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Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
Do people use DHL? I believe it exists because I do crosswords, but I want to call it DSL every time (oh, also: do people use DSL?). YODELLED with two "L"s looks nutts. If LEVELER has one "L" then YODELED should be spelled thusly, and yes, my spellcheck likes the one-L version and hates the two-L so what is even happening there? Are we yodel(l)ing on a peak in Britain? Yodel(l)ing while British. Isn't the two-L spelling typically a British thing? The extra "L makes me want to pronounce it with three syllables, the same way "learned" can be pronounced with two.
- REIGN (RESIGN) (13A: *Stay in power)
- HAVE (HEAVE) (23A: *Hold on to)
- OVERT (COVERT) (26A: *Done openly)
- EVOLUTIONARY (REVOLUTIONARY) (37A: *Changing gradually)
- FASTS (FEASTS) (50A: *Doesn't eat)
- HERE (THERE) (54A: *On this spot)
Word of the Day: ASMARA (10D: Capital of Eritrea) —
SECRET has nothing to do with "opposite," so ... I'm just stunned by the irrelevance of SECRET. The main idea of the puzzle isn't SECRET. The main idea is that the circled squares reverse (*reverse*) the meaning of the Across term, turning it into its *opposite* ... so if you're going to have a revealer, it should be something that conveys that. SECRET conveys nothing. It's overgeneral and ridiculous and honestly completely useless. Extraneous. You don't need it at all. I finished this puzzle never even noticing that there *was* a revealer. I saw that the circled letters spelled out SECRET, and I thought, "well, that's interesting, but it has Nothing to do with the actual gimmick, weird." And *then* I saw that there was a revealer, which just seemed goofy and unnecessary. I mean, you must have seen what was going on with the theme before you got down there, so SECRET, at that point, would be a. wrong and b. completely anti-climactic. There is no punch in the revealer, and there's especially no punch in the *repeated* SECRET in the circled squares. In fact, there was never much of a SECRET at all, since the Down crosses give you those squares. You can see the gimmick pretty quickly. I'm genuinely astonished at how weak a revealer / spelled-out thingie SECRET is. If REVERSE had been the revealer ... maybe you've got something. Or ANTONYM. I dunno. Something. SECRET ... what a waste. Another example of a technical / architectural feat done for its own sake, with no concern for whether the concept underneath it all really makes any sense. SECRET ... wow ... still shaking my head over the fact that I saw the revealer so late and that all it did was repeat the world I could already see inside the circled letters, and that that word was (still) in no way specifically related to the actual theme concept (which, again, is meaning reversal, not SECRETs).
Asmara (/æsˈmɑːrə/ əs-MAHR-ə), or Asmera, is the capital and most populous city of Eritrea, in the country's Central Region. It sits at an elevation of 2,325 metres (7,628 ft), making it the sixth highest capital in the world by altitude. The city is located at the tip of an escarpment that is both the northwestern edge of the Eritrean Highlands and the Great Rift Valley in neighbouring Ethiopia. In 2017, the city was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its well-preserved modernist architecture. The site of Asmera was first settled in 800 BC with a population ranging from 100 to 1000. The city was then founded in the 12th century AD after four separate villages unified to live together peacefully after long periods of conflict. Under Italian rule the city of Asmara was made capital of Eritrea in the last years of the 19th century. (wikipedia)
• • •
Do people use DHL? I believe it exists because I do crosswords, but I want to call it DSL every time (oh, also: do people use DSL?). YODELLED with two "L"s looks nutts. If LEVELER has one "L" then YODELED should be spelled thusly, and yes, my spellcheck likes the one-L version and hates the two-L so what is even happening there? Are we yodel(l)ing on a peak in Britain? Yodel(l)ing while British. Isn't the two-L spelling typically a British thing? The extra "L makes me want to pronounce it with three syllables, the same way "learned" can be pronounced with two.
I know the title "Heather Has Two Mommies" but LESLEA, nope, that slipped out of my brain (44A: Newman who wrote "Heather Has Two Mommies"). Talk about a wordlist name—all those vowels! Speaking of wordlist names: REAL ALE (29A: Unfiltered and unpasteurized brew). That entry is just an excuse to get lots of 1-point Scrabble letters into the grid to act like glue and help you hold the grid together. I've never heard of REAL ALE, the same way I've never heard of SHAM ALE. SHAM ALE for my real friends, REAL ALE ale for my sham friends! (and LESLEA, probably). I reforgot ASMARA today, but reremembered it after a couple of crosses, so I give myself a "C" on my ASMARA-remembering test. Big "D'oh!" moment with CAROLE King. You got me there, clue (26D: King of pop). Nice one. I also wrote in TIRE (off the "E") for 49A: It's in heavy rotation on the highway (AXLE). Probably not a great idea to put USER (NAME) and USED (CDS) *and* (!!?) DISUSE in the same puzzle. That's just lazy / negligent. I need coffee now. Looking forward to tomorrow's puzzle! See you (T)HERE! Mwah!
ReplyDeleteLiked it a lot better than @Rex. There's a SECRET to the puzzle -- the secret is that you need to ignore the "secret" letter to make sense of the clue. Okay, it's not one of AES's best but CAROLE King was worth the price of admission.
YODELLED is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI will die on this hill.
To be faaaaaaair…
DeleteYou will die on ANY “no double Ls” hill.
(this is my partner and we’ve had knock-down, drag-out arguments over the correct spelling of “cancelled/canceled” - as well as similar.)
The rule I learned was
DeleteDouble the consinent and add ing
No doubling of the consinent before ed
Unknown says: "The rule I learned..."
DeleteEnglish language says: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I guess the reveal is a Secret and we'll never know it.
ReplyDeletePhials, really?
DHL is very much a thing, especially if you ship internationally.
ReplyDeleteThx Alex, for an extremely crunchy, challenging puz! :)
ReplyDeleteVery hard.
Good start in the NW, then big-time floundering.
Lots of hit and miss, and the NE was all miss for a very long time.
Was in a vast OCEAN, trying desperately to get back to firma terra … oops, terra firma. Whew and phew!
HEAVEd to for repairs, then stayed on the LEEward side; finally found an ISLE and a safe haven.
Was very surprised to get the happy music, esp after I had LESLEA, which just didn't look right. Have heard of CAROLE King, but wasn't sure of the final vowel. Couldn't come up with anything better than the 'E', so that was that.
All said and done, another fun, challenging adventure on the high seas, and ultimately, a welcome mooring in the harbor.
___
dbyd pg -1 / yd pg -1
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Here's a nit for today: the answer to 59a (Christmas trio), biblically speaking, would have to be gifts instead of MAGI. The number of kings who visited Bethlehem is not specified in Matthew, but they did bring three gifts. But yes, I know, the clue is "Christmas trio," not "Bible trio."
ReplyDeleteI always spell travelled with two els....does that count?
ReplyDeleteAlex and I don't always see eye to nose but I winked out this puzzle at COVERT. Whaaat sez I? COVERT is the opposite....(W)here is Will when we need him?
Sorry, @Rex, but I enjoyed the snot out of this. When I read you, I began counting the number of times you wrote in SECRET and then I needed some deodorant. This was clever.
I had two trouble spots. I didn't know REA LALE nor LE SLEA. What kind of names are those? I thought.
SHAVEN and LATHER walk into a bar.....YODELLER is the bartender. Can you guess who is sitting in the corner?
My SPORE runneth over.
What the L?
DeleteYes, your doubling the L is a variant spelling
As @Rex explained, this just doesn't work. I lost interest about 3/4 of the way through and hit reveal. It would have been an OK themeless. Lose the circles and clue the six *ed entries straight up.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the revealer, my mind immediately went to “SECRET circle” and it all made sense. Then I read Rex’s review and wondered why he didn’t see this. A quick Google search brought up a TV show from a decade ago that ran for one season on The CW (that I never saw) and a series of novels (that I never read), and little else. So there may he a basis for the theme beyond what Rex saw, but if it is based on books or a TV show that is relatively unknown, then it loses its punch.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of 'REAL ALE'? Where have you been these last 40 years?
ReplyDeleteDrinking wine.
DeleteGoogle search hits for yodeled (one L): 3.1 million. Yodelled (two Ls): 79,000.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got RESIGNS I was blown away. A word that becomes it’s opposite simply by changing the pronunciation from /s/ to /z/. That didn’t hold true for the rest of the puzzle, but I was still blown away and enchanted by the “anti-kangaroo” words. What a joy!
ReplyDeleteOceanjeremy: I'm glad you've found a cause to give meaning to your life......
ReplyDeleteAlso, speaking as an audio professional, "leveler" when "limiter" fits is just wrong.
ReplyDeleteThank you!! This one drove me crazy, too.
DeleteAsk one million people what the opposite of “hold on to” is, and exactly zero will respond “heave”.
ReplyDeleteForty years since Carole King had a top forty song, so I wonder how much longer that King of pop clue will work. A long time, I hope.
Oh, and I'm OK with YODELLED but then you should use LEVELLER.
ReplyDeleteAw shucks, Rex, this was cleverly entertaining and engaging. Very interesting word changes, and no harm in including the 'secret' theme. Had raw milk before REAL ALE. Loved the clue and answer for NUDGER. And agree (!) on Carole King's clue and presence today.
ReplyDeleteLeslea Newman is a wonderful person from Western Massachusetts and the book is a classic. Happy to see her here.
Happy Hump Day everyone. May be laundry day. Haven't decided if buying a washer/dryer is in the cards. Found a cheery laundromat where the owner is present and upbeat. This gives me more space in the utility room (which is a consideration when one has 2 cats and so, 2 litter boxes.) 🐱🐱
@amyamyi get the washer but not a dryer. You'll save room and on your energy bill. I haven't had a dryer in 15 years since mine broke. It saves me time or I feel like it does. But I was one of those people who let clean dry clothes sit in baskets for days because I despised having to deal with them.
DeleteI won't let wet clothes sit too long in the washer, so I deal with them immediately, thereby eliminating the "fold clothes in the basket" chore.
The only redeeming quality for this puzzle is finding the 6 words within words that negate each other. Otherwise, as Rex points out, incorrect spelling, the word "use" 3 times, the revealer has nothing to do with the entries, etc. Oh, and once again, a NYTimes puzzle that can be solved without caring about the theme. One of the best of 10,000 submissions in a year? Wow, just, wow.
ReplyDeleteNot often I agree entirely with OFL but I had the same reactions to much of this, especially the "revealer" analysis. Minimum bang, maximum whimper, which was made more disappointing by a very cool theme, which deserved better.
ReplyDeleteI just saw SLEETY in another puzzle and do not need to be reminded of this particular kind of weather before it's even October.
Thought the SRI/SIRI cross was pretty neat.
NUDGER? Really? Also today I learned what a THURIBLE is, nice word, and discovered that there is someone actually named LESLEA.
Nice concept for a puzzle, AES, for which thanks, but you can keep your Annoying Extraneous SECRET.
"Real ale" is most definitely a thing -- not the opposite of "sham ale" nor a "green paint" phrase. Google "Campaign for Real Ale" ("CAMRA"). Real ale is the apex of the brewer's art, and you haven't lived until you've had a hand-pumped pint in a British pub.
ReplyDeleteAmen to that! First thing to do in Britain, wherever you go, is find the nearest CAMRA pub.
DeleteReal ale is a (mostly British) thing. I’ve had real ale in the UK and it is my favorite of all beers. Per Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteReal ale is the name coined by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) for "beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide".
I suppose if we can have OCHRE, we can have YODELLED, although my American spell-checker balks at both. Come to think of it, Eaton-Salners has a British ring to it.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle played pretty easy for a Wednesday. Putting aside Rex's valid but overlong criticism of SECRET, the theme concept is enjoyable and it would be AMUSing to compile more examples. Maybe if SECRET were replaced by "reverse", the criticism would go away? I don't think I'll have time to work on this today.
For 14D, I kept picturing a little owl who counsels the taking of Xyzal (sp?) instead of NYTOL. It almost sounds like the offspring of Xyzal and Nyquil, with Geritol as the godfather. I wonder who comes up with these names?
Not a big fan of SLEETY, a word I probably have never USED, but otherwise the construction seems competent, if not very exciting. On a 1-5, I'll give it 3.5.
yd pg -1 (haven't given up)
td ?
Agree we have a weak theme here. Went pretty quick for me - not a lot of sparkle. Hand up for noticing the multi USE. CENSES and PHIALS?? Backed into LESLEA. Liked the CAROLE King entry - SLEETY not so much.
ReplyDeleteUsed to see Brooks Brothers all over downtown - didn’t realize they are still a thing. REAL ALE on the other hand is a thing Rex. Travel thru England and Scotland and you'll have a chance to drink a lot of it. Since the furkins are not under pressure - the identifying characteristic is the hand pump used in the pour. Similar to bottle conditioned beer many craft breweries produce now - a little bougie but unique.
Flat Wednesday solve.
REAL ALE is a big thing in the craft beer world. Natural carbonation. Fermented in the vessel you will serve it from. Good stuff.
ReplyDelete@oceanjeremy - Yes. YODELLED is wrong. Unless you are in the UK where it is actually the preferred spelling. Or unless you are ok using an alternate, but accepted, spelling (which I am).
ReplyDeleteNote to @Rex - REAL ALE is a real thing, even though you've never heard of it.
My personal nit: I have never in my life heard a person referred to as a NUDGER. The person described is simply a "nudge".
You may be confusing nudge (a gentle push) with noodge (a Yiddish word for an annoying person) noodge itself is both verb and noun.
DeleteCompletely disagree. A challenging puzzle that with work revealed itself, and revealing the revealer answer (secret) and inserting in the circles indeed helped with some of the themers. Also thought both Yodelled and Carole had very clever clues.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a perfectly fine Wednesday. Truth be told, I hadn't taken in that removing the circled letters reversed the meaning, so the secret was "the answers are the opposite" and sure enough that dawned on me when I typed in secret. THEN I set about wondering what the circles were for and didn't really "get it". So, LOL, I thought this was brilliant, even if thinking so makes me a little stupid. Enjoyed ISLE as our man of the Irish sea. Had lots of other thoughts going on there. Think we're all being a bit American if we're going to quibble about what gets one L or two and challenge real ale, which is really great. Fun Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteWas disappointed to see that TERI Hatcher bested Ms. Garr today. I know it's hard to root against Lois Lane, but I really thought Ms. Garr had a shot at NYT Crossword Queen of 2021.
ReplyDeleteKind of enjoyed PHIALS which sure looks like a made-up word, but it appears to be real - I'm wondering if it's a regional, antiquated or perhaps more common overseas. Is it really pronounced "files" - that definitely sounds out of place.
Enjoyed Rex SHREDding the theme - he makes some good points, albeit a touch repetitive though.
@Joaquin. I didn't like NUDGER either, nor SLEETY. Contrived forms of words are pretty standard in Xwords but they detract from puzzle quality and enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteI'm in awe of this puzzle! This is what happens when a brilliant job of construction dovetails perfectly with a delicious solving experience for the solver. Never mind the difficulty of embedding these theme answers in a puzzle that will then wind up with the letters of SECRET in order. How do you come up with these opposite pairs in the first place? REIGN/RESIGN. HAVE/HEAVE. OVERT/COVERT. And my favorite: EVOLUTIONARY/REVOLUTIONARY.
ReplyDeleteI know that when I'm trying to come up with themers in my own puzzles, I lie awake in the middle of the night ideating. Or (more often) failing to ideate. If I'd thought to tackle this theme, I'm sure I wouldn't have slept for weeks. Or perhaps even months.
As a solver, I found this quite hard. Was the "big jerk" OAF, ASS or TUG? What was the capital of Tasmania and would I have to cheat? (I didn't have to. Whew!) Would "put a cork in it" turn out to be TMI? Nope -- it turned out to be SHH. And was that "helpfully pushy person a NUDNIK? Nope -- it was a NUDGER.
And then there's the playful, irreverent cluing. Has there ever been a clue for ELOPES more calculated to AMUSE than 41A?
How Jeff Chen could have awarded a POW to Monday's snoozer when this beauty was in the weekly lineup is beyond me. ARE we having fun yet? You betcha, Alex! Kudos.
DHL is huge internationally - both as an international shipper and as a presence in numerous countries that are not the US. DHL tried to cut into the US domestic shipping market share (against UPS and FedEx) 10 or 15 years ago, but did into meet with a lot of success.
ReplyDeleteThat there were THREE magi is a popular legend, but no where to be found in the actual biblical story (much like Paul's non-existent horse as he travelled to Damascus). And it seems that they delivered their gifts personally, as there are no accounts of a DHL van making deliveries in the vicinity that day.
And by the way, Teri Hatcher is real and she's spectacular!
ReplyDelete😂
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFEASTS is both a kangaroo and an anti-kangaroo word -- how cool is that? It contains both EATS and FASTS.
ReplyDeleteLet’s get REAL. REAL ALE ain’t a REAL thing, it’s a made up thing to distinguish between macro breweries and micro breweries. Of course, at a certain point successful micro breweries get bigger and then they hit the Sam Adams Conundrum: Too big for craft brew snobs but not big enough to actually compete with the macros. Being anti-monopolist I’m sympathetic to the need to campaign against macro brewing hegemony, but the eyes roll when people start waxing poetic about REAL ALE. There is nothing inherently better about an unfiltered beer. It can be very good. It can also be crap. Any home brewer being honest will tell you the same.
ReplyDeleteOh, the puzzle. Yeah, that SECRET thing looks like a lack of confidence to me. There’s the pretty clever add a letter to make the opposite idea, which I quite like, but somehow that wasn’t enough so this “make the added letters spell something” thing was added. But SECRET is just too tenuous so I got the same arched eyebrow as Rex. SECRET just doesn’t convey anything about what’s happening with the theme so it just clanks. There’s probably a wordy way to clue 66A to make it a better revealer, but as is it provided more “Wha???” than “aha.” And, yes, I had sussed out that the clues were for the word without the added letter thing before I got to the revealer.
Clean up on Aisle Yesterday:
@Beezer - I’m thinking I’ll wait until Sunday to revert to @Z so that the syndiland solvers have an explanation for who the hell this @Ω guy is.
@Barbara S and @TTrimble - My explanation is simple, we are pattern seeking creatures and so the mathematical patterns in music are a comfort and a pleasure to us, even when we don’t consciously recognize the patterns. Even the most dissonant punk rock has an underlying structure.
@Ω 8:57 All true but I think we can agree it's fair play as a crossword answer:
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ale
This puzzle blows chunks.
ReplyDeleteRead about the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). It’s most definitely a thing, and it changed the way the world drinks (long before the while micro-brew thing).
ReplyDeleteFar better than the bland Wednesday puzzles we often get from the NYT. AES found 6 interesting word-within-word opposites and did about the best you could do in making a theme out of them. Revealing the SECRET brings out the opposites -- what's the problem?
ReplyDeleteYeah, the fill strained a bit (YODELLED, SLEETY, PHIALS, CENSES) but overall everything works quite well. More like this, please.
This is the revealer:
ReplyDeleteWhen revealed in this puzzle, it reverses the meanings of the answers to the starred clues.
This only works if you leave the circled squares empty. If you have already filled the circle from the down entry, it doesn't work. I don't understand how so many posts can pretend that this theme is at all coherent.
At first, I thought the applied to the Down answers as well, so I spent way too much time trying to figure out what AROLE had to do with "King of Pop."
ReplyDelete@Anonymous8:51 Love the reference!
ReplyDeleteGood puzzle with a nifty theme but a revealer that was neither HERE nor THERE. Psst psst, NUDGE NUDGE. Something that’s not only visible but also highlighted with circles is already clearly OVERT and isn’t much of a SECRET to be revealed. I’m sure opinions will vary on this and really it wasn’t such a big deal but I had to HAVE something to STAB at on this enjoyable Wednesday. While I wouldn’t exactly call it an OPUS, I wouldn’t throw EGG at it either.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know about you but my abs were SCULPTED and when I performed at my peak I EXCELLED. Had no idea what D&D is or how DICE related to it but a quick Google got that.
The late Helen REDDY gave us women folk a song for the ages. It got me through some tough times back in my single girl days when I rarely missed a BASH and never needed NYTOL.
To secret (as a verb)something is to hide it. You hide the secret letter to change the meaning
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteAgree Revealer should've been worded better/differently. The SECRET doesn't reverse the Themer meanings, it's that the letters SECRET in each Themer reverses the meaning. You could've theoretically use any word instead of SECRET. With SECRET in the circled squared, it's already OVERT, not COVERT.
If that makes sense. Trying to explain what's in the ole brain is tough.
I did enjoy this puz, wrongly worded Revealer and all. Neat to find words like these. Wondering if @LMS did the puz today. This one would probably make her Top 10. Is there a word for these type words? Containerinners?
Paraphrasing MPFC:
Wink Wink NUDGER NUDGER
Wrongness right out of the gate today. elate for AMUSE. Other writeovers, buy-OWN, TOGa-TOGO (do they wear Togas in TOGO?), hOoF-LOAF.
Fun clue for MRED. Old TV show that the kiddos probably don't know. It was actually before my time, and I crested the hill 2 years ago. Technically now a DOOK. But still a fun clue!I like the word Shindig, too (9D clue).
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
I have to think our constructor, Alex, is British. YODELLER is the preferred UK spelling and all the REALALE I’ve consumed was in the UK… it’s the brews that are lured with those hand pumps (and not from a carbonated tap).
ReplyDeleteTally ho!
Lovely theme, expertly executed. AES is one of the elite constructors. He did a very nice Sunday variety puzzle involving dropping letters a few weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why Rex and some of us think that SECRET should have something to do with opposite. The idea is that we "revealed" a SECRET (see clue for 66A) and by revealing the letters in the word we made a word with the opposite meaning. The oppositeness comes from the revealer at 66A, not the word SECRET itself.
When I buy a loaf of ciabatta and put it on the kitchen counter, my wife finds it there. By dinnertime, both heels are gone. Loved the clue at 38D.
Mostly agree with Rex. Enjoyed the puzzle more than he did, but trying to lawyer SECRET as the revealer in the aftermath...blech.
ReplyDeleteYes, it can be done, but if you have to work that hard to make minimal sense...no. Just no.
Clever construction, no doubt. You had your fun - where's mine?
🧠🧠
🎉🎉
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ReplyDeleteMostly medium except for NE which was tough. ASMARA was WOEish and SHREDS and MAR did not come easily. Clever, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
ReplyDeleteHaving OAF instead of ASS slowed me down considerably.
ReplyDeleteCAROLE King was brilliant.
The construction was brilliant.
Rex needs to relax a little.
I misremembered Asmara hah
ReplyDeleteI've been underwhelmed by the output of all the new constructors we've had recently, so I was happy to see a familiar name, someone who had a track record. Half way in I was less happy, it was then I recognized the name and realized I had never taken to this gentleman's work. Here, none of the look at this! aspects of the puzzle did anything for me (words can contain / be contained in other words? You're kidding, right!?), and the junk mention above was, well, junk. And the reveal? As someone once said about a Peter Collins puzzle with the theme SECRETGARDEN
ReplyDeleteIT'S NOT SECRET! If you circle the f#$*king letters, it's not f#$#king secret! You want it to be secret, don't circle the f#$#king letters!
@Anonymous 851am 🤣🤣 👍
ReplyDeleteA rule of thumb for L vs. LL in past tenses: One L if the stress is on the first syllable (yodeled, canceled, traveled). Two L’s if the stress is on another syllable (excelled, compelled).
ReplyDeleteFor nouns, see: “The Llama,” by Ogden Nash.
This is the second day in a row where the puzzle has delighted me! If Tuesday and Wednesday are this good then I can’t wait for tomorrow. The theme today was totally novel for me. Why didn’t I ever notice that one letter could reverse the meaning? Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteThis took more time than the average Wednesday which is an added plus. My only quibble is with LESLEA. While I’ve heard of the very worthy book, I wonder if her unusual first name has actually entered the English speaking consciousness. It hasn’t hit mine, obviously.
Quite a construction fea(s)t.
ReplyDeleteStarted out easy and gradually became HARD, especially in the isolated NE and SW corners. Liked the anti-kangaroo theme a lot, but didn’t understand why SECRET had to be spelled out twice and thought that the clue for the revealer could have used some editing. Also thought that the reversal that is so clean in (C)OVERT and F(E)ASTS gets a bit muddled in (R)EVOLUTiONARY.
NUDGER is one of those words you only see in crosswords. Is there a term for arbitrarily adding an “R” to a word that normally wouldn’t have one? ROC (R of convenience)?
Get educated, Rex! Real Ale was (is) a very important movement that sparked the craft beer revolution throughout the world.
ReplyDeleteI join the fans of the theme: I thought it was ingenious. In the NW, I didn't know SIRI as clued or NYTOL, so could make no sense of RES?G? Only the following COVERT turned on the light bulb, as well as my eager-beaver gene for "Oh, boy, let's figure out the rest!" My favorite: HEAVE v HAVE. Super construction feat, with the grid layout and SECRET code.
ReplyDeleteDo-over: NagGer before NUDGER - the "helpfully pushy" of the clue had both surprised me and made me feel validated, so I was sorry to have to change it. Must practice NUDGing.
Re: PHIALS - To those who've raised an eyebrow: for me this was one of the stars of the show. In my imagination, if you have a potion or elixir or fairy-tale poison, it belongs in a phial.
Re: SLEETY - I live where it sleets, but while we have rainy days and snowy days, I've never heard anyone talk about a SLEETY day. I wonder if its different in other parts of the country.
Agree with Rex about the overly general, anticlimactic nature of the revealer. When I saw that the circled letters spelled secret, I kept looking for another word that would go with secret (maybe "secret meaning"?) to complete the revealer. But then it was just "secret." Total letdown.
ReplyDeleteI found this puzzle harder than your typical Wednesday because of a few spots where the letters were tough to figure out. I know Teri Hatcher from the famous Seinfeld episode referenced by someone above and from Star Trek TNG, but I couldn't access her name in the moment. That made the T hard to guess, since NYTOL means nothing to me. ("Benadryl competitor"? If you say so.) For a while I wanted Geri or Jeri in there, perhaps because I was thinking of Jeri Ryan from Star Trek DS9. I also had TAR for MAR for quite a while, not knowing ASMARA and thus thinking ASTARA was perfectly plausible.
"SHAM ALE for my real friends, REAL ALE ale for my sham friends!" Nice chiasm!
The only "movement" song worse than "I Am Woman" is " We Shall Overcome". Equal rights should be everyone's goal but bad songs don't help.
ReplyDeleteOK. I am aware that MEN SWEAR. So do a lot of women. Why is that a focus of Brooks Brothers? SIRI told TERI that MRED was an ASS.
ReplyDelete@mathgent 10:14 got it right about the revealer. It works perfectly if you let yourself read the clue. I guess that is our SECRET.
Fantastic puzzle, AES!
@amyyanni:
ReplyDeleteLeslea Newman is a wonderful person from Western Massachusetts and the book is a classic.
since that's where I was born and bred, looked her up to see if we might be from the same town, more or less, but the wiki says she is from Brooklyn, and says nothing about her current whereabouts. one search result says she once taught in Northampton, which makes sense in a certain way... but nothing about her current residence. ah well.
@Ω
Sam Adams has never been a 'craft brew', except for an occasional retail brew pub, and even then it was/is not clear that only beers made in those vats came out of the taps. I don't know about today, but last time I checked, most of Sam came out of available capacity from various PA brewers.
as to Magi and gifts, I'd wager that 99.44% of folks 'know' that there are 3 Kings (as in 'Three Kings Day' among certain sects) not from the Bible but from that silly ditty that is used to inculcate chillin to Christianity.
yep. About a "medium" difficulty WedPuz. What made it trickier, oddly, was the revealer clue. Took m&e a while, to figure out what the clue for SECRET was maybe tryin to get across.
ReplyDeleteTake REIGN = {* Stay in power}, f'rinstance. When U "reveal" the circled S, it reverses the meanin, to get RE(S)IGN. And if U don't "reveal" the circled S, the word REIGN fits with its starred clue.
What makes it kinda hard-ish to understand, is that the circled letters are already "revealed" when U fill in the puzgrid during yer solvequest, in order to get the Down words like U(S)ERNAME to work. So, it's sorta like U then hafta go back and un-reveal (one of) the SECRET circled letters, to get each starred clue's answer to work. Or somesuch. Different. Like, but made my head hurt.
Primo find, on the REVOLUTIONARY/EVOLUTIONARY pair. fave themer, at our house.
M&A project for the day: Find another such of a pair. So far, all I got is MOTHER/OTHER, which ain't quite right, somehow.
staff weeject pick: SHH (it's a secret).
some fave sparklers: ROCKHARD. MRED [cuz of its raised-by-wolves-style clue]. YODELED. EXHUME.
Thanx for trying to keep the meanin of the puz revealer a SECRET, Mr. A-E-S dude. And way to play with our heads.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
**gruntz**
@M&A
ReplyDeleteHow about (N)EITHER?
My favorite posts this morning.
ReplyDeleteNancy (8:48)
rjkennedy98 (10:20)
egsforbreakfast (11:48)
When I was young I was taught that you had to double consonants to keep the vowels short. So BAT becomes BATTING. So I had no problem with LEVELLING that's what I was taught was correct.
ReplyDeleteI agree that SECRET as a revealer was kind of blah and though the Easter egg of it being made up of all the circled letters was cool, I did not notice it until I read Rex. The conceit of adding a single letter to reverse the meaning that was seriously cool though. Too bad AES couldn't make it work in both directions!
@Unknown:
ReplyDeleteYes, your doubling the L is a variant spelling
of what? a lama is a Tibetan monk. as llama is a South American 4-footed critter.
oops. was regressing to a different puzzle. need to take my Prevagen.
ReplyDelete@Unknown (12:10) - Right you are! I did confuse 'nudge' with 'noodge'. That said, I still think NUDGER is a bum word.
ReplyDelete@Pete, You are my post of the day, although I enjoyed this more than his usual work.
ReplyDelete@Unknown 12:10, I threw in Nudnik for a while.
@mathgent
ReplyDeleteHow come you never read my posts? 😂
Paper was late, but it came. I had not the foggiest idea what the circles were for, when I saw REIGNS/RESIGNS. The trick was a lot more obvious with HERE/THERE. What is so SECRET about this is a mystery to me, too.
ReplyDeleteBut boy to I remember REAL ALE. Somewhere I have the original book by CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) that listed every single Real Ale pub in Britain. They are few and far between back then, though I had long been a fan of the Flask in Hampstead, and as a result of that book discovered the Lamb in Lamb's Conduit St so convenient to what was for years my favorite hotel in London, on Southampton Row. Still a Victorian gem. And thanks to CAMRA, I fell in love with any pub owned by Young's Brewery.
But the best experience I had was when I discovered this little pub, with rooms above, in a hamlet between Bath and Wells. Liked it so much I stayed for two nights, visiting Bath one day and Wells, with its moated cathedral, the other. They had Bass Ale "on the wood". No handpumps for them! The beer flowed by gravity. And they offered the best lamb chops I ever had in England. Which perhaps isn't saying much, since I have never had a meal at one of those famous London chop houses.
M&A 12:03 PM
ReplyDelete(S)HE.
I only got half of the theme today before reading Alex's notes at xwordinfo.com. I got that the starred clues indicated that the opposite meaning was needed there, when RESIG_ could be nothing other than RESIGN, obviously the opposite of "*Stay in power". But when Alex mentioned anti-kangaroo terms, I remembered a discussion here (led by @LMS?) about such things and then saw REIGN/RESIGN, aha.
ReplyDeleteI'm with @Carola on NAgGER, wondering who has ever found nagging helpful. My co-worker wanted Noodge there but thought they would never put that Yiddish word in the puzzle. Wrong, it's been in five or six since 1995, as recently as February 2021.
I could only think of lions with the "mane" part of the 28A clue and luckily was unable to dredge up Elsa the lioness from "classic TV". (Does 1974 count as "classic" in TV years? You'd think so but it doesn't feel like it to me.) Elsa in that spot would have caused even more havoc than ASMARA, SHREDS' clue, SHH and HEAVE caused.
I didn't even blink at the two-LL YODELLED. I often write CANCELLED or TRAVELLED - I blame reading too many English novels in my formative years.
Thanks, AES.
Good puzzle, fun to solve. The trouble is with the revealer in that a) every themed puzzle has a SECRET, viz., what the them is, just like here, and b) the secret is right there in the clue, when it should be in the answer. Since it's down there almost at the end, it doesn't affect one's solving pleasure much, though.
ReplyDelete@Ὠ -- what makes it Real Ale is not the size of the brewery, but that it is fermented in the cask it was brewed in, and served directly from the cask, so that there are probably still some yeast cells doing their thing. The campaign was driven more by drinkers than by microbreweries, in protest against the vanishing of RA from pubs. It's come back big-time now, and has spread across the Atlantic. I don't think Rex drinks beer, at least he only mentions cocktails and wine.
@Carola, in general, but magical substances can also be in the form of a lozenge.
Isn't it DHLL?
ReplyDelete@old timer-Nit picking and no disrespect-- we old timers need all the respect we can get-- but the moat in Wells is around the Bishop's Palace. The cathedral is magnificent and they do a very nice tour, but it has no moat. We heard their very fine choir sing the Hallelujah Chorus there on Easter Sunday a couple of years ago. We were visiting my son and his English wife, who just moved back there after living with us for a year. I can understand their attraction to Wells, as it looks like it fell our of a storybook.
ReplyDeleteThanks to you and others for all the info on REALALE. I was unaware of all this but will investigate the next time we're in England.
What Rex said. Lookin for Thurs.
ReplyDeleteAgree with 🦖 - about “secret.”
ReplyDeleteClever 🧩 with some clever 🔎 s gave a 🤩.
👍🏽🤗👍🏽
I join those who thought the theme idea was clever but that the SECRET reveal and its clue were a tad obtuse.
ReplyDeleteJ. Michael @11:15 AM, taking a verb like NUDGE and making it a noun by adding on an R is what I call letter count inflation (LCI). There are many ways to boost letter counts and fill power without adding commensurate value or interest. Several are on display today. SHAVE, LEVEL, YODEL and SLEET all get boosted letter counts. The most common LCI is the venerable plural of Convenience (POC) and they are also on prominent display. Even one of the theme entries, F(E)AST, needed some POC assistance to fill its slot.
I though this puzzle was a lot of fun. Can't really see Rex's point. There's a secret to solving the puzzle. Good enough for me. Again, it's a crossword, not a technical manual on disarming bombs. The theme altered the solving mechanics, which is my personal favorite type of theme. Felt Thursday tough, but that's okay.
ReplyDeleteNothing more tiresome than beer snobs. If you run into someone referring to some beer as "plonk"* or other cute put-downs, run the other way. It's only beer - no need to make a big deal about it.
ReplyDeleteInteresting side note: Peter Coors was in my freshman class and roomed in the same dorm at Cornell. As far as I remember he was a nice enough fellow. However, nobody at least around Ithaca, New York, had ever heard of him or his beer. If his name has been Peter Rheingold or Peter Ballantine he would have been a celebrity!
Ah, time marches on and as predicted by Gatsby, “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
*Actually an Australian term for less than stellar wine, some beer snobs have grasped onto it, as well.
Loved the theme! I honestly don’t know how constructors come up with this stuff, but glad they do. We know that Rex hates high Scrabble value letters. Now he hates low value letters??? I guess we need a puzzle filled with Ms, Ns, and Ps.
ReplyDelete*checks out the comments to see if anyone else has said what real ale is, with the intention, perhaps, of mentioning CAMRA*
ReplyDeleteOh well, only everyone.
I’m with the likers of this puzzle, Thought it was a good one.
No problem with SECRET here. Yes, it is on the huh-yeah I guess it's a SECRET since it wasn't spelled out what the secret was: remove the circled letter. But come on folks, what kind a reveal do you think you really can get by spelling the single letters that is removed from each of 6 antikangaroo words to get to the contained opposite. And have it spelled out in the order they appear in the puzzle. Pretty amazing you can even make a word out of those letters.
ReplyDeleteREALALE an unknown to me but it seems to be a genuine thing. Even interesting. Word snobs dumping on beer snobs. Here I pretend to be a potato chip snob. Don't expect me to jump on that bandwagon.
Truly a difficult puzzle for me. CENSER ASMARA LESLEA. I've gotten that mountain alp peak YODEL misdirect several times but had to get ODELING before seeing it today. And that Y got me to (R)EVOLUTIONARY. Until then I was in crash and burn mode.
Conspiracy theory: did @LMS have inside info. Was that just a coincidence. Seems a kinda unlikely donut.
I thought the unusual oddity of it all far outshines any nits and complaints anyone has mentioned today.
EXACTLY. I enjoyed this puzzle’s theme a lot.
Delete@albatross shell - exactly. THAT’S the SECRET. removed the circled letter. simple as that. Don’t over think, people
ReplyDeleteI agree that SECRET should not have been used as a reveal. No reveal would have been better than one that is wrong. Also, REVOLUTIONARY is not the reverse of EVOLUTIONARY. Too bad, this one could have been really good with a little editing.
ReplyDeleteI found a way to improve this one: 66A Superman to Clark Kent: _______ identity, or when revealed in this puzzle, it transforms the meanings of the answers of the starred clues.
ReplyDeleteREDDY THEN!?
ReplyDeleteMEN_SWEAR she CENSES she'd rather
not HAVE let down HER OWN guard,
yet CAROLE YODELLED in a LATHER,
"MR.ED you ARE ROCKHARD!"
--- LESLEA ASMARA
The SECRET to the *puzzle* is in the circles, simple as that. The clue says that When [the SECRET] is revealed [in the circles], the meanings are reversed. Has nothing to do with SECRET = reverse. OFL and many others missed the point of that long revealer clue. Read it again.
ReplyDeleteAll of the TERIs have been here so often. How about some props for CAROLE King?
COVERT/OVERT SECRET or not, still on the weak side, IMO.
Irritating theme and multiple pissers. Either a Thursday, or a reject.
ReplyDeleteI did this puzzle just now while waiting for a package from DHL which was supposed to arrive Monday. Apparently I'm at the end of the driver's route, and they just come to the end of their shift before getting to me. I've called twice...hopefully it comes today, but I'm not holding my breath. So, yeah, they're a thing, sort of. (In fairness, in Singapore they actually are the best such service going.)
ReplyDeleteAgreed that the "Secret" reveal was not good.
No SECRET here, and liked the reverse meanings of the themers, especially HEAVE and HAVE.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, LATHER wAsHEd me out, LESLEA eluded me, and ASMARA kicked my ASS.
Later, APU and I AMUSEd ourselves at the BASH. (APU’s a pretty straight-up guy.)
Agree that SECRET left me scratching my head as to relevance. It wasn't even a NUDGER (?). Plus the placement of the circles--already a minus--was totally random. That whole schmear was unnecessary; the puzzle would've been a decent Thursday without any of it. Sometimes you just have to let the solver figure it out, especially if the revealer would be awkward. This is one of those times.
ReplyDeleteAlso agree that our ever-present TERI can stand a break in favor of that "Beautiful" soul CAROLE King. DOD to her. In fact, she lifts this bogey to a par.
@spacecraft --
ReplyDeleteARE we on the same wavelength? Aren’t the letters S-E-C-R-E-T, in order, also embedded (and hidden) within the themers? It all seems pretty relevant to me. Or am I missing something?
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ReplyDelete