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Pollution portmanteau / SUN 1-26-20 / Zen garden accessory / Crossword-loving detective on Brooklyn Nine Nine / Holder of single-game WNBA scoring record 53 points / It got some Xtra flavor in 2001 / Spanish month that anagrams to zodiac sign
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Constructor: Erik Agard
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging for me, very easy for everyone else (I'm seeing lots of "personal record!"s, while I was in the 11s somewhere, i.e. slower than average)
Theme answers:
- SKINNY JEANS (beans, B)
- TIME FLIES (fries, R)
- BAR GRAPHS (grapes, E)
- RIP CURRENTS (currants, A)
- WHAT A STEAL (steak, K)
- LIZ CAMBAGE (cabbage, B)
- CORNER BOOTH (broth, R)
- EYE POPPER (pepper, E)
- COPY PASTE (pasta, A)
- UP AND VANISH (danish, D)
Elizabeth "Liz" Cambage (born 18 August 1991) is an Australian professional basketballplayer who plays for the Las Vegas Aces of the Women's National Basketball Association(WNBA) and the Australian Opals. Cambage currently holds the WNBA single-game scoring record with her 53 point performance against the New York Liberty on 17 July 2018. (wikipedia)
• • •
What's also frustrating is the way crosswords made by constructors I very much like have (here and in other venues) been playing really fast and loose with proper names, niche terms, slang, etc. I love learning new things from puzzles, particularly since our popular culture is increasingly segmented and fewer and fewer things can be counted on to be truly "popular" in the sense of "familiar to many different demographics"; pre-internet, even if I didn't watch a TV show, see a movie, listen to a particular band, there was a good chance I at least knew it existed. Today, even being a sports fan / old movie fan / watcher of TV / extremely online person, I don't even have purchase on sizeable areas of culture that are *very* popular (gaming is a good example; anything having to do with reality TV is another). I love that younger constructors are adding their personal predilections and fandoms to the vocabulary of crosswords, but, as with *any* proper name that is not truly universally well known, you *have* to mind your crosses, and the less mainstream your answer, the more you have to take care that surrounding / crossing fill is gettable. It's just polite. You want to invite people *in* to your world, not shut them out on an uninferrable cross. Anyway, this is all to say that LIZ CAMBAGE was, until the very end, a string of random letters to me, and several adjacent answers made putting her name together somewhat brutal. MALODOR? Definitely inferrable, but used by no one and archaic (poetic?) (67D: Bad smell). Then the whole Lisa BONET clue, what the heck (70A: Lisa who "ate no basil," in a palindrome). If you'd just given me a "Cosby Show" clue, or a "Different World" clue, or even an "Angel Heart" clue (the only Lisa BONET movie I've seen, I think), then maybe, but this palindrome clue??? which is basically just saying (I figured out, eventually) that her name is spelled backward in the quoted phrase!?!? So confusing. Also, that is not a famous palindrome. I guess the full palindrome is just "Lisa BONET ate no basil"? Is that it? Sigh. The worst, though, was SMAZE, a word I've never seen ever ever outside of maybe in a crossword once or twice (52D: Pollution portmanteau). I had SMA- and ... nothing. No hope. Eventually, I had SMA-E and ran the alphabet. Also, LIZ makes a woman's name, so I just prayed the "Z" was right and moved on. A singularly icky experience, that whole area.
Speaking of icky, and stying In That Same Area: BLEAH (70D: "Ugh!"). You will or will not be surprised to find out that BLEAH ... is a debut. It's never appeared in a NYTXW before. I submit that this is because it is not a real sound one makes with one's mouth. I would accept (and did try) BLECH before I accepted (or tried) BLEAH. BLAH and BLEH are real. BLECH is very Mad Magazine, which makes it real. BLEAH, I have no idea. It's like ... when you have your primary LEAH, the LEAH you really like, and then your backup: B LEAH. And then adjacent to *that* was ALLTOO, also very hard to pick up (74D: Alarmingly). So basically everything from ALLTOO NW to SMAZE and LIZ CAMBAGE was a disaster. Very rough going. I *did* end up getting it all. But it felt awful. And ALOG is in there too, further BLEAHing things up. Honestly, the rest of the puzzle is kind of a blur. There are good answers in there (e.g. GRAMMAR POLICE and Beethoven's PIANO SONATAS, a new album of which I was literally listening to just this morning). But between the half-baked (!) theme and that whole CAMBAGE-y area, the time I had was more bad than good.
On the Clipboard (observations from the Week in Crosswords):
- I actually liked a Bruce Haight puzzle for the first time in my life ... and it appeared in the LA Times (???!). How does this guy get a jillion puzzles into the NYT, none of them enjoyable (to me), and then somehow his LAT puzzle is good. I like to think it was rejected by the NYT. I know my best themed puzzle (back when I made puzzle) was rejected by the NYT and published by the LAT, so it wouldn't be the first time. Anyway, he had a nifty little RAISE MONEY puzzle on Thursday, where monetary units appeared inside long Down themers, running backward (i.e. upward, hence the whole "raise" concept). Even the revealer had some raised money in it (YEN!). The rest of the grid was also interesting and not BLEAH (!). This was definitely one of the nicer puzzle suprises of the week.
- That same puzzle also had one of my favorite clues of the week: [You basked for it] => TAN. Though the clue of the week was very definitely a NYTXW clue—that [Ernst & Young locale] clue for SENATE. Gold.
- I saw VSCOGIRL as the answer in some crossword (I want to say a New Yorker) and then (just a couple days ago, saw VSCO girl in a clue in the AVXC crossword by Aimee Lucido ("Word Wide Web"). I asked my daughter what the hell "VSCO girl" was and even when she described it to me, it didn't make much sense. Anyway, here's some info, in case "VSCO girl" somehow makes its way into a grid near you.
- Erik Agard (today's constructor!) continues to do a bang-up job as editor of the USA Today crossword (where women constructors are currently responsible for 76% of this year's puzzles so far) (NYT currently at 20%, which is actually up a tad from recent years). Erik does this great thing with his editing where he freshens up old fill with new clues, often in ways that highlight women or people of color instead of the predictable (often white male) stand-bys. On Thursday, for instance, he gave us an ASHTON that was not Kutcher but Sanders (an actor in the Academy Award-winning "Moonlight"), and instead of Mike ROWE (or whatever other ROWEs there are), we got [Sportscaster Holly] ROWE, who is a sideline college football reporter for ESPN. In both cases, the crosses for those answers are unimpeachably fair, so you aren't left hanging or weirdly struggling if you don't happen to know who these people are (I actually knew neither of them by name, though by sight I definitely know Holly ROWE). Anway, this is good, inclusive editing, and I'm thrilled by it.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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119 comments:
Thursday easy
Beethoven? Mozart!
I do the NYT Xword strictly for fun; sometimes I get a bonus as I will learn a new fact or word (or three). So why is it that Sundays always feel like a chore?
Oh, I was curious about that Fazil Say Beethoven set, which according to Amazon is available January 31. Did you get an advance copy? I have him playing the complete Mozart sonatas – you know: the ones that are actually in the puzzle.
The packaging on the Beethoven looks pretty nice. Like I really need more CDs, but...I generally like Say as a pianist. I'll check out more sample files.
I was trying to figure out which Bread song you were going to choose. I'd have gone with "Baby I'm a-Want You, Baby I'm a-Knead You".
I didn't really like the puzzle. Why didn't they give AMY a Klobuchar clue? It's even crossing PRIMARY DEBATE, and the Times just endorsed her. Too much of an appearance of bias?
Oh well. Guess I'll do the Ken-Kens now.
If ever there was a puzzle worth skipping . . .
For me, this was it. BLEH and BLECH indeed.
Puzzle was easy for me, figuring out the theme, not so much. I avoided the “note” as it seems a little like cheating, but in this case I had to go back to read it, followed the directions and came up with the BREAK BREAD deal. OK, that’s it? Mildly disappointed.
52A was strange to me, SCOTS as a language. When we lived in Scotland I thought we spoke English with a Scottish accent, I just Googled it and it is recognized as a language. Learn something new every day. No wonder the kids in my fifth grade class, after we moved back to the states had difficulty understanding what I was saying.
VSCO girl - The 2020 version of the "basic bitch".
Like yesterday, today was a start-slow-stop-start-rinse-repeat. Unlike yesterday, I was a tad disappointed. Whenever I see Erik Agard, my excitement builds and I can’t help feeling the adrenaline rush. He is truly a favorite of mine despite the times I had to put a puzzle aside and come back (often multiple times) in order to finish. Today though was much easier than usual for an Agard, and seemed to lack the spectacular wordplay to which I look forward (typically with a healthy dose of trepidation). Learned a new portmanteau today: SMAZE, and learning is always a plus.
The theme did not manifest itself at all. Sure, I knew there was a theme; its obvious from all the asterisks, but I could not suss it out, and had to resort to breaking my rule of never looking at the title page to see if the constructor left instructions. Oh well.
Fast overall for me but it felt like an eternity! When I got stuck, I was well and truly shut down but once I got going again it was speed solving. Felt like a mashup of Monday-Tuesday-Sunday.
I had the exact same issues - didn’t see the note, LIZCAMBAGE, SMAZE, and BLEAH where I temporarily convinced myself it was BLEUH and red-eye from FLuSH was a thing. On the other hand I found a lot of the cluing. Rex summed it up perfectly for me: themeless except for after the fact. I did prevail but found it unsatisfying in the end.
Medium. Rex pretty much said it.
Too easy for a Sunday. Don't care about the theme; going back after solve to change random letters didn't spark joy. Maybe Erik has to bear the burden of inspiring high expectations? Off to the races with me.
Here are some picky points.
- Misuse of the word "it's" is neither a GRAMMAR mistake nor a punctuation mistake. It's a spelling mistake.
- Who says COPYPASTE? rather than COPY and PASTE?
Also:
- Sure, a RAKE is a garden implement, but what is zen about it?
- I found BONET (whom I have never heard of) to be a total gimme, given that the quoted palindrome segment is "Lisa BONET a," backwards.
- I did think ALICIA was a clever misdirection from the usual Aminor.
- I did not realize, until looking it up, that asinine comes from the same root as ass. So not a badly written clue, as I originally thought.
- Snoopy says "BLEAH." Never seen it anywhere else.
- The crossing of AMY and AMO is a crossing of obscure items, but I guess nothing but an M makes sense there. And besides, one could guess that odi is related to odious.
New record for me at 35 minutes (!!!) when on average it takes me about fiftysomething to finish a Sunday puzzle.
Must be that I knew every reference (except for the Liz Cambage one; not a sports fan). Anyway, it was easy and fresh, though nothing extraordinary .
The concept is impressive -- ten two-word theme answers, the second word being one letter away from a kind of food. They have to be in order, because the food-making letters spell a two-word phrase that further illustrates the concept. Make the answers symmetrical, so they have to be specific lengths.
So, try even coming up with a concept like this sometime, and then, try executing it! As I said, impressive. There were also those lovely downs -- PRIMARY DEBATES, PIANO SONATAS and GRAMMAR POLICE, along with the fantastic clue [Looks that can be difficult to pull off] for SKINNY JEANS.
I liked having a post-solve mini-puzzle as a Sunday crossword chaser, a little pat on the back after the accomplishment of filling in the big grid, which in itself was comfortable, like joining a group of old friends. So, all in all, a lovely jaunt through an Agard joint, and I thank you for it, sir.
ho hum. nothing in the puzzle was all that interesting. the "break bread" thingy at the end was just "hey look at me, smarty pants." all that rex said. laid a bagel, indeed.
here's a puzzle for eric. Lisa Bonet taught it to me one day while she was portmanteau-ing on Rodeo Drive.
Think of a number, any positive integer. Keep it small so you can do computations in your head.
Square it.
Add the result to your original number.
Divide by your original number.
Add, oh, how about 17.
Subtract your original number.
Divide by 6.
The number you are thinking of now is 3!
Blech.
Would've been OK as a themeless.
Last word in the solve was BLEAH. I had bleep. As I looked to fill in CORNER BOOTH, I knew I was going to have to spend more time figuring out what I needed to change in BLEAH. Shocked that I got the “Tada” to end the puzzle. Huge fan of Agard, not a fan of BLEAH
@Joaquin - The irony is I got into puzzles through the Sunday NYTX. Now I find most 21x21 puzzles a slog. It takes something truly exceptional to tickle my fancy.
So much for the “Rex takes it easy on his friends” argument. The real “What’s the weather in Hades like today” moment, though, was Rex’s first clipboard bullet.
What Rex said about Pop Culture clues. Every day. Every puzzle.
Mostly very easy. I wrote out each letter needed for the theme as it came along so I knew I needed that final D to spell Break Bread.
However, when I got to Vanish all I could see was Radish! It gave me
an odd disorienting feeling. Another problem with Danish is that the other foods are such basic things, ingredients perhaps. Danish did not seem to belong.
Choreo? Familiarly to whom?
I did remember Sia only because she appeared so recently.
Meh.
I've ditched the paper version for the online one, and much to my surprise I really prefer it (except when the cursor has a mind of it's own). I have one question that I hope you can answer: Where is the title/instructions that appear in the print version? Thanks!
Triple Natick and I didn’t look to see what the correct letters were. Just really bad. Get off of the trivia please!
There is no letter V in Welsh, so Ivan is ruled out as a form of John. It would have to be Ifan (pronounced Ee-van), but there are other John equivalents: Ieuan, Ioan, or (this one borrowing from English) Siôn. It's true that Evan is commonly found in Wales, but that's another anglicised form. So is my own surname, Davies, but modern Welsh-speakers are increasingly reverting to Dafis.
BTW - Anyone else a little irked at the spoilers in Rex’s Clipboard comments? I like that he’s pointing to other good puzzles, but the spoilers not so much.
@Anon5:36 - It is the garden that is “Zen”, not the RAKE. Also, I get what you’re saying, but the pejorative GRAMMAR POLICE is about rude people, not “grammar.” I do agree, rules around forming contractions is grammar, its v it’s is spelling.
@unkown7:40 - What software are you using? The NYT app?
Why do I get the feeling that if Erik and I sat down for breakfast, he'd order a wheat germ smoothie and I'd have some eggs Benedict.
OK, so I solved this as a themeless. I kept crossing fingers I'd get the food picture thing. I got the note so I knew we were dealing with something here. Ah...I see beans and fries. Then I'm thinking there has to be some correlation. Who orders beans and fries? Then he gives us steak and cabbage? GAAAAAH. Cabbage gives you gas. I mean I'm going pretty fast with this puppy but it was like sitting down in a dusty musty diner in a CORNER BOOTH where some MESSy kid had spilled his ketchup and left GUM WRAPPERS and the MALODOR was like that CHOREO thing I don't want to look at.
I wanted an AHA badly. I just got Schroeders BLEAH. By the way, I knew SMAZE because if you lived in L.A. at one point of your life, that was in the news daily. Flying in to LAX you'd know you were approaching the basin full of yellow gunk.
SKINNY JEANS my favorite. Yeah, they're hard to pull off only if you're standing. You have to sit down. The looks part I'm not so sure. I love them because they stretch. Yay me.
Help me RHONDA.
Zen gardens are made of sand which are carefully raked into patterns. I once received a miniature one that came with a tiny wooden rake. Very zen.
@anon 5:36 -- I think the clue refers to those little boxes of sand that you make curvy designs in with a rake. There's little ones that can go on your desk, and large ones that can be outdoors. Just Google "zen garden" and you'll see pictures of them on the top.
The answer for 62D and the clue for 74D both contain alarm — which I thought was a no-no.
Personal best for me, 35 minutes. MexGirl, you and I both!
Like some others, I thought "Blech" instead of "Bleah" at first.
"Ancient greeting" = "Ave" brought me back to some old Asterix comic books. Anyone here also love the Asterix series?
I thought for sure OFL would call this easy-peasy. But that's why XW's appeal to the broad community - everyone has a different reaction to each different puzzle!
Colin
The most fun I had with this was writing in CORNBEEFHASH and finding out it didn't fit, ditto for GRAMMARIANS followed by GRAMMARNAZIS. Started doing the "change a letter" thing but lost interest and decided that BREAK was going to lead to "breakfast".
Yes to BLEAH from Peanuts.
What OFL said about the LIZCAMBAGE/SMAZE crossing. Two combinations of letters upon which these poor old eyes have never fallen.
Some good stuff, EA, but we've all seen you do better.
12:08 Brian said “Thursday easy” - Sunday puzzles are usually between Wednesday and Thursday level difficulty for me. This one seems about right.
If you're using the nyt app, hit the little i button at the top of the screen.
I’m responding to Anonymous’ comments:
Regarding COPYPASTE, I write software guides and always say Copy/Paste.
Regarding Zen gardens, the mini ones that you can buy in a toy store have rakes the size of a fork.
Thanks
I actually had to do the Meta to figure out LIZ CAMBAGE who was (I thought unfairly) crossed with the Spanish month anagram. That could have been either ABRIL or ARBIL, which could have been crossed with either ARMS or ABMS for the missiles.
Actually, I initially wanted the WNBA player to be LIZ CABBAGE. It sounded so cool. But then I realized that that was her name only after she'd been changed to a vegetable. I already had BREAK ?READ, and so I plunked in the other B.
Easier than most Agard puzzles. Fewer proper names than usual, although SIA and Issa RAE are b-a-a-a-ck -- as though by popular demand. Not my demand, mind you. Anyway, I thought it was a mildly diverting but not terribly exciting puzzle.
I loved it and tied my personal best time at 25:19 (with a pesky typo that held me back from a true best). I thought the fill was impeccable. Erik is doing damn good things to puzzles. Count me as a fan
Once again it came down to a single letter personal Natick involving the first name of a not so-well-known woman (LIZ CAMBAGE, at least identified as a woman today) crossing a never-before-heard term (SMAZE? WTF is SMAZE? How is it different from plain old smog?) Rescued by running the alphabet until happy music played. Increasingly feel this is not quite in the spirit of my current “go-it-alone” (without googling) puzzle policy, but having allowed it from the start of the year it seems “unfair” to change now. (It is of course obvious that Google would have made short work of my problem today.)
As always I checked the note right away—can’t understand why anyone would not want to, and for me part of the fun of Sunday puzzles is figuring out how the title relates to the theme. Anyhow, this one was so complicated I didn’t even read it to the end, and it certainly didn’t help with the solve, which I found medium difficult overall, and pretty much joyless. Debated after finishing whether to even bother with the post puzzle puzzle, but did, and got a little extra jolly from it.
Good write up by OFL today. He can be so informative and entertaining when he confines his commentary to the puzzle, the constructor and other aspects of CrossWorld instead of going off on some social justice warrior tangent.
This one played Wednesday-ish difficult for the most part. There is the usual potpourri of nonsensical stuff like BLEAH and SMAZE, an uber-esoteric LIZ CAMBAGE, and our world tour today included stops in Spain (RIO, ABRIL), India (JAIPUR), Hebrew (BEN), Latin (AMO), and as a bonus to an unknown (ancient) destination with the ASSININE-ly clued AVE.
Today’s theme was a non-event as I solved it as a themeless. I’m sure a lot of time and effort was involved in putting it all together, however when you ask the solver to work at it to that extent, well interest wanes.
Anon at 6:28:
If you use high school algebra and start with x rather than an actual number, you will easily find out that yes, you always end up at 3.
There is an infinitude of this kind of puzzle, and they are always based on your machinations creating complexity and then removing it, usually ending you up at your original number, or at some fixed number.
Ridiculously easy and the theme was useless so basically a themeless. I never complain about Naticks until now. Erik Agard is he only person I know of who follows the WNBA. It might as well have been Liz Claiborne. And crossing that with some unknown person named Issa... Is that Issa Rae or Rae Issa? Insecure ? What is any of that? The e is anyone's guess and could easily be an a or an o. The only Issa is the corrupt excongressman from California.
If you are going to include a meta, please make it worth our while. That was … pathetic.
I remember when LIZ CAMBAGE set that record, and I memorized the name in case it ever came up in pub trivia. It hasn't, but it served me well today. One of those names you file away when you see it, like Fabiano Caruana (loser of the 2018 world chess championship) or Alina Zagitova (current Olympic gold medalist in women’s figure skating).
@Russell Davies - I had the "E" firmly in place so went initially with EWAN, which is still not right but better then EVAN.
@Anon 8:27 - yes to Asterix, which is how I know AVE in the first place.
Hey All !
I usually judge puzs onthe Hardness scale by amount of writeovers I have. Today was only three, axE-HOE, BLEcH-BLEAH, and an S at the end of ALICIA, thinking it might be sharps. Mind you, I didn't fly through this by any means, but if I can make it through a SunPuz with hardly a writeover, it goes in the Easy category. (I did want plant first for INTER, but lightly wrote it in, which to me doesn't count as a writeover.)
When I originally read the note, I thought you'd have to change the very last letter of each themer to make each individual themer into a food name. Now That would be an impressive construction! But as it is, it's still nice, especially since I solved from top down, getting BREAK and wanted FAST before realizing I needed five letters instead of four.
ALPACA didn't fool me into llamas at first! Avoided writeover, there.
MR PIBB to start puz off. Good stuff. It's equivalent is Dr POPPER, I mean Pepper. :-)
Could've cross referenced LIZ CAMBAGE with ACES, as that's the team she was on when she set the record. Show us out here in Las Vegas some love!
For FORHERE, had to wait on crosses to see if it was eat HERE or FOR HERE. Another avoided writeover. Almost a Natick at AMO/AMY, but threw the M in on faith.
JAIPUR??
THE END
A BEE and A LOG walk into a bar...
RooMonster
DarrinV
I'm glad I didn't see Erik's name on this puzzle before solving because it would have made me nervous. As it was, I finished under Sunday random-solving average. Were there a lot of fill-in-the-blank clues or is it just me? (I'm hearing a lot of "slog" complaints today which is why I do Sunday puzzles online and use @r.alphbunker's solving program which allows me to have the cursor jump to random answers. It takes longer because you aren't able to build off of other answers until you get some traction but it takes the slog out of Sundays. If anyone wants to try this, go to runtpuz.org after downloading a puzzle on your computer. It doesn't work on a tablet. Ask me if you need more info.)
For the food-related "message", I was sure, after the first 5 letters, that it was going to be BREAKfast, but that doesn't lend itself to full symmetry, being an odd number of letters. Though I was thrown off on the fifth letter - I mistook the " of 55A's clue for an asterisk and tried to make a food out of MINE. Is wINE a food? Head-slap when I looked again at the clue.
I've never seen TOBE-elect. I assume that is parsed as TO BE but I still am in the dark. Ah, I get it now, never mind.
That whole sector was the hardest for me. TW_____ didn't give me TWO BIT, I could only think of laissez-faire, I though an expensive Super Bowl purchase would be a seat, and going back to school time - an hour? Fall? TUE after Labor Day? BLEAH!
PRIMARY DEBATE clued as "Running argument" is really good. "One making frequent pitching changes?" for YODELER was nice also. SUCCINCT is a cool word.
Nice job, Erik Agard!
@webwinger (9:05) Oh, no, no, no, my poor, dear over-scrupulously honest @web -- running the alphabet in your own head is not cheating!* Anything you bring to the puzzle from your own head and that doesn't rely on a dictionary, an encyclopedia, an atlas, a thesaurus, a spouse, a friend or Google is legit. If you want to count on your fingers for a math answer, you may do it. (But you may not use a calculator.)* If you want to write down a word and cross off letters, one after another, in order to figure out an anagram, you may do it. (But you may not go to the Anagram Finder site.)* Don't worry your pretty little head about running the alphabet any more. Promise?
*from the "Non-Cheater's Guide to Ethical Crossword Solving" by @Nancy.
I never received the magazine section today, so had to go online to print out the puzzle. Felt mor like a weekday experience, just longer. Felt the critique in today's write-up was a little held back, at least at the beginning. I think I would have been more brutal.
For those who like Mozart piano sonatas, check out Rampe's recordings. I have never heard anyone embellish as much as he does. Quite interesting whether you like it or not. I do.
And yes, Z. Spoilers are bad. I am surprised. If someone tried to post a spoiler, the comment would not be allowed.
Easier than usual Agardisms today.
But... Who says "choreo"? Kids auditioning for Disney's High School Musical? or Glee? Bleah!!
And Cha Cha reminded me of that Cuban chick on Surfside 6.
Do people really ask for a Corner Booth at a diner? A restaurant maybe, such as the Russian Tea Room. But all the diners I've been to just have booths, most of them identical.
Gotta love the Beach Boys because RHONDA really did HELP me today to get a toehold. Which reminds me of Toe Loop. I want my life back from all those endless hours I spent watching ice skating on TV, being instructed on the differences between a double Axel and a Toe Loop and a triple Lutz or whatever. Not to mention the ghastly glitter and Peter Allen singing RIO. My how TIME FLIES.
@anon.5:36 Since forming possessives is part of grammar, I think "it's" as a possessive could be considered a grammar mistake. Pronoun possessives do not take an apostrophe
Very easy, didn’t like it.
@unknown 7:40 When I download from NYT, I click on "view" at the top of the page, and notepad is the bottom? choice, or at least near the bottom of the drop-down. notepad gives you the message.
I also like Asterisk and Obelisk.
After struggling with Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week, I was very happy to post my all time best time for a Sunday today.
+1 for Bleh, Blech. Would add Break and Bread for a rounded alliteration :)
@chuck w:
I did say I was being picky.
If you use "it's" you know that you need to use a possessive. You're simply misspelling the possessive that you intend to use.
There could have been much more correct clues. After all, crossword puzzles are about words, and there could have been a clue that more correctly identified an error in grammar.
Went through this pretty quickly for an Agard puzzle (Agard being one of my least favorite constructors) but DNFed at the LIZ CAMBAGE/SMAZE cross. Still don't get the BONET clue but don't really care, and couldn't be bothered with the whole "substitute a letter, get a word" nonsense. ALL TOO much.
Finished without a mistake so I guess it was easy but didn’t feel that way at first. Gives one a sense of accomplishment but mainly fun.
I have a lot easier time with niches in our culture than obscure popular culture references. I dont watch tv. I do say bleah. I play game read the business section of the paper and do puzzles with my huband. Forget some rap singer unless my son is around. Forget an old movie unless i Google it. So i really liked this one. Missed the theme though.
Didn’t get SMAZE. Does that mean smog? Otherwise OK, once I figured out the food in 25A was FRIES and not FoIES.
Did no one appreciate the cross of Naan an Jaipur?
Had problems in same area as did Rex, but particularly the crossing of Abril and Liz. Always thought the Spanish for April was Avril and so wanted ( and expected) the high scorer to be Lisa Leslie formerly of the LA Sparks.
@jberg...SMAZE is a portmanteau of Haze and Smog. (I think)...Think of the skies in China!
"I love that younger constructors are adding their personal predilections and fandoms to the vocabulary of crosswords, but, as with *any* proper name that is not truly universally well known, you *have* to mind your crosses, and the less mainstream your answer, the more you have to take care that surrounding / crossing fill is gettable."
This, x1000.
Too many constructors focus on their own egos, and not the experience of the solver.
This was all I could ask of a Sunday puzzle. An eye popper really. Is there anything this young guy can't do? Speed solving champ. New Yorker star. Never a dull moment in his frequent NYT contributions. Always a minimum of crosswordese, junk, and pop culture. Clever cluing. Fun for all ages. The biggest fro ever and never clues it. And now a Sunday where time seemed to fly (it didn't).
Today this guy became my favorite constructor.
Cambage was my first solid answer. I love women’s basketball, which is much easier to appreciate than men’s, and it’s fun to see women be so unladylike. Kelsey Plum, on Cambage’s team, is high scorer in college basketball. And the aces aren’t even the top team.
Anon 5:36, I can see where you're coming from. But internally I say copy paste to myself about 20 times a day editing legal content, writing, moving graphics around, and working on spread sheets. I say it so often that I may have Copied, Pasted, Now Deleted put on my tombstone.
I also am on the fence re it's v. its. At first I thought spelling error. Howevs, in that it involves punctuation that changes it from the possessive to a contraction, I think it's debateable but okay as clued.
I never read the title or a note before I solve. After I completed the puzzle I looked at the title. OK, food names. I perused the themes and saw that removing the V would yield DANISH in 107A. I didn't get anywhere so I read the note. Then I didn't care. I was underwhelmed that the trick applied only to the last word to make a food. Now if there were such things as BAR GRAPeS and LIZ CABbAGE, that would be something.
SMAZE and LIZ CAMBAGE were for me the same as for @Rex - gettable, but with fingers crossed. But Lisa BONET - I knew that with no crosses from one of my favorite Weird Al Yankovic videos, Bob (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQDzj6R3p4). Enjoy!
Are there really AAAA batteries I had AAAS of course a political worker is a side
Today, I have to disagree with @Lewis and agree with @Kitchef
I don't read the "notes" before solving in order to avoid spoilers, so this was solved as a themeless. After reading the note post solve, my first reaction was that's all I need after finishing the puzzle, a homework assignment.
My reaction after seeing BREAK BREAD was "BLEAH."
The puzzle was probably fun/ challenging for Erik to construct, but that wasn't my solving experience..
@GILL I
I always thought it was Smoke/Fog = SMOG & Smoke/Haze = SMAZE
Replace-A-Letter theme with a meta answer (polite SunPuz yawn-clap). M&A overlooked the instructions, as they were buried at the end of a constructor bio, in the printed puz. Not the puz's fault, tho. Anyhoo therefore, didn't get the theme mcguffin, until after the (average SunPuz feistiness) solvequest. Then tried to get the meta message, and first go was BLEAK BREAD. (Used the replaced L, accidentally). Hey -- at least it ain't BLEAH BREAD, M&A mused.
Still, this was quite a constructioneerin feat, and I can respect that.
fave fillins included: GRAMMARPOLICE. SUCCINCT. WRAPPER. PICNIC. ITCANTBE.
staff weeject pick: PEA. Just one letter away from PEZ.
Thanx, Mr. Agard.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
**gruntz**
Coming to the comments, I was curious to see how many had cracked the theme concept without reading the note - I don’t think any. Me included. I spent quite a few minutes pondering how one could transform SKINNY JEANS into kidney beans and TIME FLIES into home fries...and CORNER BOOTH into corned beef. Nope. I gave up and read the note...and what is that expression...sad trombone? I enjoyed solving the puzzle as a themeless, but I’m not fond of one that tells me, “You’ll never figure out the theme on your own, so read the note where I explain it to you.” A tip of the hat, though, for those stellar long Downs.
It was okay. I guess I liked it more than most. Not great but, hey, if all puzzles were great, no puzzles would be great.
Didn't see this in the comments so far, so: BLEAH is from Peanuts. For example, when Snoopy kisses Lucy or when he licks Linus's glasses. BLEAH!
Thanks, @Nancy (9:52). I feel so much better now!
Actually, my unease derived not so much from running the alphabet as from waiting for the app to confirm my success musically. But in this case I probably would have recognized on my own that Z made a perfectly good woman’s name and also a word that could be unpacked to “smoke” combined with “haze”. On the other hand, if you solve on paper, how do you even know if you finish with an error? And if you use an app, those pesky typos can do you in if you insist on judging the filled grid based only on first completion.
Regarding Nancy’s various other rules for ethical solvers to live by, I’ve noticed that many bloggers solve with a partner and don’t count that as “cheating”. I will confess that I asked my daughter for help with the Spanish month today, but I figure that’s OK since I paid for her education. (And hey, Nancy made no mention of kids, and even Rex admits to consulting his daughter!) Besides, how else is an alte kaker like me supposed to deal with current millennium pop culture references?
The amusing (intentional I presume) precise but somewhat arbitrary quality of Nancy’s rules recalls for me a female comedian of yore named Judy who made jokes about her personal religion, Judy-ism. I find myself analyzing and decreeing which tenets of traditional Judaism actually should apply to me; think there may be an element of Talmudic tradition behind that sort of reasoning.
@Hawkeye Finch 8:15 - Every now and then someone raises this question, whether a word in the grid is allowed to appear in a clue for a different part of the grid. I did some reading on crossword puzzle construction guidelines, and haven't found such a rule. The only constraint I see is not using a word in the answer as part of the clue for that particular answer.
So, as far as I can tell, there is no reason that ALARM shouldn't appear in the clue for 74d just because it also appears in the answer for 62d. Perhaps one of the constructors who post here can confirm that.
I have a question for you all on the pronunciation of SUCCINCT. I realized that I pronounce it as suh-sinkt. Most of the online audio pronunciations are suhk-sinkt, which makes total sense when compared to succeed and success (though not succor, succulents or succubus!)
But at the online Merriam-Webster entry for succinct, I found two ways to pronounce it, the second one being my default of only one K sound. So I'm curious if that's regional (Midwestern in my case) or just personal preference. Any comments?
I solve on the app without looking at the note so themes don't always do much for me. When I got SKINNY JEANS crossed with JAIPUR, capital of the same Indian state that jodphurs are from, I thought "Aha! Something cross-cultural, maybe?" And then NAAN crossed with JAIPUR--even better. But no, it was not to be.
Who says MALODOR? MALODOROUS, sure, but this is one of those root words that doesn't get used.
Unlike some I had no problem with COPYPASTE. That's how I pronounce what I say, although I do mentally punctuate: "Did you try a copy/paste?".
@Teedmn
Hand up for suh-sinkt...or maybe suss-sinkt.
@Teedmn, born and raised here in your neighboring state, I’m in the suhk-sinkt group. I also wanted to ask you...
...could you refer me to @r.alphbunker’s solving program? On most Sundays, I solve the puzzle in the magazine, and my anti-slog approach is: 1) I must enter the first cross I’m sure of and 2) I can only work from those entries - no skipping around or looking ahead at clues. But when I’m away from home and need to solve online, it’s cumbersome because of the cursor’s automatic skipping to the next Across or Down, which I constantly need to adjust. It would be great to have an online way to make a Sunday more challenging. Thanks!
@Carola, if you'd like to email me off blog, I'd love to give you the details. It gets a wee bit wonky otherwise. My email is available if you click on my avatar.
What a great set of comments today. But where is @LMS? Snowed in in West Virginia?
Glad someone explained BLEAH. The word is part of the Peanuts vocabulary. Fortunately Sparky lived in my town, so his hometown paper continues to run his old strips. My kids used to skate at his ice rink, too, the Redwood Empire Ice Arena. Sparky used to always sit in the CORNER BOOTH at the cafe there, sipping cocoa. (Actually it didn't have a CORNER BOOTH that looked out own the ice, but most coffee shops have one, informally reserved for the regulars).
Thanks to Fowler, I can explain SCOTS to you. It is indeed as separate language. Burns wrote in SCOTS. It is a language very similar to English, but has its own history -- English grew out of the Mercian kingdom, Scots out of the Northumbrian. What we think of as a Scottish accent is Scottish English -- English pronounced with a burr, to which is added a number of Scots words. The equivalent across the sea is Irish English, which is what 90% of Irish people speak. In both countries, English and American people can pick it up about as easily as they can pick up the Yorkshire or Geordie dialects.
Both Ireland and Scotland also have a completely different Celtic language, which isn't much like English at all. It is ERSE or Scots Gaelic in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and Gaelic or (these days) "Irish" in Ireland, but the same language -- the Gaels invaded Scotland centuries ago and planted the language there. Its linguistic cousins are Welsh, Breton, and the now defunct Cornish.
@Teedmn: M&A would likely say somethin like: suck-sinked. But no way am I an expert on any of that pro-nun-citation stuff.
Don't recall any fierce nano-second biters today, except for maybe LIZCAMBAGE/ABRIL. Knew the crossin Issa-meister darlin in that area, this time around. Just looked up "Basketball Liz" and kept on goin. Don't Judge M&E (my new fave solvequest phrase, btw).
JAIPUR/SKINNYJEANS and BLEAH/BONET came close to trouble, but I was eventually able to stink-eye them pups into submission. Nuthin impeachable, there.
I reckon I'm kinda in the crowd that felt slightly ill-at-eaze with COPYPASTE. Had a cute, Ow de Speration ring to it, for a themer answer. I think maybe CopyPaste is a product name, tho … sooo … maybe semi-obscurely ok? Is UPVANISH anything? … just askin, for equal time's fairness sake.
M&Also
@Teedmn
I say it with one K sound, not two. Born and grew up in NE PA, Scranton area.
And if you pronounce Scranton as SCRAN-TON, everyone knows you're not from there. It's SCRA-EN. Might be a slight T sound in there, but definitely EN.
RooMonster Thinks English Is A Bizarre Language Guy
Easy and fast but I guessed LIn instead if LIZ and spoiled the finish. Rats.
@Teedmn - I grew up in N. Dakota, and pronounce succinct like you do, suh-sinkt.
@Teedmn - Midwesterner so suh-sinkt. Also, I sometimes (but not always) say “succeed” as suh seed. For “success” I don’t think I ever say suh cess, but it doesn’t sound wrong to my ear either.
@Teedmn-How do you pronounce "flaccid"?
Asking for a friend.
@Teedmn - Once upon a time, this was easy. Double-c before an e or an i was pronounced KS, as in accident, success. Double-c before an a o or u was pronounced as a K, as in baccarat, accord, accumulate. Then sometime in the sixties(?), some bozo began pronouncing "flaccid" with just an S sound, instead of the KS sound. And then things fell apart. Check a dictionary written before, say , 1965, and you will see only suKSinct, flaKSid.
@pabloinnh, can't say that word ever comes up :-). But for the record, no K sound, which in this case is the first choice of pronunciations at M-W.
@Teedmn 1:51pm: I'm not a linguistics expert, but I've studied French, and when an E or an I follow the letter C, the sound is soft, like an S. If the C is followed by an A, O, or U, the sound is hard, like a K....unless the C has a cedilla below it. Italian is similar, in that a C followed by an E or an I sounds like "ch", but like a "k" when followed by an A, O, or U. The letter G has a similar rule, an example being "spaghetti", where the H serves to harden the soft G sound before the letter E. Sorry if I'm not being clear, but my point is that the pronunciation must stem from the etymology of these words (succinct vs succor, for instance).
@Teedmn-Nice one.
For the record, I do pronounce it with the k sound first, and thought any other pronunciation was purely assidental.
I'm going one over here, but @kitshef, as a 1960 baby (year of the Rat, like this year), I can only plead ignorance and ask for forgiveness. (And now I'll probably stumble when I try to say SUCCINCT.)
@GILL I (and others) ... SMAZE is a portmanteau for smoke (not smog) and haze. Smog is another portmanteau ... smoke and fog. As I'm sure GILL can attest, it's become an all-too-frequent part of our SF Bay Area news and weather broadcasts over the past few years (I think you're in the neighborhood out here, aren't you GILL I?). It's okay though, because there's nothing at all unusual about what's going on with our planet, right? I guess it's not too surprising that Rex hasn't heard of it since I doubt they get much of this type of thing in the Binghamton area.
I was born in 1951 and I don't remember ever hearing flak-sid or suk-sinct when I was young. I only remember flassid and sussinct.
@kitshef - “flaccid” = FLAK-sid: you could have knocked me over with a feather. I’d always pronounced it to rhyme with “placid.” Chalk up another learning experience to the comments section. ‘BYW, the OED still cites only that pronunciation; nothing “flassid” going on there.
suhk-sinkt and flak-sid
@Anon 5:42 - I am certain there were regional/dialectical variants, like the pronunciation of "salmon" in parts of Florida.
Hear, hear @Teedmn ... As you probably know, Ralph's lovely app is what I use for all my puzzling. As a numbers guy, I love playing around with the solve summary features he's built into it after I complete each puzzle. If anyone's looking for a .puz file app, I highly recommend it. It might be a little quirky for a noob at first, but it's pretty user-friendly once you get the hang of it.
@Anon 10:56 ... Maybe consider a different hobby?
No complaints about box score?
I can imagine the case, but gosh, it's wobbly.
Innings are prominent in line scores and whatever it is that appears below the box score, sure. But I've never thought of that info as part of the box score.
@sanfran....Of course. I should've known. I knew it was a portmanteau - I just assumed it was haze and smog. I'm wondering what the poor Australians call it.
I just remember when practically all of California was burning two years ago and all of us had to wear masks for days on end. Fearless Mr. Orange face said we, the Californians, were to blame because we don't cut down enough trees. I cried.
Suck sink and flak sid.
@anon 5:36 -- I think the clue refers to those little boxes of sand that you make curvy designs in with a rake. There's little ones that can go on your desk, and large ones that can be outdoors. Just Google "zen garden" and you'll see pictures of them on the top.
yeallashoot
The reveal was like "Drink Ovaltine" in A Christmas Story. That's It? What a gyp
Right. First, blame your tools. Pah!
FWIW, I say flassid and suhksinct. It's what I've heard said my whole life, so it never occurred to me that either one could be wrong.
Thanks to the person who reminded us that BLEAH is from "Peanuts". And who provided the wonderful visuals that accompanied it in the strip. I didn't like that answer when I wrote it in and NOW I LOVE IT!!!!! Because "Peanuts" is one of the greatest things in the world that ever was. @Old timer, you call him "Sparky" -- did you know Schultz? Ever talk to him at length? I am so envious!
You know that feature in the NYT Book Review where they ask authors what three authors they would invite to a dinner party. Well, I always waver in who I'd choose. Would it be Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley for Algonquin Table-style wit? Would it be Sondheim, Hammerstein and Alan Jay Lerner where I could learn so much? I'm thinking maybe Charles Schultz would have to be part of the mix, since he has such a charming and unique "take" on life.
That's 7 and counting @Nancy. But I'm with you. Dad had a bunch of Peanuts soft covers from his teen years in the '50s and I fell in love with the whole gang as a lad.
@oldtimer ... Thanks for enlightening me about the ice arena. I may have to drive up there and check that out this week.
yo
Everyone called Shultz "Sparky" even if, like me, you only knew people who knew him. Our kids all learned to skate there, and my grandchildren go too, when they are in town.
An annual highlight used to be watching the old men play hockey every year. Sparky loved it!
Just would like to point out, Rex, that I think your first encounter with VSCOGIRL was in that puzzle from Sophia Maymudes in the Provincetown Independent that you scooped back on January 12th!
Also, for what it's worth, I enjoyed this puzzle until I didn't. Got a lot of N and NE to start, then slowly petered out from there. Last few answers (NW corner to 2/3rds down that side) were a slog.
I hated this puzzle SO MUCH!!!! I never did get the "joke."
Thanks, @Strayling, for the answer to yesterday's misdirect. Good one!
Diana, LIW
Being a Sin City-ite, LIZCAMBAGE was a flat-out (well...not "flat!") gimme for me, the WOD and honorable mention DOD (Lisa BONET, I will take you backward OR forward! DOD). I get SMAZE as a combo of smog and haze; don't know that I ever saw the word, but easily inferable. I did not know that LOONS snuck across the border and invaded Minnesota. I applaud WRAPPER WITH the W!!
I've learned to be on guard with Mr. Agard. Few easy clues, but they felt more playful than obfuscating. Erik is a fun solve. In this one--who else would have found the CAMBAGE/cabbage thing? Just uber-cool. Theme lagniappes include BAGEL, PEA, and those nasty CARBs. In-the-language fill: "OHNO! RINGTHEALARM! WHATASTEAL--a real EYEPOPPER! My SKINNYJEANS just UPANDVANISHed!" With all this, we can forgive the quad-A battery and the "and-"less COPYPASTE. This was one of the NICEST Sunday puzzles I've done in quite a while. Eagle.
I liked the puzzle and thought BREAK BREAD was the perfect phrase to end with, changing a letter from BREAK to BREAD as it does.
Relatively easy, and so it wasn't a slog. The theme was air-tight, and there was little or no dreck. Some decent cluing, too.
By the way: the "k" sound for SUCCINCT, and "flassid". So there.
FLASH EARNER FOR HIRE
OHNO, ITCAN'TBE TOOLATE FOR YVONNE,
I LENT her TWOBITS of A RAND to manage,
that those SKINNYJEANS she HAD on,
FOR A EURO, NEED to UPANDVANISH.
THEEND.
--- ALICIA RAE BONET
so starts year 6
I wonder if all those record TIMEs included getting BREAK BREAD. Doubt it. Yer not done 'til you clean yer plate.
Out of all those EYEPOPPER options today it's ANA de Armas by a longshot. Yeah baby.
Pretty good Sun-puz. THEEND.
un'K, I finished the puzzle part of the puzzle. Now I need to go back to the directions and do the lil dance. Is it worth it? We shall see.
Anyway, so far so easyish, I guess.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for the grand finale, and the Awards tonite
did the grande finale, avec pane. Ummmmmm
Lady Di
SMAZE is a combination of Smoke and Haze just as SMOG is a combination of Smoke and Fog. They are both shorthand terms for varieties of air pollution thst wer er created in the 1970s by meteorologists and are very common in the language of people who work in pollution control or are concerned with public health or visibility, such as aircraft pilots.
In law school and 40 years of law practice, judges were constantly admonishing attorneys who file motions in court to be SUCCINCT, and in that context, I have always heard the first "c" pronounced as a "k", the second as "s", and thr third as "k".
My mom and I did this from our local paper and there was no note!!! Impossible to make sense of the theme without the note. :(
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