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NBA's Young, familiarly / WED 4-17-19 / Veronica author divergent series / Movie with famous dun dun theme music
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Constructor: Alison Ohringer and Erik Agard
Relative difficulty: Medium (for me, but apparently skewing easy for many others) (4:36)
Theme answers:
- STALE CEREAL (18A: Menu item #1: A bowlful of Cap'n Crunch that's been on top of the fridge for four years)
- BURNT TOAST (26A: Menu item #2: The charred remains of a slice of whole wheat)
- MEALY APPLE (53A: Menu item #3: A Red Delicious, assuming you find sawdust delicious)
- SPOILED MILK (64A: Menu item #4: Something to pour in coffee for a sour surprise)
Veronica Anne Roth (born August 19, 1988) is an American novelist and short story writer, known for her debut New York Times bestselling Divergent trilogy, consisting of Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant; and Four: A Divergent Collection. (wikipedia)
• • •
["You're makin' yourself look like ghost, BURNT TOAST!"]
And then THAD??? Come on. I looked him up. He's never made a single All-Star team, so how do you think he's Wednesday-worthy? Maybe the puzzle tested superfast and the proper nouns were thrown up as speed bumps, I dunno. I complain when older folk play fast and loose with their pet generation-specific proper nouns, so I'm gonna bark at these two proper nouns a little today. I also didn't really know this GUNN character. There are better GUNNs. Truly, there are.
Best (and only) error of the day was my variant two-P spelling of UPPSY-Daisy! (28D: "___-daisy!") ("OOPSY"). Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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104 comments:
I'm first to say it was fun
Haha, way to start the day by envisioning the spoiled breakfast possibilities. My first breakfast of the day includes MILK and coffee, but I’m with @Rex on questioning the APPLE as a breakfast staple.
Hmm. I keep thinking I’m missing something and like Rex was kinda thinking anagram. I like the redirect of the FIX in the reveal. I guess you can fix BURNT TOAST – we’ve all stood over the sink and scraped the black stuff off and soldiered on, right? But is there some cool hack to fix stale cereal? Like put it in a ziplock baggy with a piece of celery and store it in the freezer for three days and bam, unstale? Same for fixing SPOILED MILK – some process I’m not aware of? I’m so afraid of SPOILED MILK that I don’t even *think* about using it anywhere close to the “use by” date.
Anyway – I guess you can FIX the BREAKFAST by tossing the unappealing items and starting over. So the reveal works for me in the end.
The single most objectionable issue I have with breakfast is any trace of egg shell in my fried eggs. It’s funny that I love crunchy stuff – the smallest, hardest pork rinds, a big crisp carrot, peanut brittle – but that tiny, almost infinitesimal little crunch of a piece of egg shell goes straight to the deepest part of my psyche and Freaks. Me. Out.
PUPIL PERKED up – I’m currently trying to engage a bunch of sleepy 9th-graders who hate reading in Romeo and Juliet. When their eyes start glazing over, I just have to point out some sexual innuendo. Act 1, Scene 4 – finally I told them yesterday that basically Romeo’s friends are like, Dude, you just gotta get laid tonight. Hello. There you are again, sleepyheads.
My 10th-graders are dealing with Macbeth, and, remembering Romeo and Juliet, several of the WOKEST (!) are looking for the innuendo everywhere. That witch? Who was mad at the woman who wouldn’t give her a chestnut? Told the other witches her plans for the woman’s husband: I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do….I will drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid… Several of the kids looked up at me with wide eyes. I just stared back at them with wide eyes. We shared a silent-group-wide-eye-hug.
I love the clue “green and soft, maybe.” That mystery substance in a baggy in the bottom of a fridge drawer that looks so vile you grab the whole thing with a clothes pin to deposit it in the garbage.
Favorite entry – WOKEST. More than anything I’ve learned since participating here is how unwoke I am. Worse, I’ve learned I’m racist, sexist, misogynist, ageist, fascist... at least that’s how I feel when there’s widespread outrage about an offensive entry that I hadn’t even noticed.
So in that spirit, are HEIFER and OINKER objectionable because they can be mean-spirited epithets for zaftig women? I really don’t think so, but honestly, I just can’t keep up anymore.
“It gets bigger in the dark.” Where do you even start with a gem like this? I live out in the country, and one time this summer, I was getting into bed, and a huge centipede slithered under my pillow as I pulled the covers back. Nope. No way. This isn’t gonna work for me. Overhead light on, flashlight, on my stomach looking behind the headboard, under the bed, everywhere. No trace. Gone. Or just lurking. Of course, my husband and dealer of all that is menacing was out of town, so I just went and slept on the couch. Telepathed my legion of grateful wolf spiders to come to my defense. By the time I fell asleep, I was certain that the centipede was slowly making its way toward me, now four times bigger in my head. The size of a big, crisp carrot.
Is WOKEST a word in English?
The theme idea was cute, and its execution delicious, and the puzzle is extraordinarily free of junky answers, so it’s easily not an OINKER, not going PFFT, and not rated a BAGEL. However, today is Wednesday, the transition day in the NYT puzzle between easiness and toughness, and on this day I hope for a step up in toughness in the cluing/answers from Monday and Tuesday, and, IMO, today’s puzzle was shy of that. Not enough of a fight, didn’t pass the tussle test.
But everything else about this puzzle was sterling, especially the inventive theme that relied on colorful descriptions in addition to wordplay. Despite its untoward breakfast, this offering had a fresh aroma. More of same, please!
I just finished a bowl of granola, grape nuts, blueberries, cut up APPLE, banana, and MILK. @LMS, I'm with you on the egg shell fragment thing. And it's so hard to isolate it and try to get it out of your mouth. One could also add bitter TEA and a noldy BAGEL to today's theme. And PERKED coffee of course. Much prefer drip. An OINKER could be sacrificed for some bacon. Lastly, don't forget the JAM for your BURNTTOAST.
Another breeze. Simple, Mondayish theme. No complaints.
Easy but weird...
Easiest and most ridiculous Wednesday puzzle I have ever encountered. Only redeeming factors were at 5A where I wanted MuShY and thought of the mushy peas you can order in the UK. @Z would have bolted from the room when he saw those. 4D brought back memories as I played HELEN Keller when I was a Sophomore in our high school’s play, HI @GILL I. We have more in common. Other than those two giggles I could have gladly passed by this one.
I originally entered NIX BREAKFAST - I still like it better :)
This failed the breakfast test.
Not a fan. WOKEST, OINKER, PFFT, ANIMES all smack of desperation. And the next time someone serves cereal, toast, apple and milk as a breakfast will be the first. And BAGEL, TEA and TUNA FISH seems more bugs than bonuses.
WOKE gets a ton of abuse, in these comments and elsewhere, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a genuinely useful word. It expresses in a single syllable something complex, that would otherwise require several words. Contrast with, for example, bae, which conveys nothing that is not already covered by ‘babe’, or ‘love’, or ‘dear’.
@Lewis - like your 'tussle test' concept, and agree with your evaluation today.
LOL @RavTom. With @Lewis and @kitshef generally. My mom had an acute sense of smell, so much so we used to say she could smell the milk the day before it went bad. Good Wednesday, everyone!
SPOILED MILK under the HEIFER. Hmmmm.
MOSSY JAWS chomp STALE CEREAL? Put some almond milk on it.
LAMB in BURNT TOAST. I got nuthin’.
A right MEALY APPLE for dessert.
CADETS MAKE TEA, then off to the LOO.
We have the fixin’s of an awesome picnic here, folks.
WOKEST AVATAR ever, in SWEATS!
Please FIX BREAKFAST, I’m getting NAP APNEA.
Let the ANIMES sing an ARIA of SORTS for the AEONs.
Ooh ooh!!! The bra is here again!! But it only covers the mammary glands, not the entire chest. Let’s not obsess over the brassiere, mmmkay? Free the breast, I say.
ROTH the day after tax day. Coincidence? I think not!!
It’s a just-there puzzle. A leisurely stroll through the columns and rows even never having heard of Veronica ROTH. I’ll admit that the combo OINKER BOAR, though not abutting each other, was chortle inducing. No AWOL tildes about which to rant, thank (insert favored deity). Only two sports-related items, I think. Does it get better than this on a Wednesday? Well, yes, but that’s for another day.
I don’t know from constructors, never paid enough attention to the byline to make the connections. I can’t do it. They can.
I’ve only been crosswording since 2004 but from all y’all’s (all y’all is the plural of y’all, btw) comments in the ago this here he-of-the-amazing-hair Erik Agard + conspirator shoulda done a better Wednesday, methinks.
Speaking of which: Other than “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” what is inherently gooder about “good, better, best” over “good, gooder, goodest?” And who needs more than one way to say “the?” I mean, c’mon. Let the knees begin to jerk.
And can y’all stop misusing “grok?” Please? It doesn’t mean “I got it.”
PERKED PATELLA
Mark in Mickey’s North 40
Oopsy-daisy, slipping back in to wish @mmorgan a belated birthday wish for a great year ahead.
A fine puzzle... for a Monday. Literally took as long to finish as my fingers could type, never slowed down. Personal best time is fun, but feels a bit unearned here.
Today’s contribution seemed overladen with either dry as toast phrasing or soggy wit. First off I guess the constructors live in a miraculously hygienic abode where cereal can sit untouched by mice or roaches for four years. The Capn Crunch would have turned to dust anyway, so “stale” hardly describes its condition. Okay they were attempting to be funny. Goofy and awkward and forced is not my idea of wit. Maybe geek humor, I dunno. I’m kinda grumpy in the morning, at least until I’ve had three cups of coffee. Never heard of OOPSY daisy. Whoopsy, yes. And FIX to me is something you do to a pet, not an apple or a glass of milk. A breakfast that is to be “fixed” would at least have some eggs in it. Or pancakes. Or croissants smothered in marmalade. And I happen to love burnt toast. The blacker the better. Please don’t fix mine.
The theme was weird but in a good way.
Four years seems like a very long time to not clean the top of the frig.
Oopsy-daisy? I suppose that is one of those phrases that is spoken more often than written so there is no norm. It did remind me of a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode that centered around the discovery of a gravity-defying substance called Upsydaisyium.
I think we have a new term and inside joke - tussle test! Love it.
You can "fix" breakfast by getting rid of the stale cereal, burnt toast, etc. and replacing them with something edible. You aren't fixing the bad products, you're fixing breakfast.
Also, thing I learned this week. You can order whole bags of the just the Lucky Charms marshmallows. But who would?
@Runs 7:37 - While I understand your concern over diluting the meaning of grok, in language nothing is sacred, not even Heinlein. Words evolve to mean what people use them to mean, even made up words. Language purists are fighting a losing battle.
Several people commented on being woke or politically correct.
55 Down reminds me of a story:
Professor: "What organ of the human body expands up to six times its normal size,
and under what conditions?" Miss Smith?
Miss Smith: That's offensive. It's sexual harassment!
Professor: Miss Robinson?
Miss Robinson: The pupil of the human eye expands up to six times its normal size under conditions of dim light.
Professor: Correct. Miss Smith, three points are now obvious:
1: You have not read today's assignment.
2: You have a dirty mind, and
3: One of these days, you're in for a big disappointment.
I can imagine Loren Muse Smith trading knowing glances with her ninth- or tenth-graders!
I'm with you, Rex. Kinda meh. SW was challenging for me. Never heard of the GUNN character. Count me old, but PETER would have been a better clue. NAENAE? WTF is that? Sounds like a stammering Senator's vote.
Peace brothers and sisters.
I actually enjoyed this puzzle a lot. The clues skewed young for once and I was able to confidently breeze through ROTH (those books are on my shelf three feet from me) WOKEST and JAM were cute slang and AEON Flux was a nice surprise for me as well. I'm 27 and I felt like this fill was kinda meant for me. Agree with Rex about the theme though, kinda fell flat, but the fill was delightful and felt breezy as Monday morning.
@Loren Muse Smith
I believe I have found my soul mate! I have been known to put a finger into a burning hot frying pan to remove a piece of egg shell so small it cannot be seen without the aid of a microscope, because to crunch on it would mean the end of my consumption of breakfast until the day I die. Could there be more of us??
This is a theme? Correct call by @LMS -- no one is FIXing three of the four theme entries.
Last week I ranted about the term "woke" -- you can imagine how I feel about WOKEST.
According to Box Office Mojo, the NE corner has two of the top 15 inflation-adjusted domestic-grossing films of all time crossing each other. So I guess that's kinda cool.
@Run with Scissors -- Great post.
As they say...in a bacon-and-egg BREAKFAST, the hen is involved, but the OINKER is committed.
S(ch)MEAR on BAGEL? BREAKFAST indeed!
I finished this in about half my average Wednesday time. For some reason had BoA before BRA and it took me a bit of time to find that error as I had never read the clue for XRAYS.
Happy to see the first part of my nickname make the puzzle, spelled correctly as OOPSY.
I didn't know THAD, GUNN, or ROTH, and I still crushed this in Monday time. Wednesday PR at less than 50% of my average, and close to Rex's time.
I liked the theme despite the loose definition of breakfast foods.
Kinda surprised our Binghamton professor is mute on kerfuffle occurring on hiscampus.
Google Art History prof suggests Notre Dame towers should be filled with blood and semen. Yeah. That's what he said. To his class. Best part: they wen't studying Gothic art, or cathedrals or anything remotely related. Guy just wanted to spew his poison. Many claim he's the wokest lecturer at the university. Me? I think the anti-catholic stuff is mossy. Really stale. Also, be assured that most participants in the NFL don't wear helmets. Trust me on this. I mean if he means players, sure. but participants. Hmm? No.
A comment on two names. ARIA is a women's name? An absolutely new one for me.
And BEN GUNN is a character in "Treasure Island"
All in all, though, pretty unexciting puzzle (yawn).
I was going to say that this failed my "breakfast test", but someone beat me to it. Going through the puzzle, though, I didn't clamp my JAWS shut. I was hungry, so I opted for the JAM, the TUNA FISH, the LAMB, and the TEA. It makes for a very odd breakfast, but at least everything is fresh. At least I hope it is.
Will, you squished the squares again! DON'T SQUISH THE SQUARES!!!!! SQUISHED is worse than STALE, SPOILED, BURNT and MEALY. I can avoid STALE, SPOILED, BURNT and MEALY but I can't avoid SQUISHED. Not if I want to do the puzzle that day.
Okay, here is my problem with "wokest" and the use of woke generally. It is a fixed binary. You either are woke or unwoke (asleep/unaware/asea/racist). Many people are the latter; however, I believe that becoming aware of one's biases is a process, not a switch. Self-reflection on privilege and identity is work that never ends, nor should it. Culture cannot be fixed, though it is usually the powerful who to try to fix it. Why then should the signifier of a vital cultural/societal process be non-progressive? We should aspire to be waking, but we are never (fully) woke(st).
Rex: "I complain when older folk play fast and loose with their pet generation-specific proper nouns..."
....and when younger folk do that, it that okay with you?
As a professor of English, have you never read the classic Treasure Island, by that "little-known" author Robert Louis Stevenson?
Surprised that you wouldn't call milk a paradigmatic "breakfast" food. What do you think most people put in cereal? Milk. What do children often drink at breakfast? Milk. How do many/most people make hot chocolate? Milk. What do many people take in their coffee or tea? Milk.
Tip: Eating an apple at breakfast is probably much healthier than having a stack of pancakes.
@ghthree - funny! But Miss Robinson should have failed for thinking the PUPIL is an organ. Given that the Professor apparently thinks so, too, I have doubts about the legitimacy of his credentials.
https://youtu.be/pYLHpg5HwZ0 This video perked up my entire 9th grade class to Romeo and Juliet. Kids started fighting over who would get to read the parts of Mercutio. I fell in love with Shakespeare's language immediately and wanted to read Juliet's first monologue - imo one of the most beautiful poems - but of course it went to a girl who had a crush on the boy reading Romeo. I was so bitter that I pleased me to tell her they died at the end lol. We read Julius Caesar in 10th grade instead of Macbeth. A shame, but it helped me with ETTU.
My least favorite entry: “wokest”. This is not a word. It is “slang” at best, which is a designation unfortunately not used anymore in the NYTimes crossword.
You are hilarious. Loved reading your comment.
I too originally had nIXBREAKFAST which, given the fare, seems totally apropos.
@Lewis yesterday, oooooh. In that case, I got nuthin. ;)
Near record time for me but I'm a (relatively) young. Agreed on Thad Young - I'm a huge NBA fan and while I got that one relatively easily, I dropped it in and thought... Partial name of the third or fourth best player on the Pacers? On a Wednesday? Really??
Although I guess bonus points for timely references to Game of Thrones (Aria) and the NBA Playoffs (Thaddeus Young plays tonight).
Back when I was in high school (not that long after Shakespeare's death), Julius Caesar tended to be the standard work used precisely because of its lack of sexual innuendo.
I'm surprised there was not a play on Rex here for breakfast fixes... Like spoiled milk, perhaps crossword rex clued as wordplay downer. I'm just teasing, if course, cause I love Rex.
I occasionally eat just an apple for breakfast though for a brief moment I thought jelly roll for that answer -- far tastier.
My best time ever on a Wednesday.
That would have been much better!
Hey All !
Here's a Step-by-Step tutorial of the Nae Nae. You're welcome. :-)
Hopefully never get served such an awful BREAKFAST. A definite heading to the WC if that happens. I'll just instead head to the IHOP in that case. And what's with the sawdust=MEALY thing? Odd.
Easy WedsPuz. 4 minutes longer than Rex's solve, which is about as close as I get. I don't solve for speed, as a matter of fact, I like to slow down a solve on a MonPuz e.g. by taking my time. I also read every clue, and hate when things get auto-filled. "What a weird solving method" I can hear y'all say. I have "Fear-of-Missing-Out" on a cool clue if I don't read them all!
PFFT. Fun sound. Doesn't register as failure to me, though. It's more a "I don't care" sound.
Do you see the neighbor outside in his underwear?
PFFT>
Liked the other BREAKFAST items in the puz. BAGEL, JAM, BOAR, OINKER, HEIFER, heck, you can even have TUNA FISH or LAMB if you'd like. There's no LIMIT on what you can eat for BREAKFAST. Bacon, yum, ham, yum. Poor pig!
Did notice the 16 wide grid today, so mustn't be that un-WOKE. Har. Five F's. Nice. They like to show up in pairs. YUP.
Happy the fire at Notre Dame wasn't as bad as it could've been. They'll rebuild.
OOPSY RASCAL
RooMonster
DarrinV
I'll just have the TUNAFISH, BAGEL & JAM, today, thanx U.
@RP: Cooked apple slices are great on a puffed-up German pancake, a la PuzEatinSpouse.
staff weeject pick: YUP. As in: YUPSY-daisy.
Didn't know some stuff, but that's ok, as it was all spreak out pretty well. [WOKEST. THAD. Peterless GUNN. NAENAE. Close, but no chicas.] faves: AVATAR. PATELLA. TRADEOFF. OINKER. OOPSY.
Funny theme idea. FIXBREAKFAST worked fine as a revealer: Can FIX it all quick, by just headin straight to the local Village Inn. Or by switchin to yer cinnamon rolls, of course.
Thanx for the wonderful mealy, AO & EA.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
illustrated:
**gruntz**
Very funny!
This felt what's it all about ish. Oh...BREAKFAST. I like BREAKFAST and it can be my favorite meal of the day - especially if my family is all here. I'm a piece of rye TOAST with fig JAM and always have a bite of cheese type gal. The family likes pancakes made from scratch (none of that ready made stuff) and eggs over easy and bacon and TOAST and JAM and good, real maple syrup and hot sauce and maybe some hashed (from scratch) potatoes and dang, just about anything I can whip up.
Speaking of STALE CEREAL, I wouldn't know what it is even if it bit me. I don't eat the stuff. BUT, I saw one of those "Chef" series and the contestants had to make something with either Cap'n Crunch or maybe Fruit Loop and pair it with LAMB chops. I thought HAH, how are they going to make the sauce for the chops. Sure enough, someone threw the stuff in a blender, added mint, cilantro and crema and probably a jillion other things. The judges loved it.....ETTU.
Back to the puzzle, it was kinda weird but I thought it was cute in a Tuesday heads explode day. Just too easy for a Wed. I like to tussle like @Lewis - this was a little benign sweet OINKER. OOPSY was may favorite.
How can people not know Ben GUNN? Does no one read Treasure Island any more? If it were Peter GUNN, Rex would probably complain that the show has been off the air for 60 years.
Theme needed a “fix”. Actually a complete redo.
Given that my team’s name is “You bet your breakfast we are” and tonight we’re taking on the last undefeated team, this puzzle was very timely for me. The theme was fine, the revealer apt, and the puzzle pleasantly pea-free. @chefwen - I, too briefly considered MuShY. No running from the room though. I rather enjoy finding alternative uses for peas.
@LMS - If, as I suspect, you learn that a term is offensive and remove it from your working vocabulary, you are the very definition of “woke.” Woke is not omniscience. Woke is being aware that injustice exists and maybe we should do things not to perpetuate it.
@Beaglelover - only sarcastically.
@Runs - Methinks either you don’t grok “grok” or you don’t grok how people are using “grok” here, which is very much in keeping with how Heinlein used it. Think about the solving experience, especially around themes. Or the “getting it” experience around @Lewis’ weekly list of favorite clues. Both of these is very different from dredging up Veronica ROTH from the recesses of memory, and both very much exemplify “grokking.”
@Emil - Aristotle much? As commonly used, “woke” is more a sliding scale than a fixed binary. I get why it looks like a fixed binary, you’re either “woke” or not, but what really happens is that one realizes something. and this opens one up to understanding more. As @kitshef said, it really is pretty useful, even if it is misused seemingly more than used, encapsulating a lot in just four letters.
Aria is indeed a girl's name and for 2018 was #13 of top 20 per babycentre.co.uk. A Newsweek report shows Aria as #6 in the U.S.for 2018. The character in GoT is ArYa.
@Running with Scissors. I think we've all seen women whose...well, bosoms, are pretty much the entire chest.
My reaction was like @Quasi's --- an ultra-cute clue deserves a better answer than STALE CEREAL. However, I loved the revealer; it's wordplay, folks, not a serious suggestion to unspoil the MILK.
Serious question: did Brutus really stab Caesar in the back? Doesn't seem like him.
Less serious question: do folks in Osaka catch some ANIMES and then go out for sushis afterward?
I did like the little PEP-YUP-NAP series over in the East. Also liked the JAM and TEA to have with your TOAST in the NE.
And you know you've done too many of these things when you read a clue like "Mary follower" and start trying to think of suffixes.
@Rex, how about Veronica Lake? Or are you going to claim you're too young?
I wanted Trae Young instead of THAD, myself.
Why does Rex associate GUNN (Ben) with older folk? He was a character in Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson. Hard to understand why an alleged college professor should have a problem with that.
Cereal with milk, toast, and an apple? That’s a pretty lame breakfast to begin with. Who cares if it’s stale, burnt, mealy and/or spoiled? Forget about breakfast. Somebody should FIX this puzzle.
You say uPSY-daisy when you pick up a rug rat that's fallen. There is no other version: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/upsy-daisy
@LMS @Michiganman and @Steve —
If you ever need to remove a piece of eggshell out of your broken raw egg, get your finger wet first. It will snatch onto that little sucker instantly without having to fish around in the muck to get it to stick. Just an old wives’ tip from an old wife, in case you didn’t know that one.
Sort of a cute theme today but extremely easy for a Wednesday. If I timed myself it would’ve been a record. It skewed young but in a good way, and I liked it overall although I thought the clue for 53A was rather poorly phrased. Red Delicious apples are not known for their crispness, but as a general rule they are not necessarily MEALY. Overripe ones can get that way but so do other varieties, and to say they resemble sawdust is a bit harsh.
On Timing Toast by Piet Hein
There's an art to knowing when,
Never try to guess.
Toast until it burns,m and then
Twenty seconds less.
The N.C. Wyeth (he of Natick fame) illustrated (not co-author as claimed by Amazon) version of Treasure Island is the definitive version of the work. It is currently ranked #968,133 in sales among books. By contrast, Dickens' Our Mutual Friend a novel which no one in the history of humankind has ever read voluntarily is #528,553. For further contrast, Maus that comic book that none of you could ever have been expected to know about, it's a damned comic book for god's sake, is #7,276.
So yes, no one reads Treasure Island. It's what's wrong with the "Canon".
Some people gotta complain about everything.... Fun puzzle for me & over too soon.
@relicofthe60s 10:29 - I totally concur. I grew up in the 60s and have no memory of Peter Gunn, but Treasure Island was almost required reading.
I'm a big NBA fan, and I even had him on my fantasy team (1.5 steals/game!), but it still took me a while to realize they meant THAD Young.
People seem to be conflating two independent thoughts in Rex’s post. First, complaining about the crossworthiness of Veronica ROTH and THAD Young, two “young” PPP answers. The second idea is that their are better GUNN’s to use as a clue than BEN, giving Peter as an example. I think a formatting issue contributes, since ROTH and THAD are separated by a video, so it’s easy to think the “two” PPP Rex is referencing are THAD and GUNN. I think if you re-read the post, though, his intent is pretty clear.
@ANON9:17 - What are you talking about? I couldn’t find anything about any kind of prof anywhere saying anything like this. Several Binghamton profs seem to have been interviewed for reactions, but all of those seem to be the standard “this is why Notre Dame matters” responses. The “blood and semen” thing seems like some sort of angry response to the clerical sex abuse and cover-up, but even that didn’t turn up anything.
PHUCO,
This...https://ortolanastudio.com/2019/04/16/another-day-in-the-academe-i-suppose/
Medium. Smooth, amusing, liked it.
I’ve had an apple for breakfast everyday for the last 20 years.
@LMS ought to submit today's comment to The New Yorker: "Musings While Doing the NYT Crossword." The best of a long series of great posts here. I am going to wake up tonight with a centipede nightmare.
I'm with OFL on the theme. But as I was doing the puzzle I felt time and again that the cluing was masterful and delightful, with tons of AHA moments that saved me from a Natick (here's looking at you, ETTA).
Super easy for a Wednesday, with the exception of Thad Young. Literally never heard of him. Best word: NAP. That was clever.
Thankful for a fairly easy Wednesday puzzle, but don’t the theme answers come dangerously close to breaking the “Breakfast Rule” i.e., no mention of things like feces, for example (imagine solver working on puzzle while eating breakfast)?
@jberg, good point about Brutus. I had not noticed that. He wasn’t a backstabbed. That to me refers to someone who does you in sneakily, anonymously. Or at least behind your back. But Brutus was right there in the open with the others. I’m no Shakespeare scholar, but this clue is way off.
PS I just wanted to add a thank you to whoever posted the link to the Notre Dame fund. I chose my sobriquet here because the cathedral and the book written about it by Hugo, and the Laughton movie based on it, were very important to me growing up. The cathedral was a central character in the novel. And of course in history. It is a very special place. I am glad it was not entirely destroyed.
I'm with Rex on this being "medium" for a Wednesday. I felt I had no zip, no PEP during the solve, a minute over my Wednesday average. Whether it was due to the oversized grid, or that Mr. Agard had a hand in its construction, or because curdLED MILK fit well with ddE down at the bottom (OOPSY-daisy!), I can't be sure.
@LMS, I go through two large boxes of Cheerios per week. My husband goes through one box of Honey Nut Cheerios every 18 months. Sometimes he'll pull it out and pour himself a bowl and I shudder at how STALE it must be. But he only uses chocolate MILK on his cereal (shudder again) so that might be the secret.
Thanks, AO and EA, for a silly, fun Wednesday.
Taking a desultory ramble around the grid, I got SPOILED MILK as the first themer so thought we were dealing with a vowel-change ("spilled milk"). Thus, the next one I got, MEALY APPLE, resulted in ???? over my head (mally apple? melly apple?...). Worked my way up to the reveal and the light-bulb moment. Cute!
I think most fondly of Ben GUNN (a pirate, yes, but more importantly a castaway), who longed for TOASTed cheese on Treasure Island. I can identify! @Pete, the last time I read Treasure Island (last fall), I purposely checked out my library's copy with the the N.C. Wyeth illustrations, eagerly opened the volume....and found that a previous borrower had sliced out every single one.
Fastest ever Wednesday for me by a good amount. Decidedly not for the olds for once. Enjoyed solving!
This worked up fast for me.
It's been a very long time since I read "Treasure Island", but I didn't actually read the clue for GUNN, since the downs were gimmes in the SW corner, and I happened to try them first.
My one error was that I misspelled PATELLA, and "nip" made as good an answer as NAP for 51A, "Go out for a bit". If I were doing the puzzle on paper, I'd have declared victory and left the error there.
I was resistant to WOKEST, because I misread the clue as "mostly socially conscious", and preferred an -ish ending over the superlative.
Interesting how I, a millennial, would never think to be nettled by crossword clues about Don Ho, Alan Alda, or 1950s sports figures, but the moment older folks see words and references they don't personally recognize they feel completely entitled to complain about them. I got WOKEST and NAENAE with barely a moment's hesitation, and they are both culturally relevant in today's world. A single NYT crossword can never, ever be all things to all people, but it's good that they have begun trying to spread the love from day to day. I'm in no way suggesting that all older folks think and act this way, but I say with respect to those who have been: your comments make you seem small-minded and petty. There is room in the cross-world for all of us, and we younger folks have never begrudged you your place, so now that there's one for us too please accept it with good grace and tolerance. We've been happy to learn from your generations' clues since we started solving, and now you can also benefit from the same opportunity from time to time. It's a gift, not an imposition - keep an open mind and enjoy it!
Uyy -- an unmitigated disaster, starting with 12d. I'm happy being SLEEPIEST, thank you. As @kitshef observed, the whole thing reeks of desperation. That's about all there is to say.
Hmm, I always thought MEALY was just a description of the texture of some types of APPLEs, in contrast to, say, crispy or crunchy for others, and didn't mean the APPLE was necessarily bad or needed FIXing. So for eating, crisp is better but the MEALY kinds work well for cooking pies or cobblers or for making APPLE sauce.
I read that when food is cooked at a high temperature, to the point where it is BURNT or blackened, some of the organic compounds are converted into carcinogenic substances. In the case of BURNT TOAST, the concern is with the formation of acrylamide, a compound linked to cancer and nerve damage in animals. One of the questions they ask new patients coming into the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston is "Do you eat foods that have been cooked so that they are blackened?"
I did a puzzle, USA Today 11/21/08, titled "One for the Ladies" where the clue for one of the themers was "Reassuring words to a toddler" and the answer was UPSY DAISY, so today's OOPSY version was new to me.
Half my average Wednesday time and pretty close to my fastest ever. I thought all those ingredients combined made a pretty complete breakfast. I know NAE NAE from previous crossword puzzles, not to be confused with Nene's which I also only know thanks to the puzzle as well. I'm pretty sure the plural of ANIME is ANIME. Most dictionaries don't list a plural and Wikipedia specifically says the plural is the same.
In Angela’s Ashes, unsupervised children made breakfast by boiling spoiled milk with sugar and stale bread. They were so poor and their father such a drunk that they had that dish often enough to give it a name.
He lived to tell the tale, so evidently you can fix spoiled milk for breakfast.
@Tea, thank you for calling out ANIMES. I meant to comment on that - I'm an anime fan and have never, ever, ever, ever, ever heard the term "animes" within the anime world. Perhaps it's a term used by only the WOKEST.
I would go with MOST WOKE.
I was trying to be first in this morning, but the app released the puzzle at about 9 CDT, I finished lickety-split with very few snags. I agree with those who have opined that one cannot “fix” spoilt (a Brit-ism I adore) milk, mealy apples and stale cereal, but that overall the experience was mildly numerous and in places ver “Agardian.”
Generally a fan of new entries to the Urban dictionary, I have to cry foul on WORKEST. Looked it up and found zero consistency so i went to the experts- the 21-23 year old interns in my office. Even the Millenials lacked any consistency at all. So, perhaps a regionalism? But not legit, at least IMO as of today.
@LMS, I agree completely that large scary (especially centipede or millipede) disposal is a spousal requirement somewhere in marital vows fine print. Now that my husband has passed, I have no such protection and it hurts! Went hiking with friends in SE Oklahoma’s rocky hills last weekend. Have been there so many times in the last 30+ years and the dogwoods and redbuds in early April are spectacular. So are the Enormous. Scary. Millipedes. They live to elicit hysteria reactions from hikers sitting down to rest against a tree. I could not bring myself to sit down on the ground. Since we moved to Oklahoma in 1976, we hiked the SE several times each year but enjoyed the spring the most. However, before we sat on the ground, my husband had to scrape all the leaves away, dig through the pine needles and move any of the scary creatures from anywhere near me. Since I am technologically impaired and can barely navigate this blog, I am unable (and don’t really want to) attach a picture, but for the curious, Google them. And just think about having one crawl up your legs inside your sleeping bag!
Wow, way off piste here. Happy springtime, Easter and whatever y’all like to celebrate this time of year. Oklahoma is beautiful, and too soon will be brown, hot and burnt to a crisp.
Record Wednesday time for me.
@Alex M: Well said! I completely agree except rather than spread the love, my thoughts were more along the lines of share the pain. LOL. While I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to complaining, I really do try to be open to learning something new - part of the reason I do crosswords. Good grace and tolerance - the world would be a nicer place if we all practiced that a little more often.
French cuisine, as manifest in myriad sauces, exists(ed) for the explicit purpose of masking the nastiness of spoiled groceries. They still luxuriate in offal. Go figure.
@CDilly52 4:44 - I am told that millipedes do not bite, so maybe that will make them slightly less scary. Centipedes, on the other hand, most certainly do, as I found out the hard way. Somehow one found its way into our bed one night, and woke me up by biting me. My wife, who was deathly afraid of anything worm-like, caught and dispatched it for me. Talk about true love.
This puzzle wasn't very good, though I think Rex & a few others are being overly literal on the theme. No you can't "fix" staleness; it doesn't matter to make the theme work. No, this puzzle isn't very good because of WOKEST, which is to English what Jackass the Movie is to cinema. It isn't very good because ANIMES plural? huh? GUNN OINKER THAD.
But there is gold in the comments today: @LMS "Telepathed my legion of grateful wolf spiders to come to my defense" is the single best sentence I have read on this blog in months. Just pure joy, there. I mean. Gateful wolf spiders. LOL
I enjoyed this puzzle, and pace Rex, thought the substitution of an unexpected RLs clue (Treasure Island is a great book!) for a predictable Mancini clue was a nice touch.
Liked the puzzle, despite what I thought was a weak theme, and a dislike of "woke, woker, wokest, unwoke, etc." @Pete - I read "Our Mutual Friend." I would not recommend it. However, given the previous treatment of "the Jew," Fagin, it was very interesting to watch Dickens try to apologize by creating extremely virtuous Jewish characters. ( I also read "Treasure Island" when I was in my boyhood adventure reading phase. And Scaramouche, Beau Geste, Captain Blood, Captains Courageous.... Can't recall the names of most of the characters, though!)
WOKEST has made it into plenty of headlines for The Root (e.g., 8 Wokest White People) and probably other pubs I'm not cool enough to know about , so for me it flies as a form of woke in its current usage.
Weirdly super simple today. The theme answers were clued so simply it was kind of annoying. Yes you fix the breakfast, not the spoiled milk. Jeez.
Wokest also too weird.
As for yesterday (Monday?) Ryan's Hope was about Kate Ryan, who grew up to be Kathryn Janeway, commander of the Starship Voyager and defeater of the Borg. Powerful woman.
I found this extremely easy (usually I have some trouble by the time Wednesday rolls around), but I must say the Natick in the SW defeated me.
I had not the slightest idea whether CUNN crossed NAENAE or CURN crossed NAERAE, never having heard of any of them.
1. The only way I can make sense of the revealer is that you would be in a FIX if you had these items for breakfast.
2. I agree that Brutus didn't stab Caesar in the back, but in this case I took "Et tu" to mean the generic words any betrayed person says to his or her backstabber.
I really flew through this one and shaved over 5 minutes off my previous Wednesday record. Usually I’m not great with longer, descriptive entries like the the themed answers here, but somehow I got most of them with only a handful of downs. Kinda fun, though I get the criticism of the theme, it’s somewhat odd.
Easy like a Monday.
Woof, hated this one. Aside from the theme...which was not even worth having, the overall easiness and the young skew made it additionally lame. WOKEST, NAENAE, the various anime stuff, was easy...but that didn't make it fun.
This was almost my quickest Wednesday solution ever. Less than half my average time. While some of the clues I would never have got on their own, the words going in other direction through them were Monday-easy. 9.5 minutes.
Seems unfair to criticize something that another probably put some effort into, but.. I thought this was an example of the type of NYT I dislike for a number of reasons, primarily the weakness of the clues which to me is the primary point of a clever crossword.
Lots of questionable fill, and I agree with most of Rex’s comments except for fruit for breakfast. Speaking of which, it seems unfair to criticize someone like OFL who does this on a regular basis due to love of crosswords, so a bit of dyspepsia now and again is forgivable.
If WOKEST had been teamed up with some of the the proper nouns it could have been a NATICK.
Anonymous rlvn because I didnt read through all the other comments
I am somewhat surprised that no one has pointed out the difference between a cow and a heifer. Technically the clue doesn't work. And you won't be getting milk from a heifer either.
TRADEOFF HERS
HELEN would FIKBREAKFAST and boast,
“I’ll MAKE TUNAFISH and TEA right here.”
Instead I ETTA meal of BURNTTOAST,
and ALSO ONE BAGEL with SMEAR.
--- THAD ROTH
Rats. Now I've lost my appetite. As I get up before my much better half, it falls on me to FIXBREAKFAST. Which is OK, but "fixing" any of the themers (except maybe standing over the sink alongside @muse and scraping the 26-a) is not an option. So, the revealer doesn't exactly work, though I get the attempt at repurposing "FIX."
The fill can be a bit of an adventure here and there; in particular, WOKEST smacks of desperation. C'mon, man. How WOKE can you be? You either is, or you ain't. Still getting used to the newspeak, and to the NAENAE, which I can AVOW with certainty I shall never perform.
THAD Beaumont is the protagonist in Stephen King's "The Dark Half." Other than that, I know no real-life THAD. But: crosses. Anna GUNN wins DOD. I thought solving this was easy, and just interesting enough to get a par.
Alex M Bravo! I never heard of the Beetles, oh who is Kim Kardashian. Nabakov novel? Dr dre? Oh my stars! Jesus ( whoever he or she is) Wah!!!!
Pretty sad BREAKFAST. Too bad the LAMB, TUNAFISH, OINKER ham, and JAM didn't make the cut.
Pauses at ROTH, THAD, and the AMIGAS/GUNN cross. For the latter, knowing amigos helped with AMICAS as "close chicas".
WOKED is just plain awkward, and APNEA and NAP don't help it at all.
Easier than yesterday, and liked it well enough.
Cute idea for a theme: take an "in the language" phrase (I'll FIX BREAKFAST) use another meaning of FIX on the rather unpalatable entries/themers. Seems fine to me.
You can FIX your cat.
You might get in a FIX.
You might FIX the dishwasher.
Or, you can FIX BREAKFAST by starting over, as is the case here. Heck you can have anything for BREAKFAST. The sky is the LIMIT, or the "omelet". Har. Just don't pour SPOILED milk or cream in my coffee. That LEEDS to nausea.
Other than all that, this was a good puzzle with fine fill, little to no dreck, and a few nice clues. Liked it.
It’s not because I’m ‘old’ that I complain about WOKEST. That word presumes that there are varying degrees of being WOKE: WOKE, WOKEr, WOKEST; and if you are not somewhere on that spectrum you should just as well be quarantined. People who use those words are themselves in varying degrees of pretentiousness. WOKEST reeks of elitism and presumption. Besides that, it is slang and should be clued as such. So don’t try so hard to show how ‘superior’ you are to me, you aren’t WOKE (socially conscious) enough if you do. Rant over; if you feel micro-agressed you need to seek professional help, you are not well-adjusted.
Finished this puz quickly even with YUP as YeP for a nanosecond.
She was one of us for a while, having attended Carleton College for a year. I USED to see the ‘kids’ reading her books while on the treadmills in the gym. Yeah baby Veronica ROTH, that is.
Indeed, someone needs to FIXBREAKFAST.
@Anon 10:45 -
cow
noun
•(in farming) a female domestic bovine animal which has borne more than one calf.
Clue for HEIFER should have been "Bovine sans calf"
The theme worked for me because I read it as a request to fix a printed breakfast menu. Perhaps the owner of the hotel thought it was a bit too accurate.
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