrong with the SE corner and was only reviewing it, OVER and OVER and OVER.
ReplyDeleteHow could it ever be OVER COPY? That ain't fair.
DeletePretty much what others have said, liked it a lot. (Or alot, just to see if I get the LMS Emoji of Death.) No Taylor Swift on my playlist. Actually, don't have any playlists. The last band I seriously got into was Dire Straits. Tempus fugit, or as my mother used to say, "tempus fidget".
ReplyDeleteHad a fun slowdown with "goggle" which I read as "google" and was thinking, wow, there's a synonym for google now? And four letters? Well, no, no there isn't.
Also, all the Python comments and memories of the cheese shop sketch are worth the price of admission.
Just right for a Friday. Well done, Mr. Dolan.
The last band I listened to was Crosby, Stills and Nash.
DeleteThere were several clues here that I didn't understand even after the fact.
ReplyDeleteIs "OVER copy" a thing? "copy OVER" is, but that's not the clue.
How is ACE applicable to "Peak service?" Is this a tennis thing? Something about mountains? A person is an ACE if they're the best at something, notably "ACE pilot," and the best can be described as being at the peak. But service? I don't understand.
SAUSAGE DOG was completely ridiculous. I've heard Wiener Dog quite a lot, but SAUSAGE DOG, never. If this is in use in the author's dialect, then the editor should have objected.
There were also an above average number of clues representing facts I simply didn't know. Not a criticism of the puzzle per se, though I prefer the challenge to consist mainly of clever usage rather than trivia.
“Peak service”, I think is referring to an ace tennis serve - or at least that’s my story and I am sticking to it.
DeleteCan you help me with EMBED?
For COPY and OVER, think CB radio. Understood and end of message, respectively
DeleteEven if you never heard SAUSAGE dog, it is synonymous with WEINER.
ACE is an untouchable serve in tennis
hockey player in 3 letters - ORR: 9 letter poet likely to be JOHNDONNE
WEND WINCH more interesting Friday words, no? Hardly obscure.
@Anonymous 6:50 AM, @CDilly52, @Chim Cham: An EMBED is a reporter embedded into a combat unit during a military conflict. Hence, they report on the fight.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem I had solving this was SHAKEITOFF. My daughter laughed at me.
ATTHELEAST strikes me as a perfectly common phrase.
Thank you for “embed” explanation.
DeleteBless you my friend! Now, as a Brit man era person who knows at least three journalists who have been embedded, what the heck took me so long!!! Gobi Desert got to me, I guess.
DeleteBeing a bonehead I put in PILT for the ancient outside Hadrian’s Wall, thinking of Piltdown Man. And Peale Tower sounded okay. Although I see that Peace Tower makes a lot of sense. WINCH is obscure? Maybe they don’t use them in ivory towers. Overall a fine Friday workout despite a few odd choices. HARD ASS and SODOM jumped out at me. Not to mention SAUSAGE. Over and Out.
ReplyDeleteRex: you need to get out more. Port Salut cheese is ubiquitous in any European-trending deli (you can usually
ReplyDeletesmell it!). And, c'mon, dachshunds where I live (Bay Area) are invariably referred to as sausage dogs.
Get out, more, Rex.
@Anon8:05 --
ReplyDeleteIn tennis, if you serve the ball toward your opponent so that it lands in play, and your opponent can't get his racket on the ball, it's called an Ace.
It's the best result from serving (or service), so it could also be described as the Peak Service. However, this phrase is indeed a reach, IMO.
I can't believe OFL teaches Donne and would protest about the "sing-song" nature of these lines. This is not remotely uncommon for Donne, and despite OFL's protest, this poem is hardly that obscure. I'm a lay appreciator of his work (only really "studied" in high school and a couple of 200-level college courses) and I recognized it immediately. Do you just want the too-frequent "no man is an island" clue we usually get for the great poet?
ReplyDeleteAlso, PORT SALUT is delicious. Try it.
This one was easy, esp for a Friday, going down in under 5 minutes for me. Only really struggled with EMBED being clued as a noun, which took me a while to wrap my head around.
All these bleeping song titles and brands. SHAKE IT OFF came in because it at least sounded like a...song. ICE ICE BABY didn't come in because it sounded like a...WTF.
ReplyDeleteI know three actor KEVINs: Spacey, Bacon and Kostner. That's enough KEVINs. Didn't know this one.
My SPOT was SPar (1D), so my BREAD was aLIVE BREAD (17A). Better than DEAD BREAD, I suppose.
I had IT hURtS before IT BURNS (6D), but changed it. I had lemoN SPRAY before OCEAN SPRAY (32A). Changed that too. Nothing helped. though. SOS PAD and PEACE TOWER were unknowns. And SIPHON (27A) was clued so cleverly that I never once thought of it.
I cursed the gods for saddling me with this trivia-laden puzzle. But I didn't curse MAIA. If I'd known her, I would have cursed her, too, but I didn't know her. She did come in, thanks to crosses, so AT THE LEAST there's that.
So they gave you the third degree in your orals? What'd ya expect from grad school? Nerd! Not pity here. You probably aced it. Shake it off! Be a hard ass. At least it's over with. Go sit at the poker table and fuggeddabout it. You might win a few bucks. And eat something bone head. There's some leftover olive bread from yesterday. I think you're just hangry. Geez.
ReplyDeleteI was also thinking about a Ph.D being one’s third degree.
DeleteSomebody please explain how 25D is accurate. Amy Schumer is NOT funny.
ReplyDelete6:36, the last 60 seconds of which were spent typo hunting. (Turns out it is TONI who spells his name weird, and not KEVIN (KEVyN). I know neither of them. Annoying proper name crossing.)
ReplyDeleteWINCH went right in because I have two small children who watch "Paw Patrol," a show in which the police dog uses his winch in nearly every episode.
I somehow remembered PORT SALUT from middle school, when my French teacher loved to organize cheese tastings. A totally random piece of knowledge, that.
I have never heard SAUSAGE DOG, but I can see someone saying that jocularly, so it amused me instead of bothering me.
Maybe the sausage dog likes to perch on a piano seat.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't decide between a Twinkie and a glass of Nestle's Quik you might be thungry.
Lots of fun today. I have mixed feelings about hardass. Where to draw the line? Don't ask me because I'm more likely to cuss like a sailor than cry out It Burns! But do I need it in my crossword?
Port Salut: try it, you’ll like it!
ReplyDeleteDNF at A_pLE/BO_E/GAWp. Could not shake the rocky meaning of talus, which combined with GAWp
ReplyDeletemade that cross impossible to see. Things had started off so well with no crosses needed for SHAKE IT OFF>
Most of the longs are fantastic. PICKSADOOR, not so much. But one out of sixteen subpar? Pretty amazing. BTW SAUSAGE DOG is incredibly common. As is PORT SALUT. As is AT THE LEAST. It’s like Rex lives somewhere where English is spoken, but not as a first language.
Do you use the word "pinch" more or less often than WINCH? Do you use the word "pend" more or less often then WEND? Can you think of a way to clue "pinch" that isn't a straight-up definition like that used for WINCH? Are we really going to argue that someone left out a modifier (relatively) in a Tweet?
ReplyDeleteThey're Wiener Dogs, though wieners are sausages so they're also SAUSAGE dogs, but no one but cat lovers call them that. Maybe a select few dog Dachshunds can properly be called SAUSAGE dogs, but that's totally different criteria.
Finally, when men and women put their lives at risk to serve a public good, please don't get all cutesy with identifying them. EMBEDs sometimes die in the course of their duty, don't make light of it.
Hey, now, despite being a “cat person,” I would never insult the charming Daschound by calling her a SAUSAGE DOG. Puh-leeese!
DeleteHelp, please, with OVER? I was thinking radio-speak. "Copy, over." (I hear you, your turn to talk.) But Over Copy?
ReplyDeleteIn what world would anyone want to change a glorious, evocative word such as WINCH into the much more boring, mundane, and common pINCH? I smiled at that entry, which brought back childhood memories of my father's best friend's Land Rover named Clyde. Clyde was a faded blue color, dented nearly everywhere, and had crossed eyes painted on his headlamps. My father's friend drove Clyde at breakneck speeds (for a Land Rover) over the old Fairbanks dirt roads, usually hogging the entire road. I remember thinking as a child, "What if there's car coming up the other side of this hill?" but there never was, as I am here. Clyde went into the Alaskan backcountry often, and with four wheel drive could bounce over old mining trails. And if Clyde ever got stuck, John would hook the trusty winch up to one or more of those spindly black spruce trees and Clyde would be free. There was one time I was really worried, when Clyde was up to his wheel wells in water and canting badly during a poorly judged stream crossing, but the winch saved us all, as I am here. Good times.
@Z (7:08) -- Pre-CLINTON ERA, Edward R. Murrow did EMBEDded radio broadcasts for CBS in WWII. It was also a feature of TV news coverage of the Vietnam War (cf. Francis Ford Coppola's cameo in the opening scene of "Apocalypse Now").
ReplyDeleteNot sure when the term emerged, though.
'Twas a pity the hangry Pict pinched a pie and some Port Salut to have with a pint of punch at the poker table in the Peace Tower, then picked the door to the pending pyre.
ReplyDelete"It burns!" he ranted. "Don't gawk, I need some ice. Ice, baby! For my gin, at the very least!"
The sausage dog, whose name was Spot, obeyed, while Amy, Toni and Maia yakked about grad school.
There's also FINCH/FEND. "I'll ward them off, Atticus!" Though I don't mind WINCH/WEND. It sounds like the name of a pub. The Wending Winch. (Or maybe The Winding Wench?)
Regarding ITBURNS and the breakfast test, my work frequently involves testing on pharmaceutical products. A few years ago we had an intensive project months-long, intensive project, in the middle of which I texted to a friend that "I've been elbow deep in Monistat for the past month". She replied "New phone, who this".
ReplyDelete@Birchbark.- Yep. It’s the term that seems new. It has a certain propagandist connotation to my ears because it was the hot term during our middle east misadventures. And just because I know someone will misunderstand, my criticism is of the politicians and the media that enabled them (like the “liberal” NYTs), not our soldiers or the reporters in the field.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 8:05am
ReplyDeleteI had the same question about OVER and copy and it just came to me - when you're speaking on a CB or similar radio, you say "over" to signify the end of the message. The respondent says "copy" to signify receipt of the message.
Thanks! That’s it exactly.
Delete@puzzlehoarder -- Wishing you a very successful and as painless as possible knee replacement. If IT hURtS, don't be a hero: Take every med that isn't nailed down.
ReplyDeleteAnd I join @Hartley in hoping that your mother-in-law is a saint. Well said, @Hartley!
I agree with Rex about AT[THE]LEAST...it is "at least" or, if you must, "at THE very least." I have come to expect these kinds of "shorthand" versions of phrases in a xword puzzle. I understand what they're getting at even though they aren't 100% accurate. That one was off, but close enough.
ReplyDeleteI weirdly knew PORTSALUT...but I wanted to end it with a D. PORTSALUd. That said, I truly have no idea how I knew that. In fact, I know the word(s?), but I didn't know it was cheese. So with PORT in place, the SALUT/d came to me.
I do xwords in the morning...and probably more than anything else, the thing that I enjoy most is finding words will pop into my brain that a) I had no idea existed there, and b) when I woke up this morning, I never thought I'd be thinking about today. To have to mine PORTSALUT and PICT from my brain is a prime example. That there's stuff lying dormant in the grey matter lodged between my ears never ceases to amaze me...it's there, all of it, hidden for all eternity until they slightest nudge can dislodge it. Then once dislodged, it awakens, floating to the surface, like it had been there all along. I mean come on, the greatest mystery of the entire universe exists right between our ears.
Also, it's a weiner dog. I had one as a kid..."Hildie"...she was a cutie. But, at least in Nebraska, no one said SAUSAGEDOG. It was weiner dog or nothing. I also think that weiner dog was said as a pejorative by the kids in my neighborhood...because to kids in my neighborhood, "weiner" meant only two things...something you ate and something else...and as kids, in the case of my dog, it meant the latter, as in: "har har your dog's a penis har har." Hi-freaking-larious. (Not surprisingly, none of them grew up to be comics).
Naticked by EMBED and MAIA.
ReplyDeleteI had Gaia for the goddess (like many others apparently) so was looking at "EGBED" and still couldn't see it. So I assumed I had totally messed up the corner, just gave up and DNF. Just one lousy "M" away.
Really, you can called an embedded reporter an "EMBED"? And MAIA was up there on Olympus? Sounds like a kids' name.
I’m feeling lucky today. All my questionable answers turned out to be correct and I got the happy music. I can’t call the puzzle easy, but it finished in my average Friday time.
ReplyDeleteI had no trouble seeing JohnDonne but OCEANSPRAY took me forever. PICT was easy but ICEICEBABY was not. EMBED, OVER and ACE were guesses and I was sure at least one would be wrong.
When HARDnose didn’t fit I thought ASS was a surprising choice but not offensive.
I love the controversial W. WEND and WINCH happen to be two words I use frequently. The P words not so much. BTW great info on WENt, @LMS, and OMG the diaper story!
There’s been way too much talk about OLIVEBREAD and now I want some. Toasted, please.
Lol a million operas and European rivers and 1920s songs are in crosswords every week, but "winch" is obscure. Crossword nerds have a very funny way of viewing the world.
ReplyDeleteWhatever problems PICKSADOOR has as an entry, the clue ("Chooses at the request of Monty Hall, say") is worse. Who else asks you to pick a door?
ReplyDeleteI found the puzzle difficult, but interesting. Today, Rex sounds like a whiner. Yes, people say sausage dog. It's not a regionalism. Port Salut is a fairly familiar cheese, nothing esoteric or exotic. I thought the answer to the Monty Hall clue, "pick a door", was fine. Could have been clued along the lines of the lady and the tiger as well, but nothing wrong with the answer. Nothing absurd about the phrase. And, the John Donne quote is familiar enough that a sweatshirt company has a sweatshirt with the phrase on it! How obscure is that? And, even it it is relatively obscure compared to "no man is an island", so what? Yes, Maia is obscure. Again, so what?
ReplyDeleteAgree with Rex that the clue on Clinton era was solid. Clever. I actually thought of "Pict" for 38A, but didn't trust myself, and had to wait a while to get the answer.
Loved the winch/wend combo.
EMBED was the last thing to fall for me, because I'd never heard of MAIA, and figured an important god like Hermes must have an important mother -- so I went from herA to gAIA, but got no further until I sinfally saw that a smacker could be a BUCK rather than a faCe or a kiss. I even considered changing HARD ASS to HARrass.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, PORT SALUT was relatively easy (when gouda wouldn't fit). I grew up in Wisconsin, where the blessed cheesemakers imitated every known cheese in the world. As about 12, I loved the Kaukana Club version of Ps.
@Loren, I'm still stumped about yesterday, but your avatar today is brilliant!
Whoever asked -- yest, an ACE is an excellent service (aka serve) in tennis.
OK, got to WEND my way to my music lesson. I use that word every so often, so was not troubled by it.
Basic crossword tip: when clued with a type of person or thing, ignore the details and just look for what fits. I got both ORR and JOHN DONNE that way.
I liked this a lot. Did my usual staring. Thank you crosswordese friends - AKIN and ERE for at least getting me started. POKER TABLE was my first entry and I smiled. I'm liking this dudes cluing. I also love it when just one letter gives me a long answer. The Y off of (not funny...Hi @Linda V.) AMY gave me OCEAN SPRAY. And so I was getting it on and getting it off. PEN Pal instead of GAL pal. Easy to change because I knew it was SAUSAGE DOG. We have two little Doxipoos. Boy are they cute. Dad was a miniature poodle, mom was the wiener. Think looking at a tiny hairy hot dog walking on stubby paws.
ReplyDeleteHad no problem with WEND/WINCH. Why change it? Fancier than any pend/pinch. And PORT SALUT just off the P from SPRAY and the A from APIA. Not my favorite of all the French cheeses. I like my lips to pucker up a bit more.
OK so I'm getting all kinds of answers and patting my back and then come to a complete stop at the hip hop single and Ottawa's landmark. Holding me up was the DNF Peak service. I had PEACh TOWER and ACH sounded perfectly normal for Mr. Peak or whoever he is. My other DNF was back upstairs in the EMBED/MAIA. I thought if you're reporting a fight, you might get EGGED. A smacker certainly could be a gUCK, no? Didn't matter, I like that I come here and learn what EMBED really means. Not sure about the ACE thing, though.
OLIVE BREAD soooo delish. AT THE LEAST does need some help with very. Glad the CLINTON ERA sits atop OVER. We need more of the PEACE TOWERs.
Thanks for the fun.
HARDASS seems a bit objectionable but not sure why. "Ass" appears in the puzzle now and again with an animal related clue or a clue having to do with a misbehaving human. But HARDASS just seems too much.
ReplyDeleteEMBED. I see others have mentioned pre-Iraq. I was going to mention Ernie Pyle, but checked with the Wiki, and, it seems, that with Iraq and later, EMBEDs are very, very closely controlled by the military. Up through Vietnam, especially, censorship/control was much, much lighter. If the only criterion is being with troops at the 'front lines', then yeah, reporters have been doing that since at least WWI.
ReplyDeleteMy own ignorance led me to fill in JOHNDUNNE, and SEGA sounded like it might be a star, so I was stuck with USER copy, which at least is a thing. First DNF in I don’t know how long. Grrr.
ReplyDelete@Z and @Albatross shell Thanks for responding to my shout of pain yesterday. It’s good to be back. Found today’s puzzle quite doable for the most part; kept getting the ending of words “door”, “dog”, “tower”, “bread” ,”card”, “spray” and “table “ and then had to scramble to come up with the antecedent. Bogged down in the NW. Though I thought I knew Roman history, Pict was unknown and I’m not up on my Swiftisms. Had to wend my way to the finish with the aid of my co-solver, Auto Check.
ReplyDeletelots of bad stuff IMO. GAIA/MAIA. Ended up with EGGER for EMBED and thus HARRASS for HARDASS. PICT and ACE not easy but inferred PEACETOWER from the rest. And of course the cheese.
ReplyDeleteFun, just tough enough, including a long moment of "Will I DNF with an empty NE?"
ReplyDeleteWheelhouse report:
Knew: PORT SALUT, JOHN DONNE, PICT. VEGA
Remembered with the nudge of a few crosses: ICE ICE BABY, KEVIN HART
No idea: SHAKE IT OFF, PEACE TOWER. MAIA, TONI
Do-overs: kiLO before HOLO, pen before GAL, GApe before GAWK.
"Really?" Corner: HARD ASS. Objections to WEND x WINCH.
I pondered the parallel placement of KEVIN HART and JOHN DONNE. Possible "heart" homonym to fit with the fool for love?
In GRAD SCHOOL my husband and I ate PORT SALUT and drank Harvey's Bristol Creme and thought we were very sophisticated.
We had the best one for 13 years, don't know if she was 4 or 5 when we got her from the rescue league. Doxie, Dachshund, Wiener dog, even hot dog. I heard them all frequently, but sausage dog, not so much. It's definitely a thing though. By the way, if you let your doxie get so fat they resemble a sausage, you shouldn't be allowed to own them.
ReplyDeleteA few things I put right in which caused me trouble: "makes a deal" and "Ogden Nash", it took me forever to suss out "sausage dog" even after "picks a door" fell.
In restaurants we always had to call it "Port du Salut" and never heard "hangry"; hope I never do.
SOS, Ocean Spray, Sears: boy, I hope the Times and Kyle get money for the product placements
Liked the clue for "Clinton Era" and got it off two things: one was just the N in Donne, the other is puzzle makers insistence on calling presidential terms "eras", which they decidedly are not. Or maybe, with our attention spans so shortened by the computer era, they are?
Nothing at all obscure about either "winch" or "wend". My grandmother used to say "at the least".
Yes, the embed came about under Bush II.
Oh, you youngsters. SAUSAGE DOG was the only meat-dog term used for dachshunds for half of my lifetime. Sometime in the '90s (I think) wiener dog came along and now that is what you hear most.
ReplyDeleteStiff competition, at our house. Some of those clues … yikes!
ReplyDeleteStill haven't quite figured out the DRE clue, so it gets our staff weirdject pick.
fave fillins: HANGRY. SHAKEITOFF. SHEATHE. UEYS.
cool clue: {Where a hand might be raised} = POKERTABLE.
Learnt: PORTSALUT. ICEICEBABY. JOHNDONNE.
yo, @muse darlin: Nice catch on the 12-Dog's PB1 Usage Immunity.
yo, @RP: Could also do FINCH/FEND, in addition to PINCHINGIN.
Thanx for a feisty FriPuz, Mr. Dolan.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
Winches and their cousins comealongs are among the handiest tools ever, right up there with vise grips. Good, challenging puzzle; chuckled when HARDASS appeared. Have never seen ERIS before. ARES, sure, but ERIS? Greek to me. OVER
ReplyDelete@PuzzleHoarder
ReplyDeleteGood luck tomorrow.
@M&A
ReplyDeleteI think the clue for DRE (Rap mogul of the highest degree) refers to him being a "Doctor."
Wow - kept me going. Loved Clinton Era but still don't get "Embed"
ReplyDeleteI am always happy when I have to wrestle a puzzle to the ground. For five minutes, the grid was almost blank. Then, slowly, and oddly, the long answers cane to me: PICKSADOOR, POKERTABLE, and a few others. And then I just fought my way through until I got the "congrats" message.
ReplyDeleteDid no one else wince at PICKSADOOR? Once I filled it in, all I could see were the stabby things sticking out of a bull, enraging him so that some overdressed "hero" had a worthy opponent. It’s the picador's job to antagonize the poor creature, sort of like the stuff they put under a bronco's saddle to make him buck and twist to get the damn thing off. What we do to animals!
I, too, really liked the inclusion of WINCH and WEND. Thanks to @LMS for the fun bit of trivia about "went's" origin.
@puzzlehoarder, I echo others for a saintly MIL and good drugs for the knee.
Now let me explain EMBED . . . .
P.S. Dachshunds were a large part of my life for a long time. I never liked the nickname of SAUSAGE DOG, but heard it as often as weiner dog.
ReplyDeleteObjection! In poker, a hand is not raised. A bet is raised. Very bad clue, Will. And the clue for "EMBED" doesn't fit at all.
ReplyDeleteI guess I had a quasi DNF because I looked up "sospar". When I found no such product, SOSPAD came to mind and I replaced "retains" with the far more accurate DETAINS. If you are stopped by a cop but not arrested, you have a "detention, but not an arrest." And a cop who almost arrests you but doesn't may well decide not to write that traffic ticket he originally was going to.
ReplyDeleteI did, however, get PORTSALUT right away -- always a favorite for me. And PICT because they were there across the Wall, not some regtag bunch of Celts (who were in Gaul, and many other places, if you remember your Caesar).
For a brief moment I considered writing in JOHNDeere before smiling as I recognized DONNE. OFL is a real whinger sometimes, isn't he?
@Joe Dapinti, brilliant! HALL OF FAME material. And @LMS, thanks again for making me smile. Hope everything went OK in North Carolina.
I think it is now time for everyone to put to bed the sausage v wiener controversy! Yes it is regional thing. I have personally never heard sausage dog but have heard wiener dog and @kitchef I am not a “kid” and saw no uptick in 90s. Either way is fine. I didn’t react “SAUSAGE DOG...WTF!!??
ReplyDeleteIT Bites! No, not the puzzle - that's just what came to mind at 6D when only ITB was in the grid. HAR[DASS].
ReplyDeleteThis was WENDing its way to the easiest Friday puzzle ever when I hit the East side. My Pain started with 42A but ARRAY sorted that out. I had the PORTS____ of the cheese and could only imagine PORTSwiss. Reading the description of PORT SALUT cheese in Rex's comments, I can't imagine being able to eat a 9 inch wheel of cheese in two weeks. That sucker would be green and thrown out, for sure.
40D, "Cover in a protective layer" = SHEllac, certainly. Or maybe SHElTer works, kind of? And WINCH - I chuckle every time I see the word because it reminds me of a typo in our local paper's Home and Garden section. Someone was digging a hole and needed a WeNCH to get a big rock out or something like that. So I had some SE trouble but it didn't involve a WeNCH.
But the NE almost cost me a DNF. With SAUSAGE DOG and PICKS A DOOR in place, but YAp at 14D and gAIA at 16A, 11D's Eg_ED and 18A's _UCp made for some head scratching. Could 11D be EMcED? No, no. Changed the YAp to YAK and figured out the EgBED problem. I was still expecting a DNF somewhere but I seem to have SLIMLY avoided one.
Kyle Dolan, thanks for the workout.
And M&A, thanks to your comment, I re-SCANned the clue for DRE and I think I've got it. The highest degree is a doctorate - Dr. DRE (not quite a Runt clue for DegReE).
ReplyDeleteRex,
ReplyDeletePick a door is perfect for the clue. Loved it. But not as much as I love the Monty Hall problem:
There are three closed doors before a contestant.
There is a prize behind only one of the doors.
The contestant duly picks one of the doors. Monty then opens one of the two remaining remaining doors and reveals that no prize is behind that door.
Monty now asks the contestant whether he would like to change his original choice of doors to the third door. The question: is the contestant advantaged by switching doors?
If you think the NRA provokes fights, just wait!
Eris is the goddess of chaos and discord. When refused admittance to a party she was not invited to she tossed in a golden Apple gifted to the fairest one of all. Gods and goddesses being almost human... it did not go well. I learned abot her from Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminati Trilogy. She was an expert on using chaos for vengeance and to manipulate others. Leaders of a pair of cold war countries seem to me to be using her tactics, if I may mention this without causing any discord here.
ReplyDeleteI think there may be some elbow room in the use of raise at the POKER TABLE and in punning. The possible flush raised my two pair. I raised him back.
Reporters were embedded with the troops.for reasons political and practical. These reporter's became known as embeds. An embed reported on the war.
Radio talk: One person says over, the next says copy. Over may precede copy, as the clue states. That was my best explanation while solving and it has been mentioned here.
Sometime in the last week or two I filled in HARDASS knowing it would be wrong because NYT would not do that, but I liked the answer. This time I tried hardcase first. Look forward to badass.
The U.S. military learned two important lessons from the Vietnam War about how to minimize or eliminate wide-spread civilian unrest and protest against sending young people off to die in armed conflict in some far-away land.
ReplyDeleteOne was to eliminate the draft and just pay people to fight our wars. Can't complain about it if people voluntarily sign up, right?
The other was to control the journalists. One of the catalysts for the protests and demonstrations during the Vietnam War was the nightly T.V. news coverage of the carnage. There were body counts of U.S. versus Viet Cong killed. There were regular images of wounded soldiers and horrific civilian casualties. These were some of the reasons why Francis Ford Coppola's anti-war movie was titled Apocalypse Now.
So the answer for the military was to EMBED journalist within military units and to tightly control what information is allowed to get out, a kind of blanket censorship. Anything that is deemed to violate security or possibly harm the military efforts gets deleted.
The program is a total success, from the military's point of view. How many protests or demonstrations against the numerous wars we're fighting these days have you seen lately? The success of the EMBED policy is attested to by the fact that so many of you folks haven't even heard of it! Out of sight, out of mind.
Sausage dog is the standard nickname here (occasionally dachsie / sausage / worsie (Afrikaans translation of sausage dog). I've only encountered wiener dog in American culture; I think the first time was in the lyrics of Yankovic's Albuquerque...
ReplyDeleteThose using "doxie" to refer to your dachshund really should look up the definition. It has had that meaning since Shakespeare's time.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doxy
Want a laugh ? You tube "cop singing shake it off". Have never,I mean never, heard embed used as a noun.Yuck !
ReplyDeleteMy only problem with Port Salut was a T or D at the end. CLINTON ERA solved that
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 1:39. The contestant should switch. The odds are 2 to 1 that switching will produce the prize.
ReplyDeleteSolved this one completely, but a few too many "WTF" ...Ice ice baby, shake it off, Jedi (they are knights?) Dre, and product names, Ocean Spray, SOS, Sears, and "Hangry", which I think has appeared before, or I never would have known it.
Still, a mostly pleasurable, appropriate Friday.
The NE corner was the death of me.
ReplyDeleteESPY was a killer. I was thinking of kisses/
CLINTON ERA was clever!
@Runs with Scissors. Are you referring to the prostitute or the sweetheart? My two doxiepoos/doxipoo - depending on whether you're a Brit or Yank - are of the sweetheart ILK. Thank you very much.
ReplyDeleteOisk,
ReplyDeleteYesiree!!! Almost noone gets it. There was a kerfuffle a few years back about in Parade Magazine. Lots of folks got pretty insulting when Marilyn (I forget her last name, but she's playfully billed as the world's smartest woman) gave the correct solution.
In Stat circles it is in fact called the Monty Hall problem. And the best part is Monty knew the math!!!
What the heck is wrong with WEND & WINCH? If your vocabulary is so limited that you don't know these two words, maybe you shouldn't be doing late-week NYT crosswords.
ReplyDeleteHad to work at this one. Too many clues that referred to pop culture knowledge I could care less about, but I plugged away at it. Found the 'wend'/'winch' intersection ok, but wonder why 'wend' was defined (46A) as "Make, as one's way." Doesn't 'wend' mean to make one's way? Once I had 'wend,' winch was obvious.
ReplyDeleteThen I looked at what I had for 58A ("About to start the workday, say") and came up with "Lunching in" which gave me a chuckle, and seemed a flippant way to start the work day. Reminded me of the years when I would wend my way to work through gaps, and valley, and over mountains, stopping to pick up a sandwich before I got to campus for office hours at 11 (you know I'd been grading exams at 8, but who cares). Then I realized that a person doing a balancing act had to be a cPa, and so "lunching in" became a dreary "punching in." Couldn't there be such a thing as a Certified Limber Acrobat who would be doing a balancing act? Sigh.
Shout out to @anon10:51 for saying it first, And that’s why I think of it having propagandist connotations.
ReplyDelete@anon1:39 - What settled it for me was that someone actually ran the game as an experiment and confirmed that changing doors is advantageous (in a fair game). I can follow the logic when it’s presented, but I don’t understand it well enough to explain it.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteOriginal post was lost when my phone auto-refreshed. I hate that.
Anyway, liked puz and comments. Also liked YesterPuz, with the correct :-) using the NOSE. The non-NOSE is just wrong.
To the puzzlers about @LMS's avatar, I just figured it out myself. It's a PEACE TOWER, as in a truck that tows. Har.
RooMonster
DarrinV
@Z -- Google "Marilyn Vos Savant Monty Hall problem"
ReplyDeleteHangry?
ReplyDeleteChanging a door choice or sticking with a door choice dilemma? Two doors remain from which to choose. Odds should now be 50-50, right? Wrong, evidently. But why? Would someone (not named @Z) like to explain it to moi?
ReplyDelete@anon/1:39
ReplyDeleteMonty now asks the contestant whether he would like to change his original choice of doors to the third door. The question: is the contestant advantaged by switching doors?
The standard answer is Bayesian. I hate Bayesian; it makes up 'information'.
@JC66 & @Teedmn: Many thanx for the DRE clue explanation. har. Can't hardly believe they snuck that one past m&e, during (and even after) the solvequest. Maybe if it'd had the double-?? clue punctuation -- then, denser-than-snot M&A coulda been a contender.
ReplyDeleteSome stuff that maybe is in the language on the street just ain't gonna always be in the Official M&A Help Desk Dictionary. This was the case with SAUSAGEDOG, today. Don't make it wrong or bad. Heck, DRE ain't in the dictionary, either. I say viva the different.
Oft-asked question in these parts: Is the NYTCrossword still the world's best? I guess I don't know of a puz that comes out every single day of the year* that's better. Do kinda miss Patrick SausageDog Berry, Liz Gorski, Nancy Salomon, and several other old regular faves, I'll grant. Lotsa new talent showin up all the time, tho.
Thanx, Mr. Shortzmeister. I don't believe U get that quite often enough, here'bouts.
M&Also
* cuz the runtpuz misses some days, now and then.
The key to the Monty Hall problem is that Monty knows where the prize is and is going to show you the a door without the prize.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is a little easier on your intuitive senses if you imagine a million boxes all empty except for one that has a prize. You choose one to open to see if you win the prize. Before you open it, someone who knows which box has the prize opens all the remaining boxes except one. Now he gives you a choice between the box you chose (which is still a one-in-a-million shot since he was going to show you all those empty boxes whether or not you chose the prize) and the one other box remaining (which contains the prize whenever your original choice did not).
Hope this helps. I could do the math to get the answer, but could not feel the answer until I thought of it this way.
It's a deceptive problem, but the answer is pretty simple. When you chose the door, you had a 1 in 3 chance of being right. The odds are 2 to 1 that you picked incorrectly. Those odds don't change when Monty opens one of the doors. Since it is TWICE as likely that you picked the wrong door as that you picked the right one, you need to switch!
ReplyDeleteThe Monte Hall problem is very simple. Suppose the situation was this: He lets you pick a door, then after you chose one, he let you pick either keeping that door or choosing the other two doors. He makes this offer without considerations of your specific choice, you can always keep the one or switch to take the other two. Of course, you pick the two door option, you have 2/3 of a chance of winning rather than a 1/3 chance of winning.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what he is doing by showing the one empty door. You know there's one empty door among the two, you just don't know which one it is. He's just making you think you now have a choice between door 1 and door 2, not your original choice of door 1 and doors 2&3.
I STILL don't get it!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYes, I knew the odds were 2-1 against me when I was forced to pick one out of three possible doors. The result -- that I lost! -- was not in the least bit surprising, nor should it have been. But it's already happened. Now there are only two doors -- two doors that have absolutely no memory of what I did or didn't do in the first round. Two doors: one with a prize; one without a prize. A clean slate. A tabula rasa. Leading to a 1 in 2 chance of being right, whichever door you choose. Change your pick? Don't change your pick? The prize is in one out of two doors, whatever you do now or did earlier. 50-50 odds: I don't see any way around it.
Sheesh, Rex. PORT SALUT was a gimme. JOHN DONNE was fine. HANGRY was weird.
ReplyDeleteYep, Nancy, you still don't get it! You don't know that you lost, when one of the doors is opened. You DO know, that the odds are 2 to 1 that you picked the wrong door. That does NOT change when one of the remaining doors is opened. It is still 2 to 1 that your selection was wrong, and therefore still IS wrong. You therefore need to change your selection.
ReplyDelete@OISK, et al.
ReplyDeleteI still don't get it either. What if @Nancy picked door A, I picked door B, and Monte opened door C. Are both @Nancy & I better off changing are selections?
How can that be?
@JC66
ReplyDeleteThat's a different situation, because Monte doesn't use his knowledge of where the prize is to decide which door to open.
Think of it this way: Monte has two doors, you have one, so he's twice as likely to have the prize. He's not going to show you the door with the prize (if he has it), he's going to show you the other one. But he's still twice as likely to have the prize as you are.
Just keep away from #3. All of these game shows expect you to pick lucky 3. Don't. Always go for # 2. I have ESP...just like my little Moe....
ReplyDelete@Speedweeder
ReplyDeleteAre we talking odds or probability?
Because, if the prize is behind the door @Nancy picked (door A), Monte could open either B or C, still leaving the odds at 50-50.
@Nancy - Three doors, a prize behind one of them. I tell you that you can pick either 1 door, or 2 doors. You pick 2 of course. I then show you one of your 2 that doesn't have a prize. Did my telling you that change anything? You knew that at least one of your doors didn't hide the prize. My showing you that one doesn't have a prize gives no information. It doesn't change the experiment, which was that picking 2 is better than picking one.
ReplyDeleteThe reason this works is that you think being shown a door that doesn't hide a prize changes the experiment, but it doesn't.
@OISK - Best explanation I’ve seen. Thanks.
ReplyDelete@Nancy and @JC66 - As I recall, @Joe DiPinto’s suggestion is sound.
And I do remember that someone actually did a large enough scale experiment to verify that changing doors is the better option, and that the results were statistically consistent with the predicted results. Vos Savant may have been the one who mentioned the experiment.
@Z - In her column, Vos Savant asked teachers around the country to present the problem to their students as an experiment, and the subsequent results corroborated that it was more beneficial to switch your pick -- that's probably what you're thinking of.
ReplyDeleteOISK does have probably the clearest explanation. The fact that one of the two other doors is opened for the contestant creates an illusion that the original odds have changed, but in reality they haven't.
I’m sorry, pizza does not mean pie in Italian, it means pizza, which is the same word in English. If you’re referring to a kind of dessert, such as apple pie, in Italian it’s torta, not pizza!
ReplyDeleteBill MacGillivray 12:58 PM
ReplyDeleteYour Donegalian grandmother may not have liked Catholics, or Protestants...I can't really tell which and don't care...but the Picts were not Irish, they mingled with the Scots. And are no longer. Ergo, extinct.
I'll take a thousand PICT and PORT SALUT answers over one GoT actor. I'll take a thousand WINCH and WEND answers over one KEVIN HART. The degree to which people willfully immerse themselves in banal mediocrity these days never ceases to cause me wonder.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Rex, PORT SALUT is delicious. Go get some, eat, and repent.
Thanks to RunswithScissors for pointing out that a "dachsie" does not equal a "doxie." As a founder of a national dachshund rescue group, I've dealt with dozens of misspellings (dashund, dashhound, datsun) and alternative names--including wiener dog (not "weiner," which is a misspelling of "wiener," i.e., Viennese). Never once heard our courageous, stubby-legged friends called "sausage dogs," and I was annoyed when "wiener dog" didn't fit.
ReplyDeleteMore annoyed at "slimly" (by a narrow margin). When does anyone say/write that? "The Tigers beat the Red Sox slimly, by a score of 2-1." Never. That's when.
It's one thing to use obscure words in a puzzle--see cranky comments about "winch" and "wend," both perfectly good words, both in use today, if not wide use. Also obscure: "buck" as a synonym for "smacker," and "smacker" meaning a dollar. But it's quite another to use a word that isn't really a word at all; if you look it up in most dictionaries, you'll get "ADVERB. See SLIM."
Overall, though, really enjoyed this puzzle.
Easy?? Yeah--except for the entire puzzle! Reading the clue list searching for a way to PUNCH IN, I finally found AMY. Though not really my type, Ms. Schumer receives DOD status solely for being my DOOR into this. Later I found an anatomical gimme: ANKLE BONE, which helped greatly in breaking into the west.
ReplyDeleteI get the point of HANGRY from the clue--but it's still not a word. That and EMBED/MAIA were the nastiest parts of one HARDASS puzzle. But despite not knowing the song titles or the cheese, I did ACE this test; magunga triumph points attend.
I agree about ATTHELEAST, people say either "At least" or "At the very least." On this I am of one voice with OFC: fill your grids with actual speech, not made-up awkward rephrasing.
Hand up for IThURtS. Wanted pen and pay before GAL pal, and wrote OVER one other letter: rETAINS changed to DETAINS. OVER may precede copy? Over copy instead of copy over? Hmm. That one needs some 'splainin.' When cheating in a test, don't over-copy your NERD neighbor's paper--do it only once.
Rev. Jim (whisper): Hey Tony.
Tony: What?
J: What does a yellow light mean?
T: Slow down.
J: Okay. What...does...a...yellow...light...mean?
T (exasperated): Slow down!
J: O-kay. What? Does? A?...etc.
Great stuff. So was doing this puzzle. I liked SEARS crossing PEACETOWER; made me think of the SEARS TOWER; though I was pretty sure that's not in Ottawa. Yeah right. Chicago. Anyway, eagle.
S.O.S.PAD PITY
ReplyDeleteSHEATHE your SAUSAGE,DOG, ORR maybe
some HARDASS GAL may scoff,
“ERE I give you ICEICEBABY,
ITBURNS when I SHAKEITOFF.”
--- “ABEL” AMY VEGA
ESPY PIE
ReplyDeleteWhen HANGRY AT your DESK ORR POKERTABLE,
ATTHELEAST you should be FED
a SPOT of OCEANSPRAY, and if you’re ABEL
some PORTSALUT on OLIVEBREAD.
--- TONI “BUCK” HART
When I get HARDASS HANGRY I prefer olive loaf on OLIVEBREAD with PORTSALUT cheese and a OCEANSPRAY chaser.
ReplyDeleteITBURNS reminds me of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
I liked FLASHCARD crossing GRADeSCHOOL.
Overheard at a SAUSAGEDOGfest: SHAKEITOFF
More hands up for IThURtS and rETAIN. Other than PORTSALUT the rest fell in pretty quickly; the obvious POKERTABLE, PICKSADOOR, and CLINTONERA really helped things along. I must have seen HANGRY before because I didn’t hesitate putting it in; or maybe I’m catching on to Newspeak.
ReplyDeleteThe former SEARS store is across the street outside my window, now just an empty building with a huge parking lot occupying acres of prime real estate on the fringe of downtown St. Paul.
Is AMY Schumer actually funny? I mighta gone with ‘Winehouse’ as the clue. Yeah BABY.
Too bad that CLINTONERA wasn’t a little closer to SODOM. Or maybe it was. Fun Friday.
Good puzzle - too bad I didn't know more of the people/answers.
ReplyDeleteLady Di
Did you know that Jarlsberg and PortSalut have the same number of letters?
ReplyDeleteAnd DNF until daughter stepped in with Ice Ice baby and pyre.
Sad!
WINCH/WEND: I'm virtually always an RP supporter, but today I'll note (acerbically) that if the constructor had gone for PINCH/PEND, RP would've had a cow about "PEND," which doesn't appear in conversation. Yes, WEND is self-consciously archaic, and that's what makes it a fun find.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Fs: FINCH/FEND are better than PINCH/PEND, but I still support WINCH/WEND.
PEACE TOWER: "... completed just after WWI" nudged us-what-don't-know-Ottawa toward PEACE.
SAUSAGE DOG: 2,480,000 hits on Google (in quote marks, to weed out unrelated hits) vs 2,960,000 for "wiener dog". Close enough to be a fair entry.
But TONI clued with "Kuloc" (438,000 hits) rather than "Braxton" (11,900,000 hits) is *not* a fair entry, given the dearth of women in fill/clues and as constructors. This earns the daily SYS (Screw you, Shortz).
Petsounds: Complete agreement about the bogus "slimly" -- that is very definitely the choice of an app's wordlist, and this constructor needs to prune his, A LOT. (That's my big beef with this new gen of computer-lovin' guy constructors: They're not sufficiently language-driven, so idiocies like SLIMLY creep in, and they're so happy to fill the grid that they don't stop to think about the un-wisdom of including tons of trivia, with product-placement being the worst.)
The Monty Hall Problem, explained:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
I enjoyed this one because the longer entries in felt fresh to me. I'd never heard SAUSAGE DOG before, which makes sense because Merriam-Webster says it's British, but after I got ____AGE DOG, it was pretty clear. (Like Rex, I solved the NE corner last.)
ReplyDeleteI was pleasantly surprised that my first thoughts of HANGRY and HARDASS were right because I hadn't expected to see them in a NYT puzzle but was glad when I did: no qualms from this solver.
I've never heard another term for a WINCH, so I'll second those who are surprised to hear this word called obscure. For those who didn't know WINCH, is there some other word you call this device? If so, I'm eager to learn it.