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Relative difficulty: MEDIUM (Played easy for me - 4:30, but I feel like it might cause problems for some)
THEME: NONE - Because it's...
Word of the Day: TETHYS (Moon of Saturn) —
Tethys, or Saturn III, is a mid-sized moon of Saturn about 1,060 km across. It was discovered by G. D. Cassini in 1684 and is named after the titan Tethys of Greek mythology.
• • •
Hello and welcome to your Friday puzzle! I'm Eli; I've been here a couple of times previously, and I deeply apologize for posting the Rebecca Black video. Before I get into things, I want to thank your host for the last two days, Malaika Handa. Malaika's 7x7 project has been a blast, and she's a fantastic constructor, even if her puzzles repeatedly destroy me. Between my solve times on her grids and her write-ups of the last two days, I think we're just on different wavelengths. And that's great! I love learning things and solving puzzles where I have to struggle a bit. It's always nice to expand my horizons. All right, enough ranting and gushing, on to the puzzle! So, 6 grid-spanning 15-letter entries and none of them are true clunkers? That's an impressive feat (I assume; I've never tried my hand at constructing). Of the sestet, ANIMAL HUSBANDRY was probably the least interesting to me, but I feel like I haven't seen it very often, so that's nice. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER could have been boring, but cluing it with Blondie lyrics will always get a thumbs up from me. When I saw the clue for 32A ("Response from Siri"), I felt like the answer would be a bad joke or something generic. But HERE'S WHAT I FOUND is something my phone has said to me dozens of times, and it felt very natural in the grid. I may have wanted LAH-DI-FRICKIN-DAH to be something more explicit, but that's just because I solve a lot of indie crosswords where swearing is acceptable. Seeing this was the answer to 48A ("Well, aren't you so darn special!") made me smile.
The sheer number of squares taken up by the 15s did put a bit of strain on the fill (I assume. Again: not a constructor). But the amount of true crosswordese was admirably small, in my opinion (AGAR, SLOE, COS), and most of the cluing seemed pretty fresh to my eyes. It mostly just felt a little nondescript at times. If that's the worst you can say about a puzzle, I think that's pretty good. After feeling like I was flailing in the Northwest for a while, I worried that I would struggle with this one. But having a massive gimme at 3D opened things up quickly and I didn't really slow down after that.
There were a few proper nouns I wasn't familiar with. As noted in my clue of the day, even though I consider myself an astronomy enthusiast, TETHYS wasn't a moon I knew. I mean, Saturn has 82 moons; I'm supposed to know them all? Sylvia SYMS, ERICH Fromm, and Nate MCMILLAN (I've never been able to really get into basketball for whatever reason)were unknown to me, as well. But all of them were crossed fairly, so it's just a case of being trivia I didn't know.
- ONE ARM — There's a few ways I can think of to clue this (Bandit/slot machine, The Fugitive), but I'm never going to complain about using semi-obscure Simpsons characters (even ones I don't really care for).
- DANTE — The clue (37A: "So-called "Father of the Italian Language"") almost feels like it's mocking him. For the record, I have no beef with Dante.
- AMALIE — I'm not a geography guy. I had a vague idea of what the capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands was, but needed a few crosses just to remember the general direction I should be going, and then had to remember if it was "Emily" or spelled like the movie/Phillipa Soo musical.
- OCLOCK — As I was solving, I kind of cringed at the clue (29A: "The end of time?"), but looking back, I think I actually like it?
- LAWDY — I gave this one a side-eye as I solved it, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I spent 12 years living in the South, so it's not like I'm not aware of its existence, it just has the vibe of a phrase that comes out of minstrel shows. Maybe I'm overly sensitive to these things, and it didn't ruin the puzzle for me; it just didn't feel great. Regardless of the history, it feels like appropriation of a cultural dialect, and it's something I personally try to avoid.
Ok, I'm solving/writing this on Thursday night, which is a break in tradition for me. I normally solve in the morning along with my coffee, but solving the night before is a sacrifice I'll make for you lovely people. During the pandemic, my wife and I have turned Thursdays into a weekly Happy Hour at Home, so I'm going to finish my cocktail (a strawberry basil caipirinha that matches my shirt) and watch this week's RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars. We've hit the point in the season when I generally like all of the queens, but Ginger Minj has been the most fun to watch for me this season. And I'm rambling. See you all back here tomorrow!
[Follow Eli on Twitter]
"It's not Hedy, it Hedley." A boring clue for an amazing person.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Frantic. Ooh, the AGAR! You must have made some eggless ice cream in your time. Thus far it is the only stabilizer I use (after about a half dozen “highly recommended” and absolutely vile alternatives). For anyone out there wondering, do not-DO NOT- think your liquid ice cream base will dissolve the AGAR powder for you as it churns-unless of course you want a surprise frozen July bean in your otherwise crystallized ice cream. Word from the mad ice cream scientist.
DeleteJust on the easy side of medium. If I hadn’t had ATE it before ATE UP it would have been easy. The grid crossing answers sparkle, liked it a bunch!
ReplyDeleteTETHYS was a WOE fortunately SYMS wasn’t.
Eli, Malaika, et al - I've been meaning to thank y'all for filling in during OFL's absence. You're doing stand-up work.
ReplyDeleteOk. So I had a dnf ‘cause I had “mangalese” crossing “Ali” – utterly defensible, imo.
HERE’S WHAT I FOUND is a terrific entry. My British Siri guy is always misunderstanding that I just want to add mirin, say, to my grocery list, and instead says HERE’S WHAT I FOUND reading me the entire &*%$ explanation of what mirin is. He’s so nice and polite that I just endure it and make like that’s exactly what I wanted and am so grateful to him.
In my dialect, it’s Lawsy mercy.
Curious why Seth went with LOAMS and not roams.
Loved the clue for FIT. I sat and took an inventory of stuff I have thrown in frustration: Kant’s book Critique of Pure Reason, dry erase marker, Nathalie Sarraute’s Le Planétarium, a blister pack of earbuds I couldn’t open, a tennis racket.
As regards photo preparation, SMILE is the very last thing on the lead-up list. Surreptitious nose and teeth check, suck stomach in, turn slightly sideways, extend one leg out a little. . . then SMILE, but not a whole lot ‘cause my cheeks can look too fat.
For the Fulham foil alternative, I thought of “cling film” because I love Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry.
Up until very recently I thought that ANIMAL HUSBANDRY dealt only with breeding. Like the hapless horse you brought to stud becomes a husband in a sense. Dumb. Don’t tell my daughter. (Who in nine months will be Sage Smith, DVM!)
Wanna know why Dante is considered the father of Italian? “Cause he thumbed his nose at the fancy-schmancy, elite, LAH-DI-FRICKIN-DAH Latin and embraced the dialect of the streets, of his people. I imagine Dante and I would have been fast friends, hating on language snobs while braiding each other’s hair.
TETHYS - SYMS is not crossed fairly. Two proper nouns. The final S makes it a natick.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, looked like it was gonna be tough, but everything just fell in place somehow for a fast time. The longs were really cool. Six in all, with three symmetrically across and down. That is exquisite!
ReplyDeleteHERESWHATIFOUND… LAHDIFRICKINDAH could have gone many different ways, but my inner Chris Farley (how’d he fit in here?) brought that one to life!
A really fun solve. I actually wish it went longer it was so good.
@Mikey. Your mentioning Chris Farley prompted me to find THIS CLIP
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteDespite liberal use of Sergey and Larry, For the second day in a row I was on the cusp of a DNF. The culprit this time: "LA De FRICKIN DAH". Somehow, SePS looked okay to me. Or at least better than "LA DI FRICKING DAH."
Every time I encounter the term ANIMAL HUSBANDRY I think of Tom Lehrer's quote about Dr. Samuel Gall, inventor of the gall bladder: "His educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school, where he majored in animal husbandry ... until they caught him at it one day."
Well whaddya know, it really is just deserts, not just desserts. Just when you think you know everything….
ReplyDeleteSame!
DeleteWell, @Frantic Sloth, not going to "lose it," but SIRHAN gave me some unpleasant moments. Don't understand why that's amusing. Will never forget getting up and going into high school the morning of Bobby Kennedy's assassination. Following MLK's as closely as it did, in those times, was heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteI also didn’t like that entry.
DeleteAgree. It's still too soon.
DeleteLots of spark in many of those long answers, my favorites being I MEAN IT THIS TIME, LAH DI FRICKIN DAH, and ONE WAY OR ANOTHER (a great earworm to kick off the day). I even liked ANIMAL HUSBANDRY (I can’t put my finger on why, but I’m sure glad it’s there).
ReplyDeleteA big “Hah!” moment for me, when I slapped in SITS (instead of SIPS) for [Tries, in a way], thinking “sits on the bench”, and thinking it was a world-class clue/answer.
That you came up with such lively long answers in a tic-tac-toe board pattern shows your chops off well, Seth, and your puzzle gave me a buoyant journey this morning. Thank you!
First OGC (Our Guest Critic) admits to knowing neither SYMS nor TETHYS, then says they were "fairly crossed". I'm with @tokyoracer in thinking no, no they were not. Also invoking @Nancy in thinking didn't know and don't care. I mean, really.
ReplyDeleteI was BAD made the Siri message difficult for a while. BRISK, which worked fine, threw sand in the gears until CRISP showed up. Also read "get ready" instead of "got ready" for 1D and spent lots of time looking for a present tense answer. PRIMP fit nicely, the imposter. And had LAWSY before LAWDY, a la LMS. Very common expression here in NH. (Har.)
This was a ton of fun, SAA. Such an A+ Accomplishment. Mil gracias.
Now to see if today's thread brings a "kerfuffle" or a FLAP.
Total wheelhouse puzzle. Starting with the gimme ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, moving through Nate MCMILLAN and Charlotte AMALIE, and down to Lisa BONET, TETHYS, KIP, WKRP and ONE ARM, this puzzle just hit all my areas of knowledge, while pretty much avoiding everything else.
ReplyDeleteSo uncanny that I had to go back and look a past Abel puzzles. Did not find that same degree of synchronicity, so this was just a one-off. One of those past puzzles was all about cars ugh.
It’s also an odd history: twelve puzzles between 2003-2007, then nothing for 11 years, then three since December 2018.
Almost Famous (Cameron CROWE) is probably my favorite movie … it’s at least on the shortlist.
Remember when President Trump wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark? Well, that's exactly how we got the US Virgin Islands and Charlotte AMALIE. Cost us $25 million.
I don’t time or solve for speed but this one flew by - just filled it right in. Liked MANGANESE, GETS RICH, THREE CAR and all the grid spanners. LAWDY and SIRHAN not so much. Lots of trivia - but I knew it all. Watched Fast Times the other night. TETHYS was in the cobwebs.
ReplyDeleteCharlotte AMALIE is a beautiful little town but if I’m in the VIs you’ll find me at Foxy’s on Jost.
Enjoyable Friday solve.
Thx, Seth for an excellent Fri. puz! :)
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed your comments Eli; love the movie 'Amelie'. :)
Easy-med solve.
Good start in the NW and across to the NE, moving down south with little to no resistance, until a semi-educated guess at the 'P' in KIP / WKRP.
TETHYS didn't look right, but all the crosses seemed solid, so went with it.
Recently watched the highly acclaimed Bombshell: The Hedy LAMARR Story on Prime Video (Canada).
Knew MANGANESE from my mnemonic list of the elements.
Was very much on Seth's wavelength for this one.
A nice changeup from yd's defeat.
__
yd pg -1 (missed a easy 8er)
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@off…. Nice. LMFrickinAO!
ReplyDeleteI kid about A.P.P. but a fifteen letter middle finger to Android Users has to be convincing proof to everyone that Shortz is on Tim Cook’s payroll.
ReplyDeleteI loved all the grid spanners. I did wonder how many, say, under 40 year-olds would struggle with the Blondie clue. Right down the middle for me, but most popular music from 1975 to about 1985 is going to be wheelhouse for me. But it has been forty years since they were huge so I wonder how much the youngs know those lyrics. My current favorite is AS THICK AS A BRICK because, well, let’s just say I appreciate @Gio’s late comment yesterday.
TETHYS/SYMS - That’s hard for me to judge. The S seems most logical to me if I knew neither but I knew both (well, I know TETHYS, I recognize SYMS from xwords) so I’m not the best judge. What else did you natick claimers consider? I guess TETHYe/SYMe or TETHYp/SYMp look kind of plausible but nowhere near as plausible as an S to me. Maybe an M?
Clearly it stalled some people out so a suboptimal crossing. I do suggest you stick Sylvia SYMS away in your LFC file because I only know her from doing xwords and she caused me no problems today.
@LMS - LOSE or rOSE seems like a push, but I like LOAMS more than rOAMS. I did not like the choice of pairing the clue for 9&10 D. It made me have to think about where exactly the 11D clue was for because my eye wanted it at 10D.
I had ANn before ANI. Is a jewelry chain I never heard of better than a Star Wars clue or definite article/vowel clue that is always too cute by half? I was going to be irked by the clue, but none of the alternatives seem any better so I won’t complain.
A slow start with SLOE and AGAR, an iffy finish at SYMS/TETHYS, and the clue for ELISE is just awful (if you don’t know my feelings about anagramming let me just say that it somewhere near dentist visits and COVID testing on my list of things I want to do) but otherwise a very enjoyable and crunchy Friday puzzle.
I'm just going to sit in my bunker in shame while everyone says else how easy this was. SW corner: not easy (TETHYS, SYMS), and the puzzle was botched by my writing ATE it instead of ATE UP, making it impossible to decide LAH De ... DAH and LAH DI ... DAH.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I thought it was a fine Friday with all those 15-ers.
yd pg -3. Some of the answers I found downright unpleasant. td is weird.
Over and out.
can someone please explain why just deserts = DUE?
ReplyDeleteI am flummoxed as well
DeleteHere it is: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/just-deserts-or-just-desserts
DeleteI had the same response you did to LAWDY. Add in SIRHAN Sirhan and RUBRAW and there was a certain grimness to the puzzle that I found unsettling. Irrational, I guess, but there it is.
ReplyDeleteUnpacked boxes in my wheelhouse attic for this one. Here's What I Found - the vile and the sublime. Sirhan from '68. It's A Shame. Blondie from 43 years ago singing One Way Or Another, the same year WKRP (in Cincinnati) debuted. Had my first grown up job as a radio copywriter that year. WKRP wasn't that far in tone from the real thing, fellow babies. When was the last time you heard Thick As A Brick?
ReplyDeleteFound Chris Farley from the '90s, yelling Lah Di Frickin Dah. Erich Fromm playing in heavy rotation on college campuses in the '70s. Wonder if he's still taught. Cameron Crowe is still active. He got his real start at Rolling Stone when it was a force in 1973. I'm a fan.
Back downstairs, we find Acai as the whole berry for a change. Agar making its first appearance of '21. Expect more, probably by Sunday. What else? O'Clock, Cubes, Dante. Nice.
Enjoyed this because I knew this stuff and it was fun thinking about it again.
@Conrad, Finally! An Animal Husbandry joke. I was looking for the Centaur opening but it wasn't there. Thanks.
@TTrimble (8:33 AM) 🤞
ReplyDelete___
g -1
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Thank you, Eli, for waiting until the end to (mildly) go off on LAWDY. Had Rex been writing, I'm certain he would have lost his mind and a nicely constructed puzzle with some terrific long answers would have been dismissed because it offended his delicate sensibilities.
ReplyDeleteFrickin has no place in a puzzle and the phrase does not require it either. But otherwise fun.
ReplyDeleteQ: who decides to use Blondie and not Tull?
Siri really says "HERE'S WHAT I FOUND"? Why, she sounds almost human, doesn't she? What will they be teaching her to say next?
ReplyDeleteYou ask her to, say, sort a list of 100 names, putting them in alphabetical order. "Well, LAH DI FRICKIN DAH," she might answer. "You must be AS THICK AS A BRICK. I've told you I don't sort lists. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER I'm gonna make you stop asking me. LAWDY, I may even go on the fritz permanently. I MEAN IT THIS TIME!"
For a BOT, she seems to be a regular chatty Cathy.
This is an unusually colloquial puzzle, with a lot of crisscrossing grid spanners -- which I tend to like a lot. I did want ONE dAY OR ANOTHER for the title rock lyric (which probably means that's the way that I would have written the song), but LADDY does not mean "Gracious', informally". That was my only write-over.
Not an especially difficult Friday, but an entertaining one.
OK OK OK, I know when I’m outnumbered. I was grousing about this being too hard and having too many too much PPP etc. etc. justifying in my mind why I had so much trouble. But everybody else ATE IT UP so it’s just me and my usual pathetic whining. Guess I’m not so special after all. LA DI FRICKIN DAH.
ReplyDeleteI always appreciate learning something new from the crossword and today’s lesson was a real eye opener. I finally get how certain Republicans can justify their inexcusable denial of the January 6 terrorist insurrection: SHAME. It has a poor memory.
Nice puzzle. Was going to post the Farley clip, but others beat me to it. Here's the full sketch (the line is at about 3:05) -- for me, it remains the funniest SNL bit of all time. Man, do I still miss him.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how many errors I had to overcome today. aLOE (like that's ever been in a liqueur!), oGosh, LAMouR, bRISk leading to Cameron bRucE, sOckS (baseball stirrups) noeARs (not much "Simpsons" knowledge here). My newspaper looks like a Rorschach test.
An excellent write-up, Eli. A joy to read. Maybe OFL should take more vacations.
ReplyDeleteYou seem like a very nice man, Eli Selzer, and you wrote a very thoughtful appraisal of the puzzle, but you made one big mistake. And in order to honor the work of those too-often unsung heroes who labor in the creation of musical theater, I am going to point it out to you:
ReplyDeleteAMELIE is not "the Philippa Soo musical" -- no matter if she belts the hell out of her starring role and is the greatest thing since Ethel Merman, Julie Andrews and Mary Martin. AMELIE is the Daniel Messe (composer)/Nathan Tysen (lyrics)/Craig Lucas (book) musical.
Musicals do not write themselves. If there were no writers, there would be no "AMELIE the Musical", and poor Philippa would have nothing to sing.
I hope everyone will take this lyricist's message to heart. End of rant.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteEli put in his write-up "After feeling like I was flailing in the Northwest for a while" and still finished in 4:30. Har. Talk about different-plane solving. I flail in a corner for 4 minutes 30 seconds! Although I do have to put this puz in the Easy catagory, as I did finish in 25 minutes, which for me is quick on a FriPuz.
Had wrongness, however. Five wrong squares! Ouch! Not up on my World Capitals, so AMALIE not known. Had AMALIn, with bROWn for CROWE, bRISk for CRISP, Ink for IMP, and SHAnE for SHAME. Dang. Other spot was ATEit, regardless that DiE for DUE and SItS for SIPS made no sense for the clues. LAWDY! Sakes alive!
Did like the 6 crossing 15's, and the dreck-light fill. @Roo's dictum, Every puz has junk, but this one was polished quite well.
Got LAHDIFRICKINDAH first, then having IMEAN___ in, thought it'd be the Rare FriTheme with quadi-insults. Wanted (I MEAN seriously) up there. But then got ONEWAYORANOTHER, and that quelled that thought. (Funny, know that song, sung it to myself to get the answer, but never knew that was the Title of it!)
7:15 OCLOCK here in PDT, gotta run.
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Still not sure how BANE is the "source of ruin." I can see how bane could tangentially lead to ruin, but to be the source? No. I flew through the puzzle (Cameron Crowe, author of Fast Times at Ridgemont High!) much more quickly than on most Fridays until the SE corner, where the poor clueing of BANE threw me for awhile.
ReplyDeleteAlso, THICK AS A BRICK is just that, without the added preposition "AS" before it. I went with BE before AS kicked in, but neither is necessary.
Overall, a very nice Friday puzzle. Poor clueing and superfluous words aren't totally unexpected in a NYT puzzle, so that's fine.
I first put in LADHDIDAHLADDIDAH. Guess I had Annie Hall on the brain. I spot checked it with the downs at the end, and it fit, so I moved on. It wasn't until I got to 43D that I found my error, but made another, short-lived one: FREAKIN vs. FRICKIN.
ReplyDeleteOriginal meaning of BANE is something (usually poison) that causes death. The more modern usage has been softened a bit from the original.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of poisonous "bane" plants: henbane, wolf's-bane, leopard's bane, mousebane, etc.
@Sir Hillary - What about Bass-o-matic or More Cowbell?
ReplyDeleteBassOMatic fan here.
DeleteAs a person who use Apple products (out of necessity, because when I first bought a computer the only good music notation software ran on a Mac), I must say I never asked Siri a question. And I must admit that I had no toehold until I researched the correct answer to the PPP clues. So why am I happy with the puzzle? Not sure, but I liked it a lot better than some of the earlier puzzles this week.
ReplyDeleteA note to Z: About your late comment yesterday. Anyone who frequents this place should understand your what you are saying unless they are a bit obtuse. At any rate, I agree with your observations. My purpose was to figure out some positive reason for the complaints. Even if they are misguided, some of the complaints (though poorly thought out) may originate from worthy origins. Then again, some of them may just be the musings of the ill-informed. I prefer to try to be one not to judge.
@Z -- It's obviously not an easy call, but Matt Foley wins by a nose for me. The two you mentioned are easily top 10. Others off the top of my head would be Mr. Robinson, Chase-Pryor job interview (unbelievably daring, would never work today), New Shimmer, Farley-Swayze Chippendale's audition and Celebrity Jeopardy ("Jap Anus Relations"!) and pretty much anything with Gilda.
ReplyDeleteBut of all cast members, Farley made me laugh the hardest. He seemed to mostly play exaggerated versions of himself, as opposed to being an "actor", but LAWDY were the results hilarious. The Chris Farley Show (the McCartney interview is priceless), Da Bears fans, the girl who scarfs french fries...OK I'll stop, time to go watch Youtube. :)
Challenging but doable Friday 🙏👍
ReplyDeleteLAWDY Miss Clawdy....I awaken this morning with a heavy heart. My beloved California is on fire once again. I look out my morning window and the sky is hazy and the sun is actually red. The Spirit meltdown is taking its toll and I MEAN IT THIS TIME.
ReplyDeleteI wish my fun energy bone could be funneled into a LAH DI FRICKIN DAH puzzle; anything to distract from the haze following me around. My best friend is stranded in Orlando...a trip she's put off a zillion times and now she's sleeping on an airport floor.
I started the puzzle around 3 in the morn but it wasn't giving me much of the up-lift I was needing. I didn't like all the names I got hurled at me and it didn't help that I had AS THICK AS thieves. I guess a BRICK makes sense. You can hurl one through a window but thieves just go home and count the thick wad of money they just stole.
I really do need to get a life...maybe shake the smoke from my eyes as well.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis ran medium for me today, maybe on the harder side, but I think that's because, not being willing to slam in SLOE on just a guess, I moved on to 5A and spent some time considering the downs to see if AGAR worked. While the R pointed to 8D being RE- something, again, I felt wary and wouldn't commit. On to the NE where 9A might be LOAMS. Considering the A, I splatzed in ANIMAL HUSBANDRY and finally got the solve moving along. If I'd just read all of the clues in the NW, I would have seen ONE WAY OR ANOTHER and could have started there as the crossword gofs intended.
ReplyDeleteI caught the BIB answer to 47D right away and thus wanted Lisa BONET in at 47A but that made Saturn's moon T_T___ and all I could remember was TiTan, nope, and Triton (oops, Neptune). It wasn't until the Y of BERRY appeared that I remembered TETHYS, though I have no idea how.
I loved seeing the answer to "Put on the line, say" was DRY at 25A. For one thing, I'm hanging out bed linens on the line today, and for another, I was thinking someone was making a bet and putting it all on the line. Don't do it, I thought. Oh, DRY, har.
Thanks, Seth Abel, and Eli, thanks for the writeup.
Had LAMOUR (Dorothy) instead of LAMARR. Both fit the clue (excerpt birth place but who knew).
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed most of the puzzle except LA…..DAH. What the frickin heck?
So did ZsaZsa
DeleteDNF, but a lot of fun puzzling along the way. I looked at the clue for 1A and wondered if it would be 'kiwi' or 'acai,.' then got the latter as a malapop. Then I had a great time guessing the grid-spanners. It's been a long time since I was a Boy Scout, but I believe I once got a merit badge in ANIMAL HUSBANDRY; I had to take care of our dog for a couple of weeks, I think. Then I got MANGANESE from the first E -- no idea it was next to iron, but it's a metal, and has the right number of letters, so in it went. TETHYS from the H, with another vague memory that I'd once read a science fiction novel with that title. It turns out that there is a multi-volume series, available on Amazon, but that's not the one I read. Still, it worked. (@Z I think the S makes more sense than other letters only if you are at least a little familiar with the conventions of Greek and Latin names; it always amazes me, but many are not.)
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I thought SITS as what judges do when they try, and ATE It were just fine; came here to see how DIE is just deserts (maybe because we all end up there at last?) That one's on me; if I't thought more I'd have come up with DUE.
But for a song I never heard of, ONE DAy AT A TIME made perfect sense, and if you're going to mispronounce a word LADdY is as good as anything. For that one I blame the puzzle.
@Bocamp, you have a mnemonic list of the elements?? How do you member it? Is it a short story? I'm impressed!
Mods, I object to Anon@10:45 who most likely didn't do the puzzle, has never done the puzzle, and is only itching to submit his master thesis for his MA from Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteHow about giving credit to the first artist to make a hit of ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, Linda Ronstadt?
ReplyDeleteThis week's puzzles have been very meh, with the annoying Naticks yesterday and today. Today's puzzle has the TETHYS/SYMS Natick (I put an M), and the cross at L for HAL/MCMILLAN (I put an N). When I didn't get Mr Happy Pencil, I was going to do an alphabet run, but doing an alphabet run at 2 places means too many options. So I took an @Nancy, as expressed by her yesterday and expressed above by pabloinnh. I thought, "Don't know, don't care" and had my first DNF in a very long time.
ReplyDeleteNow that my streak is broken, I think I may be doing the @Nancy pretty often. No more alphabet runs or pulling my hair out because the puzzles aren't well-constructed. Don't know, don't care.
No gripes about the WKRP / Kip crossing? Had to button
ReplyDeletemash my way to that one.
Fascinating. If you work with foreign currency at all KIP is a gimme. As for WKRP, not only did that provide us with Loni Anderson at her most spectacular and a hysterical Howard Hessman, it also has one of the best TV show theme songs ever (was made into a single like the Friends one and the Cheers one). We all have our own wheelhouses I guess
DeleteWith five interlocking grid spanners, this was not only an impressive feat of construction, but also an enjoyable solve. It did not come easily but the payoff was worth it. A few random thoughts:
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing as MANGALESE and no jewelry chain called ALEX AND ALI.
AÇAÍ has now officially become the new OREO.
There can be more than one LOAM.
DANTE was the first person to ever say LAHDIFRICKINDAH.
And there’s a Simpson’s character with only ONE ARM?
Jeff Chen calls the grid a tic-tac-toe board. It is, but a fancy one with enclosed squares. Not the usual four lines.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading LMS's comment on ANIMALHUSBANDRY, I looked it up. "Husbandry" means "carefully manage", not exclusively the breeding process, in the ANIMALHUSBANDRY discipline. One of our University of California campuses at Davis, near Sacramento, features that study. Part of that curriculum is the study of the breeding process.
Junk usually comes in short entries, but today it's TETHYS. Mr. Abel must have felt like an astronomer when he discovered TETHYS in his spacious word list, saving the SE corner.
Excellent puzzle. The six spanners are all pretty good.
This morning's SF Chronicle has a map of twelve current wildfires in California, only one of which is fully contained. We haven't had any smoke yet here in SF but the winds are shifting.
I’m not easily offended but this puzzle was unacceptable.. Start with the author grasping for a fill, resorting to the name of the person who assassinated Robert Kennedy. Now move on to the answer for “Gracious.” Do the puzzle creator and the NYTimes editor have any sense of its historical racist connotations?
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note, there is nothing redeeming about introducing to this hallowed blog the existence of the noodling tune called “Friday.” This peppy little ditty is renowned for being sung—no, strike that— nasal-squeeked by a vapid teenybopper. It’s topped by insipidly repetitious lyrics, including the need to inform us that Saturday comes after Friday. Egads. I just got off the phone with my 14-year-old granddaughter. I made her swear on a Bible that she will never allow that piece of mindless cultural dreck to play at any high school party she’s at over the next 4 years. It’s bad enough that they’ll all be infecting each other with Covid. This song had to be designed by a deep state to rot their minds.
Alternate clues:
ReplyDelete24D. HEROD. Penis
35A. AMALIE. Fib told by a doctors org.
47A. BONET. Flip a steak
Fun and easy puzzle for a Friday. Thanks to Seth Abel for a great solve and to Eli Selzer for an enjoyable write up.
Blondie and Devo in the same week makes me smile ear to ear.
ReplyDelete@Tom ONE WAY OR ANOTHER was written by Debby Harry and Nigel Harrison and preformed by Blondie. I don't think Ronstadt ever did a cover.
Overall, I really enjoyed this puzzle. I would have liked to see LAMARR clued differently. TETHYS/SYMS was crazy.
Animal Husbandry with Lah Di Fricking Dah - go figure...
ReplyDeleteWhere is Annie Hall when I need her?
@Tom 11:14 – I don't think so; the members of Blondie wrote "One Way Or Another", and I don't see that Linda ever did a version. Are you maybe thinking of Linda's "How Do I Make You"? It has a similar feel, and both songs were getting airplay in late 1979/early 1980.
ReplyDeleteOne Direction did a good cover of Blondie later on.
I can't be the only one that hates when words/phrasees that aren't ever spelled or have no standard or alternative spelling are put in the grid. So "frickin" frustrating. Just google Lah-di-frickin-dah and see if you can find a single source that spells it that way. There are literally alternative spellings for every single one of these words!
ReplyDeleteLah vs la. Di vs Dee. Freakin vs Frickin. Dah vs Da.
Please constructors. Spare us from this spelling pain.
RE: The [presumably white] politico-nitpickers who went looking for, and hence found, some residue of "minstrelsy" in LAWDY: Here's one very hip, very proud, irony-impaired Black man who used that term in an unforgettable and (and 100% "minstrelsy"-free) way:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqycY37sr_w
Luved the intersectin puzgrid-spannerz. Different -- a real good attribute for a themeless puz.
ReplyDeletefave spannerz: ONEWAYORANOTHER [becuz it was a gimme]. LAHDIFRICKINDAH [becuz it has that superb raised-by-wolves vibe].
staff weeject pick: COS. More about this pup, in a moment.
@muse darlin: yep. Fill choices are sometimes awful interestin. ROAMS vs. LOAMS. Or even PRAMS vs. LOAMS. And take COS, for another example. Coulda made it COB, if CELTS were made CELEB and DANTE were made RANEE. And then ergo the Coo De Grass ... 32-D can become HAR.
fave clue: OCLOCK = {The end of time?}. One of four ?-marker clues, in this fun FriPuz.
Thanx, Mr. Abel. Abel-ly done.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
The SE corner and the bottom middle of the grid were ridiculous. TETHYS crossing SYMS? KIP crossing WKRP? I mean, how are you supposed to get these random letters? Fortunately, after considering what looked like it made the most sense and taking some stabs in the dark, I did. Also, the name CAMERON CROWE is familiar to me, but at first I had BROWN in there, since it made sense based on having -ROW-. The B led to BRISK for "Invigorating," which prevented me from seeing IMP at first. Overall, kind of an annoying puzzle without much payoff from the boring grid spanners.
ReplyDeleteStill awaiting the outrage from the virtue signalers who would have been waxing apoplectic had "One Way or Another" been sung by a MALE singer.
ReplyDeleteONE WAY OR ANOTHER is what I sing to my cats when we are playing “catch the bird” and they won’t give me a turn or when I need to corral them to take them to the vet. That gave me a good head start on this highly enjoyable Friday. And I got TETHYS, my late husband’s favorite of the larger Saturn moons. Nope. I didn’t remember the name but did recall that it had HY in the middle. Got a chuckle from I MEAN IT THIS TIME, because that was never ever said at my house. Both my parents and my Gran just said “You know I will not tell you again,” when they meant business.
ReplyDeleteI get tired of Siri telling me what she found and it isn’t what I asked for. I changed her to “Rex” my new Aussie “Siri.” Rex is apparently much smarter because he “gets me.” Good puzz today, and another excellent review.
And, to the substitutes for OFL, excellent work! Thanks for the fun reviews. I really enjoy the variety and the varying POVs.
Great success in the ice cream lab yesterday. My Bellini sorbet was a huge hit. One of my neighbors said she was going to get me a set of the old ice cream bicycle vendor bells for me to ring whenever i have some ready. I was so glad everyone loved it because it is a recipe I have been working on for quite a while. Really, it’s all about the ingredients and I scored some incredible peaches over the weekend and had some left after the pie and the cobbler. Beautiful color, just a blush of raspberry purée and some really primo Prosecco, but not so much that it would t set properly. “Very firm slushee” so that it holds shape when scooped but becomes perfectly “firm-mushy” so it dances across the palate and down the throat.
Any Scots in the neighborhood? I learned of a leftovers dish yesterday called Rumblethump and simply must try it! I’m clearly enjoying retirement at the moment. Walking morning and evening to “earn” my calories!
On the harder side for me, honestly closer to Saturday difficulty -- of the longs only knew Blondie off the bat. The others just didn't hit me until I got a lot of crosses, and the shorter stuff was mostly not on my wavelength. SW took a long time to crack and don't care for LAHDIFRICKINDAH much -- just kind of dumb in my book. Otherwise, a fair puzzle I think.
ReplyDeleteMuch enjoyed all spanners, especially LAHDIFRICKINDAH !
ReplyDeleteFine Friday.
Here's what I found....
ReplyDeleteToday is the 146th anniversary of the murder in odium fidei of Gabriel García Moreno, integralist ruler and martyr of God & the Sacred Heart, at the hands of Freemasons and apostates. His last words were to forgive his killers and cry, «¡Dios mo muere!»
I think this post is puzzle related. I mean it this time.
Of course a certain Calvinist will balk but I say lah di frickin dah.
@jberg (11:03 AM)
ReplyDeleteBought 'The Memory Book' (Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas) hardcopy many years ago. Upgraded to the .epub version, as I'm in the process of downsizing, e.g., donating hardcopy books to friends and libraries.
Basically, the chapter on 'Pegs' (or hooks) is what I use for most of my mnemonics, altho linking lists are also useful. Pegs (hooks) are more useful when needing to know the exact place of a memorized fact, i.e., IRON is element # 26 and MANGANESE is #25. Linking lists are useful for to-do items, etc., where the order is unimportant, or where the list has already been compiled in a specific order, e.g., a list of errands to be run according to location.
Btw, for me, peg #25 is always 'nail', so to memorize MANGANESE, one could visualize a nail gun shooting a MANGo. Peg 26 is always nacho, so one could visualize a nacho chip being IRONed flat.
The number 'two' always has 'N' sound, the 'five' always an 'L' sound. The vowels are immaterial. So 'nail' could just as well be 'nil', Nile', Nell, Nolo, kneel, etc., etc.. A nail is very versatile which is probably why Lorayne & Lucas recommend it.
The crazier the visual image, the easier to recall the item.
___
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Did not like this puzzle. Natick city! TETHYS crossing SYMS (and also BONET), KIP crossing WKRP, SIRHAN crossing MCMILLAN...all of these could have multiple "plausible" options for the crossing letter if you don't actually know the proper nouns. The WKRP/KIP one is particularly ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteLovely puzzle. I wondered for a moment why stirrups are BONES, before remembering my EAR anatomy. Misspelled AMALIE at first, wanting it to be AMeLIE. DNF at the end, thinking it was LAH De FRICKING DAH, and thereby missing DUE and SIPS and having ATE it instead of ATE UP. Not Mr. Abel's FRICKIN fault, though. His answers were clever and right on, all the time.
ReplyDeleteI love LAWDY. If you're my age, you immediately thought about Lloyd Price, whose LAWDY Miss Clawdy was his first big hit, way back in 1952. Knew the song well, because it was so often played as an Oldie but Goodie in the late 50s and the 60s. And I smile to think of Price, who was a favorite of mine. Tons of great songs. I learned today that LAWDY Miss Clawdie was Fats Domino's first exposure to a broad audience, though all he did was the piano intro. Fats, as you know, lived in New Orleans, and Price was originally part of the New Orleans sound -- grew up in Kenner, right outside the city. Learned also that Price died only this year, age 88, having for some reason moved to Westchester County, just north of New York. Lloyd Price brought a lot of smiles to a lot of faces. Certainly to mine.
The Northern version of LAWDY was Lordy, the word my mother (born in Peoria, spent most of her life in Los Angeles) used in moments of frustration or surprise. Another reason to smile at LAWDY, for me.
What a puz - - - - six spanners? Wowza!
ReplyDeleteI loved Eli's critique of the puz; frankly, I think rex should read it and take notes.
Up until his take on LAWDY.
Could someone explain to me how this is cultural appropriation, or have we lost all sense of what that term originally referred to?
I am with folks on the TETHYS - SYMS cross. Not a fan.
Saturn has a lot of moons. I was proud of myself for recalling TRITON, but that's a moon of Neptune . . . . .
You are all welcome. Unless you wanted my riff on the typo. You’ll just have to wright your own Spike Lee or Sheck Wes joke (who? no idea but I knew there would be one).
ReplyDeleteI’m with @jazzmanchgo on LAWDY. Southern dialect isn’t in and of itself racist. Could LAWDY be misused in a racist way? Sure.
@Frantic Sloth - SIRHAN SIRHAN definitely hit a sad note for some. I’d say that as a general rule assassins are best avoided, both in puzzles and in life.
@MeteoGnome - While a little stalkerish, especially before the bridge, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER has none of the stalkery menace of Every Breath you Take. Blondie is “I’m gonna meet you” while Sting is all “you belong to me.”
[i]Run For Your Life?[/i]
DeleteAh, those lovable Moptops.
you got what you deserved. thus 'you got your just DESERTS' or 'you got your just DUE'
ReplyDelete@pmdm
ReplyDeleteJust curious. Why do you feel that you have to apologize for using Apple products?
@old timer
Thanks for the Lloyd Price memories.
Actually the state of New Jersey got themselves in a jam when they used Blondie's One way or Another in a campaign to stop tax evasion and fraud.
ReplyDeleteThey were, rightly, excoriated. The song is a de facto threat. And fantastic live. Saw blondie at the Asbury Park Sea Hear Now festival two or three years ago. She did a raucous, high-energy set. Not bad for an old lady.
Coincidentally Joan Jett appeared on the same stage ( there are several) at the same festival either the year before or the year after. She too was great. Absolutely ripping. I know I've told the story of her helping revive the crowd at JFK after REM had crushed the assembled's spirit after their execrable set.
Siri and Alexa are CREEPY!!! I will never have either unless needed to sustain life. Please, GOF, don't let that happen.
ReplyDeleteWow, right up my alley...Particularly gratifying after yesterday's Haribo-Ren Yar-Odor disaster. The difference between the Ha_ibo _en Natick, and Sym_ with Tethy_ ( aside from the fact that I knew the latter), is that there are very few letters that seem to work with Tethy and Sym. But in a really BAD, Natick, there is no way to make any kind of guess.
ReplyDeleteI started with "As thick as a board," which I well may be, confusing "thick" with "stiff" somehow... Corrected it with "foil alternative in Fulham," which is an easy one for me...
In all, really nice puzzle, appropriate for my age group, cleverly clued.
@ Z 8:23
ReplyDeleteIf you really believe that Will Shorts is promoting Apple products b/c of the Siri cross, you've been drinking rex's koolaid for way too long.
You realize it's the constructor who came up with that phrase, right? And likely the clue as well.
I like when the blog header incorporates casual trivia into the proceedings. For example, did you know that Hedy Lamarr was hungry when she was born in Austria? I didn't. But because the header mentioned it, I did some googling. Her first words were: "If you're not gonna eat that wiener schnitzel, can I have it?" Then she yawned and said: "And bring me a protractor, I have to invent Bluetooth now."
ReplyDelete@unknown 4:52 - Are you denying the evidence right before your very eyes!!!!!?????!!!!! What next? Paul isn’t dead? Aliens don’t actually do anal probing? The color of the pill doesn’t matter? Rye doesn’t really have a marina? Open You Eyes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!!!!!!! If you don’t believe it must surely be because the nanobots from your vaccine are controlling your mind. Throw off the shackles and see the truth.
ReplyDelete@old timer - Your post reminded me that Fats had a cameo appearance in one of my favorite TV series “Treme”. It’s set in post Katrina New Orleans and the music is terrific. You can stream it on HBO Max. Colbert’s band leader Jon Batiste appears in several episodes.
ReplyDeleteReally don't mind if you sit this one out. My words but a whisper your deafness a shout.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once asked my if I had ever worn out an LP vinyl record by playing it so much and I said yes, Jethro Tull's "THICK AS A BRICK". So that central grid spanning Down was a treat. (I eventually wore out two of Dave Brubeck's "Time Out" LPs. I still watch a YouTube of "Take Five" from time to time.)
I think this puzzle scores very high on the degree of difficulty scale. The grid has only 26 (!) black squares. That's a very low number and the amount of open space left to be filled with words crossing one another is daunting, to say the least. And on top of that there are six (!) grid spanning entries. Each grid spanner crosses three (!) other grid spanners. Think about it, after only a couple of spanners, there are already lots of constraints in the to-be-crossed spanner slots. And the hill just gets steeper with each additional spanner entry. Most impressive. The low black square count and the multiple-crossing grid spanners won me over before I ever even read the first clue. Overall liked it a lot.
The puzzle did have a 1960s-70s vibe to it (bowling in my lanes) and I can understand why entries like WKRP, SIRHAN and ERICH Fromm might cause a bit of a FLAP with many solvers from later ERAS. I enjoyed the WKRP initial episodes and thought they were edgy for their time and, of course, there was Loni Anderson. Haven't seen any reruns so don't know if WKRP has aged well.
Also giving the puzzle an old school feel was TETHYS. That's the kind of thing that we used to find in a standard Crossword Dictionary, right?, along with lots of other mythological figures, arcane geological terms, moons and stars, and that kind of stuff. Now we need electronic help with popular culture stuff. The Times, they have changed.
Your wise men don't know how it feels to be THICK AS A BRICK.
I didnt have any problems for me. In terms of time, I dont look until the end and im not a speed solver. Happy to peek over a few hours and love the aha moment when another answer falls into place and then cascades to 5 or 10 more.
ReplyDeleteThis was exactly one of those puzzles. Until I tapped out after looking at it for a few hours off and on. I gave up and on the app said to Check Puzzle. Hate to do it. And said to myself it was going to be one square.
It was one square. Maybe I should have changed it based on the down. But wtf is RARES. Is that anything. I had RARER. Which makes sense to me. I hate that I didn't complete this and should have with the down clue ignoring the across. But I was fixated on the across and have no idea why I would have put rares. Maybe rarest if I had the room.
Am I the only one that found this answer less than satisfactory. I'll accept that if so. But I think that is rares.
When I was a kid (during the "Space Age"), I had this Rand-McNally map of our solar system pinned to my bedroom wall (which was in an attic of our house, an arrangement I just loved), and being a nerdy kid I could have told you things like the average distance from Jupiter to the Sun, that sort of thing. And I might have been able to recite the dozen or so moons of Jupiter and the nine or so moons of Saturn. In the intervening years, I think I have been given to understand that there are many, many more orbiting bodies around these gas giants, and however they might be named, I think on coming of age I abandoned any hope that I would remember them, and thus have jettisoned all those earlier names from memory. (Deimos and Phobos around Mars, that I can remember.) Possibly I knew TETHYS as a kid, but as an adult: fuggedaboutit. In all honesty: not a clue in good taste.
ReplyDeleteOn FRICKIN': when I was a slightly older nerdy kid and studying the dictionary, I knew that "frig" meant "fuck", and I would have fun with my parents who left notes, before going to a party, that there was food in the "frig" (my dad's misspelling). So FRICKIN' is a variation of friggin' which is another way of saying fuckin'. Freakin' is some sort of dubious attempt to be even more genteel about the matter. So really the NYT means to say "Lah-di-fuckin-dah", but the Grey Lady is not quite prepared to go that far. Yet.
Having been a kid during the Space Age when science and scientists held an honored place, it shocks, appalls, saddens me this loss of prestige in the public eye for the scientists. Christ, we have no idea how lucky we are in this country to have all this vaccine at hand so early, compared with other countries, and yet we are squandering it all away because of liberal hoaxes and nanobots and... gah! Frig!
Basta. Hey @bocamp. Today was a weird one but got to 0 td. Hope you got there too. I read with interest your writing about mnemonics. Do you know this story Funes the Memorious by Borges? I am stopped in vast wonderment whenever I think of it.
@Ttrimble
ReplyDeleteWhat liberal hoaxes?
@JC66
ReplyDeletePrecisely. Imagined hoaxes. Like this, for example.
Pretty good. I could be nit picky and criticize 48A. But then I might be acused of being a crossword snob and someone would surely say:LAHDIFRICKINDAH. So I won’t :-)
ReplyDeleteStrange...the first glance at this grid was daunting: lookit all that white! 199 of 'em, I later counted out of curiosity, a mere 26 blackies to contend with. But then I read this really long clue for 3-down: gimme! I greedily threw down ONEWAYORANOTHER and was off to the races.
ReplyDeleteAnd I never slowed down. Honestly, yesterday's puzzle was ten times harder than this. The stuff just flowed. With only the first O and the last C in place, I read "The end of time?" and saw OCLOCK instantly. I can't remember an easier Friday.
Of course, LAHDIFRICKINDAH was worth the price of admission. LAWDY was no problem via the aforementioned Lloyd Price. Sure, it's colloquial, and you could infer offense if you wanted to...glad OFC wasn't here to beat that dead horse. The lovely Lisa BONET wins DOD, though LAMARR must receive props as well.
Nothing in the fill to RUB me RAW, either. As I am in a super good mood having seen the D____S C_____S lose their NFL season opener, I shall award a second straight eagle.
SHAME BANE
ReplyDeleteLAWDY, IMEANITTHISTIME,
HERE'SWHATIFOUND, FELLA,
ONEWAYORANOTHER to rhyme
with LAHDIFRICKIN'DAH.
--- ERICH MCMILLAN
Pretty much what @spacey said. Including Lisa BONET.
ReplyDeleteA late late night movie last night: "Johnny O'CLOCK"
Coincidence? This morning on 89.3 The Current they played the Blondie song so the earworm ONEWAYORANOTHER was still rattling around.
REHASH: pretty easy but good.
I basically agree with @Spacey and @Rondo. Except ONEWAYORANOTHER was playing in my head and I couldn't grasp the words. Sooooo frustrating. Walked away. Came back. Got it.
ReplyDeleteGot all of it.
Diana, LAHDIFRICKINDAH
HERE'S WHAT I FOUND, AND I MEAN IT THIS TIME! : “LAH DI FRICKIN’ DAH”. At that point I SMILED, though with some SHAME, feeling THICK AS A BRICK for not finishing cleanly
ReplyDelete--HAL SYMS