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Peter Nixon impeachment hearings chairman / MON 4-29-19 / Cuban born Grammy winner Jon / Alexander who directed Nebraska Sideways / 181-square-mile country in Pyrennes / Triangular Swiss chocolate bar
Monday, April 29, 2019
Constructor: Andrew Kingsley
Relative difficulty: Medium (3:02)
"Eggs":
- OST(R)ICH
- DINO(S)AUR
- GO(O)SE
- CHI(C)KEN
Peter Wallace Rodino Jr. (June 7, 1909 – May 7, 2005) was a Democratic United States congressmanfrom New Jersey from 1949 to 1989. Rodino rose to prominence as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, where he oversaw the impeachment process against Richard Nixon that eventually led to the president's resignation. He was the longest-serving member ever of the United States House of Representatives from the state of New Jersey. (wikipedia)
• • •
Also, why is this puzzle running now and not on Easter, when it would've been Sunday and you would've had a big grid, which would've allowed you to let some of these themers breathe. Instead, they are crammed into a space too small for them, which puts incredible pressure on the grid, which results in truly dire fill. Just awful. These names. Red ADAIR *and* Jon SECADA *aaaaand* Peter RODINO!?!? I know a. only from crosswords, b. only from having been a fairly young, radio-listening person for the three years Jon SECADA was famous, and c. not at all. Not At All. Please, tell me how important RODINO is while I tell you he hasn't appeared in the NYTXW since '04, and only two times in the Shortz era before today (and never on a Monday). That's fifteen years of people dying who would've known who RODINO was. I was four when Nixon was impeached. Thank god I know what NEC is, which ... again, this is a mark of a terrible puzzle—I'm reliant on crosswordese (I never see NEC anywhere outside of grids) to avoid a full-on Natick*. On a Monday. Actually, I guess I could've used the theme to complete those squares, in an emergency. Ugh. That I finished this puzzle in normal Monday time is a bleeping miracle.
Is it OLAV or OLAF? GAIA or GAEA? Oh what fun** we get up to on Mondays! I teach college English, have for over two decades, literally never heard anyone anywhere ever refer to Lit CRIT (certainly not as a "course") (4D: Lit ___ (coll. course)). TMI? IMO, no! Are you really gonna follow KIM (56A: One of the Kardashians) with KIM... CHI? (57A: Spicy Korean side dish). That weird KIM dupe is so bad, it could really only have been unbaddened if you'd followed with CHI on the other side, creating KIM KIMCHI CHI. I'd've stood and clapped for that. There's just so much depressing fill here. AMER is just making me sad. I'd've taken a RRN (Random Roman Numeral) at 49D (DLI), just to get ATHENS at 48D and thus AMEN and NATS at the bottom of the grid. [The "A" of U.S.A.: Abbr.]??? Do you see how sad that clue is?—you clued an abbr. with a shorter version ... of the abbr.? The "A" is short for "America"; nothing is short for AMER. You avoid all this nonsense by not having stupid AMER there in the first place. OK, that's all. Make Mondays Fun Again. Please.
*see the "What is a 'Natick'" section in the first sidebar on my website
**not actually fun
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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118 comments:
I have very low expectations for a Monday, and yet this puzzle failed to meet them.
Rex leads talking about he problems with the way a 'crack' is represented in the theme answers. If I listed 20 things that are wrong with this puzzle, that would be like #17. If it even occurred to me at all. If the fill is smart I bet I'm defending it.
You know, Pete RODINO is a bad answer on a Monday. His name vaguely rings a bell at least. Which is more than I can say for Alexander PAYNE, who directed two (things?) I have never heard of. Oh... Sideways is that movie about Cali wine country isn't it. Never seen it, but there was a stretch of a few months where people who know I like wine told me I should watch it. I see Mr Payne also directed About Schmidt, which is a movie I have heard of, and would seem to be fairer cluing.. though not on a Monday for chrissakes.
But I digress. The real marker for this puzzle, the real red flag, is AMER. I filled that in and immediately drew an unfavorable conclusion about the constructor's intelligence. Which, before you send hate mail, I fully recognize is a BS reaction. I am human and I have faults, and one of those faults is a very low tolerance for this sort of stupidity in my puzzle. Oops I did it again.
"If you can't say something nice..." -- ok ok I liked ANDORRA in there. TOBLERONE was good. ACME. KIMCHI is great, but unfortunately marred by one of the worst dupes I've ever seen.
Here's hoping for a good Tuesday.
First! Agreed, Rex, this was a stinker of a Monday and far too late for Easter. That said, I made a fresh batch of hot cross buns yesterday with the caveat that, ecclesiastically speaking, it is still the Easter Season, so who am I to talk...
What jumped right out of the grid and into my left nostril: KIMCHI. Lordy, that stuff is . . .pungent. I spent a few days in Pusan, Korea and it was ubiquitous. Like many odoriferous items it just blended in after a few hours. But man, until then it was brutal.
Had a hard time with ON ACID. Maybe since I never indulged in that particular alterer of reality.
Never heard of ICHIRO since I do not follow sports. Crosses were fair, except for my brain fade ON ACID.
Lived through Watergate, blanked on RODINO.
I say let’s GET CRACKING and TRY TO have some COCOA TO GO, and a TOBLERONE in EAST LA.
TSK TSK, MR T and Red ADAIR LIE. Bad DEEDS.
The only nauseating answer in the whole puzzle was EAST LA since it wasn’t clued by a Cheech & Chong reference. I protest!
Fun, easy, on to Tuesday we go.
Mark, in Mickey’s North 40
Medium-tough. We’re currently watching “Kim’s Connivence” on Netflix. One of the characters is KIMCHEE. It’s a CBC series set in Toronto. Delightful and very funny.
Didn’t know 21A ICHIRO, didn’t know 28A RODINO, didn’t know 47A SECASA, didn’t have to, they all self filled.
We have some new young chickens and they lay the cutest, little blue eggs, I almost feel guilty eating them.
No love lost on KIM Kardashian, but I do love KIMCHI, always have a jar of it in the fridge. Puzzle partner always moves to another part of the house when I’ve been snacking on it. Sissy.
I think the only name I knew in this was KIM Kardashian, and then I second-guessed myself on KIMCHI because I thought, "No... there's absolutely no way" so I left it blank until I could see from the fill that it had to be KIMCHI. But yeah, Peter RODINO? Nope. Alexander PAYNE, no. I'm still not sure I get the clue for ADAIR (oh, wait, I just googled it, how the hell would I have heard of this person?!). I have lots more I could complain about. Overall, a very unpleasant Monday puzzle.
My late night comment was apparently lost. I said Rex misconstrues the theme. Get cracking is used to mean hop to which means the missing letter has hopped to the line above. The revealer does not represent a cracking of an egg. Probably would have been clearer if the clue and answer had been reversed. Also said, if Rex used the news as his frame of reference rather than old crossword puzzles he would have to know Rodino since he has often been invoked during coverage of the Mueller investigation.
There are two descriptions in this puzzle about what is going on in the theme. Not only GET CRACKING, but also "Hop to it", which is in the reveal's clue, and what you literally do, going from the beginning to the end of the circled letters. "Hop to it" was as much a reveal as GET CRACKING, and seeing it in a clue rather than in the grid, was something different, just as having a theme that called for two reveals was something different. This gave the puzzle an out-of-the-box feel that I liked.
Having the gap in the circled letter words did kind of feel like cracking an egg to me, where the eggshell pulls apart but is still connected at the top.
This puzzle gave new solvers a good lesson -- that even if you don't know an answer, even if it is nowhere in your brain, that you can still get it (through the crosses). I teach new solvers in a crossword solving class I teach at UNCA, and can tell you that they often think that if you don't know an answer, you don't have a chance of completing the puzzle. Here all the tough names (OLAF, ADAIR, ICHIRO, RODINO, SECADA, PAYNE) were crossed fairly and skillfully, IMO. For instance, ISAAC, which comes into RODINO and SECADA is clued in a very gettable way.
I couldn't help but notice that the KKK row (fourth from the bottom) is launched from TSK TSK.
Totally agree with Rex....my major issue is the proper names for a Monday combined with awful fill (ill concievced theme ranks low for me). I am somewhat of a political junkie and (not surprisingly) I have been reading up on my impeachment history lately. If I even came across that name (which I’m not sure I did), RODINO would not rank high on the list of historical figures from the scandal. SECADA (who?!?!), Red ADAIR (like Rex, only know from crosswordese), NATE (again, not a widely known person except among more nerdy circles, but at least inferrable from the crosses).
Theme, didn’t even really look to the end and I’m sitting here scratching my head now trying to figure out how this puzzle made it out of the womb.
You want sad? I'll show you sad: that my fellow solvers (presumably of higher intelligence) are so ignorant and dismissive of one of the true heroes of the 1970s, Rep. Peter Rodino. Without Rodino, Nixon might have skated through the Watergate mess. Does "I'm just a country lawyer" Sen. Sam Ervin of North Carolina bring equally blank stares? Now I understand why we are in the mess we are in today. People don't read or learn from history. Shameful and scary.
I was astounded that because of all of those strategically crossed proper names I nearly DNF. On a Monday? I actually needed the theme answers to complete my grid. Geez.
Besides all of Rex's complaints, which I agree with, there was the crossing of IMO & TMI. Then the pairing of Can you? Try to.
I didn't appreciate the razor company bringing that nauseating commercial to mind at my breakfast table either.
I couldn't parse On acid because I saw On a ___.
As usual, @ Lewis has a half-full attitude but I can't do it.
Is Will getting so desperate for puzzles that we get stuff like this?
HOW CAN ANYBODY NOT KNOW RODINO... the guy who saved our country from a Constitutional crisis... those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. If you are among these, put down your puzzles, turn off your sports channels, and go read some Watergate history. People need to understand why the times we are living through right now are so scary. Do it.
OK, end of rant. I find myself in the Out Crowd today, loving the puzzle and admiring the theme. Which, by the way, can be a command to the eggs/chicks inside, not to a person, so the DINOSAUR one makes perfect sense. Easy puzzle even for a Monday, but it had some great answers. Mainly TOBLERONE. Now my brain is full of thoughts of chocolate and nougat, so I’ll just say More please and thanks for this one.
Agree that this is the worst Monday puzzle I can remember. There was absolutely no joy and no "aha" answers. I guess a few names are okay, but Olaf, Gaea, Adair, Ichiro, MrT, Sri, Rodino, Andy, Sealy, Leif, Togo, Secada, Kim, Kent, Nate, Andorra, Payne, Isaac, Roe, Kane and Lee? That is 21 names in a puzzle and shows that the constructor was not creative at all. Of course I knew enough of them to finish, but I had to get lucky on Crit crossing Adair. I don't even know what Lit Crit is.
Just horrible.
I solved this in PuzzAzz (heading home tonight) and got gray squares instead of circles. I despise circles. The gray squares are so much better to look at.
@Lewis is correct, “hop to it” makes this theme representation work. I found the theme about perfect for a Monday. As for the names, I didn’t even realize some of them were in the puzzle. I’ll grant Rex’s point on RODINO/NEC, but even that one is saved by DI-OSAUR being a third cross. Rex is probably right on the fill, but enjoying the theme always helps one be bothered less by drecky fill. In short, I liked this puzzle.
Sunday Potential Spoiler - don’t click on the link if you have not solved yesterday’s puzzle
@Token Millennial - Thursday April 25 BEQ puzzle - which several of us “solved” yesterday).
I liked the theme, but this went much slower than usual. Nothing really hard, but I couldn’tg get any momentum going.
Wow, what a horrendous puzzle. Agree with the Rex bashing. This should've been sent back as a "No". Is Will ON ACID? At least change the KIM dupe, for goodness sake. TRY TO make the eggs and the theme make some kind of sense.
I think Will is CRACKING. The puzzles used to be consistently good, now they're consistently SHARt.
RODINO, PAYNE, SECADA and that ridiculous clue for EASTLA are all Saturday-appropriate – if that.
But the rest of the puzzle was sub-Monday easy, so I guess it evens out.
Better clue for 27A: ___ Jayawardenepura Kotte
(And history lesson for Rex – Nixon was never impeached.)
@Klazzic (and @BarbieBarbie to a lesser extent) - The plaint isn’t with RODINO per se, it is with having a representative who’s been out of office 30 years and dead nearly 15 in a Monday puzzle. House Judiciary Chairs, even ones during significant political crises, come somewhere below Speakers, Senate Majority Leaders, Vice Presidents, and Presidents in their crossworthiness. Also, for anyone born after about 1970, Watergate is history, not lived experience, and the role of House Judiciary Chairs is far less memorable than, say, the derringer-do of reporters and the intrigue around secret tape recordings. Would we be better off if Pelosi and Schumer followed the footsteps of RODINO? Probably. Is pointing out that he and ICHIRO may cause Monday solvers problems a harbinger of the end of civilization? Not so much.
Just noticed I mucked up my links in my first comment. The link for @Token Millennial
My reply to @JC66 was cut -
@JC66 - Crossing rugby and country western music does seem unfair. {a reference to the puzzle I did manage to link to}
I come not to praise this puzzle but 3 names defend.
ICHIRO: He was a NYY. This is the NYT. He is assumed to become a first ballot Hall of Faamer in 2025 by everyone.
ADAIR: Famous whenever an oil well fire was in the news up thru the first Gulf War. Jonn Wayne played him in the movies.
RODINO: Chaired the House Watergate Hearings and ran the House impeachment hearings. Did it so well that his name did not become famous enough, I guess.
Better Tuesday-Wednesday names? Maybe just barely.
Tirade worthy? BS.
Rex is spot-on. This is an awful, esoteric trivia-laden disaster. Easily the worst puzzle of 2019 so far. Oh well, on to the LA Times . . .
I would much rather here from beginners than experts reviewing this puzzle, but I certainly felt it would put off any new solver(that lacked someone like Lewis cheering them on). The difficult level seemed to me more appropriate for a Tuesday. Even the theme was a little tough to fathom. I misinterpreted it (as did others) and had to be set straight by some of the comments here. Perhaps there is a lack of Monday puzzles in the queue. Unless one knows the answer to that question, one should avoid aiming too much invective towards Mr. Shortz.
I don't enjoy PPP much, so I didn't much enjoy the puzzle. But ignoring the day of the week on which it appeared in print, it seemed to me no worse than many other puzzles. I don't mean that as damning praise. If some liked the puzzle (even a minority), its publcation is appropriate.
I have fewer problems with this puzzle and theme than a lot of the grumpy primates this morning, but I did think some of the names were better suited of a later-in-the-week edition.
There were a couple I didn't know and more that I did, but I suspect this is an age thing, and I do have an age thing. So be it.
I'm also annoyed by the "this happened before I was born, can't know it" attitude. Really? Stop and think about that.
Mr. Kingsley made a puzzle that he hoped people would enjoy, and I, for one, did just that. Thanks AK.
My eggs don't jump up when I crack them. My eggs plop down. Just saying.
And so I was trying to guess what I would have to do to eggs to make them bounce up. Flip them? Cook them sunny side UP? I gave UP. GET CRACKING came as a complete surprise, but not a satisfying one.
The result of the challenging (for the constructor) construction was a puzzle with very mediocre fill. Don't think there was enough of a payoff for the solver to justify the compromises that were made to accomplish it. And there were too many names. Very meh.
Surely Rex misspoke when he wrote that Nixon was impeached. Or did he?
Got as far as Red ADAIR and knew Rex would blow his top. Came here for the criticism. well-deserved in this case.
WTF were Shortz and company thinking running this at all, let alone on a Monday?
I was thinking, no way this is a Monday puzzle, but @Lewis’s point is well taken—the more obscure answers were all pretty gettable from crosses that were not at all obscure. Still didn’t like it much, but did get a bit of a smile from the hop-over-the-black-square design of the themers. @Rex’s wrath was a bit excessive IMO.
What with RODINO in the puzz and for the second day in a row heaps of (fairly well deserved) scorn coming from the commentariat, I was reminded of the wonderful phrase “nattering nabobs of negativism”, uttered by Nixon’s VP Spiro Agnew but created (if I am recalling correctly) by William Safire, a speechwriter in the Nixon administration who later became seriously venerated by x-word types of all political persuasions because of his long-running column “On Language” in the NYT magazine. He was one-of-a-kind, but we could certainly use more like him now.
I, too, am surprised that people don’t recall Rodino, a major figure in the whole Watergate drama. That was a gimme for me.
As to the theme, it is a bit confusing, and the “hop to” stuff people are mentioning seems plausible. I took the theme to mean “get (understand) that the eggs are cracked — the eggs are cracked, get it?”
I knew Rodino right away. The Watergate hearings were major news for us older solvers. Just as we need more up to date clues, it’s good to have some from the past. IMO.
If this is a Monday puzzle deemed worthy of publication as is, I shudder to think what rejected grids must contain!
Apologies: I posted this accidentally on the Sunday blog:
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!
WRT RODINO, since when does one have to have lived through a moment in history to understand what happened or who was involved?
Skewed really old, so the names were right in my wheelhouse. Ha! But the theme was a dud that I didn’t bother with. And yes, Kim and Kimchi in the same puzzle was a bit much. Scary to agree with Rex.
Rex, history didn’t begin when you were born. Peter Rodino played an important part in the greatest constitutional threat in America (until now).
Hey All !
Hop to it and GET CRACKING. Missed Easter Monday a bit.
Some tough names for a MonPuz. My memory has been shot as long as I can remember (wrap your brain around that one), so add me to the list who doesn't know ADAIR, RODINO, NATE. Did know SECADA. Reverse of Neil Sedaka. Also knew ICHIRO, although did have to wait on the second I. He had his first name, which is ICHIRO, on his uniform instead of Suzuki. Knew the other names also. ANDORRA toe sounds like a Sci-fi made-up place.
Quick fix to get rid of JIM squared, change GAMBLE to DOABLE. Result:
TODO
SHORE
KIA
TOBL
SALE
KNEE
Easy. :-)
Two F's, nice. Actually had two writeovers, Split-SHARE, bCc-bCS-CCS. Who can keep up with all the CNET NEC abbr. stuff. TMI.
DOC DOS
RooMonster
DarrinV
To Orthodox Christians today is Easter Monday so I guess egg cracking has some relevance.
@Anonymous 8:42
I can guarantee there are better puzzles that pass through the NYT's puzzle editorial desk than this. This was a FETOR pile.
@Klazzic, Every single person in the country could know RODINO's name, but that would not mean we would not be in the mess we are in. Knowing his name is not the same as understanding what Watergate was, what led to it, what it said about our democracy at the time, what happened in response, what perhaps should have happened in response...The names of players is not what is important in history in terms of learning from our past--the events/causes/factors...that is what is important. RODINO does not belong in a Monday puzzle. Sure, his name could have become a lasting household name, but it didn't.
Other names in the puzzle, other than KIM, also problematic, as has been said.
I didn't see the clue for AMER until I started reading comments and went back to look. That's just awful.
This just didn't feel like a Monday puzzle....one my daughter might enjoy or my 80 plus, next door neighbor. When ICHIRO met up with RODINO I thought uh oh, not boding well.
My thought after seeing the GET CRACKING reveal and looking at the various egg layers was...why would anybody want to crack a DINOSAUR egg.....Circles and shades of gray invading my brain.
The theme was ok and I'm certainly glad It Didn't Run On Easter. Maybe it should've been for breakfast.
Speaking of...two goodies here - at least for me: KIMCHI and TOBLERONE. I have a very good Korean friend (who is quite possibly the funniest person on this earth) who calls KIMCHI Korea's finest perfume. Thanks to her, I finally tried it in pancakes. I don't like fermented anything because I don't like the word fermented, and cabbage and garlic mixed together tend to make a green vapor like AURA hang over your head and the smell is AKIN to watching KIM Kardashian in anything. Anyway, I tried it in pancakes and it was delicious. @chefwen and I can chase down the fraidy cats. TOBLERONE doesn't smell. A Christmas in the sock must.
ANDORRA is a wonderful place to go skiing....the people are very nice and so is the food. I just finished a book about SRI Lanka called "Anil's Ghost" and it made me sad - just like all the news today about that once beautiful country. IRAN reminds me of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and thinking of Gatsby.
Crossing fingers for a smile or two Tuesday.....
Have I told you how much I hate Auto-Correct (Auto-Corrupt)?
Changed my KIM squared to JIM. Rrrrr...
And my though to toe.
Proofread much? Har.
RooMonster
As above, so I sobbed. Ichiro?! Rondino?! And I need a shower after a Kardashian reference in the NYT crossword (please spare us here from those poseurs)
How can a crossword get so many people in a dither, if not outraged?
I'm not the only one complaining about the plethora of names in this puzzle. And when you have so many that perhaps can't be avoided without completely redoing the grid, it's your job to make sure you don't add even more unnecessarily. Here are some answers that could have been clued in a way that didn't add to the pile-up of trivia:
FOUR (9D) -- Leave the Ninja turtles out of it.
DOC (54A) -- Leave Disney and the dwarfs out of it.
HER (5D) -- Leave the movie title out of it.
TOGO (44A) -- Clue it as TO GO and leave the country out of it.
LEE (63D) -- Clue it as a protected area and leave Ang out of it.
This wouldn't have made the puzzle good. But it would have made it better.
OK. Maybe not on Monday. But ... how could any citizen of the USA not have heard of Pete Rodino? He was a MAJOR player of the Nixon mess. And even today, Red Adair I hear mentioned on tv news from time to time. He is a legendary fire-fighting character, known worldwide for his skills and daring. The sad truth is more people know comic book heroes than know real heroes.
@Z
re: My late comment yesterday.
Yo did know I was joking, right?
@Oopsydeb, I lived through Watergate, read all of the subsequent books and still had to pull Rodino from the very depths of my brain. So I agree with you, he isn't well known to a range of people today. Neither are a second tier rapper from the 90s or an actor who was in a sci fi cult class from 25 years ago, but there you have it. There are few names we all know and many are worked into puzzles every week.
The nature of the beast.
No time to read the comments yet; had to deal with a dog with "digestive problems" this morning, and have to leave the house in 30 minutes. I liked it more than @Rex, at least. To me, KIM KIMCHI KENT was a little flourish, not a problem, though I would have liked Kick for the third one even more. And although I've never worked in the business, I know from the press that at one time Red ADAIR was your go-to guy if one of your oil wells caught fire. And a new way to clue OLAF! I hear those "unfortunate events" books are pretty good.
And the theme -- c'mon, it's a feature, not a bug, if you can use a word, e.g. "crack," with different meanings. All those egg-layers are actually sitting on a single black square -- the egg (I know, DINOSAURs didn't do that, but hey); and what would you do with a bunch of eggs but crack them for an omelet. I do agree that 3 birds and one reptile make a bad mix--there must be a five- or seven-letter insect out there that would work.
It would have been more fun if we hadn't been told we were looking for eggs, specifically -- but maybe too hard for a Monday, I don't know.
ACME has been popping up a lot in recent puzzles (this time appropriately at the top); I keep wishing she'd pop up here with a comment or two.
That's it for now -- will try to check back for the comments later.
In high school I had a social studies teacher with an "I hate students" attitude who celebrated wrong answers given in class by pointing at the student and thundering "GOOSE egg!" This was totally opaque to me until years later when I learned it meant: "A zero for you!" Today, I felt it was the puzzle pointing at me with the same message. Just couldn't make sense of the theme. (@Lewis, I really tried :) )
I had the same thought as others that this would be a tough and discouraging Monday starter puzzle. I'm old enough to be an admirer of both Red ADAIR and Peter RODINO and devotedly watch the Oscars so knew Alexander PAYNE; for me, the "Are you kidding? On a Monday?" ones were ICHIRO and SECADA. Solidly in the winner's circle, though: TOBLERONE.
Clues sometimes do it, and answers do, too — but a whole dang puzzle failing the breakfast test?
Is there a Shorts-ian ban on Spike Lee? It's invariably clued 'Ang'.
My five favorite clues from last week:
1. Problem with more than one marriage? (6)
2. Business whose income is computed quarterly? (6)
3. It's more than a fling (5)
4. "Neat" (5)
5. Bushes are found on both sides of it (10)
BIGAMY
ARCADE
HEAVE
NOICE
CLINTONERA
@pmdm asked what beginners, not experts, thought about whether this was easy enough for a Monday. I'm not exactly a beginner but I'm far, far from an expert (I could show you the stats the website insists on keeping for my solve times to prove it), and I thought it was fun and easy enough. I get most names from crosses anyway, so SECADA and ADAIR didn't bother me: ICHIRO rang a faint bell once I had CHIR, although I still needed the crosses because I had no idea how to spell it. I'm old enough to remember dinner conversations about Sam Erwin while the Watergate hearings were going on; I guess RODINO wasn't as showy on tv. I gave myself a tiny pat on the back for knowing NATE Silver and Count OLAF.
As for the cracked eggs gimmick, I liked it because I figured it out early, it helped me solve the puzzle, and it was kind of cute. I enjoyed imagining a little backyard pen with ostriches, small dinosaurs, geese, and chickens, all happily laying eggs for my breakfast.
Awful. Please let's start the week over,
Almost half (42%) of the answers in this grid are proper nouns. That makes this more of a trivia contest than a crossword puzzle. Whatever happened to wordplay?
To make matters worse, my copy of the puzzle featured shaded squares instead of circles. In what world is a string of shaded squares an “egg?”
My only aha! moment in solving this puzzle was the realization that ASTUDENTS was not an astronomical classification of celestial bodies in the solar system but rather a description of people in a classroom based on their test scores.
Just as @Lewis tracks the best clues of each week, someone should track the worst. I'd like to nominate AMER and its clue as the first entry.
@Alice:
Is there a Shorts-ian ban on Spike Lee? It's invariably clued 'Ang'.
Be thankful. Shortz/constructors can (will, given lead time) clue to Trump and Charlottesville being about the Fine People protesting the removal of R.E. Lee statue. Lee, BTW, was a traitor. Just like Trump. Have a nice day.
Hello, Amy Lundy here:Someone asked for comments from a beginner so here goes. I liked this puzzle as the egg theme delighted me and the cracking vs hopping debate I also find amusing as I had no expectation that anything need follow a theme of that nature. The comment from the teacher in this blog seemed spot on--That you don't have to know something to eventually get it. I have been checking Rex's blog and it is so helpful. Mostly I check it to learn what the theme means to see if my mystification is justifiable or not....love people's comments
Fun!
Sat next to Red Adair on a NY to LA flight....must have been upgraded to First Class. He gave me a little lapel pin with a burning oil well on it. Back then Texans used to put those pins on their stetsons. I still have it.
Have yet to try kimchi. It's on my culinary bucket list.
Puzzle was great fun.
Professor Rex's contempt for history never ceases to amaze.
@Joseph M - I count 33 of 78 PPP answers, but several of them were PPP because of their clues (DEEDS, for example). Since we both counted 42% but I didn’t count that many proper nouns “in the grid,” I’d be curious to see your list.
For those newer to the blog, PPP are Pop Culture, Product Names, and other Proper Nouns in the puzzle. Anything in excess of 33% tends to elicit the wheelhouse/outhouse effect, i.e. very easy for people who know the PPP, nearly impossible for people who don’t.
I am old, but also try to keep up, so knew all the names, except for OLAF. I guess my kids were before the Lemony Snicket books.
But I really came to defend LIT CRIT. In addition to being old, I mark my 30th year working in higher ed this fall, with another decade or so as undergrad/grad. It may be passe now, but Lit Crit was a pretty common shorthand back in the day, along with its sibling COMParative LITerature.
All of that said, I was more in agreement with OFL than usual, as I am normally am "oh, get over it" kind of guy.
Solved with only the downs, which spared me the annoyance of all those obscure names. Actually found it pretty easy that way. Saw the shaded squares spelled birds... No, egg laying things, cued by GET CRACKING... early on, but couldn't see why one square jumped. Agree it's a pretty weak effort.
I was also not a fan of three K words in a row. Needless, tactless, bad.
Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.
@Suzie. What is the issue with Gillette?
Bookmark, you are correct that Nixon was not impeached. The House Judiciary Committee voted on articles of impeachment but the full House did not. Nixon was warned that he would be impeached and that he would be convicted by the Senate, so he resigned before that could happen.
When I was living and working in South Korea in the 80's I had to take public transportation to and from different work sites. The first time I stepped onto a city bus in Seoul, I nearly fell backward! The stench was overpowering to this non-garlic eating foreigner. In self-defense, I started eating it morning, noon and night.
One of the regular sources was, of course, KIMCHI, which, along with fermented cabbage, had lots of raw garlic in it. Another was galbi (spell?) where you took a leaf of a dark green spinach-like veggie, a thin strip of fajita-like beef, and an entire clove of raw garlic, rolled it all up and ate it with a big grin on your face.
I never developed a fondness for KIMCHI, but did become a big garlic fan and still eat it regularly to this day. Cooking it does greatly reduce the breath-that-can-peel-paint effect. If you want to maintain a ten-foot radius personal space around you that no one will violate, without reeling backward, just it the stuff raw!
Bonus: Both ancient traditions and modern research support a number of health benefits of eating garlic.
I agree with OFL's low opinion of this feeble effort, but let's not forget that Peter Rodino as chair of the House Judiciary Committee (I think) helped save the country from Nixon. We need Rodino now, more than ever.
@Z I also counted 33, so we probably have the same list. Some of the entries in the grid were made proper nouns by their clues -- for example, "Her" as clued is part of a title. Ditto with "Crit." But no matter how you look at it, there are are a hell of a lot of proper nouns in this thing. It's a real PAYNE.
While solving, I noted everything Rex and others are complaining about today but I still liked the aha I got when I realized the cracked gray squares were all egg-laying creatures. As @Nancy points out, they really shouldn't be hopping up (though perhaps that's from the "Hop to it" part of the reveal). Eggs are laid so maybe they should plop down in the grid.
KIM CHI - I subscribe to the NYT Cooking app and just got emailed today a recipe for KIMCHI soup. Product placement in the grid?
The names made this a longer solve than average for a Monday (how did I miss hearing RODINO during the Watergate years? - I thought I knew all of the players from that era), but my only writeover was up top when I was thinking of Count Ivan rather than OLAF. I've never read the Lemony Snicket books but I loved the movie with Jim Carrey as Count OLAF.
Andrew Kingsley, I liked this idea.
If every Monday puzzle were like this one I'd never skip another. It made me wonder what I missed the last two weeks. Yes I'm in my 60s and have been solving for almost 30 years but the beauty of this puzzle was that I was forced to get the unknown names just like any beginner would, by working around them and using the crosses. RODINO and SECADA were complete unknowns. DOI was my final entry.
What Mr. Kimgsley has done is bring the kind of quality he puts into a themeless puzzle to the Monday slot. It's better to learn obscure entries from an early week puzzle where the crosses can help you than on a Saturday where it's likely to cause a frustrating dnf. These entries may stick out like sore thumbs on a Monday but that just makes it all the more likely that you'll be able to come up with that spark of recognition when you've forgotten them and they show up in a late week puzzle where the crosses aren't such a help.
Rather than a thinking about this puzzle as something that would discourage a beginner it should be viewed as exactly the kind of Monday a beginner needs.
Per Sunday's comments, thank you to @runs with scissors and @Aketi for your support.
NEC originally stood for Nippon Electric Company (Limited). Apparently shortened its name to "NEC" in 1983. (Per Wikipedia, the Fount of All Knowledge.) And Peter Rodino was incredibly well-known in 1974...not so much today. The more you know...
I'm not buying that the NEC cross with rodino is a Natick (says someone from Natick). The N stands for Niponese, which is frequently used for something from Japan. thus, if you have to guess a Japanese company, the N is intuitive. A true Natick occurs when you can't intuit the answer from any possible angle.
@HungryMother --
Did you know that there is a Hungry Mother State Park in SW Virginia. Named after a white settler who escaped captivity by Natives but died of starvation before being found by settlers.
Is this where you got your moniker, and if so what's the reason. If not, may I be so bold as to inquire where it's from.
Btw, the reason this came up is that I'm now reading a David Baldacci novel, and one of the characters was described as driving past the park, and the name connected with you.
I was in high school for Watergate and we talked about it every day, but I still couldn't remember RODINO till I had most of the downs. It didn't help that I had ash for the tree, and I couldn't get past dropping ACID. Thankfully I never saw the two KIMs - right next to each other!or the AMER as I got a lot of the puzzle just doing downs. Agree there were a couple of obscure names. (Looking at you ICHIRO and SECADA).
I liked the them a lot - felt enough like cracking to me. I didn't even see that they were all animals that lay eggs. I had shade not circles FWIW.
Yo, RooMonster
As said, Auto-correct and Spell-check are dangerous crotches to rely on.
I don't claim to be an ASTUDENT, but I'm tryin' to be.
I was a little slower than on some Mondays, having forgotten about Mr. RODINO, a man whose face I saw every day on TV, back in the day. But I just can't see the hate here. It was a competent puzzle and if I had realized "hop to it" was a signal that hopping up to a grey square would give me the name of an egg-laying creature, my time would have been faster (for some reason, I got GETCRACKING before understanding the trick fully).
I am not a Yankees fan, but I watch enough baseball to have gotten ICHIRO immediately. Geez, @Rex, don't you at least glance at the Times sports section? (I do, and go Warriors).
One more thing, if you crack an egg into a frying pan the shape you get looking from the side is pretty much what this puzzle's themers provide.
Another of Rex's "I've never heard of it so it can't be a legit clue" comments about "lit crit". At my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College, everyone taking literary criticism, called it 'LIT CRIT'.
@AnotherAnon/1:50
Yeah, but the criticism of the clue/answer is the such a class/course is rare outside of the Ivies/Seven Sisters. All aren't just Sisters anymore, right?
This was the worst Monday puzzle in forever. I hated it.
I am increasingly astounded by how many people don’t know who Peter Rodino was. Henry Ford said, “History is bunk,” and it has been known for many decades that Americans are terrible at history, including their own. But of course, those who don’t remember history, are condemned to repeat it. The American ignorance of history, specifically of the Nixon horror, is what gave us Trump. The American ignorance of the history of Vietnam is what gave us Iraq and Afghanistan and the never-ending War on Terra. History doesn’t repeat, as the saying goes, but it does rhyme.
You don’t need to have been alive and awake, as I was, during the Nixon years to know who Peter Rodino was. I even recall what he looks and sounds like! But I also know all the names and political backgrounds of the people who engineered the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868, and I certainly am not THAT old! Also, as a reminder, Nixon was not impeached; under the aegis of Rodino, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, articles of impeachment were voted out for the full House to consider, but before the full House could vote on impeachment, Nixon, having learned he could not survive a Senate trial after impeachment by the House, resigned before the House could vote to impeach him.
C’mon, folks, read some history! I’m looking at you, Rex. ;-)
Hey Ol Timer
What about algebra, history, science book and French you took?
Try to see it my way, only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong
Maybe by being an "A" student, baby, I can win your love for me
I was born in East L.A.
In, out -- let's get cracking!
I ran, I ran so far away
Grazing in the grass is a gas, baby can you dig it?
I don't know -- I'd have to agree the theme architecture doesn't make sense, but on the other hand I like the puzzle's content, except for the blight that is 56a. That it's a little demanding for a Monday is okay by me.
I did not give the theme any thought during or after solving until I came here.
Now looking back at it, I have to say it's very neatly done. GETCRACKING = hop to it; the black square represents the crack in the egg; the center letter of the animal
represents the animal hopping out of the egg thru the crack; the shaded squares represent the egg. You may be said to be cracking the egg by solving the puzzle. Two eggs above and two eggs below the reveal, and all very symmetrically placed and very close to each other. The only flaw is that DINOSAUR has an even number of letters, and thus is not perfectly symmetrical as the others. But as has been pointed out he was the odd man out.
Take a look at the puzzle. Handsomely done theme.
And it's interesting to learn that GAIA has an alternative spelling GAEA and that, new to me, the Roman equivalent, Terra, is also called Tellus which is not just a spelling difference but a historical difference as well. Maybe everyone knew but me.
I thought the theme was simple and cute. About right for a Monday puzzle, so no complaints there. It could have been good for Easter, but it's still spring. Passover is only just past, so it still seems like the season for such celebrations.
There were quite a few answers I didn't know, mostly those already noted by others, but most cleared up promptly in the other direction.
I misspelled ToblArone briefly. I also wrote GaIa at first, but the potential mIteor straightened that out. (That was my last clue to solve, since the rest of the METEOR had filled in on the across clues, and I had thought the corner was done.)
There are two spellings for OLAF/Olav, but since the clue is a book reference, this is more a knowledge test than a guess-the-spelling. If you do know that it's one or the other, then you're 75% of the way there, which is pretty good for a reference to something you haven't read. If you caught one of the screen adaptations, then not knowing how to spell the character names is a frequent consequence of that. (It's also worth noting that OLAF is the far more popular spelling in English usage, and has also come into play in other recent popular media.) You could argue that the book series is too obscure for a Monday puzzle, which I can't judge, but to me it seems less obscure than some others on this grid.
I think we all said "Pete" Rodino, not Peter at the time.
I see @old timer already channeled Sam Cooke. Great minds...
I saw the clue “hop to it” before I sussed out GET CRACKING so I saw the dinosaur and the birds as having a hop in their names.
@jberg, birds are descendants of feathered dinosaurs and both are descendants of reptiles.
The latest LATTE art that my now favorite cafe offered me looked like a bird, but not one of those featured in today’s puzzle.
I finally got over the fact that PHD in EnglishRex never read The Great Gatsby until about three years ago and now he has to tell us that he has never heard the term "lit crit". I have to say that this is one of my favorite Rex rants ever.The Nixon "impeachment"; relating historical importance to the last time a name appeared in the nyt puzzle;" why would anyone crack a dinosaur egg? I'm with you Rex. Hell,Sam Ervin has been dead for 32 years. Patrick Henry ,whoever he was, for 220. Voltaire kicked in 1778. Does anyone raise their hand in the comic book class and say "Hey I was 4 when this Batman came out ! WTF ?"
@davidm -- "The American ignorance of history, specifically of the Nixon horror, is what gave us Trump."
I disagree with half of that sentence. I agree that ignorance of history, particularly the history of autocratic regimes (Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Franco Spain, Mussolini's Italy, etc., etc.) and of the experience of countries run by grifters and crass buffoons (Italy's Berlusconi), helped give us Trump. But I among Americans I wouldn't blame so much Nixon, who behaved differently. Rather, the line runs from Spiro Agnew (Nixon's V.P.), through Newt Gingrich, cheered on by Faux News, that gave us Trump.
I'm on the "good god, how do you not know Peter Rodino?" side of the divide here. He was to 1974 what Jerry Nadler is right now, if things go way further in Judiciary and past that. You'll all be sitting here thinking that Nadler's name will live forever -- and then, I guess, be shocked by your descendants who see him in a 2060 puzzle and scream about how obscure he is.
And I'd like to put in a word for Alexander Payne, who's been Oscar-nominated for best film/director/screenplay for Sideways, The Descendants and Nebraska, winning screenplay for the first two. He also wrote-directed Election and About Schmidt. He's one of the premier directors of this millennium. How is he more obscure than Ang Lee? (Who's also pretty great.)
I listen to my Secada album every 17 years.
@QasiMojo
Good one.
Play it LOUD and drone-ful.
What years hatch do you have?
I think Rodino wasn't as high profile as Sam Ervin because Ervin's committee hearing s were televised every night.It was can't miss viewing for anyone with a political interest.Say around with friends every night, smoked the weed,and watched the drama play out (we were all early twentys). All the interest was in what was said in the Oval Office. Then a guy named Butterfield says "Why don't you just check the tapes?" Whaaaat!!! There's tapes ?? Beginning of the end for Tricky Dick.
@Americans
Plausible theory. Maybe throw in a some Ollie North. Agnew's corruption was mostly old-fashion state level graft. Strangely, the idea that a president could not be indicted was one of the prices that was paid to be able to get rid of Agnew before getting rid of Nixon.
@davidm -- "The American ignorance of history, specifically of the Nixon horror, is what gave us Trump."
The Republican Party, except at the beginning under Lincoln, has always been white racist. Hell, they even hated Italians and Irish and Germans when those immigrations were peaking. Don't you be no Pope lover!! Trump didn't take over the GOP, he is their Pied Piper. The nastiest immigration restrictions of the 20th century came from GOP administrations; you can look it up. So, it's a Rhyming Simpleton.
@Anon 3:30
Who's Jerry Nadler?
Seriously, I don't know him or RODINO because I don't watch news. It's too stressing and depressing. In my case, ignorance is bliss.
And Trump came to be because Republicans hate anything-Democrat. Any Republican thinks that the Democrats are wrong and hate Americans and America. Ask one, you'll see.
Just sayin'.
Roo
This is one of my two Watergate memories, and my mom had to explain the other one to me at the time (Barry Goldwater and two other guys leaving the White House looking really grim). Peter Rodino’s voice vote, given last, as the first article was adopted, and then again as he turned it over to be sent to the floor. His face looked so sad and his voice sounded so grief-stricken. I will never forget that. Here it is so the young ‘uns can remember it too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxOhBa5IO9Y
-sorry, you need to cut/paste.
Oh, by the way. Back when I cared about this kind of thing, if I made a point in a meeting and it was ignored, and then later a man made exactly the same point (maybe even using the same supporting information) and everybody agreed with him and started discussing it, I used to say “there’s an echo in here.” Which was a quote from Firesign Theater, so it made me happy, but it also served the purpose and generally worked well.
But I don’t care about that stuff now.
RODINO is certainly a lot more significant for American history than Alexander PAYNE.
I see nothing wrong with references to a wide range of decades of culture and history.
Would Secretary of State William Seward (just to pick a random example of a political figure of comparable importance to Rodino) be out of bounds just because no one who is contemporaneous with him could possibly still be alive?
Yeah, that was the day a great wheel of history turned, sealing the fate of Richard Nixon ... the first article of impeachment voted. And people don't remember who Peter Rodino was.
It saddens me, honestly.
Seward is a good example, but I’d pick good ol’ Thad Stevens, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, who helped engineer the impeachment of the despicable Andrew Johnson (who survived conviction in the Senate by a single vote in 1868) and who before that wrangled endlessly with Abe Lincoln over Lincoln’s temporizing about slavery, and who long before that — back to the 1830s! — was a supporter of full civil rights for African-Americans. As important a historical figure as Rodino was, Stevens was ten times more important, and yet I’d bet dollars to donuts that not one American in ten even knows who he was — and this despite the Spielberg film “Lincoln” in which he was so memorably dramatized, just about six years ago.
This is Stevens in the debate over the fugitive slave act, in 1850 (!)
“It is my purpose nowhere in these remarks to make personal reproaches; I entertain no ill-will toward any human being, nor any brute, that I know of, not even the [Democratic] skunk across the way to which I referred. Least of all would I reproach the South. I honor her courage and fidelity. Even in a bad, a wicked cause, she shows a united front. All her sons are faithful to the cause of human bondage, because it is their cause. But the North—the poor, timid, mercenary, driveling North—has no such united defenders of her cause, although it is the cause of human liberty ... She is offered up a sacrifice to propitiate southern tyranny—to conciliate southern treason.”
You go, Thad! Tell us how ya really feel, why don’t ya! :-D
I had the last 3 letters and so wanted it to be KRAKEN (do they lay eggs? Who cares?!), but alas, it was not to be. I agree with @rex, the theme isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I knew Peter Rodino right away, and LIT CRIT was well known to me in college in the early 80s. I found the puzzle easier than OFL, but just as bad. Bleh.
Hey @oldtimer and @JoeDiPinto-
From reading through the commentary, we can all be pretty sure that we're sad that most 'muricans
Don't know nothin' 'bout nothin' at all...
Great, great song. BTW, James Taylor does a very nice job on it too.
@pabloinnh -- yes, most 'muricans look at the pictures and turn the pages.
I have the 45 with James Taylor trio-ing with Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon (each sings a verse). I like that version too.
Song trivia: Herb Alpert is a co-writer.
I didn’t like this puzzle much either. But . . . as per who should know what, I was 14 when Nixon was impeached, and not only do I know who Peter Rodino was, I’ve always thought of him as an American hero. This is not some character from Game of Thrones, or a minor pop singer, or a lesser member of the Yankees, it’s someone with some real importance in history. Don’t brag about ignorance, Rex.
This was the first (of four) puzzles at the Canton CT tournament. It seemed hard for a Monday. RODINO was before my time and I'm sure I've seen TOBLERONE, but it was not coming to mind. Didn't spot ADAIR, and it probably wouldn't have presented much of a problem (which possibly means I've done too many puzzles)
Put me in the liked it and easy-ish column. I'm old enough to remember Watergate (I have a newspaper from the day Nixon resigned - also my son's birthday). As an older solver, this is revenge for the current musicians and rappers I don't know.
Crosses were fair and some of the clues made me scratch my head and reach back in memory. Good Monday for me.
KIM TOGO?
KIM?CHI don’t DO much, she got KNEE PAYNE.
CANYOU get HER a crutch, ANDORRA KANE?
--- ICHIRO SECADA
The laugh of the day belongs to @Quasimodo. The puzzle produced few smiles.
Okay, I can visualize the theme. You "CRACK" the black "egg," and the creature "hatches." It's murky, but it works...sorta. As to the fill, I'm afraid OFC said it all. One KIM is enough! And while those centrally located names may--or should--be recognizable, they hardly belong in a Monday grid. And most puzzling: shouldn't GAEA require a "(var.)" in the clue? GAIA is the MUCH more widely accepted spelling. That one nearly derailed me.
A line from an old song, "Wonderful World," has already appeared here. The opening line may also apply to the RODINO discussion:
"Don't know much about history."
How soon we forget. It's almost worth an upgrade to par, just to have this reminder. But the fill is just too ragged. EEK, we have an EKE! Bogey.
I’ve gotta admit I’m pretty much in OFL’s camp on this one. Eggs? Not even circles in squares, they’re shaded gray. This all seems rather obtuse.
ICHIRO is one of the greatest hitters of all time. Gotta know him just by accident, dontcha?
GILLETTE or Schick? Ginger or MaryAnn?
KIM K? No way. KIM Novak? Yeah baby.
Easy but kind of a SNORE.
GET CRACKING - "Hop to it". Works for me.
There were quite a few names here, but it was kinda gratifying to have Alexander PAYNE in there. I've seen three of his movies, and really liked them all. The crosses made none of the names impossible to get, in any case.
KIMCHI is definitely an acquired taste (and smell), and for me, KIM or any Kardashian are in the category of the NRA.
Not an execrable Monday.
Yes - I'm with @Rex today, too. Eggs? Really? And these particular people? On Monday? Not the best of picks, IMHO.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords, and Keeper of Monday Justness
Clever theme, gave me a smile when I got it. The rest of the puzzle not so much, mainly because of all the trivia quiz answers.
Sometimes I wonder if companies product-place clues and check their brand recognition by how many online solvers get it right.
[Solving in syndication, six weeks after the fact.]
I didn't like this puzzle, and not because of Peter Rodino — I remember him, and Sam Ervin, and Elizabeth Holtzman, and so on.
I had a different way of reading the theme: crack the egg containing the letter, and the letter falls into the pan (solid black, so cast iron, I guess). I took "the various eggs in this puzzle's circled squares" to refer to the circles with single letters that needed to be dropped into place. So why, I wondered, are all the other letters circled? Huh? What?
One reason I solve in syndication is that the puzzle's sense of what's cute or funny too often leaves me cold.
@GHarris : You're incorrect about the theme. You wrote
Get cracking is used to mean hop to which means the missing letter has hopped to the line above. The revealer does not represent a cracking of an egg.
but the clue reads
Hop to it ... or what to do to the various eggs in this puzzle's circled squares?
The clue is very clearly telling the solver to crack the eggs -- which is what some people do when they make breakfast, which is also when many solve the NYT puzzle -- and the bumped-up letter is indeed meant to represent the cracking of an eggshell.
I don't think "Hop to it" would have worked better as the reveal, but at least two of you did -- which says "Not a successful theme."
And: With so few women in NYT puzzles, it's irritating that LEE is never clued "Peggy" or even "Michele."
And: Rex, I was an English major (1979-83), and we referred to "lit crit" and sometimes "lit-crit shit."
Also, folks: Proper nouns, not proper names. Proper nouns vs common nouns.
[syndie solver, 6-10-19]
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