Constructor: Ryan Patrick Smith
Relative difficulty: Easy, apparently (I solved it sleepily in the comfy chair, on my clipboard, so I have no idea)
THEME: none
Word of the Day: OLIVIA WILDE (
17A: Actress who directed 2019's "Booksmart") —
Olivia Wilde (born Olivia Jane Cockburn; March 10, 1984) is an Irish and American actress, producer, director, and activist. She is known for her role as Remy "Thirteen" Hadley on the medical-drama television series House (2007–2012), and her roles in the films Conversations with Other Women (2005), Alpha Dog (2007), Tron: Legacy (2010), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), Butter (2011), Drinking Buddies (2013), The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013), Rush (2013), The Lazarus Effect (2015), Love the Coopers (2015), and Meadowland (2015).[3] In 2017, Wilde made her Broadway debut, playing the role of Julia in 1984. In 2019, she directed her first film, the comedy Booksmart to critical acclaim. (wikipedia)
• • •
I thought this was fine, but as far as the fill goes, only
OLIVIA WILDE feels truly fresh—a proper marquee answer—and the cluing was almost obnoxiously pop-culture oriented (and I say this as someone who quite enjoys pop culture-y things in his grids). We had to have a movie clue to get
MARINE. Another to get
MOON. Another to get
APES. Another to get
EERIE. Individually, those clues are fine—good, even—but cumulatively, the clues created a voice that seemed very desperate to seem current—a very
AV CLUB voice. Which, fantastic, I like the
AV CLUB. And better current than musty and dated. But two things: Fridays and Saturdays should have a
bunch of marquee answers, and they should draw from all over, from all kinds of knowledge bases and activities, and not just, say, extreme movie/TV-watching.
Balance! But a solid grid overall, and a "Booksmart" answer in a position of prominence (along with lots of other women's names, hurray), make this one a decent effort.
["Booksmart"'s Beanie Feldman (seen here in "Lady Bird")] [TITULAR! (38D)]
I think I was too tired to really zoom through this thing, though once I finally worked out the NW, the cobwebs were sufficiently cleared from my head and I did tear through the rest of it without much trouble. I think I just stared at
1A: Online pop culture/media hub (AV CLUB) and tried to guess it with no crosses, which meant me sitting there like an idiot going "The ... Buzzfeed? The ... Jezebel? The ... Awl? The ..." No, I have not had coffee yet. Eventually I did the thing I should've done immediately, which is hit the crosses.
AMOR MARINE LIVE MÁS got me moving, and then I got
OLIVIA WILDE, which made me feel I like I finally had my feet underneath me. Found the whole solve fine but pretty unremarkable, until the very end when
MAMAN (!?!?!) really slowed me down again. I don't remember "The Stranger," and certainly didn't expect to see so uncommon a French word in the puzzle ("uncommon" for U.S. crosswords, I should specify). Happily, the crosses were all very gettable, but yeah,
MAMAN gave me a little scare. Is
SEE'S "upscale"??? They seemed pretty ... scale ... to me, as someone who grew up in California, where they were common (I haven't seen
SEE'S since I left in the early '90s, except maybe on vacation, at a mall or an airport, which, again, raises the question of their upscaleness). I guess if you can't get them in the checkout line at the supermarket, they're "upscale"? OK. I really need coffee now, so good day!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on
Twitter and
Facebook]
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Fun & fresh, like "Booksmart." Agree the NW corner was challenging (anyone else ponder VALE/Dale?). Not a fan of MAMAN as clued, but the crosses soothed frustration. Fine start to Friday.
ReplyDeleteI will remember my well-earned success in three quadrants of this puzzle, where bits became blobs, then the area became anchored by that unlikely rock band, THERESA MAY and the ISRAELITES, then joy after joy as lacunas fell away. Oh, how I loved those three quadrants.
ReplyDeleteI will also remember the NW, Lacuna City, where I had BEACONS, MOON, and furtively inserted CANTS for [Declines], and then silence. Nothing but echoes and tumbleweeds forever (cue whistling wind). Soon I was cursing my ignorance, and finally I declared "[Cave man?]!" (Okay, "Uncle!"), and accepted alms.
Man, how I loved those three quadrants, and the fourth was a magnificent cheerleader, calling on me to "Bone up! Bone up! Bone up!" on my pop culture and myth. Thank you RPS for all four quadrants, and a fully edifying solve.
Shout out to you - I rarely stop into this culture of complaint anymore but when I do you regularly offer some clearsighted cheerfulness. Whatever happened to LMS?
DeleteLoved the 45A clue ("Trips in the dark"). Great misdirect.
ReplyDeleteThis was mostly easy with the exception of the NW. That section had some late week resistance to it that was just enough to keep the puzzle from being too easy and made this a nice debut Friday.
ReplyDeleteOther than a brief consideration of PUNK as the "rock rock genre" and an easily fixed OLDHAND/OLDSALT write over the solve went smoothly clockwise. When I got to the NW I had to skip ahead and restart with. MARINE and AMOR. The other three across entries were unknowns to me but with the downs they were recognizable.
A ton of recent PPP with AVCLUB, OLIVIA WILDE, THERESA MAY, TRUDEAU, and the poster child, ISSA RAE. At this point I have probably filled in ISSA or RAE or ISSA RAE fifty or more times in crosswords, and I still have no idea who this person is – not even whether it is a man or a woman. I have never knowingly come across the name outside of puzzledom.
ReplyDeleteDNF at the MA_AN/E_S cross. My ‘R’ guess was not a particularly good one. I considered the correct ‘M’, as it made sense in French, but EMS meant nothing to me.
Issa Rae is a Golden Globe and Prime Time Emmy nominated actress and NYT bestselling author.
DeleteNatick in the NE, appropriately. TOO MUCH TRIVIA!!
ReplyDeleteFor me the SW was the only sticking spot, otherwise I found this puzzle super easy. My normal Friday time is 18:39, and i sometimes have to cheat to finish. This one was a blazing 9:08, my best ever, at 3 am no less! Maybe I should have prednisone induced insomnia more often!
ReplyDeleteWell, if you're going to get all upscale on chocolates you might consider Godiva or Goldbelly. SEES is nice and all and if you want something that is sugar free, go ahead. If you want to impress me, then don't.
ReplyDeleteHow did I love thee...let me count the ways. So much I learned. Chipping away at this baby and sadly coming up with a final DNF. Of all things, I had that 911 dispatcher at 19A going for ESL (you know English as a second language) for an option. My Aleutian Islands was an INLET and I kinda liked a MASON being dead. Alas...didn't care because I had fun.
I liked learning that TRUDEAU was a bouncer and that THERESA MAY snubbed her nose at Parliament. I'm trying to figure out how I can incorporate that into a conversation today. I'm having lunch with friends so I think I'll just toss that out with the baked salmon I plan on having.
My biggest hold-up was at the beginning and trying to remember Olivia Wilde. I'm not up on my 2019 movies yet. If it's not on Hulu, then I don't know it.
Loved the clue for RED EYES. They certainly are trips in the dark. How I remember them well - especially SFO to MIA. Arriving and having my dad take me immediately to Little Havana for a cafecito.
Hope to see more of you, Ryan. I really enjoyed your puzzle.
The NW proved easy for me, the crosses were in before I even looked at the downs. My trouble was with Bud's place being EAR I wrote in bAR and it took me a while to find that mistake. Overall enjoyable solve under my Friday average despite the hunting trip.
ReplyDeleteAs has been pointed out (implicitly), VALE and DALE re synonyms. For a social media Luddite, such as myself, ADCLUB looked fine. Though I can now see that AVCLUB is a better answer.
ReplyDeleteG
Where would Justin Trudeau be a bouncer? A day care center?
ReplyDeleteI have no idea who the Hans are but there certainly are a lot of them. My other guess was Hun.
Rex is right about too much pop culture.
This was a disappointing Meh.
Hans are the major ethnic group in China.
DeleteIsn’t Han a collective noun, if not an adjective?
DeleteJimG
10 of the first 13 Across clue/answers are PPP. It gets a little better from there, but still logs in at a hefty 25 of 68 for 37%. That’s not including PROG rock or ELECTRONICA or CRIB, so I can imagine this feeling like 42% PPP to solvers. This amount of PPP always results in the wheelhouse/outhouse phenomenon. And Rex is right, this tilts heavily to the stuff typically known by the AV CLUB fan, far less towards AARP: The Magazine reader.
ReplyDeleteI’ve long taken the position that Word Play is always better in crosswords than trivia. That the trivia is less tired than we often see doesn’t make it any more interesting. “Trips in the dark” is so much better than “Famous person who did X” that I’m always just a little surprised that puzzles rely so heavily on what is, in the end, just trivial trivia. I also really liked “Make a fast stop.”
Medium here. SE filled first, then counterclockwise from there. Hand up for dALE before VALE. Hand up for wondering if some sort of qualifier is needed for the LIVE MÁS clue. Is that still a Taco Bell slogan? Hand up for wondering if BIKE was initially clued exactly the same as MOON.
I got Live Mas right out of the gate. I believe it is still in use.
DeleteSurprised to see they let Prime Minister Blackface off with an anodyne clue.
ReplyDeleteI even tried Dell for a bit first.
ReplyDeleteFrom Webster's II New College Dictionary (which got a lot of use when I solved on paper)
ReplyDeleteDale-valley
Dell-wooded valley
Glen-valley
Vale-valley
So, like avow/aver, elude/evade/avoid, and others, you try for a lucky guess or wait for a cross or two.
AV CLUB undid me. Slotted in (The) Ringer at 1a first, (which is the phoenix risen from the ashes of Grantland. I miss Grantland). But that didn't work. Olivia Wilde popped into my head with relative ease, seemingly corroborating my guess of DELL at 2D. Worked clockwise through the rest of the solve until I had a completed fill with the website ADDVUB at 1a. I was convinced of VIVE MAS at 4d. DALE for 2d seemed cromulent and we don't play cards at my CRIB. Knowing a website's name could be almost anything I threw in the towel and took the DNF.
ReplyDeleteExcellent cluing for REDEYES.
ReplyDeleteI, too, had bar for EAR way too long and couldn’t decide between dale and VALE.
It would be nice someday to have a puzzle that avoids the inanity of pop culture but today was not that day.
ReplyDeleteI don’t participate in many trivia contests, and I wouldn’t be very good at it if I did - so I’ll leave it to others to discern whether this was a good and fair trivia quiz.
ReplyDeleteAs far as being a crossword puzzle, I think it really stunk. Unless I missed one, I don’t believe there is a single set of two crossing entries that don’t involve a trivia answer. I have the following as being, or being clued as if they were part of a Friday night trivia contest at a local pub.
AVCLUB, PROG, MARINE, SULU, HAN, OLIVIA WILDE, REBECCA, ISSA RAE, ARIADNE, MAMAN, THERESA MAY, MOE (and that’s just the top half of the grid !), SMARTTV, EERIE, PRATT, TRUDEAU, TITULAR, VESPERS, APES, ISRAELITES, UBOAT, AARP, URSA, and ELECTRONICA.
Obviously, not in my wheelhouse today - congrats to all of the PPP fans out there, as this may have been a very enjoyable romp for y’all. I shall steel and gird myself for what tomorrow brings - I just hope they don’t confuse eccentricity with difficulty or we will be in for another slog fest, lol.
I didn't have as much issue with the pop culture (maybe I'm watching too much TV), but I did have a lot of issue in the SW with MUFTI. Maybe that's some crosswordese I'm not familiar with, but I've never heard that word. The clue "Civvies" didn't help much since I'm not really connected with the military at all.
ReplyDeleteI thought the same thing about SEES candies, which I loved as a kid in California, but were strictly rationed. I just passed through three airports in the past two weeks with SEES candy kiosks, which always reminds me of my childhood in Sacramento.
ReplyDeleteI've taken a lot of redeyes but they're only half trips in the dark, right? I mean Galway to your destination the sun is rising. Or is it that I only took them from LA to NY, not vice versa?
ReplyDeleteFun Friday but never heard of SEES so I had SKOR too long and BAR for Bud's place. At first I was thinking GUT. Lol
Poor Theresa May! She certainly tried hard enough.
Happy weekend all. Apparently a long weekend for the Senate.
Not at all Friday, but no nigs
ReplyDeleteI almost think I don't have to write this review. You've already guessed that I'm not a happy camper, right? Well you're a very good GUESSER.
ReplyDeleteA pop culture trivia fest in which even the clues that didn't have to be clued so as to require pop culture knowledge were. Ugh.
I Naticked at the rock music genre/ car abbrev cross, natch. I had FSI and FROG. Which made/makes just as much sense to me as PSI/PROG.
I had no idea who Caesar was in the franchise, much less who his army was, and I wanted bAR for "Bud's place". [Hic.] So I ended up with bAR crossing APbS for Caesar's army. Did this seem odd? Yes, and in a puzzle I liked more, I might have struggled to figure out the mistake.
Not a Nancy puzzle. But y'all knew that already.
Never gave it a thought.
DeleteIn the comfy chair on a clipboard, as Rex said, is the best way to solve. I normally do a modified version of it with a cat on my lap and the clipboard on the chair arm so that I don’t disturb her. It’s a morning ritual which I always feel guilty about if I have to miss it. I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciate the effort on this great Friday crossword. Not too hard, not too easy, and I learned a new word in ELECTRONICA.
ReplyDeleteThis was my day for all-time favorites starting with the timeless classic REBECCA. There are few fictional places as frightening and yet as alluring as Manderley by the sea. Then best ever film MARINE John Wayne as Sergeant Stryker in The Sands of Iwo Jima, one of only four films in which John Wayne’s character dies. Can anyone name the other three? First prize is a package of SEE’S candy which I’ve never tasted or even heard of. But then someone who grew up in California might never have eaten a Cherry Mash either. Anyone??
"halfway" not Galway. Altho I have flown there too. :-)
ReplyDeleteThree naticks for me: the HAN/MAMAN cross (HuNs still exist, right?) I mean HuNs and MuMAN is just as reasonable as HAN/MAMAN. The second, same word, crossing ISSARAE with MAMAN (I've never taken French and that word was completely unfamiliar with me as well as uninferrable)...so that ISSARAE, while seemingly obvious, could have been something unusual like ISSAReE...and MAMeN seemed, you know, fine.
ReplyDeleteThe third natick came from the other side of the world. I've never heard of the website the AVCLUB. So crossing that with the just as reasonable d/VALE...AdCLUB v. AVCLUB, dALE v. VALE. Really, it could've been both for all I knew.
The rest of the puzzle was a breeze. I didn't know OLIVIAWILDE either, but it was gettable with the crosses. 33A Bud's place, I originally had bAR.
Also, I read somewhere that the narwhal's horn is basically a tooth, and it can grow to be as long as the narwhal itself. Now you know.
I feel like ISSA RAE's publicist has an in with the crossword people. Wasn't she in 2 puzzles just this week? Still don't really know who she is.
ReplyDeleteDon't miss @kitshef's 7:15 comment on ISSA RAE. I had the exact same reaction; in fact I could have written those sentences word for word. I, too, have written in the name ISSA RAE over and over in puzzles of late, have never seen the name anywhere else, and, like just @kitshef, don't know who this person is or even whether it's a man or woman.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I'd been planning to put that in my comment, but got sidetracked by FSI/FROG and BAR/APBS.
It's always fun when someone has the same reaction that you do to a clue.
Rex,
ReplyDeleteJust how big do you suppose a crossword puzzle's marquee is?
And isn't marquee usually reserved for the biggest thing? Thta is, it's singular. I think your usage is as appalling as your manners.
Quasi,
ReplyDeleteJust what time are you taking off from Galway to get a sunrise? Sure aint anytime in the dark and arriving in the US at first light. The US is 5 hours west of Galway.
Red Eyes only work West to east for obvious reasons.
Wake of the Red Witch is one of the Wayne films where he eats it.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. I once knew the other two....
@Anon 9:58
ReplyDeleteSee @Quasi's 9:47 comment.
THE SHOOTIST (1976) - Killed in gunfight in saloon at end of film.
ReplyDeleteTHE COWBOYS (1972) - Killed by Bruce Dern and avenged by the boys.
THE ALAMO (1960) - As Davy Crockett killed by Mexican soldier lance.
SANDS OF IWO JIMA (1949) - Killed by sniper bullet at end of film.
WAKE OF THE RED WITCH (1949) - Killed as ship plunged off ledge and sank with Octopus.
THE FIGHTING SEABEES (1944) - Killed by sniper as he was about to leap from bulldozer.
REAP THE WILD WIND (1942) - Killed by squid undersea.
WEST OF THE DIVIDE (1934) - Duke had a dual role and his evil look-alike died after drinking poisoned water. This is a clip from the film showing the brief scene of Gat Gans and his death.
Loved the cluing for Neruda & savored that for OLD SALT. Friday word play which makes a relatively easy solve worth while. Kept waiting for that huge Cross of Black in the center to cast a shadow on the solve?? Maybe OFL will reveal a clever bit that I overlooked as so often happens. Thanks for a gentle start to the weekend Ryan.
ReplyDeleteIf you are old and from Los Angeles (and I'm both) you will remember that a box of See's Candies was THE holiday or hostess gift. It was considered quite upscale, at least in my middle-class life, and somewhat of an extravagance.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed it very much. Fifteen red plus signs in the margins, a lot. Learned about the Hans. (I’ll ask some of my friends if they are descended from the Hans.). I had almost forgotten about the CRIB (I haven’t played cribbage for years). Terrific clue for APES — it reminded me that Caesar was the leader of the dominant force in some of the sequels to Planet of the Apes.
ReplyDeleteWe get fresh See’s candy. It is made in South San Francisco, an independent city immediately southeast of us in San Francisco. They use locally-made chocolate and nuts grown in the valley a few miles away. It is big in our family, one-pound boxes being exchanged wildly on special days. My mother discovered See’s as soon as they came to San Francisco in 1934. She taught me that the yummy chews were rectangular and the yucky creams were round.
So Rex likes this one because it has "lots of women's names". Jeezuz. And the " crosses were all very gettable" for Maman ? Han,EMS,and Issa Rae ? This one was so bad I'm agreeing with @Z.
ReplyDeleteWhere there's a mill, there's a May. Issa Rae announced the Oscar nominations this week; she's a nascent star. At least I was able to eliminate Pine and Hemsworth from the recent spate of Chrisses, leaving only Evans and Pratt to consider. They must have searched high and low all over Wikipedia to get that information about SULU.
ReplyDeleteRemember "waxy yellow buildup"? Was that on the floor or on your teeth? – I'm not sure. I don't want to end up like Bonnie and Clyde.
I hated this puzzle. Too many trivia-related answers.
ReplyDeleteWell, one man's trivia is another man's wha? Plenty of that for me today, mostly in the pop culture end of the scale. Like others I once again wrote in ISSARAE and thought, I wonder who that is. Hooray for MUFTI, how have you been? Long time no see.
ReplyDeleteHoping that @JoeD will put up Desmond Dekker and The Aces doing their fine piece The ISRAELITES. Early example (earliest?) of reggae on the American pop charts.
Sure, quite a few answers seem like entries in a trivia contest, but that's OK with me. Any answer can be considered trivial, especially if you don't know it, but I think the alternative is having a puzzle full of answers that are obvious. Not why I do the NYTXW.
Nice Friday workout,RPS. Thanks for the fun.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteThat NW corner can take a long jump off a short pier... Or whatever that saying is. AMOR as clued? Couldn't get the ole brain off AVC L_B, so I did go this time with @M&A's "when in doubt, put in a U", and it worked! Didn't work in HuN, however, when it was HAN.
Way too many specific things in that NW. dALE first like a bunch of y'all. MARINE oddly clued, UNICODE a Huh?, REBECCA not known, as you know I don't know books well, just a cluster. And yes, I freely admit to stuff I don't know, which seems to get an @Anon or two to wonder why people admit to their ignorances.
Anyway, rest of puz was on the tough side, but ultimately doable. Had Punk for PROG first, but SULU had 8D starting UU, which, while good for @M&A, didn't make sense.
RED EYES best clue. ATE and TIS also fun. We have SEES Candies Shops here in Las Vegas. Fell into the bARS trap for EARS, thinking APbS in the Caeser films had to do with Armored Personal Carriers, even though that's APCS. Not military type movie, Planet of the Apes. Aha.
Overall, OK puz, with a death stare to the NW.
AS IF OFT
RooMonster
DarrinV
@anon 9:59 The Duke did not die in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he is the one who asks Jimmy Stewart's older character to 'think back' to that day, and blows smoke in his face as the transition unfolds. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend", is the line from the movie when the newspaperman finds out that Ransom Stoddard (Stewart), was not the one that killed the local bully, the notoriety of which may have directly led to his winning local elections.
ReplyDeleteRT
Still don't get the answer for 36Across. How does one come up with "ear" for Bud's place? I still don't get it and haven't seen any comments on it, other than the ones where people had 'bar' as their answer (which I did, too).
ReplyDeleteIssa Rae was a gimme, just cuz I've seen her name so much in crosswords these past six months. She has (had?) a series on HBO and she was in the movie Thug Life; that's all I know. Allegedly she's funny.
Ear buds, those things you stick in your ears, connected to smart phones.
Delete@Nancy, maybe you thought Frog Rock would be a pejorative term for Johnny Hallyday? And having foie gras while listening would be de rigueur?
ReplyDelete@Photomatte
ReplyDeleteEAR bud
Played tough, for a while …
ReplyDeleteNW: Hard; lotsa names & pop cultures that I didn't know.
NE: Semi-hard; more names; the weeject stack helped m&e some, tho.
SW: Friendly.
SE: Friendly; lost a few precious nanoseconds on the mysterious but kinda inferable ELECTRONICA.
Middle: a big plus.
Were the seed entries for this puppy = OLIVIAWILDE and ELECTRONICA? Sorta weird seed choices. Didn't happen to know either of em, at our house.
staff weeject pick: HAN. Cool different clue for it. Plus, SULU is right nextdoor, hintin at HAN SULU [which ain't anything, but is still primo schlocky-soundin.]
Thanx for the semi-feisty FriPuz and congratz on yer debut, Mr. Smith. Gotta appreciate a 9-U debuuuuuuuuut.
Masked & Anonymo9Us
**gruntz**
That's Beanie Feldstein, not Beanie Feldman.
ReplyDeleteRT,
ReplyDeleteUm. No. Ransom Stottard comes back to town as an old man ( and Senator) specifically and only for Tom Donophon's funeral. That's the Duke's character. That's why Pompey (woody strode) is with the corpse. ( I'm sure my spelling is in error; my movie knowledge is not)
I imagine this will be tough going for those unfamiliar with the likes of OLIVIAWILDE and ISSARAE (though the latter has been all over crosswords the past few years), and some won’t like the plethora of names on principle. My complaint is this was way too easy; my time was only slightly above my Wednesday average.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, serves the constructor right to go so far out of his way to pander to Rex, only to find that the man who constantly complains of “bro-y” puzzles can’t be bothered to even mention the onslaught of women in this grid. In addition to the two I mentioned above, there’s also REBECCA, ARIADNE, THERESAMAY, and even Camus’ MAMAN! (Which I loved, both clue and answer. If you’re solving a Friday puzzle, you should know the French word for “mother,” and you should be familiar with the opening of “The Stranger.” More of these kinds of clues, please!)
THANK YOU. my thoughts exactly. I solved and was delighted to see so many women and female characters featured. Was sure Rex would comment on it. Crickets.
DeleteGive me pop culture over the billionth sportsball clue any day!
ReplyDeleteI don't go to many movies, and when I do I usually don't notice what the actors' names are -- so until recently, when another puzzle also used her full name, I was assuming this one was called RAE ISSA. Now I know. One thing in her favor is that she has knocked the repugnant ex-member of Congress Darrell ISSA out of the puzzle. He's out of Congress, too, but trying to make a comeback this year.
ReplyDeleteAside from that -- well, I agree that there were a lot of contemporary pop culture references, but there were also Pablo Neruda, Albert Camus, and Daphne DuMaurier, not to mention ARIADNE and Theseus. And then there was the nice crossing of the prohibited U BOATs with the illicit BUILDUP of weapons by the Nazis.
@kitshef, if you call 911, you have an emergency which will be referred to either the police department, the fire department, or the Emergency Medical Service (EMS).
Just so you know, since many seem not to -- HAN is what the ethnic Chinese, as opposed to Chinese of other ethnicities, call themselves. There are a lot of them.
The ISRAELITES in Exodus in the Bible are indeed emigrants; in the novel by Leon Uris, they are immigrants -- so it could be clued either way. I think that's kind of neat.
OK, now for the important stuff. I think that a) we have all grown more sophisticated in our tastes, and b) when a branded product gets a reputation for quality, the makers may be tempted to ramp up production so they can sell more, and quality may decline a bit as a result. So something that used to seem really excellent, such as SEE'S candy, can come to disappoint. I think Godiva is starting down that same slippery slope. My advice is to hold out for Leonidas or Daskalides.
Like @Z, I enjoy wordplay. But after that I enjoy figuring out what a pop culture answer is without knowing much about it. For example, I had no idea about the movie, but anything about Iwo Jima is like to have some MARINEs in it. I always enjoy that sort of reasoning, when it proves out.
@Tim Aurthur (11:13) -- Your comment may be as stuffed with humor as a goose or duck's liver is stuffed with foie gras, but both your presumed witticisms sailed right over my head.
ReplyDelete1) Who's Johnny Hallyday?
2) I don't get the foie gras reference since foie gras does not come from frogs.
I'm sure what you said is funny. I just don't know why.
The only upscale candy I've encountered is truffles from Kron Chocolatier in White Folks Mall in Fairfax, VA. Never heard of See('s). Could be an Edy/Dreyer thing?
ReplyDelete@pabloinnh – check my post two above yours. ;-)
ReplyDelete@Nancy – Johnny Hallyday was a French pop/rock singer.
"links to the candy company's site can be found on Walmart.com and similar internet stores. Through an arrangement with Costco, coupons for boxes of candies may be purchased at the warehouse outlets and redeemed at See's stores or by mail."
ReplyDelete[the wiki]
Walmart and Costco is upscale? in what universe?
@Anonymous at 10:28 — Looks like you cut and pasted from one of the same websites I found. The four I was referring to were: The Shootist, The Cowboys, The Alamo, and Sands of Iwo Jima. Before posting my original comment I did Google verify those four which seem to be the most commonly known. Then after someone else mentioned Wake of the Red Witch, I started googling again and found those and a few other really old ones where his character bit the dust or it was implied without being portrayed. And of course there is the debate over whether or not he “died” in Liberty Valance because he was already dead when the movie started. Well anyway, this was a fun bit of trivia on a day when many are complaining about too much trivia. Happy Friday!
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 12:14 asks, " ... Costco is upscale? in what universe?"
ReplyDeleteAt the Costco near me, one can buy top-of-the-line items of jewelry and watches, book premium cruises, order top brands of automobiles, and purchase many well-established brands of household items. The store itself may not be so upscale, but the merchandise often is. No reason to dis a box of See's just because it came from Costco.
This guy is an English “professor” and he doesn’t remember The Stranger? Maybe if they put it out as a Classic Comic. Oh, the Humanities!
ReplyDeleteI had the titular line in Star Wars.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiqPmsBYieA
It's been a long, long time since I studied French. While I had no problem inferring MAMAN off of MA_A_, I couldn't remember if aujourd'hui was yesterday or tomorrow. Oh, today, sheesh!
ReplyDeleteAnd while I was preening myself on having a decent solve time, I should have known that I would find an error. Yeah, AdCLUB, like more than one commenter here. I should know by now to hesitate before entering the first letter of _ALE without considering both choices. Maybe next time.
ISSA RAE does show up an inordinate amount in crosswords. I run into her name everywhere in print but have yet to see any of her work. I'm amazed at all she has accomplished - today was yet again a new-to-me vehicle of hers.
I was very proud of myself for getting "Rebecca" from just the second C - I may have read it, but if so, it was back in the 70's when I had access to my mother's library. She was very fond of EERIE gothic novels.
I could have used less pop culture in my Friday puzzle, but this is nice debut themeless, so congratulations, Ryan Patrick Smith.
BTW, Erik Agard did today's New Yorker puzzle.
ReplyDelete@Joaquin:
ReplyDeleteThe point of See's in Costco&Walmart is that truly 'upscale' merchandise is sold *only* in bespoke stores. You have to go there to get it. When Harry Winston diamonds show up at Sam's, then upscale won't mean anything.
Though I don’t consider myself a PPP whiz by any means, managed to finish this one in better than average time without help from Google (2020 house rule). Didn’t know my own strength until I came here to find a forest of complaints. A very distant memory from HS French gave me MAMAN right away. Remembered MUFTI from a NYTXW within the past year. Also knew HAN (my daughter was born Chinese). Same response to ISSA RAE as reported above by several other senior solvers. Was a good GUESSER throughout today. Final correction of bAR to EAR (bought my daughter earbuds for Christmas last year) aided by dim recollection of the Planet of the Apes movies released the happy tune.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely not in my wheelhouse with all the contemporary references and proper names, but the puzzle seemed fair enough. I predicted Rex would like it. I breezed through much of it but was confounded in the NW, as were many others. As @JBerg, I found I was able to reason out a surprising number of unknown words. But I still ended up with a few errors.
ReplyDeleteAlso @JBerg aptly described the tendency for many beloved local food products to scale up and risk losing their quality and cachet. Sees Candies, once sold only in standalone stores, were never exactly upscale but they were considered “good chocolates” as opposed to the drug store or supermarket variety. It is a slippery slope but the void is always filled by some new entrepreneur.
Like many others, I prefer delicious wordplay over PPP any day. Trips in the dark and German marks were my faves today.
@JoeD-
ReplyDeleteOf course. Must have been in the pipeline while I was posting.
When will I learn?
@pabloinnh & @Joe D
ReplyDeleteGreat minds...
I always miss @LMS. Maybe tomorrow?
ReplyDeleteTechnical DNF because I totally forgot about the AVCLUB. Kind of dated for me. I used to visit The Onion all the time, and the AVCLUB was their sister site. So I too had AdCLUB and did not catch the error. MAMAN I did get, though it took a while for it to come to mind. I think even if you know how the book begins, you might not know the French word for "mom". "Mere" is standard in crosswords. MAMAN -- I wonder if this is a first?
Otherwise a fine puzzle, and the PPP stuff was not hard, and fairly crossed.
Thanks, @Tim Aurthur, for Frog rock. Still laughing.
ReplyDeleteConstructor here! Appreciate the debut congrats, Teedmn & Masked and Anonymous. It's been great fun for me reading through everyone's remarks--even the somewhat SALTy ones. :) Honestly, I was expecting Rex himself to lay into me with a little more ferocity than he mustered; I got off easy with his sleepiness I suppose, haha.
ReplyDeleteI do have to give him major props for that "TITULAR role!!" GIF from "Booksmart"--that was truly inspired.
A fun one, the pleasures of BEACONS, ARIADNE, NASCENT,, VESPERS, and the sylvan GLENS and VALE matched by the wit of REDEYES, EAR, and UMLAUTS. With all of the proper names, I was happy for the footholds MAMAN, REBECCA, and ARIADNE provided and grateful to pattern recognition for easy access to THERESA MAY, TRUDEAU, and OLIVIA WILDE. Wasn't sure if it would be MOE or Mel (I don't know either, but I think both are bartenders on TV). No idea: UNICODE.
ReplyDelete@QuasiMojo, re:REDEYES--it perhaps depends on the season. In winter a REDEYE from Honolulu to Chicago is in full darkness all the way to landing.
@Z The clue for CRIB is, in my opinion, the exact opposite of pop culture. I think it is mostly played by old-timers these days.
ReplyDeleteFor me it is the best two-handed card game.
Poor NYTIMES, between a rock and a hard place. To attract a new generation of solvers it has to include current slang and cultural references which then alienate us old timers. I just don't have the mental bandwidth to store all these (to me) stupid names (e.g., AV CLUB, ELECTRONICA, PROG, LIVE MAS). Not in my wheelhouse and decidedly not my cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteCarola,
ReplyDeletethe season matters, but not nearly so much as direction of the flight. Quasi' suggestion that one could be on a red eye from Galway to the (implied) US, is a non-starter; the flight time simply isn't long enough to overcome the time zone issue.
As for Hawaii to Chitown, even in winter that's a stretch. We're less than a month from the winter solstice and tonight sunset in Honulul is 6:12. There are flights to Ohare that land at 4:50 AM --in the dark this time of year. But the take off is in the 5o'clock hour from Oahu. Plenty of daylight.
Aloha
Easy-medium. The trivia was mostly in my wheelhouse, liked it.
ReplyDelete@anon 3:15
ReplyDeleteAgain, please read @Quasi's 9:47 comment, "Galway" was a typo or autocorrect. He meant halfway.
How much does your Galway?
ReplyDelete@JustMarci - The way I count Pop Culture includes all sportsball.
ReplyDelete@jberg- I guess I complain so much about excessive PPP that it seems I oppose all PPP. But, no. PPP that is relatively sparse (less than 25%), diverse, and fairly crossed is fine by me. Today fails on all three counts. Too much. Skews too much towards a particular interest area. At least a few crosses that, if we are to believe the comments, are hard to infer.
@tb - Settlers of Catan and Monopoly both count as PPP when I’m counting. CRIBbage is, the more I think about it, also PPP of the same ilk. Ariana and ARIADNE are separated by a couple of millennia, but both count as PPP, they just appeal to different pop culture interests.
cribbage is not a product name, pop culture reference, or other proper noun.
DeleteI'm 26 and this felt like a Tuesday to me. Maybe crosswords are finally being made for my generation!
ReplyDelete@JC66, thanks so much for guiding folks to my corrective post, although I'm not sure it helps. I tried not using Autocorrect for a month and spent forever retyping my posts due to fat fingers and poor eyesight. So I rely on it again despite its own embarrassing errors. A Red Eye is also a drink of coffee with a shot of espresso something I should have had this morning to avoid the "halfway" / "Galway" gaffe.
ReplyDeleteWhat does PPP represent?
ReplyDeleteGuys, guys, guys.
ReplyDeleteI'm in my 60's. I know stuff. Lots of stuff because I'm in my 60's. Because I read. Because I go to the movies. Because I read the newspaper that this puzzle is in every day. I watch TV. I listen to the radio. I follow people on podcasts. And blogs!
Issa Rae's HBO show Insecure is fantastic. Olivia Wilde has always been an interesting actress, and now she's an interesting director. She's also from the famous Cockburn family. LOOK IT UP. NO excuse for not knowing stuff when everything you need to know is sitting at Wikipedia. One click away. Trivia? This is the world we live in. Why wouldn't I want to know about music and art and movies and literature when the information is there. It's everywhere. It's streaming in a torrent.
And why, why, why do you want to do puzzles like these and visit blogs like this one, if you don't want to know stuff? This I don't understand at all. This pride at not knowing who people are because you don't watch TV, or can't be bothered to find out. So why the hell are you doing crossword puzzles? I don't get it.
Back to Rex. I vowed I would never do this again, but really. If he's teaching English, he should be a reader. And if he's a reader, then he should know Camus. The first line of the stranger is FAMOUS. He should know it. He should not admit he hasn't read something that iconic or even say he doesn't remember. (Mind you, I remember less and less as I get older. SEE Wikipedia. But he's a kid. He has no excuse.) Of course, that's his thing. He likes doing that.
And since when is the French for Mom a tough word?
@Quasi
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, I completely understand.
@Anon 5:03
PPP is an @Z invention:
Pop culture, Product names, and other Proper nouns. 25-30% is pretty NYTX typical. More than 33% almost always causes some subset of solvers trouble.
This is the closest I've come to solving a Friday independently, so I'm proud. That said it might have been on the easy side. SE made for the easiest start with ELECTRONICA although I did try ELECTROfunk. As usual the lit references alluded me. Also I put POLARIS for guiding light, took a while to dig out of.
ReplyDelete@JC66 - I don’t know that “invention” is quite right. I stole PPP from @Lewis and then made the term work, so maybe “coiner?”
ReplyDelete@OffTheGrid - I wouldn’t count “chess” but I would count “Monopoly.” So is CRIBbage more like Chess or Monopoly? Or should I count all games including Chess and Checkers as “pop culture?” I tried to have it both ways initially.
@Amelia - I read Camus in high school, so I needed “only” 3 letters to shake the answer loose. I am always amazed that anyone is surprised that Rex (or anyone else) doesn’t know or remember something.
The card game cribbage is not a brand name, but just another card game like poker or pinochle, and has been around since the 1600's(I just looked that up), which I first learned to play in the late 50's or early 60's,but haven't played it in years. If poker and pinochle aren't PPP, then I wouldn't think cribbage is either, but I'm not sure where you stand on non "brand" name card games.
Delete@Z
ReplyDeleteI knew you'd react. ;-)
And I did't know @Lewis was the. originator.
Pabloinnh --
ReplyDelete"My Boy Lollipop" (Millie Small) beat Decker to the charts by about twelve years.
@Amelia: Thank you for the recommendation on “Insecure.” I do not currently watch it but will definitely make it a point to do so. And I agree with your thoughts on looking things up or as I call it, doing my research. All day I have been wondering why people are critical of too much trivia when it seems to me that’s pretty much what a crossword puzzle is - bits and pieces of trivia. And as for learning pop culture and terms or even words I don’t know, that’s one of the reasons I love this particular crossword. I know things but I don’t know everything, and most days it forces me to think and learn so hopefully at the end of the day, my rapidly rusting brain is a little less creaky.
ReplyDeleteThe translation of "The Stranger" we were assigned in high school—first published in '88 dedicated an entire forward to the decision to go with "maman" instead of "mother." Apparently it was big news at the time (https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/18/books/classic-french-novel-is-americanized.html). By the time I read it in '02, the teacher still noted it.
ReplyDeleteAnd as recently as 2012, the New Yorker ran this: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be
Amelia,
ReplyDeleteI think I'm in love!
Thanks.
Quasi,
Sorry I didn't see the halfway post.
My apologies.
Z,
Not just something. One of the most famous passages of post-war literature. And it's in his field. Why carry his water? You seem like a toady.
Or maybe that's not right. Maybe you are.
@Whats
ReplyDeleteBest post of the day.
No naticks, green paint, or felt like another day
Z
ReplyDeleteAre you joking? Coiner? No. Check the dictionary.
Popularizer, at best.
@MetroGnome – Five years, actually. "My Boy Lollipop" charted in 1964 (though the song is actually older than that) and "Israelites" in 1969. And if you want to split hairs, "Lollipop" has a ska beat whereas "Israelites" is reggae.
ReplyDeleteAmelia, Amelia, @Amelia 5:41 pm
ReplyDeleteI'm 58. I know lots of stuff. I read voraciously.
I don't have HBO, or SHO, or cable or satellite TV, because it's a vast wasteland. Books are better.
The point being made here is that trivia for the sake of trivia is stupid. As long as the trivia is gettable by crosses, even if it's tough, it's great. If it's a "Natick" (here in SoCal I'd use Buellton) because it's uninferrable then it's BS.
I've never read Camus. Not my thing, so I don't know him from Jung. I mean, I know who he is, but the stuff he wrote doesn't interest me in the slightest. The answer fell from crosses, as it should.
I enjoyed today's puzzle.
French is irrelevant to any thinking human being.
REBECCA'S UMLAUTS
Mark, in Mickey's North Forty
Couldn't understand Thursday’s puzzle. But Friday was good for me! One mistake: Trips in the dark ... SEANCES
ReplyDelete@JoeD-
ReplyDeleteYou've done it again. We are not worthy.
CRIB AMOR
ReplyDeleteREBECCA SEES it as a PRE-DATE,
THERESAMAY OFT act ASIF a child,
ISSARAE says it is REAL great,
‘TIS what I POSSESS drives OLIVIAWILDE
--- HAN SULU
Well, DNF again, but this time only by a single letter: at #2. I have no idea about 1a, and 2d could be either dALE or VALE. I was a bad GUESSER. AdCLUB looked OK to me. Do I have to be living under a rock to not know AVCLUB? So be it. At least I have a stone roof.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know DOD OLIVIAWILDE, either--but I'd like to. Waited for either BIKE or MOON for the ET poster clue--and found both in the grid! Very mean-spirited clue for SEES, but absent that awful Natick at 2, a good puzzle, I thought.
Wheelhouse? Couldn't even see the ship. The entire upper half of the puzzle was one pisser after another. Rejected.
ReplyDeleteThis was a tough puzzle for me, particularly the NW which got filled in last. The first section I got was the SW with semi-gimmes TIS, ATE, OFT. From there with the help of UMLAUTS and BUILDUP, I moved to the SE and friendly crosses helped get ELECTRONICA, which I've never heard of, but I was stopped for quite a while with the actor's name and the trips in the dark.
ReplyDeleteOut of the blue, RED EYES came to me, which revealed THERESA MAY (didn't know she was the only one). So then, back to the NW when I finally remembered REBECCA which was key. CRIB, a favourite game of mine (shoulda got it right off) led to the last enlightening entry, OLIVIA WILDE (had WILDE already in place). AV CLUB(?) "had" to be right and so TADA!
The STREAMS/GLEN twosome was iffy in my opinion, but basically I thought it was a good and fair puzzle.
Missed only a couple. Usual suspects. Must - study - Greek - myths. Along with periodic tables, etc.
ReplyDeleteLots of good guesses on the longs, tho. Was on the wavelength. Till I fell off.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
No write-overs; certainly finished more quickly than yesterday, no REAL hold-ups, didn’t have to be a GUESSER. AARP is getting a little too popular; I MAY have to join one of these days. OLIVIAWILDE a definite yeah baby, as is a certain THERESA some of us know. Nice quick Fri-puz.
ReplyDeletePretty good, but also pretty top-heavy with PPPs. Some good long downs and acrosses, also mostly PPPs. Overall, on the easy side, especially the Eastern half.
ReplyDeleteResistance in the NW, as is often the case, with the AVCLUB, OLIVA WILDE, and REBECCA cluster. Needed some help to get out of that corner.
Favorite word: ELECTRONICA.