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Relative difficulty: Medium (6:13 on oversized 16-wide grid)
Theme answers:
- NIA LONG (21A: Word following sing or play) ("along" + "knee" = "knee-a long")
- BROWNIE (23A: Furrowed feature) ("brow" + "knee" = "brow-knee")
- JOURNEYMAN (27A: Language that's the source of "gesundheit") ("German" + "knee" = "Ger-knee-man")
- HONEYBEE (51A: The mister, affectionately) ("hubby" + "knee" = "hu-knee-bby")
- GENEALOGY (34D: Study of rocks) ("geology" + "knee" = "ge-knee-ology")
Inuktitut (/ɪˈnʊktɪtʊt/; Inuktitut: [inuktiˈtut], syllabics ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ; from inuk, "person" + -titut, "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languagesof Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, to some extent in northeastern Manitoba as well as the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It is one of the aboriginal languages written with Canadian Aboriginal syllabics.It is recognised as an official language in Nunavut alongside Inuinnaqtun, and both languages are known collectively as Inuktut. Further, it is recognized as one of eight official native tongues in the Northwest Territories. It also has legal recognition in Nunavik—a part of Quebec—thanks in part to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, and is recognised in the Charter of the French Language as the official language of instruction for Inuit school districts there. It also has some recognition in Nunatsiavut—the Inuit area in Labrador—following the ratification of its agreement with the government of Canada and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian census reports that there are roughly 35,000 Inuktitut speakers in Canada, including roughly 200 who live regularly outside traditionally Inuit lands.The term Inuktitut is often used more broadly to include Inuvialuktun and thus nearly all the Inuit dialects of Canada. (wikipedia)
• • •
[Journey, man...]
[2019 NBA MVP GIANNIS Antetokounmpo, aka the GREEK freak ... GIANNIS is coming soon to a grid near you, for sure]
Five things:
- 13D: Firefighter Red (ADAIR) — one of the only bits of true crosswordese in this whole puzzle. EWOK and ONO and ITO and EXECS are common, sure, but they don't have that whiff of mothball and proper name bygone-itude that ADAIR does. Not my favorite fill, but definitely a name you should know if you're gonna be a constant solver. Nice gimme to have in your back pocket. By the way, ADAIR was famous for capping oil well fires in the '60 and '70s.
- 58A: Lithuanian, e.g. (BALT) — was not aware that a BALT was a thing. This is only the second appearance of this word in the Rex Parker era (2006-present). I'd probably have gone with BALL here ... is there another BALL in the grid? ... No. There isn't. Actually, I think I'd've just changed EBOOK (not my fav) to SHOOK and be done with it (STA not great, but ETA not exactly gold, and if you can disappear EBOOK and BALT, I say go for it)
- There are no other "knee" sounds in the grid besides the ones in the themers — I like that
- 63A: 1950s-'70s football star nicknamed "The Golden Arm" (UNITAS)— another proper name that could be the difference between speeding and stalling. He's a Hall-of-Famer, so, like ADAIR, you really should commit his name to memory. Not as common as ADAIR, but he shows up.
- 44A: Ancient name for Ceylon (LANKA) — Interesting. SRI is uber (MEGA-) common in crosswords, but LANKA, not so much (today's just the third time in the Rex Parker era)
P.S. just reminding you that Erik Agard is the editor of the USA Today crossword, which is now very good on a regular basis. All the puzzles are M/T-level easy, but they are clever and clean and full of fresh fill / clues. What's more, year-to-date the USA Today constructors have been *80%* women (by comparison the NYT currently sits at 20% and hasn't been *over* 20% for any year in over a decade).
P.P.S. I was going to wait until Sunday to announce this, but since Jeff Chen is the NYTXW co-constructor *today*, I will go ahead and tell you that the latest book in his middle-grade series, Ultraball, just came out this week. It's called Ultraball #2: Deathstrike. Scifi + sports. Read about it here. Also, Jeff is offering a free signed copy of the book to one of my readers, soooooo ... If it sounds like something you, or a middle-schooler in your life, might be interested in, send me an email at rexparker at icloud dot com with ULTRABALL in the subject line by the end of the day. I'll pick one email at random and bam, that person gets a signed copy of Jeff's book! Neato.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
And all this time I thought INUKTITUT was the native language of Natick. Well, it should be if it isn’t.
ReplyDeleteMedium. I lost some time trying to reconcile spelling and phonetics so my solve was a tad longer than medium...but that’s just my dyslexia at work...so, when I factor that out I get medium.
ReplyDeletegETS before NETS confirmed gErMAN which also ate up a stadium full of nanoseconds (hi M&A).
NINER was a nice touch!
Liked it.
UNITAS has a knee sound in defiance of Rex saying there are no other knee sounds in the grid....
ReplyDeleteName is not u-knee-tas, but u-nigh-tas. It's the sound, not the spelling that you're after.
DeleteFirst name-- John-knee
DeleteOk ok UNITAS is you-knight-us
ReplyDeleteI found this to be about twice as hard as the average Thursday. Granted I'm not a theme person but this one seemed to have that extra wrinkle to it.
ReplyDeleteOne of the hardest write overs I've ever had to deal with was putting HIGHGERMAN in at 27A. By the end of the solve I'd convinced myself there was something called JOURGERMAN and a tree called a REW. I kept looking around for that fifth themer until the lightbulb went off and I avoided a double dnf.
A very entertaining solve and INUKTITUT looks like GREEK to me.
Well for once, I am on the same page as @Rex! No idea what to think of that but my solve mirrored his. I was sure something was afoot since it is Thursday after all, but the first themer NIALONG flummoxed me for sure. Then BROWNIE shows up across the grid and my brow was certainly furrowed and I could have demolished a good gooey BROWNIE but I kept on moving! Got to the reveal and stalled for a while trying to figure out whether “taking” the knee meant add it or ignore it. Either way you get the right answer. Overall a new idea, well executed and “gettable” without too much word torture or bad joke consternation. Liked it.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like Rex is taking a welcome cocktail of mood stabilizers and bourbon. More importantly, he's lost his vitriol for JC. I appreciated both in the write up. Most importantly, the puzzle was really fun. I love EA and JC individually and their collaborative excellence. Mirror symmetry (vs. rotational) seems to lend itself to better fill and creativity.
ReplyDeleteDid somebody slip Rex a Xanax? Just kidding. I liked the puzzle too.
ReplyDeleteFor the first time in a very long time, I am in sync with @Rex. Both in opinion and solving experience. I really didn’t recognize a theme out of the gate, but found the first two theme answers perplexing. I was certain my answers were correct, yet they made no sense with extra letters/sound. Oh well, sure of my early work, I forged ahead. Even after finishing, and going through the exercise necessary to TAKE A KNEE, it was a bit before I figured out that the “taking” of the “knee” sound referred not to removing it but to leaving it in just as the solve suggested.
ReplyDeleteThe result was fresh and interesting. Very little awful answers and some nice wordplay. Enjoyed it!
Huge yay for INUKTITUT. It is a literally huge thing in Canada (covering a huge part of the country geographically). Did I say huge?
ReplyDeleteInuktut (aka 'inuktitut') is currently written with a (really!) unique alphabet, as inscrutable to most of us non-Inuit as Egyptian hieroglyphics. But there is a push to change to a new system,
Qaliujaaqpait more compatible with the Roman alphabet and (I would hope) easy to type on any computer/phone keyboard. A big thumbs up!, because I think that will make it used more.
That unique alphabet is syllabics and can be applied to any unwritten language, as has been done with every First Nation one in this country (Canada) and many others.
DeleteLive and learn. All these years I thought GEOLOGY was the study of the earth and that the study of rocks was petrology.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't the reveal be about inserting a "knee" sound into the themers in order to make the resulting answers "in defiance of their clues"? If you TAKE A KNEE from the themers, then they match up to their clues, no?
Maybe it's the "defiance" part that seems weird to me since I think of it as meaning "bold or open disobedience". How can you boldly disobey a crossword puzzle clue?
I have a suspicion that these two crosswordworld luminaries just wanted to see if they could make a puzzle with INUKTITUT in the grid without it being part of the theme.
I'm surprised to see a positive review! I found the theme incredibly tortured and painful, especially JOURNEYMAN.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that even people who liked the puzzle inevitably missed one or two theme answers.. not a good sign IMO.
Me too - I thought for sure Rex was going to be all over this one. It seemed terribly disjointed and tortured to me. I’ve noticed Rex is a little more forgiving to constructors he knows.
DeleteOh man I thought this puzzle would get FRIED by Rex. I thought it was a tortured disaster. Oh well.
DeleteI hated this puzzle and so did my wife. It’s September 2020. Took us forever, as you can tell, lol. Puzzle fits with 2020: a disaster!
DeleteVery very good puzzle, just too tough for me.
ReplyDeleteINUKTITUT was impossible and a few others were unknown to me or clued difficultly (STOW), but the puzzle is smart and all the themers work well.
i caught that also, Anoa Bob
ReplyDeletegeneOlogy rather than geneAlogy......right?
ETO for estimated time of.....?
whoops? (yes, and hollers!)
I hated this puzzle so of course Rex loved it.
ReplyDeleteEarly on, before I knew the theme, I thought I was learning a new slang term: FROWNIE
ReplyDeleteAgree with Rex. Delightful.
ReplyDeleteI travel a fair bit and have become accustomed to the USA Today being offered for guests. For the past ten days I stayed at a hotel which put the wsj and USA Today out for free consumption. We all know the reputation and quality of wsj puzzle but I was shocked to see how much better the USA Today’s puzzles had become. It wasn’t until the sixth or seventh day that I thought to check the editor’s name to see if a change had been made. Yes, the themes were straightforward but the clues and fill were consistently clean. Thanks mr Agard!!
ReplyDeleteGreat workout! Nice seeing Johnny Unitas. @Joaquin, you made me grin, as did EXAM TABLE, inexplicably.
ReplyDeleteSuperb puzzle with one quibble. Many of us—by which I mean me—start in the NW. so the first themed I ran into was NIALONG. The knee-sound is at the beginning, unlike all the others where’s it’s inserted in the middle of an otherwise intelligible word. I get that Nia Long is an actress but still. If this was the third or fourth themer that would have been less devious.
ReplyDeleteThis was a tough trek for me. Through it, I did notice the mini theme of double E's (6), the uber-clean grid (which was a given, given the constructors), and a rollickksome laugh moment, when after agonizingly trying to picture whatever the heck that furniture with the crinkly paper was, I finally saw the exam table.
ReplyDeleteWith easy cluing, this would have come off to me as a cute puzzle with a serviceable and clever add-a-sound theme. But today, with cluing that made me seriously knit my BROWNIE, it was a capital-S Solve. Today, for me, the journey was the star, one that was engaging, satisfying, and glorious. Thank you, gents.
Apple Jacks are #1 on my list of cereals for drinking the delicious leftover milk.
ReplyDeleteI object to the clue for YETIS, which implies a factualness that does not exist.
MEtA before MEGA messed me up for a while.
Overall, loved it.
Well I'm glad you liked it...all I got was the case of some ague and some angst.
ReplyDeleteIt's not beer BONG?
You put FETA on pizza?
What happened to Ceylon's SRI?
You get the drift....I kept thinking that two crossword pros handed me nothing but some GREEK NOISE.
Did not like this one bit - even though I got the TAKE A KNEE. Images of Kaepernick and the NINERs.
Sri:Lanka :: Great:Britain
DeleteSo much fun and so many interesting words. Good Thursday entertainment. My only question was sop as clued.
ReplyDeleteTwo more theme related answers:
ReplyDeleteNINER is for Colin Kapernick.
MEL Brooks had all those silly knights saying "Ni!"
Would someone explain why nialong is correct. Taking a knee is not an act oof defiance. It is a signal of surrender, is it not? Jim
ReplyDeleteNIA LONG is an actress' name. Take out the "knee" sound and it's "along" like sing along or play along. Taking a knee has been a sign of protest for years now, since NFL player Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem at football games to being attention to police violence against African-Americans, beginning a movement and huge national controversy.
DeleteI enjoyed the solve, though the theme was kind of wonky. I got that the theme answers took (on) the "knee" sound but didn't see the new phrase element right away. It would have helped a lot if I had known who NIA LONG is, particularly since that's the first themer I got. I still don't quite get the defiance thing outside of TAKEAKNEE as a defiant action. Not sure how "Word following sing or play " is defied by adding "NI".
ReplyDeleteNice putting UNITAS in the same puzzle as BALT (the city in Maryland where he played).
ReplyDeleteJerry ADAIR was a Baltimore Orioles second baseman.
DeleteFeeling my age, again. I put in ADAIR instantly, not because it's crosswordese, but because he used to be famous. Last year, I thought. Guess not. On the other hand, NIALONG meant nothing to me, even after I wrote it in. Catch up, Grandpa.
ReplyDeleteThe BROWNIE clue made no sense until the revealer showed up. aha, brow TAKESAKNEE to be correct. And away we go.
Also wanted some form of GERMAN. Nope.
Good fun guys, and thanks, but EXAMTABLE?
I think Rex has it wrong. We must delete the “knee” sound to get the answer. If I am right, So omitting the “knee” sound makes nialong a corectvrespose to the clue. Jim
ReplyDeleteKinda weird, but I finally got the theme and moved on through it apace. Loved the “Animal House” reference. I was a member of a frat at FSU in 1960-61, the same year that the frat at Dartmouth was the source of the book and movie. Lots of the tamer stuff was spot on.
ReplyDeleteUgh—I’m with @ Ron (2:22 a.m.) and not with Rex. I got the theme early on when BROWNIE became an obvious answer, but the theme seemed like a twisted pretzel. Not only were we supposed to add a “knee” sound, but we were supposed to play some sort of phonics game, (JOURNEYMAN). SPARE ME this kind of silliness.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the clue for LEEDS seemed more like a Jeopardy final question than a crossword clue. It’s trivia-based.
I cannot understand Rex’s disdain for Red ADAIR as an answer. Adair was well-known and did a great job under trying circumstances. He deserves a spot in the crossword pantheon of Proper Nouns.
The word play with GENEALOGY relies on a common mispronunciation of the word, which should rhyme with ‘analogy’ and not ‘biology.’ So that one is a whiff in my book, although the rest of the puzzle is clever.
ReplyDeleteWow, I found this really hard. Not sure whether I liked it or not but it was hard for me and I was delighted (and a bit surprised) to get Sir Happy Pencil. The first themer I “got” was NIALONG — even though I already had BROWNIE and GENEALOGY, I hadn’t realized they were part of the theme. And, not knowing that NIA LONG is a person, I thought the theme simply involved adding an extraneous “knee” sound somewhere in the word and was confused why all the others were actual words, while here we just had NI before ALONG. I get it now and now I like the theme answers even more. Very challenging and rewarding workout!!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 8:07 - The dictionary rhymes genealogy with geology. The rhyme with analogy pronunciation is listed second, with "also". So your comment is a whiff in my book.
ReplyDeleteI’m in the DNE (did not enjoy) camp on this one, though I appreciated it more after reading the comments from @Rex and some of you followers. Soldiered through the grid in about average Thursday time, but no happy tune. The revealer didn’t make sense at first, then I figured it out after rethinking NIALONG and BROWNIE, in both of which the “knee” sound was simply added to the answer as clued, at one end or the other. Then I saw what was going on with HONEYBEE and GENEALOGY, which involved some alteration of the base word in addition to adding the NEY/NE. Then I must have spent 15 minutes figuring out what was wrong with JOURgErMAN, which I didn't at first recognize as a themer, and in which the base word had to be pretty much trashed to get to JOURNEYMAN. I at first had reasoned that if INUKTITUT could be some kind of Inuit tongue, JOURgErMAN must be spoken in some part of Deutschland (maybe near the French border?) Plus, gETS and STOp seemed fine as answers; rEp trees as likely correct as, well, INUKTITUT. Finally the light came on and the tune played out, accompanied by a groan, not a nice aha. Maybe this progression was a feature, not a bug, but it really felt irksome.
ReplyDeleteSo LANKA became Ceylon, which became Sri LANKA? Live and learn…
Found this theme tortured but beat my average solving time... ?? Did not much enjoy the solve though I got the theme (and did really appreciate the defiance part!) I guess I’m always thrown by theme answers that have no relation to the clues other than they were handy to toss a ni into, or remove a ni, or whatever is the theme gimmick. Asking a lot, eh!
ReplyDeleteBtw, Mel Brooks had nothing to do with Knights who say ni — that was the Monty Python crew... ; )
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Merriam-Webster. 8:52. Interesting handle ... are you with that publisher? In their philosophy of language, there is no such thing as a mispronunciation, only “new and previously unattested pronunciations.” Of course, no one lives by that philosophy, least of all the folks at MW. Speak/spell/pronounce as thou wilt is NOT the whole of the editorial law. Peter H. once famously said, “Scratch a descriptivist hard enough and you’ll find the prescriptivist underneath.”
ReplyDeleteNice anOlogy, eh?
Journey, man...love the video. A real throwback!
ReplyDeleteWell, this puzzle wasn't for me. I hated it. Part of it was I don't like it when answers deliberately don't match the clue. I can handle the ? clues but not this. I think I'm just too anal for it haha. I remember a puzzle years ago where the puzzle had deliberately misspelled words. I cringed hard. This was a touch better but I'd rather have a clue about the awesome and amazing Nia Long than this. Plus, I didn't like some of the fill. Yes, Inuktitut was tough but it wasn't my only non-favorite.
ReplyDelete@Mark, Same thing on frownie. If it isn't it should be!
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteDidn't go with @M&A's philosophy of "When in doubt, put in a U" (again!) and ended up with my famous one-letter DNF at FEeD/INUKTITeT. Dang!
@Anonymous 9:10 beat me to it, but to reiterate, @Austin's mom 7:40, not Mel Brooks, it was Monty Python!
Didn't enjoy puz as seems Rex and alot of y'all did. Adding a KNEE sound was OK, but it was confusing with the spelling changes ala JOURNEY MAN. Kept saying JOUR as in Soup de JOUR, so couldn't get the ole brain to the GER sound it needed. Got the rest, even though HONEYBEE kinda falls into that category, as I wanted HO-BEE not changing the HO to HUH.
Did like the clean fill, especially that South center of four 6's crossed by two 6's and four 5's, with a themer there. Tough to get clean fill.
Nowadays, everyone something starts with APP, you go searching for something computer related. APPLE JACKS. Har.
Resisted putting in the second UP in ASKUP, as already had STANDUP, and as someone else quieried, how is SOP the answer to Conciliatory gesture?
Different clue for ONO. "Singer" as usually clued.
FAUNA FEUD
RooMonster
DarrinV
A suggested Pledge for Crossword Constructors:
ReplyDelete"I swear on the ping PONG TABLE of Will Shortz that when I have come up with a really tricky theme -- a theme where the answer to "word following sing or play" turns out to be NIALONG (of all completely unexpected things) -- I will not add to the solver's misery by futzing it up with a non-theme answer like INUKTITUT."
Here, too, is why I didn't get the revealer:
I had OtoE instead of OKIE for the neighbor of the Arkansawyer.
I didn't remember "OTIS Day and the Knights" from "Animal House". Why on earth would I?
So now you tell me what ?AKEATNEE is! Deal?
This came very close to Greatness, but it failed because of unnecessary obscurity. If your revealer is terrific, make sure that everyone can eventually come up with the damn thing!
Scratch a descriptivist long enough and you’ll find someone who thinks prescriptivists are unlearned snobs who don’t actually understand language. I think the famed linguist Zed Zed said that.
ReplyDeleteMy overriding impression of Chen puzzles is that the humor tends to make Dad Jokes seem modern and funny. Teaming up with Agard, who can go too far the other direction for some people, resulted in a puzzle that displays both their strengths while mitigating the tendencies that bug solvers the most. Maybe it’s recency bias, but it also seems to me that Chen really likes mirror symmetry.
I guess it’s to be expected, but I see lots of comments indicating people aren’t quite grokking how the theme works. The actor in each case is the answer, the answer defies the clue, TAKEs A KNEE, and comes up with an entirely different answer than the clue is demanding. The new answer is a legitimate thing.
Hand up for having to fix Beer bONG. I always preferred “Quarters Bounce.”
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only 1970’s teen to suddenly realize that Glee had a fondness for 1970’s power ballads and uttered “JOURNEY, MAN.” Rex’s caption made me smile.
@Austin’s mom - Good catch on NINER, but I’m pretty sure the Knights who say NI is a Monty Python thing.
@Suzie Q - See definition 2.
For some reason I was reminded of the Great Vowel Shift.
I struggled with this, got most of the letters without being able to figure out what was going on, got nowhere in the southeast and finally just put int mAKEsensE for the revealer and gave up.
ReplyDeleteINUKTITUT?? @ Joaquin said it first! At least we had fair crosses. Now back to see what I totally missed that Rex will explain; I KNEEd to know.
ReplyDeleteAny puzzle that includes a reference to the movie Animal House......or Christmas Vacation or Airplane for that matter.....is a winner for me 👍
ReplyDeletePut me in @webwinger's DNE camp. Luckily have been doing xwords long enough that Nia Long is in my Xwordese back pocket so just waited to figure out what the gimmick would be, but, I'm never happy when a themer is a Person while others are real words. Just my own personal nit. Figured out the theme after the next two (23A / 27A). Came down (11D) CROWD NOISE to be confirmed by revealer down there in the SE. Had a furrowed BROW moment when my Oar (55D) was a BLiDE, until I corrected spelling of UNITiS. Hubby got (33D) EXAM TABLE right away. I think of it as very smooth paper. In a paranoid kind of way, I always use the smoothness as a check to make sure it's 'fresh' and not reused from the previous patient. But that's what made me see hubby's point of view. It becomes crinkled as soon as someone sits on it. Also agree with @Anoa Bob about Geology. That is what finally gelled my opinion of this puzzle. Had just come in from the SE where I was willing to concede that I learned something with INUKTITUT; backed my way through GREEK and GEYSER to HONEYBEE (which was my only slight chuckle today); and was tackling that 34 D but just kept saying, No Way! Geology is the study of any number of things, but not 'just' rocks! Hubby finally convinced me that rocks are included in the features of the Earth, so it was valid, but I was still appalled that a science clue would be so imprecise! Did like the more unconventional clues for Sop, Ono, and Otis, and liked that there was a range of old and new with Lena HORNE, NIA LONG, moving up in the decades to ADAIR, MEL, and UNITAS to end up with the fresher YO DUDE and EBOOK, but overall just thought this was too tortured for xword enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but in what universe would GENEALOGY be pronounced "ge-knee-ology" and not “jean-al-ogy”? Precisely none. The effort to pretend that GENE sounds like “genie,” and that AL = OL, makes this answer a fail. Aside from the a-ha moment when I realized that JOUREYMAN is “German + knee,” I found this puzzle to be a tiresome slog.
ReplyDeleteI found the difficulty level to be typical for me for a Thursday puzzle. But I found no humor in the puzzle, which is most unfortunate.
ReplyDeleteZ: On his blog today, Jeff indeed says he likes mirror symmetry.
One nit about a clue that happened at least once before and that doesn't seem to bother anyone except me. Bach incorporated his name into the last [unfinished] fugue of his Art of Fugue. Liszt wrote Prelude and Fugue on the Name Bach for organ. How did they do this. There are more than one system of naming keys. In one system, what we call B-Blat is called B-Natural and B-Natural is called H. Without some additional reference (such as "in America"), the clue to 68A is incorrect. Since crossword clues and entries tend to recognize foreign language issues (Enesco or Enescu?), the qualifier probably should be included. Now to listen to Bach's Mass in H Moll.
I found this really tough because of the inconsistent themers.
ReplyDeleteI got the trick of dropping the "knee" with NIALONG and BROWNIE. But since ALONG & BROW fit the definition of their respective clues, it took me many, many nanoseconds (hi M&A) to work out the rhyming part that the other three themers used.
Taking a knee is a sign of resistance? No way. Taking a knee is a sign of respect, of submission. That's why one genuflects in church. Or why those about to be Knighted get on their knees. I know Mr. Agard thinks Colin Kaepernik is a great and brave American. And while I'd love to debate him about that, there's no doubt that taking a knee is not a sign of resistance.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm a big fan of Agard and Chen, I'm with Nancy on this one: "This came very close to Greatness, but it failed because of unnecessary obscurity. If your revealer is terrific, make sure that everyone can eventually come up with the damn thing!" I got a few of the themers (BROWNIE, HONEYBEE) and still couldn't get the theme because _ _ ALONG was sitting up there in the NW corner, mocking me. And then there was INUKTITUT, which was just a killer for me.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, and despite the really long time it took me to finish, I found the fill fresh, as usual with these guys, and I really loved TOETAP, EXAMTABLE, and SPRIGS, and the inclusion of the great Johnny UNITAS.
P.S. Kudos to Joaquin for his clever comment about the native language of Natick! Laughed out loud at that one!
ReplyDelete@Anon 10:40
ReplyDeleteWikipedia on Colin Kaepernik (emphasis mine):
He is also a political activist, best known for kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racial inequality in the United States.
Anon at 7:42, defiance, surrender, getting knighted? Context matters.
ReplyDeleteGreat job Brownie, just not for me. I spent far too long thinking Inuit and wondering how the heck Inuktitut fit into the theme, which I was not getting along with in the first place. Now I know of another language. That's good. Hand up for staring at ETO for a while and wondering why "journey" for German.
Here in NYC white pizza is made with mozzarella, ricotta, and pecorino romano. Feta??? I guess that's gobbledygook pizza, metaphorically.
If you insist on the far overused "oboe" this is the best way I've seen it clued ever. Thanks for that.
Red Adair became nationally famous during the first Gulf War, in the 1990s. Maybe he was famous in Texas in the 60s and 70s, I don't know.
Lots of good fill and good cluing. I usually ignore themes but you made that impossible with this one, and I just didn't get it.
Aha! After letting that semantically wobbly "In defiance of their clues" undergo a few sleep stage cycles, it finally came to me. Would not a better clue read something like "What must be done to five answers in this puzzle to make them agree with their clues"? See? If you TAKE A KNEE phonetically from those five answers/grid entries, they then match/agree with their clues. Okay, I can get on with my day now.
ReplyDeleteFilled in all the squares and waited for the "go back and find your multiple errors" message. Instead I got the Happy Pencil dude. Totally surprised. Didn't really have fun.
ReplyDeleteGood, tough Thursday. My only real gripe was with "Balt" (assuming it refers to Lithuania being on the Baltic Sea.) My first answer would have been "Lett" or "Slav," though I do not think Lithuanians are actually a Slavic people.
ReplyDeleteGot hung up on the gesundheit answer thinking it was something-german, with GETS rather than NETS.. and then for the tree with berries, well, I was at a loss.
ReplyDeleteI cheated
I'm surprised Rex didn't mention the fact that the theme is a direct reference to the Black Lives Matter movement.
ReplyDeleteI suppose any citizen of a country along the Baltic Sea is a BALT? cf. Balkan, Slav, Redneck, Yankee, etc.
ReplyDeleteyep. ok. sorta. M&A felt better about the theme, after the fact. Long after the fact, after mullin it all over for a spell.
ReplyDeleteThe TAKEAKNEE revealer confused the snot out of m&e, mainly, it turned out, becuz TAKE can have these meanins:
* REMOVE. This is what I was thinkin, during the solvequest, and it made no day-um sense, at our house.
* ACCEPT. Which is the meanin that the revealer was evidently goin for. Just the opposite of REMOVE, of course.
Other than that, and that sometimes the KNEE-to-the-answer-groins used the right spellins (ALONG, BROW), and sometimes didn't (JOURMAN, HOBEE, GENALOGY), everything else was up to snuff.
Solid fillins, primo E-W-symmetry, snappy clues, and a more-for-yer-moneybucks 16-wide puzgrid. Like, like, and like. Learned somethin new, with INUKTITUT, too boot.
staff weeject pick: OLA. The Un-C COLA.
Can NINER maybe come inside and be a themer? We could surely agree to agree that NIR can just be a weird spellin of NIGHER, right? yep. Didn't think so.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Agard & Chen (yo)dudes.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
I didn’t kneed this
ReplyDeleteI thought Rex would skewer this puzzle because it's ABSURD. But I forgot that something like taking a knee is right up his progressive alley. Pardon me.
ReplyDeleteAren't we adding a knee? Or adding a NI?
I can't even.
It was ridiculous. I got nothing but admiration for people who protest, but this one was nuts.
@G. Weissman 10:27, you asked in what universe would GENEALOGY be pronounced "ge-knee-ology" and not “jean-al-ogy”? I was curious since I have always pronounced it with the knee sound so I looked it up. FYI dictionary.com and other on-line sources show pronunciation of the word as: jee-nee-ol-uh-jee.
ReplyDeleteHow is SOP (39 down) a conciliatory gesture?
ReplyDeleteI loved it! I didn't understand what was going on until I found myself looking at JOURgErMAN, then checked the clue for 31D and saw that it had to be YEWS. Changing gETS to NETS was clearly called for, and suddenly it all made sense. Then I got the revealer, and it really made sense. For me, the difficulty of working out JOURNEYMAN, with the strained pronunciation, was a feature, not a bug -- I laughed out loud when it came to me. But then, I'm a grandad, and it was a dad joke squared.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of amazed by the number of solvers who insist that GENEALOGY is not pronounced the way that everyone I have ever heard pronounces it. It's true that it's inconsistent with its spelling, but what else is new? We're talking about the English language here. (Not the language of Natick, which is actually Natiktitut.)
Speaking of languages, nobody seems to be looking things up this morning, so I did. BALTs are a linguistic group, consisting of Eastern Balt, which includes Lituanian and Latvian, and Western Balt, now extinct. It's true that the group is named after the sea though. That's from Wikipedia; Dictionary.com includes Estonian in the group, but that's wrong -- as everyone knows, Estonian is in the same group as Finnish--not even Indo-European.
And what's more, Johnny UNITAS was Lithuanian-American, i.e., a BALT! Nice touch.
My biggest laugh of the day: Natiktitut!
DeleteBy the way, is the accent on the first or second syllable?
SW corner just about killed me because unlike Rex, I was NOT going to enter GENEALOGY without being able to figure out how the hell it met that clue (and I was at a complete loss with the across clues in that corner, so that didn't help). It took me forever to realize that it was the last themer. Very slow Thursday for me.
ReplyDeletep.s. GEALOGY, not GENALOGY, in M&A's first msg attempt.
ReplyDeleteAlso … Come to think about it, NETS might make a cool themer, with a clue of: {Didn't understand the theme? That's just too darn bad! har! : Abbr.} -- or some such.
Thirsty. Time to take a Nehi.
M&Also
Count me among the naysayers today which is rare but it happens. As someone else said, a DNE for me. The most enjoyment I got from the successful completion of this puzzle was @Joaquin’s hilarious comment re INUKTITUT. I wholeheartedly agree.
ReplyDeleteWhile the football related theme is certainly timely, I kind of feel like @Rex occasionally does about how some things shouldn’t be in a crossword puzzle. I’m not going to go on a rant about it like he would, but I will say that IMHO, the knee taker obviously referenced here wouldn't even be in the same league as the great Johnny UNITAS. Actually I was a little surprised that Rex did not go ballistic today. I really expected him to dislike this one.
Want to see a good movie? Rent “Glory Road,” based on the true story of [now] UTEP Coach Don Haskins who led the first all-black starting lineup team to the 1966 NCAA national basketball championship title. At that time, they were known as a The Texas Western Miners, now the University of Texas El Paso. An inspiring story of some determined young men who overcame tremendous adversity to succeed.
based about the UTEP Miners who wAt the time of this movie the setting of this movie the school was then known as the text as Texas western
Glad you're here Erik, but this puzzle just really let me down since it's from you - I usually ENJOY you :)
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle sucked.
ReplyDeleteI’ve come to dread Chen’s puzzles knowing that there will be tortured clueing and obscure themes.
I thought this was ingenious. And fun, too - especially, getting JOURNEYMAN (after correcting that infernal almost-right "gETS") and then ferreting out the last two theme answers: ah, GENEALOGY.....but where was the other? Having first thought that the spouse was going to be a non-theme HONEY Boo, I ignored it even after correcting Boo to BEE. Laughed when I finally spotted the hubby who''d taken a knee.
ReplyDeleteHelp from previous puzzles: NIA LONG, UTEP.
Help from being old: HORNE, ADAIR, UNITAS.
@Music Man - re: SOP - I've always understood the phrase "to throw a sop to someone" to mean making a small gesture of conciliation, but your question made me curious. According to the OED, this meaning: "Something given to appease or pacify the recipient; a bribe" is
"An allusion to the sop given to Cerberus by Æneas," Those who know the Aeneid will have to take it from there :)
To answer several inquiries:
ReplyDeleteDefinition of sop (per Merriam-Webster):
1: a piece of food dipped or steeped in a liquid
2: a conciliatory or propitiatory bribe, gift, or gesture
This was infuriatingly difficult for me, and it felt like much more of a Friday than a Thursday. But that's because I didn't pay enough attention to the theme. Lesson learned.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteRed Adair was nationally famous well before The Gulf War. So famous they made a movie based on his life. Hell Fighers. None other than John Wayne played the Adair character. It came out in the 1960s.
To all those who note the puzzle has some pretty iff bits. We all know Rex likes his politics left. No way in God's green that he would criticize any puzzle that lauds C. Kaepernik. As for the makers and any non-white constructor is likely to get a pass. Heck, he all but genuflects in front of Agard.
Nope, nope, nope, did not succeed with this puzzle in the least. I had so many errors in the SW, there's just no way I could discern the theme. And JOURgerMAN. And MEtA rather than MEGA. Nope.
ReplyDeleteWorst of all was having letT at 58A and epeE at 62A. This made the tablet in 50D mean "gravestone" to me, on which an Elegy was to be found. (epeEs do have bell (guards) on them and I thought the little stopper on the tip might be a cork. Oops. And bra brands? I haven't worn one in 30+ years).
I interpreted the revealer as phonetic TAKE An E. This helped not one bit with discovering the theme so much of this solve might as well have been in GREEK or INUKTITUT for me. So it goes, some days.
@kitshef, perhaps you haven't been following "Mark Trail" in the comics recently. Our hero is in the Himalayas on the lookout for YETIS. His traveling companion, the leader of the expedition, claims to have seen one in the past. Mark remains skeptical. I'm sure we'll found out in about 3 months.
EA and JC, I applaud your evil genius in constructing this whopper of a Thursday.
"Stow it"?!
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is that???
I'm not a theme person, and puzzles like today make me dislike them even more. I can appreciate this as an impressive feat of construction, but for an only slightly above average solver who really doesn't care for themes, this was a nightmare.
ReplyDeleteDNF and DNE
I'm surprised Agard is allowed to publish a puzzle in a paper that competes directly with his. I wonder how his compliance people feel about that. And if he got dispensation to do so, I wonder how the other Gannett employees feel about his getting such privilege.
ReplyDeleteThe clearest description of the theme, and one makes sense, was provided by @Z 10:11. I think the constructors botched the revealer. It was poorly written.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 9:16 - No, I'm not associated with Merriam-Webster. I just like to give them credit when I use them as a source. Usually I'm responding to someone who questions a clue and/or answer without bothering to look it up first.
ReplyDeleteTake "knee" sound out of journeyman and you have German. Take Knee sound out of honeybee and you have...hobe? And what in blue blazes is Knee-along?
ReplyDeleteBALTs.
ReplyDeleteNote the warning about the Balti ethnic group, an answer sure to appear in a Saturday puzzle near you soon.
@Anon1:43 - We occasionally see puzzles from just about every other crossword puzzle editor out there published in the NYTX, so it would be unusual for Gannett to single out Agard. The only exception I can think of would be Evan Birnholz at WAPO, but he's actually doing every Sunday Puzzle, not editing the daily puzzles. Seems like it may be more a matter of time than actually being forbidden by his employer. What you describe is certainly not unheard of, it just has never been an issue in CrossWorld.
Z
ReplyDeletewhat other big corpoartions with things like compliance officers, H.R., formal codes of conduct etc are providing the Times with puzzles?
It beggars belief that Gannett allows an employee to work for a competitor. Something's different with Agard. Either he's got permission---which is unfair to others who have marketable skills--or he's in breach of the ethics code he signed.
@anon/3:25
ReplyDeleteIt beggars belief that Gannett allows an employee to work for a competitor.
That assumes that he's an employee. There are fewer every day. Welcome to the world of gig employed sub-contractors. In any case, so long as he provides the needed puzzles/editing he's contracted to do, what's the problem? Reporters and editors write books on the side. Lots of folks do what they do on the side for a fee. Why is that 'unethical'? And so on.
Anon 3:12
ReplyDeleteNIA Long is an actress.
Because Gannett is a competitor of the New York Times. These are publicly traded companies. There are fiduciary responsibilities at play.
ReplyDeleteYour analogy of books etc is inapt. A book is not a competitor per se of a newspaper.
As for lots of folks doing things on the side for fee, that is true. But big companies typically prohibit it. Especially for higher ups and or prominent employees.
And yes, of course I'm assuming he's an employee. Courts frown on shenanigans like pretending someone who works every day--or provides a service or product every day- is not an employee. Perma-lancing included.
It is unethical if he signed an employee code of conduct prohibiting him from doing so. I doubt that is the case. Rather, I'm guessing he has permission. I'm also guessing, if someone--say a large shareholder--wanted to make a point of it, he'd be prohibited from making the contribution to the Times or anyone else.
I've gone back to look at all ye posters to see if I missed something. I was hoping for some love. Nope....None came to the fore. @Amelia at 12:00 threw in the ABSURD I was secretly hoping for.
ReplyDelete@Anony 3:12 gets the prize for "Take a Knee sound out of honeybee and you have...hobe?" Yep...pretty much says it for me. Also...anyone using hubster. AAAAAAACH.
Very late to the party or wake, depending on your "take." I finished this in my standard time for a Friday so I can't say I found it challenging but I was sure the theme was Take An Something, maybe an EYE for an I, until I went with the KNEE, but that phrase meant nothing to me. I stopped watching football around the time UNITAS was still playing. You may recall I had his picture and Bart Starr's on my wall at home. Lol. Ok Boomer! Never heard of Nia Long. Or that particular Inuit language either. Nevertheless I finished without cheating and felt proud yet exhausted. I love Erik Agard's mind but there seems to be some distance between what he finds acceptable in a puzzle and what I feel is fair. That makes it fun to do them but not always a pleasure, if that isn't oxymoronic. It's not all GREEK to me. Some of it is just plain HELLenic.
ReplyDeleteRe: Gannett and NYT and Agard: NOBODY CARES!!!
ReplyDelete@whatsername, thanks for bringing that up. I knew one of the players from the Texas Western team because he humbly worked 30 years later in facilities at a school in Harlem for the DOE (he coached me and our faculty team in the faculty/student games). One of the players from the losing Kentucky team, Pat Riley, went on to have a more illustrious career. Life isn't always fair.
ReplyDeleteAlso possible Agard submitted puzzle before becoming USA Today editor. Isn't there a large backlog of puzzles and he just took the job recently?
Regarding the NYT/USA Today conflict of interests discussion, it may be that this puzzle was accepted for publications by the NYT many months ago, possibly more than a year ago, before Mr. Agard recently took the helm of the USA Today crossword, in which case there doesn't appear to be any violation of any codes or statutes or any grounds for lawsuits, litigation or recriminations.
ReplyDeleteSop ??????
ReplyDelete@Flinque
ReplyDeleteJust because you don't know it doesn't mean it's not real.
Open a dictionary or read the comments.
Anoa
ReplyDeleteCould be. But in my experience most companies of any size or with any acumen don't see it that way. Once you're in their employ, all bets are off. Ask anyone who's been cancelled by a social media post a decade old.
@Anon - Again, the practice is not uncommon. The Newsday crossword editor has had puzzles published by the NYTX. Likewise the WSJ puzzle editor (although I don't know if he has since taking the WSJ gig). The LATX editor Rich Norris hasn't had any NYTX puzzles for 11 years, but he had well over 50 puzzles published in the NYT after becoming the LATX editor. Peter Gordon edited the New York Sun puzzles and it sure looks like there's no gap in his NYTX puzzles. So, yes, Gannett could make not publishing elsewhere a condition of employment, but that would be unusual. Given the age of most of these puzzle editors, it would be unwise to put too many conditions on a talent like Agard. You have to believe that many of Gannett's competitors would gladly offer less restrictive deals to sign Agard away.
ReplyDeleteNo idea what’s happening in this puzzle! I read Rex’s description; I still don’t get it. But it looks like, overall, it was enjoyed and considered a big success. I hope to improve my skills so that I can do a puzzle like this! One day!
ReplyDeleteFor once I expected to agree with Rex but I hated it and amazingly, he liked it. The theme answers aren't united in any way, the added ni sound comes at different places in the word (sometime two words), and the "real" answers have no connection to the words without the ni sound, all things Rex would have taken the constructor to task for. What's the point? And why today? Why any day? Was this the date of the initial protest? Side note: I've been wondering ever since the protest where the silly phrase "take a knee" came from. And why do we need it in the crossword puzzle? We already have a verb for that: kneel. (Past tense: knelt. There are evidently people who don't know this.)
ReplyDeleteFor once I expected to agree with Rex but I hated it and amazingly, he liked it. The theme answers aren't united in any way, the added ni sound comes at different places in the word (sometime two words), and the "real" answers have no connection to the words without the ni sound, all things Rex would have taken the constructor to task for. What's the point? And why today? Why any day? Was this the date of the initial protest? Side note: I've been wondering ever since the protest where the silly phrase "take a knee" came from. And why do we need it in the crossword puzzle? We already have a verb for that: kneel. (Past tense: knelt. There are evidently people who don't know this.)
ReplyDeleteThis one passed about a mile and a half over my head. Not surprised, when I see the byline. DN by a long shot F.
ReplyDeleteA fair, workable puzzle except for the overly vague and complicated theme stretched past the breaking point. I didn't KNEED that.
ReplyDeleteMESSY ELDERS
ReplyDeleteBy ORAL tests we’re DIRELY unable to DECIDE GENEALOGY,
so STANDUP to the EXAMTABLE and we’ll TAKEAKNEE.
--- MEL ADAIR
Put a couple of clever, crafty dudes like these two together, and this is the kind of puzzle you get. Just way too, too much (at least for me).
ReplyDeleteGreat puzzle! After pretty quickly getting most of the North, I realized there was some sort of trick involved. Once NIALONG and BROWNIE appeared I thought "Aha, get rid of the NI and the NIE, but why?" In the centre section I was trying to have some sort of GERMAN work, and almost put in gETS. Moving to the SE, I got ANTE, FEUD, and SETS and that opened the door for INUKTITUT. Hey, I'm Canadian. That enabled me to get TAKE A KNEE, and suddenly JOURNEYMAN became "obvious".
ReplyDeleteThe rest was pretty smooth once I accepted OBOE, and laughed at EXAM TABLE (great clue).
I had a delightful time with this.
Didn't get it. Didn't like JOURNEYMAN. No ha ha from me.
ReplyDeleteLady Di
Still mulling over the theme and revealer....
ReplyDeleteOK, so to TAKE A KNEE, as in the Kaepernik protest, is the revealer of five answers incorporating phonetic variations on "knee", how is that a "defiance" of the five words left in the clues' answers, as in ALONG, BROW, JOURMAN, etc., or for that matter, the words including the NI, NIE, NEY, etc.?
Something has to be missing here.
OTIS day and the Knights who say, "NI,NIE,NEY,NE, or KNEE" approve. I KNEEded the revealer to get the rest. Those themers defied their clues by taking said KNEE sound.
ReplyDeleteFETA on a pizza? Since when? No good.
No Ole, but a Lena HORNE. Yeah baby.
TAKEAKNEE was around long before that dick Colin Kaepernick, so enough with the defiance angle on that phrase. If you didn't know TAKEAKNEE, you oughta work on your cultural awareness.
@rondo -- Apart from my cultural awareness or lack of it, what is the "defiance" angle anyway? Isn't that word a bit too intemperate or inapt for the clue? Defiant is a pretty strong word in the context.
ReplyDeleteI had the puzzle nearly complete and could not figure out the theme. I came here to get an explanation - now understanding it, I am astonished that Rex likes it. Loves it, even.
ReplyDeleteContrived. Too clever by a half. A Bridge Too Far. Call it what you will - I quite disliked it. Had the correct answers circled back in any way to the clue, now THAT would have impressed me. As it is, they flew off in another direction entirely.
Ugh...
I normally do the puzzle printed out on paper with a pen. I imagine everytime I have to change a letter with a heavy write-over as costing me a dollar in an imaginary gambling puzzle contest. Today was a rare perfect puzzle, not one write-over. Just a clean single letter in every box. Congratulations to me!
ReplyDelete