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W.W. I French biplane / SUN 1-19-20 / Olden Tokyo / Romanian-born writer once in the French Academy / Wildflower with spiky purplish blooms / Home of Latino Walk of Fame informally / Gag item floating in Halloween punch / John Wilkes Booth's actor brother / Apostle called The Zealot
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Constructor: Victor Barocas
Relative difficulty: Challenging (12:20)
Theme answers:
- HEDGE NETTLE (??!) (24A: Wildflower with spiky, purplish blooms) / IN GENERAL (4D: As a rule)
- PLANTAGENETS (26A: Ruling family of Edward I) / EUGENE IONESCO (14D: Romanian-born writer once in the French Academy)
- REGENERATION (98A: Remarkable ability of a starfish) / FRONT PAGE NEWS (57D: Big story)
- HOMOGENEITY (101A: Lack of variation) / DODGE NEON (84D: 1990s-2000s compact car)
Phillipa Soo (/ˈfɪlɪpə/; born May 31, 1990) is an American actress and singer. She is best known for originating the role of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton in the Broadway musical Hamilton, a performance for which she was nominated for the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Her additional stage credits include the role of Natasha Rostova, which Soo originated in a number of New York productions of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812in 2012 and 2013, and the title role in Amélie, which Soo originated on Broadway in 2017. Most recently, Soo appeared on Broadway in The Parisian Woman, which ran from November 2017 to March 2018. (wikipedia)
• • •
"ONER ENO EDO OTT, EIEIO!" Sing it, it's fun! OATGRASS is, I'm sure, a thing, but pretty weak, as thingness goes. Wheatgrass ... is more of a thing, in that it's juiced in healthfood juiceaterias or whatever they're called. It's truly horrendous, but supposed to be good for you. Supergrass ... is a band.
The spelling of TIRANË is so bad that I honestly don't think it should appear in puzzles ever again. Conventional English spelling is TIRANA. It just is. No, seriously, it is. This is like that ENESCU / ENESCO composer guy. Like ... he has a name. Let's agree on what it is and just spell it one way. CAF is just not a thing. You order a latte. If you want it decaf, great, you say that. But the default is caffeinated. The only time you'd ever say CAF is, I guess, "half-caf" but honestly, what are you doing??? Just pick a team. Oh, and as side note, I just want to say that the worst recent development in mainstream coffeedom is the thing where I order coffee and the cashier asks me "hot?" Uh, did I say "Iced?" No? Then yes, hot. Coffee is hot. The default is hot. If some dumbass orders "coffee" and then gets MAD AT you when it comes hot, he does not deserve the coffee and you should throw him out of your establishment. This isn't hard.
On the Clipboard!!:
Gonna use Sunday to highlight some of the week's best (or most interesting, or noteworthy) puzzles and clues from around the (non-NYTXW) crossword world. Only just had this idea, so this week's a little light, but here are three puzzles I quite enjoyed:
- Will Nediger's "The Internet Has Something For Everyone" (bewilderingly.com, Mon., Jan. 13) — from his independent puzzle site, bewilderingly.com. Very internetty in a way that was not exactly in my wheelhouse, but that was cool and well executed all the same. Get it here.
- Rachel Fabi's "She She" (USA Today, Jan. 14) — a really interesting set of pop culture themers. I guarantee you that a many of you (like me) will not know at least one, if not several of the names involved, but ... you know, branch out! Learn some things! The theme concept is a winner, and the set of answers is truly remarkable in ways I'll let you discover. Available at the USA Today's puzzle site (https://puzzles.usatoday.com/crossword/ ... you'll go to the current day's puzzle, but you can find older puzzles if you click the little puzzle grid icon at the top of the interface)
- Erik Agard's Weekend Crossword (themeless) (The New Yorker, Friday, Jan. 17) — the best themeless I've done this year. So much current, winning material. The central Across made me beam. Such beautiful work. All the New Yorker puzzles are really nice, as a rule, but this one was exceptional. It's here.
And here's a stupid clue that made me laugh and also start conversing with my friends in bovine puns:
- [Cow-feteria?] — answer: LEA (from the WSJ, Sat., Jan. 18)
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114 comments:
I just went out to the west forty to check my wheelhouse; not a HEDGE NETTLE or EUGENE IONESCO to be found, though there was an old DODGE NEON stashed under the rubble.
More challenging than most Sunday puzzles. TGGF (Thank God Google's Free).
Oh god this puzzle was so unfun. The theme was clever but the fill just ruined it- way too many Naticks for me. It's TIRANA. Sundays as of recent have been a real slog.
A fun if rather twisted Sunday. Poor REHABS and ALE had to sit by themselves until the end of the solve. The theme raised its ugly head quite early and some of the fill up in that NW corner was of no help.
From ADS and DIOR I sailed smoothly east until the next theme encounter. I thought that royal family was the PLANTANGENTS or something like that. Was there a PLANTAR one? Could they be the source of those warts? This three letter Romanian guy wasn't helping either. Sensing a dnf I just kept entering fill in the NE until the themes' trick revealed itself.
With TIRANE crossing the standard English TRUETHAT it was shades of Thursday two weeks ago.
The rest of the puzzle was fairly easy to fill in with the exception of some recurring confusion over exactly where the particular theme entries began and ended.
I finished by mopping up that NW corner. GOOBER? Ignorant alright.
Haven’t been doing much puzzling lately due to a houseful of guests and this is what I come back to, yikes! Got the GENE thing fairly early on, but holy moly piecing it together was about as confusing as it gets. NE area was the most challenging spot starting with 26A, sorting that out took a couple of cheats i.e. TRANJAN, never heard of him.
This whole thing left me REELING.
Crossing LEROUX with EUGENE IONESCO just about did me in, but I eventually got there.
This is, what, the second TIRANE in as many weeks? I'm a relatively new subscriber to the NYTXW, but am disappointed at how often the crosswordese fill can repeat. (Particularly when it's just wrong.) When I see the same clue or fill on successive days, which I've noticed three or four times in the past month, it just strikes me as lazy editing.
I've been working my way through the NYT puzzles (excluding Mondays and Tuesdays) back to 2001 so far and this is the biggest waste of time in the whole pile. I get the schtick but there's nothing fun here.
Big time Natick with SEPAL crossing SPAD. Wasn't sure whether it was STELES or STILES too and I also thought it was spelled SENKAS and SEALENT looked right enough. How did Will Shortz let this happen?
More ughs:
ONER
EDOM almost next to EDO
THEROSE, VANUATU, and SPADER all crossing the very obscure OATGRASS, which is barely acknowledged in Google as being edible by humans
LOTRIMIN crossing CASHMONEY (which must be produced by the US Department of Redundancy Department) and OLINE
And to add to the confusion about eastern European names, EUGENE IONESCO was of course born IONESCu, as one would expect of a Romanian.
Having said all that, my wife and I found it slightly easier than most Sundays (which we can't necessarily finish). We just plugged away steadily till we had it all.
@rex -- "'ONER ENO EDO OTT, EIEIO!' Sing it, it's fun!" -- Hah!
I'm beginning to learn Victor's modus. There will be footholds, enough to get you into the grid. There will be answers I will come across for the first time in my life. The cluing will be mostly direct, and there will be a contingent of one-word vague clues that can't be filled in without crosses. There will be other clues that involve slight wordplay, enough to make you hesitate, but not dig deep. Also, there will be some old-timey answers you don't come across much in puzzles any more. Check to all that in today's grid.
Today's theme is impressive -- splice is nice! And after getting the first, it helped to suss out the others, and that was fun. I put on my work clothes, ground my way through the rest, and when I was done the effort felt good on top of being wowed by Victor's execution of the theme and his coming up with it in the first place.
All in all, an experience well worth the time, and much gratitude, Mr. Barocus!
A taste of the trivia-rich Maleska era smack in the middle of the
prim Shortz reign (look at my puzzle, ma. It’s so so clever!) is not
a bad thing,
Only complaint: capital of Albania clue should have had asked for
alternative spelling,
7.5/10
I liked this puzzle. I know what a Spad is, for instance, from reading, the same way other people learn and acquire information. I guessed at sepal because it sounded familiar (probably from high school biology class). I figure I have no trouble with sepal, Trajan or Spad in the same way other people, who have different areas of interest and knowledge-bases, find clues about musical theater, fashion or art similarly easy and fun; however, when I encounter a puzzle that doesn’t interest me, I figure it’s not my cup of tea and accept that other people might like it. I learn what I can from it, even if I’m not terribly interested, but I don’t question whether it’s worthy of inclusion. It would never occur to me to get mad because I didn’t know the answer to a straight recall-question with no gimmick. I’d just read up and move on. The Spad was once important to many people, including members of the Lafayette Escadrille.
To the naysayers and whiners, I recommend reading over complaining about the editor any day.
Disagree with Rex about the revealer. Sure, if the light bulb has already flickered on it is redundant. For those of us reaching it while still sitting in our dark den it helped make this solvable.
OTOH - 1,000% agree with Rex on his coffee rant. Seriously people, why don’t you just drop a No-Doz in your McDonalds chocolate shake? My small town recently got a Starbucks near the freeway exit. I was talking to the staff where I get my beans if they were much worried. Not really because they don’t really serve our customers was the reply. Yep.
What I know about Albania: It’s on the Adriatic and never put in the capital city’s last letter until you check the cross. I think that’s it.
OATGRASS? Wheatgrass? I know lemongrass. I know wheat and OAT and even bamboo are GRASSes. I know I’ve seen VANUATU before. Still, that A in OATGRASS was a small act of faith that English makes occasional sense.
Of all the brand names I’d prefer not to see in my Sunday Morning Puzzle, LOTRIMIN has got to be top 5.
Anyone else roll their eyes at the TMI clue for Loch NESS? I fully expect Urquhart to show up in a puzzle sometime this week.
Yes, GENE came to me early. It was nice of him. The only problem was that he came to the party empty handed. Why are you here? Why didn't you bring a good bottle of wine? Oh...wait...those little empty dashes were some canapés you snuck in around the back door. Why didn't you say so? OK, they tasted pretty good once I found where you hid them. Not sure about the OAT GRASS...it had an ODOR.
THE ROSE to the rescue. I saw a biopic on Janis Joplin put out by PBS. I always thought of her as this dope-head, crazy, living in zombieland, young woman. She wasn't. In many ways she seemed so innocent and frail. I believe she was a victim of her own success in the age of drugs and WANNABE stars.
On to the puzzle....I thought it was pretty good. I do agree with @Rex, though, on possibly cleaning up the empty bottles in the middle of the living room. The CAF LARC ENCYSTS could've used some help. Don't understand why AUTO SAVE is insurance 56D....Wait, maybe I do? Saw SWEENY Todd with Angela Lansbury so you got me to smile on that one, Victor. I thought a GOOBER was one of those chocolates you get when you go to the movies.
Is there anything else other than CASH MONEY? Is that redundant?
Welcome back @chefwen......
Must be National Bad Puzzle Day. Not a good one in the lot today.
Trivia of the day.
Urquhart is pronounced (at least in a PBS adaptation of a Dorothy Sayers mystery) as Ercut (the u being pronounced as as a backwards e "uh" sound).
By the way, look at the perfect symmetry of the theme answers -- impressive.
Very strongly agree with Rex! I really liked the fact that this was (at least for me) far more challenging than the typical Sunday. The theme was clever and the theme answers were fun. The revealer both pre- and anti-climactic in a strange way. But the rest of the puzzle wasn’t especially exciting... though I did, again, enjoy it being more difficult than most Sundays.
I really like the new feature pointing out great puzzles for the week in sources other than the NYT. Hope you keep that up, Rex!
While I definitely gave a good number of answers the side eye in this puzzle, the crosses were pretty good (except where they were Naticks - a bit too many in this one for my taste). Still, it was pretty easy to guess the couple of letters that weren't obvious, so I had no real issues.
Great puzzle. A rare Sunday that had some bite to it, and a rarer still Sunday with an enjoyable theme. It would have been fantastic if we did not have GENE in all four themers, but I will take what we got and be happy with it.
Almost all of the answers Rex complains about today in that upper middle section were just fine with me. SPAD, SEPAL, STELES, ENCYSTS, those are all not merely acceptable, but good, interesting fill (though overly reliant on plurals). The one I’ll agree on is SANKAS.
Sometimes I read a clue and just know that I have no hope and will need every cross. Philippa ___, Laura _____. Constructor, you may think you are helping me by telling me what they have been in, but I assure you that’s not the case.
Agree that the theme is impressive and happy that I figured it out fairly quickly. But for the third day in a row, I would characterize the puzzle as unfun. At least to me. I had a lot of unfilled squares in the themeless puzzle and had no desire to struggle any further. In my way a looing at things, a failure.
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. Very clever set-up and quite different from the usual NYTXP. Only took me 2 hours and considering that Rex calls it "challenging" makes me very proud of myself. Plantangenets was the opening "bell". Liked that Shark fighters clue, especially when it dawned on me - oh, he means West Side Story. Ha Ha.
Best Sunday in weeks. Rex doesn't like it because it took him more than 1 minute and 52 seconds to complete.
AUTOSAVE and EASTLA and LOLA and a bunch of others were all quite fun. If you don't like how EUGENEIONESCO and PLANTAGENETS intersect, then why are you doing puzzles at all?
One small prob..i don't think Moses was a Levi. He was not associated with a single tribe. How about "last name of Dolly and Ephraim "instead?
To me, this is how a puzzle should be created. Yes, it sets out a construction challenge for the constructor, but it never loses sight of the solver's pleasure -- leaving the solver with plenty to figure out, as it provides a whole slew of "Aha" moments. I loved this puzzle!
It wasn't especially hard for me-- except in the L'ARC section. I wanted ARC. I never thought of L'ARC. And because I had PEsKY instead of PERKY for "full of spirit", I ended up with the LASC de Triomphe. I scratched my head, wasn't sure what was wrong, and came here. So a 1-letter DNF.
Occasionally I felt a bit dizzy wondering in which direction I was being SPLICED. But even the dizziness was fun. In fact, the dizziness provided the fun. Great puzzle!
Hey All !
Impressed by the construction feat, symmetrical GENEs as-middle-of-things themers. Nice.
However, from a solvers view, my word, this was painful. That NW was next to impossible, with one have-to-know-plants/flowers themer (HEDGE NETTLE)(which I didn't, and couldn't even parse it till here), an opera, a TV receptionist, BOLEYN not spelled BOYLAN, and EDOM. Ouch.
Found middle also tough, as wanted OAT GRAin forever, not thinking it was a good answer, but OAT GRASS even worse. Plus pedAL for SEPAL, and SPAD!? Ouch two.
LEROUX/TIRANE/IONESCU (ouch three)/TRAJAN all clustered together waiting to whack you over the head. DNF in all the Ouch areas. Thankfully did online today, so I could get massive use of Check feature, to go back and randomly plug in letters until I got them correct.
At least give me known things for themers, but HEDGE NETTLE, HOMOGENEITY, PLANTAGENETS, EUGENE IONESCU,Holy Moly!
I appreciate the effort and hair pulling it took to make this, but it ENDed UP as more sloggy than YAY-y.
This opinion from a WANNABE, so take as you will. :-)
If I have a second cup of instant coffee, I've had two SANKAS. Har.
PERKY ASKANCE
RooMonster
DarrinV
DNF by choice. This whole thing was a dreadful slog. Shortz is mailing it in.
PLANTAGENET...that's a name? Tudor, Windsor, even Este...I got those "powerful" families. But "plant a genet?" I don't even know what a "genet" is to plant it...ooh, sorry, a "jzhen-NAY." If I could roll my eyes any harder...I swear.
Between the aforementioned planting, the variant spelling (?) of Xanadu (22A), and some guy from Estonia or Bostonia or someplace, that entire NE section was a mess.
Also, does Christian DIOR have a particularly big house that we should care? Or does he just do fashion and we call that a house? Hwat?? That little cube of fun: MIND, MOOR, DIOR...was not fun.
Otherwise, I got the GENE theme thing almost immediately, and all that was left was to confirm it as I filled in all the blanks in an almost completely white grid. I wanted the revealer to be GENEtic something...I also secretly wanted it to involve CRISPR somehow...but no such luck.
Normal length of my morning taken up with solving the Sunday puzzle...I winced a lot too.
Alas, there is no joy in CROSSWORLD today . . . Rex was way too kind with his commentary. This is probably year number five or six for me doing the puzzles on a daily basis, and if this is not the absolute worst, it is definitely in the top three. It’s just garbage that looks like it was put together by a random number generator. Take the northernmost section for example, where you have:
THEROSE
VANUATU
PLANTAG with crosses involving the Brady Bunch, HALLE Berry, Bambi, RUNE and some guy named IONESCO.
Yea, there’s lots of witty wordplay there. How about TRAJAN right next to the aforementioned IANESCO - what good fun that is.
HAYDN crossing EDWIN who is right next to poor LEEANN Womack who never wanted to have anything to do with this horrible puzzle in the first place . . , and on and on.
Someone recently compared Shortz to Willie Mays looking lost in center field for the Mets when he was way, way past his prime. Well, this puzzle is Exhibit A in support of that assertion. Seriously, solving this puzzle makes you feel sorry for the team at the NYT - nobody wants to see them embarrass themselves when it is so evident that they have obviously lost their fastball.
Thanks for the link to the New Yorker puzzle. Wow, what a fun solve!
Yowee, this was tough. I got the revealer before I saw the GENEs interspliced into various answers. Because I was solving using @r.alphbunker's randomization tool, I didn't hurry to put in the GENEs into the circles provided. Whether that cost me time or not, I'm not sure but this took about 5 minutes over my usual random Sunday solve.
Lots of esoteric knowledge needed here. EUGENE IONESCO, LEROUX, TRAJAN, TIRANE, all in the same sector, whew! LOTRIMIN crossing O-LINES? FIDELIO. VANAUTU. This was quite a mental workout for me.
Over all, I liked it because it was so hard. Not a ton of wordplay but I liked the clues for GUESSED (71D) and DENIED (95A), AUTOSAVE (56D) and HATE (108D). The WANNABE dreamer and the ATM tender spot were also good.
Thanks, Mr. Barocas!
I had a lot of fun completing this clever puzzle.
Why do so many come across as angry in their comments? And everyone isn't Naticked like you were. Man, I hate that N word.
Each Sunday, I finish the puzzle by thinking, "Well, things can't get worse." And sure enough, on the next Sunday....
Thank you for this. I love dredging up words or names that I didn't remember that I knew, and I love learning new words. I get so tired of hearing people complain when they don't get the answers!
Sorry, the Plantagenet family ruled England (the country the United States of America split off from) from 1154 to 1485. They are important.
Agree with Teedmn and RooMonster: LEROUX and TIRANE crossing both TRAJAN and EUGENE IONESCO! Quadruple Natick!
Not chutes and ladders but chromatids of a chromosome. (Google it)
Difficult. I did not pick up on the theme until a half hour in! Ultimately,did not finish completely but I did not Google at all. The EUGENEIONESCO cross with PLANTAGENETS was a killer and I had pEtAL for far too long for the flower part clue. But the fact that I could not finish does not make it a bad puzzle. Also misspelled HAdyn, (HAYDN) which didn't help...
So much to love today. I struggled but felt very proud when I finished it hour cheating, if you ignore my asking someone how you spell Vanuatu! @Dorothy, a GENET is actually a plant. As well as a brilliant French author, and also an erstwhile female New Yorker columnist. Speaking of African Unicorns, today we have Ionesco, author of Rhinoceros. I saw it once in Paris at a small theatre, La Huchette, I think. Hilariously absurd.
Now someone cue the GENE Pitney video.
@jae, thanks for the old archive links. I will try those puzzles. The harder the better!
Today was indeed hard, but gratifying.
Anybody else see that the Sunday Review has a full page on th book that changed your life.
There are only 14 and Camus's The Stranger is among them.
Won't convince z, but it's pretty clear to ,e The Stranger is among the all-time most important books. At least in the current pecking order.
Not being familiar with it is a deficiency.
This was a great puzzle!
I see the crybabies are out in full force today. If you didn’t like the words or couldn’t figure them out you need to get a new hobby.
I figured the whole GENE gag pretty quickly but solving it was another thing. I loved all the entries and they added to the challenge and difficulty. This took me a full forty five minutes to solve, but then I’m powerful hung over from a four day bender of absinthe and smoking opium mixed with bath salts, so I guess that slowed me down a bit. I only stopped to do the puzzle, go to Mass, and maybe eat some donuts and then I’m going right back down for another four days in the opium den.
I’ll leave you with this lovely quote from Rex, which he stated so un-ironically above:
but ... you know, branch out! Learn some things!
P.S. Hey look! While I was unconscious my staff got me an account!
Southside Johnny,
Wait. Is Shortz a centerfielder or a pitcher in your mixed metaphor insult?
Gigantic DNF in the two sections connected by the top left GENE. Didn't know THE ROSE, VANUATU, PLANTAGENETS, EUGENE IONESCO, TRAJANE, TIRANE, LE ROUX...gross.
I don't mind hard. I mind joyless. Just found this one annoying.
Well, this was a workout! Liked the theme a lot, figured it out pretty early, which definitely helped with the solve. But oy, the fill! Won’t belabor most details, as others have covered the ground pretty well. Surprised myself that I remembered SPAD from making balsa wood model airplanes in the basement as a kid.
Somehow managed to complete the grid, but no happy tune. (Especially hate when that happens on Sunday!) After spending what seemed like an eon perusing my answers, and resisting the powerful temptation to google, I concluded the last letter I had entered (v in EvA/VAvUATU—Micronesian archipelago where, bizarrely, the natives speak Inuktitut) must be the problem, though I had an Aunt Eva myself and really wanted Bambi to have one too. Tried every consonant until N made the music play. So the streak goes on, google-free for three full weeks now.
OK, i admit it == I liked this puzzle. It did have a few flaws, such as including the definite article in L'Arc de Triomphe, and calling SANKAS a kind of coffee, but they were relatively minor. But SPAD? Didn't everybody grow up dreaming about being a fighter pilot in the first world war? I guess not anymore -- now they want to be Han Solo.
In the printed paper there is a note from Will Shortz where he explains that Victor Barocas is a professor of biomedical engineering, and remarks "Given his profession, the genesis of this puzzle (spelled out at 71-Across) is probably obvious." Well, it wouldn't have been if you hadn't pointed it out and told us which answer it was! So thanks for that -- it made getting the theme pretty easy.
Not totally easy, though -- the first time I thought I saw what was going on was with REGNERATE -- but I did it by going down to the E in ENDUP, then continuing to the N in the same word and slanting up to the ERATE in AERATE. Only after filling all that in did I stop to wonder why other letters were circled, and the scales fell from my eyes.
My other problem was seeing Gaston and immediately thinking Defferre! Of course, he wasn't a novelist, he was the long-time socialist mayor of Marseilles, and he wouldn't fit -- so I just put in the DE and waited for crosses. That made it really hard to get LEROUX, which I should have known right off.
I'm in the "it's not a bad puzzle just because you didn't know some answers" camp, anyway. The thing is, you don't have to know every answer to solve the puzzle! And figuring out the ones you don't know is half the fun.
last I checked it was TRUEdAT
the solution to the Albania problem... just leave the ultimate box empty until...
HEDGENEedLE for too long...
wasn't Janis knicknamed PEARL?? why wouldn't that fit?
my great-great-great grandparents (Pappy's side) acted with both Booths, so not Natick. deal with it.
Behold -- my first Rex comment typed on my new laptop -- installed by my very tech-savvy handyman five minutes ago. And, voila, I AM RECOGNIZED on two crossword blogs plus both my email accounts. I am so, so relieved!!!!!!!
So far, no software issues. (Well, it's only been five minutes). One hardware issue. The cursor/arrow seems unstable and flits around, willy-nilly. It's like you've been driving a heavy SUV and suddenly you're driving a -- what's the lightest weight car ever made? This laptop, unlike my last one, is made for carrying around -- except that I never carry it anywhere. It's very light, but seems to lack...heft.
I assume I'll get used to it. At least the typing keys don't skip the way they have been doing on my old laptop for at least two years.
Hopefully my new computer adjustment will prove to be so uneventful that I won't be mentioning it ever again. If not, thanks for your patience and forbearance.
Thank you so much for the link to Erik Agard’s puzzle. After this Sunday puzzle’s badly clued OK BOOMER fill it was an awesome palate cleanser...
Naticks Naticks everywhere, augmented by those $&@^! "-" clues. The first puzzle in months that I couldn't finish. So as you can guess, I truly hated it. The fill was appalling.
Natick is in the eyes of the beholder, and rightly so. No one should be insisting that all people must have the same Naticks.
@Anon11:23 - Wondering what you make of what was written. Granted, less damning than what was written about Atlas Shrugged, but not what I would call a ringing endorsement of the book’s greatness. “I was 11 or 12,” is, uh, an interesting way to start. “... Camus was inarguably on to something,” comes very close to damning with faint praise. Of course, that “something” was written about much better by Augustine and Shakespeare and Roth and Ellison and ... well just about every better than average to great writer. So, yeah, you are correct, the inclusion didn’t do much to convince that it is much more than advanced navel gazing. I just wish I had the phrase “advanced navel gazing” when I chose it for my AP Test essay back in 1979. Of course, then I thought it was a great book. Live and learn.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one any more difficult than this, even though I figured out the theme while solving. I just never heard of any of the people, places or things. I never studied Roman emperors, French (or Romanian) writers, don’t know what a PLANTAG is, never heard of the
Schoenberg dude, I probably should know more about the apostles and the tribes of Israel . . . I thought BOLEYN was the lady from England who sang that famous song on reality TV. I know that Janis Joplin recorded the LeAnn Rimes song about Bobby McGee.
I guess it is pretty obvious that I am not in the target demographic if they are going to be this hard. Seems like a lot of people liked it, and many people hated it. I can’t say I hated it, as I never had a fighting chance and maybe finished 25% of it, which is bizarre since I’m having an easier time with Fridays and Saturdays (once I establish a toehold, which is always the hardest part).
@Anon12:14 - I don’t disagree much, except there is a definition from the coiner of the term: NATICK PRINCIPLE — "If you include a proper noun in your grid that you cannot reasonably expect more than 1/4 of the solving public to have heard of, you must cross that noun with reasonably common words and phrases or very common names." Of course, “reasonably expect” is pretty wish-washy. I try to remember to use “personal natick” when it’s me as opposed to say, LEROUX/IONESCO, which may fit the universal definition. I can’t say because I know IONESCO, though only from crosswords.
A rare treat of a Sunday - ingenious construction, challenging to figure out. EUGENE IONESCO spliced with the PLANTAGENETS is going to keep me smiling for quite a while. I liked the music wafting through the grid, too: besides IONESCO, THE ROSE, FIDELIO, SWEENEY Todd, LOLA, the JETS, HAYDN, ARNOLD Schoenberg.
Do-overs: PEppY, NIgel, garnER (before SPADER Help from previous puzzles: VANUATU.
Yes, this was a tough one, but I enjoyed it. There's a reason it's called solving a puzzle.
It's understandable that others might not like it, but why go on and on showing one's lack of knowledge and inability to figure things out?
@John X
Mazel Tov on going blue.
@Nancy
Good luck with your new laptop.
As a molecular biologist, I thought I would breeze through much faster than my blog buddies but alas it’s just wordplay. But terrific wordplay. Challenging, clever and only two missteps - off to Apple Maps for VANUATU, and never heard of L’ARC as a way of referring to, you know.
Special cheers to the constructor for what must have been a horrendous challenge.
Chacon a son gout...definitely not my cuppa.
@Nancy congrats! You can control the size and speed of your cursor by going into settings. It may be set on default now which could be faster than your old one. Good luck!
Crosswords have Across and Down clues, NOT Diagonal clues. Other gimmicks that make for unenjoyable puzzles: "rebuses", plethora of "popular" culture references, and irregular grids. Check out the weekly crossword from the West Texas County Courier. Its themes include riddles, quotations, and clever wordplay.
Dreary slog. Voluntary dnf.
On the tough side, clever, and a bit of a slog. Liked it.
I started with GENESPLICING. It was soon pretty clear what was going on, so I filled in all the circles. So this time, the theme helped me work it. The answers around the GENEs on the left held me up the longest. I don't have any problem with ENCYSTS or some of the other words that bugged Rex, but am bemused by Shortz's choices, in his note, of certain bits of filler to single out as "colorful."
Man, did I ever have troubles here and there, in the solvequest at our house…
* Those "-" clues at the end of the lines of four diagonal circles … that helped m&e suss out an impendin chain of multiple answer parts. But in the NW, HEDGENETTLE was kinda tough to identify, since I weren't up to snuff on my nettles. Same problem in the NE gene pool, with PLANTAGENETS & EUGENEIONESCO. The gene pools got much easier, after that, sooo … ok, grudgingly. I suffered, but it was a nice challenge to puzzle the theme all out.
* Lotsa proper nouns splatzed all over the place that I also didn't know (yo, LEROUX, VANUATU, LOTRIMIN). But I learned some new stuff, which ain't all bad. Sometimes, knowin the content of the circled letters in advance helped out some, along the way.
* Not as much humor as M&A would normally like, in a long SunPuz fight. More of a head-scratch slug-fest, this time out. Did laugh a little, when I saw OLINES, tho.
That NE corner area musta been a real bear to construct. Had the most obscure stuff, an indication that the constructioneer mighta been a smidge more desperate than average to get it all to fit together thereabouts. Diagonally zigzaggin themers will no doubt do that to yah, now and then.
staff weeject pick: CAF. Also have a sentimental spot in the old masked heart for ENA, as it was the first thing I entered with certainty into the entire puzgrid today. Better CAF clue: {Cafe start-ups??}.
Thanx for splicin the livin tar out of us, Mr. Barocas. OLINES … ? … har
Masked & Anonym8Us
**gruntz**
Well, here's a good thing. I had a half marathon today and had to meet my friends (car pool) at 5 am. Decided to do the puzzle last night and it put me to sleep. So I was rested even got an Age Group award.
Thanks for the links, Rex.
Thought cash money was a Yogism
Now this is what I call a PUZZLE, just what I hope for everyday. Took an hour and a half and "check puzzle" many times but I finished. Many lovely words, askance, solaria, erelong, smirk and I guess I'm the only one here who has met Ionesco in person. It was at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge in 1969.
Always interesting to read through the complaints, starting with the Blogger-in-Chief himself. Took a while to figure out the GENE intersection and what it was doing, but once that happened, everything else fell into place in slow motion. Solved the whole thing in under 90 minutes, learned some new things, and only mildly objected to SANKAS but not that much because I can imagine my wife saying, "Get us a couple of Sankas, if you're heading for the coffee station."
Otherwise, had the usual satisfaction of completing a NYT Sunday puzzle, which is the idea, isn't it? Have to add, I really enjoyed singing Rex's line "ONER ENO EDO OTT, EIEIO", and was only sorry that it didn't appear in a straight line in puzzle itself. Now that would have been the topper!
That tough actin’ tinactIN fit where LOTRIMIN belonged didn’t help relieve the burning sensation I had solving this one. Damn you, John Madden!
Can someone explain 115A
Good for leaving handprints in
WET
I'm with the thumbs-up crowd, although it seems we are a group of perhaps a certain age. So be it. Took a while to realize that the splices were headed off in two directions, and I found that to be wonderfully clever. Lots of answers were familiar to me but I guess were unheard of by some, which always surprises me. IONESCO is a mystery? I guess.
Only glitch I hit was being pretty sure that EDWIN Booth was the brother in question but having that give me a DN together which made no sense, until HAYDN showed up.
In short, Sundazo. Well played, VB. Well played indeed.
All I’ve read is Rex’s commentary so I have no idea how the rest of y’ll feel about this puzzle. But I loved it, for a purely personal and idiosyncratic reason. Pardon my long-windedness but I have to share this or I’ll pop.
I’m the right generation for Janis Joplin but I’m absolutely stupid about media of any kind. So I went to Janis’ wikikpedia page to get the movie. Her page is huge, and I had to scroll, skimming, for forever to find THE ROSE. And in the porcess got pulled up short by a name from my past. Back when I was this itty-bitty good catholic girl from an upper-middle class family in Cincinnati, I hung out with a group of private school and Notre Dame folks. I dated a couple of the guys, and then in 1964, headed off to college and never saw them again. But one of the guys was Dave Niehaus, a big, handsome guy a few years my senior who was at Notre Dame. One summer when I returned home, I caught up with one of the guys and in the course of catching me up, he mentioned that Dave had joined the Peace Corps After graduation, which blew me away; that was NOT the usual trajectory for our crowd. Fast forward to this morning and my scrolling through Joplin’s wiki article. Out pops Dave Niehaus, a man from an upper-middle class family in Cincinnati, a Notre Dame grad. He and Janis methttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janis Joplin in Brazil where she’d gone to get clean and he was serving in the Peace Corps. It’s not clear how long they were together; he broke off the relationship when he caught her using again. And despite super-sleuthing genealogy skills, I have no idea what happened to Dave after that. I never lived in CInci again and I’m definitely not the good Catholic girl of long ago. But that paragraph in Wikipedia reminded me of a fun, carefree part of my life and a terrific group of men and women. So this puzzle hit a home run just for that memory.
It also kicked my butt. Lots I didn’t know so I did a lot of GUESSING, hoping to fire a useful neuron or two. I ultimately finished, with errors, but I got the trick about a quarter of the way in and that was quite satisfying and helpful. Sadly, it also led to one of my more stupid error, geNE at 112 down. What do I know about e-cigarettes? BLG could work. I finally sussed out UTNE, but I rather like my goof; perfectly logical there’d be a journal GENE whose motto was “Cure Ignorance.”
SO it was fun. Thanks for the memories, Mr. Barocas.
Guess I should do a better job of proofreading. Sorry for that hash, friends.
@Anon3:46 - WET paint and WET cement would both be good for leaving handprints in. Anyone have a better explanation?
I think this puzzle relies a little too much on PPP for difficulty. I see lots like this sort of puzzle today. From experience people (no, not you of course, other people) sing quite a different tune when it’s rap or internet meme or more 21st century PPP. That’s my complaint about too much PPP in general, it’s not actually puzzling, it’s just easy if you know it and often impossible if you don’t. This is especially true of foreign names and rap artists and Albanian capital cities.
This is exactly the type of puzzle that makes me rethink my NYT subscription.
Forgot to mention I wanted (and after reading every post, seem to be the only one) GENE SPLItING first, even going as far as to ask myself, "Isn't SPLItING spelled with two T's?" Had that as an extra ugh in the center.
RooMonster LEROUX In France Guy
20 minutes I'll never get back. With everything else already mentioned, the clue for DELETES is X's.
@Roo
Usually, atoms are split and genes are spliced.
@Tony
How would you have felt if the mods had X'd out you comment?
Thought the same but decided Moses and Aaron were priests, so that would make them Levites. Could be wrong but got me to the answer...
Wish I could edit my comment. It was the GENE-intersected clues on the RIGHT side that held me up the longest, not the left… I've been doing this a lot lately. Sigh.
Like concrete, or paint
Thanks for the reply but this makes no sense to me. What is wet? Is wet a synonym for paint or concrete?
I get it that you can put your hands in wet paint or wet concrete but wet doesn’t fit here unless I’m missing something.
Thanks again.
So is "WET" a "green paint" answer?
Interesting story, @Malsdemare. Sure beats reading about Sanka plurals!
Aren't these puzzles supposed to be fun?
@Anon - Maybe as in “Don’t touch the wall. The paint is still WET and you’ll leave prints.” Yeah, I’m not really buying it either, but it’s the best I got.
A fashion concern is referred to as a “house”; hence, the House of DIOR.
Like many, hung up for a while on "Tirane."
I gave this puzzle one hour (it's late tonight for me - started this puzzle at 9:27 pm, and I wanna go to sleep), and could not finish the SW corner. Just blanked.
As a biomedical researcher myself, I found the gene splicing theme refreshing. Prof Barocas' area seems to be biomechanics. Cool.
Not that I've followed Rex for a long time, but this is the first time I've seen him label a Sunday NYTCW "challenging."
G'night, everyone!
Colin
There is not enough profanity in the English language to adequately express my resentment toward this puzzle. Absolutely awful. Neat idea for a theme, but the fill was horrid in pretty much every section.
This was my least enjoyable solving experience in as long as I can remember.
@astrotrav I found last weeks Sunday to be quite easy. So I wouldn't say they've all been slobs, but yes the fill on this was atrocious. I really liked the theme and still had a fun time with it even if my final grid was filled with Naticks an hour deep into starting.
Sometimes I think you have to just give yourself a time limit, and if you can't figure it out, you cheat until it's done and try to enjoy that process as much as possible. This was not ideal, but I did really enjoy the theme.
FWIW Kris Kristofferson wrote Me and Bobby McGee.
john
I agree completely. Got WET by default, but it's unsatisfying: wet what? Kept looking around the corner to see if I was missing something.
I know. Went to the clue number expecting CHIS, and was stopped short.
I completely agree. It's the height of narcissism to think that your knowledge base is THE knowledge base. I enjoyed sepal, steles, sanka because I knew them but liked learning spad and hedge nettle because I didn't know them
Are you really complaining about one of the most famous names in English history and one of the most prominent in Shakespeare?
Genesplicing, not splitting
What oi a PPP?
Thanks for the Janis story. When I first heard about that relationship of hers with Niehaus it made me sad to think that if only she had been able to stick with it, she might be alive today. She was wonderful.
I agree. Bad clueing on that one. But a good challenging puzzle over all
A better clue:. Weak in the UK
Got to get those "ascus" straight. One was a composer, the other a playwright.
Too much obscure fill for me (I'm admittedly bad at solving). -just very difficult to get a shoehorn in to any corner.
Tough one. Had 4 areas of problems: 2 involved eUgene iOnesco crossing vanuatU and lerOux. Then the Natick of stEles crossing sEpal. Finally blU crossing Utne. Almost gave up, but decided to slog away.
Just about the best NYT Sunday puzzle I've ever done. Look forward to more from Victor! Once the repetitive "gene" became clear, the splicing challenges were manageable (excepting Eugène Ionesco). But the fill required a lot of thought. Great fun, a masterful job.
DNF: too much for me. Couldn't make sense of the patterns, I guess. Plus, enough unknowns to stop me cold.
Unlike frankbirthdaycake, I didn't like this puzzle but I could not agree more with the rest of his review:" I know what a Spad is, for instance, from reading, the same way other people learn and acquire information. I guessed at sepal because it sounded familiar (probably from high school biology class). I figure I have no trouble with sepal, Trajan or Spad in the same way other people, who have different areas of interest and knowledge-bases, find clues about musical theater, fashion or art similarly easy and fun; however, when I encounter a puzzle that doesn’t interest me, I figure it’s not my cup of tea and accept that other people might like it. I learn what I can from it, even if I’m not terribly interested, but I don’t question whether it’s worthy of inclusion. It would never occur to me to get mad because I didn’t know the answer to a straight recall-question with no gimmick. I’d just read up and move on. The Spad was once important to many people, including members of the Lafayette Escadrille.
To the naysayers and whiners, I recommend reading over complaining about the editor any day."
I only know Rex through his reviews but I cannot imagine a non-psychotic human being I would less like to spend time with.
Is there anything he likes? Anything that doesn't piss him off? Anything that doesn't offend him?
He should take up permanent residence in his own safe space, snuggle up to his favorite teddy bear, and avoid venturing out into the real world, which so disappoints, and causes him so much unhappiness.
SENSORS ENCYST
INGENERAL, most TVPARENTS have DENIED enticing,
and just GUESSED they'd ENDUP in SEX relations.
It's TRUETHAT they don't WANNABE GENESPLICING,
and I PREDICT they'll ENTWINE for REGENERATION.
--- FIDELIO SOLARIA LEROUX
Well, I've met Victor Barocas, and finished out of respect for that. I could tell right off it was going to be too hard to be a whole lotta fun. That's probably my fault today, not his.
One thing though, if you're gonna have TIRANE, you then oughtta have EUGEN IONESCU, especially in that same neighborhood.
There are options, but Bond girl and former Catwoman HALLE Berry gets a Super yeah baby nod today.
I PREDICT KC 28 SF 27
Talk about an armful of triumph points! This was very challenging for me, especially starting in the North. I couldn't deal with the themer in the NW, but actually intuited PLANTAGET in the NE, although I didn't' know how that was working. Then, I hit the revealer and aha! GENE SPLICING!
I tackled the NE one first, saw that GENE went into the circles, went back to the NW, put in GENE, and was able to sort out the splicing thing even though I never heard of a HEDGE NETTLE. Went back to the NE and finally saw EUGENE IONESCO who I know because I'm half Romanian.
The other two themers weren't quite so difficult, but man, lots of the fill slowed me down, but in a good way as I see it. So happy to finish. Fun
By the way, you can get a tea latte, so I can understand someone saying CAF latte. Mostly I don't care about those terms anyway, but the most inventive coffee order I've heard is a "why bother" - a decaf with skim milk and nutrasweet.
my paper printed the wrong week - last Sunday's puzzle again. Looked awfully familiar.
Lady Di, still waiting
It's certainly interesting how differently we see things. For me, Trajan was a gimme (Trajan's Column in Rome, and the fact that he came from Seville); and as soon as I caught on to the gene splicing, Plantagenet and Ionesco were gimmes. Don't you guys know any English history, or any 20th century European theater? (Rhinoceros? Bald Soprano?)
But I still don't understand the clue for ODOR.
RUBE: Moses was definitely a Levite. See Exodus 2:1-2 in the O.T.
"Phrase of Agreement" (42D) is TRUETHAT?!? Although I worked it out, WTF?
From syndication land, I would pay big money for a Sunday puzzle containing no PROPER NAMES, none, zero.
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