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Relative difficulty: Challenging (14:47, most of that in free fall, just staring at a bunch of nothing in the NW)
THEME: none
Word of the Day: Anna KARINA (48A: Anna who played Scheherazade in 1963's "Scheherazade") —
Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Bayer 22 September 1940) is a Danish-French film actress, director, writer, and singer. She rose to prominence as French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard's muse in the 1960s, performing in several of his films, including The Little Soldier (1960), A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Vivre sa vie (1962), Band of Outsiders (1964), and Pierrot le Fou and Alphaville (both 1965). For her performance in A Woman Is a Woman, Karina won the Silver Bear Award for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival. (wikipedia)
• • •
Let's see, maybe there are at least some funny wrong answers in here. Ooh, yeah, faced with -AGAN at 36A: Author of the 2011 political memoir "My Father at 100," I wrote in CARL SAGAN. My apple pie apples were SLICED. My Italian city or TORINO. My [Emphatic agreement] was something-SORRY (I read "emphatic" as "empathetic"). For [Split] I had IN HALF (courtesy of the "N" in TROUNCED, which was also wrong). El Alto was ANDORRAN for a little while before it became BOLIVIAN, so that's cute. Tried to make YESTERDAY fit at 39A: "When I was a kid..." ("YEARS AGO..."). SION (?) before BERN. IRIS before UVEA. OPINER (?!?!) before YELLER. TESTY and HASTY for TERSE (35A: Brusque). Oh, and I repressed one of the most tenacious wrong answers of all: BROTHERS at 1A: Fratty group (BOYS' CLUB). That NW ... getting the center of the grid does Nothing for you. Center gives me the MEG- in MEGASTORE, the YE- in "YEARS AGO...," the -GAN in REAGAN, but giving me the -ED in DERANGED is virtually no help. My gimmes today were awful and embarrassing. AD ASTRA. Like, I knew that. Just knew it. It's Not Good Fill. But I knew it. AERATED, same. TRICOLOR, gimme. ODEA, gimme. REALER, pretty much a gimme. A few other things were easy because I had letters in place. ARGENT off the A, GEEZER off the G. Gimmes didn't make me feel smart. Nor did taking this puzzle down, eventually. It all just felt like dental work. BOYS CLUB—that is the (marquee!) answer you should remember here.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. [One after another?] is ELEVEN because, written out, ELEVEN is "1" followed by another ... "1"
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
SW easy, NE and SE medium, @Rex NW very tough. Had this all done except for the NW which was blank. I too tried Brando, then put in OTOOLE and took him out only to put him back. Had DEmentED before DERANGED, iris before UVEA, Bro...before BOYS, orator before YELLER, tried Tibet and Peru before BOLIVIA...so tough. Liked it a lot more than @Rex did. Nice to have a tough Sat. after some of easier ones we’ve had recently.
ReplyDeleteI’m a lot closer to Jef Chen’s “Wow, did I enjoy this one!” than Rex’s “Hated this puzzle...” I rarely like highly segmented grids, and REALER was a groaner. But six Vs tickled me, and it was surprisingly clean overall. Relatively easy always makes a hard puzzle more appealing too: I finished in way under two Rexes, which is rare.
ReplyDeleteAnd I always like Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Bolivian.”
Even though I first put MensClub and Demented I got a Thursday time. Nice and easy Saturday.
ReplyDeleteI found this an extremely easy Saturday puzzle too. Northwest stumped me for a while but then just flowed.
DeleteThis puzzle started out hard until I got down to that middle section. Once I started there the solve went smoothly. The SE went in quickly with only a SALINE/SAILOR write over. After that it was the SW then the NE and finally (but no more difficult) the NW. No hold out sections just nice steady work with interesting material.
ReplyDeleteMy time was 28:11 a good portion of which was reading over the across clues for the upper half and having little luck. Skipping ahead to that easy center would have sped things up a lot but I was really savoring that feeling of this being a hard solve. Once the solve started the puzzle gave little resistance. When you know the start of the Kansas State motto by heart you know you've done your share of puzzles. ADASTRA ad nauseum.
I do not disagree with your dislike of such a segmented grid, and I don't disagree that some of the fill is old and --no, I have to keel: I finally finished a puzzle faster than Rex Parker did! Squee!
ReplyDeleteI also found the NW harder than the rest of the puzzle, but not onerously so. It helped that both ROLLOVER and ELEVEN were successful guesses.
I will push aside all my reservations about the uninteresting letters and the disappointing twentieth-century-ness of the answers (I spent 42 years in the twentieth century! Most of them pretty darn good!) and just gloat for the rest of the evening about my no doubt ephemeral uberRexity.
Ooof.
ReplyDeleteTo the extent I was blanking almost everywhere, then slowly making mistakes I held onto for way too long…what @Rex said.
Couldn’t get traction anywhere for all the money in the world, until I slowly saw things here and there.
I actually like the challenge of a segmented grid. They tend to work me harder than mundane open grids. I thought the cluing was difficult, yes, but what the heck. It’s Saturday. Liked BOYS CLUB, DERANGED ( I had DEHINGED – yeah, I had a WTF moment on that too) ONPAROLE, GEEZER, etc. Everything was legit.
About the only thing I’d object to is 26A. REALER? Yeah, it’s a word, but Holy Toledo, Batman.
One more day not in my outhouse.
YESIREE, DERANGED CATERERS ACTIVATE APATHY
Mark, in Mickey’s North 40
At least I'm not the only one spending a wild Friday night doing a crossword.
ReplyDeleteTo a patient, a DISC may be slipped. But I believe it's herniated to a doctor. IRIS before UVEA except after CORNEA.
ReplyDeleteI did not find the grid to be hateful. Exactly 1:00 slower than @Rex today -- maybe the full moon.
Or maybe because I did tomorrow's puzzle by accident tonight, when I meant to knock out an archived one from YEARS AGO before turning in. I'm solving in 2008 at the moment and never suspected this to be the current puzzle. I guess it's one for the ages.
I'm crawling out from under my rock to celebrate this puzzle for having only one Terrible Three. A record for me since I've been counting them. I think that Lewis once wrote that there was a puzzle once with none.
ReplyDeleteI have a general question...how many folks here actually send money to Rex for this blog? I was just curious
ReplyDeleteI've donated a couple of times. I'm a lurker... never commented before and don't read the blog regularly. I'm grateful this resource is here, though, when I want others' takes on a puzzle.
Delete25:10. Any time I'm under twice Rex's time, I feel I've done well. Oddly enough, I thought the NW was the easiest quadrant. I had it done before I even looked at the others. SW gave me the most trouble. Anna Karina? Really?
ReplyDeleteIf I hadn't thrown in Peruvian without a second thought, this would have been a lot easier than I made it. As it is, I liked it a lot better than anything else this week. Good job Mr. Adamick, I enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteAs a man, I found this manly puzzle to be quite easy. When I was done I scratched my nuts in triumph.
ReplyDeleteNo idea what's going on here, but I finished this puzzle just 10% slower than Rex's posted speed, rather than the usual double his posted time.
ReplyDeleteYes, this was one of those disconnected Saturdays, where you basically have to solve 4 mini-puzzles. C'est la vie. We can't expect an unobjectionably clever every Saturday, just something presumably difficult without self-consciously so
Anyway, despite getting ROLLOVER with no crosses and then LIVING through it, finished the NE first. Then the SE, back to the NW and finally SW.
Probably my biggest problem spot was trying to enter SEADOG rather than SAILOR, and slowly realizing, no, that won't work. Also had some trouble trying to enter ANTE rather than GENE for something in a pool. And although I had it from the start, I hated middle-of-the-ROADER.
I have no idea why Rex tried CARLSAGAN for 36A. That was one case where I got the center crosses (i.e., the -GAN) and entered the rest without thinking about it.
Anywho, medium.
Pretty much the same story here, except I went with PACINO and MILEHIGH which fit nicely with LIVING. Finally decided to stick BERN in there which gave me ----CLUB and the rest fell into place.
ReplyDeleteIt took two of us, but we finally KRANKed this one out after a very, slow start in the NW. O’TOOLE, LIVING and BERN gave us the boost we needed. Once we filled a few of the longer answers we picked up the pace considerably.
ReplyDeleteOur apples were sliced and seeded before we finally decided to PEEL them. DOH!
Another groaner here with REALER. I had the two E’s in place and thought “Oh please don’t be REALER”, Jon filled the rest in and I got to say “UGH”.
Have to love a puzzle created by a guy with our last name, pronounced the same, but spelled a skosh different.
It was definitely a challenge for me. Spent the first 10 or so minutes staring at an empty grid. Could not get a single clue. At first. Then I remembered the Helen Keller quote, and I was able to work the downs off that. I also thought the northwest was toughest, but the southwest was also tough. Lots of staring followed by a flash of inspiration which occasionally proved accurate.
ReplyDeleteUnsurprisingly, I liked the puzzle a lot more than Rex did. The segmentation didn't annoy me at all, felt like I was getting four mini-puzzles. I thought it was a good Saturday puzzle.
Super easy for me, surprisingly. Fueling up for a 5K this morning. I hope my run is about 2 minutes slowier than my solve time.
ReplyDelete@rex -- My killer corner was the SW.
ReplyDeleteYes yes yes. The challenge of the four islands. Sixty word grid with hardly a whiff of junk. Some gorgeous cluing (ELEVEN, ATTICS, DISC). A puzzle that kept me on my toes to the end, until the last island was complete.
So much drama and delights within a square of squares. This was one of the special ones. Thank you very much, Kevin!
@Lewis—just did your fine puzzle! The full meaning of the revealer’s second word didn’t dawn on me until 20 minutes later—Brilliant!
DeleteEveryone else—it’s today’s puzzle for the Universal syndicate. Go find it!
Only 3 minutes slower than Rex. Cool! I liked the puzzle. Or I guess you could say I enjoyed finally cracking it-
ReplyDeleteFor me it was the SW that was the nightmare section. I had CLOGS for the shoes that were water hazards--think pipes--and didn't question it for a very long time. That made most of the downs there impossible to see, even though RON REAGAN was a near-gimme. Wound up with almost exactly the same time as Rex, probably a third of it spent in that quadrant.
ReplyDeleteAgree with Rex 100% today. Knew this would be a downer as soon as I saw the grid. And it was.
Peter O'Toole came to mind immediately, and made that quadrant an easy solve. No real problems anywhere. Once again Rex shows that if it isn't in his personal wheelhouse it must not be any good. At least he didn't hit us with some phony understated solve time today.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I’m a glutton for punishment but I really like segmented grids. And when my time is just a few seconds longer than Rex’s I feel like a genius. Usually my time is three times longer. Not that I care about lengths of time. This is no sword fight. It’s just to point out how easy I found this one. And how much fun. It was dead center in my wheelhouse. I guessed BRETHREN for the fratty bunch but it seemed too formal for the clue. I then threw in BARBED however and was off to the races. I was slightly wary of 2D because I was thinking it had to be LEDGER whose portrayal of the Joker I’m told was REALER than Cesar Romero’s. The little I’ve seen of it turned me off big time. But as I am always disliking immensely popular performances, not on purpose mind you, I was delighted to see OTOOLE fall in to place. His was a brilliant performance everyone can agree on. According to some site online, Brando turned down the role. I’ve always found him an overrated actor. At least OTOOLE didn’t take himself too seriously. Anyway, count me among the admirers of this old-fashioned word fest. A GEEZER gala. Decaying Teeth, Slipped Discs. Cloven feet. Apathy. Dog tired. And worst of all UNLADE. Makes you grateful for small pleasures like this puzzle before having to ROLL OVER prior to being SENT OVER for good.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRex hated the puzzle because he had to stare at blank space for several minutes, which I think is a normal solving experience for most of us. I thought the difficulty level was medium for a Saturday, 21 minutes for me. It usually takes me 3 or 4 times longer than Rex, so I think he was just having an off day.
ReplyDeleteThis was my favorite type of puzzle, where the first pass through the clues only gives me a couple of entry points, and I have to build it out from there.
ROLL OVER
ReplyDeleteSENT OVER
NEATER REALER ROADER CATERER(S) YELLER GEEZER HECKLER(S) ORDER(S)
This week has been, cumulatively, easier than any other week I can recall. I miss the days when you actually had to work at solving the puzzle. Today was the hardest of the week and it felt like a Wednesday.
Loved this puzzle! Like doing four separate puzzles, as mentioned by others. I don't time myself, but had to be one of my faster Saturdays. I've been reading this blog for years and there is definitely a pattern, when Rex struggles with a puzzle he tends to pan it. Any puzzle he can't speed through is a bad puzzle.
ReplyDeleteYou are a sourpuss, Rex. This was tough but fun.
ReplyDeleteIt was indeed tough, and fun — as much fun as a puzzle can be, that is, with nary a Game of Thrones, or Harry Potter, reference. An egregious absence of rappers weakened it substantially (and would the inclusion of a “Glee” cast member, or a star soccer goalie, have *killed* the obviously male constructor or his aged, lackadaisical editor?)
DeleteI liked the puzzle more than Rex, in that it seemed to me intelligent. But perhaps it needed some editing or "supervision"--i.e., it could have been moved to another day. I found it very, very easy for a Saturday. The several "misdirections" were clever enough, but since we were all looking for them anyway, once they were understood the cluing became a little too obvious, at least for a Saturday.
ReplyDeleteAnon. i.e. Poggius
had unhinged before deranged, and in a row for eleven ugh
ReplyDeleteMy fastest Saturday ever, a third as long as yesterday's. One of the few times I've ever been faster than you, and at 8:55 it was way faster.
ReplyDeleteMenSCLUB and bEsottED pretty much trashed the NW for a long time for me. The rest was crunchy but doable. And I ended up at under two Rexes on a Saturday, which is a PR! The segmented grid made it four toughest Minis, which for me is faster than one Midi.
ReplyDeleteMaybe REALER was a gimme, but it’s still icky. I was hoping it was wrong as I wrote it in.
Whoa, KARINA crossing ROSEANNE. Now there’s a strange juxtaposition.
Yes, the segmentation made it tough but it’s Saturday. This was filled with tough answers that were easy (like, Oh! Yeah!) when you got them. I thought it was beautiful, and a very satisfying solve. Finishing each segment gave me a nice feeling of accomplishment. I had peruVIAN for awhile but once I took that out the NW came together. The SW was the last to fall for me. Once again my prediction of Rex’s response is 1000% wrong. How could anyone not like this puzzle?
ReplyDeleteWhile I find segmented puzzles generally hard, this fell in under 2x Rex which as others have pointed out is a good benchmark. Also agree with others that NW was hardest quadrant. SAline for SAILOR for awhile. Cluing reminded me of Patrick Berry which is my highest compliment. Clue for ELEVEN my favorite. Fine Saturday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteNW very tough, until I remove BRANDO. Loved the clue on one after another. Happy to finish without help
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit surprised at how many of the bloggers above keep track of their solving time. Is it because one of their objective in solving the puzzle is to do it speedily, or is it just to know how long it took relative to their normal day-of-the-week times? Probably a mixture of both, I guess.
As for me, I just enjoy the process, taking my time. I have no idea how long it took me to do this one.
As usual for a Saturday, I had a few consultations with Professor Google ... Tivoli, Crocs, RonReagan, Roseanne, Bolivian ... Oh, well, on to Sunday, my favorite day.
Nice puz, I think less accomplished solvers will not finish it.
ReplyDeleteI knew Rex would go into this with a bad attitude as soon as I saw the clue for 1A. No matter what the answer ended up being, it had one of his triggers in it. I'm so glad he didn't fail me. Such drama!
ReplyDeleteI started in the middle of the grid hoping to get a solid start and that really helped.
Medium difficulty but better than medium fun.
Loved the clue for eleven.
Good to see you @JOHN X. Yes, a puzzle made for you. Make yourself all
cozy while I get you a sandwich and a beer.
How did I know Anna Karina? No clue except I probably saw her movies years ago.
ReplyDeleteCarl Sagan published a book about his father 15 years after he died? Quite a trick, that.
Yep, 4 mini-puzzles. NE first, then NW, SW, and finally, excruciatingly SE, where the A drive finally helped me crack it.
Realer, meh. Roader, just no.
Exactly how I solved the puzzle—4 mini-puzzles. NE easy, NW worked out well after I changed Peruvian to Bolivian. SW also pretty easy. SE was more difficult (for me) than NW, but finished the whole thing correctly. I don’t time myself for any puzzles as I just try to enjoy them and I have no interest in trying to race through them.
DeleteGot satisfaction out of this one ‘cause I finished it successfully.
@John X, spitting my coffee
ReplyDeleteAny time I can finish a Saturday puzzle without even one google, I’m happy. Have a great weekend.
ReplyDeleteI came here expecting to see "Very easy" at the top of the page since I was at just over 9 minutes but no! I must've gotten lucky.
ReplyDeleteAfter filling in the entire right side of the puzzle and looking forlornly at what was left -- the entire NW without a single filled-in square and the SW with NEATER, RON REAGAN and nothing else -- it was no longer a question of Would I Cheat? but only How Much Would I Cheat? It's sort of like Name That Tune: "I can name that tune in three notes." "I can complete this puzzle with three cheats."
ReplyDeleteBut I couldn't. Cheating only on KARINA enabled me to finish the SW, but nothing enabled me to finish the fiendish NW. I wanted IRIS instead of UVEA; I wanted BRANDO instead of (who was it again?); and I wanted DEMENTED instead of DERANGED.
There's only one thing more ignominious than cheating in order to solve a puzzle. And that's cheating and failing to solve the puzzle anyway.
@mathgent (1:27 a.m.) -- It's so wonderful to see you again!!! (Of course I see you almost every day, but not everyone is that lucky.)
ReplyDeleteHmmm... Rex couldn't knock this one out in under 5 minutes, so it sucked. Got it.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed with everyone who found this easy - this was 3/4 easy and then the SW kicked me into an uber-Saturday solve. Before the SW, my only write-over was from Peruvian to BOLIVIAN in the NW. But then....
ReplyDeleteA political memoir ending in GAN had to be RON REAGAN. But the sliced apples and the polar sledge were CRITICAL roadblocks. With _R______c in at 32D, I entered fRenetiC, which I considered a possible answer for "Pressing". That got rid of "sledge" but what was to replace it? Eventually, I wrote down my time, (at that point 34 minutes, 10 of which were in the SW), and pushed the puzzle aside. During my hiatus, I did look up what year Ronald Reagan was born to confirm that 36A was right, which I consider the subtlest of cheats but a cheat all the same. Some time later I looked at the grid on which I had black-inked out all of my SW answers except for RON REAGAN and the -ER ending of 46A and I saw SERENADE. That was the breakthrough. My final watch reading was an hour after I had started, so, minus the hiatus this took 45 minutes or so. Not easy.
But I loved the low count - when this came off the printer, I saw the 60 word count and was impressed. It wasn't until I started solving that I noted the single 3 letter answer and was impressed all over again.
Some great cluing - CATERERS for "They serve a function" was one I circled. ELEVEN and CROCS (with frenetic in place, I put in REEFS at 29A - they are indeed a water hazard but shoes, not so much) were both well clued.
ROADER - where I grew up, this would be clued as "malty travel beverage" or something cleverer - I was shocked that that definition was #4 in the Urban Dictionary and didn't even make it into Merriam Webster, har.
Kevin Adamick, I liked this and it got POW over at xwordinfo so congrats.
I’m with Rex. Worked as four separate puzzles - SW, NE, NW, and the Brutal (for me, anyway) SE last. But I like this one, especially after yesterday’s indecipherable clueing.
ReplyDeleteWell for the first time ever I had a time faster than OFL. 11:53! I thought that day would never come. I knew Peter O’Toole instantly... there were several clues that made me think “How clever!” I had no idea that a segmented puzzle was quintessentially manly.
ReplyDeleteLoved the puzzle and was surprised to see it panned. Oh well tastes differ.
why is everyone talking about nuts? Are they hungry?
ReplyDeleteWeirdly gendered response to a puzzle I found neither particularly hard nor particularly male. None of the answers was super-exciting but the only dreck from my POV was EMAG and middle-of-the-ROADER. Clue on ROLL OVER was Wednesday easy (but still cute), clue on ELEVEN was pretty clever, and both handed me the NW right out of the gate. I’m a Kansan so AD ASTRA gave me the NE. South was harder, but CROCS and SNOCAT gave me the east, and the little middle section and west fell fast. Thought it was going to be way harder based on grid shape, but ran easy medium in the end.
ReplyDeleteWow, 47 comments already!
ReplyDeleteMrs. 'mericans and I solved this one in tag-team style, yet it still took us 7 Rexes. Nonetheless, we enjoyed it. After Mrs. 'm had her first crack at it, I ended up adding a few and erasing several. Finally, puzzle partner (I hope you don't mind my borrowing the phrase, @chef wen) completed the SE corner, then we went back and forth, adding, subtracting, and solving the NW, SW and finally the NE.
In each quadrant the trick was in getting a few correct words in. Them once it reached a tipping point, the rest came easy. Very satisfying.
One of our many write-overs was I had "redActed" before PAROLE for 31D ("Out but with caveats"). I guess I was too influenced by the Mueller report.
We thought the word choices were just fine (except for REALER -- the kind of adjective my mother would have quickly answered with a TERSE correction). Some were yawners (ELEVEN, ROLL OVER, SENT OVER, STICKS), but APATHY, BOLIVIAN, CLOVEN, CRANKS UP, DOG TIRED, GEEZER, SALIVA, TIVOLI, and TRICOLOR were simple but refreshing.
So, O'TOOLE ranks #1? Lawrence of Arabia is a great film, to be sure. But I might have voted for Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man (unranked, though he does come in at #7 for Midnight Cowboy, or for sheer believability, Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs (ranked #70).
Having been to El Alto (it is where the La Paz airport is), The NW opened right up for me. In fact, this was both my fastest Saturday and the first time I beat Rex by so much time. For that reasons, I loved it!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that several people had Brando as their first answer at 2D. My first answer was Bogart whom I'll take over Brando any day. Both O'TOOLE and Bogart lost Oscars to Brando.
ReplyDeleteI found it easy. I guess that makes me weird. By the way, how is "ELEVEN" one after another?
ReplyDelete11 - see it? (Groan)
DeleteForgot to add: RON REAGAN made me pine for the days when a president's children had lives outside the White House, rather than inside and running it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if I had not overthought it, I would have gotten SNOCAT (51A) pretty quickly. But I was an avid reader of tales of the Arctic and Antarctic explorers when I was a kid, so I wasn't sure whether some other conveyance might fit in there, such as sledge, or some kind of ship, or submarine, or even airplane.
Rex doesn't like anything that challenges him. It's very noticeable. He wants those record or near-record times. This was a very good puzzle, but hard because of all the long words and clues that had many possible answers.
ReplyDeleteA real Saturday struggle, which is just what I want. Many good clues, two clues with proper nouns disguised by being the first word, and with crossing answers; lots and lots of wodplay.
ReplyDeleteIf Ross had had SNOCATs, he and his crew might have survived. Although Amundsen might have been worse off, since he couldn't eat them.
I knew the motto, but not that it was Kansas, so it was fun to have the truth dawn on me in stages. "Hmm, it seems to be in Latin. iD? No, maybe AD!" and then I had at. I was expecting Helen Keller to be denouncing hatred or something like that; that slowed me down more than anything.
@Wm. I think the people who mention their times and then say they don't care about them are solving online. I don't do that, but as I understand it the solving app tells you how long it took you from start to completion.
It’s four mini puzzles with the same story in each: Hard until a single foothold is found, then easy. My solve was NE, middle, SW, NW, SE. SeasOn before SAILOR made the SE marginally harder than the other corners. As mini-puzzles go, these were fine. As a Saturday puzzle goes, this was pretty boring. How boring? 195 letters in the grid. I counted 101 of the RSTLNE variety. And of the remaining 94, 49 are vowels. Yawn. A little more scrabble-f&*#ing would have been appreciated. Recognizing the low word count high 1 pointer situation actually helped me with ELEVEN, SENT OVER, and PEELED. I actually figured out why ELEVEN was correct long after I entered it (a “one” after another “one” - made obscure by making the second “one” implied)
ReplyDeleteRex gets criticized for his high expectations all the time. Here’s the comment and attitude I find far more troubling, “We can't expect an unobjectionably clever every Saturday.” What? Why not? Aren’t we paying for clever and inventive puzzles? I might disagree with those who like highly segmented puzzles, tastes will differ, but “a little dreck is okay from time to time?” No. Just, No.
unlike others, found nw pretty straightforward. sw and se were slower to come. btw, stayed at villa d’este ten years ago and recalled town name as cernobbio. obvi didn’t fit, but created a challenge in ne.
ReplyDeleteThe number of great actors whose last names are six letters made that NW really tough. For example, besides O’TOOLE, there are:
ReplyDeleteDeniro
Streep
Bogart
Duvall
Brando
Pacino
Norton
I ATE this puzzle ALIVE, finishing in just over 30 minutes. So Rex’s complaints about taking 14 minutes to solve made me laugh.
I knew you were going to hate this hahaha. I didn’t mind it, took a bit longer than usual but nothing felt like torture.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else thinks the lines kind of look like a swastika, though? That was off-putting.
I don't have any nuts to scratch but for some reason I get all smug and happy when I find a Saturday puzzle easier than some of you smarty pants.
ReplyDeleteBOYS CLUB...first in. No hesitation. I only paused for a few because I was formulating what OFL would say. Didn't disappoint. Why in the world do you want to be predictable? My main man O'TOOLE went in without hesitation....Brando? Really? Never liked the man -especially when he did that butter thing.
Let's see...had a few pauses but they were all good ones. I did a lot of the eenie meenies today. I couldn't figure out what Helen found so distroughtful. I mean APATHY is pretty bad but dang, being blind and deaf would bring a lot worse thoughts to my mind. Eventually got it with the pretty easy downs.
Had a bit of a slow down in the middle. My poor canine woe was a DEPAW. I thought that was pretty cruel and it made my big heart an APE. I thought that was stupid. Had the same CLOGS instead of CROCS. Thank you ROSEANNE for setting me on the correct path. Is she still alive? Wasn't she burned at the stake?
I really couldn't believe how easy this was. AND, I thought it was a pretty cool Saturday. It's clean, it's gettable and I didn't find any dreck at all.
All of you are singing the praises for the clue for ELEVEN (21A). I don't get it. I mean I got it because of BAR BED and Mr. yummy pants but.....porque?
Played very fast for me (everything was in my wheelhouse). Probably the first and only time my solving time beats Rex (11:25)....
ReplyDeleteI like the longish answer set that is produced by this grid. Cuts down on the short fill dreck (only the small middle can contend and only EMAG) is really crosswordese junk.
Nice puzzle.
You can't be a little bit pregnant; you can't be "more" authentic. REALER does not exist. It's either real or it isn't.
ReplyDeleteDown was easy, across not so much.
When I saw Rex's review (Challenging - which most Saturdays are), I almost didn't attempt it. I'm glad I did.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAverage Saturday for me, and only 18 seconds slower than @REX (@Wm C - I only know because I solve online in AcrossLite, which shows my time when the puzzle is correctly completed).
For those interested, here's the link to @Lewis's today's Universal Features Puzzle.
Oh @Rex, boo effin' hoo. It was hard! Saturdays are SUPPOSED to be hard. Challenge is GOOD. I fought for every minute of my 34:12 solve time and loved it. Basically 4 6x8 stacks in one puzzle, with only a tiny amount of bad fill. Thought it was brilliant.
ReplyDeleteCan someone explain ACE as the answer to “Big heart?”?
ReplyDeleteAce of hearts... I thought it was a stretch too.
DeleteThe way I deal with difficult puzzles is to go to the version on my iPad and turn on auto check. Using that device somehow emboldens me to throw down answers I hesitate to enter on paper. And I am often amazed at how much sharper my thinking is when I know I have the backup of an unjudgmental tutor and how often I see the right answers without needing prompting from my electronic co-solver.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that so many commenters are reporting their times today—clearly some ill-concealed schadenfreude stemming from @Rex’s abysmal performance on this puzzle. I confess to sharing that feeling—for the first time in memory finished in less than 2.0 Rexes.
ReplyDeleteI found the puzzle OK for a Saturday overall. Noticed the very segmented grid and thought it was sort of cool. My first entry, placed with confidence, was “Netanyahu” for author of the paternal centenarian book: I had just read a piece in the New Yorker bemoaning his recent re-election that began with the writer’s reminiscence about once interviewing Bibi’s father, whom he mentioned had lived to 102. That definitely slowed me down in the SW. Shamelessly turned to Google for KARINA, an actress I know well from her Godard films (prominently mentioned in her Wikipedia bio); hard to imagine anyone making the connection with a long-forgotten French movie that predated most of her iconic roles (and the clue, at least in my version, lacked the accented e’s that would at least have revealed its nationality).
OFL’s rant today with its insistence on demeaning male constructors as a group seemed over the top even by his standards. Increasingly I wonder if, as some here suggest, RP is a deliberate send-up of a certain academic type well known to Michael Sharp (mild-mannered college professor) but not actually being him. I’ve been told they are never seen in the same room together… Glad to see @JOHN X back today in great form!
With the final N in place at 21 Across, I confidently dropped in LAWMAN for "One after another". Okay, ELEVEN is cute, but I still like LAWMAN better.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else think of MEALY for 55 Across "Like the apples in apple pie, typically"? No? I didn't think so. Just thinking about apple pie does ACTIVATE the old SALIVA glands, though. Ummm.
YEARS AGO if you took A DRIVE you would say you did a ROADER. Not really, I just made that up, but I'm a DERANGED GEEZER so all you HECKLERS can sue me.
“Very unfair! Extremely bad puzzle!!! Failing Will Shortz! Sad!!!” @RealRexParker
ReplyDeleteWhy is a big heart an ACE?
ReplyDeleteLewis’s is a gem. You’ll enjoy every one of however many minutes it takes...
ReplyDeleteACE of hearts
ReplyDelete@ravtom.....ace is the highest card, with heart being the suit....
ReplyDeleteSo happy to see that others here share my [negative] feelings about Brando. (I wanted him as the answer, but not because I think he's a great actor, mind you. I just thought that everyone else did.) But I agree completely with @Quasi that he's vastly overrated (we also share that same feeling about Laurence Olivier, if memory serves.) I also agree completely with @kitshef that "I'll take Bogart over Brando any day." (If only he would have taken me...and now it's too late). And I agree completely with @GILL that Brando does absolutely nothing for me as a sex symbol. I'm not attracted to men with hooded eyes and low-slung jeans who mumble and whom I can imagine behaving a lot like @JOHN X at 2:21 a.m. -- but with much less humor. I like funny, charming, intelligent men who speak clearly. Which eliminates not only Brando, but James Dean, Elvis Presley, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and that erstwhile sex symbol in NY and NJ, Joe Namath. (Tres animal! said a female friend at the Literary Guild back in the day. Whereas I said Yuck.)
ReplyDeleteDon’t ya love it when Rex whines about his wrong answers and then blames the puzzle? I’m not an expert, but this review is a great tutorial for “How not to enjoy crossword puzzles.”
ReplyDelete1. “ Here's the entire story of this puzzle from my perspective: I wrote in BRANDO / TROUNCED. Then nothing happened.” Right, Rex, nothing happened because you can’t imagine you’re wrong.
2. 36A: Author of the 2011 political memoir "My Father at 100," I wrote in CARL SAGAN. Why in the world would you not second-guess that? Who was Carl Sagan’s father, and why would anyone care enough to read a book about him?
3. My apple pie apples were SLICED. Yeah, first mine were too, til I realized that didn’t work, and then I thought about how I make an apple pie. Oh yeah, PEEL ‘em first.
4. My Italian city or [sic] TORINO. You’ve got to be kidding... never heard of Tivoli?
5. My [Emphatic agreement] was something-SORRY (I read "emphatic" as "empathetic"). Right, so blame the puzzle for your dyslexia.
6. For [Split] I had IN HALF (courtesy of the "N" in TROUNCED, which was also wrong). Ok, I can understand this. At least you realized the crossing words have something in common.
7. El Alto was ANDORRAN for a little while before it became BOLIVIAN, so that's cute. Thanks for that. Again, that’s why we look at the crosses...
8. Tried to make YESTERDAY fit at 39A: "When I was a kid..." ("YEARS AGO..."). Really, you were a kid YESTERDAY? So you had the Y from DECAY already (which, btw, was one of many wonderful misdirects imho, but you couldn’t give a shout-out to it?)
9. SION (?) before BERN. WTF is SION? Again, time to reconsider your initial mistakes.
10. IRIS before UVEA. Ok, you can have that, since iris is the colored part of the uvea. By the time I got there after exploring the 4 corners, I’d noticed the near-plethora of Vs, so I went that way. Again, pay attention to the rest of the puzzle.
11. OPINER (?!?!) before YELLER. I would’ve YELLed so loud at OPINER, I would definitely think there’s gotta be something better.
12. TESTY and HASTY for TERSE (35A: Brusque). All nice near-synonyms for BRUSQUE; it’s nice to have a big vocabulary. But why a Y at 14D? Haven’t you noticed all the YESSIREEs lately? And we all know how Will Schortz likes to repeat recent clues/answers.
13. Oh, and I repressed one of the most tenacious wrong answers of all: BROTHERS at 1A: Fratty group (BOYS' CLUB). See, that’s YOUR fault, or arrogance, again, assuming the first thing that pops into your head is correct.
14. RE GIMMEs: AD ASTRA. Like, I knew that. Just knew it. It's Not Good Fill. But I knew it. AERATED, same. TRICOLOR, gimme. (None of those are gimme’s. ) ODEA, gimme. (Nope, that one’s XW-Ese.But not as bad as Oreo). So, Rex, if you know it “Its Not Good Fill”, but if you don’t know it, it’s bad or unfair? I don’t expect everything in a Thursday - Saturday puzzle to be in my natural wheelhouse, but except for (obscure-to me) tv/ rap / opera stars most everything is fair game, I think.
Ok, you can gripe about the segmentation of the grid if that’s not your thing. But we all do minis as warm-ups, don’t we? To obsess about that instead of admiring the numerous clever misdirects is pointless: canine/DECAY, top stories/ATTICS, big heart/ACE, salt (NOT OLD SALT)/SAILOR, ..functions/CATERERS, ...out/ONPAROLE...I could go on and on, but once I started tilting my head sideways (metaphorically, of course) I was delighted by the “nope, the other meaning”-quality of so many of these clues. And without the “?” of a bad pun or stretch.
Sorry about the super-long post, my friends, but I’m fighting off a sore throat after 3 out of 5 services to sing this weekend, and I’m a little ... we will rise again! Happy Easter to all!
So funny, as I was nearing completion, I kept thinking, “Ooh, I bet Rex will like this one. It had interesting fill, not a lot of those patented NYT 3-letter excreta, clever clueing... and then I read the blog. Whoops. I found it pretty enjoyable, myself, challenging at first but then it opened up in a most satisfying way
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete-Hated
-boring
-bad
-bad fill
-terrible
-pain
-sadistic
-ugh
-hateful
-no good
-whatever
-who cares?
-dusty
-unwelcome
-not good
-like dental work
Good morning, sunshine!
I kind of liked and finished in a good time for saturday. Almost as fast as last week whisk Rex said was easy. Had many of the same issues. Brando, Peruvian, Unhinged. NW hardest, but was sure on Rollover and Living, so worked from there.
ReplyDeleteRe @Lewis puzz - I finished but can't decode the theme. Help?
ReplyDelete@JC66 - Your link got me an error 404.
ReplyDeleteIn poker or bridge the ACE is the biggest heart.
@GILL I - 11 is a one after another one.
@Wood - The “relative to other Saturday’s” is implied in the rating. An “Easy” Saturday will still take longer to solve than a “challenging Monday.”
@Anon11:11 - Except most people see all kinds of things as more or less authentic and more or less real. Where you live, for example, I will guarantee that people who were born and raised and never left view themselves as REALER natives than the person who came for a job after college, even if that person has lived there longer than the “REALER” natives.
Not that anyone cares, but “it was hard for him so Rex hated it” is the laziest, tiredest, wrongest comment genre. Seriously, grow a pair. @GILL I’s are bigger and she doesn’t even have any to scratch.
PERUVIAN before BOLIVIAN (yeah, I know - so sue me). But I got the NW first through LIVING, which got me DERANGED and CLOVEN, realized PERUVIAN was wrong when SALIVA flowed in (had to, sorry), and finished that section. Wanted ANTE for GENE (Something in a pool), so didn't put in DECAY right away. Got the SE from DOG TIRED and A DRIVE (wanted DVD-ROM, but that was too recent (!)). Then the SW, then EMAG and DECAY and GENE, then the NE.
ReplyDeleteI agree with @Rex - not too enjoyable to do four small puzzles, but I didn't hate it as viscerally as he did and I finished in respectable time.
And there's a HEX cryptic in the WSJ today, so at least I have that to look forward to!
Ando... think deck of cards.
ReplyDeleteStarted out tough for me, but finished under average time by a fair amount.
I enjoy tougher ones, so i thought it was fine.
Again Rex is bashing men. This time a male constructor.
ReplyDelete@Bobl. Read the clue for 66A carefully.
ReplyDelete@Z Try again, it works for me.
Basically four puzzles in one.
ReplyDeleteMy personal opinion of each quads relative difficulty was:
SW --fast
NE --med fast
NW --med slow
SE --slow (this took up nearly half my time, partly because I was convinced OVER just couldn't appear twice in the same grid, also had SEASON for SAILOR for a little bit)
Loved everything about it.
ReplyDeleteAS A CHILD is a much better answer for "When I was a kid..." Yesterday or YEARSAGO say nothing about a state of being that is youthful. "Photoshop command: COLOR IN, possibly? I went in totally the wrong direction there.
ReplyDeleteHi @mathgent! You’re missed.
ReplyDeleteI wondered about the constructor’s last name at first glance.
I always want stacks, even short ones. That made me think of pancakes and I gave those up years ago. The NW almost filled itself in and I worked the stacks clockwise without much trouble. I didn’t know Anna but I tried KARINA on a whim thinking it was a poor take on Karenina and lordy it worked. Good Grief. I’ve been to Villa d’Este and was surprised to discover today that I wasn’t still in Como when I got there.
@Nancy, I tried to think of a leading actor who is or was “funny, intelligent, charming and speaks clearly” and could only come up with Claude Rains, who for my money was as sexy as Bogart. Dirk Bogarde was handsome but too dry to be “funny” although some of his clever memoirs had me chortling. You and I seem to agree more often than not but I was surprised the other day to find you don’t like coloratura sopranos. Have you ever heard a Handel opera done by young singers, small orchestra, period instruments, in an intimate theater? It might change your mind. I loved Beverly Sills and Joan Sutherland but sometimes baroque opera is even more charming and effective when done on a less grand scale.
ReplyDeletePS @Nancy, I left out James Mason! And @kitshef, I agree about the decline in difficulty. It used to take me a day or even a couple of days to finish the Saturday NYT puzzle. And finally, is Lewis’s puzzle available to non-subscribers of the Universal puzzle?
ReplyDeleteFour runt puzzles connected by a hallway. Different. M&A likes different. Always harder, when U sorta have to reboot, to solve each section. But, hey -- it's a SatPuz; most anything goes. Suuuu … suck it up, @RP.
ReplyDeleteBy section:
Central Hallway: This is where any sane, mediocre solver like m&e would hafta start out. Got ACE quickly, and DECAY soon afterwards. GENE required a few nanoseconds, due to its semi-sneaky clue [this cluage happened a lot, thru-out the whole solvequest]. Could only get EMAG much later, by fillin in the other sections.
SE Runt: This is where I was led next, by gettin YEARSAGO, of the hallway letters. Put up a bit of a fight, as it had the most desperation [ROADER. ADRIVE. ODEA]. Got the POC corner "S" real quick, tho.
SW Runt: This is where M&A marched off to next, thankfully splatzin in NEATER and ROSEANNE off basically nuthin. Got about half of this runt section, then handed it off to PuzEatinSpouse, who polished it off.
NE Runt: PuzEatinSpouse conquered this section solo, then handed the whole rodeo back to M&A. [p.s. REALER. har]
NW Runt: Yikes, said M&A, when inheritin a section whose only solved stuff was the -ED endin on 23-A.
Tried IRIS at 7-D. Nuthin. Tried UVEA at 7-D. Better, as has a U -- and also worked better with my theory that 1-A might end with CLUB, which led to fillin the BERN. Then SALIVA/ELEVEN, and off we went. Thought this section had the smoothest, undesperatest fillins.
staff weeject pick: ACE, by default.
Great ELEVEN clue; it was an honor to see thru its deception. (yo, @RAD2626)
Thanx for the workout, Mr. Adamick. Suck it up, @RP.
Masked & AnonymoUUs
runt section annex:
**gruntz**
My friend is currently on vacation in Bolivia so I kind of lucked into that one and it helped a ton in the NW, as it also played into my desire to put acerbic for cutting.
ReplyDeleteEL ALTO has something unusual going on. Check out The Colorful Mansions of El Alto .
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think it's pretty cool to see such vibrancy and comprehensive design. Putting the twerk in Latin American gesamtkunstwerk.
19 A. guessed Peruvian, IMHO a truly reasonable guess, which totally screwed me up until O found O'Toole (really one of the greatest actors of all time), but Rex, Andorran? That's just dumb.
ReplyDeleteJC66
ReplyDeleteImpressive theme - I'd still be looking for a solution. Thank you
JC 66
ReplyDeleteThanks much.
I finished within 3 minutes of Rex's time (longer, of course). I'm King of the World!
ReplyDelete@Quasi If you click on the link in my 11:24AM post, you should be able to click "Play Now" to access the puzzle.
ReplyDeletep.s.
ReplyDeleteOTOOLE = best performance by an actor ever, huh? Assume that would be for his "Supergirl" role?
Always hard to beat a solid, funny schlock flick performance.
M&Also
NE first, SW second, SE third, NW a distant fourth.
ReplyDeleteI agree, as soon as I opened the puzzle, I knew it wouldn’t fall easily. Throttled my average time (not beneficially)..
But thanks for a little Pete Townsend in the blog. I rarely do anything but note these little flourishes, but this one I watched and it partially made up for the puzzle..
Hi, @Quasi -- Re my opera comment last night: I procrastinated and procrastinated on writing it because I know you adore opera and I didn't want you to think less of me. This, even though I absolutely howled at @GILL's marvelous post: "All I could think of during the 8 hours it took Mimi to die was...I'll kill her myself." I'm afraid I'm with GILL: Those really, really high soprano voices, lacking in sweetness and throbbing with vibrato, quite literally make my eyebrows hurt. And it's not only opera: Florence Henderson in the original Broadway cast of "Oklahoma" gave me a headache too.
ReplyDeleteThere are exceptions. Even arias by sopranos. The Habanera from "Carmen" is one of my favorite pieces of music in the entire world. In fact, I love it so much that I would rather hear it sung 23 times in a row than sit through an actual opera. Except maybe "Carmen".
Actors who are funny, charming, intelligent and speak clearly. Some of my nominees: Cary Grant; James Garner; Yul Brynner (devastating in "the King and I"); Rex Harrison; Paul Newman. (Bogie didn't speak all that clearly, but I'll make an exception for him. And although most people thought he was completely miscast in it, I found Bogie a lot more charming in "Sabrina" than in "Casablanca".) Agree with you on Claude Rains, but James Mason has given me the creeps in every single movie he's ever been in.
Why does Rex think that being a quasi feminist man hater is
ReplyDeletea cool thing?
The @JC66 Link did not work for me, either. Here is an alternative for Lewis's puzzle (but I warn you, the interface is terrible).
ReplyDeletehttp://syndication.andrewsmcmeel.com/puzzles/crosswords
@Bob L -- I don't want to explain @lewis's theme here, as that would be a spoiler for those who have not solve it yet. And although you have a blue name, I couldn't find your email -- oh, wait, I see you got it from a few hints others provided. Frankly, it took me 20 minutes from solving before I realized the full meaning of the second word of the revealer.
ReplyDeleteA real slug-fest for sure, but at the end of the day, I felt liked I’d beaten a worthy foe. I thought the fill was tough, but far from terrible (apart from maybe YELLER). And while the isolated corners were a bit of a drag, I’d rather suffer through that than scads of three- and four-letter garbage just to draw a pretty picture in the grid (looking at you, Thursday).
ReplyDelete@Nancy...I could not agree with you more on your choice of the yummies. I'm an eye drooler myself. You have to have the eyes.... My husband is of the Hugh Laurie genre but what drew me to him was the way his eyes always twinkled when he laughed. I once asked him to be brutally honest with me and tell me what attracting him to me on first encounter. He said my hair.. I said "not my je ne sais quo?" Nope, the hair. I still keep it long - just for him. My man HAS to have a sense of humor - first and foremost. I'm not drawn to pretty men. I like maybe a crook in the nose or even that one tooth that doesn't seem to belong. But the eyes have to have it. I'll add my fantasy: Gerard Butler, Pierce Brosnan and Gregory Peck. See how the eyes light up when they smile or laugh?
ReplyDelete@Quasi: You're talking Baroque.....whole different set of pipes. My brother was the director of Mannes Camerata In New York and his specialty was bringing back Baroque and Renaissance opera to the American audience. The soprano voice (back in the day - I certainly hope not now) were all sung by castrated males. Having that voice was deemed quite noble. The female voices were in the alto range. I'm confident you enjoyed Handel"s Cornelia & Sesto duet. I know I did. Just don't put me in the trunk of @Joe Di's car with Maria Callas.
@Z. You been peeking? Oh, and thanks for the ELEVEN explanation. I don't think I would have ever gotten it.
Could some kind soul send me @Lewis' puzzle? I don't have Adobe Flash and I need it. Just click on my gaucho wearing, smoking dame icon for my Email....gracias.
Took a long time to be able to grab onto anything here, but I finally got the NE by mostly guessing correct answers (though I had RIVOLI for the Italian city at first until I realized I was thinking of the old NYC theater).
ReplyDeleteAfter that it went purty smoovely. But why such a ridiculous clue for BOLIVIAN? I had to read it 5 times just to make grammatical sense out of it. I did like a number of other clues: for ELEVEN, DISC, ORDERS. Was surprised at O'TOOLE for 2d, his L of A would *not* be my choice. Overall this was a good solve, the right degree of demandingness for a Saturday.
@Nancy -- Florence Henderson wasn't around to be in the original Broadway cast of "Oklahoma!", apparently she was in a road company later. (I remember growing up that she would often be the fourth or fifth replacement for the lead in successful musicals.)
@JC66, thanks a lot. it worked for me on my laptop. Nice job Lewis! Fun puzzle. Altho I was expecting something a bit tougher on a Saturday. Or maybe I’m getting better. @Nancy, I guess you don’t like Deanna Durbin much then. Lol. No worries. :)
ReplyDeleteI actually liked this one a lot. Had to work for it and made a lot of wrong guesses, but the clues were all right on the mark once you got them. There were no sloppy clues.
ReplyDeleteTop half through DERANGED MEGASTORE TERSE fell smartly (as smartly as I can on Saturday). Bottom half--nada. Had to get help.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHere -- for those interested, this link works better: http://www.uclick.com/client/spi/fcx/ .
ReplyDelete@Nancy and JC66 and Lewis. I wrote a long post in reply but it seems to have vanished. Thank you all.
ReplyDeleteUnexpected theme. DOG TIRED, some STICKS for the dogs to chase, a ROLL OVER, a snoCAT for the dogs to bark at, also the word canine in a central clue. You can also see PETtiest as fitting into that theme, and old YELLER, which is a literary dog.
ReplyDelete:)
@Kevin Adamick, in case you're (still) reading comments, I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the puzzle. For me, it was "just right" challenging for a Saturday.
ReplyDeleteMy way into the quadrants: BERN x BOYS CLUB; AD ASPERA x ATTICS, ARGENT x YEARS AGO, and PEELED x SERENADE.
9:50 solve time. 5 minutes quicker than Rex?!!! Strange days, indeed.
ReplyDeleteBolivian marching powder
ReplyDeleteMuch faster than usual Saturday for me. Thought the puzzle was fun and nicely challengening
ReplyDeleteRex, you are just being a poor loser. Just because you had trouble solving the puzzle is not necessarily the puzzle’s fault, maybe you had a bad day. What is disappointing is listening to you bash the puzzle, rather than critiquing your own performance. Kind of the thing Trump would do.
An actor who is funny, intelligent, charming and speaks clearly? How about Michael Caine?
ReplyDelete@Anoa 10:16...Speaks clearly? Oy... What's it all about Alfie? I'll take Michael Crawford...Thank you.
ReplyDeleteFun. A fun Saturday puzzle. Nothing wrong with a boy's club now and then .
ReplyDeleteI so wanted 31D ("Out but with caveats") to be ONTHEDL. But alas it didn't fit...
ReplyDeleteI know I'm waaaay late to the party because I do the puzzle in the paper but I did like it included a reference to "highest city" on 4/20...
ReplyDeleteEasy-medium, for a Saturday. Would've been flat-easy if I hadn't misplaced my high city in Peru. But I didn't leave the NW till I wrote that one over--and from then on I was a clear SAILOR. I dunno...it seems that the more Mr. Adamick tried to muddy the clue waters, the easier it was to nail the answers. Guess I'm just getting used to the way they think around here.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree about REALER: as per the Carlin quote of yesterday (or YEARSAGO!), either a thing is real or it isn't. REALER I just don't buy. And I'm not a middle-of-the-ROADER (ugh!) about that.
Despite these and some other length-stretching alterations, I thought this was an extraordinary feat. You try doing a 60-worder. The corral effect is OK because--hey, it's Saturday. Had fun solving it--much more than did OFC. Does he even remember fun?
Let's see, how did I start? Oh yeah: ROLLOVER/LIVING. Well, I thought, if you're gonna gimme two gimmes out of the chute, I'll take 'em. DOD is, or was, Anna KARINA. This GEEZER is pleased to award a birdie, and a nose-thumb to you-know-who(m).
BOYSCLUB LIVING
ReplyDeleteThe CATERERS SENTOVER ELEVEN BOLIVIAN gals with ADRIVE
and ORDERS to ROLLOVER, ROTATE, get PEELED, and ATEALIVE.
--- GENE KARINA
I liked it no matter OFL's CRITICAL rant. Did it pretty much around the horn, but did put in the likely plural S and the -ER -EST and -ED endings. Most helpful. Two messes where my kindling 'tinder' needed to be STICKS and I turned the Sledge into a SNOCAT.
ReplyDeleteSorry ROSEANNE, never. Yeah baby Anna KARINA was quite the dish YEARSAGO and is still LIVING.
Didn't exactly ACE it, but I DECREE it was just fine. YESSIREE.
Right half - fairly easy. Left needed a teeny bit of help. So for me, it was a great Saturday.
ReplyDeleteFeeling almost back in the swing after a 28-hour journey with no sleep and then a 3-hour nap the night I got home. And I still have the cold I had most of the 2+ weeks of vacation. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful time.
@Rainy from yesterday. You could have a group, or have a bunch of groups. You could have a bunch of cohorts, and the folks in your group would be your companions or cohorts as well.
Have a lovely holiday, all!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords, with only 12 left to catch up on!
Two quads on the East side were pretty easy; not so for those on the West side. That hub in the middle of the pin-wheel type thing was a key to the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteWords leading into the hub were most helpful in pinning down answers in the near-isolated quads: DERANGED, MEGASTORE, RONREAGAN, and YEARSAGO.
The two OVERs in the NW and SE were a bit disconcerting, but informal rules do change, and that's OK.
Tiresome to say, I suppose, but this puzzle and yesterday's could have been switched for better placement.
Easier an more fun today, and rules and switches be damned.
I do send Rex a bit of cash. Where would we all be without him? 😉
ReplyDeleteHere among the cohort of Syndies, I too very much liked this puzzle. I saw it as 5 puzzles, and solved the centre one first which led to YEARS AGO, GEEZER, and ORDERS. That was this morning; then I was out on errands until this afternoon when I resumed in the SE. That actually went fairly smoothly. Next was the NE which was harder but helped by a wild guess on MEGA STORE. TERSE helped a bunch, too.
ReplyDeleteI actually found the NW the easiest section, thanks to UVEA, BERN, and BARBED.
The SW was the hardest section for me, not helped by splatzing in TIDIER. I knew the book on Reagan, and then spent a lot of time getting the rest, finally seeing NEATER (D'OH). Oh yeah, somehow I "knew" KARINA, maybe by accident.
Anyway, it was a tussle, but a good one. Amazing how you can go from "this is going to be impossible" to "hey, I may be able to finish" with just a few answers here and there. I think many of those in the "real-time" cohort had a similar experience.