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Twits author / THU 4-11-19 / Tucson school informally / Four-time grammy-winning gospel singer Adams / Modern locale of ancient sumer / frequently cosplayed character / ornately decorated money
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley
Relative difficulty: Easy (5 flat, at 5am)
Theme answers:
- BAROQUE BREAD (from "broke bread") (19A: Ornately decorated money?)
- PARADE FOR RAIN (from "prayed for rain") (26A: March meant to end a drought?)
- COLLIDE BARROW (from "Clyde Barrow"!) (41A: Bumper version of a cart?)
- THOREAU SHADE (from "throw shade") (47A: What the trees by Walden Pond provided?)
The expressions "throw shade, "throwing shade", or simply "shade", are slang terms used to describe insults. Merriam-Webster defines "shade" as "subtle, sneering expression of contempt for or disgust with someone—sometimes verbal, and sometimes not." OxfordDictionaries.com defines "throw shade" as a phrase used to "publicly criticize or express contempt for someone". // The slang version of "shade" originated from the black and Latino gay communities, and was initially strictly used by those communities. The first major use of "shade" that introduced the slang to the greater public was in the documentary film Paris Is Burning (1990), which is about the mid-1980s drag scene in Manhattan.[2] In the documentary, one of the drag queens, Dorian Corey, explains what "shade" means. She says, "Shade is, I don't have to tell you you're ugly, because you know you're ugly."
The expression was popularized by the American reality television series RuPaul's Drag Race. (wikipedia)
• • •
Lots of 3- to 5-letter stuff meant that the fill ran toward the dull / familiar side. Crosswordesey generals (MEADE) and designers (DIOR) and places (OAHU) and characters (SHERE) and shoes (AVIA) and music (IRAE) and authors (DAHL) and brands (AMANA) and sounds (SHH) and generals again (LEIA) etc. None of it was that irksome, though, because some crosswordese is at least a real thing, and some is garbage, and today's was by and large real. HORSECAR, though, what the heck? Not real. I had HORSE- and was like "well, CART doesn't fit, and neither does CARRIAGE, so I'm out." I also really hate that definition of DIDO, which no one uses. Come on, man—never miss a chance to clue the greatest figure in classical literature. She did so much in so little space! She was so intriguing that for over a millennium people mostly knew "The Aeneid" as "that DIDO story with some epilogue about a war in Italy." BOOK IV IV LIFE! "Mischievous trick," my eye.
Five things:
- 21D: Sheep's cry (BLAT) — sheep say BAA. Or they BLEAT. What the hell is this?
- 2D: ___ milk (OAT) — wanted SOY. Then weirdly got SOY two answers over (4D: Vegan source of protein = SOY BEANS)
- 40A: Commotion (HOOHA) — stop with this
- 59A: Member of an early 20th-century French art movement (FAUVE) — because of my "burrow" error and the stupid CAR part of HORSECAR, I couldn't get into the SE corner. Until this answer, which I just knew because I have a beautiful Taschen book about 20th-century art that I once read cover to cover. Yay art. Yay reading.
- 27D: Guy in a restaurant (FIERI) — "in a"? That phrasing is suspect. You probably should've put a "?" at the end of this clue. I believe I have the best wrong answer here. I had "blank IE blank blank" and wrote in SIEUR (as in ... monsieur??? which was, somehow, in my mind, in the ballpark of garçon????). Guy FIERI is a restaurateur. I haven't the time or will to explain him to you.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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95 comments:
The constructor's name on a Thursday put me into high alert, and the vague cluing and names not immediately known steeled my resolve.
Then the dominoes started falling, with "Yes!" after "Yes!", and when the second theme answer appeared, I let out a big laugh, getting the trick and loving its humor. And it was mirth through to the end.
No YAWN here. Today, for me, BEQ is the Cat that Ballou me away.
Speaking of art, who the hell spells OCHRE as OCHER?
Easy here too, but a few lucky wags helped a lot. Nice theme.
I solved it, and the theme was clever, but I did not like the words I didn’t know (rouse, blat, shere), and the clueing for menus seemed odd.
Why is "let go" a yawn? Why is "socially aware" woke? Both are puzzling to me.
I love me an anaptyxic epenthesis theme. And I love schwas. And BEQ is a constructor beast. So my cup runneth over this morning. THOREAU SHADE and BAROQUE BREAD made me laugh.
This is way harder to do than you might think. And, as Rex said, “Very consistent.” Very tight. All three themers involve inserting the schwa in between a word-initial consonant cluster whose second consonant is an R. So no flay – filet or plight – polite. And the hanky-panky has to be the head word. So no water caress or gravy terrain.
My avatar does not follow this pattern.
Spoiler alert – the link is the filled grid. This is a smaller, less-involved second cousin (Sunday July 22, 2012) of a BEQ tour-de-force July 22, 2012
Thanks, Brendan – from one of your most perfervid fans.
WoEs galore today: FIERI, BLAT, DIDO, YOLANDA, OPRAH, HORSECAR. All inferrable or fairly crossed, except maybe DIDO. I’m just very glad the writer didn’t wind up being Mort SAHL.
Went through a period in college where the only things I ate were a packet of instant oatmeal, eaten dry (breakfast), peanut butter sandwiches (lunch), and Kraft macaroni and cheese (dinner). I’ve never had RAMEN, but I gather that is the modern improvement to the mac and cheese.
@Suzie - for YAWN, you have mixed up your clues. YAWN was clued as "[Been there, done that]". "Let go" was the clue for FREED.
@LMS - there are four themers, and COLLIDE BARROW does not have an R as the second consonant.
@LMS - "You fergot about ol' Clyde Barrow," we cried.
@Susie - Let go belongs to the last across, not to yawn.
I can appreciate giving up coffee for Lent and yet drinking tea. I give up white chocolate for Lent....
This puzzle deserves to be in the XWDHOF, if one existed. Four laugh-out-loud answers in a grid that is solvable by most puzzlers. I say that because all of the tough answers are inferrable. eg, DIDO, YOLANDA, OAHU. I'd easily give this puz to a Monday/Tuesday solver and say, "Stick with it, it is worth it, you will finish it."
A great great puz, thank you , BEQ.
"Blat"?
I don't think so.
Extremely easy, though.
Thorough shade, I'm guessing. A noun, not a verb like "throw shade."
Vegan protein was soy beans, not soy milk.
Fun! Hooha!
Hate to jump to the defense of Guy Fieri, but despite him looking like a total jackass, he seems like a genuinely good dude. I couldn't get going on this puzzle. Should have waited for coffee. Tough one for me.
Draft choice is lame. It is draft pick. Otherwise only comment is that Avia is not a Nike competitor. Hasn’t been for many many years, if ever. Get rid of that clue/fill. Otherwise, fun easy Thursday.
The trick was too easy for a Thursday, but still a pleasant solve. Normally I'm comfortable with slang, but shuddered to see HOOHA again (too soon). Don't care one whit about the 'commotion' definition (British usage?) - the slang meaning is pervasive enough that I can't shake it. Also cringe-worthy for me is that dang WOKE. Perfectly legit usage here, but WOKE is one of those younger generation linguistic slang words that makes me want to shake my fist and yell at teens to get off my lawn. Geez, when did I get so old and cranky?
WTF is a fieri?
For someone who's always so hard on themes and how disjointed they can be, you make no mention at all how "CLYDE BARROW" doesn't fit at all with the rest of the verb-noun themers??
Today I made my Croque Monsieur with SAM. SIC.
Thank you, @kitshef, for explaining why I left DIsO in my grid!
And I conflated Simon and PERES for a brief moment and had PERon in at 39A.
I got the theme at COLLIDE BARROW and gave me the openings to the other three as I had BREAD, SHADE and FOR RAIN in before the rest made sense.
I did think BLAT was the sound a poorly played trumpet made but oh well.
WOKE with YAWN a bit below - nice.
OCHER with FAUVE underneath, not likely!
HAVE IN STORE sounds like a diabolical plan.
DRAFT CHOICE is more interesting as one's beer preference.
Thanks, BEQ, nicely themed.
And from yesterday, said in a whiny voice, "But @Nancy, it was a Wednesday!"
For the rest of you who never google on crosswords but was too itchy not to, CLYDE BARROW is half of Bonnie and Clyde. Bank robber. Somebody else can google OAT MILK, I have no idea what that is.
Faced with a BEQ puzzle, I never YAWN, and I doubt any of you do either. Occasionally I go BLAT when I'm faced with too much pop culture -- as I felt I was today in the SW corner. But mostly I feel very WOKE and ROUSEd and am likely to go YAHOO! This one was great good fun -- and I even forgive it that name-laden SW corner.
Was initially baffled by BAROQUE BREAD and PARADE FOR RAIN and failed to pick up the theme until COLLIDE BARROW. Was then enchanted by THOREAU SHADE. The non-theme parts of the puzzle had just the right amount of crunch and I was continually required to think. And, of course, I've seldom met a pun I didn't like. Very enjoyable.
The opposite of @Rex. My brain is far more alert in the morning than in the evening. One of the many joys I experience in my golden age is enjoying good wine with our evening meals as we BAROQUE BREAD. Tends to dull the brain, though.
So, this early AM I'm going to be treated to the amazing BEQ. One of those puzzle that I did NOT want to end. I've yet to do one of his that hasn't elicited a smile or two. 19A started the ball rolling for my morning goodie.
You start my morning off with BOSSY DIOR HAM and you've got my attention. Almost put in EGG for the croquet-monsieur ingredient and then remembered it's the madame that has the egg. The monsieur is the HAM here. Hah. I like egg over béchamel. Que bello.
So glad DIOR had the sense to tell us all how we can get to know a woman. My handwriting is pretty good but my taste in perfume matches that of my wine. Expensive is better. Just please, don't ever buy anything Coty.
Nary a YAWN to be found. The theme was easily sussed out. A few schwas for the simple YAHOO in me. Only clue I wasn't sure of was 43D. I actually wanted a TOE to have a crush on me.
A horn goes BLAT.
@Marc K. from last night. Aha. Of course you did. Do you think he notice?
@DeeJay - as a novice puzzler, very much disagree. I didn't get the theme at all until I came here in desperation to see if there even was one.
I had no idea who Clyde Barrow was (never knew his last name), assumed that "collide [wheel]barrow" was something I'd never heard of, and actually started wondering if HORSECAR was a themer because both clues were clearly some insanely neutered phrase for a vehicle. I never had a laugh-out-loud or an ah-ha! Just a lot of "WTF is THAT?" and "that's not a thing???"
I easily inferred the three tough answers you called out, but AVIA/MEADE was impossible for me. Again COLLIDEBARROW felt wrong even when I had it all filled in with relative certainty. And I got really thrown off by assuming 47A was "thoreau's h---" instead of "Thoreau sh---"
That plus entering and erasing RADII for CARPI and UMBER/AMBER for OCHER a dozen times each made this a punishing slog.
Didn't mean to itemize all of my difficulties, but as a MTW solver I felt the need to refute your promise that sticking with it would be worth it. It wasn't.
Fell asleep last night catching up on yesterday, and had planned to go ahead and have a twofer day but, didn’t make it. Barely finished yesterday’s by midnight so it was no blog yesterday and a morning coffee solve today.
BEQ is one of my all time favorite constructor’s and this was vintage BEQ! THOREAU SHADE is a blue ribbon answer and the clue just as perfect! Overall and easy but very enjoyable Thursday. Work beckons. Have a great day everybody!
Deciphered this at BAROQUEBREAD (saying it aloud really really helps) and I've heard "go for baroque" more than a few times. The fun part was seeing what BEQ could come up with, and he did not disappoint. Well played sir, well played.
Interesting to see the HOOHA wars reignited. You think you have a nice long stretch of never seeing this, and thus no controversy, and hey presto here it is again.
Also, no Tessa today. I miss her.
Thanks for a good one, Mr. Quigley.
Pretty good as these types of puzzles go. BEQ does this sort of thing on his site a lot, so no complaints here.
@Teedmn -- Great call on DRAFTCHOICE. Could have clued that and CASE with Beer purchase option
I must be old. Never heard of DIDO as clued (debated between Roald DAHL and Mort sAHL for a second). And I am amazed that while I know of HOOHA only as a commotion, others identify far more strongly with its less savory connotation. Funny that it shows up twice in a week.
WOKE is the absolute worst. Another term that is only projected onto others (mostly to signal their virtue) but never used in self-reference.
Thanks BEQ -- you are the hoopster sowing his acreage.*
* Kareem of the crop
Please explain 6 down: “Mischievous trick” answer, “dido”. Also 37 across: “Building site code” answer, “html”. Thank you.
No love for me for this puzzle. The DIDO / DAHL cross, as clued, as horrid. When I looked up how DIDO fit the clue, I got
* Multiple citations / definitions using cutting a DIDO, cutting DIDOES but never simply DIDO by itself.
* When your citations are all from friggin Nathaniel Hawthorne, perhaps an "archaic" might be applied, no?
With all the good clues available for DIDO (Queen of Carthage, the singer, etc) I decided that DISO had to be something (something else, in hindsight) I didn't know, because I knew Mort sAHL might have written "The Twits". Not that I knew anyone had written "The Twits", but if someone did, Mort Sahl was as likely the author as anyone. I would put the blame on DIDO on the editors, because with what little I know of BEQ, I'm guessing he went for the singer.
You invoke "Ornately Decorated" and I will think of rococo rather than BAROQUE 100 times out of 100. Perhaps that's because rococo style was the extension of the BAROQUE style, which was marked by detail and intricacy, and blowing it all out of proportion into the excessively ornate?
CLYDE BARROW doesn't fit with the others, in many ways.
This was just an add a sound, maybe wackiness ensues puzzle. I'm not a big fan of wackiness.
@Sir Hillary - "less savory"!? Have you ever...?
For me, this one wasn't that much fun to solve and I had some of the same responses to the clunky answers (BLAT??), but it was fun to see "throw shade" included in the puzzle, and to see Paris is Burning mentioned here. It really is a wonderful documentary, and for any fans of Drag Race it will make a LOT more of the references make sense.
I’m. An. Ord. In. Air. Ee. Guy. God, the Talking Heads are the HOOHA. No, no, not that HOOHA, the other HOOHA.
Serendipity alert. A kid at our game last night was wearing a t-shirt with “It’s a Schwa Thing” on the back.
Word Play! Woo Hoo! A little side eye at IRAE, otherwise nothing rankled and the theme was fun fun fun. As was mentioned, the potentially difficult PPP was fairly crossed, so this would be a good challenge for newer solvers. Far more accessible than many BEQ themelesses.
@Susie - probably already answered, but WOKE is slang and “Let go” is FREED, not YAWN.
@DeeJay - I take your meaning, but for us coffee addicts that is a major sacrifice.
@Bernie - I’m always a little surprised at the intensity of the FIERI-hate. A guy who focuses on cheaper to eat at places that manage to use fresh ingredients and creativity to put out some pretty damn good food often in unexpected places, seems like a good dude to me. I doubt I’d like his politics, and he’s a bit too much of a Bro for me to ever want to socialize him, but I’ll gladly eat at any place he’s had on his show.
@Anon 9:47am -- Thanks for, um, biting.
@Anon9:42 - See @Pete for DIDO, think “website” for HTML (short for HyperText Markup Language I believe).
@Sir Hillary - I had the same guffaw as @Anon9:47.
As for WOKE, everything you said except for “the worst.” Anyone who would describe themselves as WOKE is most likely not. However, striving for empathy and understanding for those disadvantaged by our social constructs seems a worthy goal to me.
@MJT - But you got it? And if you had pondered the theme a little longer and gotten it on your own? Thinking “if I slog through a little more I’ll get it” is the key to going from a M-W solver into a late week solver. Yes, there are some late week elements here, but it is accessible.
If Rex was on the same wave length, then I was on another planet. The theme was great fun and I got it right away, but the fill was really a slog for me. It’s a perfectly fine crossword but for some reason my brain is like molasses this morning even after two cups of coffee. Maybe I should follow @GILL’s example and start drinking more wine in the evenings to clear the cobwebs. Couldn’t hurt.
This is all Schwahili to me.
I saw the theme early as I had _____BREAD and got the double meaning of BREAD. PARADEFORRAIN is different. It's still RAIN in both phrases, no double meaning.
@ulysses. Pick doesn't fit and CHOICE makes perfect sense. I think AVIA still makes athletic shoes so it would be a Nike competitor.
I liked the puzzle OK but remember that the last BEQ was a mess.
@Gretchen. Try Google.
BLAT to mean bleat is in the OED, chiefly US, first citation 1846. Also figuratively to talk noisily or impulsively.
@sir hillary -- "Kareem"... good one!
Never heard of a DIDO, and I had IRAN instead of IRAQ. So the North got me. Liked the puns, though. A fun puzzle.
In case anyone hasn't seen it, The Times is having a fight with a communist dog over on wordplay. It's worth a peek.
Medium. NW was the toughest. I had soy milk before OAT which made SOYBEANS tough to see.
COLLIDE BARROW was not pleasant.
Cute, liked it.
For a more historically accurate version of the Bonnie and Clyde story see The Highwaymen now streaming on Netflix.
Loved the theme, loved OCHER crossing RED down there with the FAUVEs, loved YAHOO and HOOHA gazing at each other across the grid. (I hear the latter as clued here all the time, btw.) I know a guy named Clyde BARROW, a political science professor currently in Texas somewhere -- so I spent at least a minute wondering how he'd become famous enough to be crossworthy. Just before I resorted to a web search, I suddenly remembered Bonnie's pal.
What I don't quite get is the "backward" in the clue for ARCH. You can arch forward, too.
Anyway, a fine puzzle.
collide barrow is my favorite answer so far this year
COLLIDE BARROW?
Yeah, no.
I feel like the village idiot today. I had no problem with the puzzle but this blog was over my head. I could see how the theme worked but I had no idea what the heck schwa or schwaa means. It sounds like a word from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” to me. I’m consoled to discover that autocorrect is as ignorant as I.
Unfortunately it seems to be a word whose Google definition is nearly as unintelligible as the word. I’m going to have to work on my mid-vowel sounds. It’s a concept I’ve never considered. Aaah?
BLAT fortunately seemed ok to m&e, while quickly whizzin thru this funny BEQPuz. I just assumed that BLAT was a sound comin out of the B-side of yer sheep, and moved right along -- nuthin to smell here -- etc.
BEQ is for solid sure one of my all-time fave constructioneers. He [unintentionally] taught me a lot about how to make elegantly raised-by-wolves crosswords … which the runtpuzs humbally then tried to expand (and/or shrink) upon. Thanx, dude.
Today's theme is pretty entertainin. Has that primo bouquet of anaptyxic epenthesis (yo and whaaa and day-um and har, @Muse darlin) that we all enjoy. (Sure it ain't "anaptyctic", tho?)
YAHOOHA. Just had to blat [pardon] that out there. Feel better, now. Otto Correct changes "blat" to "boat", btw. Just sayin.
fave fillins: Shoot... Almost everything. Especially BLAT, of course. HORSECAR is nice and non-dictionhairy horse stuff, tho. Like.
staff weeject pick: SHH. Not quite sure why @RP thinks 12 weejects is too many. Only 72 words ... average word length over 5.25. Seems all in order, here. Barr woulda summed it up as "not enough to charge with obstruction -- pass the mashed potatoes".
Mucho thanx, BEQmeister. Great job. [Cool weeject stacks in the NW & SE … Darin to be a little runty!]
Masked & Anonymo4Us
variation inspired by recent events:
**gruntz**
Barack was a wild beast
(see 59A)
Two things; the word "baroque" is not pronounced with a schwa, it's a short "a." (As in "Baa-roke.) And Blat? What the devil is that supposed to be? The constructor couldn't fit in "bleat" so he faked it? Please. Otherwise, a good challenging Thursday. Blat??!!?
Amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau's aunt each wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word thorough (/ˈθʌroʊ/ THURR-oh—in General American,[10][11] but more precisely /ˈθɔːroʊ/ THOR-oh—in 19th-century New England). Edward Waldo Emerson wrote that the name should be pronounced "Thó-row", with the h sounded and stress on the first syllable.[12] Among modern-day American English speakers, it is perhaps more commonly pronounced /θəˈroʊ/ thə-ROH—with stress on the second syllable
ESP is the stuff of nonsense but giving something up for lent credible?
@Z -- Yep, no problem at all with the striving you describe, and I won't argue your unsaid point that we could use more of it. It's the term itself that annoys me (because we don't really need one) as well as the way it is applied (typically as a virtue-signaling device designed by the so-called enlightened among us to distinguish themselves from the so-called troglodytes). As with so much these days, it's a good idea spoiled by polemic misuse.
/rant
purplecar @ 7:47 is right ... THOROUGH shade ... not THROW shade
Sorry, @jberg
Pressed "reply" inadvertently..
Love your comment. People pick and choose the made up stuff they believe.
When I saw it was a BEQ puzzle, I thought I won't finish. But I did & enjoyed it a lot except for "Clyde Barrow" - got collide but not Clyde. All in all, totally enjoyable.
No shade, but, uh, no. What is “thorough shade”? That’s not a phrase, whereas “throw shade” most definitely is. First word of the base phrases also all have one syllable (broke, prayed, Clyde) with a schwa sound added for wackiness. So again: throw —> Thoreau
@anon12:18 - According to Merriam-Webster it is pronounced with a schwa.
@Hartley70 - “Uh.” It is not Bare Oak. It is not Bar Oak, It is Buh Roke. If you look at a dictionary pronunciation and see an upside down backwards “e” use the “uh” sound.
@Sir Hillary - Noted. Bugs me not at all but I have my own terms that affect me the same way.
@Conan Doyle - Shockingly, one can even be an atheist and recognize the value of periods of fasting. There is research that supports fasting as improving health and happiness. There are lots of religious practices that are valuable absent all the god BS. The art is discriminating between the crap and gold.
@Jyqm - I’m wondering the same thing. I’m 99.99% certain it is “throw shade” but I’m open to a citation showing how thorough would work.
BEQ always delivers, and this was no exception. Still chuckling over having to say THOREAUSHADE out loud like six times before getting it. And I’ll overlook DIDO, since the clue itself was a mischievous trick. How meta!
100% “throw shade”! I forgot to add above, not only are the first words of the base phrases all one syllable, they all begin with a consonant cluster (br, pr, cl, thr), and the schwa sound breaks up that cluster to create a second syllable. Thorough —> Thoreau doesn’t even add a schwa sound; the schwa is already there, only the stress is shifted from one syllable to the other. That and, again, “thorough shade” would be a kind of “green paint” answer, rather than a recognizable stand-alone phrase.
Conan Doyle,
You're snide question is actually a category error. ESP is nonsense. Or at the very least there is no credible evidence for its existence. But people do give up things for Lent. That's uncontroverted. I'm assuming you're implying that Lenten sacrifice is silly because there's no evidence for God.
But even if giving up something for Lent is a fool's errand, it doesn't mean it isn't happening. They are simply not equivalent.
I thought the first two themers were aces. BAROQUE BREAD and PARADE FOR RAIN, though humorously wacky, made sense. I can imagine both those actually existing. And then when the sound of the first two-syllable words are collapsed into a one-syllable sound, Broke BREAD and Prayed FOR RAIN, the clever theme pattern is nicely revealed.
Then the theme seems to run off the tracks. COLLIDE BARROW!? Get out of town. Maybe it's because I've spent some time pushing a wheelBARROW, but that is totally nonsensical to my ear. Plus, as has been mentioned, the verb-noun pattern of the first two morphs into an adjective-noun format. Clang, off the back of the rim.
The final themer is unclear, due to some question as to how THOREAU is pronounced. He's one of my heroes and I always thought his name had a French sounding pronunciation, with accent on the second syllable, thə ROW. But of late I've read that the proper pronunciation is with the accent on the first syllable, THUR row. So is the correct derivative phrase "throw shade' or "thorough shade"? A bit muddled there, methinks.
For the record, a few months ago Alex Trebek on "Jeopardy" pronounced it with accent on the second syllable, thə ROW.
So if I were calling this one, the first two were strikes down the middle of the plate, the third was a wild pitch to the backstop, and the fourth is still in the replay booth under further review.
Major struggle here, especially in the SE. OCHER over OCHre was the first stumble, although EVE straightened me out. Then I had cablECAR, so you can imagine the mess that made. Were Wolverine's weapons handS or CLAWS? Finally, given the plethora of baseball clues in the NYT, I was convinced that 47A was THOREAUShome (throws home). Isn't that a thing in baseball?
Surprised that Rex didn't ding the theme for inconsistency - all the themers are 2 words except for PARADEFORRAIN. I've seen him rant on inconsistent themers before, so I have started looking for such nits just as a matter of curiosity. Didn't bother me however, since I couldn't solve the darn thing at all.
DIDO/IRAE are complete unknowns to me so even if I hadn't Titanicked on the SE iceberg, it would have been a DNF Thursday. My favorite clue was "oven handle"; my favorite theme answer was BAROQUEBREAD which gave me an immediate visual of colorful Canadian currency.
Hey All !
Schwaaaaaaaaaaaa! HOOHA!
THROW SHADE is a phrase, THOROUGH SHADE is Not a phrase. That is all.
SHH
RooMonster
DarrinV
The clue for YAWN is actually [Been there, done that], as in "oh, booriing! *yawn*". "Woke" is an extremely common modern term meaning aware of social justice issues, such as systemic racism, transphobia, the patriarchy, etc. Hope this helps!
@M&A, coffee went up my nose but fortunately didn’t exit elsewhere after reading your comment on BLAT
WOKE, as clued, is my most-detested buzzword of the moment. It makes me YAWN when I see or hear it. Some music to get rid of the bad taste:
When I woke up this morning, you were on my mind
And when I a-woke, I was alone, this bird had flown
Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head
I appreciated this theme. I don't understand the problems with COLLIDE BARROW, to me it works just as well as the others, so what if "r" isn't the second letter of "Clyde".
Change the clue for WOKE and get rid of LEIA and we have a BEQ winner.
Center. Theater. Ocher. Although my phone's autocorrect does prefer OCHRE.
The clue and answer are in agreement on part of speech (noun)... But the pun is definitely on the verb phrase "throw shade."
I wonder what additional circuits are required to go from 14+ down to 5?
And I wonder whether it's as much fun when it does.
Probably.
HTML is a programming language that can be used to build websites. Though it's something of a dinosaur at this point.
I would have had a MUCH better time, but I wrote in Bar-B-Que Bread." What was BBQ bread? I have no idea. Am how can you slightly shift the pronunciation to create something else? Also no idea. I tried and tried to come up with an answer that fit the D _ _ B answer going down to no avail. It took probably ten minutes of staring at that mistake before I saw the error.
Well, the replay booth, after a seemingly never-ending further review process, has made a decision. Since the clue for THOREAU SHADE, "What the trees by Walden Pond provided?", clearly calls for an adjective-noun phrase, the verb-noun phrase Throw SHADE is disqualified and Thorough SHADE, green painty though it may be, has to be the the correct call.
The review officials would like to thank @Old Mr. Boston over on the crosswordfiend comment page for help in making the definitive call.
If I possessed the ESP superpower, I would keep it tight secret. No one, including my wife, would handle the news well. This, plus the electro-magnetic nature of thought, makes me think that some people have it.
I guess when Rex finds it easy (quick) to solve the puzzle, he likes it. I didn't care for the theme, and some of the answers DIDO were like, really? I guess I'm not that WOKE.
This was an easy solve but the puns were random and inane. No idea why people liked this.
This is the reason I do the xw every day.
This is the kind of puzzle that drives me up the wall--because of its sloppiness.
BLAT: A ewe does not blat. She bleats. Or baas.
The clue is "What the trees by Walden Pond provided?" The answer had to be a noun, obviously with a modifier, because a noun provides. THROW SHADE is verbal. THROWN SHADE, while hugely clunky, would have worked--but then no more Thoreau. So come up with something better.
DIDO as an answer to "mischievous trick." Not sloppy, just incredibly annoying. If you have to rely on archaic terms for your puzzle, you're just lazy.
Solving this puzzle wasn't hard, but it wasn't fun either, and the theme was just...blat.
@Z, Uh, thank you! That was clear and concise and much appreciated.
No one I have ever met in the medical world, nor in any anatomy class, calls wrist bones carpi"! I consider that a very bogus answer.
@Anoa Bob (4:29) and Anon 5:36 -- Where is it written that the parts of speech represented by a pun and the phrase upon which the pun is based have to be the same? Yes, a clue and an answer have to be the same part of speech; a verb can't clue a noun. But this is not a clue/answer situation. The clue for 47A is not "Throw shade"; rather the clue is "What the trees by Walden Pond provided." All that's required is that the pun and the phrase that the pun sounds like sound alike in the same way that the other theme pun answers sound alike. They can each be any part of speech at all; it doesn't matter.
I found it harder than @Rex, but I enjoyed it. The themers sparkles (except for COLLIDE BARROW, which I only got from the crosses). Loved the clue for HTML. Overall very enjoyable.
As a Latin teacher, I LOVE your comment about Dido. Thanks, Rex!
I didn't get the theme because, being British, we pronounce baroque with a short o, so it rhymes with "rock".
Well, I found myself wondering whether FIERI was Italian for “garçon.” So I learned something today.
Forget it, @Nancy, it's Chinatown.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fieri
BLAT is a perfectly good word. Ask any trumpet player or trombone player. It's a loud, overblown, harsh sound that lacks resonance.
AMAN,A HOOHA
ATLAS WOKE with a YAWN, “You SEE IWON’T be FREED today,
what I HAVEINSTORE at dawn WON’T let the skies MELTAWAY.”
--- ETHYL DAHL
Wow, I keep seeing "easy," not only on OFC's blog, but on several comments. I didn't think it was so blasted easy. On first read-through, I didn't know a damned thing! But then, here and there, little things started to pop in. I seemed to be fighting these clues all the way. Suffice to say, Thursday is the earliest possible placement for this guy (FIERI, one of my starting places).
I confess I forgot about SHERE Khan; wanted DOD candidate Chaka there. Had to go elsewhere, finally looking up this YOLANDA Adams person--and immediately awarding her the sash.
HOOHA makes a curtain call; let's not get into that again. One inkblot (not to be confused with BLAT: who knew that little word would generate so much print in the comments?): I FirED the guy before I FREED him. Should have known it'd be tough to end 37d with "I." So while it ended up not being the uber-challenging monster I thought it was at the ONSET, I still thought it was m-c for the day. A tad more PPPs than I'd like, but clean. Birdie.
I had an Irish lass broom this puz up – a colleen sweep with no write-overs. Har. Got the gimmick up top when BAROQUEBREAD mostly filled itself in.
The next time I hear or see the term WOKE will be too soon. Tiresome. Pretentious.
The REFS decided to HANDOFF the yeah baby to the first DRAFTCHOICE YOLANDA Adams. She actually sticks to the singing side of the music, but she can toss in an occasional holler like more than AFEW of the rest of the gospel singers.
I’ll THOREAU no SHADE at this puz.
Clever wordplay gimmick, mixing nouns and verbs and sounds.
PARADE->prayed and BAROQUE->broke were pretty straightforward. COLLIDE->Clyde and THOREAU->throw were less so, at least to me.
Unknown proper names: YOLANDA. FIERI, and SHERE. Odd clues/answers: BLAT(?) and DIDO. But got 'em.
Liked the two long downs in the NE and SW.
Usually have more fun than this on Thursdays, though.
Except for the NW and SE, I motored pretty smoothly through this. Got the first themer (cute!), then got the second off the last -RA- (yay). When I filled in COLLIDE--- I "knew" it was somebody named Clide/Clyde and the only one I could think of was BARROW.
I liked THOREAU SHADE, as I did all the themers.
The NW was sticky and I took forever to see BOSSY, guessed YOLANDA, and FAUVE.
Overall, a delightful Thursday puzzle. Really liked it.
@Anoa Bob 4:29 PM
Old Mr Boston's reasoning on this is muddled, so his post is useless. The clues in the puzzle comport with the themed answers in the puzzle -- they have nothing to do with the syntax or parts of speech in the four underlying phrases which a schwa was added to (in order to create the four themed answers).
As Jyqm wrote above,
100% “throw shade”! ... not only are the first words of the base phrases all one syllable, they all begin with a consonant cluster (br, pr, cl, thr), and the schwa sound breaks up that cluster to create a second syllable.
Thorough —> Thoreau doesn’t even add a schwa sound; the schwa is already there, only the stress is shifted from one syllable to the other.
That and, again, “thorough shade” would be a kind of “green paint” answer, rather than a recognizable stand-alone phrase.
Finally, if you've solved even a few BEQ puzzles and have seen how his clever brain works, then you know he would never choose "thorough shade" as a base phrase because
1. That would violate one of the rules for creating a tight theme set (as noted, "broke, prayed, and Clyde" are one syllable each).
2. It isn't a known thing/phrase/idiom as are "broke bread, prayed for rain, and Clyde Barrow."
And, Shortz wouldn't allow a loose theme set with "thorough shade."
[syndie solver, 5-23-19]
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