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Briton who wrote Fish Called Wanda / SAT 4-27-19 / Dutch craze of 1636-37 first major speculative bubble / Crowdsourced compendia / Half of long-running Vegas show / Early 2000s low-carb fad / Five-time pro-bowler with Chicago Bears / Alfalfa's sweetie in Little Rascals /
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Constructor: Joe Deeney
Relative difficulty: Easy (6:21, not fully awake)
Word of the Day: Lake MEAD (50A: Lake on the Arizona/Nevada border) —
Lake Mead is a man made lake that lies on the Colorado River, about 24 mi (39 km) from the Las Vegas Strip, southeast of the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, in the states of Nevada and Arizona. It is the largest reservoir in the United States in terms of water capacity. Formed by the Hoover Dam on September 30, 1935, the reservoir serves water to the states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, as well as some of Mexico, providing sustenance to nearly 20 million people and large areas of farmland.At maximum capacity, Lake Mead is 112 miles (180 km) long, 532 feet (162 m) at its greatest depth, has a surface elevation of 1,221.4 feet (372.3 m) above sea level and 247 square miles (640 km2) of surface area, and contains 26.12 million acre feet (32,220,000 ML) of water.The lake has not reached full capacity, however, since 1983 due to a combination of drought and increased water demand. As of August 2017, Lake Mead was at approximately 40% of full capacity with 10 million acre feet (12,000,000 ML) of held water.] It has been smaller than Lake Powell (the second largest US reservoir when both are full) since 2013.
• • •
Started with some luck, in that I wanted PEEL TASE URSA for the Downs. Now I balked at first two because they made impossible "PTU-" formation at beginning of 1A: Selling point (PLUS). But I went down and got LEAF PEEPER off just the "EA" (woo hoo!) (If you've never heard of LEAF PEEPERs, then you don't live in the northeastern U S of A). Put PEEL back in and it wasn't long before NW corner was worked out. Trouble with second half of both long Acrosses up there, especially ESSAY EXAM, which I had as a TEST. Easy fix, though. Slowish going through the DART / TAMPS / MEAD section, mostly because ON REPORT was so touch to see / parse. Had TUG AT before TUG ON (49D: Gently pull). But that's it for roughness. Finished in the NE, where yet another Shakespeare clue, this one a fill-in-the-blank, slowed me down a little, but not much. Main trouble up there was that I always spell BONSAI with a "Z." They really shoulda called it the ATKINZ DIET (11D: Early 2000s low-carb fad). The "Z" gives it a whole retro '90s vibe and maybe would've helped them make inroads in the rad teen market. The last thing I read before going to bed last night was the second volume of NEIL GAIMAN's "Sandman," so that was an odd coincidence. Speaking of ... time for green tea and comfy chair and morning reading. Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. There hasn't been a solo woman constructor in two weeks. Just two woman co-constructors. So that's 13/14 men. In case you're wondering what the trend is.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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91 comments:
Very easy today. Luckily I know what day it is: race day.
It is so condescending to use "?" on Friday and Saturday. I don't want my hand held.
It's official: ASS is the new BUTT! Two days in a row.
Only if you stunt the growth of your tree with a katana is it called a banzai; which makes Ralf the masseur. And anyone who thinks 'tulip mania' is obscure hasn't lived a broad & full life. Nor has he (or she) read Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Today was relatively easy for a Saturday; 'rared' was a weak answer but otherwise some nice words in there.
Hamlet, Act III, scene I
HAMLET: Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
OPHELIA: At home, my lord.
HAMLET: Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.
OPHELIA: O, help him, you sweet heavens!
HAMLET: If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
and quickly too. Farewell.
OPHELIA: O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET: I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
those that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
nunnery, go.
Would have been much faster for one crucial mistake that hung me up in the transition from the NW to the upper middle. Read 4D as a plural with “positions”, put in SLOTS which gummed up everything...I really wanted HYPES and with slots it gave me EARLY__ which seemed a plausible beginning to “Dawn of the Space Age?” (Given “dawn”) but everything else looked wrong. Finally ended up getting it coming up from the bottom with GREENTAX and realized HYPES was correct with all the crosses allowing me to swap back out STAFF for SLOTS
Overall, liked the puzzle immensely, loved the luring on BONSAI “stunted growth”...like Rex also got the marquee answer with just the XU and F, but unlike him I think the article THE sounds better in the phrasing
Saturday….The NW corner of this puzzle was in my outhouse, not my wheelhouse. But I still liked it because it made me battle for every across and down.
Okay, so some were gimmes…”THE LUXURY OF TIME” was friggin’ outstanding. TULIP MANIA was so Dutch it paid for itself. ESSAY EXAM, well, not so much. Can we discard the ATKINS DIET? It’ll kill you. But it’s your life, if you believe go for it. I had to dredge NEIL GAIMAN out of the deepest, darkest recesses of my memories; almost didn’t. LEAF PEEPER got the WTF treatment, but hey, it’s Saturday.
I don’t have the Monty Python gene all y’all seem to have…John Cleese isn’t really all that funny. Life of Brian was good, not interstellar. I always thought History of the World Part I, along with Blazing Saddles, was better because Mel Brooks didn’t give a crap about what was PC.
All around great puzzle. I do not slam the constructor or the results just because I couldn’t make my way through it. I made a valiant attempt. It won. Good going, Joe Deeney. Keep ‘em coming.
DOD (I don’t actually know what this means. Diva of the Day?) KEIRA Knightley.
I’m off to a 50 mile fundraiser mountain bike ride to do and I won’t have THE LUXURY OF TIME. I may not do the Sunday puzzle after that.
Tulip mania is not obscure, particularly if you saw the film Orlando. You have a bad habit of thinking that if you don't know something, it must be obscure.
Along the lines of Slow Travel and Slow Food, this was a Slow Easy, with A TAD here and there until it all came together. The more unusual letters were certainly a help: e.g., that X in LUXURY, whose Y then signaled DYNAMITE. Loved the beautiful EARTHRISE, the two Bears URSA and DITKA, the parallel AIRING and ACTING. For the autumn "invaders," I first conflated LEAF cutters with spring PEEPERS and tried to picture such 4- or 6-legged creatures, until the 2-legged variety snapped into focus.
Do-overs: PEdi before PEEL, TULIP pANIc before MANIA (I guess I was thinking of when the bubble burst).
Favorite clue: Has left.
I got it off only the 'X'. Had to say it because I can't brag about ever getting close to the time.
I had trouble coming to terms with my do overs.
DASH for DART,
MARCO for MATEO even though I know the singsong phrase Mathew Mark Luke and John.
Very enjoyable, easier than average Saturday. Never heard of NEILGAIMAN. Or LEAFPEEPERS (I don’t live in the northeastern U S of A; had fun imagining what these might be). Able to get both from crosses without much difficulty. Beautiful clue and answer in EARTHRISE. Also really liked TULIPMANIA. And THELUXURYOFTIME—for some reason that phrase brings to mind the famous Salvador Dali painting The Persistence of Memory.
RAISINETS always gives me a smile, reminding of the classic scene in Blazing Saddles where a character named Hedley Lamarr, pursuing an adversary into a theater, stops at the concession stand to buy a box of the candy. I’ve heard that the Nestle company provided Mel Brooks with a free life-time supply of them in gratitude for this best ever movie product placement. Also, it is definitely true that the actress Hedy Lamarr, long past her prime when Saddles came out, tried to sue Brooks for unauthorized adaptation of her name. They settled amicably and became friends. Lamarr (Hedy) led a fascinating life, nicely related in the recent documentary film Bombshell—won’t provide any spoilers here.
Interesting to see KNELT crossing DITKA, probably the last NFLer (see--you can use that word in a sentence) who would ever “take a knee” in protest. (Which, by the way, I can imagine evokes much the same response from some of our far-right participants that NRA does from Rex.)
Easy for me today, at 15:19. I'm not sure about the clue for 36A. "Welcomed" doesn't say LED IN for me. LED IN sounds like something you did for someone on the way to their execution; not very welcoming.
And 61A, "Has left". I read this as "Has remaining" and IS OUT puzzled me to no end until I figured out "left" means "gone" in this case. I SEE.
Thanks, Joe Deeney.
What else besides ALL IS TRUE would you name a play about Elizabeth I's father? With all the deceit and skullduggery in the preceding History plays the title comes as something of a fawning relief, deserved or or not, that the Tudors are finally on the throne. And be it Elizabeth or James, Shakespeare is writing among them.
Re "a play no one reads anyway" -- I like the inverted Cartesian feel of "I teach, therefore no one reads." It puts me in the no-one camp, but in good company with Emily Dickinson:
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
Tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Second ASS in two days in the puzzle! Yesterday in the grid, today in a (clever, I thought) clue. Back in Jimmy Carter's presidency, it was big news when Ted Kennedy was threatening a primary challenge and Carter said, "I'll whip his ass." Newspaper editors pulled their hair out about how to render that in print, and I think mostly it went a--. Seems positively Victorian, now that the NYT is bravely quoting the current president in all his reprobate short-fingered vulgarity.
Considering that we’ve had two speculative bubbles make spectacular crashes in two of the last three decades and that both times my ancestors’ (dad’s side) weird fascination with a Turkish flower was the oft cited example, I’d say TULIP MANIA is far, far, far from obscure. Given that I am in Holland, Michigan this weekend and TULIP Time starts next Saturday (where my hometown with a population of 33,000 gets 133,000 visitors) I got the serendipity chuckle filling it in.
I do take slight issue with the clue. People being people, I think a more accurate clue would be, “considered the first documented major speculative bubble. I have every confidence that China, India, Egypt, and the Mayans were all advanced enough to do something stupid like have a speculative bubble crash.
Right with Rex on IOWA. I saw that it was four letters and said to myself, “no Big Ten school uses a four letter abbreviation.” Had the A in place when the D’Oh moment occurred. Other big slowdown was ESSAY test before ESSAY EXAM. It’s fine, but tests and quizzes can be a single question type (true/false, short answer, multiple choice, essay) but an EXAM implies multiple question modes, except for doctoral Oral EXAM. Again, the clue is fine, but not a phrase I would use.
All in all, a fine Saturday.
Fun intriguing puzzle. Tulip Mania is obscure? We were taught about that in junior high. I bet Rex knows all the original titles of Herman’s Hermits songs. Decent fill today. I tried the Atkins Diet back around 2000. I didn’t realize it was a fad. I lost 5 pounds running back and forth to the bathroom. I also got rolfed once. Guy nearly pulled my guts out. He said he was massaging my liver. Ay, there’s the rub!
Tulip Mania is not obscure if you have any interest in finance and investments and don't want to end up buying at the peak of the bubble.
Fun, easy puzzle. Don't live in the NE, never heard of a LEAF PEEPER.
Rex - Two things:
Tulip mania is obscure in the same way that Wm. Shakespeare is a little-known playwright.
The fact that only one woman has had a puzzle published in the last two weeks is such an out-of-context statistic that it means nothing
Had tulip panic, then thought about neurotoxins and knew it must be a poisonous animal, asps perhaps. Which gave me the final A. IA led to mania. Fun solve.
I had a tough time getting started but that's why I love Saturdays.
Utne Reader, Lake Mead, and good old Darla got me going and it was a fun ride. Tulip Mania and Leaf Peeper alone were worth the price of admission. Don't forget the Raisinets!
Does anyone out there have an explanation as to why there are so few puzzle submissions by women? I don't accept the premises that Shortz is biased against women, or that most women's' submissions are of lower quality than those of men.
Second Saturday in a row that I solved without even one google. That’s all it takes to make me happy. Have a beautiful weekend!
Is Ass the NYT's pathetic attempt at edgy or whatever else it's meant to accomplish? So many great clues for Brand, but we get ram a hot iron into an animal's hip just so we could read, heh heh, Ass? It's not clever or witty or funny, and it's wrong.
Probably on the easy side for a Saturday, for which jet-lagged me is thankful. The unknowns were supplied by the crosses, which is as it should be.
For those of you unfamiliar with a LEAFPEEPER, I assure you that the word and the phenomenon are both very real. In fact, they are a major economic boost in these parts. We turned our summer resort with cabins into a B&B in the fall, and our four-bedroom house was full every night for three or four weeks. Tour buses full of LP's roll by. The roads are full of traffic. It used to be that folks would get in the car and go for a drive to look at the leaves, figuring they would just find somewhere to stay for the night, and discover that there in fact was no place, and folks were sleeping in jails (worst case scenario). Maybe the internet has changed all that. I wouldn't let any of this discourage you if you've never seen the northeast leaves in the fall, as they are annually awesome, but do plan ahead.
Fun Saturday. Thanks JD.
Ohhh.... thanks, @pabloinnh, a LEAF PEEPER is a human! I thought it was some kind of insect (which is an oh, duh, for me, since the clue had "infestation" in italics.
Over 30 minutes today with more than half of that finding my error--I somehow talked myself into thinking "Start running off" had something to do with skinny dipping and having ones clothes off, hence GOTOPLESS. I finally decided that DALLA was the main word I had no clue on and ran the alphabet on the third letter to get it. Streak intact!
Or if you read the book Tulip Fever or saw the movie based on it.
I guess t was easy since I finished it in far less than my usual Saturday time. But it was slow going. NEILGAIMAN was easy and I caught THE LUXURY OF TIME pretty early. But for me the last to fall was that Washington / Oregon area. I liked seeing GREENTAX in there though I really wanted carbon TAX, which wouldn't fit. I had oJS as my mixers because bowler/football??? So ultimately, I failed. Sigh!
I sure was surprised to see, in my Facebook feed this am, an ad for sausagedog.com. They sell (drumroll, please) specially made Dachshund stuff, such as ramps. By the way, it’s gotten to the point that facebook has more sponsored posts than friend posts these days. I keep thinking of just quitting it.
I had to work my way around the grid so I wouldn’t call it easy, perhaps medium. The only givens for me were JOHNCLEESE and TULIPMANIA. THELUXURYOFTIME came quickly once I had the X. I have always thought a horse ReAREDUP, not RARED. I found the NW the toughest area. I plonked down PEEL ASAP, but then I went with Perk for 1a which slowed me down.
Favorite answer: LEAFPEEPER. The tour buses that come through southern Vermont are legion. It does seem like they are invading the little markets and restaurants when normally you often can drive without seeing another car, a welcome change from the NYC area. The upside of the invasion is that they give a welcome boost to the economy.
Mrs. 'americans and I did this one together, in 15 minutes better than our usual time for a Saturday -- which was a blessing, as we didn't have THE LUXURY OF TIME. We liked it, especially LEAF PEEPER, as I spent my early years in Maine and most of my cousins live in NH. TULIP MANIA was a gimme, as I've worked with economists the last 40 years. Had "noble" before INERT, however.
My one nit is with GREEN TAX (nicely crossed with EARTH RISE), a term that I've only ever seen used by generalist journalists (as they GO T PRESS) and other non-specialists. I would be very surprised to see it used anywhere in the Code of Federal Regulations, or even in a state statute. There are carbon taxes, waste-collection charges, emission taxes, effluent charges, tradable permits -- collectively known as environmental, not GREEN, TAXes.
Be forewarned: I predicts that OFL will hate tomorrow's (Sunday's) puzzle as much as he likes today's. The theme was easy enough to get, but left us scratching our heads.
Finally going to be a LEAF PEEPER in Vermont this fall on our way to QuĂ©bĂ©cois country. Should be more fun than slogging through today’s puzzle. Are foliage viewers a modern iteration of TULIPMANIA?
Hey All !
Originally from NE (Scranton, PA area) and haven't heard of LEAF PEEPERS. Got a funny image of somebody slightly opening their blinds with a finger, and leering out at the fallen leaves. Ooh, nice leaves!
Had troubles in the S, with having nOnE for LOVE making a mess of things. Didn't know TULIP MANIA even though after reading y'all, apparently I should. So I had TUNIc MANIA, thinking in the 1600's, people discovered how comfortable tunics were, and the craze of everyone wearing one started. Then they started LEAF PEEPing.
So ended up with OnEaSLEEP, and ONREcOaT, since that sounded plausible as a misbehavior discipline. Hey you, I see that! I'm putting you ON RECOAT!"
One other DNF spot, SEeR for SEAR. Now I SEE that a SEER SEEs things. I GIT it.
Got a chuckle out of BRAND clue. I think ranchers and such should brand themselves as well. Why not? Proof that you own said BRANDed animals. Share the pain.
Is UTNE reader still a thing? I know the letters are nice to fit into a puz. As a novice, never published constructor, (I know, Boo-Hoo to me! :-))I do appreciate weird letter combo words that will make filling easier. That's why your EELs, ASSes, OREOs, EMOs, ENOs, RRNs, et alii are often in puzs. Because they fit and make completing your fill possible. Viva la -ese!
GO TO PRESS and GO TOPLESS are one letter apart. That was just in that other puz a week or so ago, no? The ole brain takes a bit to remember things like that. Which might be why stuff like TULIP MANIA isn't floating around the brain matter, it just dissipates into the ether. Or maybe too much TV/movie trivia crammed in there. ALL IS TRUE.
DART LOVE
RooMonster
DarrinV
I had one letter wrong in this crunchy and enjoyable puzzle. Spent too much time cursing the puzzle when I should have been cursing myself. I thought NiMEs was where Hercules conducted one of his labors, and I couldn't let it go. Then I "corrected" to NEMEs, leaving me with sIRING for "Live". Now you are creating live beings when you're sIRING, but you're not live yourself. Grrrr. Had to come here to see NIMEA/AIRING. Oh well.
Add to that the fact that I had RAG before RIB (20D) and I had gONS-I for the stunted growth. Huh??? Finally straightened that one out, but OY.
Loved the clues for BRAND and EARTHRISE, both of which baffled me for a while. GO TO PRESS was great too, but didn't fool me. An excellent puzzle that I was almost, but not quite, equal to.
@webwinger, shared the same reaction to Raisinets. Thanks for the trivia. I may read up more on Hedy and Tulipmania.
Tore through this after a brief moment of panic. Love me some Saturdays.
rex, no one cares about your silly obsession with the dearth of wimmen constructors. This is just a stupid puzzle, not a vocation.
Easier than Friday’s puzzle by a full minute. Lots of gimmes in my wheelhouse, including JOHN CLEESE, NEIL GAIMAN, and LEAF PEEPER. No complaints!
Mostly easy. Very smooth.
none before LOVE and out before GIT.
Solid with a bit of zip, liked it.
OMG, @pabloinnh (9:49) and @Hartley (10:38) -- I thought that the autumn LEAF PEEPER was an insect!!!!! Sort of like the aphid.
You must never read about investments or fads.
Everything that skyrockets is compared to "tulip mania"
Beanie Babies were pretty much the modern equivalent...adults paid hundreds and even thousands of dollars for what had been (and are again) $5.00 kids toys.
Crytpocurrencies are the current concern...will they be another "tulip mania"?
I agree with the ANONYMOUS comment above: TULIP MANIA is definitely not obscure. In fact, it is very obvious and the only possible answer to the clue.
I had a complete failure in the NE. After almost three hours of reworking that one section I gave up and went to xwordinfo to find out what was wrong. Why did I think Mark was the first gospel? Probably because it's the oldest. This left me using either MARCO or MARIO in that slot. MATEO never even crossed my mind. ATKINS was out of the question as I don't associate that name with a thing from this century. I kept putting in BRAND and then taking it out. BMW kept being alternated with AMG. Basically it was about three hours of frustration.
I've got some time on my hands as I'm waiting for tests to come back so as to be discharged from the hospital. Thank you @Hartly70, @Nancy, @JC66 and @Malsdemare for your good wishes for my knee replacement. So far this one has been much better than the first.
Rex: Let it go with the women constructors. You're beyond making yourself look ridiculous. I fought for women's rights back in the 1960s and still am. But enough already, Rex. LET IT GO!
Found this one pleasantly crunchy... just about average Saturday time. Thought LEAF PEEPER was some kind of plague of insects until coming here. Not from the Northeast, obv.
Not sure about RARED. I've only heard that form in "RARIN' to go," and I'm not sure that makes it a conjugatable verb.
I could find no reference that condoned RARED(UP) as a legitimate variant of REARED UP. Bad editing for sure.
Easy for a Saturday. My only hangup was in the NW where ESSAY did not come easily though URSA was my first entry. LEAFPEEPER should have come faster, too -- My wife is from Vermont and that phrase was new sometime in the early 1980's and oft used to describe the autumn visitors.
Nice to see ASS in its original meaning, the beast Jesus rode to Jerusalem on. In America, its other meaning came early, early enough so we came up with "donkey" as a substitute. (In England, the term for backsides is arse, so ASS does not raise so many eyebrows).
I know why OFL had never heard of TULIPMANIA. He is too young to have read the original Whole Earth Catalog cover to cover I'm pretty sure "Popular Madness And the Delusions of Crowds" was recommended there. What I do know is that the WEC was the basis for a lot of my reading back when it came out.
OK, let's get the bad part out of the way first: I've never watched an episode of Little Rascals, and wasn't too sure about their names -- so when I had some crosses and saw that GO TOPlESS would fit in 60A, I wondered how the clue worked (I thought of several possibilities involving running -- maybe like Atalanta wanting to go faster -- but none of them really made any sense), but never questioned DAlLA. No excuse for that at all -- once I saw the correct name I realized I'd heard it before.
Aside from that my biggest problems were: 1) thinking the name in Spanish was MATtEO, so putting in Marco; OVERShooting before I OVERSLE(E)Pt; and for some reason writing ini PEaL, then wondering what an aSSAY EXAM might be. I fixed all those, but not DAlLA.
I grew up in Wisconsin, parts of which were also famous for their autumn leaves. We did get tourists, but the name LEAF PEEPERS is strictly New England, or at least was back then.
I agree, we heard about TULIP MANIA in junior high, if not before; @Z, I think China, India, and Egypt at least have pretty well-documented histories of their own. I'm not sure they had the kind of commodity markets that would make speculation pay on a big scale (I could be wrong, though!)
I had LEAFBLOWER for Autumn invader. Much more pervasive, you'll have to admit.
Is the clue for rared up really correct? Rising on hind legs is associated with reared.
@Birchbark (8:10) -- You do realize that Henry VIII wasn't the first Tudor king, that most of "Henry VIII" is full of deceit and skullduggery, and that James I was a Stuart, not a Tudor, right?
I spent my childhood summers in rural Kentucky; RARED up is a definite thing in them thar parts. First time I rode in a flat saddle, my horse rared up, dumped me, and then took off across a golf course. I would have been in trouble but I was just nine and the groundskeeper was a nice guy.
Like @DigitalDan, I had LEAF blowER at first. When LEAF PEEPER finally filled in, it reminded me of watching a mother hen vigorously scratching up leaves so her brood of chicks could dive into the freshly uncovered area, looking for bugs and worms, and boisterously PEEPing all the while.
Oh, it's people. Do they just look at one LEAF at a time? When the leaves would begin to turn colors back when I was a kid, it brought on a sense of sadness and loss. It meant my summer was over and I had to go back to school. Buzz kill.
Now that’s comedy, pure comedy!
Does anyone remember laughter?
“Rared up,” not “reared up,” is the proper term.
Barry Frain
East Biggs, CA
Isn't THELUXURYOFTIME the name of the famous episode of Twilight Zone where Burgess Meredith is the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust so now he has time to pursue his passion of reading undisturbed---until he breaks his glasses?
Larrupin good SatPuz, Mr. Deeney. Thanx.
Any puz with yer GIT & RARED & {Pain in the ass} trifecta has pretty much got M&A roped in, from the gitgo. Also, it weren't overly hard on my nanoseconds.
New stuff learnt: LEAFPEEPER [I started out suspectin the dreaded LEAFPOPPER]. NEILGAIMAN.
fave fillins included: THELUXURYOFTIME. TULIPMANIA. OVERSLEEP. LOSEIT. RARED.
Shakespearean-level desperation: ALLISTRUE [wanted ALL ASTREW, altho not convincinly].
staff weeject pick of 6 meager choices: GIT.
Clues were less sadistic today than yesterday. Best of the litter: {Pain in the ass?} = BRAND. Wanted DRUGAD, but it wouldn't quite wedge in there. Almost instinctively reached for the mute button.
Congratz on gettin a decent @RP review, Mr. Deeney. Third time was a charm. Mighta been the U-count, tho @RP don't ever admit that.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
If you think Monty Python is more PC than Brooks, I sentence you to watch The Meaning of Life and Search for the Holy Grail over and over until you concede. I also fart in your general direction.
Agree!
Did not find puzzle as easy as some. Struggled with GMAN, DAsh before DART and several others where I filled in plausible but wrong answers making some of the long unknowns not inferable. Took 150% of normal Saturday time. Don't think I had five answers in by the time Rex finished. Very well constructed and clued puzzle.
I think BONSAI is misclued. It refers specifically to a tree grown in a pot. It’s not a general term for stunted growth.
But overall, a nice, clean puzzle. My first answer was TULIP, leaving the rest blank, unsure whether it would be BULBS or MANIA.
I grew up in NJ and had never heard of leaf peeper. So the NW corner did not go smoothly.
Anyone heard from @Two Ponies or @George Barany?
"Time Enough at Last."
Are Saturdays getting easier or am I getting better at this. Second time ever finishing a Saturday puzzle.
@Chris 1:47 -- that episode was called "Time Enough At Last" (same idea). And how dare you spoil the ending of a 60-year old TV show? ;-)
I've never heard LEAF PEEPER. As a lad my family would make regular foliage-sighting runs up to New England in the fall, but we didn't "peep" at the leaves, we gawked and gaped and oohed and aahed at them. (I see from @old timer that the current phrase dates back only to the 1980's.) Of course those excursions were never complete without the purchase of a box of maple sugar candy.
I can never remember if R_LF and B_NSAI are spelled with A or O, so in my puzzle that box is trapped in a permanent time loop switching from one to the other and back again.
I had other writeover fodder, the most interesting of which was OJS for DJS ("Who is Oitka?" I wondered.) Overall the solve was enjoyable.
And now please join me in singing a chorus of "Leaf Peeper" (to the tune of Gary Wright's "Dream Weaver"):
Ooh ooh ooh Leeeeaf Peeeper
I believe in the autumn hues so bri-iiight
"RARE UP" is a folksy way of saying "REAR UP" but is not generally accepted in written language.
@jberg - “well documented in the western economics canon” seems a bit wordy. Empires mean wealth means trade means some smart person learns market manipulation means speculative bubbles. I don’t know if there are any hieroglyphs found in tombs describing the great cedar market crash during Khufu’s reign, I’m just confident in Man’s capacity for stupidity.
@Chris - Close. Time Enough at Last. I must confess I thought you were correct so I’m a little disappointed.
@XQQQME - I’ve always considered Every Sperm is Sacred and Life of Brian to be so terribly PC... Oh, wait, making fun of entire religions is PC, right?
Banzai!! My sakura BONSAI bloomed!
puzzlehoarder 11:35 AM
Glad to hear you're doing well, hope recovery is as easy as it can be. My wife (and I as support) will be dealing with that in a couple months.
XQQQME 2:10 PM
I wasn't actually comparing them as to PC-ness. I just like Mel's brain eruptions better.
No gold star today as I had FEDS (Swamps) crossing GREEDTAX (It's what polluters pay).
Given the current political climate (on climate) I feel fully justified in those answers and much prefer it to the correct grid. I suppose I was in a cynical mood this morning...
The tenders of our community garden must have been smitten by TULIP MANIA this spring. Yesterday, I walked past all the tulips in their flaming glory of bright oranges, reds, and yellows. The whole garden was ringed in tulips. Phone cameras just do not capture the glory of this spring’s flowers in NYC. The blossoms in Central Park from West 86th to West 90th looked like a Monet painting. Along the streets the white petals from the trees had covered the cars like freshly fallen snow.
@Puzzlehoarder, good to read that your knee replacement went well. I wish you a speedy recovery.
I RARED up a hunk of steak before working the puzzle. It wasn't horse.
Got a lot of half answers- OFTIME TAX EARTH TULIP EXAM at various times. TNT SEAR INERT BONSAI yielded the long downs in the NE. TUGON ISEE NEED TULIP eventually got me the long crosses in the SE. The rest was slow and minimal until I gave up and went to bed.
In the morning it all filled in quickly and easily. I was never a morning person. Is this a side effect of aging? My mind now works best in the morning? WTF.
Any Saturday I finish I know I'll come here to find easy comments. But I just pretend I am improving my skills.
Like ASAP and ASPS. Too bad they were not in symmetrical positions like AIRING and ACTING. Lots of fun words and clues that folks have previously mentioned. A tough and good puzzle.
I like the inverted Cartesian feel of "I teach, therefore no one reads."
@Birchbark 8:10, you completely cracked me up with this.
@Joe Dipinto (7:01) -- Thanks for the kind words. And more importantly, thanks for taking "Dream Weaver" to the next level.
I think the main reason there are so few women crossword puzzle constructors is that, generally speaking, women have better things to do with their time. I mean doing a x-word puzzle is waste of time enough, but at least it only takes a few minutes. God know how long it takes to actually create one. Although reading this blog, it would seem that most of these puzzles are created by some kind of computer programs which would I.D. the constructors even more as uber nerds living in their parents' basements; basically just another off shoot of the trolls and assorted misfits that the cyber age has spawned - a human sub-species I feel almost certain is overwhelmingly male. A woman with some time on her hands is more likely to share a recipe, or send a note to a lonely or forgotten friend or relative - or, maybe, even, God forbid, actually leave the house and go out and do something!
I'm not certain as to how much Henry VIII is read or assigned in Literature classes, two different things. But, traditionally it is perhaps one of the least produced plays in the canon. Got to fill those seats, folks.
When I rode a bicycle around Holland in 2002, I could have made a case that TULIP MANIA was still going on.
@Larry (8:44) -- I think the lesser plays are sometimes like the Catskill eagle in Moby Dick (end of Chapter 96) -- down low in a mountain gorge, but still way above the soaring birds of the plain.
@Birch, You nailed that one, and referencing MD, to boot! One of my many favorite images in the novel. It took more than a few readings to embrace. I was thinking of it the other day. As to HVIII, I'm a nobody and have never read it or seen it produced. I may have seen it on that comprehensive BBC extravaganza years ago, but nothing pops out. Maybe, an opera needs a beloved aria and Shakespeare needs a moving soliloquy.
You teach
therefore
they read not
As a lifelong New Hampshirite, loved the clue for LEAF PEEPER. This was a fun one!
ON what was apparently an easy day for many people, I was Naticked at AdKINS DIET/MAdEO. I had another error at GO TOPlESS/DAlLA, but that was due being a lackwit.
RAISINETS ISOUT
Gates® has RIBs to SEAR, thou DOST NEED to try it.
Weight? You’ll LOSEIT dear, on the ATKINSDIET.
--- ROLF DITKA
You guys with your easy! I was on this for over two hours, thankyew. A native of PENNsylvania, I have NEVER heard of LEAFPEEPER. NEVER. When I at last filled in the north central--the last to go--and saw this term, I thought I'd screwed up somewhere. Knew people who did that, but never called them 19-across.
Some of the cluing here seems way off, like "Subjective evaluation" for ESSAYEXAM, which is SUBJECT to subjective evaluation, but is not that itself. You might say that a student's ANSWER in such a test is a s. e.--but it is NOT the test per se. BAD clue.
Wanted PEdi for the spa thing. "Presses down" for TAMPS? I think of TAMP as more of a hit than a press. And "Beg for" is certainly not NEED. One might beg for something he needs, but those two things are not synonymous. Stinky bad clue. Had TUG at before ON, and that one cost me the most time.
Had Olsen before DITKA, that's how far off I was. The whole thing was a struggle, and to see it called easy (for OFC, I'm sorta used to it, but all you others??) really makes me doubt myself. Anyway, for me, triumph points are again off the scale. Fill is pretty clean, the AP "ISOUT" excepted, and with a fine DOD in KEIRA Knightley, this one shoots a birdie.
This one got me in the SW-two proper names I didn't know, and I just didn't get ACTING. Wanted something like "fleeting" which obviously didn't fit. Such was my Saturday. But I didn't come here to lament, but rather to say thank you to @Bard who always comes through with an apt Shakespeare quote-labored through a year of "the great plays" back when they were carefully selected (doctored?) to remove any questionable language. Didn't always appreciate what was being taught, but really enjoy the selected quotes-maybe it helps that Immo longer have to take a test?!
I got this one done in about 3.5 Rexes which is pretty snappy for me. Biggest holdup was a DAsh for a DART. And that very NE corner took a few runs through the alphabet.
I live just far enough away from the Twin Cities to be very familiar with LEAFPEEPERs. Before the beautiful maple tree in my yard began to die the LEAFPEEPERs would park in my driveway and get out to take pictures of it.
Hard to pay any attention to ACTING when yeah baby KEIRA Knightly is on screen.
If not DYNAMITE, pretty good.
All but the NW. LEAFPEEPER???????????????????? Noooooooooooooo
Diana, LIW
Spacecraft - I'm with you - Not easy. A struggle... as is almost every Saturday. If this is easy I'd hate to see what difficult is.
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