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Mexican marinade made with chili pepper / MON 6-28-21 / Popular meal kit company or mother of the food critic featured in this puzzle / Energy giant synonymous with corporate scandal
Monday, June 28, 2021
Constructor: Pamela F. Davis
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging to Challenging (***for a Monday***) (about half a minute-ish slower than normal) (3:22)
Theme answers:
- BEET (not "beat") REPORT (17A: "So, this red thing, Mom? This is not good.")
- ROLL (not "role") REVERSAL (27A: "The French one is my favorite. Wait, no, the pretzel one."
- MUSSEL (not "muscle") MEMORY (48A: "Eww, mollusks ... I don't know didn't this make me sick last time?")
- MOUSSE (not "moose") (!?) CALL (63A: "Wow, Mom, this is like at a restaurant! Dibs on the chocolate pudding!")
1: a Philippine dish of fish or meat usually marinated in a sauce containing vinegar and garlic, browned in fat, and simmered in the marinade2: a spicy marinade used in Latin American cuisine and usually containing vinegar, garlic, and chili pepperschipotles in adobo3: a seasoning mixture that typically includes ground dried garlic, ground dried onion, oregano, salt, and pepper (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
Fill is mostly short and ordinary. Not enough snazzy stuff to distract me from having to deal with REFILE *and* RETIE, or to offset the upset from deeply unappealing fill like SPOOR and SPUMES. Some people don't like the word "moist," but I'll take "moist" over SPOOR and SPUMES any day. We've been drinking a lot of tequila and mezcal cocktails lately, so I'm weirdly happy to see AGAVE, even if it isn't exactly new to griddom. Especially heartened to see ADOBO, which is delicious and welcome in my grid any time (even if I did briefly blank on it, and then considered ANCHO). I saw "Hamilton" but I don't know if I saw it with Phillipa SOO, but either way I forgot her name. I also didn't know HOME CHEF was the name of a meal kit company. Blue Apron ... is that something? I know that. And something something Fresh, maybe? Ah, yes: HelloFresh. Those are the ones I know. Between the I-don't-knows and the wacky punniness of the themers, this one played more like a Tuesday than a Monday, but that didn't really bug me at all. There's a potentially interesting core theme idea here, but it just didn't come together very well for me today.
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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100 comments:
Food and puns. What better way to start the Mondee?
Loved MUSSELMEMORY and MOUSSECALL, but I think I need help with the clue for BEETREPORT.
I get that it's a pun on BEaT REPORT and that BEETs are red...but "So, this red thing, Mom? This not good." Sounds like an indication that something popped up on your computer screen when you made a boo-boo. Can't get past it.
Wonder if anyone will help me...
Are there "pretzel ROLLs"? Is that what those pretzel snack sticks are called? Because I hope to cheezits there isn't a sammich roll made of pretzel out there choking out the bread aisle...
Anyway, wonderful, goofy, fun theme with some good fill. And another debut!
Very nice work, Ms. Davis and congratulations on your first NYTXW. Hurry back!
ðŸ§
🎉🎉🎉
There’s a million food puns in the Naked City. [Check in at midnight to hear one and bring a burger with you.] That’s right. Meat me later.
I liked this a lot better than Rex did. And even though I am the Dad and the cook at my house, I didn't even notice the Mom stuff about which Rex complains.
Tough, but I did have a drink before dinner. I’m not familiar with HOMECHEF and I needed to go back over the theme clues to grok what was going on.
Pretty smooth and amusing once I caught on, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did. A fine debut!
@bocamp - I finished Croce’s Freestyle #625 and it was quite a bit tougher for me than the last two. The east side went pretty smoothly but I went down a number of rabbit holes on the west side that took several additional sittings to extricate myself from. Plus the NW was a blank for quite a while. Hopefully you will have better luck.
@Frantic: You really should try a pretzel roll. They add a whole new dimension to sandwiches. Just Google a recipe and head for the kitchen -- you probably already have everything you need. You can even make a sourdough pretzel roll if you have starter left over from quarantine.
Tougher than your average Monday, but not for interesting reasons... agree with Rex on most of it, especially "SPOOR" and "SPUME" - yuck!
100% agreed with Rex. Except I found the puzzle very easy. Corny and forced.
I guess our experiences diverged, however, in that I did at least enjoy solving it. Not a great deal, but somewhat.
Also loved seeing ADOBO. My “secret ingredient” when making chili is to grab one of those inexpensive cans of chipotle peppers in ADOBO (La Morena makes a good one) and purée them before throwing it in. Proportion is about 7oz per 2 lbs of beef. It makes it pretty spicy, so be careful that you don’t serve it to the spice-averse (aka “cowards”).
@Frantic Sloth: There are, indeed, pretzel rolls! They are delicious. I’ve often seen them on menus as a burger bun. If you run across one, I recommend you give it a try!
Amusing. Leaves me facing Monday morning at work with a smile.
What is so rare as a day in June?
~only 3 days left this year to answer.
This is a debut to remember. So many elements landed just right. As I solved, I felt like I was sitting taller and taller as my interest and inner wow grew. This puzzle shines with wit and skill.
The theme is sophisticated. Just the four horizontal theme answers alone would have been sufficient for a Monday puzzle, but Pamela tied them all together with HOME CHEF, which itself has two meanings. When I filled that revealer in, I realized that the theme answers were from a child’s eyes, and I saw how perfectly they were written. That in itself took this puzzle to a higher level. In addition, the theme answers were excellent puns, with their first word perfect sound-alikes of another word with a completely different meaning. This is simply one terrific and to me, memorable theme.
Then there is the scrubbed-clean grid, and those answers that are in the language but not bland – AGAVE, PRECLUDE, SPOOR, SPUMES – to spark interest. Even a very funny clue: [It’s a crime to lie under it] for OATH.
This is far more than OH OK or BLAH. To me, this is a MEGAhit, and shows terrific promise. Yours is a name I will remember, Pamela, and I will eagerly await your return. Thank you for a sparkling start to the week!
I have often taken a torturous path to get to a pun I wanted to make but a couple of these would be a stretch even for me, especially the BEETREPORT. If you want a groan you need a better referent.
5D made me think of Dorothy Parker's famous reply to the much younger chorus girl holding the door for her. "Age before beauty", says the bright young thing. "No dear," says DP, "pearls before swine." That one never gets old.
At least I found out about a company called HOMECHEF. Having just moved from our rural home to suburbia, we have discovered a phenomenon called "take out". Also agree with @Joaquin about not noticing the Mom thing.
Congrats on your first, PFD. A Pretty Fine Debut.
Yes there are pretzel rolls and they are delicious.
I don’t think this would ever be my favourite theme, but it grew on me as I solved. I went from “Huh – I really don’t get this” to “OK, this is kind of cute – a child’s comments on Mom’s cooking conveyed via puns on known expressions.” I liked the theme answers better as they went along, BEET REPORT the least, and MOUSSE CALL the most. And what to make of 39D, HOME CHEF? When is a revealer not a revealer? It doesn’t seem like a revealer, in either its content or position, and yet it does tie the theme answers together. I say “content” because “Popular meal kit company (or the mother of the food critic featured in this puzzle?)” doesn’t address any specifics of the puns, as most revealers would do. There was also some excess food – a theme-strengthener or a flaw? I mean SPUD, ADOBO (which is also a Spelling Bee word) and maybe JAM (OK, it was clued as “printer malfunction”). But really, I’m not prepared to think too hard about this puzzle – I’ve decided it’s some harmless fun on a Monday.
No particular problem areas, except that I misread the clue for 43A as “Request form” rather than “from.” That was a head-scratcher so I left it blank and filled it in near the end when my reading skills had returned. I liked these pairs: DODGE & EVADES, STARE & EYEBALLS, REEF & SHELL, DO TELL & DON’T. And there were scads of words beginning with RE: REFILE, RETIE, REBELS, REPORT, REVERSAL, REEF, REBA and REARS.
The bottom of this was shocking: SPOOR, SPUMES, SOO, MOUSSECALL, MARCROS and SERGE are not Monday words, especially when crossing.
Today I’m quoting JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, born June 28, 1712.
“Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill...You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting."
(From Emile, or On Education)
I believe we had something similar to “Spill the tea” as an answer not too long ago - if I remember correctly, it is a phrase that is more prevalent across the pond. I agree that SPUMES and SPOOR are pretty left-field for a Monday (and both kind of yuk words to boot). AGAVE and ADOBO are pretty cool (and I believe are actual words) - SERA, not so much.
I love puns, but I didn't love this.
First of all, beetroot is purple. Or sometimes orange. But not, in my opinion, red. Also, red 'thing'? As the first themed clue, and because it was addressed to Mom, I was thinking along the lines of chickenpox, especially when paired with the mollusc clue about getting sick.
Being pedantic, I don't think of PLOP as the noise of sitting heavily, but as descriptive of the movement - a straight drop, ~like~ something that might make a plopping noise were it to fall into, say, water, but not. PREP is a contraction, but that didn't seem to be hinted in the clue so I stubbornly refused to enter it for a long time. You can also ENTER without walking, and I'd query whether one would ever have cause for plural sea foams.
But this might be sour grapes because I got totally messed up by the SE corner, not knowing SERGE (had tweed for a while), SERA, or MARCOS, so I went the wrong way with the ON ME/ON IT potential, decided maybe there was such a thing as a DOJu variation for DOJO and ended up with an injury instead of a MEMORY for my MUSSEL.
I have no idea in what sense ELKS are fraternal and I've never heard of a French roll or a pretzel roll (maybe these are all Americanisms?). All in all, a tricky Monday for me and the payoff didn't feel worth it. I don't think I'd have minded the silliness of the theme if the full overall had been more lighthearted but the tone of the theme and the tone of the rest of the puzzle felt at odds.
This felt like it was pushing back a little bit but time-wise was pretty normal. SPOOR & SPUMES are a nice combo. I like the bonus eating theme answers. SPUD, JAM(though not clued as food), SUPS, (I could eat a) HORSE, SHELL(fish), ADOBO, ORSO(almost), and even ECOLI. There is a local restaurant called AGAVE Mexican Grill.
There are a few ways your theme can fail, but the most basic one is when the revealer doesn’t land.
For whatever reason, the TV Stations we watch show a lot of meal delivery ads. We get hammered with Blue Apron, Daily Harvest and Hello Fresh ads. Occasionally, a Dinnerly or Fresh Direct ad. Lately, Tovala has been everywhere. But HOME CHEF? Never heard of it.
On the plus side, I really enjoyed MOUSSE CALL.
We also get dozens of ads for The Mirror every day. Listen, The Mirror people. If I didn’t want it after the first six hundred times I saw your ad, I'm not going to suddenly want it on #601.
SPOOR and SPUMES were in the puzzle?
Food puns are fine by me. The HOME CHEF revealer is fine by me. The turning of the revealer into product placement, though? Blrrrgh!
Lots of non-theme dining material today, SPUD, AGAVE, ADOBO, JAM, SUPS. So much that I have to wonder about including HORSE. And E. COLI. And, uh, STOOL.
Odd Monday. Felt like there was too much too easy and too much too hard. SERGE crossing SERA was rough. Would say a moose call is no more "a thing" than any other animal's, so that fell a little flat. And wow, when's the last time Ferdinand Marcos was on your mind? But did learn that SPOOR is (are, I guess) more than animal droppings, which I did not know, so actually really liked that entry.
Cute theme - fun puzzle. Agree it was a little loosely constructed but fine early week. Not sure how the challenging category made it in there. Liked the AGAVE x ALOE x EYEBALLS cross. Didn’t know HOME CHEF but easily gettable. Lots of SPUMEing for the plovers to play in yesterday when the wind turned.
Enjoyable Monday solve.
In addition to the cringey/funky SPOOR and SPUME, not to mention STOOL, I wasn't picturing food for 17A. I was picturing something for which you'd need a dermatologist.
Very off-putting.
Sorry for the mental picture...
Thx Pamela for a fun Mon. to start the week! :)
Med+ solve.
Slightly on the tough side, esp sussing out the themers.
Nevertheless, a most enjoyable puz. :)
___
yd 0
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Tolerance ~ Health ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Of SPUME and SPOOR you may adore.
SEA FEVER
BY JOHN MASEFIELD
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
From The Bridge by Hart Crane:
The nasal whine of power whips a new universe....
Where SPOUTING PILLARS SPOOR the evening sky,
Under the looming stacks of the gigantic power house
Stars prick the eyes with sharp AMMONIAC proverbs,
New verities, new inklings in the velvet hummed
Of dynamos, where HEARING'S LEASH IS STRUMMED....
Power's script, - wound, BOBBIN-BOUND, refined-
Is stopped to the slap of belts on booming SPOOLS, SPURRED
Into the BULGING BOUILLON, harnessed jelly of the stars.
This was tough but I’m tripping on mushrooms (third time posting about solving this way). Even with the blog explaining this puzzle I STILL don’t really get it. I’ll check back later today to see if things make sense after coming off this trip. Wish me luck with the “prove you’re not a robot” challenge awaiting me. If you’re reading this I did it successfully. Now I’m off to hug some trees. Peace and love everyone! Have a great week!
Is HOMECHEF really meant to be product placement? I'd never ever heard of it, so if it is (which I doubt), it's pretty obscure, especially for a Monday. rex calls it out as product placement, and Z jumps on that bandwagon, but I'm guessing it's just serendipity and not a deliberate promotion of some obscure company.
Why are people grossed out by SPUME, which is simply ocean spray, and SPOOR, a natural scent? I think Americans have an aversion to anything that remotely reminds them of bodily fluids. It reminded me of the NPR show I was listening to yesterday while driving, involving a new birth control device, where they gave a "warning" ahead of time, apparently because they discussed reproduction and used words like VAGINA and SPERM. The horror! As a society, we're sure afraid of our bodily functions, especially if they are MOIST.
Ultimately, any puz relying on puns is going to be potentially problematic. The puns have to be pretty nifty -- and today's were!
Elks is referring to the Elks Lodge a US “fraternal order” akin to the Freemasons
I must go down to the sea again
to the lonely sea and the sky
I left my vest and socks there
I wonder if they're dry
- Spike Milligan
SPUME and SPOOR are not Monday words!
Speaking of preposterous. Not only do some of the crossword themes fall into that category, so do some of the criticisms. Which sometmes can be equated to the write-up. Which often does not argue with the assessment, only the way it's stated.
Anyway, if as Lewis says this is a debut to remember, I'm not sure if that is the constructor's fault because, according to her comments, she received a lot of help from others. Does that matter? Of course not. It's the final product that matters, which I liked. Although I must admit some of the entries were not what I would throw at new solvers.
As a former beat reporter, I can assure you no one in journalism ever asks to see a “beat report,” it’s redundant, like saying the baseball player has a baseball hit. If there was news on my beat, I’d file just a report, free of embellishments and unnecessary adjectives.
I still don't get this antipathy toward SPOOR, which Rex can always be expected to comment on. Some people use it plenty enough -- I'm not one of them, but I know it and it's fine. SPUMES is more understandable, as it could remind one of "spew" with its various vomit-y connotations, combined with the basic meaning of SPUME as froth as might be found in vomit... what -- too much? Too early? I'm sorry.
Speaking of disgusting things -- can we talk about BEETs? Seems you either love 'em or hate 'em, and I'd bet a buck and a beer there's some sort of genetic basis for that. Just like some people love cilantro, and for others it tastes like soap. (I love cilantro.) What amazes me though is that an entire continent of people seems to be mad, in a welcoming way, about BEETs -- I'm talking about Australia, where the burgers always seem to feature a big slab-o-BEET. Yuk! Don't do that! I do find them tolerable in BEET, goat cheese, walnut, and arugula salad, but that's about it.
Anyway, I'm inclined to agree with Rex that BEET REPORT isn't quite as successful as the others. Agree with various people that HOME CHEF didn't really need or warrant a commercial cluing (I hadn't heard of it either).
Side note: yes, The ELKS is a fraternal organization in the US. Communists and atheists need not apply. There's an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry has gotten himself kicked out of his country club and needs to join a new one (because of, you know, golf), and the only suitable one leans heavily white Republican Gentile. So Larry and Cheryl in their interview present a bunch of phony credentials, and the interviewers, asking what fraternal organizations they belong to, are suitably impressed when Larry declares, "I'm a Moose. And an Elk." Here's some additional oddly fascinating info.
Average-ish Monday solving time.
@albatross shell (8:28)
The Masefield is one of my favorite poems of all time, from childhood to now. So evocative, almost cinematic, and a wonderful poem to read aloud with all those S, SH, W and WH sounds. Thanks.
I have no problem with SPOOR or SPUME, both terrific words, if tough for a Monday. Like @thfenn (7:30), I had too narrow a view of the meaning of SPOOR. I also thought "change into different forms" was an interesting clue for VARY: metamorphosis, rather than simply "being of different kinds."
@People - Please ignore @Rex's musings regarding moose. They are the most dangerous animals in the woodlands; they harm far more people that bear, mountain lions and wolves combined. They're not out to get you as the bears, wolves and lions may be, but they're much more common, they are huge and have horns, and they will protect their young (which was all the bears, wolves and mountain lions were likely doing).
@Unknown 8:48AM
The cluing for 39 Down explicitly says, "Popular meal kit company", so in response to "not a deliberate promotion of some obscure company", I think one could at least confidently assert that it was a deliberate mention of some (obscure) company. To me it was slightly gratuitous, as HOME CHEF is absolutely a standalone phrase, not needing a commercial tie-in. (But I'm not gonna SPUME with outrage about it.)
Hey All !
SPOOR and SPUMES and STOOLs, oh my!
SOO is also a Railroad name.
Fun, punny puz. The themers are neat. I have to agree with Rex that the "Moms" were added, and the Revealer was just thrown in because it happened to be there. Anyone read xword.info to see?
Many EE's and OO's today. Or it seems, anyway. Clean fill, which is nice. No screed from Rex on GOP. Figured he'd lose his decorum.
Debuts like crazy these past 6 months. I guess people were bored sitting at home, so tried their hand at construction. Does Will get now over 400 submissions every week instead of 200? Curioser and curiouser.
"Here, chocolate! Here, creamy chocolate!" - That's my MOUSSE CALL!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Popular meal kit company (or the mother of the food critic featured in this puzzle?) is not a revealer clue. It's an additional clue/answer that neatly pulls it all together.
Product placement? PFFT!
I'll bet MUSSEL MEMORY was the impulse behind the puzzle, since it's the cutest, most amusing, and least forced of the themers. I can also imagine the constructor tossing in bed at 2 a.m., trying to come up with homophone food phrases containing the right number of letters. I know what that feels like: you may not sleep again until you've nailed your theme answers.
From my standpoint as solver, it was easy and pleasant -- with no brain cells unduly disturbed. "Beat report" really isn't a phrase I've often if ever heard (maybe I don't watch enough police procedurals) so BEET REPORT doesn't work so well for me. And I don't know why you have to use the product name of a "meal kit" to clue HOME CHEF when there are cleverer non-PPP ways to clue it. But all in all, a breezy and good-natured Monday.
Flummoxed was my state through most of this. I was able to proceed through the grid okay, but kept looking in the rear view mirror at BEET REPORT with incomprehension, repeatedly returning to the scene to check its crosses. Finally decided it must have to do with a cop on his beat. And I finally got the joke that "Mom" was the HOME CHEF.
Worth the price of admission: MUSSEL MEMORY, a terrific pun and so apt for many who have suffered a shellfish "incident."
Kvetcher's Korner: Chocolate pudding = MOUSSE? Not around here. Pudding either comes from a Jello box or is cooked on the stove, thickened with cornstarch.
@Frantic Sloth, forgive me for piling on about pretzel rolls. At our supermarket they're so popular that they're not in the bread aisle itself but arrayed on a dedicated table. Get there early.
@Barbara S. - The Hart Crane, my goodness! I need to find out more - thank you for this excerpt.
My five favorite clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Where Boxing Day comes before Christmas, in brief (3)
2. Is the pope Catholic? (3)
3. Spots for spots? (8)
4. In-flight call? (5)(2)(5)
5. Answer that would be more apt at 10D?
OED
YES
TEAROOMS
HEADS OR TAILS
TOES
This was so fast and easy for me—didn’t consider the mom thing.
Usually ponder theme when answers are not so immediate.
Not complaining about a Monday being too easy (and not bragging!) but this one was meh, maybe for the reasons Rex gave.
On the other hand, what’s not to love about breaking a speed barrier?
🤗❤️🤗
@Unknown 8:48 & @Anon9:47 - @TTrimble already took care of pointing out that the revealer clue explicitly mentions the company, I’ll add that the parenthetical after the clue is the typical way of indicating that this is the clue that reveals the theme. And, of course, nobody seriously thinks that HOME CHEF paid to appear. Let me suggest that just about anytime you are wondering if someone here is being serious or sarcastically satirical you should opt for the latter.
@Jack Hannah - Anybody foolish enough to approach a creature bigger than themselves with antlers based on an aside in a crossword blog deserves what they get. But, yeah, Big wild animals with antlers or tusks or horns? Stay away.
@unknown 8:48 - Right with you on SPOOR and SPUME. I got them completely from the crosses, so I didn’t even realize they were in the puzzle until all the plaints appeared. They both seem perfectly cromulent Monday words to me.
I don’t quite know what to say. I struggled to categorize my reaction and Rex came close with preposterous. I’m still reeling from BEET REPORT. It was like expecting a novel and getting a comic book. I approach crosswords with the hope of being a little smarter when I finish. Is it too much to ASK OF one that it not make me feel less so? Every NYT publication is a noteworthy accomplishment for the constructor, but this one won’t be making my greatest-hits list.
MOUSSE isn’t really the same as pudding but I could see how a kid would think so. It struck me that having Modern Family and All In The Family in the same clue was the ultimate juxtaposition of sitcoms.
@Frantic 12:06 AM. IAs @Dittie points out, pretzel rolls do exist and when used for a particularly juicy sammich are both delish and appropriate. They are a tad denser than a typical burger bun (or roll depending on your locale) and have a shiny top like a pretzel and may or may not be salted ir seeded. Very popular these days.
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine
So shoot me, but I’m with those who enjoyed this. Most fun I have had on a Monday in ages! This seems to me exactly the type of silliness that might attract a new solver and encourage her to persevere. I actually laughed at several of these, particularly ROLL REVERSAL.
The puzzle was a tad more difficult than many Monday’s but still falls within the Monday difficulty range, at least to me. I liked ODIE popping up again; seems like an AGE since we have seen either him or his buddy, Garfield.
My avatar-cat gives me what I call her flat-eyebrow “Garfield look” when she is displeased with me (usually when treat-begging is unsuccessful). Her Torby-cat sister plays the ODIE-dufus (albeit as a much more sophisticated version being feline and all) at my house; always falls for whatever ruse or prank her “big sister” cooks up.
Thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle and the solve.
Naming a company is neither an endorsement nor product placement. Sheesh.
Ironic that someone would call Home Chef an obscure company. Normally I'd say they don't get out much, but of course Home Chef is designed to allow you to stay at home. Hmm. What a pickle.
@Lewis, two of your five were my least favorite. But I agree with you puzzle analysis today.
Todays puzzle was far better than the run of the mill Mondays I am used to. It seems, from judging the comments, that many of our responders have either recently entered the country or have never left their house.
Thank you, @Barbara S.,for the Rousseau quote. Interesting how so many of the thoughts of writers from centuries ago are still so relevant to our current times.
And now we are getting more quote submittals. Maybe we should designate one day per month when we all submit one of our favorites ? I mean we are all so erudite and well-read. ( Not you, Beaver.)
Interesting that in the app, EURO was clued as an analogy with symbols referencing the dollar and in the printed version, it was "Continental currency"
I originally thought of sea foams as the churned up water in the surf, ala froth, and had the lovely SPrayS. (I now see the poem with the 2 terms in the same sentence, thanks @albatross)
@Z, would you count the reveal as PPP since it is clued in a way that you don't need to know the product? Seems more like a bonus, although not as tight.
@Jack Hannah(haha), thanks for the moose PSA - especially important during mating season. For some reason, my youtube feed was recently featuring tourists taking selfies next to enormous bison in national parks - these do not end well.
@Carola - good point about the difference between chocolate pudding (MEGAFLOP) and mousse (SOO good)...sorry, I'll show myself out.
My Mussel memory is seeing all the buoys in the waters off Prince Edward Island holding lines with mussel "seeds" that dine under the ice during the winter.
Did Rex really have to go all grawlix on us because a mom is making meals for her kids? Sure, dad can cook, and mom doesn't have to be relegated to household tasks, but this is a scenario that is totally plausible, happens millions of times a day, and is as unoffensive and pleasant as possible other than the fussy kid.
The presence of ECOLI in this food-themed puzzle makes me a bit uncomfortable, kind of like the lobster tails I left in the fridge for 2 days recently.
A puzzle constructed by a schoolteacher, voiced by children. Of course.
The solve reminded me of my elementary school aged kids, wearing the cute clothes I picked out for them, left in rooms filled with primary colors, under the instruction of pleasant teachers. Innocent, happy, and lighthearted.
By high school I was dropping them at a safe distance off where people couldn't see they weren't driving themselves, to march in with the ragged zombie hoards who'd stayed up all night gaming.
Agree with @Nancy on Mussel Memory. Never heard of a beet report and my first job after college was as a reporter.
There should be a better word for sea foam than Spume. Like … sea foam. Spume will haunt me at the beach forevermore. Once had a nightmare about being charged by a Moose in an open field. Blame Bullwinkle for Rex's confusion.
@jae (12:38 AM)
Thx, looking forward to the challenge. :)
___
g -17
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Tolerance ~ Health ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Barbara S and @albatross shell -- The Masefield is one of my favorite poems since childhood also, and I still know SEA FEVER by heart because I learned it young. It was so completely effortless then; it's so difficult now.
I never learned any poems by Hart Crane and I only remember one thing about him. Our "house mother" at Emerson House at Smith College claimed to have been his girlfriend/mistress back in the day. I can't remember this woman's name for the life of me, only that she seemed very odd, was fairly unattractive, and wore far too much lipstick and rouge. I alternated between finding her Hart Crane story largely exaggerated and believing her, but then questioning Hart Crane's taste in woman.
I've never tried a home meal kit delivery service, but a quick internet query suggests that HOME CHEF is not an obscure company in that growing industry, Most of the sites I glanced at list it first, with Hello Fresh being the other most frequently mentioned.
As Nancy said, "Good-natured."
Brava, Pamela! Only six Terrible Threes. But that gave you room for more longs.
Very disappointed to see that the abominable clue for TOES made Lewis's list.
Learned the definition of SPOOR. I knew that it had to do with the trail of an animal being pursued but not its odor.
@albatross shell (8:28). Thanks for reminding me of the wonderful Mansfield poem. I hadn't seen it since high school.
A very fine debut and it isn’t the constructors fault if it is in Monday rather than Tuesday position. @TTrimble, I agree with you about the “love them or hate them” reference to beets. I have three things that I could not stomach as a child and at age 66 I still cannot stomach: beets, turnips, and hominy (yeah, hominy). I have “re-tried” these several times as an adult. It goes into my mouth, I think “this isn’t bad”…then the horrible after-taste hits me! Really ticks me off about beets since they have been dubbed a “super food” but I’ve decided my tolerance for the taste of kale might make up for that.
I guess all the comments about SPOOR and SPUME are in the sarcastic satirical vein as per @Z but let me add PUS and MUCOUS to the list.
@Nancy, Was her name Jean Brodie?
@Barbara: Such a thought-provoking quote today. I’m a person who enjoys idle time and I actually schedule my days to allow for it. To those who insist on declaring that doing so is a waste of time, my response is that if “doing nothing” is how I want to spend my time, then I have not wasted anything.
@Beat it: Love me some turnips in any form and BEETs if they’re pickled but hominy has to be one of the most disgusting things ever put on a plate. It’s one of the very few things I absolutely refuse to eat.
@Anonymous (8:44) Is that you JOHN X??? Hope you don’t get too comfortable with those trees. We’d miss you.
Full of Dad jokes. Wait, Mom jokes. Wait, who cares. Just too corny for me. Also too easy but after all it’s a Monday so appropriate.
@burtonkd - The second P of PPP is for “Product Names,” so HOME CHEF as clued definitely qualifies. That it is unnecessary to clue it as a product and that its revealer status means people do not need to know the company to suss out the answer are not things I normally factor in. As a general rule I tend to err on the side of counting an answer as PPP if there is any reason to do so, but I will mention hard to categorize answers when it seems relevant. I have noticed that I haven’t been moved to do lots of full PPP Analyses lately, as there have not been all that many puzzles engendering wide-spread complaints.
@Shé di Felina - Descriptions of color are rather loose. While some beets (beetroot) may technically be closer to purple/magenta than red, in at least US English (and many other languages) they are generally considered red, as in the phrase "red as a beet" or the description "beet-red." (And some varieties very much are red, not purple.) In Polish they are considered czerwone ("red.") In Hungarian, vörös (red/"earthy red.") In German, it's "Rote Bete" ("red beet.") To be honest, I've never heard anyone refer to them generally as purple. It's a bit like "school bus yellow" here in the US which, objectively, is often closer to orange than yellow. Or like "red onions" which are really purple (and, in fact, in Hungary are known as "purple onions," while the yellow/Spanish onions are called "red/vörös onions.")
Anyhow, average time here on this puzzle. Never heard of SPOOR (I already forgot what it means), and SPUME I was able to find in the deep recesses of my mind as something that may be a thing, but I wasn't sure. It looked like a reasonable assortment of consonants and vowels.
Never heard of HOME CHEF. Having worked for a few years in a newsroom, I agree "BEAT REPORT" sounds a bit forced. BEAT REPORTer, sure. BEAT REPORT? I guess. Pretty sure that phrase has never been uttered in the newsrooms I've worked at.
Why Mom? Because she's a far better cook than Dad!
One of my five favorite movies of all time, @JD (11:15). And our house mother should have been so lucky as to look like the young(ish) Maggie Smith.
Actually, I did remember her name just now, walking in the heat on the shady side of the street. It was Mrs. Babcock. Marjorie, I think, if memory serves.
Fun Monday puzzle with puns and some good cluing. Would have preferred "red stuff" to red thing." Later week clue for GOER might reference Monty Python. Nudge, nudge. Say no more.
SOO sorry for anyone who doesn’t see Buona SERA and immediately think Puccini.
Il Tabarro - O eterni innamorati, buona sera
La rondine - Buonasera
Shifting GEARs, those enumerating the food entries forgot EYEBALLS. Maybe the constructor had soup in mind: PLOP, SPUME, EWE. James Cordon TRADEs CHEF Gordon Ramsey an EYEBALL for an EYEBALL
Bon appetit!
Thanks, @Barbara S and @albatross shell, excellent quotes. Forgot to mention I liked seeing POEM over JAM.
No, I'm wrong. It was Margaret Babcock.
Not half bad for remembering all the way back to Freshman Year in College, right?
https://www.homechef.com/
Product placement. I wonder what the NYTimes charges for this.
Regarding yesterbee (no spoiler here). How could a crossword constructor not have ETUI on the Bee word list?
@BEE-ER
In SB, if you click on the yellow circle showing your score, the "Rankings" info will appear. Right underneath are email addresses that allow you to provide feedback and list words that SB missed.
Moose is bad. Squirrel is bad. We must get them.
Geez, Rex. Let the constructor have her moment. Obviously this was her personal experience and not a treatise on gender equality. You of all people should appreciate the "personal" touch given the daily dose of it you share with us. Your blog, your rules. My comment, my opinion.
@Conrad 530am Thanks, dude! Obviously you've confused me with someone who has a modicum of ambition. But your comment did prompt me to perform the arduous task of Googling "pretzel roll" and dang, if they don't look delish! Plus, had I given it any real thought, I would have remembered soft pretzels (duh!) which I do like. 😋
@oceanjeremy 536am I would never run across a pretzel roll. What a tragic waste of an obviously (now) delicious treat! 😉 (sorry)
@pabloinnh 644am Thanks for the DP. You're right - it never gets old!
@Dottie Parker 648am Right below @pablo's comment! Freaky. And thanks. 🙂
@MarthaCatherine 741am Exactly! And a better description, if a tad less appealing. 😉
@Carola 1000am Pile away! The more, the merrier! 😊 Are the pretzel rolls made fresh there at the supermarket? I might set an alarm.
@CDilly52 1023am Thank you for the detailed description. Now I might have to kill for one. 😉
1037am That's my favorite cat look. Google "skeptical cat" and be rewarded!
@JD 1045am Gotta work on your June Cleaver impression, dude. Next up: SPUME-surfing moose crashing on your beach.
Also never heard of HOME CHEF, but the same could be said about a lot of things for me. Witness pretzel roll.
No reaction to SPUMES (except obvi POC) or SPOOR, but thanks for [gag] "moist" [gulp], Rex. 🤣
---- SB Alert ----
It's been my experience that the NYT is not interested in feedback regarding their inclusion/exclusion decisions. Generally, you will receive one of two canned responses indicating that they don't accept proper names/nouns, contractions or words they consider obscure. Unfortunately they have some unusual ideas as to what obscure means.
Once I figured out the theme this went pretty easy for me, about 50 secs faster than my Monday average. Nice seeing Phillipa Soo pop up.
@A 1159am 🤣🤣 EYEBALLS, PLOP, SPUME, EWE. Lucky for me breakfast was hours ago.
@Nancy, Yes, amazing! I read the Miss Jean Brodie book last year and then went on a Muriel Spark binge.
After that I rewatched the movie (free) here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lOF08n-M5M
Close the shades, turn on a fan and enjoy.
@Whatsername The only waste of time is doing things you don't enjoy that aren't absolutely necessary or that you can't pay someone else to do.
I added a few nanocseconds to my time with a poor assumption at 21A. Seeing EYE in place, and with the tense of the clue, I splatzed in EYEs and expected something like EYEs up, only longer, to fill in. So when EYEsALLS was in place, I was at sea. I checked twice, all crosses of ALLS were correct. Finally I tried 22D. D'oh!
BEET REPORT didn't make much sense to me, so ROLL REVERSAL was only slightly funny. But MUSSEL MEMORY was quite good and MOUSSE CALL took the pudding. Certainly, it didn't have to be Mom making all of these dishes - my husband makes a wonderful mousse - but I think Rex over-reacted there.
Pamela F. Davis, this is a lovely Monday puzzle - thanks and congratulations on your NY Times debut!
@A -- I didn't know these, but immediately thought of Rossini.
Buono Sera, mia signore
Then I clicked on your link for La Rondine, and what did I see but an ad for HOME CHEF!
@burton -- In my paper, EURO was clued by the symbols; but perhaps you meant a paper version printed out from the website (I've never paid for the online puzzle, since I'm already paying for the paper, so I'm not sure how that works.
The most fun for me was thinking for most of the solve that the food critic referred to was some actual newspaper or TV food critic, who had a shtick involving his mother. I needed the revealer to recognize what was going on, which was neat. BTW, I don't think the revealer works if it doesn't have two meanings, so the product placement is essential to the theme.
It was nice to see AGAVE crossed by its old friend ALOE.
I don't get the idea of words being repugnant in and of themselves. SPUME and SPOOR both have nice rounded vowel sounds, and are useful in conversation or narrative writing -- the former is what bloodhounds pick up, the latter is more colorful than foam, or so it seems to me.
As for the MOUSSE CALL -- first of all, the words do describe the sound made by a bull moose, but they also refer to a gadget you can stick in your mouth and blow into to imitate that sound, thereby (at least in mating season) luring the moose to come charging toward you, whereupon you shoot him. I've never done this, but it's a pretty well-known technique. And yes, moose can be dangerous (though the danger is easily avoided), but that's now why they are hunted. They are hunted for their meat. In Maine, where moose abound, many rural people are poor and have a hard time making it through the winter; a moose can feed a family for quite a while, and the cost of a license is far less than the cost of that much meat. (And if it's rural enough, and you can ELUDE the wardens, you can skip the license.)
@Nancy --- at first I thought Hart Crane was too old to fit that story, but then I realized I was thinking of Bret Harte. Oops.
@Nancy – maybe you want to take a gander at this.
"Beat report" immediately sounded idiotic to me, as if a beat reporter files an over-arching piece covering their entire area. Thanks to all the pros here who called it out as not a "thing".
Well, who doesn't love a sweet Monday puzzle full of food and little seven year old puns?
Q: What happens when veggies throw a party?
A: They get a DJ to turnip the BEET.
I'm betting our friend, @burtonkd could whip up a little sufferin' succotash with EYE BALL MOUSSE and a side of ADOBO JAM. PLOP PLOP fizz fizz OH what ECOLI is....
En hora buena, Pamela...on your debut. This was fun and don't read Mr. Grumpy pants.
@Frantic, Har! Teenagers, they broke me. The laundry room became the walk-in hamper. The kitchen was opened 24-hours-a-day. Dishes and flatware disappeared into bedrooms never to be seen again.
I once called on the way home to ask them to preheat the oven so I could throw in something frozen for dinner and I heard my daughter yell to my son in the background, "Tell her we can't do this every day!" It's known as The Day the Cookie Baker Checked Out.
And thanks for Spume Surfing Moose! Now that's stuck in my head.
PS, I meant HORDES.
Embarrassed by the misspelling of their job description, the BEaT REPORTERS ran down 17th St, through the intersection at 18th Ave, then all the way down to the third block of 9th Ave and turned right. (They were headed for the bureau at 26th St, to REFILE their stories.)
@TJS -- I bet I know what those two are.
@mathgent -- I was waiting for your pan of my inclusion of that clue after your comment about it on the day it ran.
Joe Dipinto (1:54) -- HOLY COW, THAT'S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The most interesting link on this blog or any blog that anyone has ever put up for me to see that wasn't about my own family.*
*And I don't think anyone's ever put a link up about my own family.
I hang my head in shame that you went searching for this, Joe, and I never thought of doing so. It's just incredible that it exists and that you found it! So there must have been some secret side benefits involved in that Hart Crane oral history.
@JD 203pm 🤣🤣🤣 I lost it on "Tell her we can't do this every day!" Oh, the humanity! Happy to hear nobody is amassing zombies. New on TLC:
Zombie Hoarders: They'll be soooorry!
Some days I'm doing a puzzle and all that gets me through it is thinking "Man, I can't wait to read Rex Parker f**king destroy this." Today was one of those days.
The 98 transcript ends with this, I wonder what happened next?
ROBERT BROWN: We'll talk about your affair with Malcolm Cowley and how—I've turned—how you introduced him to his wife. [00:22:02]
MARGARET MERAS BABCOCK: And Hart Crane and Peter Blume. You [inaudible]—
JEFFREY PITMAN: Granny, can I interrupt for a second?
ROBERT BROWN: Yeah.
@Nancy – Yeah it was pretty exhausting -- I typed in "Hart Crane Margaret Babcock". Well now you'll have to tell us what it says. :-)
@Nancy
If you do put in that pair of names you should also find an article about exciting news for Hart Crane fans. It has an announcement from the Hart Crane Society that has links to the movie Searching for hart Crane that includes Babcock. And a link to The New Yorker on the same. Some interesting comments (... they shared an interest in drinking and sailors...).
And beyond that you will find the recording of Babcock about Crane.
The poetry Foundation article claims Peggy Baird, Cowley's wife, was Crane's only known heterosexual relationship. But really how would they know?
@math gent
Sorry I flubbed on Karen Black Saturday. Confused movies. The outfit. Duvall not Marvin. If you want a memory never try anything JOHNX sends you. I'm undecided on the issue.
Sure, Joe -- I could have found that link just as easily as you did and in exactly the same way. But you thought to look for it...and I didn't :)
Good question.
@Lewis, thanks for another excellent review; I also hope we see more from this promising constructor.
Now everyone’s been spewing about them, I think I rather like the words SPOOR and SPUME.
Like @Whatsername, I like to finish a little smarter. Today, I did that by learning that spoor is from from cognates Middle Dutch and Old English spor "footprint, track, trace.”
And SPUME shares its Latin root, spuma (foam) with SPUMoni.
@Frantic, I was hoping it was well past breakfast for most. Good thing @OffTheGrid and @Z didn’t think of EYEBALL soup. Loved @GILL I’s EYE BALL MOUSSE at 2:00.
@jberg, thanks for the awesome Barber of Seville video.
@albatross shell, @Barbara S, @Nancy, @mathgent and other Masefield fans - you might like John Ireland’s setting of Sea Fever. At first it’s strange to have the music but it’s sensitively done and really captures the compelling nature of the verse.
Worst Monday ever . . .. Really, really,really bad!
Take a fun puzzle and criticize it for criticism's sake. . . That's what I do.. . . Cheers.
@A – I like that Ireland setting, I have recordings by Bryn Terfel and Christopher Maltman. It's very popular with baritones! Paul Robeson recorded it too.
@Peter I was being rather pedantic, I admit. I think because in the context of the clue it's a naive read of something for which the fictional child doesn't have a name (hence it being a 'red thing') it made me question whether someone who didn't know it as beetroot and therefore didn't have the cultural association between beetroot and red would see it as red rather than the colour it actually most resembles. But I recognise this is a rather esoteric musing for a crossword clue! I'd quibble that 'red onion' is a bit different because, whilst they are indeed not red, that is what we call them rather than how we describe their colour (even if that is how they originally got their name). I don't think anyone would describe a dish made of red onions as red, for example.
Thanks for the clarifications on ELKS - I do like it when I learn something from a puzzle.
Hi everyone! Newbie commenter here...I found this puzzle a yawn, and sometimes an annoying one. For me, the only tickle was, oddly, was “it’s a crime to lie under it” = OATH, And what did I miss with the clue for DOTELL...”Oooh, spill the tea”? Tea? Somebody?
It had potential. Too bad it was such a lunchbag letdown.
JAM PREP
When EYEBALL EWE, EYE'll start ON top,
so DON'T PRECLUDE this MEMORY:
we'll TRADE spots in a MEGAFLOP;
with ROLLREVERSAL EWE'll be ONME.
--- REBA ZETA-STREEP
Yesterday Julia Child, and now this? You put all this food in--and then you infect it with ECOLI. Also EYEBALLS, in this context, brings up (!) a vision of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, at that awful dinner. If ever there was a breakfast-test MEGAFLOP, this is it.
I wouldn't call it challenging; the clues are so Monday-simple as to elicit a series of "Duh!"s: "Gradually wear away, as soil," etc. I did pause a bit starting out, trying to make even punnish sense of BEETREPORT. Didn't work for me.
A lot of the fill is equally unappetizing. This grid has two saving graces: ADOBO, which I regularly use, and the DOD stage, where Catherine ZETA-Jones wins on a tie-break from STREEP and REBA. But they only saved a big number; the whole thing is still a bogey.
I don't think this one makes puzzle of the week.
Second-string HOMECHEF today? meetsubstitute.
Despite the competition, Ms. SOO earns a yeah baby.
In that vein, Happy 70th @Diana, LIW. You can't possibly be.
EZ puz will soon fade from MEMORY.
Some cleverness and bite (literally) for a Monday. Here’s the scene:
Theme is that mom, the HOME CHEF, is dealing with her fussy child all the way through the ordeal (i.e., the themers). The ADOBO with "chili pepper" gives her child a bit more to fuss about; and maybe the SPUD and the AGAVE do, too. Through it all, we admire mom for her patience. We might even consider awarding this scene an EMMY?
Elsewhere...paused over SPOOR as "scent of an animal”, and SPUMES, a good word for “sea foams”.
A bit of a Monday stretch, due to the usual unknown PPP answers. However, did manage to suss it all out.
HOMECHEF - really? You really need a box of stuff to make a meal? I was a better cook than that when I was 7.
Thanks, @Rondo. I'm still chugging along!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
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