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Physics Nobelist who co-discovered cosmic microwave background radiation / WED 5-19-21 / Fictional NYC locale on children's TV / Salon brand with 100% vegan products / Family member in rural dialect / Man's nickname that omits -old / Classic film series that anticipated the invention of hoverboards
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar
Relative difficulty: Medium
The Nobelist stuff:
- BIG BANG (1A: This is the way the world began, per 51-Across)
- PENZIAS (51A: Physics Nobelist who co-discovered cosmic microwave background radiation, confirming 1-Across)
- WHIMPER (71A: "This is the way the world ends," per 24-Across)
- T.S. ELIOT (24A: Literature Nobelist who penned 71-Across)
The traveling-through-time stuff:
- PAST ONE'S BEDTIME (16A: At an ungodly hour)
- NET PRESENT VALUE (39A: Tomorrow's cash flow assessed today)
- "BACK TO THE FUTURE" (64A: Classic film series that anticipated the invention of hoverboards)
Arno Allan Penzias (/ˈpɛnziəs/; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.
• • •
This has not been a good week for me where theme answers are concerned. For the second day in a row, I was completely unfamiliar with the central Across answer (today, NET PRESENT VALUE). Then came the double whammy, as I'd never heard of the physics Nobelist either (PENZIAS). So half of the puzzle felt like it was made just for me, and the other half ... didn't. Hence the "Medium" difficulty rating (I didn't actually time myself, so I don't know—it felt generally easy, actually). I like the idea of this theme. The PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE element is interesting and ambitious, but it feels like it muddies things a bit, conceptually. The main problem is the PRESENT, which is just hanging out there with no Nobelist to give it a good quote. Briefly thought "WHERE AM I?" was supposed to be a themer linked to the PRESENT, but the symmetrical counterpart to "WHERE AM I?" is SESAME ST., which ... wait, is that where I am? Is that where we all are? "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to SESAME ST.?" "You're already there, man." "I ... I am?" [achieves satori, ascends to higher plane of existence]
PENZIAS was genuinely scary for me because I knew I was going to require clear and indisputable crosses for every letter of his name. Thank god I knew the words NACRE and TITTLE, and didn't decide to spell PREZ with an "S" at the end (40D: Head of a country, informally). Managed to tiptoe through that minefield nicely. NET PRESENT VALUE I just hacked away at until discernible words appeared. The grid has a lot lot lot of ordinary short stuff, which meant that getting traction on the longer answers was never a problem. The only place I really found that short stuff off-putting was in the SE, at the PCBS / BRER / SES pile-up (ULM's lurking presence didn't help). But on the whole I thought this puzzle was creative and ambitious and whimsical in a pleasant way. I think the clue on PAST ONE'S BEDTIME is pretty bad (16A: At an ungodly hour), in that "ungodly" implies extreme lateness, whereas PAST ONE'S BEDTIME is just a vague, general time period. You'd refer to an hour as "ungodly" if someone woke you up during it, whereas PAST ONE'S BEDTIME has more of a banal "it's getting late" kind of vibe. "I'm sorry, I have to leave your party, it's an ungodly hour" = no. "I'm sorry, I have to leave your party, it's past my bedtime" = yes. What else? Paused at -HEW because "P" or "W," who can say? (58D: "That was close!") Had BIBS before BUNS (37D: Supply at a barbecue). Blanked on BAO (4D: Chinese dumpling), or, rather, conflated it with BANH MI, and so wrote in BAN (!?!?!). They're both so delicious that I feel compelled to apologize to both of them for the mistake. I'm sorry, food. The end.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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142 comments:
On the tough side of medium for a Wed. I too did not know PENZAIS (and neither did Jeff at Xwordinfo) and I needed several crosses for NET PRESENT VALUE.
Delightful theme, liked it a bunch.
BAO is not a dumpling!
All my life is Channel 13, Sesame St. What does it mean?
Hang on while I put a bookmark in the clue for 51A...
Because the way you make an answer about physics more palatable to us lay people is to bury it in a novella.
So, I'm guessing the theme is...PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE? Thrilling.
And why? Why do people insist on lookie-loo puzzles??
And especially the type like 54D and 66D: day after/day before. Yeah it turned out to be easy, but stop it! I beg you.
Is it me, or is that clue for 5D (ARN) the weirdest thing ever?? It's just odd. And ugly. ARN always reminds me of Prince Valiant's son. Don't ask.
How is PAST ONE'S BEDTIME necessarily an "ungodly hour"? Wouldn't it depend on how far PAST ONE'S BEDTIME it is for the hour to gain "ungodly" status? And not for nothing, but I feel there is more evil to be found in early morning rising than in late night ventures.
Not a morning creature, I.
That's a shame about SPELT. This is 'Murka, not the UK.
At least TEEPEE was spelled correctly.
I'm curious to know if anyone here has seen LEAH Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. Anyone?
That's a series that will get your dander up.
Except for a few oddities (to me, anyway) I mostly enjoyed this one. There were ridiculously easy entries and others where I needed all the crosses, so basically all over the map for me. It presented a good challenge unlike the usual Wednesdee fare and I like that.
🧠🧠🧠
🎉🎉🎉
Rex: "Thank god I... didn't decide to spell PREZ with an "S" at the end".
Well, I did. And the lack of Happy Pencil caused me to doubt the I in TITTLE, which of course is also crossed by the notorious Mr. PENZIAS. Or could be PENSIAS, or PENZEAS, PENZOAS, etc. So much anti-fun there at the end.
NET PRESENT VALUE is the most boring central grid spanner in months. ADJUSTED COST BASE, anyone? (And I missed the PAST / PRESENT / FUTURE trick, which is actually pretty neat and almost redeems it, but not quite.)
For a Canadian like me, the COLOR/COLOUR, METER/METRE question is a daily dilemma. Especially since I read a lot of British crime fiction.
Is there actually a grade of D PLUS? What's the point?
But what is a BRER?!?!?
I'm an astronomer who used to live in Tucson, so for two days in a row I've had the pleasurable sensation of immediately getting clues that very few others would (LISAFRANK yesterday, PENZIAS today). This almost makes up for the years of feeling like an idiot on most proper noun clues.
Cool concept marred slightly by some awkward clues.
71A: The way the world ends is *with a* whimper... not just "WHIMPER." They should've put "with a" in the clue. That seems like a major blunder.
1D: Even if they went with ewes — the plural of ewe, which is grammatically correct — the answer *still* would be BAA. Ewes say "baa" — they don't say "baas." Cows say "moo" not "moos."
16A: What Rex said.
I, too, initially read 1A as referring to the Eliot poem!
Lastly... was almost done in by putting CREOLE at 48D! Anyone else do that?
I had pHEW but that was an obvious fix, and tentatively remembered TITTLE. I also had PREs and didn’t know NACRE so that took some time and would have been a DNF on paper. I went with LACRE and PElsIAS looked totally reasonable. Ended up running the letters twice to find the answer.
Even with that it seemed a reasonably fun, quick solve.
My only other real beef is the one you pointed out that many things can be past ones bedtime without it being late enough to be an ungodly hour. I like the answer, just don’t think the clue really fits.
Ended up with an error, had PRES and PANSIAS. Not up on my physics nobelists I guess. I was also leery about BAO as a dumpling, I think of it mor as a bun.
Agree with PAST ONES BEDTIME is not an ungodly hour. It’s when your neighbor calls you at two A.M. to tell you that the light you left on is bothering them. It’s happened.
I loved this theme. Wonderful blending of poetry and science on a cosmic journey from beginning, through past present future, to the end. I just find this grid so satisfying, even if I’d never heard of PANZIAS either. (Seems like he ought to be more of a household name.) Thanks to Ashish Vengsarkar for a puzzle I enjoyed so much I forced my sleepy husband to admire it.
By the way, sorry to report that the lovely girl whose photo you see here and my namesake, Zen, died recently one week after her 17th birthday. She was a special old lady.
This was a pretty good puzzle, although I fell sound asleep while solving it so my time went a little high. Fortunately my Tesla was on autopilot so I made it back home safely anyway.
“Heineken? F**k that s**t! PABST Blue Ribbon! That's what you'll drink tonight!”
Have you ever wanted a picture of JOHN X that you could tape to your bedroom wall? Here’s a self-portrait of me that I took myself in a crossword puzzle staple.
I met Ashish (the constructor) at my first crossword tournament. He was so nice and outgoing and warm and he made me feel welcome. Of course I’m inclined to enjoy his work. That being said, even if this had been constructed by Steve Bannon, I would have admired it.
@Breakfast Tester: I didn't think of CreOLE, thank Goodness, but when I first read the clue I came up with the jazz album "Al (He's the King) Hirt". Looking for confirmation via crosses and finding none, I figured out that alhirt wasn't going to fit. I had PREZ, then changed it to PREs because "No physicist's name ends in -zias." D'oh!!
Well, there it is. The breadth of existence neatly packed in a box. Whoever said that crosswords aren’t an all-encompassing art? They be wrong.
“WHERE AM I?” you may ask. You be here. Taking a STROLL. In this box. Cooking SPELT, perhaps, or knocking back a PABST, or imagining the grid answers in lower case and counting the TITTLEs (7).
WHEW! Thank you for putting everything into perspective, Ashish, and throwing a little span of fun into this great mixture of life. I loved this puzzle!
Harder than some FRI/SAT puzzles. Did not know NACRE, TITTLE, or PENZIAS so DNF. Hit reveal to get PENZIAS which also completed the other two. Ungodly hour does not match up well with PASTONESBEDTIME. NETPRESENTVALUE was unknown but not a real barrier. Wouldn't MESH gym shorts make your BUNS visible? BTW BUNS is next to SEAT. I liked the puzzle OK.
[achieves satori, ascends to higher plane of existence] Just laugh out funny.
Personally, I thought the WHERE AM I / SESAME ST symmetrical answers were a little dig at any solvers not knowing PENZIAS or ELIOT - Sort of a “This is basic stuff, people” jibe. Which, of course, I love. Give me a puzzle with a little sass (preferably without “sass” supporting three POCS).
I, too, had the “Srsly?” reaction to a lookie-loo at 1A at first. But I love this theme, so can forgive the infelicity at 1A. Any puzzle that gets us wondering whether the end is the Big Crunch or the Big Freeze is alright by me. This puzzle strikes me as a 15x15 invitation to grab a spliff and do some serious pondering about what it all means. Clearly the answer is 42. Or satori. Or maybe 42 is satori.
I don’t really know what makes a BAO a BAO, what its essential nature is. But looking at the images that came back when I did an image search a BAO is either a thing that looks very much like a Chinese taco OR a thing that looks like a dumpling. Which, of course, raises the question, are tacos and dumplings really the same thing? Put another way, is a hot dog a sandwich? BAO wow if you know the answer.
Hand up for arching the eyebrow at “ungodly hour.” Serious “get offa my lawn” vibe with that clue.
@okanaganer - So you’re not a big believer in the 11 point grading scale? (D- = 1, D = 2, D+ = 3, C- = 4, … A- = 10, A = 11) Me either.
@Zen Monkey - Sorry to hear about Zen.
Solved like a Saturday puzzle for me.
Awesome idea, and I love the BIGBANG/WHIMPER symmetry. BACKTOTHEFUTURE is good, but I can't believe that there weren't better themers than PASTONESBEDTIME and NETPRESENTVALUE, both of which were awkward and boring. I suspect that the location of the 'time' word was also meaningful (PAST on the left, PRESENT in the middle, FUTURE on the right), but I would have preferred livelier fill to ensuring that gimmick.
It was fun to learn about the DUMBO Octopus. Google images for it if you've never seen one. Kinda cute. More than one would be DUMBO Octop.........
Definitely on the hard side for a Wednesday - the jumping all over the grid doesn’t help. I find it confusing when a lot of clues reference other clues as well.
Something that I have never had the opportunity to ponder before, but just occurred to me - 44A (Hanoi) is clued as “World capital” - what the heck does “World capital” mean (besides money) ? If the world has a capital, shouldn’t it be something like Geneva ? I googled “world capital” and mostly I got lists of capitals of different countries - but didn’t see a definition. Pretty bizarre.
Oooh. I liked this one a lot. Fun and smart, and keyed well to a Wednesday.
Made an embarrassing self-inflicted error at 51A. With the ‘P’ in place, I mixed up my cosmic background radiation cosmologists (and Nobel winners) and put in PEebleS instead of PENZIAS. Of course, that worked with two other crosses and with BEEBEE for the musical ‘king’ and was very hard to give up.
Thx Ashish; very enjoyable Wednes. puz! :)
Med.
All over the place on this one. No major hangups, so avg. solve.
Ended with a guess between 'S' or 'Z' at PENZIAS. Got lucky. :)
BACK TO THE FUTURE: all-time fave trilogy.
While STROLLing Through the Park ~ One-man barbershop quartet
While STROLLing through the park one day
In the merry merry month of May
I was taken by surprise
By a pair of roguish eyes
In a moment my poor heart was stole away
___
yd 0
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Oh, @ZenMonkey, so so sorry for you. Just the other day at the Vet, doc kept referring to my two as "older" and it got me. Will give them extra love and treats in Zen's honor today.
Am a T.S. Eliot fan so liked this one. Happy Hump Day. My office is reopening next month. Have to freshen up the business casual.
The scope here is breathtaking. Start with physics, end with literature. In between you have biology, history, geography, and anatomy.
And it's accessible information that almost all solvers probably have. So in that sense, I loved it.
But I have rex-like problems with it.
There's the phrasing:
This is the way the world begins, "Big Bang." This is the way the world ends," Whimper." The world ends whimper?
And there's this:
Definition of the world, "the earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features."
The universe started with the big bang and the earth came along about 10 billion years later.
Still, a beautiful puzzle.
Loved the puzzle.
But felt puzzled all along.
-Why the long answers are not themers?
(Only after getting on the Rex Express did I realize the past-present-future thing).
-How B.B morphed into Carole?
-Who mutilated Arn, i.e what happened to his tail?
-Why is BLT for dinner and not for lunch?
- Is there a reason I should know the capital of Laos and its relative position to its neighbors, on a Wednesday?
Hannoing stuff.
-How does a date have anything to do with the Arabic Horse Owners Foundation? (if ewe had baah instead of baas, ewe know what I mean)
-Who's the trawl that tattles about barbecue supplies of buttocks and hairdos?
-What are Penzias the units of?
- Why do you call a spa a spot, are you totally alliterate?
Anyway, two things are for sure:
1.At an unngodly hour is when your 17 year old gets home on Sat or Fri.
2.Sergey Bubka was the tsar of pole vault.
Thanks for the Cher video. Cher, Chas, and all the colors made me smile.
Hand up for the Z/S thing in 51A. Since I solve on paper, I just left the S and said the hell with it. I learned a name, at least.
Also learned what NETPRESENTVALUE is, although I doubt I will ever use that phrase for anything ever.
A "fishing net" is a TRAWL? News to me. Trawler is of course familiar but I associate that with BIG fishing nets. "Gonna be out a long time, boys, we'll need some extra TRAWLS.". Do fisher folk say such things?
Lots of fun stuff in today's, AV, and I didn't need any Aloe Vera (sorry, best I could do).
I was a DUMBO, thinking that BrL was the OPEC unit. In a daze from all of the names. Seemed like a Saturday level of difficulty.
I was wondering how/why I never heard of someone as important as PENsIAS. And now (but only after reading the blog) I'm wondering why I never heard of someone as important as PENZIAS. Yes, my PREZ, like some of yours, was a PRES -- which is how I abbreviate my presidents. So sue me.
Anyway PENZIAS is the guy who found evidence for the BIG BANG, so I'm duly impressed and thinking that maybe there's a big black hole in my education. I did know T.S. ELIOT and WHIMPER -- "The Hollow Men" being my favorite Eliot poem. (Actually it's the only Eliot poem I really like.)
What a truly depressing idea for a theme, btw. I might have ended my grid not with WHIMPER but with HANDBASKET, as in "the world is going to Hell in a handbasket". The problem is, though, that no one really knows the origin of that phrase. I just Googled it.
As I say -- a depressing theme. But not uninteresting.
I had the same opening thought as Rex: I confidently wrote in WHIMPER for 1A, without reading the referenced clue at 51A, realized the downs weren't working for me off WHIMPER, and then was disappointed after reading 51A that the answer was just BIGBANG. Darn it, I thought. But I smiled again when I got to 24A and 71A where WHIMPER and TSELIOT did appear.
Going off G for 7D led me to a rather amusing mistake. [OMG!] got me thinking text-speak initialisms, so I hesitatingly wrote in Gtfo ["get the f*** out"] thinking, nah, this crossword can't be that transgressive, could it? Of course, not. It was just the simple GASP.
The SW corner stymied me. I had to look up PENZIAS to fill in that answer. I've never heard of NACRE (I feel like it's a crossword word I should know), I stupidly had teT instead of SAT for 54D and wondered how in the heck I was supposed to know the name for the day before TET for 66D. For WHEW I had pHEW; I'm only in the very vaguest sense aware of the words TRAWL and TITTLE, so tidying up the SW and S took more time than I would have liked. I could not think of PCBS in the SE; the only thought coming to me were cfcS. Just a mess for me.
Not a bad puzzle overall -- I was just frustrated at that PENZIAS/NACRE cross.
Oh, and without not knowing PENZIAS it also made the answer PREs/PREZ uninferrable, as PENsIAS also looks like a valid surname to me, and I've seen "president" shortened both as "PREs" and "PREZ." (Though I prefer the latter.) So the ambiguous PREs/PREZ coupled with my ignorance of the word NACRE, and little memory of the word TITTLE made the NZI of PENZIAS a rough one for me, hence my throwing in the towel and Googling.
I’m totally in the @ZenMonkey (3:07) camp today. (Condolences on the loss of Zen.) I thought this theme was wonderful – I loved the blending of science and literature. And did you notice how the words PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE moved from left to right across the grid. My one criticism is that NET PRESENT VALUE is so prosaic that it lands with a thud right in the middle of the puzzle. But I can forgive even that because I like the theme so much. I enjoyed the central column of GASP, IDEAS and WHEW – yeah, our beginnings and our end represent some heavy-duty cogitation! [The whole thing somehow reminds me of the book Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc by Arthur I. Miller, which posits that Einstein and Picasso were exploring many of the same ideas in their work at the same time.]
“This land” in “This Land Is Your Land” is of course THE USA, but did you know there’s a Canadian version of that famous chorus?
This land is your land, this land is my land
From Bonavista to [the] Vancouver Island
From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters
This land was made for you and me.
It was penned by The Travellers (Canadian folk group) in the 1950s, and I remember singing it a lot in my choir days as a kid. I don’t know whether anyone sings it now.
Today’s selection is by MALCOLM X, born May 19, 1925.
“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.”
(From The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
Not sure why, but I hated every minute of this puzzle.The cluing, the fill, the "fri,sat" crap. Jesus...
I enjoyed this quite a bit, with the exception of getting naticked at the PENZIAS and NACRE crossing, in particular since I wasn't quite sure about TITTLE. NET PRESENT VALUE came to me instantly, as did BACK TO THE FUTURE, of course, and that made PAST ONE'S BEDTIME rather straightforward, even if the clue didn't fit my own personal early-to-bed sleep schedule. I had B flat before correcting to D PLUS. Is B flat below C? I'm not really a music person. Some of the unique usage and abbreviations threw me -- do ewes really BAAS? Why THE USA and not just USA? And why SESAME ST and not SESAME STREET? In all, a nice Wednesday solve where I learned some new things.
Count me among the PREs/PENsIAS crowd. Otherwise, cool puzzle.
Add me to the PENZIAS DNF roster. Also struggled with BBL for OPEC unit; was thinking "barrel," all along, so confused by the double B's.
Regarding BBL, I just popped it in a search engine, and the first several results came up (so to speak) as Brazilian butt lift! I'd like to see the clue for that!
Is 11d an alibi?
Brother. Brer Rabbit?
And the clue for BAAS could have been fixed pretty easily.
My favorite verse in This Land is Your Land:
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
I found the puzzle very easy. Of course, I'm an Astronomy and Physics educator, so I knew Arno Penzias right off (his co-discoverer was Robert Wilson).
However, I have to throw a big flag at 1-A. The WORLD did not begin with the BIG BANG, the UNIVERSE did. The world began as a bunch of space dust and rocks orbiting the Sun clumping together to form a giant ball that eventually collided with other giant balls forming the Earth. (And, yes, I know that it needed to be worded that way in order to go along with the poetic theme.)
Otherwise, easy-peasy Wednesday, and nicely done.
@ Breakfast Tester, Yes on Creole, but couldn't pound it down with a hammer. And if I'd read all the comments first, I would've seen you already it ends with whimper.
Also, my dnf was Pres.
This theme is incredibly dense and wonderful. Please let me add a couple points it's so far I haven't seen
Net present value far from being an obscure financial oddity it is essential to our modern economy and world. Without this idea or something very much like it our economy is almost inconceivable.
I wondered given the two Nobel laureates in today's puzzle whether a third Nobel laureate had come up with this idea and I just didn't know about it.
It turns out that I was half right. No Irving Fisher didn't win a Nobel prize in economics for formalizing net present value in 1905 because he died in the 40s 20 years before the price was first awarded.
But two Nobel prize winners Tobin and Friedman both have stated he was the greatest economist America ever produced
So I wondered if there was a place in the puzzle where his name could have gone and realized that the central down in this wonderful puzzle is the word IDEA
And that seems worthy of note.
Now what we've gotta do
What we've gotta do is have a plan
I have a dream
I have a vision
That everybody on the planet
Is gonna get together
And they're gonna go
To the amusement park in my mind
Mojo World!
Where there's waterslides
With loop-de-loops
And barbeque sauce in the waterslides
And there's go kart tracks
Going through the middle of the loop-de-loops
And the waterslides
And there's drive-in movie theater!
Showin' Vanishing Point, Two-Lane Blacktop and Thunder Road every night
And you can always buy
Cheez Whiz, Beanie Weenies, Royal Crown, Pomade
And liquor stores open 24 hours a day, everyday!
Yeah!
And there ain’t no fool wearin' a badge saying "We ID under 25"
If they ID you
And you're old enough to buy it
Then you get it free!
That's Mojo World!
Yeah and every Saturday night
Tribute to a great American hero
It's Evel Knievel Saturday Night
There at Mojo World
There's cheap beer, live music, 24 hour record store
You can buy Brunswick Stew
With hotdogs and coleslaw on 'em
Y'all probably sayin'
Mojo, how do I get to this place? I wanna go
Everybody!
Everybody wants to go to Mojo World
Let me tell you what you gotta do
Turn right at the light
Go passed the trailer parks
Stand naked, singin', in the blazing sunlight of liberty
We gotta sing...
We gotta sing...
This land is your land, this land is my land
From the California to the New York islands
From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
TRAPL? TRAPL?? TRAPL??? OOooOoooOoh! TRAWL!
Cool puzzle. Elegant theme - fully developed. The only drawback to me was the short gluey stuff. I’ve heard PENZIAS lecture so that was a gimme - could understand the side eye from the crowd though. Hand up for calling bs on PAST ONES BEDTIME. For me ungodly is defined as 2:00-4:00am - at least that’s what my mother used to yell at me for coming so late all those years ago. I always question if SPELT is correct.
@John X 5:28a - one of Hopper’s finest moments. I still use the reply whenever Heineken is offered - of course sometime mumbled to myself.
One of my favorite Wednesday’s in recent memory.
It's always a big concession on my part to find greatness in poetry that doesn't rhyme -- rhyme being of enormous importance to me. In fact it was Frost who said that "writing poetry that doesn't rhyme is like playing tennis with the net down."
But the same poem that gave us today's WHIMPER produced two of my favorite lines in all of poetry. Many of you will already know them. For those who don't:
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion...
An awesome description of "hollowness" -- wouldn't you say?
@RickO, Right on the world. Wording yes, but it's just plain wrong. I expect to say that comment repeated today.
Hey All !
The darn Physics Nobelist did me in. Crossing a "Shiny button material". Really? How would ONE know that? Am I in the button making business? No, I'm not. 🤪 Also, I had PREs wrong and not knowing it. So last letter to go, Googled for good ole PENZIAS and his cosmic radiation discovery. Did he exclaim SSS when he made it? 😁
So a DNF, but still has my streak of WedsPuzs going online, as I filled it after the cheat, and got the Happy Music.
I'll give props to the construction, having a 7 Themer almost on top of (or below, symmetrically) a 15 Themer. Tough to get any type of clean fill, especially with an 8 twixt them. And Ashish (cool name) got us EARLOBES to boot. And those two corners (NW, SE) came out quite clean. Regardless of the odd clue for BRER.
Two TS starting words. Whenever TSELIOT is in a puz, and I come at it from the front, ala TS_____, I never realize it until almost all filled from crosses. Why? Silly brain.
Example of a good cross is AGE/GEAR. Had rEAR first, but the gimme AGE helped me change it to GEAR. That N cross of PENZIAS/NACRE is an example of a bad cross. Is NACRE ST in Natick?
Segmented grid, but with all the themers, I get it. Even with my nits, I liked this one. Did learn that someone (of course forgot who now!) Got a physics Nobel for Holograms in 1971! Dang. Why don't we have Holodecks ala Star Trek yet?
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Enjoyed the puzzle and the write-up. The theme worked despite the weak PASTONESBEDTIME. But I was stuck at the end with the ultimate Natick of PENZIAS and NACRE. Never heard of either and probably won't again. TITTLE also made it more challenging. The symmetry of WHEREAMI and SESAMEST was nice.
Viva la AVEDA loca.
Whiz by....pause. Whiz by.....pause. Let's see.....Ooooh there is a PAST here and next a PRESENT; what will the FUTURE hold? Now just take a look...a BIG BANG to start my breakfast with and it ends with a WHIMPER. Frijoles frescos, sez I.
What did I like? All of it. Of course I wouldn't know a Physics Nobelist even if it came up to me and bit me in some BAO BUNS. But I guessed the Z correctly and PENZIAS and I were off to SESAME ST.
As I get older, my BED TIME changes every night - depending onnhow my damn brain clock. The only ungodly hour for me is when one of our pups does her WHIMPER to be let out for a piss. It's usually around 3am.
Never heard of a DUMBO Octopus. I looked them up. Did you know there are all kinds of them? There's the Southern Sand, the Sydney and the Day...to name a few. Anyway, I don't know why they named it DUMBO (as in stoopid)....It's as cute as can be. OK so I found this quote: "Unlike many animals, the dumbo octopus does not have a breeding season. The male octopus simply gives the female a handy-dandy sperm packet so she can lay eggs continuously on shells, beneath rocks or orbits of coral". Typical male.....Squirt and leave.
I drank PABST once. I knew then that I would forever hate beer.
My BRER runneth over.
Barabara S.
Thanks for the info regarding the Canadian Version of This land Is Your Land.
I find it off-putting though.
Canada was not founded in the The American mold. And the idea that the land belonged to the citizenry runs counter to its provenance. It was until very recently a possession of the Crown, the very antithesis of America. Heck it was until 1982 that the Canada Act was finally passed.
I like America's hat. I like some of it very much indeed. But cadging our folk songs? Not a great look.
@RickO 8:49, @JD 9:19. "World" also has the meaning of "universe." Remember, words are often fuzzy, depending on context, and can mean multiple things. If you look up "world" on M-W online, you'll find the 6th definition is: "6. A system of created things. Universe." Similarly, dictionary.com, based on the American Heritage Dictionary, has "9. everything that exists; the universe; the macrocosm." Crosswords clues often play on multiple definitions of a word.
The clue is fine as is.
Secondly, you can also justify it (though I prefer the simple explanation that the word CAN mean "universe") by saying that since the world (going with the Earth-only definition) is part of the universe, it stands to reason that it ultimately, too, was created by the Big Bang. Maybe not fully "assembled" yet, but the stuff from which it exists has the ultimate source in the Big Bang.
World as a noun has 14 definitions over at Merriam-Webster. #6 is the system of created things : UNIVERSE. What several of you are huffing about is that the “only” definition is the 14th definition (being listed 14th means it is the most recent usage, it does not mean it is the least common usage). World = Universe is still pretty common, especially in religious contexts, where it is more world = creation.
@Pete P - [OMG!] - The brackets mean the answer will be onomatopoeic.
PREZ v PREs - “Informally” in the clue suggests the slangier Z. Or use my new rule, when in doubt go with the Z.
@Karl Grouch - Diner or dinner?
So many subtle clues in the clues.
@ironst8 - Welcome. And which st8 of iron are you? I’m guessing molten.
No me gusta. Practically no sparkle, zero word play, lots of weak cluing (e.g. for ARN).
The constructor worked with PENZIAS. We shouldn't feel ignorant in not knowing his name if we're not expert in physics. I'm expert in mathematics, but I don't know the names of many prize-winning mathematicians. There is no Nobel in mathematics, there is the Fields Medal.
@ZenMonkey 307am So sorry about your little Zen kitteh. If her personality was half as adorable as her pic, I envy those 17 years you got to share with her. ❤️
@Z 645am Or 420.
@kitshef Noticed you changed your avatar. Is that your tiger? 😉
@RickO 849am Excellent point about world/universe. Also, if only the puzzle clued Robert Wilson instead of Arno (just had his "ld" omitted?) PENZIAS, I wouldn't have gotten that either. 😉
@GILL 931am 🤣🤣🤣 I know, right?? Those Physicists Nobelists and their big BAO BUN biting! Boo. Also, "handy-dandy sperm packet" sounds like something a squirter and leaver would impulse buy at the 7-11 counter.
If your BRER runneth over, go with a bigger cup. 😉
***Confession Alert***
To all the CreOLE putter-inners. I'll admit that seeing C_ _OLE had me thinking the same thing - until I saw the clue.
My particular Fo Paw was WHIsPER for reasons passing understanding. Because I'm an idiot. And I have a club.
Oh, and the PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE physics/literature theme completely eluded me. For another ungodly reason, I thought "tenses"*? 🙄
*Toonces's uptight sister
World Capital is a capital of a country in the world...Washington DC, Ottawa, etc. The list you saw IS the definition.
@OFL:
I was completely unfamiliar with the central Across answer (today, NET PRESENT VALUE).
and with good reason, because that's not the answer, which is 'discounted PRESENT VALUE'. while it might be argued that it is NET, in some sense, the "cash flow assessed today" means, and can only mean, 'discounted'. ask any economist. don't bother asking an MBA. they're innumerate.
The BLT clue said diner, not dinner
Scottish
British
Mexican-American (ouch - that one hurts a little)
Catalan
Huh? It’s almost as if folk music belongs to folks, not countries.
I know as I say this that I speak for all poets everywhere, PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE; poets of this world as one little blue orb or this world as the glorious, mostly empty, universe, of singular, parallel or sequential universes. I don't know what form matter takes on the other side of a black hole, but I know what I am about to say is true on the other side of a black hole. I know this because I know that what I have to say is universal. It is true at an absolute level, at a level otherwise only known in a universe with well defined rules, both of logic and one with all known functions, actors and boundaries well defined. I know this as I know a - a = 0 in the algebra of addition of integers.
@Nancy, we are all ever so grateful that you will, on occasion, appreciate our work when it doesn't involve rhyming.
Fell into the PREs hole. I solve on paper; no happy pencil or "reveal letter" to bail me out. So a DNF for me today. Just take it like a man. Sorry...take it like a grown-up.
Off to cook breakfast before our Meals on Wheels route, so I’m glad that Rex said it all for me today. Now I can look forward to comments from you all after lunch & a nap. Thanks Ashish for the fair crosses to teach us a worthy Nobelist to add to the crossword canon 😏
@ZenMonkey (3:07 AM) 🙏 for you and Zen
@Barbara S. (8:18 AM)
Thank you for This Land Is Your Land ~ The Travellers.
And thx for the MALCOLM X quote. I can relate to his affinity for reading. Reading changed the course of my life in Afghanistan and opened up a new 'vista' for me.
@Z (9:54 AM) wrote:
"PREZ v PREs - “Informally” in the clue suggests the slangier Z. Or use my new rule, when in doubt go with the Z."
Exactly! The 'informally' pushed me towards the 'Z"; besides, PENZIAS just looked better than PENSIAS to my uninformed eye, altho I think The Pirates of PENZance may also have been a subconscious influence. LOL
___
td pg -9
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Loved the theme, well thought out and not the same old, same old Wednesday trend. Other than that, it seemed . . . odd. Odd grid, odd clues, odd answers. But then again I barely have the energy to WHIMPER this morning after a long weekend jaunt, so maybe it’s just me and worn OUT brain TREADS, the NET PRESENT VALUE of which I WON’T go into.
For starters, BAAS is odd. The clue for GET FAR seemed like it should be GO far. I’ve never personally known anyone named Arnold but always assumed they were all nicknamed ARNie. And BRER? I have spent most of my lifetime surrounded by people who speak in rural dialect, and I can assure you I have never once, not ever heard that word used to refer to any family member.
BIG BANG always makes me think of a Sunday School classmate whose theory was “God spoke it and BANG! It happened.” Works for me.
@9:36
Canada was not founded in the The American mold. And the idea that the land belonged to the citizenry runs counter to its provenance. It was until very recently a possession of the Crown, the very antithesis of America. Heck it was until 1982 that the Canada Act was finally passed.
Canada hasn't been 'ruled' by either the Queen/King or Parliament in a vewy, vewy long time. "possession of the Crown"? not hardly. hell, the Crown hasn't ruled England/UK in centuries, much less the Commonwealth of Nations.
"Queen Elizabeth II, in her address to Canada on Dominion Day in 1959, pointed out that the Confederation of Canada on 1 July 1867 had been the birth of the "first independent country within the British Empire"." the wiki.
https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-47-canada-our-oldest-good-neighbor-(1946)/how-does-canada-govern-itself-or-does-britain-do-it
moreover, its structure gives most power, and independent of one another, to the provincial governments, just what the Better Red Than Dead States' Rights Wingnuts demand. all those Rednecks really should choose the Province they most cleave to and move. good riddance. your Damn Gummint services differ, sometimes greatly, among the provinces.
On the run this morning, but just wanted to say that I loved this puzzle. As a physics nut the Penzias, Big Bang, Ulm connections were easy and pleasurable. As an MBA, I filled in NET PRESENT VALUE without crosses. Here’s hoping that the MOBS don’t take us BACK TO THE FUTURE PREZ.
Thanks for a sweet solve, Ashish Venksarkar.
@Z. Huh? Of course the music belongs to the people. But the meaning of This land is not applicable to subjects of the crown. That land was certainly NOT made for Canadians. It misconstrues the whole point of Guthrie's song. Apparently you do too.
@10:51
You have heard of the Magna Carta, right? 1215, and all that.
A+ from this physics nerd.
Surprised there wasn't more spluttering about "net present value" from the commentariat. Truly a capitalist tool!
Thank you, Ashish, for a terrific puzzle.
A wonderful puzzle, with its cosmic sweep through time intersecting a survey of the Arts and Sciences. An elegant construction, and really interesting, replete as it is with IDEAS (again, so nice right at the center).
Me, too: PREZ? PREs? I went with the Z. No idea: NET PRESENT VALUE.
@Ashish Vengsarkar, I thought this one was exceptional - thank you.
@10:51
But the meaning of This land is not applicable to subjects of the crown.
The USofA just barely avoided being taken over by an Orange Sh!tgibbon (not my coinage, but I cleave) Fascist and his mob of terrorists, and your kvetching about a symbolic head of state with no power over The Great White North? Odd.
Anon 10:58
Wowsa. Magnta Carta Liberatum, yeah I've heard of it.
Which part grants access to land?
No, you're thinking of the right to roam. That was codified in 2000 AD as the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (CROW), not at Runnymede in 1215 AD.
BIG BANG and WHIMPER were two of my earliest fills and they made me smile, as did lots of the in-between stuff. But this would have been a DNF on paper; along with the rest of the universe, I didn’t know TITTLE or PENZIAS (but I will now), so it had to change the S to Z and the O to I before I got the happy music.
I had no idea other countries had versions of “This land is your land.” But it’s one of the songs you feel compelled to sing along with so I can hardly blame them.
My daughter just called to tell me that she has to abort her hike in the Adirondacks because the trail is ice- and snow-covered and steep. Wisely, she’s turning around and has notified me of her predicament; she’s a little concerned about navigating some of the icy steep descents. This should keep me alert today.
@Zen, I’m so sorry to hear about your kitty. Loving our pets as we do is our greatest act of generosity, giving our all despite knowing what’s in the future.
Shared so many observations with so many of you. Never heard of Penzias but glad I know now. Thanks Rex for the TS Eliot recording - I’d never heard his voice before. I’ve loved his poetry since high school. East Coker is my absolute favorite. Thanks to you all for getting my day off to a great start!
ARN as the years worst fill (so far).
@Frantic Sloth - that tiger picture was taken in March of 2020, while we were blissfully travelling through India only vaguely aware that the US was exploding over the lack of toilet paper. One day after that picture was taken, the park we were to visit next closed due to lack of tourists (India had cancelled entry visas), so we headed back to Mumbai and flew home. Two days after that, the US halted flights from India.
@Z 9:54, @anon 10:14
You say dinner, I say diner
Let's call the whole thing off.
I used to teach this stuff and the clue/answer irked me. The NET in NETPRESENTVALUE is incorrect. “Net” involves subtracting upfront (current) investment costs from the present value that the clue describes (discounted future cash flows). But cluing that correctly would probably be even worse!
My clue misreading was a little different; my eyes slid over the "Literature" at the beginning of the clue for 24A, so I thought I was looking for another physicist. TSE is a perfectly reasonable first name for a Nobel-winning physicist, but LIOL (from SPELl) didn't seem to quite fit. Once I finally thought about why the words in the clue were British, I made it into SPELT, and finally say Mr. ELIOT there.
It took forever for me to see AS OF, due to the obvious singularity of the clue.
But, like so many, I went with PREs/PENsIAS, so DNF. I looked him up after I completed the grid; he was quite a guy. Read his autobiography on the Nobel site. Among other things, his family was put on a train to be deported from Munich to Poland, but for some reason the train turned around and went back to Munich, and they were able to leave the country, ultimately for America.
CAROLE King was almost a gimme for me. For those of you who wanted Creole, here's a little chicken soup with rice to console you.
@ZenMonkey, I'm so sorry about your cat.
I also had Creole for King & kicked myself for not putting in CAROLE who was more my time than King Creole.
Gotta say, tho, I can't remember a Wednesday puzzle that I disliked so much.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for bringing Cher singing the Sesame Street theme song into my morning.
A little economics aside…. The cluing for NETPRESENTVALUE doesn’t imply NET…. the clue just describes “Present Value”…. “Net” is where you subtract the upfront initial costs. I guess it’s better than THEPRESENTVALUE! 😝
@Rex and most of the commentariat are misreading the answer to 16a. It's not "past one's bedtime", it's "Pastone's bedtime". Theusa Pastone was an often overlooked colleague of Arno Penzias. It was she who said, extremely late one evening, "C'mon, Pansy-Ass, you've been working on your More Bang For the Buck Theory or whatever you call it for three days straight with no rest. Let's go grab a beer and then you should take a nap."
So they did that, and when Pansy-Ass woke up from his nap, he not only confirmed the More Bang For The Buck Theory, he also discovered an entire new planet, which he named "Net Present Value". Then he ate a seeded bagel, which he pronounced "the best, sesamest bagel I ever had." Many scholars feel that the suggestion made by Theusa Pastone was key, thus the expression "Pastone's bedtime" entered the language to mean "an ungodly hour of rest preceding a momentous discovery."
I love science.
@Frantic (12:28) Interesting we both used the same word (odd), and I may have mentioned before that I’ll share your loathing of the lookee clues. Thanks for the tip on the LEAH Remini series. Unfortunately I missed it, will have to see if I can catch a rerun. I did read her book “Troublemaker,” and wow! Some eye-popping stuff.
@Breakfast Tester (1:31) Totally agree with you that day 71A needed WITH A to be correct.
@ZenMonkey (3:07) Very sorry to hear of your precious fur baby’s passing. All Pets leave a unique imprint on our hearts and often in the case of cats, on our laps.
@Barbara (8:18) Interesting quote selection. While his circumstances were certainly unique, I think many people with a love of reading could relate his thoughts to their own individual situations in the way books have impacted their lives.
@Anonymous (9:36) According to Barbara, the Canadian version of those words were penned in the 1950s. According to Wikipedia: This Land Is Your Land" is one of the United States' most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie in 1940, based on an existing melody, a Carter Family tune called "When the World's on Fire", in critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" on the radio in the late 1930s, he sarcastically called his song "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming it “This Land Is Your Land”. So it would appear it was Canadians who did the cadging.
This Brooklyn Technical High School alumnus appreciated the Arno Penzias clue.
The point of D+ is, "I don't want this kid in my class again" or "Get your crap together," depending on the teacher.
Kinda different … seven themers, endin with a WHIMPER and a SES and a black cheater square. Gotta like different.
Fillins of mystery: AVEDA. PENZIAS. NETPRESENTVALUE.
Fillins of sparkliness: WHEREAMI. TITTLE. SESAMEST [Written this way, kinda looks like it should be clued as: {Like the seediest of all bagels??}. PABST.
Mama & Mia, did M&A ever get off to a false start on this rodeo … Got SPA, ok. Then put in THEN where IFSO went. Then [nervously] put in ANNO where ASOF went. Then [ignorantly] put in DAL where BAO went. Then GULP where GASP went. Then got DPLUS and NEED right. Then [enthusiastically] HAR- where ARN- went.
Then went "back to the futile" and tried to figure out why BAAS wouldn't fit at 1-D. Then kinda [whimperingly] started over. Lost precious nanoseconds.
staff weeject picks: The wily BAO & ARN pair. Not the friendliest of fillins, but I imagine things can get pretty dicey with two longish themers that close together and zero black-square blockers in between.
Thanx for the trip thru time, Mr. Vengsarkar dude. Heckuva construction effort. Got a bang out of it.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
**gruntz**
I was reading that the physicist in today's puzzle had some colleagues who were quite jealous of him and his accomplishments. They were described as having PENZIAS envy.
@Z 9:54 - Ah, thanks. I didn't realize brackets literally indicated an onomatopoeia, just that something sneaky was going on with the clue. A couple years of solving the NYT puzzle regularly and I've somehow never grokked that specificity. Like I don't know exactly what a question mark indicates or an exclamation point indicates, but kind of have a feel for what type of answer it's looking for. I know a question mark tells me to think laterally a bit with the clue or signals some sort of wordplay and an exclamation point -- that I'm not exactly sure I can define. Maybe a synonymous colloquial phrase? I figure out those answers, but I've never put my finger on what it means. Is there an actual compendium of conventions somewhere?
@Legume And now gas prices are going through the roof. Thanks. And there was (but purged from Lame Stream Media) the "mob of terrorists" were Dem plants.
Oh God ! Beaver Cleaver is back.
nice photo bomb.
Reading now the objections to the 16A clue as not equaling the answer, ungodly-wise, I guess I have to agree that they aren't equivalent but while I was solving, I found the clue/answer pair charming. Perhaps because as I filled in PAST ONE...I was expecting a ONE AM time to appear; ONE'S BEDTIME was so much more scintillating that I couldn't help but smile.
I had NET PRESENT and decided the next word was going to be VALUE. It is not a phrase that trips off the tongue readily but I must have come across it somewhere in the PAST in order for it to self-fill, which was nice.
As far as WHERE AM I? being SESAME ST., well I must admit that if I found myself on SESAME ST., I would not know I was in NYC unless there was an obvious landmark in sight. I had no idea that's where the gang lived - I grew up in a PBS desert and never had the pleasure of watching Sesame St. I had such a deprived childhood :-).
I found two finally-made-it-into-the-long-term-memory answers today. I knew TITTLE and what country has a capital city of Vientiane, yay!
Thanks, Ashish Vengsarkar. I was surprised to see you have constructed 16 NYT puzzles since your name was unfamiliar to me. But I started looking at constructor bylines only 7 years ago or so, and your xwordinfo comments mention a 10-year hiatus so...
Perhaps others have noticed that the solution to today's Jeopardy Clue of the Day is contained in today's crossword.
@ZenMonkey
My sincerest sympathy. I, too, have a Siamese sweetie, Bella, who is just turning 10.
Speaking of the Universe, unrhymed poetry and black holes, I offer the following:
The Missing Link
Visible only when it takes a
a fatal bite and swallows an unlucky
star, a mid-size black hole, a smaller
eddy of nothingness,
like its gigantic cousins, the
massive black holes that lurk in the
center of large galaxies,
anchors the center of
smaller dwarf galaxies. Its home
merged by collision with other
galaxies and most of its stars gone,
the small black hole, now an
empty-nester, moves to a marriage
with its larger kin.
Meanwhile, the devoured star disappears
in a shriek of X-rays leaving only an
arc of leftover fire, like drool on the
lips of an ultimate cosmic maw.
The X-rays, a fading Cheshire smile,
are detected by astronomers in a
constellation far, far away. The
universe, they tell us, is built
when dwarf galaxies with their
small holes accrete in a growing
assemblage of stars with ever bigger
black holes at the center of it all
Those who watched the end of TV's The Big Bang Theory will remember the fact that Sheldon and Amy's "Superasymetry" theory that won the Nobel Prize was accidently confirmed by 2 two other physicist's data. This actually happened!!!
Therorists George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Herman, calculated that The Big Bang would leave a "cosmic background radiation of a few degrees above absolute zero.
Robert Wilson and Arno PENZIAS were listening to the sky with a radio telescope designed to listen to the Telstar communication satellite in 1965. They kept getting an annoying hiss @ 3° above absolute zero. The did everything they could to get rid of it (including cleaning out bat sh*t) but it kept on going. Finally, they heard from another physicist about the backgrond radiation and realized this what they were detecting. I don't know why only PENZIAS was awarded the Nobel Prize.
@Z (9:54 AM) Thanks for the welcome! If I had to choose one st8, I guess it would be solid, like my typical Spelling Bee ranking. :p
I knew Penzias as the author of the Big Bang theory because I cross examined him at the trial of the AT&T case in 1981 - the case that led to the breakup of the Bell system. I was introduced to him prior to the trial and tried to impress him with my mathematical knowledge by saying "division by zero is impossible", a phrase that had been taught by my college math professor. Penzias replied: "a lot of people believe that but it's in correct" and then turned away in contempt. On the witness stand he said that even today you can detect the existence of the Big Bang by tuning your radio across the FM spectrum; between stations you will hear a hum that is partially caused by the Big Bang. I was tempted to ask him this on cross-exam: Dr. Penzias, is it not true that before the Big Bang occurred, everyone got better reception on their FM radios? But I chickened out.
Ever notice when Rex has some significant trouble with a puzzle, he doesn't "actually time" it. . . Cheers.
Fun, breezy puzzle until some brutal naticks. Same places - NACRE/PENZIAS/PREZ (guessed pres, guessed wrong!). And then we had WHIsPER/ULs instead of WHIMPER/ULM, which in retrospect made a lot more sense. We knew we were just guessing with the other natick though, so we didn't even bother looking at other parts before doing a check.
If we knew any of those answers, would have been a record Wednesday for us. Instead just a DNF.
But outside of that, enjoyed the theme and cluing. Nothing particularly standout, but fun nonetheless.
Oh well. On to tomorrow.
@12:46
yeah, well... you can thank/blame Colonial Pipeline, a private for profit exploiter for that. can't even keep its network clean. and that's thanks to using ancient M$ Windoze (upgrading cuts into the bottom line); a virus petri dish.
https://www.windowscentral.com/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-attack-linked-microsoft-exchange-vulnerabilities
Only rex could bury something like "But on the whole I thought this puzzle was creative and ambitious and whimsical in a pleasant way" amidst so much nit-picking! I guess he has to keep his persona going.
Brilliant theme, with only the PENZIAS/PREZ cross being a bit sticky.
@Zen...my sympathies on the passing of Zen. Our cats are such a large part of our lives. They leave enormous holes in our hearts when they are gone. Only time will heal that, but, sorry to say, there will be flashes of loss that will never completely heal. All we can do is hold on to their memories with tears and laughter.
Excellent puzzle today. I would call the Pres/Prez crossing with Pensias/Penzias to be a huge Natick.
@Peter P - Ah, the question mark. Basically, one of the words in the clue is being used in a supposedly less common way than it would normally be used in the clue phrase. I say "supposedly" because I've had times where the way I would mean a phrase is exactly the way the clue intends and the alternate meaning is less common to me. Also, there is a significant minority who argue against ever using the question mark hint, especially in late week puzzles. At least in part this is because the question mark usage sometimes seems random, dropped when it seems really needed and included when it isn't needed at all.
As for the exclamation point, I reached the conclusion that it is just the clue writer saying F.U. I cannot discern any rhyme or reason. I generally ignore the exclamation point as irrelevant and cannot recall a time where that mattered.
Everybody has figured out that This Land is Your Land is socialist, right? That it is a giant middle finger to the owner class (a class literally personified by the Queen of England), which is why it is readily adopted by artists like, say, Billy Bragg in England or The Rage Against the Machine Guy at an Occupy LA performance. I mean, I get that our elementary school teachers sanitized it for us when we were young, but we all know this kind of thing now, right? (BTW - if you are ever prone to think of people like Obama or Biden as "socialists," Morello's intro is a good reminder of what actual socialists think of them - If you just want to hear Morello sing and not rant you need to skip to the 1:30 mark - well, then it is just a musical rant I guess)
@Frantic Sloth - It's always 4:20 somewhere.
11:24
Which part grants access to land?
which part of the US Constitution allows one to claim public land? private land? do you support eminent domain for highways? for MegaCorp's new headquarters? you can't take land from private hands, right? the public is people, too. some have tried. some of them died. public land means it belongs to all of us, not just some Red Stater who claims it for Fredonia.
Did not know PENZIAS, and at various times wrote in both PREs and PREZ, with an odd attempt at PREx. Poor guy got only a quarter of the prize. His prime associate shared a half-prize, with the other half going to a physicist who had made a discovery on a totally different topic.
Still, the prize money is significant. My best friend's dad shared the Medicine Nobel in the late 60's or so, and his share was enough for him to afford a vacation house in Italy, in the hills NW of Venice. Very nice guy, too. He insisted on washing the dishes every night after dinner, explaining that some of his best ideas came to him then.
I certainly knew the last word in The Waste Land is WHIMPER, which made the puzzle pretty Easy for me.
just so that some mice who are clearly in thrall to The Orange Sh!tgibbon (not my coinage, but I cleave) don't get to pollute other minds: no it wasn't Dem/Antifa/etc.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/16/capitol-riot-guilty-plea-oath-keepers-482377
"Jon Schaffer, a heavy metal guitarist and self-described "lifetime member" of the Oath Keepers, on Friday became the first Capitol rioter to plead guilty to charges based on his participation in the attack and has entered into a cooperation agreement with the government."
I guaroooonnteee he'll flip like a boarded fish on the rest of the terrorists.
I should add, if your city has a Chinatown, it has BAO, little white buns filled with something savory -- often pork, but not always. In San Francisco, you go to either of the main Chinese neighborhoods, and find them at a Chinese bakery, along with many other goodies.
No. Just no.
I hate channeling my inner Rex and realize that I'm going to be repeating some of the things that others have said, but I cant help myself.
The cardinal sin is the puzzle saying that the Big Bang was the way the world began. It was the beginning of the universe. The Earth didn't come along until [insert arbitrary amount of time here since time didn't exist then as it does now] years later. You can say that the Big Bang began the process that created the Earth, which is true, but then you should accept the Big Bang as the way the McRib began too.
Less sinful, but still bad:
"Arn" as a nickname? Don't buy it. Sorry to any Arns reading. (I assume that if any Arns do exist, they're the type to do crosswords.) Bad fill, necessitating bad clue.
An "alibi" is (per the Oxford dictionary) "a claim or piece of evidence that one was elsewhere when an act...is alleged to have taken place." "I have an identical twin" is not an unconvincing alibi, it's an unconvincing alternate theory of the crime. Fine fill, bad clue.
Perhaps this one is idiosyncratic, but I have to say it: Nacre (a word that I've probably seen in Xwords before and am sure I will forget within 10 minutes) and Tittle (same) and Prez/Pres all crossing Penzias (a science Nobel laureate who this science nerd has never heard of) was horribad. Bad enough to scuttle the corner and give the puzzle a revise and resubmit. Bad judgement on several parts.
Ok, I'll unchannel Rex and try to get this bad taste out of my mouth.
@ DrLee77 1:23 PM
You lost me at “Those who [watched] TV's The Big Bang Theory . . .”
@The Joker 12:32
Big LOL! Thanks for that.
@blinker474 1:32
LOL! Dang, that would've been epic!
RooMonster Laughing Guy
@Anonymous (2:26) Great news! Fingers crossed for that fish to flip big time.
Zen was beautiful,so sorry for your loss.
With the middle east blowing up. The chinese building warships, while others build bombs. The climate growing hellishly warmer. The NYTXW is predicting the Future. Perhaps it should start calling itself the "!Horrorscope" First Wednesday I got through in a while!!!
Oops, no mention of the former president or Prez. He who must not be named.
When a puzzle has to be submitted EVERY SINGLE DAY for years on end, there will occasionally be bad fill (as there was today). Not a very hard puzzle, but I still don't know how BBL refers to anything OPEC-related. Seriously, what is BBL? Got most of the unknown answers on crosses but that BBL took a little work. It was my last space to fill and I was very surprised when the happy music came on.
Defenders of the World. By all means use the less precise, 6th listed word in in the dictionary in reference to the big bang theory because, um why, you can? Bosh
I just got off a plane and I'm mask crabby. Apologies for tone.
@Photomatte
OPEC is an abbreviation of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations.
BBL is an abbreviation of barrel, as in barrels of oil.
Rex tweeted anniversary kitten pictures.
Just want to say thank you all for your very kind words. I appreciate them deeply.
The first epigraph of Eliot's poem is "Mastah Kurtz - he dead" is the Kurtz of Conrad's Heart of Darkness (the horror the horror) and who became the Kurtz of Apocalypse Now. The big bang could be Apocalypse PAST, then the movie is Apocalypse PRESENT, and Eliot's WHIMPER is Apocalypse FUTURE. It also connects nicely with the recent puzzle we had with Kurtz in it. Good editing, that might have been better if they were even closer together.
I really enjoyed the way PAST PRESENT FUTURE moves from first to second to last of 3 (well 3 or 4) word phrases. And though I had barely heard the phrase (and I do not care if is nit-pickable) NETPRESENTVALUE, I like it because it fits quite well in puzzle that seesaws between science and poetry. First is a common phrase, second is a financial phrase and the third is a movie. I even like the clue for the first phrase because both are strictly personally defined. No objective standard for either. Calling past bedtime is better tha calling before wake up time for me. But objectively they are identical.
Seemingly a tame Wednesday with some natick traps turns into a puzzle that is of notable depth and breadth.
Lookieloo clues do not make me frantic at all.
The second epigraph concerns Mr. Fawkes.
Here we go round the prickly pear.
Take care if you weed around one at the wrong time of year. My best non-rhyming advice.
@ mojo nixon
Who is out there channeling Mojo? First Son Volt, now this? BTW, listening to mojo right now! Do we srsly have outlaw country fans on this blog?
And standard oil used 42 gallon Blue BarreLs for oil shipping which became the standard and the reason for the BBL abbreviation.
For those unfamiliar with NACRE, I’ve been wending my way through the late week puzzles in the NYT Archives and have encountered NACRE more than once per year. It’s worth remembering as a bit of late week crosswordese. Today it snuck into a Wed. puzzle.
@Son Volt
Or whoever is masquerading as one of my favorite bands
My Dad was a physicist. Met Penzias and others when they came to my parents' house. Didn't think anything of it then. So at least I knew his name!
That wasn't me, that was my twin brother passes the unconvincing alibi test for me.
NACRE is mother-of-pearl.
Very enjoyable Wednesday, loved the literature and science.
Did the same as others - knew there was WHIMPER somewhere when I read 1A. Also like many others, DNF by Naticking at PENZIAS but with the “i” in the unknown T_TTLE. Reminded me of another punctuation mark I’m pretty sure I learned not too long ago from a NYTXW – the portmanteau INTERROBANG, which I like so much I’ve remembered it.
ARN (5D) could also be a nickname for Arno Penzias.
Knew the name Boris Godunov (43A) from somewhere but brain finally settled on tennis player, so I thought, _ _ _ R, ACER? Right? Tennis players ACE serves? Crosses straightened me out.
@ZenMonkey 3:07 am – I’m so sorry for the loss of your lovely Zen. To get to love a furry family member for 17 years is a gift.
@Rex – like @Z 6:45 am said - your achieves satori, ascends to higher plane of existence is laugh-out-loud funny. And happy 1-year cativersary to you and Alfie. Thanks, @Z 4:53 pm, for the link to Rex's tweets.
@ironst8 – welcome!
@JD - and it isn't exactly a new usage. Note from etymonline.com: Originally "life on earth, this world (as opposed to the afterlife)," sense extended to "the known world," then to "the physical world in the broadest sense, the universe" (c. 1200).
Yes, I will happily continue using English words in all the various duties they can perform. That's what makes language fun for me. (Plus, like I said, every crossword practically has one digging for secondary, tertiary, etc. meanings of words in clues or answers. This one isn't even a stretch, in my opinion. "World" is not as concrete a concept as "the Earth." They are not exact synonyms.)
@Joe Dipinto (11:56) -- It's late in the day to comment, but I appreciated your post. So much about PASTONE remains unpublished and apochryphal. You pick up what you can here and there and wonder what's true -- like PASTONESPRIME, which among squares is a byword for the number 16, eh?
@ Joe DiPinto 11:56 -
Pastone was my mother-in-laws third cousin. Our family gatherings were often interrupted by her screaming “It’s an ungodly hour! Paint it black, you Devils!” Unsettlingly, it was usually well before dinner time when she’d yell this.
To the NPV commenters, you are reciting a definition, but not thinking about the concept. If you are charged an annual fee for your investment, you need to subtract the discounted value of that fee from the Gross Present Value of your investment. The clue and answer are 100% correct.
Found it quite handy to have my equity research analyst girlfriend helping me with this one over my shoulder. Without a single cross, she looked at "Tomorrow's cash flow assessed today" and immediately said NET PRESENT VALUE. Helped me get to a near-record Wednesday time.
Curious to know why "Bryn" would be considered part of a mess. Bryn Mawr College is one of the greatest liberal arts colleges in the country and is uniquely dedicated to the education of young women. A professor at SUNYB has no business dissing an institution of higher learning as distinguished as Bryn Mawr. And, yes, my daughter will be a graduate in a little over a week.
Several problems with this one:
-->Clue for 1a should read "universe" where it says "world." The "world," ours anyway, began with bits of stardust clumping together.
-->PASTONESBEDTIME. Surprised OFC didn't jump on ONES.
-->the RCG (random course grade) DPLUS. Ugh.
-->HEALUP. C'mon, HEAL. "UP" doesn't add anything.
-->ditto THEUSA. Superfluous THE. OFC let that one go, too.
And we're not even out of the north! Now tell me that PENZIAS belongs anywhere NEAR Wednesday. Raise your hand if you knew this name. Yeah, that's what I thought; me neither. This is what a certain late blogger would call a "pisser."
I slogged my way through it, but did not enjoy the trip. Only a financial guru would know NETPRESENTVALUE; crosses required all the way. The puzzle was just way too obscure for this day. Fuzzy cluing didn't help.
On the bright side: the sliding tenses in the gridspanners, and the DOD stage (sorry, ETTA and ANNE, but CAROLE King gets the sash this time).
Oh yeah. Never heard of AVEDA, either. Gimme a break, here! Bogey.
Fun with anagrams: TSELIOT = toilets
So guess who fell for having an S instead of a Z in the physicist's name? Still guessing? Darn - and I got the other two guesses, that I was very aware of, right!
Oh no - did we lose our "pisser" of a SyndieCat? Did this blogger become a stray cat?
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
A mix of easy, odd, clever and obscure making for a densely packed puzzle. And an interesting one at that.
Poet T.S. ELIOT is an established gimme; scientist PENZIAS is not, though he clearly deserves his plaudits. (Oops, misspelled the latter’s name with an S instead of the Z in the middle.) Despite some dissonance, PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE add cosmic background to the overall theme (or two related themes).
The CUBE helps to round(?) things out with a mathematical touch.
Ergo, my friends, science, poetry, and math are proved to be co-existent.
@spacey:
M-W definition of “world”-- "7: the earth and the heavens : the entire universe as an orderly system : the system of created things".
(Though, yes, most of the definitions refer to the earth.)
AGE OLDE ALIBI
Go BACKTOTHE scene of THE crime,
WHERE I WHIMPERED, "Dang,
WON'T it be PAST LEAH's BEDTIME?
AMI late for a BIGBANG?"
--- CAROLE ANNE TITTLE
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