THEME: "Words of Introduction" — clues all follow patter [[ALL-CAPS WORD] words?], where the clue itself is a familiar phrase, but the answer is a phrase that comes from treating the ALL-CAPS clue word as an acronym:
Theme answers:
KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND (21A: KIND words?)
HEART AND SOUL (35A: HAS words?)
BELIEF IN GOD (60A: BIG words?)
RUN OUT OF TOWN (82A: ROOT words?)
SET A FINE EXAMPLE (99A: SAFE words?)
BEYOND ALL DOUBT (15D: BAD words?)
LIKE A SORE THUMB (44D: LAST words?)
Word of the Day: REUEL (98A: Moses' father-in-law) —
[from the "Jethro" wikipedia page] In the Hebrew Bible, Jethro (/ˈdʒɛθroʊ/; Hebrew: יִתְרוֹ, StandardYitroTiberianYiṯerô; "His Excellence/Posterity"; ArabicشعيبShuʿayb) or Reuel was Moses' father-in-law, a Kenite shepherd and priest of Midian. In Exodus, Moses' father-in-law is initially referred to as "Reuel" (Exodus 2:18) but then as "Jethro" (Exodus 3:1). He was the father of Hobab in the Book of Numbers 10:29. He is also revered as the spiritual founder and chief prophet in his own right in the Druze religion and is considered an ancestor of all Druze. (wikipedia)
• • •
Well this is slightly better than most recent Sunday offerings but still nowhere near as enjoyable as the NYT's marquee puzzle oughta be. Astonishingly, this one gets a DQ right out of the gate because of the first themer: KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND. Aside from the fact that it's just obnoxious—obscure and very difficult to parse—it simply doesn't fit the pattern for the rest of the themers. "Koh-i-Noor" is not three separate "words." That is a hyphenated phrase; you can't treat "i' like a separate word. I didn't find the theme thrilling to begin with, but this Koh-i-Noor nonsense doesn't even conform to the theme's own rules. I had KOHINOO- and I was like "Oh, the themers go backwards or there's a code or something, weird." But then I got DIAMOND and the answer looked like [randomletters]DIAMOND but then I remembered some earlier crossword where this diamond came up (never seen it mentioned out of crosswords), and since all the crosses checked out, I just left it. But when I came back to figure out the K, I, N, D of it all, I was like "nahhhhh. nope." SET A FINE EXAMPLE feels mildly forced, BELIEF IN GOD probably couldn't stand on its own in non-theme circumstances, but only that diamond answer is truly egregious. A deal-breaker. Lethal. No idea what people were thinking there.
REUEL? I mean ... the alternate name of Jethro, who isn't exactly well known to begin with. Survey says: oof. Ultra-rare for good reason.
And FETOR? I'm laughing just typing it out, what??? My god. This is its first appearance Since I Started Blogging (i.e. 2006; actually, first since 2004). That ORDO FETOR INTOTO is fetid. It's like the Latin motto of Oz, or Kansas, translating roughly to "Order of the Little Dog Who Rolled in some Animal Carcass or Something." I believe we call credit cards "no-fee," not NON-FEE (lah-di-dah, is that the formal version? Is that how Charles Entertainment Cheese describes his credit card?). And [Tic-tac-toe loser] is always such an unfortunate clue. Up there with the worst of all clues, leaving the solver with "OK, a random string of X's and O's, just not OOO or XXX, This Should Be Fun!" And then there's IVANKA ... man, this one really ticks a sizable number of the unpleasantness boxes. Where is SEE-THRU used? I'm imagining some kind of peep-show Drive-Thru... oh, man, turns out it's used on all kinds of commercial nonsense, ugh. So OK, that one's technically valid. Dumb-looking, but valid. Most of my trouble today came around bad stuff I've already whined about, but I also struggled with one perfectly fine part of the grid: PASS KEY over PLATTE. Just couldn't figure out either of those, and didn't really trust NESTS, so I really had to come at that patch from both sides before I could get it to fall. Otherwise, mostly clean grid, not terrifically difficult, an OK way to pass the time, but not what an NYT Sunday puzzle should be.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Hey, what's the KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND's favorite Simon & Garfunkel song? That's right, it's "Cecilia." Yeah, I don't get it either. Wait, maybe I'm misremembering the riddle. Oh well. Have a nice day.
Man, I HATED this puzzle. The sloggiest of all slogs yet. The themers made no sense, there was no cool payoff, and there was a complete street map of Natick, MA.
This does not live up to the BEQ standard. I usually love his puzzles, and was excited to see his byline before I started. This was a swing and miss. Oh well, nobody bats 1.000.
"Hey, I just came to town!" "Well I'm afraid we're gonna have to run you out of town!"
I really thought that was going to be RUN OUT OF TIME. Uyy. When I want to bring someone up to date I CLUE them in. Why no CRAB/TROPIC clue cross-ref, especially as they cross in the grid? And why is LOOKER "informal"?
It took me ages to think of the Simon & Garfunkel song, even with __MAR_C_ in place. "La Maraca"? "Alma Rice"? "Tamarack"? I should be taken out and shot for that lapse.
I remember Jo Ann Pflug from "Candid Camera" but I have no idea about this fabric mogul JO ANN. I do like the almost-musical pairing of COMTE and ORLY, "Le Comte ORY" being the name of a Rossini opera.
I feel like BEQ had an off-day with this one. Or maybe WS owes him money.
Whenever I see an answer that refers to anything or anyone right of center, I can't help but come here to see if you are dutifully offended by its existence. And every time, without fail, you are.
Perhaps some day, when we've finally rid the world off all those on the wrong side of our subjective, Manichaean, and yet infallible perception of the wrong side of history, then we can at last bask in a better world where double-plus-unhood stings of letters like IVANKA, MEESE, & DEEPSTATE have been purged from the human memory, and more importantly from trivial word puzzles, forever.
Until then, I will continue to champion you as you fight the good fight by carping about words you hate appearing in puzzles you clearly also hate solving in service of a blog you probably hate as well.
Got the gimmick early on, with KIND (definitely aware of the pretty famous diamond’s name, not bothered like @Rex by the hyphenated acronym issue), and was then able to fill in the first letters of all the remaining themers, but talk about a joyless solve! Would not have bothered to finish if I weren’t protecting my longest ever (since 12/31/18—woohoo!)* streak.
*Fair googling (i.e., no x-word clue based sites) allowed; OK to look for errors when no happy tune on completing the on-line grid, but no use of check or reveal functions.
My last to go in was 75D AMATEUR, and I immediately said Oh, Yeah. I wanted Aaron for Moses' father in-law, but that was his brother. Good work, BEQ. I didn't get the theme again, but it wasn't necessary for the solve.
There was a theme? Could have fooled me. I may be a CRAB, but this was one of the WORST Sunday puzzles I have encountered. It should have been RUN OUT OF TOWN. I feel CHEATED out of my Sunday puzzle.
Weird puzzle. The theme was somehow joyless- each themer solved without an Aha. They didn’t feel “clever.” I’m not sure how else to describe it, so I’ll leave it at that. I did not enjoy this one. Fewer, please.
So if KOH-I-NOOR can be treated as three words for acronymifying, what gold-plated Florida UPSTART club location makes MAL? Huh.
Ooof! As I wrote yesterday, I predicted OFL would not like this one.
Neither did we. The theme answers made no sense to us in relation to the title "Words of Introduction", unless one is willing to stretch the meaning to "Words that can be made with the letters in the acronym that starts off each theme clue."
They could be anything, apparently, even words in Persian (KOH-I-NOOR means "mountain of light"). Besides 21A being out of keeping with the rest, I think the puzzle could have been salvaged by either using real phrases of introduction, such as From Los AAngeles, It's Ronnie! (FLAIR), or creating appropriate acronyms from the capitalized introductory words, such as BE A DEVIL for BAD.
I like @Joaquin's metaphor of "a complete street map of Natick". For example, REUEL was INFERable from the crosses, but pretty obscure.
Also, the puzzle has INTO right next to INTO TO. Just sayin'.
But there was at least one bright spot: TOUCAN. The bird's name always brings to mind this little children's poem:
Whatever one TOUCAN can do is sooner done by TOUCANs two, and three TOUCANs (it's very true) can do much more than two can do.
The koh-i-noor diamond was mentioned in a Rex Stout Nero Wolfe novel (or novella). Otherwise, I would never have heard of it, but it did give me an early clue to the theme.
What’s This? Like a Sore Thumb? Is that a phrase? I mean I don’t understand this puzzle at all. made me think of the ad “like a good neighbor”— seriously NON AWED. I filled it all in but wish I’d vacuumed the lanai or something instead. BWOT: Boring Waste of Time.
I looked up KOH I NOOR DIAMOND post solve and discovered the hyphens. Huh? Putting your most obscure, doesn’t quite fit the pattern theme answer first is some chutzpah. Reading the wiki page the story rings bells, but KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND still means nothing to me.
Years ago, before computers changed the design world, young architects such as myself used Koh-I-Noor® technical ink pens to draw and draft. Artist’s still use them. At some point I found out that the Koh-I-Noor company chose its name from the one-time famous diamond (isn’t it in the British monarch’s crown now?). Anyway it is answer that I knew.
The one word definition of this puzzle: OBNOXIOUS! And puhleeze--- do not soil my puzzle with obscene names like Ivanka and Kirshner. Will Shortz needs to lay off the booze.
Seems that Sharp and Chen agree concerning the quality of this puzzle (although expressed very differently). I think I agree with both.
There seems to be a reason for the slide in quality Sunday puzzles. Only 10 in the queue? That's asking for trouble. What's the matter? Has the ocean of great Sunday themes dried up? Are that many fewer constructors interested in working with larger Sunday size grids? Even after the Times increased payment for the puzzles? At least the bi-weekly acrostics seemed to have retained their quality.
Do many believe that it's not worth constructing a puzzle when there's so much nit-picking about hyphens and diacritical marks? (That's not an arrow aimed at those with powerful feeling about such issues.)
Whatever the reason, let's hope things turn around. At least Chen's name occasionally appears as a constructor or co-constructor on Sunday. WHy not Sharp. While there's non love lost between him and Shortz, I doubt Shortz has blacklisted him as a constructor. We need all the quality we can find.
Agree with Rex here. Otherwise, to me Kohinoor will always be a harmonica brand, even though like @James F, I used the pens extensively back in the day. I have just one brain block on 84 A. Can someone explain how TWO is a brace?
I am in COMPLETE AGREEMENT with Rex on every single point he made in this review. Heads should roll for allowing such a crap answer as KOH I NOOR DIAMOND anywhere near a crossword. All of the other crap fill made me nuts too. I know that the NYT is short on Sunday grids, but this one wasn't good enough to line a bird cage with.
I seem to be more familiar with that diamond than everyone else. I don't know why I knew it. Maybe because of that lovely woman who is (was?) the Queen of Jordon. Thanks for the translation @'mericans. That is an appropriate name considering how large it is. The puzzle? Well, seeing BEQ's name and having ass in the last two puzzles I thought we might be in for some edginess. But no, today was a bowl of oatmeal with no brown sugar. Ooh, we did have a clue for eel I've never seen.
Thank you @Z, that phrase had slipped my mind. Forgot to mention earlier that the Koh-I-Noor diamond is housed in the Tower of London. I would not call it obscure. Many a tourist in London gawps at it. Fans of Agatha Christie might remember its presence in her mystery “The Secret of Chimneys.”
Just a very ordinary Sunday puzzle. Reminded me of Dorothy Parker's one-liner: It "ran the whole gamut of emotions—from A to B.” Understood the theme pretty quickly, and just thought, really? That's about it. Just a bunch of SAD words. Said and done.
Kohinoor just destroys the whole puzzle. And if I am Max Baer Jr., I am screaming about Reuel and not Jethro or at least Yitro. This puzzle tests my belief in god with all my heart and soul and beyond all doubt that somewhere someone can construct a quality puzzle but this guy has not set a fine example and it pains me like a sore thumb to say that he should be run out of town. Kohinoor doesn't fit the pattern
Average in difficulty, I THINK. It wasn't until I filled in the very last letter that I realized all of the theme clues were known phrases with the word WORDS in them. Hah, clever, but what else does one EXPECT from BEQ?
I certainly had my MISFEEDs - RUN OUT OF Time (harking back to yesterday perhaps?), sUm up before CUE IN. I thought 55A's Path finder was a Pathfinder and I put in Honda even that vehicle is a Nissan. And 1D was Athens for a while.
I can't remember ever seeing REUEL as Moses' FIL. And for some reason, I couldn't come up with a Scottish export with _OOLS in place (Do the Scots just exile all fOOLS? Do they make really great wrenches and screwdrivers?)
Tell me what I'm missing in this theme. All I'm seeing are random acronyms. That's it. Do the acronyms have anything to do with the phrase they create? I hope that's the part I'm missing...because otherwise it's just random acronyms that aren't even real acronyms. SCUBA, LASER, FUBAR, SNAFU...those are actual bona fide acronyms. They're words and they stand for something. What does KIND have to do with the diamond?
Again, unless I'm missing something (which would not be unusual and is why I'm asking), if there is no rhyme or reason to the acronym's relation to the words in the acronym, then I guess I disagree with Rex about Koh-I-Noor...evidently there are no rules here. Just the first letters of some kind of rando phrase (or name of a diamond) that just happen to spell a common word.
Bright side, I grew up on the PLATTE river (which just recently flooded my home town a month or so ago). When I was a kid, you couldn't accurately draw the state of Nebraska without that signature line running through the middle of the state. I guarantee most people who grew up there know the shape of that river as it bisects the state.
Ok. Sure. This theme doesn’t have the wow factor like a lot of BEQ’s do, but sheesh – why the hate? I was delighted when BEYOND ALL DOUBT fell, and I saw the deal. I just settled in to figure out each themer with its two in-the-language phrases: the clue and then the answer. A lazy, overcast Sunday morning after Prom. Perfect non-challenging way to gear up for frantic Act IV Macbeth studying.
What other kinds of “words” can you have? Swear, cuss, code, buzz, cross…
FETOR didn’t make me mad. It interested me to discover this cool noun form of fetid that I can add into the rotation. Better than fetidery, right? (Besides, it shares the grid with IVANKA.) My husband and I went on a fetor search yesterday and finally found the little baggie with a rotting garlic bulb in it. Those baggies are not airtight, man.
I had to notice HATER so close to LIKE A SORE THUMB. Sometimes I feel like that, like I’m surrounded by haters, which makes my cloying rah-rah comments even more obtrusive. But I’m sticking to my guns. If Rex et al can look at a grid through a what-are-all-the-problems-with-this lens, then I get to look at it though my what-was-cool-about-this lens. Fair’s fair. Hah. One man’s foul is another man’s fair. Just ask the witches.
Ranking first in stuff can be WORST, too. I think WV may currently rank first in obesity. We’re probably up there with opioid addiction, too. But, yeah, we’re bringing up the rear with our schools. I don’t have a solution. All I know is that every year I have students in my classes who read at the second-grade level. I know it’s illegal to separate out the kids who need extra help and have them in one contained classroom, but I tell ya, having a couple of low-reading-hence-embarrassed, angry kids in a room with higher performers, and things can go downhill fast, especially with an idiot novice teacher like me at the helm. I’m not fishing for anyone to assure me I’m great. I’m serious – I mishandle situations all the time that stem really from a guy who is just embarrassed that he’s not as good a reader as his peers.
Anyways… Gotta go surprise the clean-up crew this morning. The prom was not my rodeo, but I feel bad that they have to go back today and tear down. Color me team player.
BEQ – you’re way too super badass to let the haters get to you. Ignore their choice words and carry on. You’re still my hero.
I knew someone would ask about brace. It does appear from time to time usually referring to a brace of pistols or a brace of pheasants both hung on either side of your belt. It's not used much these days but sometimes in poetry or old song lyrics.
An awful puzzle -- completely arbitrary and muddled. And I stopped -- 2/3 of the way through. Should have stopped much sooner.
I stayed around long enough to straighten out the SW, where I had put INTERNET before ETHERNET. This gave me LIKE A (something-or-other) T-MB at 44D. Well, a TOMB is exactly where you should find LAST WORDS -- right? This one at least made some sense. Except it didn't. It was ETHERNET/LIKE A SORE THUMB -- which makes no sense at all. Just as arbitrary and nonsensical as that DIAMOND for KIND WORDS or RUN OUT OF ROOM for ROOT WORDS. Arbitrary, arbitrary, arbitrary. No rhyme or reason for any of it -- except for first letters. And that's not good enough, Mr. Quigley. So I'm not going to finish; I've wasted too much time already.
This is odd but the puzzle ,NYT 0428 , in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette is not this puzzle. Title is Paper Work constructed by Samuel Donaldson and Doug Peterson. Very strange. Anywhere else?
INTOTO and INUTERO - doesn't this count as having the same word in the puzzle more than once? But that rule is gone, apparently. Figuring out the gimmick helped with the theme answers, but I was disappointed that eg BAD words had nothing to do with bad words. "Ranking 50th amont all states, eg". I thought Alaska. Being 50th could mean WORST I suppose, but it could mean a lot of things. Pretty lazy. Re REUEL - sometimes I ask myself, "would a really intelligent person (I'm open to the possibility that lots of people are more intelligent than I am) know this, or would I suspect she or he used a word-finder of some sort?" I knew Jethro, but when I got the correct answer (through crosses), I thought "a really intelligent person who did their education in English would probably have clued it with regards to Tolkien. other than a specialist in Exodus" ps 13 images today to prove I'm not a robot. I suspect that if an algorithm can verify my correct answers, a robot could too.
A much better clue for AMATEUR would be "does it for love"; the secondary, pejorative meaning is used more often it seems
I've never been offered a "non fee" credit care either, just no fee.
Two attractive people objectified in one puzzle, congrats!
Well, I liked having three Spanish words, fetor, and joule, otherwise I only bothered to finish because I'm OBSESSED with completing every day's puzzle.
For those who care, the Koh-i-noor diamond is currently in the Queen Mother's Crown (laid on her casket at her funeral). Google taught me that. I had never heard of the diamond before. (Even after I got the happy pencil from crosses, I had no idea how to parse that string of letter).
A "brace" is a term for a set of two. I've mostly heard it used by British soccer (football) announcers who talk about people having scored two goals in a game as having a "brace" (and being "on a hat trick" which, to an American ear, sounds like they already have 3).
Wasn't planning on piling on, but I will say that, while I liked some of the fill, each themer was met with a "Good, now that one's over." as opposed to any positive reaction.
Would have been so much more coherent and enjoyable if the acronyms had spelled out words that related to the answer phrases.
But what really made me lose it were 33A and 43D. Ivanka is not the "Wife of Jared Kushner," Ivanka Trump is; Ivanka is the "Wife of Jared." And Philip is not "Queen Elizabeth's husband," Prince Philip is; Philip is "Elizabeth's husband."
Will Shortz continues to be a disappointment. Just doesn't seem to care about quality.
Both my father and brother's middle name is REUEL, so not a speed bump here. Did not mind KOHINOOR, because as noted it's a fairly well established manufacturer of writing implements. And we all use those, right?
For an entertaining but definitely NSFW story of the role of Kohinoor diamond in the history of British India, try Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser (yes, this is the antihero Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, but the history is pretty accurate).
The NYTXW Is my favorite diversion, good, bad or ugly. Well actually, never bad or ugly. Just words, some associated with things we’d rather not think about over breakfast perhaps, but just words. I don’t find myself riled up, raging or even critical. Some are hard, some are easy, some I learn something new. Then I come here and discover a whole range of outrageousness I seemed to have missed. I question myself. Am I so vacuous that the lovely Koh-I-noor Diamond didn’t inspire my crossword contempt?
I’m really curious. Does the general level of picky dissatisfaction that emanates from the large majority of commenters carry over from crosswords to other aspects of your lives? I hope not. If so, time to find a new hobby. Sometimes this blog fails the breakfast test too. Count me with Loren. If I had her linguistic gifts I would join her coven.
On Friday, they put blueberry-habanero AIOLI on my hamburger. Also bleu cheese and applewood-smoked bacon. It tasted pretty good, but who are these TOUCANS?
It was supposed to snow but didn't yesterday. Today I'll get the crowbar, go out to the shack in the woods that collapsed a couple years ago, and just keep working it apart and stacking things -- HEART AND SOUL, BELIEF IN GOD, SET A FINE EXAMPLE.
A BRACE is not really “two” as much as it is “pair.” So a BRACE of goals or a BRACE of rabbits, “two of a kind.” I think it is more commonly used in Britain, but I’ve never thought of it as specifically “britspeak.” Perhaps that’s because I know lots of Tolkien nerds and Samwise cooks a BRACE of rabbits much to Gollum’s chagrin at one point.
@LMS - My reactions are closer to Rex than to you, making your takes the more valuable by far. We already have Rex’s take, so cogent counter observations are great. What I find tiresome are the litany of lazy Rex-haters. You manage to disagree while being entertaining. As for reading discrepancies in the classroom, ASCD has support if your district is unwilling or unable to provide it. There are discrete skills and strategies that others have found that work. No strategy always works, so it’s good to accumulate as many skills and strategies as one can. Your special ed teachers should have strategies to share as well, but I know from experience that that is not always the case.
I just don’t understand … why? Unlike someone who remarked earlier, when I got BEYOND ALL DOUBT — the first themer I solved — my instant reaction was, that’s it??? That’s the gimmick??? To me, it would have been SO much more interesting if the grouped words in the answers not only started with the capitalized letters, but expressed the MEANING of those capitalized words. BAD words? BUMMER ALL DAY. LAST words? LETS ALL STOP TALKING. ROOT words? RAVE OVER OUR TEAM. KIND words? KIDDING IS NOT DECENT. And so on.
@Joe P, you probably hadn't heard of Joann (name of store) because its shoppers are almost all women, except for the occasional unfortunate, sad looking guy standing near the front whose wife dragged him in. At least it wasn't an obscure baseball player from 35 years ago.
@Rex, another demeaning, unasked-for, unappreciated affirmative action count on the woman thing yesterday. Wiki white savoir trope in films. Get a cue. I mean clue.
Hmm. Yeah, that one should have been left in BEQ’s desk drawer. So much sub-par fill and only a couple of the snappy clues I usually associate with him. We’ll just line the birdcage with this one and never speak of it again.
There were oodles here that I did not know or know how to spell or half know. One of these days I'll remember EDDA or get around to reading it. But now give me any 3 letters and I could only guess at the fourth. Same with that sauce AIOLIS. And TWO for brace. FETOR? KOHINOOR? Even took me a while to suss that CAME was not a town.
But heads should roll? Ruined the puzzle? Stole my Sunday? Not even close. Actually got KOHINOOR but would never have guessed it was right. Two other places my guesses were wrong. My first themer was BEYONDALLDOUBT. After that the themers helped the solve quite a bit. One letter with certainty plus much more. If IVANKA offends you (and I do find her to be a poised lying deceptive self-serving joke of a public servant) good. But do you really want to be like those deplorable people who could not stand to see the name of any Obama family member without going into a rant?
But many thanks today for all those gems that have appeared before I even started this: The KOHINOOR translation and it's current location. I was at the tower 50+ years ago but the jewels were being cleaned. That I had come across the diamond before via Agatha and Archie. The TOUCAN poem from Paul Hess. Dorothy Parker quotes always welcome. The kohner harmonica reference which just autocorrected to kosher. Ho ho hohner. And much more to come.
The puzzle solved faster for me than the average Sunday but it was a dnf.
I TOUCAN say that @mericans in Paris little poem was the highlight of my morning experience today. BEYOND ALL DOUBT New Year’s Eve under the Eiffel Tower with two million fellow revelers remains a memory for our lifetimes. Thanks for that👍🏼
@Lorelei Lee: Geez, Rex put the comment as a PS, hardly made it a feature rant. But hey, I get your point, it is so obnoxious when people shed light on marginalized groups.
Well, I filled in everything, but noticed neither a) that the theme clues were phrases in themselves, nor b) that 21A worked if you parsed it as KOH I NOOR. So I came here believing the first theme answer was some kind of meta that was too clever for me.
I know of seen PSAs using KIND as an acronym; turns out there are many, many of which are "Kids In Need of...Defense, Dentistry, Dreams, Direction, Desks." That helped me get the theme, even if it wasn't actually right.
I visited the Tower once, in 1991, and read in my guidebook that you the jewels you saw were not the real crown jewels, as those were 50 feet underground, but rather glass replicas. No contemporary authorities agree with this, however, so I THINK it's probably not correct.
I liked ANGER next to things one is mad about, WOOLS crossing WARP (as in weaving), CRAB crossing TROPIC, and lots of individual entries such as FETOR, ORDO, TUCAN, and JOULE. I liked the foreign-language partials, as well, but probably many did not.
I've driven past many JO-ANN stores, but still rejected it at first because I wanted an E at the end.
So, I liked it more than some, though the theme made it too easy.
@ everyone Sorry for the pair of suspenders. Apparently the dictionary I was looking at was giving an example of usage instead of a definition. I misconstrued.
Coming up for air from the bottom of the “haters heap”. Still have to say I really didn’t like the puzzle, but my hat is off to @Loren for her (as always) very smart and very enjoyable positive comments. It’s very important (and increasingly difficult) to keep in mind that many of the joys of exchanging thoughts on anything come from bumping up against opposing views. Rather than being contemptuous, we should welcome and engage them. And I also have to say that I sometimes find myself fantasizing about being a student in one of @LMS’s classes…
It is certainly relevant, I believe, that the NYT is facing such a drought of Sunday submissions. Not hard to understand why WS felt he needed to run a BEQ entry that was sub-par. Hey @Rex and all you puzzle gals—Uncle Will wants you to get to work on those big grids!
I *cannot believe* I didn't get Naticked on the already-mentioned KOH-I-NOOR or ORDO/FETOR (wasn't *at all* familiar with any of those), so credit for the gettable crosses at least.
I *did*, however, screw up and focus too much on the "airport" part of the clue for REUEh/ORhY and Natick myself there. Arggg.
Congrats to @Mike E (8:38) and @davidm (10:25) for coming up with what BEQ failed to give us: GREAT words. Germane, Relevant, Excellent, Accurate, True.
Hey All ! I'll be in the small bunch who enjoyed this puz. Using acronyms for phrases is fun. Would it have been better if the phrases corresponded to the acronym? Sure, but this was still a good puz.
NW was last to fall, and took a good amount of time. I believe it was the KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND holding things up. I have heard of said DIAMOND, so once I finally figured out some of the PPP there, I was able to get that themer and the rest of that corner. I do agree that that themer doesn't follow 100℅ the gist of the theme, but again, it's still a nice puz.
For those who think it's sub-par-BEQ, maybe Will asked him to whip up a SunPuz in a hurry. Does anyone know?
Had quite a few writeovers, ipaS-ALES, THat-THIS, ANGst-ANGER, unum-ORDO, INvitRO-INUTERO, vetO-enDs-UNDO, oOX-XOX, skiP-WARP, SOireES-SORTIES, NOfees-NONFEE. Whew! Some of my original answers were rather funny.
Thanks to those who gave the TWO explanation. That 10D clue was a trap! Had pAt in there, seeing as how the ole brain read clue as Super Bowl winner, not player. Amazing how the mind plays tricks on you like that.
ABCB. har KOHINOOR. har HEATON. har FETOR. har AME. staff weeject pick. ORDO. har REUEL. har BURP. fave. ODON. har COMTE. har AKINS. BEQ hears a "who?" ITHINK. har
Thanx for the laughs, BEQ. Probably not yer finest moment ever, but it had some 'tude.
Here’s a given only to those familiar to Times puzzles. The clue for EDDA is obviously Scandinavian and EDDA has appeared sooo many times. Who has read it or even know it’s subject? Poor theme cause acronyms not related to answers except for CAPS. But as someone who is trying to construct a crossword to satisfy Shortz, don’t knock it until you try it. It’s difficult.
OK ODON. I finally got it. OD on. All caps really hides it. What is really bad it's been used before, slightly different CLUING perhaps and I got it that time. Grrrr.
It's not just a DIAMOND, but a brand of instrument pens (& pencils). Why, I don't know. But getting to KOH... leads one to the gem stone, since PEN won't fit. If you know about the pens, you know about the DIAMOND.
The puzzle and this blog = two delightful hours on a bright, sunny, COLD Sunday morning so I'm content. I got Koh-I-Noor diamond just fine, but I have no clue (CUE) what part of my garbage can brain was its home. Yeah, the puzzle didn't exactly sizzle, but it didn't frustrate me with clue after clue of athletes and rap music, which I don't know. And before anyone jumps on me, I know that just because it’s not in my wheelhouse doesn't mean it’s not legitimate. But I do like a mix of old and new so I get to exercise my recall and learn new stuff. Although I think the only new stuff I know is DRE and ALOU.
Oh, the puzzle. I liked learning FETOR, will forget REUEL in about five seconds. I was so busy trying to find Descartes in my brain (thinking Cogito Ergo Sum and yeah, I know the clue was about ego, not ergo, and besides Descartes was not going to fit) that it took forever for FREUD to rise from my subconscious.
My beloved therapy dog Rose retired herself yesterday. Fifteen minutes of adoring attention from five little kids was her limit. She made her lack of patience known and we left with apologies to all. She celebrated her retirement with a lamb dinner. She'd been doing therapy for over six years.
Oh, @barbiebarbie, did you have to put that rendering of MAL in my head? The MALs here may never forgive you.
Since I have given up expecting any level of quality from Sunday puzzles, this one felt okay to me,possibly because I have a bias in BEQs favor. At least I had some moments where thought was required,which is not always the case. @lynx, I get your sarcasm, but in my mind,when I see the word "marginalized",it implies someone actively involved. I'm the case of Rex' continuous complaint re. the lack of female constructors, who is doing the marginalizing? Does someone come into work everyday and throw out all the puzzles signed by feminine names? I kind of doubt it.And I would consider it a rant given the frequency of these inclusions,regardless of where they appear in the revue.
FETOR? Really? I kept wanting it to be FETID or FEVER or FUROR, but all the crosses were right. Ugh.
I HATED the themers. The phrases had nothing to do with their clues. It would have been much tighter (and probably impossible to construct, to be fair) if the phrase from ROOT words had something to do with ROOTs. Etc.
@Malsdemare (12:25) -- Your anecdote about Rose is charming and delightful and completely understandable. All I could think was that she lasted in her job 6+ years longer than I would have!
Put me in @Loren's camp. Rex supplies more whining and outrage than any puzzle deserves; no need to pile on. If I can solve the puzzle, but not too easily, I'm happy. If I can't, I don't blame the puzzle, I try to learn from it.
I found this one to be of medium difficulty, with a couple of tricky spots, but ultimately doable (once I stopped spelling Howard Roark's name with a u). The theme, such as it is, helped with the solve. A better than average Sunday as far as I'm concerned.
@What? (11:58) -- The EDDAS are sources of Norse mythology dating from the 11th c. The trusty old Bullfinch's Mythology version of the Northern myths talks about and is drawn from the EDDAS.
You can go to Bullfinch (= EDDAS, but watered down) to learn where our crossword friend ODIN came from (spoiler alert): the frost giant's cow was licking away at a salt block, and out popped ODIN and his brothers. They slew the frost giant and created the world as we know it from the remains.
DNF, not seeing ANGER and FETOR, which I have almost always seen as foetor if I have seen it at all. The puzzle was a total slog, and I suspect remained for some time in WS's desk drawer before being accepted, in desperation, faute de mieux. Will could never actually reject a BEQ puzzle, but I doubt he wanted to publish it.
The reason most of us agree with OFL today is that this really was a bad puzzle, and the theme, which could have been good, wasn't. It stank, with a noticeable FETOR indeed.
@LMS, you give new meaning to the phrase, "you are too kind." There were indeed some things to love about this puzzle (I loved being reminded of that ABCB verse scheme) but not many.
Out of towners: your local paper runs NYT puzzles 4 weeks late. Mine does, at least
I'm with @Speedweeder, LMS, and the others who think this was OK. However..... if our friend BEQ was trying to disguise his actually decent theme, he couldn't have picked a more deceptive beginning than the KOHINOORDIAMOND, which I had right and have heard of, but never in pieces.
I put OFL in the camp of most college football coaches, who seem to be always angry at something, or as some folks around here say, enjoying his misery. I am thankful for his effort in doing what he does and providing a forum for us to share our reactions. Was just out of the country for a week with no access and realized how much I missed what Mad Magazine used to call our "usual gang of idiots".
Thanks for the fun, BEQ, and I'm looking forward to your next one..
Hey, hey, here's a list of alternate, things-that-mean-the-acronym phrases. Mind you, I'm not one who deserves to correct either BEQ or Will, but what the hey. And also these wouldn't be symmetrical. KIND - Kept In Nice Delight HAS - His/Hers Awesome Stuff BIG - Bountiful I Guess ROOT - Rah On Ones Team SAFE - Secure All For Everyone BAD - Brutal And Dire LAST - Least Among Slow Times
JRR mined the Eddas for Dwarves, wizards, rings and named swords.
Tolkien had an Icelandic nanny from the West Fjords who lived with the author and his family in the early 1930s in Oxford, England. It was through the nanny that the author became further acquainted with Icelandic folk tales and mythology and was able to practice Icelandic.
Heavily influenced by Norse mythology, Tolkien had been a reader of the Icelandic sagas since childhood. In the Völsunga saga – the text that also inspired Richard Wagner’s opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen – an all-powerful ring and a broken sword that is reforged are both main features of the story, similar key elements in Tolkien’s novels.
Agree with those who deem it not one of BEQ's best.
Re: KOH-I-NOOR. I had DIAMOND and just white space in front of it, and pondered, "How can three words fit in there? Too bad KOHINOOR (I thought it was one word) won't work." Went on to other areas. Then, from the back of my mind, "Wait...is it hyphenated?" I see the objection (not really three words), but I thought it was the most interesting answer. Otherwise, I tried to make it fun by guessing phrases with as few crosses as possible.
Dunce Cap Corner: Had to do an alphabet run on ?OOLS x ?ARP
I cannot believe that anybody was not familiar with the Koh-i_noor diamond. Isn't this the most famous gemstone ever? Isn't this considered to be the epitome of the finest possible quality? What sort of dark cave are some people living in?
@AnotherAnon/3:51 Isn't this the most famous gemstone ever?
The Hope Diamond, more likely.
Both were extracted from India. Queen Victoria: "No one feels more strongly than I do about India or how much I opposed our taking those countries and I think no more will be taken, for it is very wrong and no advantage to us. You know also how I dislike wearing the Koh-i-Noor". She sounds almost anti-Imperialist!
I am simply going to say that any time I can finish a BEQ I celebrate and when I finish in whatever my “normal” time is, I feel like a pro! He and I are not on the same wavelength. So, finishing today with 3 minutes less than normal Sunday made me very happy. Consequently, I figured all the regulars here would say “easy.” I wish all the “words of introduction” would have had some vintage-clever BEQ revealer but one can’t have everything, right?
Got KOHINOORDIAMOND early off of KOHIN. Not as obscure as @Rex seems to think. Agree though that there wasn't much joy in the themers or their clues. Sundays are getting to be more effort than they're worth.
The thing that unifies the theme is that all the clues have the form of an in-the-language phrase "_____ words." And the answer is an in-the -language phrase for which the clue's word could be an acronym.
Funny ROOT was the clue criticized for bearing no relation to its answer. It's not precise but close to it. Run out of town = uproot or root out.
Is the diamond more famous for its size and history than its quality? Articles do seem to throw some shade on the way it was cut and recut. No doubt it's a quality diamond, but it's size and history gets the attention.
@Lynx, I understand that there are some people who believe that women are marginalized and when being offered rescue by a man, should welcome it.
There are also women out there who don't believe that every situation of disproportion is entirely due sexism just because a noticeable number are. To fully see the nuances, you almost have to be a woman.
This isn't to say that there aren't men with strong, intelligent arguments to the contrary. But your argument isn't one of them.
This one took me longer than I expected. Never even noticed the circled "jump" squares, which in any case were shaded on the iPad. I found that confusing, because the shading was the same as one gets for the across connected to the down word in which the cursor is sitting (and vice-versa).
Now that I see all the proper living, dead and fictional people names -- ADAIR, ANDY, DOC, ICHIRO, ISAAC, KENT, KANE, KIM, LEE, LEIF, MR T, NATE, OLAF, PAYNE, RODINO, SECADA -- not to mention the corporate or institutional names (CNET, GILLETTE, MOMA, NEC, SEALY and TOBLERONE), I feel better about taking 4 minutes longer than my usual to finish.
Others have set out their criticisms, so I won't repeat ENTER there, except to agree that AMER should not have been let through. And I have never seen GAiA (as we had just the other day) spelled as GAEA before. Not Monday fare.
Small nit: I would not, personally normally start off a request with "CAN YOU?" It would more normally be, "Could YOU ... ?" or "would YOU please?" or "May I?".
Nice to see ANDORRA and TOBLERONE in the puzzle. Have never visited the former, but eaten plenty of the latter. I am not a fan of milk chocolate, but I make an exception for TOBLERONE. (Does that count as a product placement?)
Whenever someone comes to this blog to complain about Rex complaining, I dutifully check to see if their grievance checks ito. It seldom does. Yours certainly doesn't.
Ivanka and Company are not right-of-center. They are far-right. The most centrist of their bunch wants a new Gilded Age, and the most extreme literally promote ethnonationalism.
Those are not right-of-center positions. They are both fundamentally undundemocratic---the former plutocratic, the latter ethnocratic.
Had all but four squares in the NW done very quickly. Spend another ten minutes on that corner before throwing up my hands and submitting what I "knew" was an incorrect grid. Only to have it be correct WHAT THE FLAMING FUDGE IS KOH I NOOR DIAMOND?????????????????????????????????? OR IS IT KOHINIOORD IAMO N D?
Quite apart from that, what an awful theme.
And does anyone have any clue whatsoever what Rex's riddle is supposed to mean?
Another Nash: The kangaroo can jump incredible. He has to jump, because he's edible. I could not eat a kangaroo, But many fine Australians do. Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs Prefer him in tasty kangaroo meringues.
Licking my chops when I saw the byline...and then? These are just acronyms?? BAD words: BIG ASININE DEAL. (I'd have used a different word there in the middle, but BFD doesn't spell anything.)
Nor does the fill save it. We have our RT-T-TL (Random tic-tac-toe line), and REUEL, which would be 100% better clued as one of Tolkien's names, given the imminent release of the film of his life; really looking forward to that. FETOR was also new but I could INFER it from "fetid."
Solving wasn't too much of a problem; this big S&G fan caught a fat gimme with IAMAROCK (though that's one of my least favorite songs of theirs} to get started. One little glitch: ANGst before ANGER. I think ANGST fits the clue better. Once again I refuse to honor a Trump with the DOD sash; instead it will go to "Lt. Dish," who "woke up" the Painless Pole in the M*A*S*H movie, JOANN Pflug. Bogey.
This was one of the worst themes I have ever seen. I mean, acronyms? That's it? They don't relate to each other or have a separate clue that links all of them or anything? What lazy construction! Maybe if there were theme clues that included the acronyms but didn't hit you over the head with them (e.g. "Know the big man is up there?" for "BELIEF IN GOD"), then sure. But this... this was a nothing puzzle.
There was NOTMUCH to IVANKA's SEETHRU, BEYONDALLDOUBT, she EXPECTS we're AWED. Now I OBSESS over her TUMMY cross TATTOO. FORBID! I CAME to a BELIEFINGOD.
KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND tip used to be (maybe still is) a brand of technical pen used on engineering drawings when we, get this, used to draw them by hand! So a gimme there as it appeared square by square. skiP before WARP as the only write-over.
@spacey is right (or left), or correct. No Trump gets the yeah baby, but Laugh-In's Judy CARNE does. Body paint on her TUMMY . . .
I've met BEQ, nice fellow, but I've grown to EXPECT more.
A "BRACE of pistols" for dueling. A BRACE (yes, singular) is also "a pair of straps that pass over the shoulders and fasten to the waistband of a pair of trousers or a skirt at the front and back to hold it up; suspenders." Though I have always heard them called BRACEs (plural).
“Fair googling” - please forgive me for finding that offensive. Not up to BEQ standards (OFL is correct all around) and it sounds like we filled it in in the same manner moving clockwise.
That said, I enjoyed it for the most part and found it much better than the earlier POS puzzles for this week which he me close to stopping all shortz edited puzzles
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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137 comments:
Man, I HATED this puzzle. The sloggiest of all slogs yet. The themers made no sense, there was no cool payoff, and there was a complete street map of Natick, MA.
This does not live up to the BEQ standard. I usually love his puzzles, and was excited to see his byline before I started. This was a swing and miss. Oh well, nobody bats 1.000.
"Hey, I just came to town!"
"Well I'm afraid we're gonna have to run you out of town!"
I really thought that was going to be RUN OUT OF TIME. Uyy. When I want to bring someone up to date I CLUE them in. Why no CRAB/TROPIC clue cross-ref, especially as they cross in the grid? And why is LOOKER "informal"?
It took me ages to think of the Simon & Garfunkel song, even with __MAR_C_ in place. "La Maraca"? "Alma Rice"? "Tamarack"? I should be taken out and shot for that lapse.
I remember Jo Ann Pflug from "Candid Camera" but I have no idea about this fabric mogul JO ANN. I do like the almost-musical pairing of COMTE and ORLY, "Le Comte ORY" being the name of a Rossini opera.
I feel like BEQ had an off-day with this one. Or maybe WS owes him money.
Have another drink, dude. What diamond HAVE you heard about? Neil?
Medium. Not one of BEQ’s bests.
Dear Rex,
Whenever I see an answer that refers to anything or anyone right of center, I can't help but come here to see if you are dutifully offended by its existence. And every time, without fail, you are.
Perhaps some day, when we've finally rid the world off all those on the wrong side of our subjective, Manichaean, and yet infallible perception of the wrong side of history, then we can at last bask in a better world where double-plus-unhood stings of letters like IVANKA, MEESE, & DEEPSTATE have been purged from the human memory, and more importantly from trivial word puzzles, forever.
Until then, I will continue to champion you as you fight the good fight by carping about words you hate appearing in puzzles you clearly also hate solving in service of a blog you probably hate as well.
I have no kind words for the KOH I NOOR DIAMOND.
Got the gimmick early on, with KIND (definitely aware of the pretty famous diamond’s name, not bothered like @Rex by the hyphenated acronym issue), and was then able to fill in the first letters of all the remaining themers, but talk about a joyless solve! Would not have bothered to finish if I weren’t protecting my longest ever (since 12/31/18—woohoo!)* streak.
*Fair googling (i.e., no x-word clue based sites) allowed; OK to look for errors when no happy tune on completing the on-line grid, but no use of check or reveal functions.
My last to go in was 75D AMATEUR, and I immediately said Oh, Yeah. I wanted Aaron for Moses' father in-law, but that was his brother. Good work, BEQ. I didn't get the theme again, but it wasn't necessary for the solve.
There was a theme? Could have fooled me. I may be a CRAB, but this was one of the WORST Sunday puzzles I have encountered.
It should have been RUN OUT OF TOWN. I feel CHEATED out of my Sunday puzzle.
Oh yuck. So few answers that made me smile. Not enjoyable.
Weird puzzle. The theme was somehow joyless- each themer solved without an Aha. They didn’t feel “clever.” I’m not sure how else to describe it, so I’ll leave it at that. I did not enjoy this one. Fewer, please.
So if KOH-I-NOOR can be treated as three words for acronymifying, what gold-plated Florida UPSTART club location makes MAL? Huh.
Ooof! As I wrote yesterday, I predicted OFL would not like this one.
Neither did we. The theme answers made no sense to us in relation to the title "Words of Introduction", unless one is willing to stretch the meaning to "Words that can be made with the letters in the acronym that starts off each theme clue."
They could be anything, apparently, even words in Persian (KOH-I-NOOR means "mountain of light"). Besides 21A being out of keeping with the rest, I think the puzzle could have been salvaged by either using real phrases of introduction, such as From Los AAngeles, It's Ronnie! (FLAIR), or creating appropriate acronyms from the capitalized introductory words, such as BE A DEVIL for BAD.
I like @Joaquin's metaphor of "a complete street map of Natick". For example, REUEL was INFERable from the crosses, but pretty obscure.
Also, the puzzle has INTO right next to INTO TO. Just sayin'.
But there was at least one bright spot: TOUCAN. The bird's name always brings to mind this little children's poem:
Whatever one TOUCAN can do
is sooner done by TOUCANs two,
and three TOUCANs (it's very true)
can do much more than two can do.
-- Paul Hess, Animal Worlds
The koh-i-noor diamond was mentioned in a Rex Stout Nero Wolfe novel (or novella). Otherwise, I would never have heard of it, but it did give me an early clue to the theme.
Hated this puzzle
Even after i plugged in KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND
I believed i made an error
I solve in pencil
This was a three eraser puzzle
Ugly and joyless. BEQ needs a sabbatical.
What’s This? Like a Sore Thumb? Is that a phrase? I mean I don’t understand this puzzle at all. made me think of the ad “like a good neighbor”— seriously NON AWED. I filled it all in but wish I’d vacuumed the lanai or something instead. BWOT: Boring Waste of Time.
What @ColoradoCog said.
I looked up KOH I NOOR DIAMOND post solve and discovered the hyphens. Huh? Putting your most obscure, doesn’t quite fit the pattern theme answer first is some chutzpah. Reading the wiki page the story rings bells, but KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND still means nothing to me.
Years ago, before computers changed the design world, young architects such as myself used Koh-I-Noor® technical ink pens to draw and draft. Artist’s still use them. At some point I found out that the Koh-I-Noor company chose its name from the one-time famous diamond (isn’t it in the British monarch’s crown now?). Anyway it is answer that I knew.
@QuasiMojo - The phrase I know is “sticks out LIKE A SORE THUMB.”. Just another “huh?” moment in this lesser BEQ puzzle.
The one word definition of this puzzle: OBNOXIOUS! And puhleeze--- do not soil my puzzle with obscene names like Ivanka and Kirshner.
Will Shortz needs to lay off the booze.
I really like BEQ puzzles. Usually. This I guess was the exception that proves the rule.
Super quick, but I stared at the first themer after it filled in from the crosses and then let it be. No real joy other than that of a win.
doesn't the clue "wife of Jared Kushner" (first + last name) imply the answer should be IVANKATRUMP?
And not even a mention of good old RON "monkey this up" DeSantis.
Seems that Sharp and Chen agree concerning the quality of this puzzle (although expressed very differently). I think I agree with both.
There seems to be a reason for the slide in quality Sunday puzzles. Only 10 in the queue? That's asking for trouble. What's the matter? Has the ocean of great Sunday themes dried up? Are that many fewer constructors interested in working with larger Sunday size grids? Even after the Times increased payment for the puzzles? At least the bi-weekly acrostics seemed to have retained their quality.
Do many believe that it's not worth constructing a puzzle when there's so much nit-picking about hyphens and diacritical marks? (That's not an arrow aimed at those with powerful feeling about such issues.)
Whatever the reason, let's hope things turn around. At least Chen's name occasionally appears as a constructor or co-constructor on Sunday. WHy not Sharp. While there's non love lost between him and Shortz, I doubt Shortz has blacklisted him as a constructor. We need all the quality we can find.
Agree with Rex here.
Otherwise, to me Kohinoor will always be a harmonica brand, even though like @James F, I used the pens extensively back in the day.
I have just one brain block on 84 A. Can someone explain how TWO is a brace?
@pmdm - I think Sharp blacklisted Shortz. I don’t know, but I suspect he’s not the only one.
I am in COMPLETE AGREEMENT with Rex on every single point he made in this review. Heads should roll for allowing such a crap answer as KOH I NOOR DIAMOND anywhere near a crossword. All of the other crap fill made me nuts too. I know that the NYT is short on Sunday grids, but this one wasn't good enough to line a bird cage with.
Peep show drive-thru. I am laughing so hard right now!
Love you BEQ, but no. <3
I seem to be more familiar with that diamond than everyone else. I don't know why I knew it. Maybe because of that lovely woman who is (was?) the Queen of Jordon. Thanks for the translation @'mericans. That is an appropriate name considering how large it is.
The puzzle? Well, seeing BEQ's name and having ass in the last two puzzles I thought we might be in for some edginess. But no, today was a bowl of oatmeal with no brown sugar.
Ooh, we did have a clue for eel I've never seen.
Thank you @Z, that phrase had slipped my mind. Forgot to mention earlier that the Koh-I-Noor diamond is housed in the Tower of London. I would not call it obscure. Many a tourist in London gawps at it. Fans of Agatha Christie might remember its presence in her mystery “The Secret of Chimneys.”
Just a very ordinary Sunday puzzle. Reminded me of Dorothy Parker's one-liner: It "ran the whole gamut of emotions—from A to B.” Understood the theme pretty quickly, and just thought, really? That's about it. Just a bunch of SAD words. Said and done.
Help with 84A - how is TWO “A brace” ?
Ugh
Leeee
Kohinoor just destroys the whole puzzle. And if I am Max Baer Jr., I am screaming about Reuel and not Jethro or at least Yitro. This puzzle tests my belief in god with all my heart and soul and beyond all doubt that somewhere someone can construct a quality puzzle but this guy has not set a fine example and it pains me like a sore thumb to say that he should be run out of town. Kohinoor doesn't fit the pattern
Brings a smile to my face that, for some reason, most of us know what Polly wants. A cracker doesn’t seem too much to ask. I hope Polly gets it.
Average in difficulty, I THINK. It wasn't until I filled in the very last letter that I realized all of the theme clues were known phrases with the word WORDS in them. Hah, clever, but what else does one EXPECT from BEQ?
I certainly had my MISFEEDs - RUN OUT OF Time (harking back to yesterday perhaps?), sUm up before CUE IN. I thought 55A's Path finder was a Pathfinder and I put in Honda even that vehicle is a Nissan. And 1D was Athens for a while.
I can't remember ever seeing REUEL as Moses' FIL. And for some reason, I couldn't come up with a Scottish export with _OOLS in place (Do the Scots just exile all fOOLS? Do they make really great wrenches and screwdrivers?)
Nice job, BEQ.
Tell me what I'm missing in this theme. All I'm seeing are random acronyms. That's it. Do the acronyms have anything to do with the phrase they create? I hope that's the part I'm missing...because otherwise it's just random acronyms that aren't even real acronyms. SCUBA, LASER, FUBAR, SNAFU...those are actual bona fide acronyms. They're words and they stand for something. What does KIND have to do with the diamond?
Again, unless I'm missing something (which would not be unusual and is why I'm asking), if there is no rhyme or reason to the acronym's relation to the words in the acronym, then I guess I disagree with Rex about Koh-I-Noor...evidently there are no rules here. Just the first letters of some kind of rando phrase (or name of a diamond) that just happen to spell a common word.
Bright side, I grew up on the PLATTE river (which just recently flooded my home town a month or so ago). When I was a kid, you couldn't accurately draw the state of Nebraska without that signature line running through the middle of the state. I guarantee most people who grew up there know the shape of that river as it bisects the state.
How is INTO right next to INTOTO okay?
Ok. Sure. This theme doesn’t have the wow factor like a lot of BEQ’s do, but sheesh – why the hate? I was delighted when BEYOND ALL DOUBT fell, and I saw the deal. I just settled in to figure out each themer with its two in-the-language phrases: the clue and then the answer. A lazy, overcast Sunday morning after Prom. Perfect non-challenging way to gear up for frantic Act IV Macbeth studying.
What other kinds of “words” can you have? Swear, cuss, code, buzz, cross…
FETOR didn’t make me mad. It interested me to discover this cool noun form of fetid that I can add into the rotation. Better than fetidery, right? (Besides, it shares the grid with IVANKA.) My husband and I went on a fetor search yesterday and finally found the little baggie with a rotting garlic bulb in it. Those baggies are not airtight, man.
I had to notice HATER so close to LIKE A SORE THUMB. Sometimes I feel like that, like I’m surrounded by haters, which makes my cloying rah-rah comments even more obtrusive. But I’m sticking to my guns. If Rex et al can look at a grid through a what-are-all-the-problems-with-this lens, then I get to look at it though my what-was-cool-about-this lens. Fair’s fair. Hah. One man’s foul is another man’s fair. Just ask the witches.
Ranking first in stuff can be WORST, too. I think WV may currently rank first in obesity. We’re probably up there with opioid addiction, too. But, yeah, we’re bringing up the rear with our schools. I don’t have a solution. All I know is that every year I have students in my classes who read at the second-grade level. I know it’s illegal to separate out the kids who need extra help and have them in one contained classroom, but I tell ya, having a couple of low-reading-hence-embarrassed, angry kids in a room with higher performers, and things can go downhill fast, especially with an idiot novice teacher like me at the helm. I’m not fishing for anyone to assure me I’m great. I’m serious – I mishandle situations all the time that stem really from a guy who is just embarrassed that he’s not as good a reader as his peers.
Anyways… Gotta go surprise the clean-up crew this morning. The prom was not my rodeo, but I feel bad that they have to go back today and tear down. Color me team player.
BEQ – you’re way too super badass to let the haters get to you. Ignore their choice words and carry on. You’re still my hero.
BRACE is apparently Britspeak for a pair of suspenders (or maybe like devices for moving appliances?) ? Now what is ODON?
Fun for awhile....but diamond was inconsistent..
I drive by Joann’s everyday..but still missed it...
I knew someone would ask about brace. It does appear from time to time usually referring to a brace of pistols or a brace of pheasants both hung on either side of your belt. It's not used much these days but sometimes in poetry or old song lyrics.
An awful puzzle -- completely arbitrary and muddled. And I stopped -- 2/3 of the way through. Should have stopped much sooner.
I stayed around long enough to straighten out the SW, where I had put INTERNET before ETHERNET. This gave me LIKE A (something-or-other) T-MB at 44D. Well, a TOMB is exactly where you should find LAST WORDS -- right? This one at least made some sense. Except it didn't. It was ETHERNET/LIKE A SORE THUMB -- which makes no sense at all. Just as arbitrary and nonsensical as that DIAMOND for KIND WORDS or RUN OUT OF ROOM for ROOT WORDS. Arbitrary, arbitrary, arbitrary. No rhyme or reason for any of it -- except for first letters. And that's not good enough, Mr. Quigley. So I'm not going to finish; I've wasted too much time already.
This is odd but the puzzle ,NYT 0428 , in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette is not this puzzle. Title is Paper Work constructed by Samuel Donaldson and Doug Peterson. Very strange. Anywhere else?
INTOTO and INUTERO - doesn't this count as having the same word in the puzzle more than once? But that rule is gone, apparently.
Figuring out the gimmick helped with the theme answers, but I was disappointed that eg BAD words had nothing to do with bad words.
"Ranking 50th amont all states, eg". I thought Alaska. Being 50th could mean WORST I suppose, but it could mean a lot of things. Pretty lazy.
Re REUEL - sometimes I ask myself, "would a really intelligent person (I'm open to the possibility that lots of people are more intelligent than I am) know this, or would I suspect she or he used a word-finder of some sort?" I knew Jethro, but when I got the correct answer (through crosses), I thought "a really intelligent person who did their education in English would probably have clued it with regards to Tolkien. other than a specialist in Exodus"
ps 13 images today to prove I'm not a robot. I suspect that if an algorithm can verify my correct answers, a robot could too.
Koh I Noor? First of a long slog for no payoff.
A much better clue for AMATEUR would be "does it for love"; the secondary, pejorative meaning is used more often it seems
I've never been offered a "non fee" credit care either, just no fee.
Two attractive people objectified in one puzzle, congrats!
Well, I liked having three Spanish words, fetor, and joule, otherwise I only bothered to finish because I'm OBSESSED with completing every day's puzzle.
A brace of quail means 2 quail
For those who care, the Koh-i-noor diamond is currently in the Queen Mother's Crown (laid on her casket at her funeral). Google taught me that. I had never heard of the diamond before. (Even after I got the happy pencil from crosses, I had no idea how to parse that string of letter).
A "brace" is a term for a set of two. I've mostly heard it used by British soccer (football) announcers who talk about people having scored two goals in a game as having a "brace" (and being "on a hat trick" which, to an American ear, sounds like they already have 3).
Wasn't planning on piling on, but I will say that, while I liked some of the fill, each themer was met with a "Good, now that one's over." as opposed to any positive reaction.
I'm tossing this into the Ugly Garbage Heap. Was this really a BEQ? He's so talented...que pasa?
This was ABCB WOOLS FETOR UNDO LOOKER.
Both of our local newspapers published the puzzle entitled "Paper Work". Need some answers!
TWO goals scored is called a brace. Three GS is, of course, a hat trick
Would have been so much more coherent and enjoyable if the acronyms had spelled out words that related to the answer phrases.
But what really made me lose it were 33A and 43D. Ivanka is not the "Wife of Jared Kushner," Ivanka Trump is; Ivanka is the "Wife of Jared." And Philip is not "Queen Elizabeth's husband," Prince Philip is; Philip is "Elizabeth's husband."
Will Shortz continues to be a disappointment. Just doesn't seem to care about quality.
Both my father and brother's middle name is REUEL, so not a speed bump here. Did not mind KOHINOOR, because as noted it's a fairly well established manufacturer of writing implements. And we all use those, right?
Not BEQ's best, ITHINK.
For an entertaining but definitely NSFW story of the role of Kohinoor diamond in the history of British India, try Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser (yes, this is the antihero Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, but the history is pretty accurate).
The NYTXW Is my favorite diversion, good, bad or ugly. Well actually, never bad or ugly. Just words, some associated with things we’d rather not think about over breakfast perhaps, but just words. I don’t find myself riled up, raging or even critical. Some are hard, some are easy, some I learn something new. Then I come here and discover a whole range of outrageousness I seemed to have missed. I question myself. Am I so vacuous that the lovely Koh-I-noor Diamond didn’t inspire my crossword contempt?
I’m really curious. Does the general level of picky dissatisfaction that emanates from the large majority of commenters carry over from crosswords to other aspects of your lives? I hope not. If so, time to find a new hobby. Sometimes this blog fails the breakfast test too. Count me with Loren. If I had her linguistic gifts I would join her coven.
NONFEE TOFFEE.
On Friday, they put blueberry-habanero AIOLI on my hamburger. Also bleu cheese and applewood-smoked bacon. It tasted pretty good, but who are these TOUCANS?
It was supposed to snow but didn't yesterday. Today I'll get the crowbar, go out to the shack in the woods that collapsed a couple years ago, and just keep working it apart and stacking things -- HEART AND SOUL, BELIEF IN GOD, SET A FINE EXAMPLE.
A BRACE is not really “two” as much as it is “pair.” So a BRACE of goals or a BRACE of rabbits, “two of a kind.” I think it is more commonly used in Britain, but I’ve never thought of it as specifically “britspeak.” Perhaps that’s because I know lots of Tolkien nerds and Samwise cooks a BRACE of rabbits much to Gollum’s chagrin at one point.
@LMS - My reactions are closer to Rex than to you, making your takes the more valuable by far. We already have Rex’s take, so cogent counter observations are great. What I find tiresome are the litany of lazy Rex-haters. You manage to disagree while being entertaining. As for reading discrepancies in the classroom, ASCD has support if your district is unwilling or unable to provide it. There are discrete skills and strategies that others have found that work. No strategy always works, so it’s good to accumulate as many skills and strategies as one can. Your special ed teachers should have strategies to share as well, but I know from experience that that is not always the case.
I just don’t understand … why? Unlike someone who remarked earlier, when I got BEYOND ALL DOUBT — the first themer I solved — my instant reaction was, that’s it??? That’s the gimmick??? To me, it would have been SO much more interesting if the grouped words in the answers not only started with the capitalized letters, but expressed the MEANING of those capitalized words. BAD words? BUMMER ALL DAY. LAST words? LETS ALL STOP TALKING. ROOT words? RAVE OVER OUR TEAM. KIND words? KIDDING IS NOT DECENT. And so on.
Liked it. 21-A was a gimmee.
@Joe P, you probably hadn't heard of Joann (name of store) because its shoppers are almost all women, except for the occasional unfortunate, sad looking guy standing near the front whose wife dragged him in. At least it wasn't an obscure baseball player from 35 years ago.
@Rex, another demeaning, unasked-for, unappreciated affirmative action count on the woman thing yesterday. Wiki white savoir trope in films. Get a cue. I mean clue.
Hmm. Yeah, that one should have been left in BEQ’s desk drawer. So much sub-par fill and only a couple of the snappy clues I usually associate with him. We’ll just line the birdcage with this one and never speak of it again.
"Is that how Charles Entertainment Cheese describes his credit card?"
This little tidbit of first-rate snark almost makes the terrible puzzle worth it.
There were oodles here that I did not know or know how to spell or half know. One of these days I'll remember EDDA or get around to reading it. But now give me any 3 letters and I could only guess at the fourth. Same with that sauce AIOLIS. And TWO for brace. FETOR? KOHINOOR? Even took me a while to suss that CAME was not a town.
But heads should roll? Ruined the puzzle? Stole my Sunday? Not even close. Actually got KOHINOOR but would never have guessed it was right. Two other places my guesses were wrong. My first themer was BEYONDALLDOUBT. After that the themers helped the solve quite a bit. One letter with certainty plus much more.
If IVANKA offends you (and I do find her to be a poised lying deceptive self-serving joke of a public servant) good. But do you really want to be like those deplorable people who could not stand to see the name of any Obama family member without going into a rant?
But many thanks today for all those gems that have appeared before I even started this:
The KOHINOOR translation and it's current location. I was at the tower 50+ years ago but the jewels were being cleaned.
That I had come across the diamond before via Agatha and Archie.
The TOUCAN poem from Paul Hess.
Dorothy Parker quotes always welcome.
The kohner harmonica reference which just autocorrected to kosher. Ho ho hohner.
And much more to come.
The puzzle solved faster for me than the average Sunday but it was a dnf.
Just. Awful. BEQ has caught the WS disease: loose on facts, loose on language. A complete waste of time.
I TOUCAN say that @mericans in Paris little poem was the highlight of my morning experience today. BEYOND ALL DOUBT New Year’s Eve under the Eiffel Tower with two million fellow revelers remains a memory for our lifetimes. Thanks for that👍🏼
@Lorelei Lee: Geez, Rex put the comment as a PS, hardly made it a feature rant. But hey, I get your point, it is so obnoxious when people shed light on marginalized groups.
Well, I filled in everything, but noticed neither a) that the theme clues were phrases in themselves, nor b) that 21A worked if you parsed it as KOH I NOOR. So I came here believing the first theme answer was some kind of meta that was too clever for me.
I know of seen PSAs using KIND as an acronym; turns out there are many, many of which are "Kids In Need of...Defense, Dentistry, Dreams, Direction, Desks." That helped me get the theme, even if it wasn't actually right.
I visited the Tower once, in 1991, and read in my guidebook that you the jewels you saw were not the real crown jewels, as those were 50 feet underground, but rather glass replicas. No contemporary authorities agree with this, however, so I THINK it's probably not correct.
I liked ANGER next to things one is mad about, WOOLS crossing WARP (as in weaving), CRAB crossing TROPIC, and lots of individual entries such as FETOR, ORDO, TUCAN, and JOULE. I liked the foreign-language partials, as well, but probably many did not.
I've driven past many JO-ANN stores, but still rejected it at first because I wanted an E at the end.
So, I liked it more than some, though the theme made it too easy.
@ everyone
Sorry for the pair of suspenders. Apparently the dictionary I was looking at was giving an example of usage instead of a definition. I misconstrued.
Coming up for air from the bottom of the “haters heap”. Still have to say I really didn’t like the puzzle, but my hat is off to @Loren for her (as always) very smart and very enjoyable positive comments. It’s very important (and increasingly difficult) to keep in mind that many of the joys of exchanging thoughts on anything come from bumping up against opposing views. Rather than being contemptuous, we should welcome and engage them. And I also have to say that I sometimes find myself fantasizing about being a student in one of @LMS’s classes…
It is certainly relevant, I believe, that the NYT is facing such a drought of Sunday submissions. Not hard to understand why WS felt he needed to run a BEQ entry that was sub-par. Hey @Rex and all you puzzle gals—Uncle Will wants you to get to work on those big grids!
I *cannot believe* I didn't get Naticked on the already-mentioned KOH-I-NOOR or ORDO/FETOR (wasn't *at all* familiar with any of those), so credit for the gettable crosses at least.
I *did*, however, screw up and focus too much on the "airport" part of the clue for REUEh/ORhY and Natick myself there. Arggg.
Congrats to @Mike E (8:38) and @davidm (10:25) for coming up with what BEQ failed to give us: GREAT words. Germane, Relevant, Excellent, Accurate, True.
Hey All !
I'll be in the small bunch who enjoyed this puz. Using acronyms for phrases is fun. Would it have been better if the phrases corresponded to the acronym? Sure, but this was still a good puz.
NW was last to fall, and took a good amount of time. I believe it was the KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND holding things up. I have heard of said DIAMOND, so once I finally figured out some of the PPP there, I was able to get that themer and the rest of that corner. I do agree that that themer doesn't follow 100℅ the gist of the theme, but again, it's still a nice puz.
For those who think it's sub-par-BEQ, maybe Will asked him to whip up a SunPuz in a hurry. Does anyone know?
Had quite a few writeovers, ipaS-ALES, THat-THIS, ANGst-ANGER, unum-ORDO, INvitRO-INUTERO, vetO-enDs-UNDO, oOX-XOX, skiP-WARP, SOireES-SORTIES, NOfees-NONFEE. Whew! Some of my original answers were rather funny.
Thanks to those who gave the TWO explanation. That 10D clue was a trap! Had pAt in there, seeing as how the ole brain read clue as Super Bowl winner, not player. Amazing how the mind plays tricks on you like that.
ORDO UNDO. Har-DO.
TUMMY OOMPH
RooMonster
DarrinV
CROSS words? COMPLETE RANGE OF STRANGE STUFF.
ABCB. har
KOHINOOR. har
HEATON. har
FETOR. har
AME. staff weeject pick.
ORDO. har
REUEL. har
BURP. fave.
ODON. har
COMTE. har
AKINS. BEQ hears a "who?"
ITHINK. har
Thanx for the laughs, BEQ. Probably not yer finest moment ever, but it had some 'tude.
Masked & Anonymo11Us
**gruntz**
Ooh, wanted to say, but forgot (of course), 35D- Unceasing critic, chuckled and wrote in Rex in the margin.
9 F's! Way to SET A FINE EXAMPLE!
RooMonster
Here’s a given only to those familiar to Times puzzles. The clue for EDDA is obviously Scandinavian and EDDA has appeared sooo many times. Who has read it or even know it’s subject?
Poor theme cause acronyms not related to answers except for CAPS. But as someone who is trying to construct a crossword to satisfy Shortz, don’t knock it until you try it. It’s difficult.
E-Z but BO- ring 😴
OK ODON. I finally got it. OD on.
All caps really hides it. What is really bad it's been used before, slightly different CLUING perhaps and I got it that time. Grrrr.
It's not just a DIAMOND, but a brand of instrument pens (& pencils). Why, I don't know. But getting to KOH... leads one to the gem stone, since PEN won't fit. If you know about the pens, you know about the DIAMOND.
The puzzle and this blog = two delightful hours on a bright, sunny, COLD Sunday morning so I'm content. I got Koh-I-Noor diamond just fine, but I have no clue (CUE) what part of my garbage can brain was its home. Yeah, the puzzle didn't exactly sizzle, but it didn't frustrate me with clue after clue of athletes and rap music, which I don't know. And before anyone jumps on me, I know that just because it’s not in my wheelhouse doesn't mean it’s not legitimate. But I do like a mix of old and new so I get to exercise my recall and learn new stuff. Although I think the only new stuff I know is DRE and ALOU.
Oh, the puzzle. I liked learning FETOR, will forget REUEL in about five seconds. I was so busy trying to find Descartes in my brain (thinking Cogito Ergo Sum and yeah, I know the clue was about ego, not ergo, and besides Descartes was not going to fit) that it took forever for FREUD to rise from my subconscious.
My beloved therapy dog Rose retired herself yesterday. Fifteen minutes of adoring attention from five little kids was her limit. She made her lack of patience known and we left with apologies to all. She celebrated her retirement with a lamb dinner. She'd been doing therapy for over six years.
Oh, @barbiebarbie, did you have to put that rendering of MAL in my head? The MALs here may never forgive you.
Time to reinforce, once again, the dog fence.
TAPS words
This Awful Puzzle Sucks
Since I have given up expecting any level of quality from Sunday puzzles, this one felt okay to me,possibly because I have a bias in BEQs favor. At least I had some moments where thought was required,which is not always the case. @lynx, I get your sarcasm, but in my mind,when I see the word "marginalized",it implies someone actively involved. I'm
the case of Rex' continuous complaint re. the lack of female constructors, who is doing the marginalizing? Does someone come into work everyday and throw out all the puzzles signed by feminine names? I kind of doubt it.And I would consider it a rant given the frequency of these inclusions,regardless of where they appear in the revue.
EELS (Extremely easy lemon squeezy)
FETOR? Really? I kept wanting it to be FETID or FEVER or FUROR, but all the crosses were right. Ugh.
I HATED the themers. The phrases had nothing to do with their clues. It would have been much tighter (and probably impossible to construct, to be fair) if the phrase from ROOT words had something to do with ROOTs. Etc.
Blech.
The most common usage I’ve seen where brace means two is the description or usage of the phrase “a brace of quail,” meaning two of them.
@Malsdemare (12:25) -- Your anecdote about Rose is charming and delightful and completely understandable. All I could think was that she lasted in her job 6+ years longer than I would have!
Put me in @Loren's camp. Rex supplies more whining and outrage than any puzzle deserves; no need to pile on. If I can solve the puzzle, but not too easily, I'm happy. If I can't, I don't blame the puzzle, I try to learn from it.
I found this one to be of medium difficulty, with a couple of tricky spots, but ultimately doable (once I stopped spelling Howard Roark's name with a u). The theme, such as it is, helped with the solve. A better than average Sunday as far as I'm concerned.
I search for your blog first thing. Always disappointed when I don't find it m
@What? (11:58) -- The EDDAS are sources of Norse mythology dating from the 11th c. The trusty old Bullfinch's Mythology version of the Northern myths talks about and is drawn from the EDDAS.
You can go to Bullfinch (= EDDAS, but watered down) to learn where our crossword friend ODIN came from (spoiler alert): the frost giant's cow was licking away at a salt block, and out popped ODIN and his brothers. They slew the frost giant and created the world as we know it from the remains.
DNF, not seeing ANGER and FETOR, which I have almost always seen as foetor if I have seen it at all. The puzzle was a total slog, and I suspect remained for some time in WS's desk drawer before being accepted, in desperation, faute de mieux. Will could never actually reject a BEQ puzzle, but I doubt he wanted to publish it.
The reason most of us agree with OFL today is that this really was a bad puzzle, and the theme, which could have been good, wasn't. It stank, with a noticeable FETOR indeed.
@LMS, you give new meaning to the phrase, "you are too kind." There were indeed some things to love about this puzzle (I loved being reminded of that ABCB verse scheme) but not many.
Out of towners: your local paper runs NYT puzzles 4 weeks late. Mine does, at least
I'm not understanding all the hate on FETOR - early portmanteau of FEeT odOR? :-)
I'm with @Speedweeder, LMS, and the others who think this was OK. However..... if our friend BEQ was trying to disguise his actually decent theme, he couldn't have picked a more deceptive beginning than the KOHINOORDIAMOND, which I had right and have heard of, but never in pieces.
I put OFL in the camp of most college football coaches, who seem to be always angry at something, or as some folks around here say, enjoying his misery. I am thankful for his effort in doing what he does and providing a forum for us to share our reactions. Was just out of the country for a week with no access and realized how much I missed what Mad Magazine used to call our "usual gang of idiots".
Thanks for the fun, BEQ, and I'm looking forward to your next one..
I call this one a BOP.....Bad Overall Puzzle
Hey, hey, here's a list of alternate, things-that-mean-the-acronym phrases. Mind you, I'm not one who deserves to correct either BEQ or Will, but what the hey. And also these wouldn't be symmetrical.
KIND - Kept In Nice Delight
HAS - His/Hers Awesome Stuff
BIG - Bountiful I Guess
ROOT - Rah On Ones Team
SAFE - Secure All For Everyone
BAD - Brutal And Dire
LAST - Least Among Slow Times
So there ya go!
*Shuffles away*
Roo
Speaking of drive thru peep shows, western Pennsylvania had one:
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/15326
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien:
JRR mined the Eddas for Dwarves, wizards, rings and named swords.
Tolkien had an Icelandic nanny from the West Fjords who lived with the author and his family in the early 1930s in Oxford, England. It was through the nanny that the author became further acquainted with Icelandic folk tales and mythology and was able to practice Icelandic.
Heavily influenced by Norse mythology, Tolkien had been a reader of the Icelandic sagas since childhood. In the Völsunga saga – the text that also inspired Richard Wagner’s opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen – an all-powerful ring and a broken sword that is reforged are both main features of the story, similar key elements in Tolkien’s novels.
Agree with those who deem it not one of BEQ's best.
Re: KOH-I-NOOR. I had DIAMOND and just white space in front of it, and pondered, "How can three words fit in there? Too bad KOHINOOR (I thought it was one word) won't work." Went on to other areas. Then, from the back of my mind, "Wait...is it hyphenated?" I see the objection (not really three words), but I thought it was the most interesting answer. Otherwise, I tried to make it fun by guessing phrases with as few crosses as possible.
Dunce Cap Corner: Had to do an alphabet run on ?OOLS x ?ARP
And "the toucan, the toucan,/his beak can hold more than his belly can."
I cannot believe that anybody was not familiar with the Koh-i_noor diamond. Isn't this the most famous gemstone ever? Isn't this considered to be the epitome of the finest possible quality? What sort of dark cave are some people living in?
Yeah, plenty of fun in today's solving. On to Dunsinore we go!
Yeah, I got the trick but it was so thin I kept thinking, there's gotta be more here. NOPE, there wasn't.
Hand up for living in a dark cave. I love it!
@AnotherAnon/3:51
Isn't this the most famous gemstone ever?
The Hope Diamond, more likely.
Both were extracted from India. Queen Victoria: "No one feels more strongly than I do about India or how much I opposed our taking those countries and I think no more will be taken, for it is very wrong and no advantage to us. You know also how I dislike wearing the Koh-i-Noor". She sounds almost anti-Imperialist!
You might find it interesting to check out this week’s BEQ Thursday puzzle at his website, if you haven’t already.
@pam 10:11 - I just wanted to let you know, if you’re still reading, that you’re not alone.
I am simply going to say that any time I can finish a BEQ I celebrate and when I finish in whatever my “normal” time is, I feel like a pro! He and I are not on the same wavelength. So, finishing today with 3 minutes less than normal Sunday made me very happy. Consequently, I figured all the regulars here would say “easy.” I wish all the “words of introduction” would have had some vintage-clever BEQ revealer but one can’t have everything, right?
Got KOHINOORDIAMOND early off of KOHIN. Not as obscure as @Rex seems to think. Agree though that there wasn't much joy in the themers or their clues. Sundays are getting to be more effort than they're worth.
I like this one from Ogden Nash:
O kangaroo, O kangaroo,
Be grateful that you're in the zoo
And not converted by a boomerang
Into zesty kangaroo meringue!
I thought a good clue for IVANKA would have been "She went to Jered."
The thing that unifies the theme is that all the clues have the form of an in-the-language phrase "_____ words." And the answer is an in-the -language phrase for which the clue's word could be an acronym.
"O.D. on."
Are we just giving the clue for 75D a pass here? AMATEUR clued with “Mickey Mouse”? Am I just too young? Google says nothing...
Funny ROOT was the clue criticized for bearing no relation to its answer. It's not precise but close to it. Run out of town = uproot or root out.
Is the diamond more famous for its size and history than its quality? Articles do seem to throw some shade on the way it was cut and recut. No doubt it's a quality diamond, but it's size and history gets the attention.
Common slang for two goals in soccer
I actually had fun with this. Weird.
@jae6:19 - Dark. Very dark.
Shame on that startup toucan..have you not heard;
"A wonderous bird is the pelican
It's His break that can hold more than his belly can"
@Z
Like suspenders, the British braces is always plural (a Brace is a pair).
@Z & @jae
Almost finished, but got Naticked at 16A/17D. ;-)
@Lynx, I understand that there are some people who believe that women are marginalized and when being offered rescue by a man, should welcome it.
There are also women out there who don't believe that every situation of disproportion is entirely due sexism just because a noticeable number are. To fully see the nuances, you almost have to be a woman.
This isn't to say that there aren't men with strong, intelligent arguments to the contrary. But your argument isn't one of them.
@lorelei lee. Amen!
This one took me longer than I expected. Never even noticed the circled "jump" squares, which in any case were shaded on the iPad. I found that confusing, because the shading was the same as one gets for the across connected to the down word in which the cursor is sitting (and vice-versa).
Now that I see all the proper living, dead and fictional people names -- ADAIR, ANDY, DOC, ICHIRO, ISAAC, KENT, KANE, KIM, LEE, LEIF, MR T, NATE, OLAF, PAYNE, RODINO, SECADA -- not to mention the corporate or institutional names (CNET, GILLETTE, MOMA, NEC, SEALY and TOBLERONE), I feel better about taking 4 minutes longer than my usual to finish.
Others have set out their criticisms, so I won't repeat ENTER there, except to agree that AMER should not have been let through. And I have never seen GAiA (as we had just the other day) spelled as GAEA before. Not Monday fare.
Small nit: I would not, personally normally start off a request with "CAN YOU?" It would more normally be, "Could YOU ... ?" or "would YOU please?" or "May I?".
Nice to see ANDORRA and TOBLERONE in the puzzle. Have never visited the former, but eaten plenty of the latter. I am not a fan of milk chocolate, but I make an exception for TOBLERONE. (Does that count as a product placement?)
Gotta GET CRACKING on other things. Bye!
I STILL don't get this theme. Why is this remotely interesting?
Could not finish this one. I kept reworking KOHINOOR, trying to make it into something. Never got past it. I finally quit.
Dear Anonymous,
Whenever someone comes to this blog to complain about Rex complaining, I dutifully check to see if their grievance checks ito. It seldom does. Yours certainly doesn't.
Ivanka and Company are not right-of-center. They are far-right. The most centrist of their bunch wants a new Gilded Age, and the most extreme literally promote ethnonationalism.
Those are not right-of-center positions. They are both fundamentally undundemocratic---the former plutocratic, the latter ethnocratic.
Had all but four squares in the NW done very quickly. Spend another ten minutes on that corner before throwing up my hands and submitting what I "knew" was an incorrect grid. Only to have it be correct WHAT THE FLAMING FUDGE IS KOH I NOOR DIAMOND?????????????????????????????????? OR IS IT KOHINIOORD IAMO N D?
Quite apart from that, what an awful theme.
And does anyone have any clue whatsoever what Rex's riddle is supposed to mean?
Mickey Mouse = bush league
There is old (not very funny)joke about Disney being a Mickey Mouse outfit.
Another Nash:
The kangaroo can jump incredible.
He has to jump, because he's edible.
I could not eat a kangaroo,
But many fine Australians do.
Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs
Prefer him in tasty kangaroo meringues.
Also Paper Work in the Boise Weekly in Idaho.
Licking my chops when I saw the byline...and then? These are just acronyms?? BAD words: BIG ASININE DEAL. (I'd have used a different word there in the middle, but BFD doesn't spell anything.)
Nor does the fill save it. We have our RT-T-TL (Random tic-tac-toe line), and REUEL, which would be 100% better clued as one of Tolkien's names, given the imminent release of the film of his life; really looking forward to that. FETOR was also new but I could INFER it from "fetid."
Solving wasn't too much of a problem; this big S&G fan caught a fat gimme with IAMAROCK (though that's one of my least favorite songs of theirs} to get started. One little glitch: ANGst before ANGER. I think ANGST fits the clue better. Once again I refuse to honor a Trump with the DOD sash; instead it will go to "Lt. Dish," who "woke up" the Painless Pole in the M*A*S*H movie, JOANN Pflug. Bogey.
This was one of the worst themes I have ever seen. I mean, acronyms? That's it? They don't relate to each other or have a separate clue that links all of them or anything? What lazy construction! Maybe if there were theme clues that included the acronyms but didn't hit you over the head with them (e.g. "Know the big man is up there?" for "BELIEF IN GOD"), then sure. But this... this was a nothing puzzle.
PRETEND, OFFEND
There was NOTMUCH to IVANKA's SEETHRU,
BEYONDALLDOUBT, she EXPECTS we're AWED.
Now I OBSESS over her TUMMY cross TATTOO.
FORBID! I CAME to a BELIEFINGOD.
--- PHILIP ELLIS FREUD
JoAnn Fabrics store is a chain.
KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND tip used to be (maybe still is) a brand of technical pen used on engineering drawings when we, get this, used to draw them by hand! So a gimme there as it appeared square by square. skiP before WARP as the only write-over.
@spacey is right (or left), or correct. No Trump gets the yeah baby, but Laugh-In's Judy CARNE does. Body paint on her TUMMY . . .
I've met BEQ, nice fellow, but I've grown to EXPECT more.
A "BRACE of pistols" for dueling.
A BRACE (yes, singular) is also "a pair of straps that pass over the shoulders and fasten to the waistband of a pair of trousers or a skirt at the front and back to hold it up; suspenders." Though I have always heard them called BRACEs (plural).
Googling=cheating in my books.
“Fair googling” - please forgive me for finding that offensive. Not up to BEQ standards (OFL is correct all around) and it sounds like we filled it in in the same manner moving clockwise.
That said, I enjoyed it for the most part and found it much better than the earlier POS puzzles for this week which he me close to stopping all shortz edited puzzles
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