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Napoleon's famed war horse / SUN 12-5-21 / Actor Spall of "Prometheus" / Dennis the Menace's appropriately named dog / Percussion instrument of African origin / Click artificial increasers of website hits / the grand slam of show biz awards in brief / Religion that emphasizes seva or selfless service / Rapper dissed by Jay-Z in Takeover / Adventurous kids in a 1985 film / Literally I bow to you
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Constructor: Chase Dittrich and Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- NEVERENDING STORY (24A: ... FLOOR FLOOR FLOOR ...)
- BEARS REPEATING (32A: ... GRIZZLY GRIZZLY GRIZZLY ...)
- PERPETUAL MOTION (45A: ... PROPOSAL PROPOSAL PROPOSAL ...)
- AD INFINITUM (72A: ... COMMERCIAL COMMERCIAL COMMERCIAL ...)
- RECURRING DREAMS (97A: ... AMBITION AMBITION AMBITION ...)
- NONSTOP FLIGHTS (106A: ... STAIRS STAIRS STAIRS ...)
- CONTINUITY OF CARE (115A: ... CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION ...)
Marengo is a city in McHenry County, Illinois, United States approximately 60 miles west northwest of Chicago. The population was 7,648 as of the 2010 census. [...] Spinetta Marengo (Piedmontese: Marengh) is a town in Piedmont, Italy located within the municipal boundaries of the comune of Alessandria. The population is 6,417. [...] Chicken Marengo is a French dish consisting of a chicken sautéed in oil with garlic and tomato, garnished with fried eggs and crayfish. The dish is similar to chicken à la Provençale, but with the addition of egg and crayfish, which are traditional to Chicken Marengo but are now often omitted. The original dish was named to celebrate the Battle of Marengo, a Napoleonic victory of June 1800. [...] // [keeps looking, keeps looking] [OK, here we go] Marengo (c. 1793–1831) was the famous war horse of Napoleon I of France. Named after the Battle of Marengo, through which he carried his rider safely, Marengo was imported to France from Egypt following the Battle of Abukir in 1799 as a six-year-old. The grey Arabian was probably bred at the famous El Naseri Stud. Although small (only 14.1 hands (57 inches, 145 cm)) he was a reliable, steady, and courageous mount. (wikipedia)
• • •
PLEURAL crossing NEURAL is about as pleasant an experience as hearing those words repeated one another AD INFINITUM. That's way too much sound repetition for *any* two answers in a grid, let alone two that cross each other. Also, PLEURAL is just not great fill, period. See also INES (esp. as clued, 75A: Chemical suffixes). Otherwise, like the theme, the fill is adequate. Highly adequate. The RAFE / RUFF crossing was indeed rough, esp. with the ugly ACAP wedging itself into the fray as well. No idea who RAFE is, no idea even what "Prometheus" is, but these things happen (101A: Actor Spall of "Prometheus"). But crosses should be solid, and RUFF? (87D: Dennis the Menace's appropriately named dog) ... well, I inferred him (him?) but it took a while. Also, "appropriately named" was ambiguous. I thought maybe I was supposed to know something specific about Dennis the Menace's dog, and come on, how would I know that? Does the dog actually say "RUFF?" Is that his (his?) thing? Anyway, what's "appropriate" has nothing to do with Dennis's dog per se—it's just a dog thing generally; namely, the barking. Short obscure proper noun crossings! Who doesn't love those? At least this one was ultimately gettable.
I have a question about 50A: Rapper with more than 20 Grammys (KANYE WEST). This is the second time in recent days that the puzzle has misnamed him. His name is now Ye. I don't really care what you feel about Ye personally, or what you feel about his name change, you can make all the Puff Daddy P. Diddy Diddy Puffy Sean Combs jokes you want, it seems like the crossword should, as a general rule, respect the names that people want to be called. Not to do so sets a bad precedent. You shouldn't get to pick and choose whose name changes are valid and whose aren't. I don't feel terribly strongly about this, because I'm not aware of how much Ye himself cares about the issue. But KANYE WEST is, at the moment, as far as I can tell, a *former* name. Wikipedia still refers to him as "West" throughout the write-up, so maybe in professional contexts, or when discussing the past, it's OK. But I would err on the side of "call people by their chosen names."
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday
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113 comments:
Thx Chase & Jeff; nicely composed Sun. Puz, thx! :)
Easy-med. (in spite of a dnf).
Really enjoyed this one; moved steadily from top to bottom, with little or no resistance.
Spent a great deal of time trying to pinpoint my error; finally CRied uncle and hit the Reveal button. I had DAREd rather than DARE I. Just didn't read the clue correctly, nor did I give more thot to what 'the Birthright trips' destination might be. Sloppy, embarrassing faux pas! :(
Loved the themers.
Fun adventure! :)
___
yd 0
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
I was wondering what the heck is going on with this grid. What are those things in the middle? Well, on xwordinfo.com, Jeff says "I hope you noticed the infinity grid art in the center of the puzzle". Well I noticed something, but didn't see the symbol. Okay, but it sure makes a lot of 3 word answers. Infinity can be... restricting?
And is CONTINUITY OF CARE actually a thing? OK Google says yes; shows what I know. Gotta get out more.
[Spelling Bee: td (Sat.) 0, restarting after a week's holiday from it. (I actually had a short go at Fri. but gave up at -10, and glad I did; just a ton of stupid "words" that no living person uses, and not worth the effort.) Sat., only a couple.]
Bug eyes? Try symbol for infinity. You miss a lot, don't you.
This was a pretty good puzzle.
I give Rex a lot of leeway because of his limitations, and that’s okay, but I learned Napoleon’s horse was named “Marengo” when I was in high school. It’s pretty well known if you have a halfway decent education or just a sense of basic curiosity. Napoleon is a pretty famous guy; I’m not sure if he was in any comic books, but he probably could be an Avenger, along with Marengo and Emma Peel. If Marengo could fly and Napoleon could shoot laser beams out of his eyes I would read the hell out of that.
Here’s Napoleon crossing The Alps on, you guessed it, Marengo!
Here’s Marengo today, rip-roaring and ready to go.
Now, Kanye West won those Grammys, not “Ye.” This is an unchangeable fact. It says so in the official record.
By the same token, Cassius Clay won the Olympic Light Heavyweight Boxing gold medal in Rome in 1960, while Muhammad Ali beat Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman. Muhammad Ali did not win gold, Cassius Clay did. This is also in the official records.
This photo explains everything.
I really enjoyed this. BEARS REPEATING and AD INFINITUM pretty early on set the pace and I was off and running. A few of the proper names had me scrambling, but between the two of us, we figured it out. He on the sports and me on the others.
If I never hear of KANYE or YE WEST (or whatever is nom du jour is) it’ll be too soon.
@GILL I Welcome back and congratulations on your new grand baby.
... I think the "bug eyes" in the center of the puzzle formed by the black squares are in fact (and this is a generous interpretation) forming an infinity symbol, which ... it doesn't actually do? Like, if you could pull off a more convincing execution of it, then great, but I don't think the puzzle needed to have it--well, have this attempt at it.
If we’re erring on the side of just not having ardent supporters of fascist regimes in the puzzle to begin with, leaving Kanye out entirely seems like a fine choice.
The GOLDEN GEEZ Award goes to the heretofore unknown (to me) "click FARMS". I'm not up on my cyber-shenanigans terminology, so it's always an adventure when I learn something new in the world of mendacious propaganda. Even if I'm aware of such nefarious practices, I rarely know the lingo. It'll be forgotten by mid-week though. Perhaps sooner.
Have to wonder about how many people will question the whole Grinder/HERO thing at 85D, what with its pinpoint micro-regionality and all.
Let's watch!
I liked the theme more than Rex did, but that bar doesn't even bother showing up anymore. It wasn't a laugh riot or jaw-droppingly clever IMHO, yet it kept me off the streets and out of the back alleys for 30 minutes, so there's that.
Favorite themer was BEARS REPEATING because BEARS.🐻
🧠🧠
🎉🎉🎉
Easy Sunday. Quick and some amusements beyond the themes. I liked some of the repetitions. ADINFINITUM was the best and the whole concept was above OK. NON STOP FLIGHTS STAIRS STEPS FLOORS all worked well together not to mention NEVERENDING STORY. Well done.
Anyone who has read War and Peace should know Marengo.
Easy. Smooth grid and a leisurely solve with grid art to boot. Delightful, liked it a bunch!
RUFF was a gimme because the funny papers.
Wowzer!!
The return of Sloth and JOHNX on the same day. O Jive and Joy. So glad I awoke and couldn't get back to sleep and so came here to see w'sup.
Say you don't think... well ya know... they...hmmm...
This was great fun... I like it when the themes themselves are stand-alone puzzles.... And amazingly I knew Dennis the Menace's dog's name instantly... As I write this, I can see Dennis with the slingshot protruding from his back pocket.
Enough with the faux outrage over things like Kanye West's name change. It's really tiresome. (Though I guess he really did kick the Kan down the road.) It's a crossword puzzle, not a treatise on the angst tormenting uber- millionaires.
A calming solve for me, like tubing down a quiet river, gently taking in the sights and being reflective. There was the lovely cross of NEURAL and PLEURAL, for instance (Hi, @Rex!), and a passel of animals, with the BEARS, NAG, PIG, EMUS, APE, and URCHIN, hopefully under the umbrella of the ASPCA. There was the original pun-strong theme that kept me guessing and smiling.
I saw that the BEARS were indeed REPEATING, with URSA in the grid. I noticed that with one meaning of “heel” being “tail end”, that this was a schwa-heely puzzle, with ETTA / ANNA / TESLA / URSA / SANSA / NANA / SEGA / KATANA / MARIMBA and cousins ALLA and DINAH. I couldn’t come up with additional theme answers, but theme spurred in me the phrase “eternal life”, which made me think, “Best battery ever!” And then I wondered, “Can PRELATE have an alternative definition of “On time”?
Alas, the leisurely meander ended, and it was back to the everyday routine, but it was sweet while it lasted. Thank you, Chase and Jeff!
Theme was OK, felt a bit repetitive as it went through so wonder if it was more suitable to a standard sized grid… however it was easy so perfectly pleasant overall. And yes marengo was a write in and certainly qualifies as a famous horse.
No idea why grinder is hero, is that a type of sandwich somewhere?
No one in the uk has said “I say” for about a hundred years, so actually quite recently for what the NYT seems to think people say over here based on their clues which were apparently mostly written back in Victorian England.
Also bizarrely learnt today you guys have a completely separate cartoon Dennis the menace to the Dennis the menace we have over here whose dog I know to be called gnasher from reading the comic as a kid so that was confusing!
Fun, fairly easy solve, done on our way to Newark Liberty Airport to pick up our son, who's come home for a few days (from Seattle!). I totally missed the infinity symbol in the center!
I thought it was cute to cross NEURAL with PLEURAL but knew immediately that this would go over poorly with OFL.
Had "Asia" instead of URSA (Minor) and "in crowd" instead of INGROUP at first, slowing me down a tad. Grinder => HERO always conjures up the grinder-hero-sub-hoagie-torpedo dialect discussion... I'm a hoagie man myself.
Ye didn’t win the Emmy’s. Kanye did!
Wouldn’t "… FLOOR FLOOR FLOOR …" be an appropriate clue for Neverending Building? The clue for NEVERENDING STORY would be "… ROOM ROOM ROOM …"
Welcome back, @Frantic!
KATANA(S) 2 days in a row after once before? never? I don't know. Any one of you puzzle clue trackers care to comment? THANKX.
Cheese horses cracked me up! Best part of the whole puzzle and write up.
Grinder = HERO? What am I missing?
@Lewis
A bit of punctillious punctuation does the job.
We were all seated for the 8 am meeting when the bishop strolled through the door just as the church bell rang the 8th time. The prelate was pre-late.
No real resistance to me in solving. Had almost the same times for Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. I do not recall any write-overs. Only real hold-ups were related to confirming an answer before putting it in. For example, thought PSEUDOSCIENCE off of the P, but then thought that it did not have enough letters so I abandoned that idea. When the bottom ended in NCE, then I went back to count squares. Also had BRO----, but had to wait on crosses because I did not watch that show
As @Rex mentioned, AD INFINITUM was perhaps the best theme answer, and it was well-hidden in the middle with few ways to get in to that section. Luckily, the crosses were easy enough for me to see the answer, as I am not sure I would have gotten it without a lot of correct letters already there to help.
That grid art in the center results in some odd length fill throughout - mostly clean I think but there are some groaners. Thought the dense theme was fine - kept me interested. AD INFINITUM within the infinity symbol puts this over the top for me - but also liked BEARS REPEATING and RECURRING DREAMS.
Learned the meaning of NAMASTE. Knew MARENGO so not with Rex on that. Our crossword friend Siri uses recurrent NEURAL NETs extensively so that was neat to see but I agree that the crossing with PLEURAL was unfortunate.
With @John X on the KANYE discussion - it’s a temporal reference. To expand his Clay example - it’s Lew Alcindor etched into the NCAA championship cups for UCLA in the late 60’s.
Enjoyable Sunday solve.
@ okanaganer 12:30
CONTINUITY OF CARE is a term often used in medicine - most often I have heard it in the hospital setting when dealing with shift changes (between nurses or physicians) or when the on-call team is signing in or out. It is a big deal, because changing care from one person to another is a huge potential source of error. If something changes in a patient that I have seen for the last 12 hours, I may pick that up quicker than someone who is just seeing them for the first time. I may also have a better idea of what to do to treat it because I may be more familiar with the patient's case.
@John X
I consider myself reasonably well educated and curious, and have never heard of MARENGO. I only recently (in my mid-50s) learned that Rocinante was Don Quixote's horse, and that was from seeing the name in the sci-fi show Dark Matter, and then looking up the origin. That prompted me to start reading Don Quixote, which I have found quite amusing.
I think that this is more of a wheelhouse type of answer. There is so much information out there, and so little time in school. If you took classes where that was discussed and if you remember it, then it may seem like basic knowledge to you. If, on the other hand, your European history class focused on other people or events, then it may seem more like trivia.
By the way, I'm guessing that many solvers take for granted that any grid with the name Jeff Chen on top, whether solo or as a co-constructor, will be junk-free and deftly put together. This is because it is how it has always been, through so many puzzles, and thus it is how it always will be.
No. Do not take this for granted. Try making a clean, well-connected crossword grid sometime, and you will see that Jeff is a wonder, a master technician. What he does is incredible. Period.
Yep, easy Sunday. Stared at CONTINUITYOFCARE for too long as the term I'm familiar with, I think, is "continuing care", plus I didn't know the singer. Confidently wrote in AYERS for the actor, seeing an echo of our discussion here the other day, which made that easy. Also made it wrong. Oops.
I actually looked at the grid for once to see what I could make of it, but I don't think the infinity symbol would ever have been even a wild guess. I think it's about as good as you can do with a bunch of squares though.
Nice smooth Sundecito, CD and JC. Clued Directly and Just Crunchy enough. Thanks for the fun.
@alby-I don't know, but I've never seen a picture of them together. Hmmmmm indeed.
If he won the awards when his name was KANYEWEST then the clue is accurate.
PRimATES (a bishop who has precedence in a province) sure shares a lot of letters with PRELATES (an ecclesiastic such as a bishop or abbot). And since RAFE or RAFi were equally likely as far as I knew, I needed the themer to fix things. The only Spall in my data banks is Timothy.
Fun. I looked forward to each themer, and always wanted to get it with as few crosses as possible. Most were fairly easy, but CONTINUITY OF CARE took almost all the crosses – I’m not familiar with the base phrase.
I thought the ‘bug eyes’ were a Möbius strip, which made sense to me.
The return of John X and Frantic Sloth on the same day … is this a Clark Kent situation?
@BritsolvesNYT - thank you for the Gnasher reminder! The UK Dennis the Menace appeared in Beano - a word which has quite a different association here.
@Anonymous, 7:51 AM: Please see my post at 6:54 AM... "Grinder => HERO always conjures up the grinder-hero-sub-hoagie-torpedo dialect discussion... I'm a hoagie man myself."
HERO vs grinder:
"It's "subs" in North Jersey, "hoagies" in South Jersey, "HEROes'' if you're originally from New York City, "grinders'' if you're from New England." (NJ.com)
Another excellent acrostic today; tough to get a foothold, tho.
@okanaganer (12:30 AM) 👍 for 0 yd
___
td 0
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Rex full of crap about solve time. Trust me
After a super-hard Friday and challenging Saturday, this was a breeze - and my new Sunday record. I thought it was nice — all the theme answers worked for me because the key word in the answer (BEARS, AD, etc.) always had a different meaning than what was implied in the clue.
Lots of nice answers here, aside from the themers. SILENT PARTNER and PSEUDOSCIENCE, plus MARIMBA and MARENGO (couldn’t have told you his horse but recognized it with a few letters), AL GREEN singing one of my favorite songs ever and a Dickensian URCHIN. The latter made me wonder about the connection between the impish street child and the sea creature. From what I can tell, the original meaning of the word was “hedgehog.” You can see how a sea urchin resembles a hedgehog in appearance and, with a little squinting, how a street kid resembles a hedgehog in activity. Maybe?
I’m not a sports nut but I felt proud of myself for knowing the four-letter last name of a prominent basketball Steve. NASH, I typed confidently, imagining myself quite fluent in the BROCODE. Darn. Never heard of KERR.
Forgot to mention the nice crossing (and cross-cluing) of UNDERDOG and UPSET.
Easy, fun to figure out and I confidently know how to pronounce AYRES (rhymes with pronunciation 2 of Mayors in M-W).......unless of course, Ayres doesn't rhyme with Ayers.
Fun and fast 😊. Also got the theme along the way, used it to solve the rest. That's most excellent on Sunday.
Loved the theme. All the theme answers are clever and imaginative. One pithily expresses our current zeitgeist: AD INFINITUM. I'm wondering if that might have been the germ of the idea? And one, BEARS REPEATING, is genuinely funny. I laughed.
So I was having a perfectly swell time at the top -- all the way down to the SHARPE/RAFE/RUFF (the cartoon dog) section and then all hell broke loose. Even KERR and CARMEN above hadn't bothered me too much: I did't know thm but they came in. Below the awful SHARPE and neighbors section were GUIDO and ARIE and AL GREEN and FRO-yo (what on earth?) and the awful clue for CCS. What's a "TO field"? Isn't it a TO line? And NAMASEE??!! Only a few Japanese words are familiar enough to justify this kind of "literal meaning" clue as far as I'm concerned: Sayonara; Geisha; Samurai; Sushi; Ninja; Yakitori.
This puzzle went from pleasing and amusing me no end (pun intended) to making me gnash my teeth. (Well at least I had fair early warning on KATANA from yesterday or the day before.) But really -- why ruin a delightful theme with so many criss-crossing pop culture names? Were you unable to avoid them, Chase and Jeff? Or did you simply not want to avoid them? Bottom line: They should have been avoided.
It seemed like a lot of this one was Wednesday level difficult. I had to throw in the towel with just a handful of empty squares - I had forgotten that TEA EGG is a thing and never heard of NAMASTE (also the clue for SET didn’t help at all, as I don’t know the card game). Similarly, I just couldn’t close out the Sherlock Holmes section because I had never heard the term URCHIN used that way - I always thought of it as a cross between a porcupine and a rock.
The cool thing is I actually guessed right in the section that has Steve KERR along with the philosopher crossing the TV actor from the days before they even had TV sets (well, at least the normal ones that can show different colors). No such luck with KATANA crossing INES - as IdES, ItES and probably a few others would qualify as suffixes and I just didn’t feel like playing alphabet soup to get to Mr. Happy Music.
Hey All !
Surprised Rex missed the ♾️ symbol in the middle of the grid. Me being so smart (har!) wondered why there were 974 Blockers in the Center, and at first saw brackets, but then the ole brain decided to do it's job, and going by the Themer clues, sussed out it was the ♾️ symbol. I be intellectual.
Literally chuckled out loud at BEARS REPEATING. Gives me a funny vision also of lots of BEARS in a row disappearing into the horizon. Best Themer. NONSTOP FLIGHTS is good, too. CONTINUITY OF CARE, however, was a letdown at the end. Heard the *whah whah* sound once I got it. A thing, sure, but after the other Themers, ending on a major Meh.
Speaking of the ♾️ in the Center, notice the Themer in there? AD INFINITUM . Put that in your meta and smoke it.
All set to hear the Happy Music after finishing up in the East Center area, after 26 PPP names there. AYRES was a who?, KERR escaping the ole brain, and the religion obscurely clued. Plus a random philosophizer. Alas, the Almost There! popped up. Dang it! Turns out, I had SIKkISM/kUME. One-letter DNF, at a PPP cross. Should be a PPC, Piss Poor Cross. 😁
But did enjoy the puz. PishPosh on Rex saying it wasn't good. It was fun. So says RUE. (As I'm known in France!) Sacre Bleu!
yd -4 should'ves 2
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Don’t try to rewrite history Rex. It’s not a good idea.
Yes, I too noticed the simultaneous re-emergence of @JOHN X and @Frantic. But they've been gone for very different amounts of time. It's like JOHN X was teleported to another solar system, whereas @Frantic had a longer-than-expected delay in the parking lot.
So I therefore think that @albatross's and @pabloinnh's spicy speculations are probably no more than IMPish rumor-mongering. Still, JOHN X is a master of disguise and deception -- so you can't be entirely sure...
I am sorry that my comment to Trey did not help Trey with his problem But I am having my own problems now. I think my comment I composed for today did not get published. For some unknown reason. So if this comment is a duplication, I apologize.
Humor is a personal think. I appreciate the humor of Jeff Chen. Mike Sharp does not. That is OK, but I see no need to expound on one's reaction beyond saying "Once again, I responded coldly to the theme answers in a Chen puzzle." Today's rant was, for me overlong and result in my speed-reading through the write up, a bad thing.
I am happy that Lewis is more apreciative of Chen's entries. I am happy when other people's responses approximate mine.
A "sandwich" whose bread is of the Italian variety has many regional names in the USA, and one of the above comments lists them. And what I call soda is called pop in other locations. But it drives me mad when "cement" is pronounced like a sexual term (changing the stressed syllable and dropping the pronunciation of the last consonant). That coming from a church organist who is really tired of juvenile innuendo applied to me.
Katana two days in a row. That happens too often to be a mere coincidence. Now my comment about Z's post yesterday makes a bit of sense.
And now, on to proving I'm not a robot and hoping this comment posts and does not duplicate my previous comment.
I'm thinking of skipping Sundays and just going straight to the archive. (Currently working my way through Fridays and Saturdays of 2009.) I needed two words in the SE and just said screw it. For some reason Al Green didn't come to me.
So the Ol' Comics perfesser doesn't know from Dennis the Menace. Hah.
Anyway my day is made with the re-emergence of @John X. I think we are owed an explanation. And what do I do with the bail money I raised from Go-Fund-Me.
What's the pleural of lung? If you don't boil Al Green too long, will he be Al Dente? (Michigan's win has made me giddy. I'll stop now.)
This is the kind of Sunday that makes me dislike Sundays. Lots of isolated sections, lots of three letter ese, and a cultural center somewhere around 1960 (Dennis the Menace & Dr. Kildare? So so much B&W TV).
@Jeff Chen & @Joe Dipinto - What @Cory Calhoun said. Grid art gets some leeway, but that in no way evokes an infinity symbol. Make the E, I, and O into black squares and then we’d have infinity.
@Steve H - Isn’t War and Peace on the Least Read Famous Novels list? If anyone were to tell me they read it I would immediately wonder what else they are lying about.
@Stevied - What? Did Rex even comment on his solve time?
Regarding Ye: Rex didn’t say the clue was wrong. Rex didn’t say Ye won those awards. Rex said, I would err on the side of "call people by their chosen names." As far as I can tell the guy is talented, troubled, more than a little ego-maniacal, and probably not someone I’d ever want to spend any time with, but I still think acknowledging people by their preferred name is basic human decency. The NYTX not doing so twice in a few days is comment-worthy. There are creative ways to acknowledge that the guy no longer goes by the name he once did.
@Trey yesterday - Disappearing comments - I don’t know why, but my iPhone basically refuses to acknowledge that I’m logged in, while I have no issue with my iPad. I have no idea why. I suspect part of the issue might be a difference between the web version and the mobile version of Blogger. I always comment from the web version. I have occasionally had issues with comments disappearing, but usually only when going between tabs and the comments page decides to reload. Almost never when hitting publish.
Someone suggested contacting Rex. He has no control over Blogger, it’s a Google product. He just uses it.
I always groan when I see a Jeff Chen puzzle but this one wasn’t so bad. Even with all the (totally unknown to me) proper nouns, I managed to set a new Sunday best. It was funny to see Marengo in the puzzle since I live about 15 minutes from Marengo, IL. No idea it was also the name of napoleon’s horse. I also missed the infinity sign in the center. Derp.
Lol!
@Nancy 9:35 - if you did finish up with NAMASTEE, you may wish to check your grid. NAMASTE goes there. Sanskrit-to-Hindi not Japanese.
I've never heard of the card-matching game; if you don't know NAMASTE that's a very RUFF cross.
I majored in Famous Characters' Horse's Names and I didn't know MARENGO.
@ Zÿ, Not that anyone gives a damn but since you mentioned it, I read War and Peace. This was made possible by two functions of a Kindle, which has a translation tool and "X-Ray" feature that lets you look up characters. Those solve the French and 500+ characters problems. I like to read a long book killer book during the dark days of winter.
Reading War and Peace made me feel smarter than I am. This puzzle made me feel like the maroon I actually am. Pretty much the North/South experience @Nancy described.
Seriously tanked at the 3-way intersection that passed through Natick – NBC, Brocode (yeah I see it now) and Ode. I thought of Pablo Neruda as novelist and really know nothing about him.
Hoisted on the petard of 3-letter word that has appeared exactly 350 times this year in the NYT puzzle might seem strange but I've never heard of Continuity of Care. And I don't think of Ambition as relating to dreams but rather to goals you plan to achieve. At that point I was throwing in the towel. There was more, I won't bore you further.
@Frantic, @JohnX, It's been tough without you. Welcome back.
Dead-naming Ye??? Oh the humanity!
34D, Peter out/ABATE, reminded me of THIS SEINFELD BIT
I enjoyed this one … and wondered whether you would say it was easy. While I flew through most of it, there were a couple of areas where I had to stop and puzzle the answer out, getting it but with some difficulty. Oddly, at least for me, it felt like a couple of spots were difficult, but you can’t exactly call a puzzle easy-difficult. So I’ll call it easy-with-fluctuations.
Nice! Start the puzzle with the CBS show that had to pay Eliza Dushku $9.5 million after she was fired for reporting the star’s relentless sexual harassment. Yay!
I really had fun with this one - cute puns, entertaining fill - except for all the names!!! They killed me. Proper names overlapping at a vowel is just a recipe for button smashing. Took away from an otherwise fun puzzle.
I had to laugh at 1A. Isn't that the kind of clue/answer Jeff Chen (and Rex) disparages at the #1 spot? But once the theme answers started filling in, I really enjoyed the solve.
I did notice the central black bracket-like squares but failed to put it together with the infinity symbol. I thought, "GEEZ, the theme really put some restrictions on the grid apparently", causing all of those 3-letter words. But the symbol is a sweet meta for AD INFINITUM and I wish I had seen it.
CONTINUITY OF CARE: I join @okanaganer 12:30 with having to Google post-solve in order to see it is a thing. And I didn't appreciate PERPETUAL MOTION until I shook the "marriage" proposal angle.
Thanks, Chase and Jeff, nice Sunday puzzle.
Congratulations @Gill I, on the new grandbaby and @oceanjeremy on the recent nuptials.
And Kanye's new name just makes me think, "Oh, Ye of little faith" which somehow I doubt was his intent.
MARIMBA and I are going to do the fandango tango with CARMEN MARENGO.
This gets my oof de oof award. My side dish is a little TEA EGG with a GOLDEN GEEZ.
I SAY, HUME...but did you like this? Well.....yes.... but then I had a @Nancy and @JD hiccup along the way.
My hell broke loose at about the time my RECURRING DREAMS started with RAFE. His NAMASTE caused my ORAL CANINES to itch. I really sat in a SEA of POSIES. Do I just leave this or do I continue. I kept going and it was worth it in the end. But why? you ask. Because I learned that a notable chameleon feature is his TONGUE. I always thought it was changing colors.
Yay....@Frantic is back and the panic is gone.....And, and, and @John X comes strutting in on a dead horse.
CBS, GMC ad NBC walk into a bar. PIG is the bartender. APE is sitting in the corner drinking FETID SOY. Where are the GOONIES when you need them?
My GAY TONGUE runneth over.....
Re. MARENGO: The horse was named after an important battle where supposedly the horse carried Napoleon to safety. This is also the battle that causes Cavaradossi to exclaim loudly and longly "Vittoria! Vittoria!" in act 2 of Tosca. Tune into the Met Saturday broadcast next week to hear a very well sung version of this wonderful opera.
Chicken Marengo was a very popular dish for a long time. A little heavy by today's standards, but you still see it on menus at old-line restaurants.
I had a professor at the Naval War College who would challenge us with famous leaders’ horses…. R.E.Lee rode Trigger of course, Stonewall Jackson Little Sorrel, etc. I’m sure he knew Marengo but I did not (and I’ve read War and Peace)
This one is a tale of two puzzles. The top half was easy, breezy and beautiful. The bottom half not so much. I got burned by the unfair Natick at KATANA/INES. I had a T instead of the N and I’ll bet I wasn’t the only one. Jeff should know better than that. Certainly, Will should have nixed that crossing. The bottom half was a slog and not so much fun. The theme worked out well but there were too many junky little three-letter entries and cluing that was too clever by half.
@JD - And yet if I hadn’t mentioned it I suspect you wouldn’t have either, which makes me believe you. Personally, my “to read” stack keeps getting bigger no matter how much I read and Tolstoy still hasn’t made it into the stack. I’m pretty sure he never will.
Shockingly, I completely missed the infinity-bug-eyes grid art. Although the back of my mind was jinky with a subconscious itch caused by all those black squares.
@albie 544am LOL! We're wearing matching "outfits", too. 😉
@Texas Momma 743am Yes! Cheese horses need to be!
@GILL Rumor has it you've welcomed a new grandson into the world! I offer my congratulations, even though you had little (recently) to do with it. 😘🍾🥂
Just when I thought I’m off to the home (I’m 84), I finished (mostly). Now where did I put my pants?
@Zÿ, I wouldn't have mentioned it because if that's where people are gleaning the name of Napoleon's horse from, I can assure that I didn't leave that stack of words with that bit in memory. But I do work it into every conversation I can (so far this one) to intimidate all the people I know who are smarter than me (all of them), as well as the fact that my son just turned down Harvard and Stanford for his post doc work for U. of Colorado (see what I finally got to do there) but I couldn't get Ode in a crossword.
There's apparently a town in Ohio called Marengo, but it isn't "a city in McHenry County, Illinois...approximately 60 miles west northwest of Chicago." Ohio and Illinois aren't the same state. They don't even touch each other.
As an Ohioan who's spent several years living in NYC, I get that the entire Midwest is basically an indistinguishable blob to many people, but NOBODY has wondered why there's a map of Ohio up there?
GEEZ, now I’m supposed to know the name of a cartoon character’s dog from the last century? I guess I got my historical facts mixed up. I thought RUFF was the name of Napoleon’s horse. I also thought that the opposite of down was up.
Liked the theme, especially BEARS REPEATING and RECURRING DREAMS.
@John X, glad to see you finally got OUT.
@stevied 907am
Why should we trust you?
@What? You’re wearing them. But they’re on backwards! 😊
Interesting comments, as usual, and also the usual drivel from Rex, the Jeff Chen-wannabe.
Grid art has to be a lot closer than this "Infinity Art". Jeff Chen (see xwordinfo.com) even concedes it's shakiness by highlighting it in green for those who didn't "see" it.
Yes, alas, I did have NAMASeE instead of NAMASTE. A DNF. But first of all, I don't speak Sanskrit or Hindi any more than I speak Japanese :) And second: Isn't a "card matching game" you never heard of more likely to be SEe than SET? The poker term "see" means "match": "I'll SEE your $500 and I'll raise you another..."
Oh, well, can't win 'em all.
Could someone explain "112A Opposite of down: Abbr." please? What does ACR stand for?
I totally love it when people give us their opinion on what they think constitutes a "decent" education.
Having lived in Tokyo off and on for 5 years, I never saw the word Ahi (in Japanese or English) on the menu. The clue for 121 Down, "tuna, on a sushi menu" totally threw me since it has to be maguro - the most commonly used word - or toro, which means 'fatty tuna.' Yes, ahi is a kind of tuna and yes, it's a commonly used word in the States. But I've never seen it on a sushi menu, in any country.
@James Stevens; R.E. Lee’s horse was Traveller; Trigger was Roy Roger’s horse.
Across!
TOPFLIGHT Sunday. I thought the theme was very clever, with BEARS REPEATING and AD INFINITUM as special stand-outs, and lots of fun to solve. Easy, until, like some others, I got snarled in the SHARPE x RUFF X RAFE nexus and then wanted "abundancY OF CARE. Thankfully, I was able to come up with PRELATES, which let me know that the "stairs" were FLIGHTS and not heIGHTS. On MARENGO: I originally encountered the word in the recipe for Chicken MARENGO and only later learned about the battle; from there it was an easy connection to the war horse. Thanks to those who pointed out the infinity symbol.
Do-over: shY before COY. Help from previous puzzle: KATANA; help from being married to a physician: CONTINUITY OF CARE.
I can’t be bothered to know who Jay-Z dissed. Stopped puzzle at that moment.
Luved the gridart sorta infinity sign, filled with ADINFINITUM. thUmbsUp.
Also noteworthy: Weejects, nearly adinfinitum! 46 of the lil darlins.
staff weeject picks: RUE & REW. Preferred spellin, and pseudo-scientific spellin.
some fave word events: PSEUDOSCIENCE. SHARPE. UNDERDOG/UPSET. NEURAL/PLEURAL.
Theme had its light-hearted moments, so M&A approves.
{… ROME ROME ROME …} = ETERNALCITY woulda been a funny one. There's probably lots & lotsa other possible themers, I'd betcha. [ … THEMERS THEMERS THEMERS …, ya might say.]
Thanx for the fun, Chenmeister and Chase. Downright NAMASTE good, dudes.
Masked & Anonymo12Us
**gruntz**
Some Sundays are a slog. Doable, easyish and boring. This was the opposite. I don't recall a Sunday with so many writeovers (hands up for Asia before URSA, and I wanted "suit" before MGMT). I really liked the themers, most of which gave me a laugh, though CONTINUITY OF CARE was unamusing.
I wonder if they play MARIMBAs in MARENGO. But I certainly knew the name of Napoleon's horse. (Side note: The Lone Ranger rode Silver, Lee rode Traveler, as I recall.)
I like PRELATES. It is such a Bob and Ray-ish word, and if you are a fan, you know how they put "potentates" in at every opportunity). However, only one PRELATE in England is also a Primate, the Bishop before all bishops, the Leader of the Pack if you will -- the Archbishop of Canterbury.
(Well, in a sense all Bishops, like all mankind, are primates, but I digress).
A bit of a nit with 63D. A scoreless draw is not necessarily a boring soccer result. It can often involve some thrilling saves and defense. This clue attempts to be soccer-savvy but instead puts the ball wide of the net.
@BritsolvesNYT 6:50am:
The bizarre story of the two Dennis the Menaces.
@Brett - opposite of down is across as in xword clues:)
If an infinity symbol falls in the middle of a crossword grid and nobody sees it, is it still there?
@Anon 12:20 - I took the Ohio map as Rex emphasizing that the clue is an especially arcane clue for an already arcane answer. Note, too, that he adds other definitions before finally getting to Napoleon’s horse.
@Brett - I will mention that we’ve all been there before saying I laughed and wondered how big of a bruise the D’Oh moment caused when you, a crossword solver, realized what the answer meant.
Sega did not make Frogger. They distributed it in North America. Konami made it.
re: Grinder - HERO - I think the gulf coast Po'boy also belongs in that category.
I'm with @bocamp in recommending today's Acrostic. Tough but fair.
@Zy 10:06: "If anyone were to tell me they read it [War and Peace] I would immediately wonder what else they were lying about."
I am now on my second read of W&P begun during the pandemic with A Public Space, a literary journal and publisher in Brooklyn. We'd read 10-15 pages a day and would comment on the day's reading with #TolstoyToday. Thousands of people from every continent but Antarctica participated. We decided to read it again this year. Our 85 days of reading will end this Wednesday. It's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my reading life. W&P is a fascinating book. The slow read made me appreciate this timely book even more. It's a true classic.
A very straightforward easy Sunday.TEAEGG was tough the first time we had it. Today with EGG in place TEA was a gimme.
KATANA should be thoroughly beaten into everyone's head by now.
No one ever said I'm in with the INGROUP. Will groupies become crowdies next?
yd -0
Correction to my 2:41 post: #TolstoyTogether, not #TolstoyToday.
@bookmark - I don’t doubt it is a worthwhile read and that sounds like the way to read it. But if we were at a dinner party and you brought up that you’d read it my initial reaction would be the same. Note that even in this august company of literate people only two have confessed to reading it. I put it in the company of Moby Dick, Ulysses, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, works “everyone” is supposed to have read but relatively few ever did even when it was assigned reading and is now increasingly not assigned reading.
@puzzlehoarder 2:43. For what it's worth...the first time I heard about TEA EGGS was also on this blog. I thought I'd give them a try since I love eggs. My husband won't eat them but I'll gobble them. Anyway...I made them and they're delicious. The trick is not to overcook the eggs. Then, once you've boiled them slightly, you carefully crack the little puppies open (be careful not to open the egg up) and marinate them with ginger, some tea, , soy, cinnamon sticks and some Chinese white wine. You need to do this for about 24 hours in the fridge. Open them up and you get a nice little Christmas surprise.
Try it!
There was a radio personality who had programs on WJR in Detroit years ago. His name was Warren Pierce.
@Z et al.
For the record, I read W&P years ago and loved it. The alternation between the social chapters and the war chapters makes it almost like reading 2 books. At first I didn't "get" the war chapters, but as I went along they definitely grew on me. So it won't surprise you that I eventually studied Russian and spent some time in the old Soviet Union. At that time being glad I was an American citizen (not so sure these days).
And after I retire again in 3 weeks I'm planning to reread both W&P and Anna Karenina (about which my mother commented that one should reread it every ten years because you see it so differently, and now I think I have previously made this comment so I'll stop).
However, I had to get MARENGO from the crosses anyway! Otherwise easy puzz, definite head slap at 112A!
Infinity in the grid was the last thing I saw.… as I worked this while watching the second installment of the livestreamed two-day celebration of Phill Niblock's 88th birthday, DOUBLE INFINITY (88 quarter-hour pieces by sound/visual artists from around the world). If you don't know Niblock and Experimental Intermedia (the HQ is on Centre Street), you're missing something!
Rex, the name of Dennis the Menace's dog is banal General Knowledge. "Ruff" would be apt for any dog.
Puzzle was sure easy, but fun. The theme was funny and you'd have to be a nitpicker to find fault with it.
But I had a Natick spot: AYRES (not AYERS!) crossing sports name KERY.
@Z, after iBooks gave me access to any number of classics, I set myself to reading Moby Dick, Ulysses and War & Peace. I really enjoyed Moby Dick. I found it slyly comedic.
Ulysses was as opaque as it is rumored to be and I only got through it with the aid of Sparknotes to explain the relevance of what was going on.
I didn’t have any trouble with W&P. Unlike in high school, when I first delved into it, this time I was able to unravel all of the pet names everyone had so I could (mostly) kept track of who was whom. But I didn’t enjoy it at all. With the exception of Prince Andrei, none of the characters seemed to have an ounce of self-awareness and it irritated me. Call me shallow, perhaps, but I much preferred Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.
(BTW, I have been unable to finish Infinite Jest, Proust or Nabokov's Lolita.)
Go Lions!!!
RooMonster Playoffs? Guy
(Har!)
I needed granddaughter to inform me that TEAEGG is a "thing" and otherwise guesswork was useful. No complaints really.
War and Peace Round One during the 70's, during enforced inactivity when visa situation prevented working.I finished it bunt remember nothing later.
War and Peace Round Two 45 years later, while waiting for the rain to stop in Fiji. Finished in 3 days. How much do I remember?Some.
td -1 and I'd never ever have come up with the last 6-letter word.
@Z
The only one on your list I've read all of is The Love Song of JAP. I got interrupted and never got back to it but was going mention DARE I eat a peach the day DARE I was in the puzzle. Shirley you know that line as they say. And of course the opening line and paragraph of Moby is breathtaking. And the end of Ulysses. I have read several of Dostoyefski novels. But the shortest The Underground Man was my favorite.
I did not find KANYE offensive. YE won the awards when he was known as KANYE WEST. Sure call him YE if you writing about him in the paper but a crossword? Minnesota born artist who wrote Desolation Row: DYLAN if 5 letters, ZIMMERMAN if 9 letters. YE won't show up in crosswords very often. I guess if people here do not want to call him YE they can call him late for dinner. He won't care. Also give it a couple years. The puzzle was probably accepted (and written] before the name change. OK I checked. Announced change 2018. Just became legal late this summer.
@Sandy 658pm
KERR not KERY.
Losing a game by a ref's bad call may make a lesser team angry but in common parlance you can't upset an underdog. Find 3 more like that and you might have a theme.
Wasn't there a horse named Nichole?
You never heard of Namaste?
First off, Continuity of Care is a very real thing. I worked in the field of long-term care insurance (through Medicaid), and most of our plan's members were entitled to COC. If they joined our plan from another one, we were required to provide the same level of care that they had been receiving previously, for 3 or 6 months.
Second, read W&P, most of Ulysses (although I admit to a lot of skimming), couldn't tolerate Moby Dick, and love love love The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. You might have guessed I majored in English Lit.
And that's what we English majors do, after teaching for awhile. We go to work for insurance companies to make a living. Although as a Social Worker (I know, a second low-paying career), even that was touch and go. But I can honestly say, I enjoyed it all.
ASLEEP STORY
ADINFINITUM IN RECURRINGDREAMS,
DARE ISAY she'll not LETME start her,
it BEARSREPEATING OAR so it seems,
I'm UPSET with a SILENTPARTNER.
--- GUIDO MARENGO
You missed an opportunity to hit us with RAFE Rackstraw, the strapping young seaman on the H.M.S. Pinafore.
Goodness me, but what was that? Could it be it was the cat?
It was, it was, the cat! Imagine that: it was the cat!
Uh-uh, guys, it was RAFE. Anyway, we clearly have a pair of "operetta glasses" in the center here; a bit of POPART.
Surely somewhere there's a girl named CARMEN MARENGO. I shall make this phantom lady my DOD.
These themers are mildly clever, and as has been noted, that middle getup COULD be an infinity symbol--which contains itself. Cool! The extreme choppiness detracts, however. That many 3's and 4's are sure to yield some stinkers, but it's not as bad as it easily could have been. I'd have taken those black eyes out and tried for a smoother ride. One writeover: I'm always misspelling Lew AYreS' name. See?
TESLA $ a trillion? With a T, really? Wow. Par.
👍
In my experience,GRINDER is a HERO only in Rhode Island, USA.
I mistakenly thought CONTINUum OF CARE, so I considered coloring-in the last square with my pen.
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