Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (somewhere in the low 4's)
THEME: ICED TEA (39A: Beverage with a phonetic hint to 17-, 26-, 51- and 63-Across) — familiar phrases that start with "T," only the letter "T" has been "iced" (as in "murdered" (!?), i.e. lopped off, omitted), resulting in wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):
Theme answers:
APE RECORDER (17A: Jane Goodall, at times?)
EAR JERKER (26A: Corn farmer at harvest time?)
AX DODGERS (51A: Lumberjacks in unsafe working conditions?)
URN OF EVENTS (63A: Caterer's coffee dispenser?)
Word of the Day: Glacier Bay National Park (27D: Capital near Glacier Bay National Park => JUNEAU) —
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is an American national park located in Southeast Alaska west of Juneau. President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the area around Glacier Bay a national monument under the Antiquities Act on February 25, 1925.[4] Subsequent to an expansion of the monument by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) enlarged the national monument by 523,000 acres (817.2 sq mi; 2,116.5 km2) on December 2, 1980, and created Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. The national preserve encompasses 58,406 acres (91.3 sq mi; 236.4 km2) of public land to the immediate northwest of the park, protecting a portion of the Alsek River with its fish and wildlife habitats, while allowing sport hunting.
Glacier Bay became part of a binational UNESCOWorld Heritage Site in 1979, and was inscribed as a Biosphere Reserve in 1986. The National Park Service undertook an obligation to work with Hoonah and YakutatTlingit Native American organizations in the management of the protected area in 1994. The park and preserve cover a total of 3,223,384 acres (5,037 sq mi; 13,045 km2), with 2,770,000 acres (4,328 sq mi; 11,210 km2) being designated as a wilderness area. (wikipedia)
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I like the weirdness of this one. It's a little gruesome, using the language of the hitman to refer to the simple omission of a letter. I probably would've gone with something like URN OF PHRASE instead of URN OF EVENTS, just so I wouldn't leave any "T"s uniced in those theme answers, but other than that, the theme seems to do what it sets out to do, and it does so consistently and elegantly (and wackily) enough. The nature of the theme made this one harder than a typical Tuesday for me. Figuring out what the base phrase is supposed to be and/or figuring out what the clue is trying to get at turned out to be a lot of work for me today. Weirdly, the first one (APE RECORDER) was probably the easiest for me to get; I came at it from the front end, and I managed to reason the answer from the clue, even though I still didn't know the gimmick (i.e. *why* the "T" was missing); would subsequent themers remove "T" or some other letter? Would that letter always be removed from the front of the answer, or might it disappear from somewhere else? No way to know early on. And that second themer, yikes, that clue was zero help and I couldn't find the base phrase (i.e. "tearjerker") until I figured out the very last crosses. Getting to the concept of "jerk" from farming / harvesting was ... uh, not intuitive to me. I can see the connection now, but then, no way. Also, having EAR --RKER I put in EAR MARKER, completely forgetting that the answers are supposed to be wacky, not legit. TORTAS seemed like a plausible answer for [High-calorie bakery offerings], so the only answer left that could get me off of EAR MARKER and over to EAR JERKER was the [Capital near Glacier Bay National Park], and wow JUNEAU took a long time to get without that "J" to help me along the way. I didn't know exactly where said "National Park" was, and I was frozen by the lack of specificity in the clue (i.e. what kind of "capital" were we dealing with? National or state? Or province? Is it Canadian? Sounds like it might be Canadian). I sort of forgot JUNEAU existed.
Found AX DODGERS hard as well, as the base phrase eluded me and the clue had me thinking of DANGERS, not DODGERS (51A: Lumberjacks in unsafe working conditions?). Then after getting OF EVENTS in the last themer, the only way I could think to start that phrase was "(C)HAIN." But HAIN isn't a thing, and didn't fit anyway. So, as you can see, it was a struggle. As struggles go, it wasn't back-breaking, but compared to most Tuesdays, it played hard for me.
The fill wasn't doing me any favors either. I wanted my parishioners to "sit" in PEWS, of course, so NAVE had me all messed up over there in the west (29D: Where parishioners sit). I think of the phrase as "It'll COST you," not "That'll COST you," so that fill-in-the-blank was weird (wanted something like "That'll SHOW you!"). [Ancestry] is a fine clue for ROOTS, but I found it hard to get from clue to answer. Had GTO before REO (64D: Old car that's a homophone of another answer in this puzzle) (OK, first, don't make me go hunting through The Entire Grid to find your dumb "homophone," and also, make sure you know what "homophone" means, because R-E-O and OREO do not have the same initial vowel sound, wtf!?) (wait, is REO a homophone of RIO??? I always say the letters R, E, O, as in R.E.O. Speedwagon ... if the car REO is pronounced RIO, I ... I ... wow, I don't know). AUTONYM took some doing (50A: Name of self-identification, as "Deutsche" for "Germans"). Worst, though, was TIN CAN, which could've had an ordinary clue but instead got an olde-tymey automotive clue, thus turning TIN CAN into slang I've never heard of (68A: Jalopy). "Crate," "Heap," these I've heard as slang for "jalopy" (which is pretty old itself). A "tin lizzie" is a "dilapidated or cheap car" (slang from the days of the Ford Model T). But TIN CAN, nope, to me a TIN CAN is a TIN CAN. So, overall, theme works OK, felt like a Wednesday, the end.
APE RECORDER established the theme, making it fun for me to guess the other theme answers with as few crosses as possible. And those answers each made me smile, with the images elicited from EAR JERKER and AX DODGERS, and then URN OF EVENTS just sounds funny, something no one would actually say even as it is a perfect description. Thus, a terrific theme, one capped by a just-right revealer.
The ICK is scant.
Then come the bonuses. Three palindromes (EVE, ETE, ADA), the anagrams ARTS and STAR, PRONOUNCE with its wedding clue crossing I DO. Then, echoing the theme, there were five answers that include the letters T, E, and A, plus there were nine answers you could make other crossword answers out of if you stuck a T in front of them (IBET, ROPE, ETE, REO, ARTS, ADA, ICK, WERE, and ATE).
All this in one 15 x 15 box – the magic of a well-made crossword. Thank you, Lindsey, and an encore soon, please!
I agree that perhaps too much license was taken to get to URN OF EVENTS which just doesn’t measure up as a stand alone phrase. The others seem to at least make sense in the context of the clue (a person in a field can be jerking ears of corn, or recording apes, or even dodging axes I suppose).
Ms. Garr has been having quite a run in 2021 - seems like she’s graced us with her presence on pretty much a weekly basis. Way to go TERI - we’ll need to find some more creative ways to clue you (even though you were great in Young Frankenstein).
GREBE was a new one to me so the cross with a foreign word was dicey. Other than that, the only other ICKy thing today was literally ICK itself.
Got a kick out of the theme, enough so that the clues like Eww and Ri-i-i-ght and In your dreams!, while still awful terrible horrible clues, I am willing to overlook.
I have spent my life thinking that GREBES were a kind of duck. I just finished reading The Bird by Colin Tudge, and learned that they are not even close. The GREBES are most closely related to flamingoes.
The book also has this intriguing footnote. (As a point of reference, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859). “In 1831 Patrick Matthew also wrote an account of evolutionary change in which he very clearly spells out the principles of natural selection”.
Should you wish to read it, Matthew’s book is called On Naval Timber and Arboriculture: With Critical Notes on Authors who Have Recently Treated the Subject of Planting.
Talk about wheelhouse! The REO Speedwagon was a truck and the REO part was pronounced like rio. I've never heard the music group, and have heard OF it only in crosswords. So I've never (before now) known that the REO in the music group was pronounced spelled out. The crossword clue and answer made perfect sense to me. I guess car guys think differently. Lindsey, are you a car guy?
Considering the fact that the leading Ts were iced, there sure were a lot of other Ts in the puzzle. Of all the consonants in the puzzle, 16% were Ts. Seems like a lot to me.
Note: That is not a criticism; it was just something I noticed and thought was interesting. Your mileage may vary.
1) Instructions for undoing knitting? 2) Latest supermarket tabloid? 3) Workers at the Russian mint? 4) Actor Tom in a movie trailer? 5) Common body position in yoga? 6) Mickey performing hip hop?
I enjoyed this and didn’t find it as challenging as Rex did. Much chuckling ensued as I found the theme answers; I thought they were all spot-on. Yay, chimpanzees are apes, so no definitional problems there. I thought ORDER OUT was a slightly odd expression. Don’t we ORDER in? And, for the plural-obsessed among us, what about ODIUMS? ODIA is equally if not more weird. I have a feeling the word would never be used in quite the way the clue suggests. I liked seeing GREBES -- they seemed like relative newcomers among all the usual herons and ibises. DUKES is a strange word, as in “put up your ____”. I didn’t look up the derivation. Does anyone know it? It struck me that there was a lot of OR and RO action: ORES, OREO, ORDER, ROPE, ROOTS, ROAM, ROIL.
Don’t touch that dial: quotation to follow.
1) RAVEL GUIDE 2) ISSUE OF LIES 3) ROUBLE MAKERS (acceptable alternate spelling according to Wiki) 4) HANKS IN ADVANCE 5) RUMP UP 6) MOUSE RAP
Did this last night thinking it was the Monday puzzle and wondering why it was so hard. GREBES is not a Monday bird!
I don't think REO (which I pronounce as letters) is a homophone of RIO. So that was a minus.
That said I've always enjoyed these add a letter/remove a letter themes, and I thought this one was pretty good. Every phrase was fair, but many were surprisingly hard to see.
Thank you @Lindsey, for this challenging, but fun, Tues. puz! :)
Med+. solve.
The ICED TEA was no T; took me some time to figure it out; liked it, tho.
Wasn't on the same wave-length as the constructor for this one. Just seemed – overall – somewhat on the harder side, but enjoyed the struggle, nevertheless.
Had many cats over the years but, alas, no ANGORA.
This was a fun puzzle. Simple theme but well constructed and not a lot of glue. Liked APE RECORDER best and thought the revealer was solid. We see the Pied-billed and Horned GREBEs along the coast here - nice to see them start this one. Rex was off on his AUTONYM rant. Overall fill was solid - weak spot being the LTR x FDR cross. Tried to read Atonement once but didn’t get very far - but knew IAN McEwan.
I’m doing something a little different with the quotation today. It’s longish with an element of suspense, so I’ve cut it in half, and I’m posting Part 1 now and will post Part 2 later in the day. It’s an excerpt from the work of SID FLEISCHMAN, born Mar. 16, 1920.
PART 1
“Sir!" he called out. "The Great Chaffalo! My name's Touch, and I brought a bundle of straw. I'd be much obliged if you'd turn it into a horse." Nearby, the tall weeds rasped a little in the breeze. But that was all. He picked up the straw and hurried past broken windows to the rear of the house. "You there, Mr. Chaffalo? It's me, Touch, and I'm in a dreadful hurry. My great-uncle aims to cart me off to the orphan house, but that don't take my fancy. I ain't asking for a fine, high-stepping horse, sir. Just any four legs'll do, as long as one ain't lame. I'd be proper grateful, Mr. Great Chaffalo." Undiscouraged, Touch moved his bundle of straw back to the front of the house to try again. And he noticed the rocking chair was pitching as if someone had just got up. Touch's hair went stiff as needles. But he was determined not to be scared off. He caught his breath. (From The Midnight Horse)
Will The Great Chaffalo ever appear? Will Touch get his straw-made horse? What is the significance of the rocking rocking chair? And, say, is there something unknown rustling those weeds?
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this passage later today. [Slow fadeout on spooky organ music…]
Agree with Rex that this felt more like a Wednesday, though when I look at my stats I see that it's closer to my Tuesday average than my Wednesday average.
NAVE crossing TERI was almost a Natick for me, embarrassingly. I had NAVo and ToRI until I finished the puzzle and went back to see what my errors were. That was a genuine error, my other problem was a typo (ANTo crossing with oDO). But as soon as I saw NAVo down I knew what I'd done wrong, so I'm not going to call it a cheat.
I absolutely have to quibble with REO and RIO as homophones. It turns out that they are homophones, but in a way I feel is totally inappropriate for a Tuesday.
The car company REO was named after its founder, Ransom Eli Olds. Wikipedia says:
"The company's name was spelled alternately in all capitals REO or with only an initial capital as Reo, and the company's own literature was inconsistent in this regard, with early advertising using all capitals and later advertising using the "Reo" capitalization. The pronunciation, however, was as a single word."
Wikipedia also helpfully points out that the company was defunct as of 1967 — 54 years ago.
Almost every living English speaker in 2021 will be familiar with R.E.O. Speedwagon, a band that is still active to this day and whose hits are still found on commercial radio airwaves.
Almost no one will be familiar with the way that REO Motor Car Company, which folded 54 years ago, was pronounced in the first half of the 20th century.
Not appropriate for a Tuesday, in my humble (but correct) opinion.
Hey All ! Uh-oh! Let the ICED TEA vs ICE TEA debate commence! Har. Let's see... ICED TEA - TEA that is brewed, then ICE cubes are added. Ergo, it's ICED. ICE TEA - TEA that is brewed, then frozen?
Anyway, nice puz, over 10 minutes, when usually my TuesPuz times are under 10. I do puz online lately, usually, so that timer is there. Don't go for speed or time norms, but that clock keeps ticking. So a tad tougher than normal. Read: crunchy.
AX DODGERS the funnest one. Had DanGERS also like Rex, even changing my ODIUMS to OnIUMS at one point (with that strategically placed IPOD-IPaD), but looking back at it, ODiUMS too strong, and OnIUMS thankfully not something (at least I don't think it is), so I said, "Aha, IPOD, not IPAD, with the D, gets me DODGERS, not DanGERS."
EAR JERKER took a sec, but I can lawyer it to fit the clue. Got JUNEAU off of __NEA_, so there Rex! ☺️ So that helped get JERKER. APE RECORDER kinda funny, too.
So a FUN puz, that kept me IN FOCUS and never caused BOREDOM. Lite BAD ICK, didn't want to put up my DUKES to fight BATMAN. OK, too much, I BET. 😁
“ It's a little gruesome, using the language of the hitman to refer to the simple omission of a letter...” for crying out loud. Do you ever leave your house ?
Ransom E. Olds was an entrepreneur who founded multiple companies in the automobile industry. The REO Motor Car Company was a Lansing, Michigan-based company that produced automobiles and trucks from 1905 to 1975. At one point the company also manufactured buses on its truck platforms. And of course the Oldsmobile is named for Mr. Olds. The REO Speed Wagon (alternatively Reo Speedwagon) was a light motor truck manufactured by REO Motor Car Company. It is an ancestor of the pickup truck. ... The Speed Wagon used REO's "Gold Crown" series of engines, and was well regarded for power, durability, and quality.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. After two days of trivial trivia in the form of tribute puzzles we get a puzzle that actually generates a few smiles. Toss in Rex’s REO confusion and it was quite the morning chucklefest.
I hear @SouthsideJohnny, but for some reason the absurdity of URN OF EVENTS hits the Z Funny Bone just right. Z’s Placebo & Tentacle Pub will definitely have an URN OF EVENTS dispensing coffee.
After APERECORDER, I assumed that the initial T would go missing in the themers. Sometimes assumptions are OK.
Nice to see GREBES, they dived right in after loons and cormorants wouldn't fit.
I like the Hepburn quote about FUN. My favorite remains "I ain't never had too much fun." It's a fun song to sing too.
I'm with @Barbara S in thinking that ODIUMS sounds off. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard a plural. What, "I have a lot of ODIUMS concerning our former president". Really?
Also unsure about LTR, but I'll give that one a pass.
Otherwise nice theme nicely executed, and felt just right for a Tuesday. Good job, LH, you made a Lot Happen.
@oceanjeremey - Since I went to a college with a science building named for the guy and I have been to baseball games at a stadium originally named for a company he founded and early automotive history is something I practically breathed since I worked in Henry Ford’s hometown for two decades, I may not be the best person to disagree with your point. Still, in CrossWorld I think it is fair to say that Ransom E. Olds is as famous as Henry Ford. REO clues are split roughly 50-50 between the band and the car dude in CrossWorld.
Two kinds of "ducks": puddle ducks (mallards, geese, et al), and diving ducks (mergansers, grebes, loons, etc). Diving ducks don't need a head start from the air. I flew through this puzzle and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ear jerkers cracked me up.
Very nice, very smooth. I liked the theme and found it useful. I liked seeing GREBES in the grid. I’m a sometime birder, especially on saltwater beaches. I saw willets, sanderlings, terns, black skimmers, osprey, herring gulls, pelicans, and a cormorant on my morning beach walk. Yesterday I saw my first laughing gull of the season. When they first come back, they are silent and shy, but a month later they’re the noisiest and rudest birds on the beach.
@Guilmerme, @Barbara S. Just popping in to say that HANKS IN ADVANCE and UNA SANDWICH are very good. :-)
(For those who have been inquiring -- I'm lurking. Little time to participate in the commentary because I'm happily busy these days. I'm sure I'll be back.)
I found this challenging for an early-week puzzle, particularly in the Southeast.
Can anyone tell me how a "Caterer's Coffee Dispenser" becomes a "(T)Urn of Events?" OK, I get the " Urn of" part, but what does "Events" have to do with a "Coffee Dispenser?"
Nicely crunchy, Tuesday or any other day, but not impossible. Too late to explain Ransom Olds, alas. My recollection is that it was said as R.E.O. Totally forgot it was around, making long haul truck tractors, until 1975, but then that fact dredged up a lower brain stem memory of the front of the grill.
Today’s “quotation” NON-clues: 2, 20 and 60 across. 28, 35 and 50 down. These should not be used in crosswords. They could never be solved as stand alone clues whereas good clues can be solved without context.
REO the auto company died in 1967. REO Speedwagon the power band was born in 1967. Coincidence? I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend that many of the band's detractors can't fight this feeling that the members are actually robots constructed out of the remains of discarded vehicles. No one has ever proved anything, but the suspicion lingers.
Meanwhile, the band's diehard fans have vowed to keep on loving them forever.
Very cute, fun to solve. I made the same T-lopping assumption as @pabloinnh 9:01, so the post-APE theme answers came quickly. Loved the URN OF EVENTS.
@Lewis 6:29, besides PRONOUNCE x I DO, I liked the parallel placement with (lived happily) EVER AFTER. Unfortunately, that crosses with EVE, who didn't.
@Guilherme perfecto! & @Barbara tambien, amiga (appropriate that @TTrimble returned for ICED TEA day). Thanks Lindsey for a frothy Tuesday confection which was actually engaging.
Puns on a Tuesday. Corny ones! I love it. Theme was easy to SUSS right away at 17A and just got better from there. EAR JERKER was my favorite and I was so caught up in it that I kept thinking IN FOCUS and AUTONYM were themers too. I didn’t cackle as the constructor said she did while she was thinking it up but I did smile a lot. Great job Lindsey!
That said, I give you the brilliant TERI Garr (with the equally brilliant Gene Wilder) in Young Frankenstein.
So nice to have clever wordplay on a Tuesday, and the themers are so cute and well-chosen. Some un-Tuesdayish words like AUTONYM and ODIUMS are included. Many words are clued in a FUN way, including FUN.
I now PRONOUNCE this puzzle adorable. More Tuesdays like this, please.
@Guilherme 9:28: "Cierra la window que esta reinando." You made me laugh and think of my Cubano friends from Miami and how much fun we have killing the Spanish/English language. Did I like this one? Why yes...I did. Who doesn't love an EAR JERKER? You should see me trying to put my little pearls in the little holes in my little ears. I do tend to sit in PEWS rather than the NAVE. The NAVE is reserved for the choir and the clergy and I'm just sitting in my Pew thanking GOD for one more day of breathing. I think we need a vote on the best OREO clue.....I kinda like "Little Dipper." Strange way to clue TORTES. I'm thinking of baking a 14 layer chocolate one. I guess that would be high calorie?
Your theme suggestions are terrific, @Barbara S. (8:13)! (Couldn't get any of them). I agree with @Z's appraisal (8:59) but disagree with his conclusion. I think you're ready to construct your own puzzles right now!
Mi amiga @GILL I gave it a pass because of Spanglish, but there is the Spanish word "sandwich", with an accent on the A, and sadly it's UN SANDWICH, n. masc., which corrects the error but spoils the FUN. "We murder to dissect.".
Just when I start to think I'm getting better at these I get absolutely trounced by a Tuesday. I'm still a newbie, but 1:05:34. What a time sink!
The theme clue was actually easy enough to guess, but I had no idea what was meant by the phonetic part of the clue. I remember doing vocal exercises in grade school to separate the syllables in that word. Most people combine the D and T and pronounce it "ice-tea" and we were taught to pronounce it phonetically as "ice-d-tea". Just like "burnt toast" when you combine the two T's into a "D" sound. Anyway... it threw me, so all the theme clues were like pulling teeth.
I always spell Axe with an E at the end. I had TORTAS in for the longest time and that helped muck things up in 26A. 16A gave me a lot of trouble. I put RBI first, then changed it to CUT then ERA. then back to RBI. Some of these animals like GREBES and ANGORA are new words to me. SUSS is a new one too.
I enjoyed ODIUMS, XACTO, and NAVE.
The clue for OREO was terrible. I see more OREO ice creams than frozen yogurts.
After such an easy Monday it's hard to get slammed with a challenging Tuesday. Hoping Wednesday is completable for me this week.
NAVE-the central part of a church building, intended to accommodate most of the congregation. In traditional Western churches it is rectangular, separated from the chancel by a step or rail.
The chancel is generally the area used by the clergy and choir during worship.
I knew Reo, the classic car, from other NYT crossword puzzles and that it’s pronounced like Rio, the city, even though R.E.O. were the initials of the owner. So that was a gimme, made sweeter when I found out that I knew something that threw Rex WAY off. OREO? Giggle. I also knew that REO Speed Wagon, the music group, was named after the classic car company but I just learned that the company actually had a model (several sequentially) called Speed Wagon. Gotta love Wikipedia!
My favorite is the REO Speed Wagon fire truck. And what great-looking cars. Have to say, I’m very surprised the company lasted until 1967 because I knew car models pretty well in those days (due to a car-crazy older brother) and I never heard of them until recently.
Also had no problem with turn of events, so I think that’s a pretty common phrase (as in “an unusual turn of events” or “an unlikely turn of events” - both seem more commonly used, to me, than “turn of phrase,” although that’s also a “turn of phrase” I’ve occasionally heard). Perhaps your English teacher slip is showing again, Rex. Lol.
@The Joker7:24 am - good one!
@Anonymous 8:42 am - hahaha - but then, do any of us? 😅
I live in Lansing and (in better times) take frequent trips to REO Town (named after Ransom Eli Olds, who built REO cars right here). I can attest, we pronounce it like Rio.
Oceanjeremy, Z is the prefect person to disagree with regarding Olds. Z doesn't even have Henry Ford's hometown right. It's a good bet he's got other things wrong too.
@RyanSem 11:16 am - as a fellow newbie, my advice is the same that I gave to Rex a while ago (he dId it right after my comment, so again, I’m taking credit for it!) and he subsequently started to enjoy a few puzzles (although he slipped for a while again recently).
Try turning off the clock, at least sometimes. When that pressure/distraction is gone, the mind is freer to wander - at least that’s how it works for me. I can see using the clock later, when you need more of a challenge or want to prepare for competitions - but for sheer enjoyment and learning - no timing is the way to go, imho.
Hang in there. If I can improve, believe me, anyone can!
M&A's fave themer was URNOFEVENTS -- don't care much about the extra T, since theme mcguffin just dealt with icin the startin T's. Funny theme. Like. fave non-themer themer: (T)IBET. fave reverse non-themer themer: (T)INCAN.
staff weeject pick: (T)ICK. Rhymes with pick. Nice weeject stacks, in the NE & SW, btw.
Themers featured 3-4 letter beheaded T-words: (T)APE. (T)EAR. (T)AX. (T)URN. @Guilherme Gama (9:28am) had a nice one for (T)UNA SANDWICH. Old M&A is contemplatin the potential offensiveness of various (T)RIP ODOMETER clues …
@RyanSem (11:16) Trounced on a Tuesday? Hey it happens. I like your analogy of ICED TEA and burnt toast, makes sense. Oh and SUSS? I would describe it as a crossword experience when you reach that aha moment and figure out what’s going on with a theme or maybe just a certain section that’s had you stumped. Don’t be discouraged, it’ll get better.
This one was too goofy for me. I picked a lot of EARs of corn when I was a kid but never, not once, did my mother say "Anoa Bobby, go out and JERK a mess of corn for tonight's supper". And as one who has used an AX many times---still have one in my storage shed---I cannot imagine a situation where being an AX DODGER makes any sense at all (plus the phrase is one letter short of its slot). Maybe if it had been clued in the context of the ultra-goofy Itchy & Scratchy Show on "The Simpsons", it would have worked better.
So for FUN this former TIN CAN sailor went looking for the super convenient plural of convenience (POC). Didn't take long as one showed up right out of the gate when GREBE couldn't get the job done by itself. POC servings tapered off after that but then closed the show impressively with three of the two-for-one POCs across the bottom row, where DUKE/NO, ROOT/SOT and SSN/SEDER all get grid-fill power boosts from a single S at the end of each pair.
The puzzle didn't generate a lot of ODIUMS on my part, it just didn't work for me.
I was amused by this one. Contrary to my usual luck, I was able to fill in the NW early, thanks to EVER AFTER. My only hangup was wanting GlEBES instead of GREBES. Turns out GlEBES are land reserved to the use of a church minister or priest. Apparently GREBES are a common bird, though to me they just look like some kinds of duck. Far less spectacular than egrets and herons and pelicans, and certainly less common than gulls, near the California coast.
So I got APERECORDER right away, and broke into laughter at EARJERKER. When we bought our house in 1978, I double dug part of the back yard, and planted corn, along with artichokes and other veggies. A summer ritual was going out back to JERK EARs of corn off the plants, and rush them into the boiling water.
AX DODGER seemed pretty unpleasant, but URN OF EVENTS qualifies for Clue of the Week.
Depending on your accent, R.E.O and OREO could certainly be homophones. Ask anyone from certain parts of Boston or South Jersey, where they say the word "orange" more like AHR-ange, and hence "oreo" like AHR-eo.
A nit that needs picking: ROPE is not part of a PULLEY, any more than water is part of a hose or a train is part of a tunnel. The rope is threaded through the pulley. Better clue would have been “part of block and tackle” (the pulleys are the blocks, the rope is the tackle). Otherwise very enjoyable puzzle.
@RyanSem - What everyone else is saying. We’ve all been there. As you gain experience you will accumulate what I call CrossWorld knowledge, that stuff that no longer stumps experienced solvers because we have learned it from solving crosswords. Four letter rivers, all the various uses of OREOS, the oeuvre of Brian Eno and Yoko Ono, CrossWorld Ornithology (where all birds have no more than six letters, usually just three or four, except Saturdays where a rare Scarlet Tanager might appear), and the world’s waterways have a surfeit of orcas and gars, will all become second nature to you.
@12:10 - Do tell. Where do you think Henry Ford’s hometown might be? I generally think of you as making spurious and or specious arguments. Why you would want to add “demonstrably ignorant” to your résumé is beyond me.
What a fun puzzle, with the theme answers eliciting smiles, every one of them. It played a tad harder than my average Tuesday but not for the same reasons as Rex lists. I think my issue was the rather closed off NE and the vague cluing of the COST, SEE, OREO, TORTES area, all of which got me off to a slow start. But other than IPaD before IPOD, no write-overs. Certainly, JUNEAU presented no problem, which I got off the first U even though I had no idea where Glacier Bay National Park is.
Nice job, Lindsey, on your second NYT crossword, thanks!
@bigsteve46 re yesterday's post ... "Good grief!"? I hope you didn't actually feel aggrieved by my post for some reason. Or is it just that you get some sort of perverse joy out of making fun of people for doing what they do if it differs from what you do?
Mea culpa: I'm a retired medical research statistician, love both words and numbers and am just a tad anal about tracking my crossword solve times in a spreadsheet. I realize that some might find this habit of mine to be weird and neurotic (I sure don't know anyone else who does it), but my solve time data for the NYT daily goes back to June 2009. Since I have the data for it, I thought others might be interested in an objective evaluation of the relative difficulty of the puzzle, at least based on one solver's experience.
As JC66 indicated in response to your post yesterday, I've hung around these parts for much of the blog's existence. Until recently, I haven't posted all that often, but some years ago, I posted solve time statistics just about every day. This was back when the NYT puzzle page made these data available for all solvers who used the online app. I eventually stopped doing that because I began receiving harassing (even marginally threatening) email messages through my Blogger profile.
Over the past month or so, I decided to regularly wade back into the mire, but I've noted that my posts don't generate much (or even any) discussion. I think your comment is the only response I've received so far. The fact is that while I've always had an aptitude for words and numbers, I've never had much of a proclivity for the social aspects of life. My attempts to interact with others are usually clumsy, at best, and sometimes just annoy others, at worst. I'm typically not even aware of this until someone says something (as you have, in this case). I've sometimes wondered if I'd have been diagnosed as spectrumy as a lad, had such a concept existed way back then.
At any rate, it's certainly not my intent to annoy. If I have, I apologize.
Z, Springwells is Ford's hometown. That it was eventually swallowed by the black hole called Detroit doesn't confer hometown status to Detroit. It's an ontological distinction, lost on frisbee players.
Funny that you think of me. I don't think of you at all.
Here is the conclusion of the passage I started this morning. If you missed the beginning, see my post at 8:29. The excerpt is taken from the work of SID FLEISCHMAN, born Mar. 16, 1920.
PART 2
Touch's hair went stiff as needles. But he was determined not to be scared off. He caught his breath. "If you were dozing, I don't mean to rile you up, sir. Maybe you heard of my great-uncle. Judge Wigglesforth? Crosscut saws don't come any meaner. I know I don't amount to much, for a boy, but I'm not shifty-eyed, the way he says. I hope you can see that, Great Chaffalo." Suddenly, Touch thought he could feel a pair of eyes watching him. The eyes in the poster! he thought. His hopes took a leap. "I aim to ride through the woods until I'm long out of reach, sir. He won't know where to look. I'll thank you everlastingly if you'll oblige me with a horse." A snarl burst out of the tall weeds. It wasn't a horse. It was a scruffy wild dog, its teeth looking like rusty nails. And it was coming straight for Touch. Touch began to shinny up a porch column, but he knew that hound was going to get its rusty teeth into his leg. Then he heard a snap of fingers and a voice in the air. "Hey! Hey!" The bundle of straw changed into a horse.” (From The Midnight Horse)
Just not for OFL. The REO rant was great, but the JUNEAU confusion was too much FUN. “Is it Canadian? Sounds like it might be Canadian.” ( ee-hee!) Like Rex, I thought the REO rhymer was OREO, but by that time there had been so many of that ilk (ICK, ORES, OREO, ATE, ANTI) I just filled it in without question. Just another weak entry clued sketchily, sez me. Nope, it was a weak entry clued obscurely! Someone else might say otherwise; guess it’s all in the Eye of the Beholder. RIP, Chick COREA.
I agree the highlights of the puzzle were the images conjured up by the themers, and EAR JERKERS reminded me of a video of Mozart’s Musical Joke in which the conductor hammed it up by leading an impertinent 2nd violinist off the stage by his EAR. No one had to DOGDE any AXes, though. Glad APE RECORDER was clued with Jane, so we got that nice photo from Rex; and the milquetoast clue for SAUDI was a GODSEND.
Special nod to having LET’S SEE JUNEAU! all in one column. I’m ready.
Is a ROPE really a part of a pulley? GNAW, the ROPE goes through the pulley. ROPE and pulley. So I waited on that one because it seemed wrong. Mild side-eying at ORES, as groups, and at ANTI being a nay-sayer. I mean, ok, but it seemed like all the FUN cluing was reserved for the themers. I did like the Hepburn reference, and FUNnily, the clue for BOREDOM.
GREBES are cool. They have complex mating rituals which involve running on water.
Looking forward to all the TASTEful comments from the STARs of Rexworld!
p.s. @sanfranman59 (1:37pm): Well, shoot -- M&A has been around this here blog rodeo [see also: blogodeo] about as long as U, and have always really enjoyed yer solve time stats on the puz, over the years. Keep it up, dude. U are a definite interestin asset to our understandin of the puzs.
I'd give out my own solvequest stats, except I'm not sure how well they'd be received, either -- especially in the U-northodox nano-second-level terms used by M&A. [Don't wanna mess up the overall stats. har]
Peace on earth, good will to Comment Gallery folks.
Thanks to everyone who got a giggle out of my pseudo-themers. I have to say that I’ve never considered puzzle construction. I think I could write the odd amusing clue but I don’t have the faintest idea how to configure a grid. I’ve been exposed to a few of the principles from reading Rex and all of you here in the commentariat, but still. I feel that if I were to try puzzle-making, it would be like my hearing a really interesting lecture on the medulla oblongata and then deciding to take up brain surgery. A bit of a non-starter. But you never know. Maybe all I need is a collaborator!
@sanfranman (1:37) I nearly always read your posts and find them enlightening, never annoying. But you know what? If I didn’t particularly care for your style or your opinion or your posts in general, I can always scroll right on by - in the same manner you can skip over mine if you so choose.
Could be the reason you don’t get as much interaction is that your posts are usually later in the day. Many times I add my two cents, then get busy with other things and don’t always get back to read further comments. You’re a classy guy to offer such a thoughtful response to what was IMHO an unkind jab which was directed at you . . . but you don’t owe anyone an apology.
@sanfranman......Well you cucaracha, you...YES...Let's see: You, @jae, JC66, @M&A (who am I missing?) were the first of the firsts to come here. Then...let's see....@Z and Loren and I came in and lookie now...we have a bunch of bandidos (Hi @pablito) that actually like each other.....(sorta). Don't you dare go away!
@sanfranman59 - When you post is probably a huge factor in how much response you get. Speaking for myself I’m glad you’re posting regularly again. I still miss your stats based on the old NYTX app. It was a nice balance to Rex’s ratings (and for those who weren’t here back then, Rex was in agreement with @sanfranman59’s stats more often than not). Now the closest thing to that is the Not a Blog site, which is hardly the same planet as the rest of us (these are mostly times from people who make Rex look like a piker).
@1:37 - Considering that you sound like the anon who always fails to do a gotcha on me we all find the idea that you don’t think about me laughably lacking in self-awareness. I’ll grant you this, Springwells is where Henry Ford was born, but the choice of “black hole of Detroit” is interesting in three respects: 1. Springwells became a part of two communities; 2. I never mentioned Detroit because that’s not where I worked; and 3. it suggests unconscious racist bias (I’m assuming it’s not explicit racist bias).
Z, You'll grant me? Har!!! no need to do me any favors. The facts do all the hat for me. because they're on my side. Pray tell just where exactly did you mean when you said henry Ford's hometown? Just where did you work for those tqwo decades then? Springwell township didnt exitst by the time you were sucking on the public teat. Also, now you're speaking for the group? "we all find.." I'll grant you this. You got balls.
PS And calling me a racist? Please. You have no idea who I am or what I believe or even what color my skin is.
With your flair for words and wordplay, I'd think one or more of our bloggers with knowledge of the intricacies of puzzle construction would make a perfect fit for your gift.
@sanfranman59
Add me to the list of your supporters. I always appreciated your daily comparisons back in the early days of Rex's blog. I was pretty much just a lurker then. Keep up the good work! :)
@Joe
Success w/the acrostic, and thx for your ongoing encouragement! :)
When I used "liberal" I probably conflated your advice with that of others who chipped in with tips. I was thinking of taking small gambles by filling in short words, where one or more letters seemed to be solid.
I now think you may have been referring to longer words that may repeat themselves in the quote, right? ___
Skipped yesterday. Takes a lot of time to read and comment, so I’m taking breaks from it. Anyway, I had missed @A’s Caruso’s Santa Lucia link and @bocamp’s translation - thanks, guys. My dad liked it and O Sole Mio, so it was a nice reminder.
Another reason to take a break - some people (and I’m not naming names here) would seem to need to revisit preschool rules for playing in the sandbox: You can’t say “you can’t play.” No throwing sand. Walk away. Play nice, etc.
And the always popular: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Personal criticisms aren’t necessary and upset everybody.
Also want to say that it doesn’t necessarily mean no one agreed with, or liked, or appreciated, what you said if there are no comments about it - it’s just hard to comment on everything. (Unless it is something rude/crude - then it probably IS being ignored.) I often laugh at funny comments or think something is true or well-put but don’t type a comment. Otherwise, we’d all be commenting on @Lewis, say, all day. (Ever notice how everything he says is not only smart, but so nice, but not in a sappy way? Good role model, there, kids.)
Nothing wrong with putting stats in, imo - Rex used to always have his times in, so why not, if that’s your thing? I’ll admit, as a newbie, it discouraged me plenty of times, but first I learned to roll my eyes, which helped immensely, then I learned to laugh at the ridiculous difference in the amount of time it took him vs. me - now I don’t even notice it.
I look at it like the true story about famous marathon runner Bill Rodgers. When someone from the back of the pack told Rodgers his time was more than 5 hours, Rodgers replied, with admiration, “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to run for 5 or 6 hours!”
Sometimes, comments in writing seem much harsher than intended. That’s why the silly LOL and jk and emojis are so popular - to soften something that may need a joking inflection of voice or a smile to show it’s friendly teasing. I don’t know about anyone else, but I only tease people I like.
If someone goes on too long and it doesn’t interest you, skip it. Well, maybe roll your eyes and then skip it. Eye rolling is a wonderful thing. If something gets you too riled up, it’s probably time to take a walk.
It’s been a long pandemic, folks.
Some of us are celebrating our first completed puzzles and others are celebrating the publishing of another puzzle they constructed.
Some of us think everything is kind of funny and others take everything literally and answer every quip with a sincere explanation.
Some of us don’t make our beds and, apparently, some can’t imagine getting through the day without it. 🙄
As my wise Irish gramma (and, therefore, my wise Irish mom) used to say: “It takes all kinds to make a world.” A blog community, too.
Yikes! Thanks, @Z you are right on, on Everything you do is right Day! I guess the only way I'm right too is it's because I secretly really really wanted folks to see the grebes video. Ahem. For anyone wondering WOE, @Z shared the correct link to this recording of Chick COREA that I meant to share: Eye of the Beholder
@Z and @bocamp Thanks for your (possibly misplaced) faith in me. I appreciate it. And @Lewis, don't sweat it, man -- I hereby absolve you of any obligation.
@sanfranman59 Stay with us, brother. Your stats are amazing in their precision, as is the layout of your posts with their use of caps, boldface and curly brackets. It’s true: I always find your contributions aesthetically pleasing as well as informative.
@A (1:47 PM) O. M. G. That grebe footage! (Footage in more ways than one, Tee Hee.) When I was about 8 and my sister was about 16 we were in a movie theatre and saw a nature short that showed grebes doing just that amazing water dance. It struck our funny bones so forcefully that we just roared with loud, uncontrollable laughter in front of our fellow-movie-patrons and the cinema staff, in spite of being well-brought-up and knowing the importance of keeping quiet in such a place. No kidding, I thought they’d have to take us out on stretchers. My stomach hurts just thinking about it. We FINALLY got a grip on ourselves and stayed to watch the movie we’d actually come for – I couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life, but the grebes are as vivid as if I’d first seen them yesterday. For months after that, all one of us had to say was “Birds running!” and we’d both dissolve. Our mother thought we were mad. And we were.
@A - so THOSE are grebes! Didn’t know what those crazy birds were called, so I never made the connection. I’ll have to bookmark that clip for anytime I need something that’s guaranteed to make me smile! Thanks.
Did the solve last night so forget to include a couple of puzzle-related thoughts in my first post. I join with those who cast a NO VOTE on the "Part of a pulley" clue for ROPE (2D), although I just saw a web site that describes the parts of a pulley as a wheel, an axle and a ROPE. Nope. The parts of a pulley are a grooved wheel, an axle on which the wheel turns and a supporting case or housing usually with some kind of mounting hardware for, say, a SPAR. A pulley can use a belt, a chain, a wire cable or a ROPE.
Seven Down COREA, clued as "Late jazz pianist Chick", brought back a most pleasant memory of a mockingbird that staked out its territory in our neighborhood a few years back. The mockingbird is the State Bird of both Tennessee, where I grew up, and Texas, where I now live, so I always listen to their incredible song when I get an opportunity. Our avian neighbor had a typical long, varied song that was regularly punctuated by what sounded exactly like "Chick COREA"! That was repeated three times as a sort of coda before another round of improvisation began (maybe like some of Chick COREA's music). Our feathered friend was a jazz composer!
I get take out or carry out when Ikm at a store or restaurant and want to take the food home with me. When I’m home I order IN. That whole clue made no sense.
@old timer and Rex, please see the video that @A posted. Grebes are magnificent and quite above average birds. They can fly, float, and dive. They are masters of all realms of Earth. Upon reading the first clue, I immediately typed in GREBES. I'm pretty sure it was the same cluing used when I first learned about the amazing bird when I saw them appear in a past NYTimes cross.
Late, but... @sanfranman You seem too well educated and too nicely mannered to let somebody sour your view of posting your times and averages. Look at all the support you've gotten! Heck,vif I can go on forever about F and lack thereof, then you can please continue posting your analyses.
To the naysayers who get their jollies berating others, Bite Me. 🤪😷
@sanfranman, always enjoyed your stats and I'm glad you are posting on Rex regularly again, plus I enjoy your DownHome solves and comments over at Crossword Fiend. Keep it up!
"AUTONYM took some doing..." for an English professor??? This is one of those rare days when I can legitimately rate the puzzle easier than OFC. Not in real time, of course, but it took me only about five Rexes, where the multiplier is usually at least eight. I thought, relative to other Tuesdays, this one played pretty easy.
I got the gist of it early on, but because of BRISK I was able to infer EARJERKER; JUNEAU quickly followed. The long downs were gimmes. I don't even teach, but I know what an AUTONYM is...I just can't see where all the trouble was. All I had to do was change the IPaD to a POD, and done.
Well-done theme; fill somewhat defective. We have ORDER intersecting APERECORDER, plus OREO and ORES in close proximity. And the crutchy SSNS is never lovely. But then again, many-time DOD TERI Garr is a GODSEND to the grid. I could call it par or birdie depending on mood: birdie it is. :)
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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113 comments:
Jeff over at xwordinfo gives a different explanation of the REO homophone. It’s referring to RIO not OREO, apparently.
But, I did balk at having all three of those in the grid. Not technically a dupe, but awfully close.
Rio, not oreo, is the homophone.
I think you missed the homophone, Rex
This was FUN minus ICK.
APE RECORDER established the theme, making it fun for me to guess the other theme answers with as few crosses as possible. And those answers each made me smile, with the images elicited from EAR JERKER and AX DODGERS, and then URN OF EVENTS just sounds funny, something no one would actually say even as it is a perfect description. Thus, a terrific theme, one capped by a just-right revealer.
The ICK is scant.
Then come the bonuses. Three palindromes (EVE, ETE, ADA), the anagrams ARTS and STAR, PRONOUNCE with its wedding clue crossing I DO. Then, echoing the theme, there were five answers that include the letters T, E, and A, plus there were nine answers you could make other crossword answers out of if you stuck a T in front of them (IBET, ROPE, ETE, REO, ARTS, ADA, ICK, WERE, and ATE).
All this in one 15 x 15 box – the magic of a well-made crossword. Thank you, Lindsey, and an encore soon, please!
I agree that perhaps too much license was taken to get to URN OF EVENTS which just doesn’t measure up as a stand alone phrase. The others seem to at least make sense in the context of the clue (a person in a field can be jerking ears of corn, or recording apes, or even dodging axes I suppose).
Ms. Garr has been having quite a run in 2021 - seems like she’s graced us with her presence on pretty much a weekly basis. Way to go TERI - we’ll need to find some more creative ways to clue you (even though you were great in Young Frankenstein).
GREBE was a new one to me so the cross with a foreign word was dicey. Other than that, the only other ICKy thing today was literally ICK itself.
I liked it! And Rex didn’t hate it! Cool.
Got a kick out of the theme, enough so that the clues like Eww and Ri-i-i-ght and In your dreams!, while still awful terrible horrible clues, I am willing to overlook.
I have spent my life thinking that GREBES were a kind of duck. I just finished reading The Bird by Colin Tudge, and learned that they are not even close. The GREBES are most closely related to flamingoes.
The book also has this intriguing footnote. (As a point of reference, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859).
“In 1831 Patrick Matthew also wrote an account of evolutionary change in which he very clearly spells out the principles of natural selection”.
Should you wish to read it, Matthew’s book is called On Naval Timber and Arboriculture: With Critical Notes on Authors who Have Recently Treated the Subject of Planting.
I hope @Rex isn't homophonophobic.
TIN CAN is absolutely a thing referring to a crappy old car, as is “rust bucket”, but the latter wouldn’t fit.
EAR JERKER should’ve had a Carol Burnett clue of some kind.
My world is rocked. If you can't trust a 80's power ballad band... then what's left in this world?
Tedious and annoying
I couldn't wait to finish
Talk about wheelhouse! The REO Speedwagon was a truck and the REO part was pronounced like rio. I've never heard the music group, and have heard OF it only in crosswords. So I've never (before now) known that the REO in the music group was pronounced spelled out. The crossword clue and answer made perfect sense to me. I guess car guys think differently. Lindsey, are you a car guy?
Considering the fact that the leading Ts were iced, there sure were a lot of other Ts in the puzzle. Of all the consonants in the puzzle, 16% were Ts. Seems like a lot to me.
Note: That is not a criticism; it was just something I noticed and thought was interesting. Your mileage may vary.
1) Instructions for undoing knitting?
2) Latest supermarket tabloid?
3) Workers at the Russian mint?
4) Actor Tom in a movie trailer?
5) Common body position in yoga?
6) Mickey performing hip hop?
I enjoyed this and didn’t find it as challenging as Rex did. Much chuckling ensued as I found the theme answers; I thought they were all spot-on. Yay, chimpanzees are apes, so no definitional problems there. I thought ORDER OUT was a slightly odd expression. Don’t we ORDER in? And, for the plural-obsessed among us, what about ODIUMS? ODIA is equally if not more weird. I have a feeling the word would never be used in quite the way the clue suggests. I liked seeing GREBES -- they seemed like relative newcomers among all the usual herons and ibises. DUKES is a strange word, as in “put up your ____”. I didn’t look up the derivation. Does anyone know it? It struck me that there was a lot of OR and RO action: ORES, OREO, ORDER, ROPE, ROOTS, ROAM, ROIL.
Don’t touch that dial: quotation to follow.
1) RAVEL GUIDE
2) ISSUE OF LIES
3) ROUBLE MAKERS (acceptable alternate spelling according to Wiki)
4) HANKS IN ADVANCE
5) RUMP UP
6) MOUSE RAP
Did this last night thinking it was the Monday puzzle and wondering why it was so hard. GREBES is not a Monday bird!
I don't think REO (which I pronounce as letters) is a homophone of RIO. So that was a minus.
That said I've always enjoyed these add a letter/remove a letter themes, and I thought this one was pretty good. Every phrase was fair, but many were surprisingly hard to see.
Thank you @Lindsey, for this challenging, but fun, Tues. puz! :)
Med+. solve.
The ICED TEA was no T; took me some time to figure it out; liked it, tho.
Wasn't on the same wave-length as the constructor for this one. Just seemed – overall – somewhat on the harder side, but enjoyed the struggle, nevertheless.
Had many cats over the years but, alas, no ANGORA.
Chick COREA - Spain - Live At Montreux 2004
___
yd pg -1
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness to all 🕊
This was a fun puzzle. Simple theme but well constructed and not a lot of glue. Liked APE RECORDER best and thought the revealer was solid. We see the Pied-billed and Horned GREBEs along the coast here - nice to see them start this one. Rex was off on his AUTONYM rant. Overall fill was solid - weak spot being the LTR x FDR cross. Tried to read Atonement once but didn’t get very far - but knew IAN McEwan.
Enjoyable solve for a beautiful Tuesday morning.
TIN CAN might've been better clued as "Sailor's slang for a destroyer."
I’m doing something a little different with the quotation today. It’s longish with an element of suspense, so I’ve cut it in half, and I’m posting Part 1 now and will post Part 2 later in the day. It’s an excerpt from the work of SID FLEISCHMAN, born Mar. 16, 1920.
PART 1
“Sir!" he called out. "The Great Chaffalo! My name's Touch, and I brought a bundle of straw. I'd be much obliged if you'd turn it into a horse."
Nearby, the tall weeds rasped a little in the breeze. But that was all.
He picked up the straw and hurried past broken windows to the rear of the house.
"You there, Mr. Chaffalo? It's me, Touch, and I'm in a dreadful hurry. My great-uncle aims to cart me off to the orphan house, but that don't take my fancy. I ain't asking for a fine, high-stepping horse, sir. Just any four legs'll do, as long as one ain't lame. I'd be proper grateful, Mr. Great Chaffalo."
Undiscouraged, Touch moved his bundle of straw back to the front of the house to try again. And he noticed the rocking chair was pitching as if someone had just got up.
Touch's hair went stiff as needles. But he was determined not to be scared off. He caught his breath.
(From The Midnight Horse)
Will The Great Chaffalo ever appear?
Will Touch get his straw-made horse?
What is the significance of the rocking rocking chair?
And, say, is there something unknown rustling those weeds?
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this passage later today. [Slow fadeout on spooky organ music…]
Agree with Rex that this felt more like a Wednesday, though when I look at my stats I see that it's closer to my Tuesday average than my Wednesday average.
NAVE crossing TERI was almost a Natick for me, embarrassingly. I had NAVo and ToRI until I finished the puzzle and went back to see what my errors were. That was a genuine error, my other problem was a typo (ANTo crossing with oDO). But as soon as I saw NAVo down I knew what I'd done wrong, so I'm not going to call it a cheat.
I absolutely have to quibble with REO and RIO as homophones. It turns out that they are homophones, but in a way I feel is totally inappropriate for a Tuesday.
The car company REO was named after its founder, Ransom Eli Olds. Wikipedia says:
"The company's name was spelled alternately in all capitals REO or with only an initial capital as Reo, and the company's own literature was inconsistent in this regard, with early advertising using all capitals and later advertising using the "Reo" capitalization. The pronunciation, however, was as a single word."
Wikipedia also helpfully points out that the company was defunct as of 1967 — 54 years ago.
Almost every living English speaker in 2021 will be familiar with R.E.O. Speedwagon, a band that is still active to this day and whose hits are still found on commercial radio airwaves.
Almost no one will be familiar with the way that REO Motor Car Company, which folded 54 years ago, was pronounced in the first half of the 20th century.
Not appropriate for a Tuesday, in my humble (but correct) opinion.
Hey All !
Uh-oh! Let the ICED TEA vs ICE TEA debate commence! Har. Let's see...
ICED TEA - TEA that is brewed, then ICE cubes are added. Ergo, it's ICED.
ICE TEA - TEA that is brewed, then frozen?
Anyway, nice puz, over 10 minutes, when usually my TuesPuz times are under 10. I do puz online lately, usually, so that timer is there. Don't go for speed or time norms, but that clock keeps ticking. So a tad tougher than normal. Read: crunchy.
AX DODGERS the funnest one. Had DanGERS also like Rex, even changing my ODIUMS to OnIUMS at one point (with that strategically placed IPOD-IPaD), but looking back at it, ODiUMS too strong, and OnIUMS thankfully not something (at least I don't think it is), so I said, "Aha, IPOD, not IPAD, with the D, gets me DODGERS, not DanGERS."
EAR JERKER took a sec, but I can lawyer it to fit the clue. Got JUNEAU off of __NEA_, so there Rex! ☺️ So that helped get JERKER. APE RECORDER kinda funny, too.
So a FUN puz, that kept me IN FOCUS and never caused BOREDOM. Lite BAD ICK, didn't want to put up my DUKES to fight BATMAN. OK, too much, I BET. 😁
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
“ It's a little gruesome, using the language of the hitman to refer to the simple omission of a letter...” for crying out loud. Do you ever leave your house ?
Ransom E. Olds was an entrepreneur who founded multiple companies in the automobile industry. The REO Motor Car Company was a Lansing, Michigan-based company that produced automobiles and trucks from 1905 to 1975. At one point the company also manufactured buses on its truck platforms. And of course the Oldsmobile is named for Mr. Olds. The REO Speed Wagon (alternatively Reo Speedwagon) was a light motor truck manufactured by REO Motor Car Company. It is an ancestor of the pickup truck. ... The Speed Wagon used REO's "Gold Crown" series of engines, and was well regarded for power, durability, and quality.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. After two days of trivial trivia in the form of tribute puzzles we get a puzzle that actually generates a few smiles. Toss in Rex’s REO confusion and it was quite the morning chucklefest.
I hear @SouthsideJohnny, but for some reason the absurdity of URN OF EVENTS hits the Z Funny Bone just right. Z’s Placebo & Tentacle Pub will definitely have an URN OF EVENTS dispensing coffee.
R.E.O. Speedwagon never did a Flying GREBES Trot so a Flying Turkey Trot will have to do.
LET’S Go Crazy
@The Joker - 🤣😂🤣😂🤣
@Joaquin - You just know that if Patrick Berry did this theme the only T would be the one in ICED TEA, but that’s why he is Patrick Berry.
@Barbara S - Keep that alternate themer thing going and pretty soon you’ll be making puzzles.
After APERECORDER, I assumed that the initial T would go missing in the themers. Sometimes assumptions are OK.
Nice to see GREBES, they dived right in after loons and cormorants wouldn't fit.
I like the Hepburn quote about FUN. My favorite remains "I ain't never had too much fun." It's a fun song to sing too.
I'm with @Barbara S in thinking that ODIUMS sounds off. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard a plural. What, "I have a lot of ODIUMS concerning our former president". Really?
Also unsure about LTR, but I'll give that one a pass.
Otherwise nice theme nicely executed, and felt just right for a Tuesday. Good job, LH, you made a Lot Happen.
I thought we canceled Nabokov. C’mon fellow progressives get with the program.
@oceanjeremey - Since I went to a college with a science building named for the guy and I have been to baseball games at a stadium originally named for a company he founded and early automotive history is something I practically breathed since I worked in Henry Ford’s hometown for two decades, I may not be the best person to disagree with your point. Still, in CrossWorld I think it is fair to say that Ransom E. Olds is as famous as Henry Ford. REO clues are split roughly 50-50 between the band and the car dude in CrossWorld.
Two kinds of "ducks": puddle ducks (mallards, geese, et al), and diving ducks (mergansers, grebes, loons, etc). Diving ducks don't need a head start from the air. I flew through this puzzle and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ear jerkers cracked me up.
Spanish speaker making an order?
UNA SANDWICH
...I'll show myself out.
Very nice, very smooth. I liked the theme and found it useful. I liked seeing GREBES in the grid. I’m a sometime birder, especially on saltwater beaches. I saw willets, sanderlings, terns, black skimmers, osprey, herring gulls, pelicans, and a cormorant on my morning beach walk. Yesterday I saw my first laughing gull of the season. When they first come back, they are silent and shy, but a month later they’re the noisiest and rudest birds on the beach.
@Guilmerme, @Barbara S.
Just popping in to say that HANKS IN ADVANCE and UNA SANDWICH are very good. :-)
(For those who have been inquiring -- I'm lurking. Little time to participate in the commentary because I'm happily busy these days. I'm sure I'll be back.)
I found this challenging for an early-week puzzle, particularly in the Southeast.
Can anyone tell me how a "Caterer's Coffee Dispenser" becomes a "(T)Urn of Events?" OK, I get the " Urn of" part, but what does "Events" have to do with a "Coffee Dispenser?"
Then it wouldn't have been "?" clue.
@Wm. C, caterers usually cater at events such as wedding receptions, symposiums, etc. so it is a (coffee) urn of events.
Nicely crunchy, Tuesday or any other day, but not impossible. Too late to explain Ransom Olds, alas. My recollection is that it was said as R.E.O. Totally forgot it was around, making long haul truck tractors, until 1975, but then that fact dredged up a lower brain stem memory of the front of the grill.
Weird that there are two "no" answers. 14A and 69A
Today’s “quotation” NON-clues: 2, 20 and 60 across. 28, 35 and 50 down.
These should not be used in crosswords. They could never be solved as stand alone clues whereas good clues can be solved without context.
AXDanGERS did me in. Thought IPaD looked OK, and OnIUMS I went with. I do the hard copy so didn’t realize I had an error. On a Tuesday. ICK
REO the auto company died in 1967. REO Speedwagon the power band was born in 1967. Coincidence? I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend that many of the band's detractors can't fight this feeling that the members are actually robots constructed out of the remains of discarded vehicles. No one has ever proved anything, but the suspicion lingers.
Meanwhile, the band's diehard fans have vowed to keep on loving them forever.
Lively little crossword. Liked it. Smart cluing, and a fair amount of sparkle. As Lewis might say, I had many little pings of joy along the way.
Very cute, fun to solve. I made the same T-lopping assumption as @pabloinnh 9:01, so the post-APE theme answers came quickly. Loved the URN OF EVENTS.
@Lewis 6:29, besides PRONOUNCE x I DO, I liked the parallel placement with (lived happily) EVER AFTER. Unfortunately, that crosses with EVE, who didn't.
Barbara S, 8:29, thanks for that array of treats!
@Guilherme perfecto! & @Barbara tambien, amiga (appropriate that @TTrimble returned for ICED TEA day).
Thanks Lindsey for a frothy Tuesday confection which was actually engaging.
Puns on a Tuesday. Corny ones! I love it. Theme was easy to SUSS right away at 17A and just got better from there. EAR JERKER was my favorite and I was so caught up in it that I kept thinking IN FOCUS and AUTONYM were themers too. I didn’t cackle as the constructor said she did while she was thinking it up but I did smile a lot. Great job Lindsey!
That said, I give you the brilliant TERI Garr (with the equally brilliant Gene Wilder) in Young Frankenstein.
Loved it. And any puzzle that features Jane Goodall is a winner for me.
This was an asty puzzle -- a real reat.
So nice to have clever wordplay on a Tuesday, and the themers are so cute and well-chosen. Some un-Tuesdayish words like AUTONYM and ODIUMS are included. Many words are clued in a FUN way, including FUN.
I now PRONOUNCE this puzzle adorable. More Tuesdays like this, please.
@Guilherme 9:28: "Cierra la window que esta reinando." You made me laugh and think of my Cubano friends from Miami and how much fun we have killing the Spanish/English language.
Did I like this one? Why yes...I did. Who doesn't love an EAR JERKER? You should see me trying to put my little pearls in the little holes in my little ears.
I do tend to sit in PEWS rather than the NAVE. The NAVE is reserved for the choir and the clergy and I'm just sitting in my Pew thanking GOD for one more day of breathing.
I think we need a vote on the best OREO clue.....I kinda like "Little Dipper."
Strange way to clue TORTES. I'm thinking of baking a 14 layer chocolate one. I guess that would be high calorie?
Your theme suggestions are terrific, @Barbara S. (8:13)! (Couldn't get any of them). I agree with @Z's appraisal (8:59) but disagree with his conclusion. I think you're ready to construct your own puzzles right now!
Mi amiga @GILL I gave it a pass because of Spanglish, but there is the Spanish word "sandwich", with an accent on the A, and sadly it's UN SANDWICH, n. masc., which corrects the error but spoils the FUN. "We murder to dissect.".
Poor Rex. Caught in the Whirlpool of Overthink again. But, better for us - more laughs!
I thought this puzz was just grand. Another more-crunch-for-the -Tuesdee-buck adding gravitas to the kooky themers. All right by me!
Though I agree with @Barbara S and @pabloinnh about ODIUMS being a tad, well, odiuses.
@Barbara S 829am What @Z 859am and when are you gonna give it a go?? I think you'd be amazing at it.
@TTrimble 945am I see you in there! Come on out more often and soon, please!
@J-Dip 1021am 😂 Classic comment!
🧠🧠
🎉🎉🎉
Just when I start to think I'm getting better at these I get absolutely trounced by a Tuesday. I'm still a newbie, but 1:05:34. What a time sink!
The theme clue was actually easy enough to guess, but I had no idea what was meant by the phonetic part of the clue. I remember doing vocal exercises in grade school to separate the syllables in that word. Most people combine the D and T and pronounce it "ice-tea" and we were taught to pronounce it phonetically as "ice-d-tea". Just like "burnt toast" when you combine the two T's into a "D" sound. Anyway... it threw me, so all the theme clues were like pulling teeth.
I always spell Axe with an E at the end. I had TORTAS in for the longest time and that helped muck things up in 26A. 16A gave me a lot of trouble. I put RBI first, then changed it to CUT then ERA. then back to RBI. Some of these animals like GREBES and ANGORA are new words to me. SUSS is a new one too.
I enjoyed ODIUMS, XACTO, and NAVE.
The clue for OREO was terrible. I see more OREO ice creams than frozen yogurts.
After such an easy Monday it's hard to get slammed with a challenging Tuesday. Hoping Wednesday is completable for me this week.
NAVE-the central part of a church building, intended to accommodate most of the congregation. In traditional Western churches it is rectangular, separated from the chancel by a step or rail.
The chancel is generally the area used by the clergy and choir during worship.
Like @TTrimble, I, too, am a lurker these days. But I do enjoy the camaraderie.
@Barbara S., yes, you're ready! Do it. And I'm eagerly waiting for part 2. Don't keep us in suspense too long, please.
Carry on! Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.
I knew Reo, the classic car, from other NYT crossword puzzles and that it’s pronounced like Rio, the city, even though R.E.O. were the initials of the owner. So that was a gimme, made sweeter when I found out that I knew something that threw Rex WAY off. OREO? Giggle. I also knew that REO Speed Wagon, the music group, was named after the classic car company but I just learned that the company actually had a model (several sequentially) called Speed Wagon. Gotta love Wikipedia!
My favorite is the REO Speed Wagon fire truck. And what great-looking cars. Have to say, I’m very surprised the company lasted until 1967 because I knew car models pretty well in those days (due to a car-crazy older brother) and I never heard of them until recently.
Also had no problem with turn of events, so I think that’s a pretty common phrase (as in “an unusual turn of events” or “an unlikely turn of events” - both seem more commonly used, to me, than “turn of phrase,” although that’s also a “turn of phrase” I’ve occasionally heard). Perhaps your English teacher slip is showing again, Rex. Lol.
@The Joker7:24 am - good one!
@Anonymous 8:42 am - hahaha - but then, do any of us? 😅
I live in Lansing and (in better times) take frequent trips to REO Town (named after Ransom Eli Olds, who built REO cars right here). I can attest, we pronounce it like Rio.
Oceanjeremy,
Z is the prefect person to disagree with regarding Olds. Z doesn't even have Henry Ford's hometown right. It's a good bet he's got other things wrong too.
@RyanSem 11:16 am - as a fellow newbie, my advice is the same that I gave to Rex a while ago (he dId it right after my comment, so again, I’m taking credit for it!) and he subsequently started to enjoy a few puzzles (although he slipped for a while again recently).
Try turning off the clock, at least sometimes. When that pressure/distraction is gone, the mind is freer to wander - at least that’s how it works for me. I can see using the clock later, when you need more of a challenge or want to prepare for competitions - but for sheer enjoyment and learning - no timing is the way to go, imho.
Hang in there. If I can improve, believe me, anyone can!
M&A's fave themer was URNOFEVENTS -- don't care much about the extra T, since theme mcguffin just dealt with icin the startin T's. Funny theme. Like.
fave non-themer themer: (T)IBET.
fave reverse non-themer themer: (T)INCAN.
staff weeject pick: (T)ICK. Rhymes with pick. Nice weeject stacks, in the NE & SW, btw.
fave sparkly moments: JUNEAU. FUN. BATMAN. ORDEROUT. BOREDOM. EVERAFTER.
Themers featured 3-4 letter beheaded T-words: (T)APE. (T)EAR. (T)AX. (T)URN.
@Guilherme Gama (9:28am) had a nice one for (T)UNA SANDWICH.
Old M&A is contemplatin the potential offensiveness of various (T)RIP ODOMETER clues …
Thanx for the FUN, Ms. Hobbs darlin. Cool puz.
Masked & Anonym007Us
easier than snot:
**gruntz**
@RyanSem (11:16) Trounced on a Tuesday? Hey it happens. I like your analogy of ICED TEA and burnt toast, makes sense. Oh and SUSS? I would describe it as a crossword experience when you reach that aha moment and figure out what’s going on with a theme or maybe just a certain section that’s had you stumped. Don’t be discouraged, it’ll get better.
This one was too goofy for me. I picked a lot of EARs of corn when I was a kid but never, not once, did my mother say "Anoa Bobby, go out and JERK a mess of corn for tonight's supper". And as one who has used an AX many times---still have one in my storage shed---I cannot imagine a situation where being an AX DODGER makes any sense at all (plus the phrase is one letter short of its slot). Maybe if it had been clued in the context of the ultra-goofy Itchy & Scratchy Show on "The Simpsons", it would have worked better.
So for FUN this former TIN CAN sailor went looking for the super convenient plural of convenience (POC). Didn't take long as one showed up right out of the gate when GREBE couldn't get the job done by itself. POC servings tapered off after that but then closed the show impressively with three of the two-for-one POCs across the bottom row, where DUKE/NO, ROOT/SOT and SSN/SEDER all get grid-fill power boosts from a single S at the end of each pair.
The puzzle didn't generate a lot of ODIUMS on my part, it just didn't work for me.
@Ryan: I agree with @newbie about not timing yourself. That ruins it for me. Relax and take as long as you need.
Caterers cater "events", like weddings and such. I was tickled by URN OF EVENTS
Tough. Funny theme, liked it.
...however, add me to the ODIUMS?? contingent.
I was amused by this one. Contrary to my usual luck, I was able to fill in the NW early, thanks to EVER AFTER. My only hangup was wanting GlEBES instead of GREBES. Turns out GlEBES are land reserved to the use of a church minister or priest. Apparently GREBES are a common bird, though to me they just look like some kinds of duck. Far less spectacular than egrets and herons and pelicans, and certainly less common than gulls, near the California coast.
So I got APERECORDER right away, and broke into laughter at EARJERKER. When we bought our house in 1978, I double dug part of the back yard, and planted corn, along with artichokes and other veggies. A summer ritual was going out back to JERK EARs of corn off the plants, and rush them into the boiling water.
AX DODGER seemed pretty unpleasant, but URN OF EVENTS qualifies for Clue of the Week.
Depending on your accent, R.E.O and OREO could certainly be homophones. Ask anyone from certain parts of Boston or South Jersey, where they say the word "orange" more like AHR-ange, and hence "oreo" like AHR-eo.
A nit that needs picking: ROPE is not part of a PULLEY, any more than water is part of a hose or a train is part of a tunnel. The rope is threaded through the pulley. Better clue would have been “part of block and tackle” (the pulleys are the blocks, the rope is the tackle). Otherwise very enjoyable puzzle.
@RyanSem - What everyone else is saying. We’ve all been there. As you gain experience you will accumulate what I call CrossWorld knowledge, that stuff that no longer stumps experienced solvers because we have learned it from solving crosswords. Four letter rivers, all the various uses of OREOS, the oeuvre of Brian Eno and Yoko Ono, CrossWorld Ornithology (where all birds have no more than six letters, usually just three or four, except Saturdays where a rare Scarlet Tanager might appear), and the world’s waterways have a surfeit of orcas and gars, will all become second nature to you.
@12:10 - Do tell. Where do you think Henry Ford’s hometown might be? I generally think of you as making spurious and or specious arguments. Why you would want to add “demonstrably ignorant” to your résumé is beyond me.
FUN
@RyanSem 11:16 – Finishing the puzzle in 1 minute and 5½ seconds is nothing to feel down about. Yeah, it's a little slow, but you'll pick up the pace.
(Just kidding.) :-)
What a fun puzzle, with the theme answers eliciting smiles, every one of them. It played a tad harder than my average Tuesday but not for the same reasons as Rex lists. I think my issue was the rather closed off NE and the vague cluing of the COST, SEE, OREO, TORTES area, all of which got me off to a slow start. But other than IPaD before IPOD, no write-overs. Certainly, JUNEAU presented no problem, which I got off the first U even though I had no idea where Glacier Bay National Park is.
Nice job, Lindsey, on your second NYT crossword, thanks!
@bigsteve46 re yesterday's post ... "Good grief!"? I hope you didn't actually feel aggrieved by my post for some reason. Or is it just that you get some sort of perverse joy out of making fun of people for doing what they do if it differs from what you do?
Mea culpa: I'm a retired medical research statistician, love both words and numbers and am just a tad anal about tracking my crossword solve times in a spreadsheet. I realize that some might find this habit of mine to be weird and neurotic (I sure don't know anyone else who does it), but my solve time data for the NYT daily goes back to June 2009. Since I have the data for it, I thought others might be interested in an objective evaluation of the relative difficulty of the puzzle, at least based on one solver's experience.
As JC66 indicated in response to your post yesterday, I've hung around these parts for much of the blog's existence. Until recently, I haven't posted all that often, but some years ago, I posted solve time statistics just about every day. This was back when the NYT puzzle page made these data available for all solvers who used the online app. I eventually stopped doing that because I began receiving harassing (even marginally threatening) email messages through my Blogger profile.
Over the past month or so, I decided to regularly wade back into the mire, but I've noted that my posts don't generate much (or even any) discussion. I think your comment is the only response I've received so far. The fact is that while I've always had an aptitude for words and numbers, I've never had much of a proclivity for the social aspects of life. My attempts to interact with others are usually clumsy, at best, and sometimes just annoy others, at worst. I'm typically not even aware of this until someone says something (as you have, in this case). I've sometimes wondered if I'd have been diagnosed as spectrumy as a lad, had such a concept existed way back then.
At any rate, it's certainly not my intent to annoy. If I have, I apologize.
Z,
Springwells is Ford's hometown. That it was eventually swallowed by the black hole called Detroit doesn't confer hometown status to Detroit. It's an ontological distinction, lost on frisbee players.
Funny that you think of me. I don't think of you at all.
Here is the conclusion of the passage I started this morning. If you missed the beginning, see my post at 8:29. The excerpt is taken from the work of SID FLEISCHMAN, born Mar. 16, 1920.
PART 2
Touch's hair went stiff as needles. But he was determined not to be scared off. He caught his breath.
"If you were dozing, I don't mean to rile you up, sir. Maybe you heard of my great-uncle. Judge Wigglesforth? Crosscut saws don't come any meaner. I know I don't amount to much, for a boy, but I'm not shifty-eyed, the way he says. I hope you can see that, Great Chaffalo."
Suddenly, Touch thought he could feel a pair of eyes watching him. The eyes in the poster! he thought. His hopes took a leap.
"I aim to ride through the woods until I'm long out of reach, sir. He won't know where to look. I'll thank you everlastingly if you'll oblige me with a horse."
A snarl burst out of the tall weeds. It wasn't a horse. It was a scruffy wild dog, its teeth looking like rusty nails. And it was coming straight for Touch.
Touch began to shinny up a porch column, but he knew that hound was going to get its rusty teeth into his leg. Then he heard a snap of fingers and a voice in the air.
"Hey! Hey!"
The bundle of straw changed into a horse.”
(From The Midnight Horse)
Happy Everything You Do Is Right Day!
Just not for OFL. The REO rant was great, but the JUNEAU confusion was too much FUN. “Is it Canadian? Sounds like it might be Canadian.” ( ee-hee!) Like Rex, I thought the REO rhymer was OREO, but by that time there had been so many of that ilk (ICK, ORES, OREO, ATE, ANTI) I just filled it in without question. Just another weak entry clued sketchily, sez me. Nope, it was a weak entry clued obscurely! Someone else might say otherwise; guess it’s all in the Eye of the Beholder. RIP, Chick COREA.
I agree the highlights of the puzzle were the images conjured up by the themers, and EAR JERKERS reminded me of a video of Mozart’s Musical Joke in which the conductor hammed it up by leading an impertinent 2nd violinist off the stage by his EAR. No one had to DOGDE any AXes, though. Glad APE RECORDER was clued with Jane, so we got that nice photo from Rex; and the milquetoast clue for SAUDI was a GODSEND.
Special nod to having LET’S SEE JUNEAU! all in one column. I’m ready.
Is a ROPE really a part of a pulley? GNAW, the ROPE goes through the pulley. ROPE and pulley. So I waited on that one because it seemed wrong. Mild side-eying at ORES, as groups, and at ANTI being a nay-sayer. I mean, ok, but it seemed like all the FUN cluing was reserved for the themers. I did like the Hepburn reference, and FUNnily, the clue for BOREDOM.
GREBES are cool. They have complex mating rituals which involve running on water.
Looking forward to all the TASTEful comments from the STARs of Rexworld!
@sfman
I always enjoy reading your posts, as I'm sure many others on this blog do.
Please don't let one inane comment deter you from continuing to comment.
@sanfranman59:
My attempts to interact with others are usually clumsy, at best, and sometimes just annoy others, at worst.
Well, so long as you're not a Bayesian, we'd get along just fine. :)
p.s.
@sanfranman59 (1:37pm): Well, shoot -- M&A has been around this here blog rodeo [see also: blogodeo] about as long as U, and have always really enjoyed yer solve time stats on the puz, over the years. Keep it up, dude. U are a definite interestin asset to our understandin of the puzs.
I'd give out my own solvequest stats, except I'm not sure how well they'd be received, either -- especially in the U-northodox nano-second-level terms used by M&A. [Don't wanna mess up the overall stats. har]
Peace on earth, good will to Comment Gallery folks.
M&Also
Thanks to everyone who got a giggle out of my pseudo-themers. I have to say that I’ve never considered puzzle construction. I think I could write the odd amusing clue but I don’t have the faintest idea how to configure a grid. I’ve been exposed to a few of the principles from reading Rex and all of you here in the commentariat, but still. I feel that if I were to try puzzle-making, it would be like my hearing a really interesting lecture on the medulla oblongata and then deciding to take up brain surgery. A bit of a non-starter. But you never know. Maybe all I need is a collaborator!
@sanfranman (1:37) I nearly always read your posts and find them enlightening, never annoying. But you know what? If I didn’t particularly care for your style or your opinion or your posts in general, I can always scroll right on by - in the same manner you can skip over mine if you so choose.
Could be the reason you don’t get as much interaction is that your posts are usually later in the day. Many times I add my two cents, then get busy with other things and don’t always get back to read further comments. You’re a classy guy to offer such a thoughtful response to what was IMHO an unkind jab which was directed at you . . . but you don’t owe anyone an apology.
@sanfranman......Well you cucaracha, you...YES...Let's see: You, @jae, JC66, @M&A (who am I missing?) were the first of the firsts to come here. Then...let's see....@Z and Loren and I came in and lookie now...we have a bunch of bandidos (Hi @pablito) that actually like each other.....(sorta).
Don't you dare go away!
@Lewis - See @Barbara S 2:14. {hint hint}
@A - I’m thinking you didn’t mean to post GREBES twice.
@sanfranman59 - When you post is probably a huge factor in how much response you get. Speaking for myself I’m glad you’re posting regularly again. I still miss your stats based on the old NYTX app. It was a nice balance to Rex’s ratings (and for those who weren’t here back then, Rex was in agreement with @sanfranman59’s stats more often than not). Now the closest thing to that is the Not a Blog site, which is hardly the same planet as the rest of us (these are mostly times from people who make Rex look like a piker).
@1:37 - Considering that you sound like the anon who always fails to do a gotcha on me we all find the idea that you don’t think about me laughably lacking in self-awareness. I’ll grant you this, Springwells is where Henry Ford was born, but the choice of “black hole of Detroit” is interesting in three respects: 1. Springwells became a part of two communities; 2. I never mentioned Detroit because that’s not where I worked; and 3. it suggests unconscious racist bias (I’m assuming it’s not explicit racist bias).
@sanfranman59 1:37 - Having seen your comments in recent days, I wasn't sure it was you (I hadn't remembered the "59"). I'm glad you're back posting.
Z,
You'll grant me? Har!!! no need to do me any favors. The facts do all the hat for me. because they're on my side. Pray tell just where exactly did you mean when you said henry Ford's hometown? Just where did you work for those tqwo decades then? Springwell township didnt exitst by the time you were sucking on the public teat.
Also, now you're speaking for the group? "we all find.." I'll grant you this. You got balls.
PS And calling me a racist? Please. You have no idea who I am or what I believe or even what color my skin is.
A rope is not part of a pulley!! A rope is used *with* a pulley or pulleys to make a mechanical system. Total BS clue.
@Barbara S.
With your flair for words and wordplay, I'd think one or more of our bloggers with knowledge of the intricacies of puzzle construction would make a perfect fit for your gift.
@sanfranman59
Add me to the list of your supporters. I always appreciated your daily comparisons back in the early days of Rex's blog. I was pretty much just a lurker then. Keep up the good work! :)
@Joe
Success w/the acrostic, and thx for your ongoing encouragement! :)
When I used "liberal" I probably conflated your advice with that of others who chipped in with tips. I was thinking of taking small gambles by filling in short words, where one or more letters seemed to be solid.
I now think you may have been referring to longer words that may repeat themselves in the quote, right?
___
td 0
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness ~ Happiness to all 🕊
Skipped yesterday. Takes a lot of time to read and comment, so I’m taking breaks from it. Anyway, I had missed @A’s Caruso’s Santa Lucia link and @bocamp’s translation - thanks, guys. My dad liked it and O Sole Mio, so it was a nice reminder.
Another reason to take a break - some people (and I’m not naming names here) would seem to need to revisit preschool rules for playing in the sandbox:
You can’t say “you can’t play.”
No throwing sand.
Walk away.
Play nice, etc.
And the always popular: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Personal criticisms aren’t necessary and upset everybody.
Also want to say that it doesn’t necessarily mean no one agreed with, or liked, or appreciated, what you said if there are no comments about it - it’s just hard to comment on everything. (Unless it is something rude/crude - then it probably IS being ignored.) I often laugh at funny comments or think something is true or well-put but don’t type a comment. Otherwise, we’d all be commenting on @Lewis, say, all day. (Ever notice how everything he says is not only smart, but so nice, but not in a sappy way? Good role model, there, kids.)
Nothing wrong with putting stats in, imo - Rex used to always have his times in, so why not, if that’s your thing? I’ll admit, as a newbie, it discouraged me plenty of times, but first I learned to roll my eyes, which helped immensely, then I learned to laugh at the ridiculous difference in the amount of time it took him vs. me - now I don’t even notice it.
I look at it like the true story about famous marathon runner Bill Rodgers. When someone from the back of the pack told Rodgers his time was more than 5 hours, Rodgers replied, with admiration, “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to run for 5 or 6 hours!”
Sometimes, comments in writing seem much harsher than intended. That’s why the silly LOL and jk and emojis are so popular - to soften something that may need a joking inflection of voice or a smile to show it’s friendly teasing. I don’t know about anyone else, but I only tease people I like.
If someone goes on too long and it doesn’t interest you, skip it. Well, maybe roll your eyes and then skip it. Eye rolling is a wonderful thing. If something gets you too riled up, it’s probably time to take a walk.
It’s been a long pandemic, folks.
Some of us are celebrating our first completed puzzles and others are celebrating the publishing of another puzzle they constructed.
Some of us think everything is kind of funny and others take everything literally and answer every quip with a sincere explanation.
Some of us don’t make our beds and, apparently, some can’t imagine getting through the day without it. 🙄
As my wise Irish gramma (and, therefore, my wise Irish mom) used to say: “It takes all kinds to make a world.”
A blog community, too.
🌞
Yikes! Thanks, @Z you are right on, on Everything you do is right Day! I guess the only way I'm right too is it's because I secretly really really wanted folks to see the grebes video. Ahem. For anyone wondering WOE, @Z shared the correct link to this recording of Chick COREA that I meant to share: Eye of the Beholder
@Z and @bocamp
Thanks for your (possibly misplaced) faith in me. I appreciate it. And @Lewis, don't sweat it, man -- I hereby absolve you of any obligation.
@sanfranman59
Stay with us, brother. Your stats are amazing in their precision, as is the layout of your posts with their use of caps, boldface and curly brackets. It’s true: I always find your contributions aesthetically pleasing as well as informative.
@A (1:47 PM)
O. M. G. That grebe footage! (Footage in more ways than one, Tee Hee.) When I was about 8 and my sister was about 16 we were in a movie theatre and saw a nature short that showed grebes doing just that amazing water dance. It struck our funny bones so forcefully that we just roared with loud, uncontrollable laughter in front of our fellow-movie-patrons and the cinema staff, in spite of being well-brought-up and knowing the importance of keeping quiet in such a place. No kidding, I thought they’d have to take us out on stretchers. My stomach hurts just thinking about it. We FINALLY got a grip on ourselves and stayed to watch the movie we’d actually come for – I couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life, but the grebes are as vivid as if I’d first seen them yesterday. For months after that, all one of us had to say was “Birds running!” and we’d both dissolve. Our mother thought we were mad. And we were.
@bocamp 3:49 – yes I was specifically hinting that a couple of longer words repeated in Sunday's acrostic quotation. Congratulations on solving it!
@newbie 3:53 – I always thought the expression was: "If you can't say anything nice, go sit with @Rex."
@newbie (3:53) Very nice. ☺️
@A - so THOSE are grebes! Didn’t know what those crazy birds were called, so I never made the connection. I’ll have to bookmark that clip for anytime I need something that’s guaranteed to make me smile! Thanks.
@newbie (3:53 PM ) 😊 / @Barbara S. (4:21 PM) 😊
___
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness ~ Happiness to all 🕊
@Barbara 4:21 pm - we probably would have been friends as kids - I have similar memories. Still lose it occasionally. 🤣
@Joe 4:32 pm - 😅
@Whatsername 4:35 pm 😇and @bocamp 4:39 pm 😇
thanks.
Did the solve last night so forget to include a couple of puzzle-related thoughts in my first post. I join with those who cast a NO VOTE on the "Part of a pulley" clue for ROPE (2D), although I just saw a web site that describes the parts of a pulley as a wheel, an axle and a ROPE. Nope. The parts of a pulley are a grooved wheel, an axle on which the wheel turns and a supporting case or housing usually with some kind of mounting hardware for, say, a SPAR. A pulley can use a belt, a chain, a wire cable or a ROPE.
Seven Down COREA, clued as "Late jazz pianist Chick", brought back a most pleasant memory of a mockingbird that staked out its territory in our neighborhood a few years back. The mockingbird is the State Bird of both Tennessee, where I grew up, and Texas, where I now live, so I always listen to their incredible song when I get an opportunity. Our avian neighbor had a typical long, varied song that was regularly punctuated by what sounded exactly like "Chick COREA"! That was repeated three times as a sort of coda before another round of improvisation began (maybe like some of Chick COREA's music). Our feathered friend was a jazz composer!
@BarbaraS -- Oh, feel free to run ideas by me anytime!
I get take out or carry out when Ikm at a store or restaurant and want to take the food home with me. When I’m home I order IN. That whole clue made no sense.
@old timer and Rex, please see the video that @A posted. Grebes are magnificent and quite above average birds. They can fly, float, and dive. They are masters of all realms of Earth. Upon reading the first clue, I immediately typed in GREBES. I'm pretty sure it was the same cluing used when I first learned about the amazing bird when I saw them appear in a past NYTimes cross.
@sanfranman59 - I missed your comments when you left and I’m glad you’re back. Please stick around.
@JoeD- I believe it was Alice Roosevelt who said "If you can't say anything nice, come right over here and sit by me.".
Sharp-tongued, a la OFL.
@sanfranman
Stick around.
WOW! You had all that trouble and still managed to finish it in 4 minutes. . Hard to believe.
@pabloinnh – yes, she seems to get credit for it. I think she had it embroidered on a pillow or something.
Late, but...
@sanfranman
You seem too well educated and too nicely mannered to let somebody sour your view of posting your times and averages. Look at all the support you've gotten! Heck,vif I can go on forever about F and lack thereof, then you can please continue posting your analyses.
To the naysayers who get their jollies berating others, Bite Me. 🤪😷
@sanfranman, always enjoyed your stats and I'm glad you are posting on Rex regularly again, plus I enjoy your DownHome solves and comments over at Crossword Fiend. Keep it up!
APERECORDER was the only “fun” for me in this one. Mostly much too difficult for a Tuesday!
Not BAD. It took me about eight Rexes to finish - with the help of my GODSEND Mrs. Foggy. BRISK? No. But good FUN.
"AUTONYM took some doing..." for an English professor??? This is one of those rare days when I can legitimately rate the puzzle easier than OFC. Not in real time, of course, but it took me only about five Rexes, where the multiplier is usually at least eight. I thought, relative to other Tuesdays, this one played pretty easy.
I got the gist of it early on, but because of BRISK I was able to infer EARJERKER; JUNEAU quickly followed. The long downs were gimmes. I don't even teach, but I know what an AUTONYM is...I just can't see where all the trouble was. All I had to do was change the IPaD to a POD, and done.
Well-done theme; fill somewhat defective. We have ORDER intersecting APERECORDER, plus OREO and ORES in close proximity. And the crutchy SSNS is never lovely. But then again, many-time DOD TERI Garr is a GODSEND to the grid. I could call it par or birdie depending on mood: birdie it is. :)
SOT'S FUN
IBET I can't PRONOUNCE the ODIUM I SEE.
What would IDO with OUT booze IN that BRISK ICEDTEA?
--- IAN GREBES
Finished by UNCLOGging the middle, getting ICED TEA assisted by FDR and the ETHERNET.
Especially liked the T-less simplicity of the four themers.
Thanks for the fun, Lindsey Hobbs, no BOREDOM here.
It bothered me to have NOVOTE and NOS in the same puzzle, and then you ANTI as well.
Piece of cake. Better than a lot of Tuesdays. Dang near funny.
Sorry, right? _RUETHAT.
_sk _sk - fits to a T. Wondered what they were going to do with that ICEDTEA. My summer addition.
Diana, LIW
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