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Smile with one's eyes, per a modern coinage / SUN 7-11-21 / Campania's capital / Law enforcement slangily / Getting amscray under control / McEachem aka the voice of poker / Where Johnny Cash shot a man in song / Bruins legend Phil to fans / Gay city in Cole Porter song / Appetizers filled with potatoes and peas
Sunday, July 11, 2021
Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
When I started this one, I thought (feared?) I was embarking on another one of those Sunday themelesses that seem to be popping up more and more in recent years. The grid looked really wide open (just giant NW / SE corners, for instance), and I figured that was because themeless grids (Fri, Sat) are often more wide open than themed (without themers to hold you back, you can go to a lower word count much more easily). I rationalized this early mistaken belief by interpreting the title ("NO RUSE") as a kind of literal description of themelessness. "Hey, y'all, no tricks today, just fill!" But then after a minute or two I hit GOOP DYNAMICS and realized I had completely misread the situation. Instead, I was dealing with a pretty standard sound-change theme, the likes of which I've seen on Sunday puzzles since time immemorial, or at least since the early '90s when I started solving (holy cow it's been 30 years now!). In this one, there is "no 'R' use," right? I say "right?" uncertainly because I don't really get the part of the theme where the affected words in the wacky answers *all* have to be "OO" words. What's that about? I ask because my god TAMING OF THE SHOO is so awful. There's no conceivable clue that can make that good. A "SHOO" is not a noun and you cannot do anything to it, even wackily. That answer should've been TAMING OF THE SHOE ... and the only reason I can fathom that it *isn't* TAMING OF THE SHOE is that there is some idea that the "OO" thing is part of the theme. But ... but ... if the whole deal is just dropping the "R," then again, I ask, Why??? Why SHOO?!? (I see that "shoe" is in the BOOT STRENGTH clue, but that can be rewritten).
- BURDEN OF POOF (24A: Onus for a magician's disappearing act?)
- GOOP DYNAMICS (26A: Study of how gels gel?)
- MILWAUKEE BOOERS (56A: Angry Wisconsin sports fans?)
- TAMING OF THE SHOO (80A: Getting "Amscray!" under control?)
- BOOT STRENGTH (110A: Power of a cowboy's shoe?)
- PENELOPE COOS (116A: Odysseus' wife whispers sweet nothings?)
- YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TOOTH (10D: Dramatic accusation at a dentist's office?)
Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi HI PP (Urdu: عمران احمد خان نیازی, born 5 October 1952) is the 22nd and current Prime Minister of Pakistan and the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Before entering politics, Khan was an international cricketer and captain of the Pakistan national cricket team, which he led to victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. He was chancellor of the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom from 2005 to 2014.
Khan was born to a Pashtun family in Lahore in 1952, and graduated from Keble College, Oxford in 1975. He began his international cricket career at age 18, in a 1971 Test series against England. Khan played until 1992, served as the team's captain intermittently between 1982 and 1992, and won the Cricket World Cup, in what is Pakistan's first and only victory in the competition. Considered one of cricket's greatest ever all-rounders, Khan registered 3,807 runs and took 362 wickets in Test cricket and was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. (wikipedia)
• • •
Also, why is this dumb JIM MORRISON stuff in here, in huge answers, in parallel positions? How is that related to the theme? Is it? Maybe it's just 'cause I don't really care for The Doors, but what a huge distraction. Go find some Doors puzzle to be in, MR. MOJO RISIN'! Speaking of, thank god that clue said the answer was "anagrammatic," because yikes that part where it crosses IMRAN (?) and DRACO (!?) (49A: Constellation almost above the North Pole) was *perilous*. Proper noun proper noun proper noun, none of them exactly household. Yikes. But the "anagrammatic" part made it all eventually gettable. Still, not sure why the Doors guy is here at all. Does he have a song about "ruses" or something? Baffling. But back to the theme. It's basic. Some of the answers are cute (MILWAUKEE BOOERS, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TOOTH!), some less so (the SHOO thing, mainly). As for the fill, it seems mainly OK. There are a few high points (really like NPRTOTES as a full answer; same with NERFBALLS; and PALAK paneer and K-TOWN give the grid some short-fill flair). What in the seventh ring of hell (violence!) are MCBITES!?!?! (9D: Chicken ___ (discontinued fast-food snack)). When were those "discontinued"? Were they a proto-McNugget? A McNugget spin-off? [checks internet] Ew, they're like mini-McNuggets ... and they came in chicken and (oof) fish!? Anyway, I SMIZEd at MCBITES (and at SMIZE, tbh) (72D: Smile with one's eyes, per a modern coinage). R.I.P. MCBITES (2012-2013) (though according to at least one internet comment, MCBITES are still alive in Australia!) (or were as of 2020).
[warning: animated food in semi-sexual situations]
Five things:
- 15D: Bands you might listen to in the car? (AM/FM RADIO) — nice (if coincidental) throwback to a theme from earlier in the week
- 51D: Grammy-nominated D.J. Steve (AOKI) — nice alternative to [Golfer Isao]
- 18D: God who "loosens the limbs and weakens the mind," per Hesiod (EROS) — I just read the "God" part and the "Hesiod" part, looked at the letters I had in place, and went with ARES; it's hard to argue that ARES is *not* a plausible answer; all's loose limbs and weak minds in love and war!
- 66A: Total-itarian? (ADDER) — I see what you're doing there, but don't waste your cleverness on a truly terrible word like ADDER (unless you're cluing the snake, then absolutely be clever as heck if you want; but "one who adds," oof, no)
- 27D: Île be there (MER) — now that's what I'm talking about. If you're gonna be clever, stick the landing! I relaughed typing this clue in just now. It's perfect. No, really, I just laughed again, imagining some French guy pointing. It works on so many levels!
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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108 comments:
@albie from yesterday - I think what @Z is looking for vis-à-vis Franco might involve some BURDENOFPOOF.
The title of this puzzle is "NO RUSE", one of those tricky schticks that have you parse out a word by some or all of its individual letters. For the life of me, I can't remember any earlier examples - maybe even from this same constructor. (Paging @Z or @Lewis (if he's back yet, which I doubt) or @Roo or @M&A or anyone who might know.)
I have enjoyed them in the past despite my usually ending up in the ER sporting a pummeled forehead like it's a headdress or Klingon makeup.
But I'm onto this chicanery by now and it's only taken me several decades. Whip through water, I.
NO "R" [in] USE throughout these common phrases = ensuing hilarity.
Or so it would seem to be the aim here.
Don't know about hilarious, but it was entertaining and clever. I had a good time trying to get the themers (once I got the drift after BURDENOFPOOF) without any crosses - or as few as possible.
This upped the difficulty a bit which I deemed necessary since the rest of the grid was like a big Mondee or Tuesdee.
Perhaps it didn't end in EUPHORIA, but the NPRTOTE parting gift was nice.
🧠.5
🎉🎉🎉
Medium. Just about the right amount of amusing for a Sunday, liked it.
For those averse to PPP cross-cluing, more naticks than you can shake a STICK at, esp. in the lower NW. Kinda gettin' worn out by these Sunday PPP slogs...
It has been a good weekend with fun and well done puzzles Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each of them better than the usual fare for those days. As a 50 year MILWAUKEE BOOERS fan who agonized during games six and seven in 1982 in St. Louis it was fun to see them make the cut. Vertical seed entry was a classic. Weird that I wrote in EUPHORIA totally on the clue Bliss with nothing else in that corner. Rarely happens. Fun themers, colorful fill, mostly clever clues.
Go England. And Bucks.
When doing puzzles from the archive on the NYT app, what do the “gold” and “blue” xword icons mean? Thanks.
Too many proper nouns and very unfunny theme made this a slog. Some of the obscure names crossed each other
That was fun. I’ll bet @Carola and I have the same favorite long one, 56A, our home city.
I actually liked all of the theme answers. No complaints here.
Every Sunday I continue to marvel at the superfluousness of Will Shortz's little notes. Today we get this helpful nugget of information:
The seed entry of this puzzle was 10-Down, which came to Ashish while he was at the dentist's.
No. Really? You're kidding. I mean, I would never in a million years have guessed that's where he was when he thought of it, given that "dentist" and "tooth" are in the clue and answer. It's just too improbable.
Jeff Chen praises the architecture of this thing, which I can see is complex, but – sorry, most of these theme answers are just not amusing. And NO RUSE as a title? Wtf is up with that‽‽
It is kind of weird having Jim Morrison make an appearance, but it's okay with me, actually. Unlike Rex, I love the Doors.
The theme doesn't make sense to me. Or maybe it's just the title that is flawed. The theme answers don't just replace a "roo" sound with an "oo" sound; they specifically replace it with the letters OO (thus making "shoe" off limits). That specific trickery/limitation is not adequately conveyed if you parse the title as "no R use." And if you parse the title as the homophone "no roos," it doesn't work because the entire "roo" sound isn't removed.
@anon 1:32: I think the "gold" icons are puzzles that you solved successfully on the day the puzzle came out with no cheats ("Check" or "Reveal"; obviously, the app doesn't know if you Googled or phoned a friend). The "blue" icons are where you solved successfully but on a later day or with one or more "cheat."
Unfortunately I made the mistake of thinking that a Greentit and an English Tit might be kinds of birds, and didn't really pay attention to the clue on 98A.
Rex Rex Rex. How could you not Reach Out? Or at least fill your heart with joy and laughter. Usually your video game is top notch, but today it seems you were stuck in second gear.
I’m probably still the commentator most likely to agree with Rex, but we part ways on TAMING OF THE SHOO. So So So Bad that you have to groan because it is so good. When you go wacky go big or go home. That one is so absurd that it laps absurdity and becomes surd. Rex is all “it doesn’t make sense,” which,… C’mon man, that. is. the. point! How can you (rightfully) love “île be there” and not love TAMING OF THE SHOO. Now I’m imagining Kenneth Brannagh, Emma Thompson, and Keanu Reeves(?) riffing on some Shakespeare puns. Oh well, probably just much ado about nothing.
@Frantic Sloth - That’s right. The BURDEN OF POOF is on @albie. 😂🤣😂
Starting with DRESSAGE and ending with NPR TOTES says something about the NYTX solving community.And what it says evokes the same emotion in me as learning that The Boss’ daughter made the Olympic Equestrian Team. Yep, these two lanes can take you anywhere, but I’m not sure DRESSAGE is the where we were expecting. 🐎🐎
@Anoa Bob late - To summarize our schism, Yes, Latin is a dead language, but English isn’t. Just because some people studying hieroglyphs stole a Latin word first doesn’t mean they own it.
It was the 50th anniversary of Jim Morrison's death last week, so maybe 36D and 40D were an homage to him?
YOUCANTHANDLETHETOOTH elicited the usual groan from my wife. We're always joking about how A Few Good Men airs on cable pretty much every night. And how I always watch that scene.
Not sure with this one - theme was Sunday typical corny but thought the overall fill was solid. I did like how all of the themers interconnect with the long vertical spanner - that does put the cuffs on the constructor. There is some short glue here and there but starting off with DRESSAGE and UNPOISED and finishing with EUPHORIA and NPR TOTES is pretty nifty. Add SAGELY, EN MASSE, BELIE and the ribald (for the NYT) NOONER adjacent to EROS and it ends up being a decent time all around.
Little side eye to AT SYMBOL and MINUS SIGN and the filler THE in THE NFL. Thought there were two Rs in BURrs. High school in the 70s was a constant discussion of The Doors or Zeppelin. Most of the girls and intellectual types went for MORRISON but it was always Robert Plant for me.
In the end - this was an enjoyable Sunday solve.
This theme is a groaner, all right, but I have a SOFT SPOT for it. The dropped R and all those double-Os are goofy but good – it’s a spoof with oomph. (The puzzle's title may need work.) I think my favorites were the first too – I mean, two: BURDEN OF POOF and GOOP DYNAMICS. The only themer I disliked was Rex’s bugbear, 80A. “Getting ‘Amscray!’ under control?” is such a bizarre, convoluted clue and I’m not sure TAMING OF THE SHOO justifies it or, as Rex said yesterday, the juice isn’t really worth the squeeze.
Speaking of GOOP DYNAMICS does anyone spend their leisure time watching the Pitch Drop experiment at the University of Queensland? It was started in the 1920s and is said to be the longest-running lab experiment in existence. It’s a study in fluid viscosity, which observes the rate at which pitch (related to tar) drops out of a cylinder into a dish. The stuff is so thick that in 91 years, only 9 drops have fallen – it must be party time when they do. If you can take the excitement, you can watch it live through the link above!
I have a nit to pick with 1A “Art of riding and training a horse”: DRESSAGE strikes me as too specific an answer for this clue. DRESSAGE is a particular type of equestrian event, which involves the rider giving subtle, barely detectable, commands to the horse, which then performs a series of moves, some of them quite unusual in the context of general horse training. One thinks of the Lipizzaner stallions in Vienna dancing and prancing and side-stepping across their ornate performance space, but it’s not just them, DRESSAGE is performed as one of the equestrian events at the Olympics and in many other competitions around the world. Is this a Joaquin’s Dictum case, i.e. can the term DRESSAGE be used as generally as it is here? Maybe so, but I think rarely.
I also had reason to pause at 77A “Many a marble bust” = TORSO. OK, but many a marble bust depicts only head and neck, or head, neck and shoulders, which would not qualify as a TORSO. Which sort of bust you see depends on the stylistic conventions that governed particular periods of art. But, all right, I’ll let this one go because there are all kinds of busts out there.
New to me: SMIZE, MR. MOJO RISIN, PALAK paneer.
Today’s quotation comes from E.B. WHITE, born July 11, 1899.
“There is a book out called Dog Training Made Easy, and it was sent to me the other day by the publisher, who rightly guessed that it would catch my eye. I like to read books on dog training. Being the owner of dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day, if I ever get a chance, I shall write a book, or warning, on the character and temperament of the Dachshund and why he can’t be trained and shouldn’t be. I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a dachshund to heed my slightest command. For a number of years past I have been agreeably encumbered by a very large and dissolute dachshund named Fred. Of all the dogs whom I have served I’ve never known one who understood so much of what I say or held it in such deep contempt. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something that he wants to do. And when I answer his peremptory scratch at the door and hold the door open for him to walk through, he stops in the middle and lights a cigarette, just to hold me up.”
(From E.B. White on Dogs)
Thx, Ashish for a most entertaining Sun. puz; liked it a lot! :)
Med unsolve w/a dnf.
Couldn't spell MILWAUKEE, nor ENTREE. Thot entry, replacing the 'y' with an 'ie'.
Nevertheless, a nice crunchy puz with a clever theme and lots of fun stuff. :)
Pretty much on Ashish's wavelength all the way.
Keep 'em comin' Ashish! 👍
Welcome home @M&A!
@A (5:49 PM yd)
Thx for the Carmina Burana vid!
Super devotees all over the world in all three examples. Amazing how many of the ABBA fans had their parts down pat, w/o sheet music.
@Newboy (6:34 PM yd)
Great ANANSI vid; fascinating! 🕷
___
yd pg -1 (the one I missed was gettable, but a toughie for me; onto the List it goes) (felt fortunate to be at -1)
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Tolerance ~ Health ~ Kindness to all 🕊
This had just enough old-style wackiness and groan-worthy wordplay for me to enjoy immensely. I like The Doors, a lot, but never heard him called MR MOJO RISIN. Île be there is indeed nifty!
Check out this rollicking modern version of "Roadhouse Blues" by Robby Krieger's band with Miley Cyrus on vocals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItPqYCrtFSQ
Warning to the easily offended: occasional naughty words spoken/sung.
The anagramming of JIM MORRISON to MR MOJO RISIN' is part of the lore; you can read about it here. Not sure why Rex doesn't like The Doors, but okay.
Am I alone in thinking 'ENRY sounds a little on the cheap side? It's as if the constructor had boxed himself in with a non-word and thought, "Oh, I'll just clue it this way."
I'm too lazy to work out the PPP ratio, but at times it felt heavy. For example: not a clue about the "Voice of Poker" (LON), which doesn't seem like great fill. Nor did I know AOKI. Some difficulty coughing up OTIS, TERI Polo, and BRENDAN Behan (one of those first names which admits a variety of spellings -- arguably the cross with PALAK is Natick territory).
I'd rather enjoy SAMOSAS than MCBITES. I wonder at which point of the construction he decided, "I'm going with MCBITES". I'd lose that.
I didn't really dislike it, but it didn't bring on EUPHORIA either. I was a little slow getting into it and my time was about 40 percent* greater than Sundays have been recently for me, so UNDER PAR but not in the eagle-like way.
*Wanted PCT (short for percent) instead of SEN, and was contemplating plUMP instead of STUMP as the cross.
Hey All !
Well, holy cow. I go on vacation for a week, and miss out on a ROO puz. Murphy's Law in full force!
I nominate this puz for Puz of the Year. 😂
In the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield (in the movie "Ladybugs" [whuch,big you haven't seen it, is quite funny and charming]) "I finally got some respect."
Har.
RooMonster
DarrinV
@Son Volt, In my HS the debate was The Band or The (grateful) Dead. I went with The Band. Thought this had some fun moments but just too much PPP in the end. And the SE wouldn't settle partly because I couldn't see BOOTSTRENGTH and partly because I wouldn't let go of totebagS. NE also tough because I still thought the missing R would be in the last word of the themer and couldnt see GOOP, or believe that @ wasnt the ATSignxx. A NOONER on a Sunday got me thinking. Some fun available here, just a bit of a slog in the end.
Had a dumb typo that added a few minutes to by solve time. Otherwise, got a chuckle from most of the theme answers. I like The Doors, but didn't know much about the group, and the anagram was news to me.
The worst answer was MRMOJORISIN.
To everyone, he's the lizard king. If you are doing a JM thing, get the satisfying answer, not the one that people in the know don't know and people not in the know will never guess. Made for not fun.
Was Denature too hard? I am in Biology and that was easy to get.
My first comment ever,
I think I posted one that was half done. OOPS
My comment was how bad the MRMOJORISIN answer is. JM's nickname is not that, it is The Lizard King.
I also had goopdenatured which made no sense and messed me up for awhile. I am in the bio field and I was getting indignant until I saw the error was mine.
Wonder how often Scots say SMA? Seriously, anyone know? As always, kudos to anyone who can put together something like this. But this one was no fun for me.
I like the ones that make me laugh and run to my best friend to show how clever it is. But I learned a lot about people I never heard of before from this.
Thanks for the recommendations for good puzzles. Loved them all! Ran across 7/4/2004 on my own. Now THAT was fun! Suggestions from puzzle archives are still welcome!
While I disliked (perhaps hated) the PPP, I would agree a lot more with Jeff Chen than with Mike Sharp. The the repetitiveness of the theme genre has never bothered me.
I admire that the Doors seemed to favor thumbing their noses at authority (certainly Ed Sullivan). And their music (which I mostly liked or admired) Seemed to me at the time as approaching a blues version of the Mothers of Invention (who seemed more influenced by jazz.) Interesting reevaluating what all those groups did right now. Certainly the Doors were part of the "High Art" period of pop music. I often wonder where they would have gone if living with drugs did not impact the group the way it did. Seemed like a great waste at the time and continues to do so for me.
The theme made this much easier than it would have been otherwise. Once you get the idea, a lot of the themers need few or, in the case of PENELOPE COOS, no crosses.
Seem like a lot of potential Naticks today. AOKI/RICK, BRENDAN/PALAK, OTIS/TERI OR OTIS I AM MALALA, AOKI/I AM MALALA, OPAHS/BORA, and by far the worst, OPAHS/ESO. Ese, eso and esa are all equally valid answers for 117D, so that cross has GOT to be better than OPAHS.
Omg, what a mess - you definitely have to be a more hard-core solver to enjoy this one (or be the type of solver that welcomes the challenge of slogging through cross after cross to basically fill in indecipherable esoterica) - MER, ETA, OTIS, IAMMALALA, IMRAN, DRACO, PALAK . . . Definitely seems like one of those wheelhouse days (or like I mentioned, you really have to have a high batting average with the crosses). However, to me it evoked one of Marv’s trademark catchphrases (This is vintage “garbage time”).
Congrats to whoever dreamt up SMA - it’s pretty tough to win the made-up-word of the day with a 3-letter entry, but hey - you took the prize today, well done.
Seems like my practice of not reading titles served me well today, as a lot of Rex's blog and several comments are concerned with the title. Looking at it now, I see why as it doesn't make sense to me, either.
@Son Volt 7:40 - agree with you on BUR(r)S. Should indicate a variant, at the least.
MR. MOJO RISIN' is sung by JIM MORRISON in L.A, Woman.
Note to Will Shortz -- I would have known that the very inspired and very, very funny YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TOOTH was the seed entry without your telling me. In fact, it was the first thing I thought of when I finished the puzzle -- before reading your note.
Now that I've read it, I can imagine Ashish sitting in the dentist's chair and counting letters on his fingers. "21 letters!!!!! Wow!!!! What a great Sunday puzzle this will be once I find some other theme answers to go with it!!!"
And find them you did, Ashish. And they're all quite wonderful as well as very aptly and very fairly clued. I laughed out loud over GOOP DYNAMICS, BURDEN OF POOF and PENELOPE COOS. What was really fun is that, once I had the theme (at GOOP DYNAMICS where I needed most of the crosses), I was pretty much able to guess them with almost no crosses. Meaning the clues were really, really on target.
Too many names, of course. I do understand that it's hard to fill up a Sunday grid without them. But still, the fewer of them you might have had, the better the puzzle would have been. (However, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TOOTH makes me forgive everything.)
One of life’s small pleasures is being able to predict when Rex will hate a puzzle
Pretty neat Sunday, got Natick by the ESO/a cross with OPAHS vs aPAHS. Also DNF because I didn't know INGE and thought SAnELY was perfectly wise.... Oh well, enjoyed all the themers Ashish, lotsa fun!
This was Dad-jokey enough for me to enjoy it. The first revealer took far too long to show up so I moved over to BURDENOFPOOF, which I liked, and showed me what was going on. A little heavy on PPP with some crosses that made guessing inevitable and reminded me that no, I do not know everything.
My takeaway from this one is how many ways we have in English to make a long U sound. In this one we've got OO, OU, U, EW, and OE if you count SHOE, which is hinted at and preferred by OFL. Also plain O, as in "to". In Spanish all these words would be spelled with a guess what--U. How does anyone ever learn to spell in English?
Nice old-fashioned Sundecito, AV. I'm hoping that not everyone says "bless you" when you tell them your first name.
@J Keenan (9:07 AM)
Welcome aboard! 😊
@Liz1508 (9:11 AM)
Thx for the Gorski Sun. puz rec. :)
___
pg -4
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Tolerance ~ Health ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Barbara S -- I love E.B. White. I love dogs. Out of all the wonderful literary passages you've chosen so far, this may be my absolute favorite.
In fact, if I were teaching a writing class, I might take this very short paragraph and ask my students one simple question: Why is this so good?
DNF because of the IAMMALALA and AOKI cross.
Why a "?" on Fire sign. Why a "?" on Something to leave to beavers. This is just nuts! I think Shortz adds "?"'s to clues randomly just to annoy me.
I've been reading this blog for a couple weeks now, having finally gotten a subscription to the NYT crossword, and I am compelled to post in defense of the author. "No Ruse" makes perfect sense if you read it phonetically! What are there none of? The sound "Ru".
I found the theme delightful; sometimes it's nice to slowly get the theme answers through crosses and sometimes it's fun to get them from just a couple (or even no) letters. This puzzle was a great example of the latter, where after goop dynamics I was immediately able to fill in 56a and 10d. I wanted BOOTforce for 110a but eventually found STRENGTH without any crosses there either. The crosses that many of you complain about (I get that PPP means something about pop culture, but I have no idea what it initializes) weren't so bad with the easy long themers, and in my mind that helps to justify them.
Great puzzle!
Huh. Seems I got only part of the gimmick here.
Rex points out the "roo" sound, so I guess the title means "NO ROOS" (no sense) to which I cry "perish the thought!"
@Z 630am "That one is so absurd that it laps absurdity and becomes surd" is solutely ysmal. 🤣🤣🤣
@Barbara S 815am 🤣🤣😉That experiment, the live stream...there are no words, but it calls to me. 818am I ❤️Fred.
@JPK 858am or @J Keenan 907am or whatever you call yourself these days (😉), welcome! If I had a nickel for every comment of mine that was half
I did a quick and probably inaccurate count of the PPPs. 49 out of 138. Pretty high. I don't really understand why Shortz allows obscure crossing obscure.
Villager
A treat of a Sunday, entertaining from top to bottom - for me the theme hit the sweet spot of goofiness + inspiration, and there were plenty of other entries to savor, too. Still smiling at GOOP DYNAMICS. I had a conceptual DNF, though, reading the name anagram as MR MOJORISIN and thinking, Oh, cute, like "Morrison" but with "mojo" in it. Never saw "risin'." Had another close call where the eagle meets the party animal, which I originally had as mONKEY (I didn't really understand, but thought, Well,"barrel of monkeys" and all that....). Lingering unease and an alphabet run saved me.
@chefwen - Yes 56A went right in. I can't claim MKE as my hometown, though; it's always been Dane County for me.
@Barbara S - A "dissolute" dachsund! Thank you for the wonderful quote.
Who else dies at the crossing of 43D, 49A and 54A? I do! Had DieS, DRACi and IMRAe. BOO! Not fair!
Nice and easy
@Cow Orker (10:36 AM)
Welcome aboard! 😊
Same take as you re: no 'ru' sounds.
___
pg -1
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Tolerance ~ Health ~ Kindness to all 🕊
What @Nancy said. Naticked on the A/o at BRENDAN/PALAK. Way too many Natick opportunities here. Would normally have complained loudly about that, however - YOUCANTHANDLETHETOOTH caused forgiveness of all sins.
Fun puzz, delightful puns.
I still don’t get SMA - is that really a Scottish word? Please enlighten me.
My biggest hang up was the poetic rock star with the anagrammatic nickname. Even when I finally figured out that it might be JIM MORRISON, I couldn’t see why anyone would want to be called MR. MOJORISIN. It didn’t occur to me that there was more than one word at work in the last name.
Liked MILWAUKEE BOOERS, BURDEN OF POOF, and YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TOOTH. The other themers not so much. Fun puzzle overall, but way too many PROOPER nouns.
Sounds like E.B.White's dachshund was a cat.
Heart be still me. I just watched Virgin Galactic reaching for the edge of space. Wasn't it only yesterday that I watched Neil Armstrong taking his giant leap for mankind? I want to be a billionaire.
Oh...the Sunday puzzle. Well let me just say that Ashish has a great sense of humor. I mean who comes up with GOOP DYNAMICS? The YOU CANT HANDLE THE TOOTH made me cackle a bit and I'm good at that.
I just discovered that I had one error at 31D. I had POLAK paneer. Then I thought a bit about that answer. Do Polak's eat paneer? Is that a kosher word? Can you really say that? Will heads explode? Just wondering.
@Barbara S. DRESSAGE does in fact involve an art of riding and the training of your steed. The most important part of dressage is the interaction between you and the horse. Both need to feel competent and comfortable. It takes a lot of time and work to get that feeling of "oneness." I've done dressage on an Andalusian. It was the most exhilarating feeling I've ever had (now I want to go into space). I only rode the horse once but he seemed to understand me. He had incredible training before I took the reins.
My NOONER consists of a nap.
OH GEE @J. Dip. Thanks for the ear worm. Maybe I'll show RICK how to dance.
Z using schism to represent the back and forth he and Amos Bob have been engaged in is too good.
Z thinks his opinions have the imprimatur of a religious Magesterium.
By the way, he also does his usual Belle-Motte BS. Anona is right about rebus and it is precisely why Latin is the answer.
The Hieroglyphics that z introduces are extraneous to the point Anon Bob has made so well, and correctly, many times.
I have a small black wirehair Dachshund named Fred (yes, a tribute), and have long cherished EBW's comments on this Maddening, lovable breed. I've had cats who were more obedient!
I liked this one … the right combination of an enjoyable theme with a few tricky answers to keep it a bit challenging.
Regarding 'ENRY
yep. "No Ruse" is a-ok. Just don't do a "No U's" puz. Nor a "No Roos" puz. Luved the TOOTH one, down the middle.
Cool themers, throughout. Nice job, on the R-less ROOs.
Staff weeject pick: ALD. Nice Ow de Speration feel to it.
Kinda liked the whole JIM MORRISON bonus thingy. Also the extra dejavuosity of AMFMRADIO.
Thanx for a real enjoyable, solvable SunPuz, Mr. Vengsarkar.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
**gruntz**
Very enjoyable Sunday for me. If you are going to offer a tried-and-true letter-dropping theme, make the themers great. That's what this puzzle did. Long answers were clever and funny. Sorry Rex isn't a Doors fan--not sure why that matters here. Nice puzzle and now I need some Indian food (PALAK paneer and SAMOSAS)! Yum
@Music Man-It's a word, or used to be. Robert Burns used it in To A Mouse-
'S a SMA request....
Sometimes "SMA" has an apostrophe--sma'.
Still appears in crosswords so handy to know it.
Best comment so far: Blogger Coniuratos said...
Unfortunately I made the mistake of thinking that a Greentit and an English Tit might be kinds of birds, and didn't really pay attention to the clue on 98A.
LOL.
@The Joker 1150am 🤣🤣🤣 Right??
@Cow Orker 1036am (Love the nom de blog, but don't want to imagine what is involved with orking a cow🤯) Welcome to the zoo. And you are very close on PPP. Per @Z (his coinage): PPP is Pop Culture, Product Names, and other Proper Nouns - over 33% gives some subset of solvers difficulties.
p.s.
Along with admirin the use of that there YOUCANTHANDLETHETOOTH themer, …
I also really admired the constructioneer's avoidance of the temptation to go rogue and use FOOTSALAD as a themer. Coulda got ugly, in RP's blog write-up.
M&Also
I know you don't like NFL, so you blast it. I know you love baseball, so those clues can do no wrong--but the blast The Doors, just because you don't like them? C'mon! Let's be a little fair here. They are one of the super groups and whether you like them or not, they belong in the same breath as Led Zeppelin, The Who and Pink Floyd: charismatic groups with talent oozing out their pores who put out music the world will never forget. Shame on your for cutting The Doors.
While we're at it, ease up on football and crank down on baseball. Let's try to stay objective.
SMALL. Scots are parsimonious so why waste two LL’s.
I don’t get TAMING OF THE SHOO. What does Shrew have to do with Amscray?
In hindsight, 80A (Getting "Amscray!" under control?) makes sense.
Amscray! = Shoo!
To get it under control is to tame it.
noun: dressage
The ART of riding and TRAINING a horse in a manner that develops obedience, flexibility, and balance.
The execution by a trained horse of precision movements in response to barely perceptible signals from its rider.
Sure sounds a lot like clue 1A. Hard to believe anyone is nitting over this.
Ok, thanks - is this something generally known? Never heard of that before!
I liked this puzzle, mostly. The themers are so bad they're great. I mean, if you're gonna induce a groan, might as well be a really loud one, right?
I find The Doors, and JIMMORRISON in particular, terribly dull. Much ado about nothing. All sizzle and no steak. There's no there there. Etc. I can tolerate him being in a puzzle -- he's famous, some people like him -- but that anagram thing is awful. The worst part of the puzzle by far. And then crossing DRACO and IMRAN? Puzzle needs an editor.
@Son Volt (now there's a band I can endorse) -- I think BUR and BURr are different words with different meanings.
@What?
Doesn't have anything to do with "shrew". "Amscray" is Pig Latin for "Scram" which has SHOO as a synonym. "Taming" for getting it under control. Try rereading Rex's explanation of the theme again. The familiar phrase is "(The) TAMING OF THE SHrew" whose wackification is TAMING OF THE SHOO which is the actual phrase that is being clued.
Rex isn't sure what JIMMORRISON is doing here, because he doesn't like The Doors. I've never played with NERFBALLS and I've seldom shot UNDERPAR, but I don't question what they're doing in the puzzle. He might just as well have taken a shot at @ and - in the same puzzle because he doesn't use them both in the same login password.
@Anonymous 2:16PM
It sounds as if you're not aware that MR MOJO RISIN' is in a song by The Doors (L.A. Woman), and that the anagram is due to JIM MORRISON himself, as noted in a link I gave earlier. So it's not a case of the constructor anagramming, but of recalling a bit of lore about The Doors. (I'm not sure why you consider the anagram so awful. "Mojo" was already a slang term from the blues, sexual in nature and the passage in the song sounds suggestive of a male erection and sex.)
@TTrimble -- the awfulness is having JIM MORRISON twice, once in a relatively obscure way (a non-hit song from a dull group from 50+ years ago), crossing two other obscure proper name answers.
Am I the only one who remembers the song “Shoo Fly Don’t Bother Me?” “ Shoo! means to “ Amscray!” The clue and the answer were clever and made complete sense in this crossword.
Since when is a TORSO a type of marble bust? 77 across. A bust depicts the head, neck and shoulders, with or without some portion of the chest. A torso depicts the body from the neck or upper chest to the upper thighs. Sculpturally, they are not the same thing.
@Anonymous 3:34PM
Just to be clear: do you think it is out of bounds to have an answer and then an anagram of that answer elsewhere, because that would be like having an answer twice?
Much of your comment is (1) just your subjective opinion ("dull group") which many professional musicians will disagree with, and (2) factually incorrect because the song is in fact very famous and well-known, one of their biggest hits, and gets played all the time on classic rock radio. Hardly relatively obscure. [And don't see the relevance of 50+ years. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Yardbirds, Cream, The Doors, Pink Floyd -- these are all really well known even today. Not forgotten.] But (3) your point about some of the crosses may have some merit.
I only have a desk top PC for using the internet and was away until late last night when I posted a comment concerning the ongoing rebus discussion. So that is what Z @6:30 AM and Anon @12:14 PM are referring to.
Gold means you finished the puzzle on the same day the puzzle was for, in your local time zone; for example, finishing the Sunday crossword on Sunday. I believe you also can't use any of the in-app hints or confirmations for it to be gold, because "gold status" is also what determines your streaks. Blue means you completed it but missed one of those criteria. Basically, no archived puzzles can be gold because they are, by definition, not today's puzzle.
Jim Morrison, an alcoholic and drug addict, a user of women, died of "heart failure" at age 27 on July 3, 1971. How sad and pathetic. Does his music really matter?
@Liz1508
Just finished the Gorski from 7/4/04; what a great puz and workout. Probably took twice my normal Sun. time. Thx, again, for the rec. :)
___
0
Peace ~ Empathy ~ Tolerance ~ Health ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Yay! M&A is back!!!!!
@Gill I. (11:59)
Wow, that sounds like a great riding experience. The point I was trying to make about dressage is that it's a very specific sort of training, rather than the general notion that I thought was suggested by the clue for 1A. All horses used for riding have been trained, but relatively few have received the specialized and exacting training required for dressage. I think at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna it takes 10 years to train a horse for performance. So "Art of riding and training a horse" seemed to me too general a wording for the specificity of the answer.
As to the bust/torso business, a bust like this Alessandro Algardi shows much of the sitter's upper body, including chest and arms. I think one could fairly say it depicts his torso, or at least part thereof. But a bust like this Thorvaldsen only shows head and neck. However, because the clue for 77A says "Many a marble bust," I'd argue there's no problem, because both sorts exist in large numbers.
Right. Having done those two topics to death, my work is finished.
@Barbara...amiga. I hope I didn't come across as sounding like a pedantic pendeja..... ;-)
I guess I was happy to even see the word DRESSAGE and recall some memories. The ideal dressage horse has to have natural athleticism in order to use his/her hind legs for balance. You should see the training for a "piaffe...."
You usually start the training (depending on the strength of the horse) when they are about 3 or 4 years old and it takes around 5 years. If YOU are the trainer, you bond and the horse knows it. I never had the opportunity but I was fortunate to have ridden a couple of horses that were already trained and who actually took a liking to me. (That's important). My favorite was riding a Friesian in Spain. Talk about a high......!
Now I want to sing some John Denver.
A couple of responses to the comments.
Not related to the puzzle. Grated Jim Morrison was hardly a role model. Does that impact on the worth of his music. About the same impact that the worth of Wagner's music is related to Wagner the man. Baremboim understands that. Some who post here: probably not.
Related to puzzles in general. A "?" after a clue tends to mean the clue would not be classified as a denotion and requires some bridge to understand how the clue relates to the answer. Beavers build dams. A "?" after the clue means the entry (DAM in this case) is not directly related to the clue but requires the solver to recognize the relationship between beavers and dams. It can be rather tricky and incomprehensible to those who miss the relationship (if that's really what you call it). After dealing with enough of these types of clues, you begin to think on an appropriate wavelength, as I did when I confidently fllled in DAM. If you don't, the clue indeed may seem outright inaccurate. To become a good puzzle solver, one have to develop the knack of correctly interpreting "?" clues. Those upset by the characteritic should stick with Monday to Wednesday puzzles. Fot the time being.
This is a strange question, I know, but perhaps someone can help me out. I find myself with time to watch a movie--a rare thing in the summer garden season--and thought I'd check out the one Rex mentioned a few weeks (months?) ago as his favorite movie of all time. That sounds like high praise from an English professor. Anyway, I unfortunately can't find the note where I jotted down the title, and I've done a search of a couple of weeks of his posts and I'm afraid I'll never find it. Does anyone remember what the title of said movie was?
And about today. I found this puzzle entertaining, but not scintillating. I'd love it if they were all scintillating, but that is too much to hope for.
@600 - I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but Rex recently said Born Yesterday with Judy Holliday was his favorite.
@600
It seems to be "Born Yesterday", if this post is any guide. He adds that Judy Holliday won an Oscar for it.
Side note: I didn't remember this myself, but what worked was typing into Google Rex Parker + "my favorite movie". The quotation marks are important, because then the engine searches for that exact string of letters inside the quotation marks.
Re Words can have multiple meanings,
Dressage can mean the training of the horse, or the specific discipline which tests the training of the horse in specific movements. And no, Dressage is not some hoity-toity discipline, one of the USAs Olympic dressage riders is in jail awaiting trial on multiple counts of attempted murder of another dressage rider and her partner. Dressage riders are no less psychopaths that the population as a whole. Probably more so.
Re rebus - just because the word had only one meaning the last time there was a native Latin speaker, the fact that it's been borrowed makes it fair game for expansions. When you say you (or anything) were decimated by something, are you literally saying 1/10th of you/it was destroyed? If you were decimated when your cat died, did one of your legs spontaneously disappear at that exact moment? Alibi has come to be accepted as meaning simply an excuse rather than proof you were somewhere else. I could go on, the English language is rife with words borrowed from Latin which have taken on additional meanings not found 2000 years ago.
Call me corny, but I thought TAMINGOFTHESHOO was funny.
Otherwise, agree w Rex with the exception of a few other smiles here and there.
Good lord, you can’t be serious.
Thank you, @kitshef and @TTrimble! Born Yesterday it is. Now to see if my Roku is hiding it somewhere.
@TTrimble: Thanks. I googled "Rex Parker's favorite movie" (without quotation marks) to no avail. I'll know next time. Also, I searched the first three weeks of June's posts. Guess I just stopped too soon!
Again, thank you both.
Pete,
God bless you. You’ve misunderstood the whole argument.
Pete,
By the way viz decimation and 1/10th, search The New Yorker Cartoon archives. It’s perfect for the guys who have have it wrong— you— and, well, us. The folks who have it right.
@Gill I. (6:45 PM)
"Pedantic pendeja" -- you?? Horrors, never!
I think I should have addressed my remarks to an earlier Anon, who I've now lost track of.
You and I -- Amigas forever!
I had "dies" for 43D ("opposite of 'takes off'"). The middle two letters crossed at PPP that I didn't know. Felt like doing a big jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces missing, something you don't notice until the end.
@600 – If you like "Born Yesterday", Judy Holliday is also wonderful in "Bells Are Ringing", where she plays an answering service operator who can't keep from getting involved in the lives of her clients.
That was my dnf too!
Sorry, this didn’t light my fire. A few SMA sparks like DRESSAGE, SAMOSAS, I AM MALALA, NERF BALLS and EVEN ODD JOB were dampened in SLO-MO by the likes of TARES, BARES, ICER, ALD, TEES, SEN and THE EELy octet ECIG EEL ETA EOS EROS ESO ESPO EDDA.
NORTHS? MINUS SIGN.
Should’ve heeded the constructor’s (or editor’s) warning: MY BAD.
The only themer that made me smile was BURDEN OF POOF. The others were JUST one “really?” after another.
Side eye to ARISE and RISIN’ sharin’ the grid.
I did like the stack of EEEE’s at the ENTREE/MILWAUKEE/STEEP/EEL intersection.
In days OF YORE, Florida was abbreviated first FLA, THEN FL of late.
Good clues for MER, SMOKE, EVEN, LIT and DONS. The last was my undoing - I read “takes off” to mean succeed and I wrote in DieS. IMRAe SEEMed plausible - like IMRe. DRACi less so. Perhaps I’ll learn DRACO now.
DRUG, EUPHORIA, BLOT, COP, POPO - DR.MOM has her work cut out for her.
Two artists in today’s puzzle died of suicide, it appears. (Maybe more, it’s HARD to locate all of the names, most of whom I didn’t know.) Who is RICK (not Mick, Mack, Jack or Nick) Atley? Ok, 1980s, still alive. At least I knew LATOYA and ONO, and they’re both still alive.
In 1957, when his new play, “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,” was opening, William INGE stated a credo:
“In the midst of such confusion as we find ourselves in today, where can we find sure values except in those very personal values that each man can sift from his own existence and cherish? I have tried to bring back into my play some very sustaining memories of people, in their sad, funny, futile, courageous and frightened ways of meeting life and trying to cope with it.”
Liza Lehmann, born July 11, 1862, was a soprano and composer. She wrote serious pieces but also had a good sense of humor. If No One Ever Marries Me
This was my favorite kind of Sunday puzzle and I truly enjoyed it. Thematic no sense but creative thematic nonsense that made me smile and chuckle. Days like this, I think back on all the Sundays spent sitting next to my Gran, learning and laughing. She would have enjoyed this one too. Heck, for all I know she did! I certainly feel here palpably present in my life a great deal of the time, and today for sure. I could hear her clap her hands, and chuckle as she crowed “Good one!” after solving BOOT STRENGTH, and commenting (as a devout Cubs fan) that she would have been a card carrying MILWAUKEE BOOER but fir the fact that it would have demonstrated bad sportsmanship.
Thanks Mr. Vengsarkar for a delightful Sunday!
@A
Which artists died of suicide? I did a quick scan of today's entries, and so may have missed it. Both BRENDAN Behan and JIM MORRISON died pretty young, of causes undoubtedly related to alcohol/drug abuse, but I don't count those as suicides.
That's Rick Astley of rickrolling fame, or more accurately rickrolling notoriety. (I really hate that song.)
OK. EUPHORIA. One of my favorite songs by my favorite group.
OOMONSTER- Puzzle of the Year and you omit the F count? FooMonster I say. But how do you clue OOMNSTER?
The puzzle had no ROO sounds
SNL News fulfills my BURDEN OF POOF. Who is more accurate? Even the reliable sources today demand only one source who is likely to know and who says it's true, and a second who claims to know and refuses to deny the first source is unlikely to be incorrect. The others just print anything they are unlikely to be sued for. But when Z and Frantic agree on something it's likely to be a joke that I am likely missing.
@TTrimble
Good stuff today. To the point and deadpan. Your replies and explaining SHOO.
Maybe the Morrison connection to the puzzle could be a backward and inverted play on the puzzle's theme which could be clued as "The reward or punishment for being for being too aware". The answer is THE DUES OF PERCEPTION. Yes the backward "ROO" loses its R acquires an OO sound and the familiar phrase is the book that was the source for the band's name. If I have to spell it out. If you still do not get it listen to EUPHORIA or ask JOHNX for drugs.
@TTrimble, Inge and Morrison are the two, though some questions remain. Maybe I should listen to @albatross's euphoria first...
Love the Doors!
Amscray is pig Latin for scram.
Loved this clue and answer. It was also where I caught onto the theme.
EROS' HEART?
PENELOPE had SORTA RESTATED
she wanted PETER EVEN sooner,
she SAID,"THE EUPHORIA has faded,
when YOUCAN'THANDLE a NOONER."
--- LATOYA PALAK
Another bunch of triumph points were earned today and yesterday. Bit by bit.
You can SMIZE that I did ok.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
If you believe that nothing on Earth can bore you, try watching the Olympic DRESSAGE events. Best sleeping pill ever! (If you survive that, I'll take you to road cycling.)
Another snooze-inducer: this puzzle. Yeah, you can't handle the tooth. Neither can I. The question I want to ask is why? Why did this guy make this puzzle?? Because he COULD?? I can jump off a skyscraper; doesn't mean I'm gonna. Bogey--and I'm being kind.
Me too! Both "Draci" and "Imrae" seemed perfectly reasonable.
To add one more sma citation — imho, the Sma Shot Cottage exhibit is a ‘must see’ if you are ever fortunate enough to visit Paisley, Scotland. Sma shot refers to a technique which enhances the woven product, but, which was historically under rewarded by the merchants of the day.
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