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Portmanteau for a dumpster-diving anti-consumerist eater / FRI 12-17-21 / Popular Korean rice dish / Ancient land that includes parts of modern Iraq and Turkey / Mammal with four toes on the front feet and three on the back / Sophia Loren title role of 1953 / Fifth-century invaders
Friday, December 17, 2021
Constructor: Evans Clinchy
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: BIBIMBAP (1A: Popular Korean rice dish) —
Bibimbap (/ˈbiːbɪmbæp/ BEE-bim-bap, from Korean 비빔밥 [pi.bim.p͈ap̚], literally "mixed rice"), sometimes romanized as bi bim bap or bi bim bop, is a Korean rice dish. The term "bibim" means mixing rice (burned rice at the bottom of the dish and cooked rice), while the "bap" noun refers to rice. Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) or kimchi (traditional fermented vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste), soy sauce, or doenjang (a fermented soybean paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The hot dish is stirred together thoroughly just before eating.
In South Korea, Jeonju, Jinju, and Tongyeong are especially famous for their versions of bibimbap. In 2011, the dish was listed at number 40 on the World's 50 most delicious foods readers' poll compiled by CNN Travel.
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We went back and forth on whether she should add more black squares to make the grid look more plausibly fillable (that's a Lot of white space), but in the end we decided not to crowd the jumping (or hanging?) Olive with more black squares, and instead just to leave the card as is, with the idea that the cats are exploring a grid that is ... under construction. Anyway, this card is personally meaningful to me, and also, I believe, objectively lovely. I can't wait to share it with snail-mailers (and oh, what the hell, if you are a PayPal / Venmo donor and you want one too, just say so in the message). Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Now on to today's puzzle...
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| "Am I ... MONSTER?" |
This one started out very promising with a delicious order of BIBIMBAP and BOBA, but nothing that exciting came along afterward. It's a little disappointing to see long answers wasted on stuff like ITTY-BITTY and (especially) ESTATE TAX—that is a long and boring way to go for an "X." And ITTY-BITTY is not only cloying baby talk made out of crosswordese parts (I'm looking at you, ITTY), but it's also a giant kealoa*, in that you don't know if it's ITSY-BITSY (better) or ITTY-BITTY until you get two very specific crosses. So yeah the longer Downs could've packed more punch. Fill-wise, again, it's fine. Your overcommon short stuff appears only rare, and in unremarkable places. It was unfortunate that I *finished* on the worst answer of the puzzle (APRS, plural, yuck), but these things happen. Would've been cooler to end on GALAXIES, say, but your path is your path and it is what it is.
The only real difficulty I had was more frustration than difficulty. I came out of that NW area really itching to round that corner with some momentum. Screeching tires and everything. But instead my tires screeched because I had to come to an abrupt stop. You'd think getting the front ends of those long Acrosses would give me some rocket propulsion, but no. I end up staring at a THAT, which could be followed by anything, and a HOLY, which, surprisingly, could be followed by a lot of things. I wrote HOLY TOLEDO in there at one point, I think. COW, MOL(E)Y, MOSES ... there are probably more HOLY exclamations. Anyway, the point is, momentum stalled, buzz killed. I got going again pretty quickly, but no zoom zoom today. Thankfully, both the THAT and the HOLY answers ended up being strong. I was just itching to streak hotly, but despite the advertised HOT STREAKS, that did not happen. More chug chug than zoom zoom. Dutifully, I finished the crossword.
- 16A: Offline activity? (IMPROV) — hmm, as I understand it, in IMPROV, you don't have lines at all, so ... you're not really "off" lines, unless you're using "off" like in the sense of dietary restrictions, like "I'm off caffeine this month" or something like that. I liked this clue about as much as I like (most) IMPROV.
- 1A: Popular Korean rice dish (BIBIMBAP) — sorry, forgot to mention above that one of today's revelations was that in my mind I was spelling this popular Korean rice dish as three words, and also I was misspelling it BOP, like it was some kind of music or dance: "Do the BI BIM BOP!" (seriously, do it, it's delicious)
- 5D: Northern New Jersey county (MORRIS) — why would you deliberately make your clue this boring? What do I know from NJ counties? I had MONROE in here for a bit. "Family Circus" creator BIL Keane saved me, what a guy.
- 26D: Fast finish? (MEAL) — when you are done fasting, you eat ... maybe you eat a MEAL
- 46D: Some smears (LIBEL) — argh, fake plural! One of my many mortal enemies! Plural-looking in the clue, singular in the answer. By a logic which you can probably figure out if you think about it for a little (hint: bagels are involved), I (begrudgingly, angrily) had LOXES in here for a while.
- 30A: Tears (HOT STREAKS) — I assume they mean "tears" in the sense of being "on a tear," not in the sense of HOT STREAKS that run down your face when you cry.
- 40A: Pleasantly flavorful (SAPID) — who keeps inviting this word to the party!? You never (never) hear anyone use it in the wild, but every month or so (it seems), SAPID just struts into the room like "hey guys, how we doin'?" and you're like "ugh, SEE ME, did you invite this dude?" and SEE ME's like "wasn't me, man ..." and then SAPID gestures toward his date and goes "You all know IRES, right?" and you valiantly suppress an eyeroll while muttering "yeah, hey, how's it going?" and then you go stand alone by the food table eating GENOA salami wondering why you didn't just stay home and read POE.
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130 comments:
5D was the gimme of the day since I live in MORRIS County NJ. Actually, the whole top half of the puzzle was Wednesday easy, but I bogged down in the south, particularly the SW. Didn't know FREEGAN and couldn't shake seeing GO TO xxx at 27D. Also briefly wanted ski sLopeS at 30D.
Got almost all the way down to the bottom before getting a clue, so that felt a bit Saturday-ish. But once I got some traction in the SW, it all came together rather nicely. Enjoyed the center - HOTSTREAKS, THATHITSTHESPOT, HOLYSMOKES - and only had real trouble in the NW, as I sadly don't know much about Korean food. Something to try over Christmas!
Thought most of the puzzlw was pretty easy…except the NW. I had to cheat multiple times: BOBA, BIBIMBAP, AIDA as clued, IRES vs IRkS, and BESTRODE, which I refuse to believe is a real word.
offline activity - you go off the lines of a script when you improv
I’ve found that the longer I do crosswords, the better my solving intuition becomes. Yes, I’m more familiar with common answers and clues, but there’s more. I throw in wrong answers less, for instance, because the right ones hit me sooner. Also, I am better at leaving answers blank rather than throwing in guesses, because intuition says, “Hold off here”. Here’s an intuition example: For [People people], I knew it was the magazine, a combination of tricky clue radar and seeing the “People” trick before.
I’m no smarter than I was when I started doing crosswords, just wiser to the game.
But it’s a work in progress. Today I did throw in two wrong answers that had to come out, SPEAK for SEEME (terrific misdirect!) and SAPOR for SAPID (not too smart, putting in a noun where the clue indicated an adjective).
As for the solving journey, the NW and SE filled in a flash, which warmed me up for the sweet bite in the sash from the NE to SW. I loved the 5-letter semordnilap REVEL, the clues for SEMIS, IMPROV, and MEAL, and I loved that flash when I realized that FREEGAN was a play on "free" and “vegan”.
A LOVELY excursion, quality from top to bottom. Thank you, Evans, for making this!
I read OFFLINE as playing off the line of the other person. Improv involves a back and forth that feeds off of the previous line and then builds on it - always by first agreeing and then adding exceptions or further information (employing some version of "Yes, but...")
Anyway, that's what she said.
Enjoyed @RPs write up today almost as much as the puzzle, but enjoyed the puzzle much more than he admitted to. As happens some days, when he’s in sourpuss mode (usually with a constructor he doesn’t care about), it seemed like he was desperately trying to find fault, rather than benignly accepting demerits as minor flaws. Maybe it’s because I rarely breeze through Fridays, but though I had many of the same reactions as OFL at specific points in the puzzle, in the words of @jae, liked it a lot.
Many fine clues (which I will lazily let @Lewis and others who are not one-finger typing on a phone enumerate). I was very pleased to make the acquaintance of SAPID, which I look forward to using in the wild. I assumed HOT STREAKS were tracks left by tears on cheeks (initially I had weT for HOT; the latter somehow better captures the image of break-up tears), but now suspect RP is correct.
And @Rexy boy—it’s schmears with loxes (actually novas for most of us)!
I had never heard of the VISIGOTHS before, but it sounds like it would be way cooler to be one of them than a MOOR (something you do to a boat?) for example. At least a VISIGOTH sounds exotic and exciting - a FREEGAN, not so much.
I got a chuckle out of the row with two entries - TAPIR and SAPID, lol. If they were in SB on the same day, the best I would be posting would be something like “yd -2” on that one.
The description of how they make TOFU sounds about as gross as the stuff actually tastes.
I was stunned that Rex called this medium-challenging. I sailed through it, getting my best time ever for a Friday. Maybe for that reason I liked it a lot more than Rex did.
I think of that more as "ad lib." Improv is what you set out to do.
Satisfyingly Friday. Like Rex, APRS was my last entry. Perhaps because I didn't race out of the gates (no squealing tires), just chugged along happily, this one felt like a cheery car ride. A few spots of stop & go traffic, but mostly a smooth trip. Good weekends, everyone.
After some jumping around I solved the SW puzzle first and then the SE. I had bits of the center and then completed the NE puzzle. Completed the center and went back to attack the NW puzzle. Biggest problem was BOBABIMBOBAP. What a horrible mishmash for 1A/1D. BESTRODE was difficult because the cluing is really off. "Stood" over would be an accurate clue. Good Friday otherwise!
A delightful puzzle. A grid filled with lovely answers: VISIGOTHS, HIMALAYAS, HOLY SMOKES, FREEGAN, ORATORIA, BESTRODE, even some short stuff like TAPIR, GLIB, REVEL.
But whoever wrote that clue for 20D has not read the book. The original Frankenstein was a monster. Having made the creature, he becomes revolted by it based purely on its appearance and his next act is to slink off in embarrassment and leave this newly-made being entirely on its own.
I was on the same wavelength as Mr. Clinchy today, or maybe the Mojo was just flowing. I set a new Friday record with this one. My only misstep was SPEAK for SEEME but I got it right away with the crosses.
What kind of upside down world do we live in where this Friday felt like a Tuesday or maybe Wednesday to me?
I crushed it. 7:42 against my average Friday of 17 minutes. Everything was gettable, including THAT HITS THE SPOT which I got off TH_T... that really did hit the spot.
SAPID and ANEMIA and SOLUTE couldn't slow me down, not with those LOVELY crosses.
SAPID TAPIRs was the name of my Boomtown Rats cover band back in the 80s.
I had a technical DF only because I guessed correctly that MORRIS sounded more New Jersey than hORRIS or lORRIS or pORRIS. I see such a nothing geography clue and immediately wonder if they have a marina.* So a parochial clue crossing a transliteration. Yowser, that’s bad. I suppose Korean cuisine is getting to be almost as common as Thai and Vietnamese, but hasn’t quite made it to Japanese and Chinese levels of Americanization, so I guess I have to accept that it’s crossworthy. But if you’re going to give me transliterated food please give me a real clue for MORRIS.
Otherwise I thought the puzzle was decent. A little heavy on the trivia instead of the wordplay and I didn’t much like the segmentation of the corners, but the middle section was great and having People be the magazine but Milky Way not be the candy bar tickled my funny bone. So did VISIGOTHS’ VISAGE, just a hoot to recall how they are always portrayed as invading MONSTERs. And if you’re going to go Frankenstein for your MONSTER clue this is the way to do it. 👍🏽👍🏽
@Classical Music Lovers - What is it with classical pianists? Why do they always look like they are starring in a soft porn movie? How do you play a Christmas ORATORIO and make it look like foreplay? I just cannot watch. And to be fair to Lang Lang, it’s all of them. It’s always the visual equivalent of Eddie Van Halen masturbating his guitar, but at least with Eddie it is sometimes musically appropriate to play off the phallic symbolism. What is going on with pianists?
@Frantic Sloth 1:22 yesterday - Mean. Just mean. And I don’t mean AVERAGES, either. 🤣😂🤣
*They once clued Rye, as in Rye, NY, as a “city with a marina,” which is roughly the equivalent of cluing it as a “city with a gas station.” I still haven’t recovered.
Rex, you're wrong, like a challenging Wednesday, just not your wheelhouse, learn the difference
Now get offa my lawn
Medium challenging sounds about right for this one. I went from left to right and top to bottom pretty steadily. The only issues I can recall were initially getting the order of the vowels wrong on 1A and not pluralizing HIT on my first try at the grid spanner.
Part of my problem with remembering 1A is there's a song about "Mr. Big stuff" that includes the lyrics "well be bi bip". That's probably what made me initially writing it in as BIBaMBiP. BOBA is an SB classic. Speaking of which...
yd -1 (a double letter version of the second pangram that I found)
dbyd -0
PPP Analysis
Pop Culture, Product Names and Other Proper Nouns
Having already seen the wheelhouse/outhouse comments appear, it should surprise no one that the PPP comes in high, at 25/70 for 36%. I feel like it might play even higher because the non-PPP trivia has some interesting biases as well, 3 of the 4 food clues are Asian so if you aren’t into Asian cuisine that’s a real disadvantage. Also there are four “sports” clues and two of them involve wordplay. That means this might feel like the PPP is 47%, making it an incredibly easy puzzle if the PPP and trivia is in your wheelhouse and conceivably be harder than a hard Saturday if that stuff is in your outhouse. I will not be surprised if we see more DNFs and “I had to look things up” comments along with the “might as well have been Tuesday.”
Thx Evans; very smooth Fri. puz! :)
Easy; somewhere between a Tues. or Wednes. for me.
It's a wonderful feeling every now and then to breeze thru one of these.
Didn't hurt that BIBIMBAP and BOBA are both SB words and went right in. (Recall a discussion with @TTrimble after I missed BIBIMBAP in my first SB encounter with it. He was more familiar with the var. sp., BI BIM Bop).
HOLY SMOKES, even my guesses were correct, e.g., GENOA, APRS, VISIGOTHS, etc.
This one really HIT my sweet SPOT, wavelength-wise. :)
A speedy, but fun trip!
___
yd pg -4 (tabbed)
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Inklings kept turning out to be right answers (with a few exceptions) and I sort of marched through this one. File it one under stuff I was lucky to know.
My favorite answer Solute took a while because I threw down Spare too fast.
I was proud of Monibar, thought it was some Millennial thing dagnabbit. But that gave me Visogoth, which I let ride because I frequently didn't pay as much attention in class as I should've.
Sapid is new. Got it on the crosses, suspended disbelief and kept going. What an unfortunate word, so weighted down with the baggage of the more popular vapid.
I must say that I love Evans Clinchy, and not just because he has the most entertaining name in Crossworld. He's the first constructor that I can recall who used the ! correctly as a misdirect. Yes, Lava is Hot Stuff!
Rich entertainment Evans Clinchy. Thanks.
Totally agree with other comments: this played more like a Wednesday. Sailed pretty much right through it, but messed up FREEGAN/GOT OPEN.
BIBIMBAP crossing at the first letter with BOBA seems pretty Natick-y. I love both of them, but I think they're both pretty obscure.
Lots of trivia but some good fill too - liked it for the most part. The center stack makes the grid - especially HOLY SMOKES. The MAGI x GALAXIES cross was neat.
Hopefully the last time we have to experience FREEGAN - I could add BESTRODE to that also. Not sure why Rex was bitching about ITTY BITTY - lots of covers of Go Where I Send Thee this time of year with “one for the ITTY BITTY baby” prominent in the mix.
Enjoyable Friday solve.
Hmmm. A solve time below my Wednesdee average. Gotta be a wavelength thing because it ain't all smarts. Or any.
Whatevs. This is another winner from Mr. Clinchy - and it was fun!
Who even says BESTRODE? Well, *I* do now!
ITTY BITTY VISIGOTHS is fun to say and it reminds me of Tiny Vikings, a term that's inexplicably followed me for many years.
Sneaky Pete cluing added even more spice to the experience for me: 11D SPLIT as an "alley challenge", MEAL as a "fast finish at 26D, and (my fave) quarters feeding into SEMIS at 24A.
Just peachy LOVELY.
🧠🧠
🎉🎉🎉🎉
My solving experience was a little odd; it felt medium-challenging, but I ended with a quite fast time also. I guess I brain-farted on a couple slightly devious clues like quarter/semis and draw/stud, and couldn't shake the feeling I had entered multiple errors.
But in the end my only re-write was speak/see me. Pretty fun solve.
I couldn't agree more on the Morris clue - waste of time. Do Errol Morris or something; then if you don't know about Errol, you've learned something interesting.
Well HOLY GUACAMOLE....You. give me BIBIMBAP and all I want to eat is JAJANGMYEON (try spelling that little guy)...
My ITTY BITTY was a little itsy bitsy spider going up a water spout. OK...you mensa folks...is it BE STRODE or BEST RODE? I will BEST RODE over you because I tower?
My VISAGE today is not facial. It doesn't involve TATS and my SOLUTE doesn't have sugar in my coffee. I've never met a dumpster diving FREEGAN and I've never liked TOFU.
Good lord, my BOBA brain has runneth over.
By the way.....APRS, LES and LET finally walked into the bar.....SITH was the LOVELY bar tender. A POP was sitting at the end drinking ICE T. She had ANEMIA but kept screaming THAT HITS THE SPOT.....
I need a drink.
Loved the 'Quarters feed into them' clue for SEMIS.
Learned FREEGAN; well coined.
@puzzlehoarder (8:45 AM) 👍 for 0 dbyd
___
td pg -1 (timed out)
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Z, I agree that there will be DNFs because of the high PPP. I think there also might be some more comments like @puzzlehoarder, @Brian A in SLC, and @Mike G. Little snags.
For instance, I don't know sports trivia but if you've lived long enough and walked past a TV when a football game was on, you've heard "he got open..." and I had just enough letters to see it. That's pretty much how the whole thing played out for me. Inklings and Crosses (the restaurant I'm opening down the street from your T&P Cafe ... watch out).
@Son Volt, I'm with @Frantic on Bestrode. I luvvv it. At 5'2" I would Bestrode the beguiled and bemused Lilliputians.
Hey All !
I'm of the @Z "had to look things up" group. One was Wisconsin governor Tony. Now why would I know that? Did he do something note-worthy? Even if he did, I don't watch News, so wouldn't know regardless. Where's Medgar? Two was Bach's ORATORIO, because unsophistication rears it's ugly head again. BIBIMBAP was new to me also, but was able to fill it via crosses.
FREEGAN was a wha? That corner was a toughie for me.
Wanted 20A, 'Place to buy overpriced drinks' to be STARBUCKS, but didn't fit.
MORRIS as a NJ County? Dang, could've been clued for the famous Cat of commercial fame (70's? 80's?), or Mr. Chestnut, or somesuch. Take your NJ-ness and get outta here! 😁
Couple writeovers, SlotS-SEMIS, ANEMeA-ANEMIA, STUn-STUD.
GOT most of puz OPEN, bit ultimately a DNF. But just an ITTY BITTY one.
yd (HOLYSMOKES!) ng,n(all)p -14 should'ves 12 Yeesh
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
There's a 20+ minute section of Bach's Christmas Oratorio which is simultaneously the most soothing and interesting piece of music I've ever heard. It starts about 30 minutes in, and is probably based on one of the three cantatas that provided the foundation for the oratorio. Someone please identify that cantata for me. All the singers just sit there quietly, as well they should. It's my falling asleep music. You can just listen and mentally swing along to typical Bach polyphony, then whatever has been keeping you up at night disappears and you're asleep. When you wake up an hour or so later and can't get back to sleep, reset the youtube video to 28 minutes and start over. In 5 minutes you wont care that the Orange Shit Gibbon isn't in jail yet, and you can fall asleep.
Rex's basic complaint about this puzzle is that he found it hard. So did I; that's why I enjoyed it. Although I was rather irked by treating IRES as a verb. And where I come from, we say HOLY SMOKE, sans final S. Or is each of the wows in the clue supposed to be a new iteration of the phrase, making it plural? That's lame.
But I loved the long colloquialisms in the center, loved starting out with the delicious BIBIMBAP (although, as @Z points out, it's a transliteration, and can be spelled differently -- but I don't think you can change the M, so the MORRIS crossing is defensible.)
My first reaction to the clue for 9D was, "invaders of what?" After all the cosmopolitan answers (BIBIMBAP, BOBA, ASSYRIA, not to mention the Colossus of Rhodes, which BESTRODE the entrance to the harbor) in the NW, I thought it needed to be more specific-- did the Punjabis invade someone at that time? What did I know? But I already had enough crosses to see GOTHS, and the Ostrogoths were too long, so there it was.
I loved the clue for SEMIS. Since I wanted SlotS, of course, I was really questioning ITTYBITTY, but since the ITTY part was all crossed, I left it in. Even when I got the answer, I wondered why people were feeding coins into trucks for at least 5 seconds.
GOT frEe before OPEN; that one held me up quite a bit.
Around the Boston area, at least, many Japanese restaurants are actually run by Koreans, and are starting to include BIBIMBAP on their menus. A positive trend.
@Conrad - I too live in Morris County yet I initially had Concerto for 15A (Bach's "Christmas _" so had Bergen County stuck there like glue for much of my solving time. When I finally realized the answer was my own county I did a major face palm!
Interesting bi-modal experiences today it seems. AVERAGE time might not mean much. Put me down on the easy end--not quite a Friday best, but close.
@anon 9:03: my first reaction to your comment was that the thought that the BOBA/BI could be a natick in this day and age was very unlikely. But then I reflected on some recent long drives off the interstate where I went for miles and miles going through small towns that had nothing but a Dollar General and realized you might be right.
I do think for NYT Xword solvers, the liklihood that they haven't encountered either one is pretty small, but you gave me something to think about.
Rex listed some additional HOLY(s) and I found one more. Head north (up) on the first "S", then turn east (right) again for my go-to HOLY.
@Z You're welcome. 😘 But your PPP analysis made us even. Now I feel even "less smart" than I was...n't?
@Z. Your take on Lang Lang's performance is very interesting. All I saw was an artist playing beautiful music on a piano. It enhances the performance when you can see that the artist is enjoying it, too.
I loved this puzzle and even forgive it the lead-off BIBIMBAP -- which just as well might have been clued "pick a combo of 8 letters arranged in a way that seems extremely peculiar and write them in."
Isn't that the best and most interesting clue for POE you've ever seen (8D)? Clues like that are what make a puzzle sing.
And thanks to the puzzle for clearing up my lifelong misunderstanding of two words. I always thought VISAGE (9A) described the features of the face and not the expression on the face. I haven't looked up the precise meaning, but I'll take your word for it, Evans.
Also BESTRODE. My only encounter with the word is from Shakespeare: "He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." Our 8th grade class at P.S.6 was taken to see "Julius Caesar" and I assumed when I heard the sentence that Caesar was riding the narrow world as he would ride a horse. (The world being narrow made it easier to mount -- just as horse with a narrow girth is easier to mount.) When I saw "towered over" today, I never connected it to the word BESTRODE. Everyone towers over me and I've never once thought of them as bestriding me.
This is the kind of stuff -- and not the names of rap artists -- that I really enjoy learning in puzzles.
A wonderful clue for IMPROV (16A) and a funny one for AFLAC (41D). Lovely answers in HOT STREAKS and FREEGAN. A lively, challenging puzzle that I found hardest in the NW (saved by ITTY-BITTY!!) and that became somewhat easier as I proceeded south. Excellent Friday.
@Z. Another thing. Comparing Lang Lang on the piano to Eddie Van Halen on the guitar is just gross.
So bibimbap" and "boba" are "very promising" and "exciting"...No, just No. Doesn't Rex remark frequently that the opening word of a puzzle sort of sets the mood (or something like that) ? Well gimme an itty bitty estate tax over those two any day. And "bestrode" ? Good God.
The rest I liked, but man, that top corner.
@Johnny, I have a question. Southside of where?
Second Friday in a row I had to check what day it was because the answers were going in way faster than usual, until I got to the SW. Finally I just thought, "What the hell, I'll try AFLAC, how many famous ducks are there?" and that corner fell too.
Finished with one mistake I had to hunt for: EVARS instead of EVERS (neither SOLUTE nor SOLUTA means anything to me). I did like learning SAPID. I don't understand the anti-consumerist aspect of the FREEGAN clue, I guess dumpster-diving covers the FREE part, so are vegans somehow anti-consumerist? There are an awful lot of products marketed to them, so that can't be right. Is there a different -GAN that I am not considering?
Hopefully posting from the laptop this week will work, haven't had any luck with various browsers on my Android phone for the last couple of weeks.
Almost a Friday record for me, so I was surprised to see Rex rate it medium-challenging. Also liked it a lot more than he did. Lots of cool answers from BEBIMBAP (it’s so SAPID) to VISIGOTHS to HOTSTREAK. And clues, especially those for SEMIS (fooled me for a bit) and HIMALAYAS. Sure, ESTATE TAX is a dull answer, but it’s saved by a nice clue.
Candy bar before GALAXIES and GOT free before GOT OPEN (my answer sounds better to me).
PRONE is an interesting word because it’s a synonym for “inclined” in two completely different ways - in the sense of the position a body or object might take and in the sense of liable or predisposed. How often does that happen?
How many here have raged about the outrageous prices for Cheezits or tiny bottles of whiskey in the MINIBAR but eventually paid them anyway?
A story about the TAPIR: Friends and I were traveling in Peru. After the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu, we spent a week in the Amazon. Our guide took us one night to a TAPIR feeding spot, where we waited in a treehouse to see if they would come. We had to be deadly silent or they would not show up, and between the giggling and the snoring, we blew it. I felt worse for our guide than for us - he considered it a failure on his part that we didn’t get to see one. (And yeah, maybe worse still for the TAPIRs.) Oscar showed us so many amazing wonders, and we tipped well.
Easy-medium. I knew BIBIMBAP from “Beat Bobby Flay” so this one went pretty smoothly. Did not know MORRIS or that Loren played AIDA. The middle trio was delightful, liked it a bunch!
No matter how far out in the boonies you are ... its still the NEW YORK TIMES, so nearby Morris County is a perfectly legitimate clue. Don't like it? Try the puzzle in your local newspaper - if you still have one.
@Z - Agree 100% re pianists. It's all an affectation. Watch Horowitz and check out all his arm-flailing. Can't find any? That's because arm flailing has nothing to do with playing the piano, playing it well, or enjoying what you're playing. It's even worse when the pianist doing it is an accompanist. They're supposed to be invisible.
I've never been out of NJ for more than 3 weeks at a time in my 65+ years, and I couldn't see MORRIS for the longest time. I was stuck on SUSSEX because that's North Jersey, and when MORRIS was inevitable, I got angry because it's northern NJ, not north NJ. I then got angrier because that's exactly what the clue said and I'm an idiot.
The saving grace of themeless puzzles is that you frequently learn something new. For example, I now know MORRIS is a northern NJ county.
@Conrad I'm with you on the Morris County clue! It's certainly NYT crossword worthy.
Many famous and infamous (never boring) people have made Morris County their home. It's in a beautiful part of the state of New Jersey. Right now, for example, I'm sitting in my living room listening to the hum of multiple leaf blowers! Wait...that does sound boring!
Anyway, have a great weekend all!
BIBIMBAP, BOBA, BESTRODE, SAPID, FREEGAN … feel as though I had a vocabulary lesson today. That’s great but would have been appreciated far more if the first three hadn’t all been in the same corner. Some terrific clues though and answers too. LET me tell you, HOT STREAKS and HOLY SMOKES especially lit my fire.
Fun fact I learned from doing crosswords: The TAPIR is most closely related to horses and rhinos. I always had them pictured as something along the lines of a cuddly little teddy bear. Who knew?
Sad fact I already knew.: ESTATE TAX is financial concern I’ll never have to worry about.
Bibimbap is so sapid! This makes me want to get some for lunch today! I'm very lucky, I live about two blocks from some of the best Asian food in Los Angeles, including my favorite Korean bibimbap place. I'll even get extra, bring some to my dad. He thinks it's sapid, too!
PS - BESTRIDING is a specific foul in American football, though it's categorized under the bowdlerized "unsportsmanlike conduct". Or maybe "So, I just smashed you to the ground, and I'm going to stand astride your face and make you look at my junk for 30 seconds" was just too long for the rule-book.
@Z you know nothing about music if that is your takeaway.
@Anon 10:02/10:12 - At least we agree he’s clearly enjoying the music. But then, so is Eddie. Turn the sound off and watch and then tell me I’m wrong. Even the lighting is vaguely reminiscent of soft porn. Or maybe soft porn stole the look from concert pianists. Either way, I can’t watch. Listen, sure. Watch, no.
@Frantic Sloth - Wheelhouses are wheelhouses. Whatcha going to do? My bias is heavily informed by Bloom and his taxonomy, as is what I think makes a crossword better as is my reaction to reactions about people not knowing something. What I don’t know continues to grow much faster than what I do know by the nanosecond.
Unlike @Z my DNF was more than technical because I chose NORRIS instead of MORRIS. Well, I did change it to M in order to get the puzzle “completed.” There is a new “Asian Grill” by me called BIBIBOP. Go figure on ditching the M and the substitute A.
My brain is too lazy to remember what century the various and sundry barbarians were invading who and where but filled in VISIGOTHS due to its length. Thank goodness I didn’t think of the OSTRAGOTHS..(hi @jberg).
I can’t really trust my “average” solve times since I don’t stop the clock on the app if I walk away but I completed this in less than half my average so this must have been in my wheelhouse. I guess I’m surprised that the PPP came in so high.
I can tell you why Gov. Evers is important. He's trying to fight off the Republican state Senate which wants to do a little re-map so everyone in Milwaukee gets to vote in Illinois.
So did I read that bibimap and boba are legal in that SB game? What are the rules of that thing ? I think I'd rather play Charleys Angels.
We don't have many Korean restaurants in our neighborhood and they feature barbecue. Would they serve BIBIMBAP? That Naticked me twice, at BOBA and MORRIS.
Remarkably little sparkle for a Friday, only five red plus signs in the margins.
LOL RP appears to not know the difference between SCHMEAR and SMEAR
Was flying through this whole thing and stopped before tackling the SW to take our cats to the vet, got back, picked it up, and boom, brick wall. Eventually it fell into place, but, for instance, not only have I never heard of a FREEGAN, I couldn't understand the clue. GLIB and CELEBS finally bailed me out, but what a struggle.
Same Julius Caesar reaction as @Nancy on seeing BESTRODE. I thought that was a fairly famous line but I guess the last part of his speech about the "fault not being in the stars, but in ourselves" is more common knowledge. And speaking of famous sayings, I believe it was Rocket J. Squirrel who used to exclaim HOLYSMOKES with some frequency.
My dad was a LINEMAN, but he was the least offensive person I ever knew. Probably referring to a different kind of LINEMAN. Probably larger.
Thanks for a very nice Friday, EC. Parts felt like I was taking a vocabulary quiz for Extra Credit, and I used to be good at that, so more thanks for the pleasant memories.
Also Spill for 44D
@Z 1039am Bloom's Taxonomy/Bates Taxidermy - it's all just "stuff".
One of the easiest Friday puzzles in a long time; I finished it well under my AVERAGES for a Friday. My favorite BIBIMBAP place closed down due to Covid and I miss that SAPID umami flavor. I usually order mine with TOFU, even though I'm not a vegan (or a FREEGAN). The same restaurant also served BOBA tea (pigeon English for 'bubble' tea), which was great in the summer. Every time I had it, I'd say THATHITSTHESPOT (which I got today, amazingly, without a single cross to help me, just wrote it all out at once and luckily it wasn't wrong!). One of my rare HOTSTREAKS and it was just LOVELY to race through the puzzle without any SABOTAGES to trip me up along the way. HOLYSMOKES!
First square is a hopeless Natick. Ibimbap ( I don't eat Korean...not featured in my neck of the woods) and _oba.....( I don't know what bubble tea even means). This is an EXTREME Natick. There is barely a consonant that one can reject out of hand. Qoba and Qibimbap? Why not? I guessed JOBA. So off to a horrid start....But despite frustration at a DNF , I liked this puzzle very much. Agree with all who call it a very fine Friday, AND agree that it is challenging - there were plenty of experienced solvers with DNF. Now off to Google to find out what bubble tea is....
It's interesting reading the comments. BIBIMBAP, BOBA, FREEGAN were super easy for me, and were the main reason I was able to solve* a Friday puzzle (I've only done it once before!)
*I finished everything without cheating except APOP/SAPID. Literally whaaaat?
Weird that I found a puzzle so easy that Rex found difficult (that is probably the first time for me). 3/4ths of this puzzle was just exactly on my wave length, and I ended up solving this in Wednesday or slow Tuesday time. My only real snag was that BIBIMBAP is one of those words I just can't remember how to spell. I wrote in BIMIMBOP because that is how my brain remembers it. Had to do some erasing to make that work. Other than that, this was a straight solve.
Not up on Korean rice dishes, bubble teas, or New Jersey counties. so the NW for me was a chamber of cruelty. Once I got out of there, however, I began to enjoy the puzzle which I also found medium-challenging. Really like THAT HITS THE SPOT, a phrase my mother used at apt moments, such as having a late night beer after a couple of martinis.
Never heard the term FREEGAN before, but think it’s a LOVELY addition to the lexicon. Also enjoyed the POE quote a lot. Reminds me of hearing someone recently say “I’m Irish, so I’m a pessimist with brief intervals of optimism.”
Also liked the reminder the creature in Mary Shelley’s tale was not named Frankenstein. His reputation has been unfairly besmirched due to the mad scientist who created him.
One ITTY BITTY nit. The clue for 16A seems off since IMPROV artists do have lines. They’re just not pre-scripted lines.
Damn straight.
-Other Old White Guy
Just 20 mins for me today... might be a record (my son and I). Loved "VISIGOTHS" and "BIBIMBAP". No trouble there. Struggled with the SAPID/STUD cross--started out with STUn and SAPIn (figured you draw your taser and then you stun the perp--poker is definitely not in my daily experience!). But got it with a few stabs, didn't have to look it up. Does that count? Thanks Evans, Really enjoyed it! --Rick
Hey - I'm a FREEGAN! Yea for me. I thought I was just homeless and starving. It's ever so nice that my predicament has been recast as a life style choice. I guess I also dress in boho-chic, as all my clothes are scavenged as well.
Really dug this one, for whatever reasons. Lots of obscure stuff, but felt like stuff I should know, with crunchy words like BESTRODE and SAPID. And hands down my favorite constructor name ever — Evans Clinchy. Awesome!
There was recently a Japanese dish in the NYTXW that I didn't know in spite of living there for two years. And today we get a Korean food that I also didn't know even though I lived in Seoul for six months and also visited there often during my stay in Japan. I'm guessing it's because most restaurants in Japan had very realistic plastic models of the dishes on their menus and I would just point to one that looked interesting. In Korea I had a close friend who would always do the ordering for us. Now to make my ignorance of food names in countries where I have lived and traveled complete, we need something from the Philippines.
Speaking of crossword foods, I just today saw a headline from the NY Times (I don't subscribe so didn't read the story) about how our dear friend OREO cookie might be the solution to New York City's rat problem! How would that work? Does eating an OREO send them into some kind of fatal diabetic shock? Or do they relocate out of disgust for the retched concoction and become FREEGANs in another city?
So "Freegan" involves "dumster- diving" ? You mean these people eat someone elses' garbage ? And they formed a club ?
Didn't have a prayer of gettin the whole thing right, becuz of BOBA/BIBIMBAP/MORRIS. Ended up guessin SOBA/SIBINBAP/NORRIS. Wrong again, M&A breath.
On the very positive side of the rodeo: Lotsa cool fillins, and lived the POE clue.
Includin likin BIBIMBAP & FREEGAN -- even tho I had to learn em on-the-job.
staff weeject pick (of only 8 choices): BIL. He helped m&e out some, in that tough NW corner area. Like @RP, M&A will be forever powerful grateful for bein acquainted with BIL.
Did know VISIGOTHS, so felt good about that.
Thanx for the challengin, Mr. Clinchy dude.
Masked & AnonymoUUs
**gruntz**
My favorite comments this morning.
pabloinnh (11:01)
Brother ... (12:22)
This was tough but I stuck with it. And glad I did - but
"BESTRODE?"
Pleasantly, I saw a bit of one of the teeVee food shows last night, which included a long segment on that Korean rice dish. I guess there's some good to the Vast Wasteland.
Now I can’t get that song out of my head. “I am a lineman for Morris County…..”
Technical DNF here, as I have never heard of BIMIMBAP and put in nORRIS instead of MORRIS. Should have known it, since there was a famous MORRIS in the Revolutionary era (but as I now know, it was named after the English governor at the time, a person so obscure that even AP History students probably have never heard of).
The rest was pretty plain sailing. I did put in ITsY BITsy for a while. Every parent, or at least every Anglo parent knows all about the ITsY BITsy Spider. And a brave little spider was he. The victim of a terrible flood, he persisted, and went up the spout again.
Something about the puzzle -- I can't say what -- had me thinking about "Plant a Radish", the song that leads off The Fantastix. Maybe it was the children's rhyme about the spider. "If your issue doesn't kiss you, then I wish you luck! For once you've planted childer-en you're absolutely stuck!" Truer words were never sung, and the moral is, "Life is merry if you're very vegetarian. A man who plants a garden is a very happy man."
@Z:
then you'd best stay away from any live-in-concert string quartets, with gurlll cellists, legs wrapped sensuously around the instrument. the mind BOGGLEs.
I never remember not to read Rex's rating before I tackle the puzzle - it skews my solving experience (ie, Medium, Challenging).
@Brother...
I call gas-lighting!! all that poverty, and you can waste $3.00/day on the dead trees version (or more on-line), a PC/iPhone to make comments here, innterTubes connection, and a place to run all that stuff??? I bet you voted for Trumpster and hate Biden for Covid not disappearing in the Red states where they won't mask or vaccinate!! or am I reading too much into this?
Damn straight!
-Old White Guy, shaking first at a cloud
All of those recipes I read (from the NYTimes app) and yet my BImInBAP was all mixed up (BIBIMBAP means "mixed rice", if you believe Google). Really, nORRIS as a NJ county made fine sense and I wasn't thinking amps, I was thinking sound boards and there mASS might be...something?
Ah well, the double DNF doesn't subtract from my enjoyment of this puzzle. I did have to chuckle to myself that I was mis-parsing the clue for GOT OPEN - "shook" as "shook up", not "got away from" until my coworker mentioned the answer and ahhh, THAT HITS THE SPOT hit me.
Evans Clinchy, nice Friday puzzle, thanks!
@Anon12:46 - 🤣😂🤣 - Seriously, it’s only pianists that always elicit a, “ Oh. Come. On. You look like you need to get a room” reaction from me.
@Brother - You don’t seem to know much about FREEGANism. It is an example of an approach that I am always reminded of when somebody calls Elizabeth Warren a “socialist.” She’s not even close to what actual socialists think. @TJS - I’m curious what your reaction to the philosophy described in the link is. I’m imagining cranial explosions.
@Jess - Just in case, it is A POP, two words.
@bagelboy - There is no actual difference between “schmear” and “smear” other than effective marketing. I did a quick look and they are both from German/Yiddish, “schmear” is documented only as far back as 1909, and the entire “bagel and a schmear” thing has more to do with marketing than anything Yiddish. Cream Cheese doesn’t even enter the picture as a bagel topping until sometime after the 1920’s (probably - lots of hard to verify info out there which is pretty common for the mundane) and doesn’t seem to have escaped New York as a thing until even later. I do tend to agree that now the distinction has entered the language, but personally I give the “schmear” spelling a hefty dose of side-eye every time I see it.
@Beezer - I guess I’m surprised that the PPP came in so high. - One of the key features of high PPP is that it creates the “super easy” v “impossible to finish” set of comments. I’ve related the origin story of my counting it often, but I’ll do it again for those who don’t know. It was a Saturday puzzle where I went on and on about how much I loved the puzzle and how pop culture free it was. @OISK observed how hard it was because there was so much pop culture in the puzzle. I was puzzled at the differing reactions and, no surprise, the puzzle had a really high amount of PPP that just happened to be in my wheelhouse. I then spent a couple of weeks counting PPP every day and looking at comments and came up with the 33% line for where we can consistently predict that we will see the wheelhouse/outhouse effect.
@Pete - If refs called “Penalty #61 - smashed to the ground, and BESTRODE the face and made opponent look at his junk for 30 seconds - 15 yards and an automatic first down” the game would definitely be improved. Also agree, that what pianists do looks like weird affectation. Maybe they really are moved but it’s odd how they all get the same “moved pianist face.”
Judge to Felon: GO TO PEN
I’m not sure 41 A is as cringeworthy as Rex and others found it. When choosing a loan, I always compare APRS. However, it’s also important to AVER AGES of the cars under consideration.
Nicely constructed themeless. Thank you, Evans Clinchy.
I'm still swamped by unblogworthy activity but, under the circumstances, I just had to drop by with this quirky morality tale (slightly POE-ish).
LEGEND OF SEVILLE
by Alice Cary
Three men that three gray mules BESTRODE
Went riding through a lonesome road -
Dust from the largest to the least
Up to the fetlock of each beast.
The foremost was a stripling pale;
'Comrades,' he said, 'within our hail
I see a hostel, white as snow -
'T is night-fall - shall we thither go?'
'Nay,' said the other two, 'in sooth
'T is white enough, but of a truth,
Too lowly for our courtly need -
We'll gain a fairer with good speed.'
So, past the hostel white they rode,
These men that three gray mules BESTRODE,
Till led the pale young moon afar,
By her slim silver horn, one star.
Right wistfully then looking back,
Cried out the middle man, 'Alack!
I spy a rude black inn - shalt see
If the host have good wine for three?'
'Now,' said the hindmost, 'by my troth
Shamed is my knighthood for ye both.' -
'So, pricking sharply, on they rode,
These men who three gray mules BESTRODE.'
Close where a whimpering river lay
Stood huts of fishers; all that day
Drying their loose nets in the sun.
They told how murders might be done.
A moorish tower of yellow stone
Shadowed that river-bridge, o'ergrown
With lichen and the marish moss -
Forward the stripling rode to cross:
Close came the others man by man,
But farther than the shadow ran,
The legend says, they never rode,
These men who three gray mules BESTRODE.
The original Frankenstein was the doctor - his monster was never named Frankenstein. That's what the clue is referencing, although for some reason it seemed like bad wording to me.
That 1 across was just cruel. We don't even have any Korean restaurants around here, so have never heard of BIBIMPAP. And it crosses 4 other names! POE and AIDA were okay; MORRIS could have been NORRIS, and BOBA could have been... almost anything (I've never heard of that either). I guessed SOBA because although I couldn't remember what that was (it's another Asian dish!) it sounded like a play on SODA which is a drink, at least.
And why oh why such a colossally boring clue for MORRIS??
[Spelling Bee: yd pg -3; there were 8 count 'em 8 pangrams!]
@kitshef 8:14
I had more or less the same thought! And definitely worth a read for thise who haven't (a story within a story which contains *another* story).
But I knew what the clue meant (name of creator as opposed to name of creation).
So, in my world -- where I'm neither a tea drinker nor a consumer of Korean food -- the first square of 1A is the Natick of all Naticks. Weird to have a puzzle where you fill in (relatively smoothly) everything else in the puzzle but leave the opening square blank with a shrug.
Morris county, NJ is a parochial clue/answer? It's one of the richest counties in the US. It's a bedroom community to the most imporatnt city in the world. It's named after a Chief justice of the NJ Supereme court. The family name should at least ring a bell. The Morrises had not one but two signers of The Declaration of Independance. Cumberland county, Nj, Sussex county yeah, parochial. But Morris? Nah
There's a lot of NYT readers in MORRIS County, thank you! And we're a "local" category in the Broadway League's analysis of theater goers (and I know this even though we mostly see other than Broadway stuff, plug here for Signature Theater, just sayin'). So that was easy.
A whole week of speedy times makes me think my brain is starting to relax in anticipation of re-retirement. When I'll eat BIBIMBAP with a side of GENOA salami, hold the TOFU, with my ICE(d)T. And attend an ORATORIO and a concert by the cover band SAPID TAPIRS (@someone, thx for providing entertainment).
AVERAGES: my ESL students often got grief from their "mainstream teachers", sad but true. When I taught them math I always made sure they understood that "mean" and "AVERAGE" meant the same thing. So they could respond politely when asked about a teacher: S/he's AVERAGE.
SABOTAGE: perhaps you had French in elementary school and can sing along with En Passant Par La Lorraine... o, o, o! Avec mes sabots! We were told they were wooden clogs. Anyway, they were worn by saboteurs. Who, as I sort of remember, kicked things to pieces. Note, I haven't checked this recently [quick Google search] ok, now I have, yup. Memory serves.
Thanks EC!
My biggest issue was completely self-inflicted. For 35 across, I had TH__H etc and promptly typed in THis HITS THE SPOT. Then, with BIBIMBAP, ORATORIO, BESTRODE, FREEGAN and SAPID in the grid, I had too many places where the error could be when the happy music did not appear. All of the acrosses looked good, and it was not until I did the downs and saw MEiL that I knew I had located the error. It did not help that I had ITTY BITsY (not really thinking that the phrase was either spelled with -TT- and -TT-, or -TS- and -TS-, and not the mixed paring of -TT- -TS-). Anyway, fixing MEiL to MEAL and fixing the missing T took care of all of it. Enjoyable for the most part. Best clue may have been for LINEMAN
BIBIMBAP crossing MORRIS a complete NATICK for this native of NOCAL. I've even been to Morristown, but didn't make the connection. Waiting for LOOGOOTEE IN to make the puzzle.
NJ only has 21 counties. Not that you'd want to, but you committ all of them to memory with about 5 minutes of effort. Delawar only has three counties--the fewest of any state. Fun fact, despite being separated by the Delaware river/Bay. Nj and Delaware have had territorial disputes for a long time. Twice the US Supreme Court has made ruling in the fight. Check out how close to NJ land Delaware rights come. Its quiet amazing.
Texas has the most counties including the one with the smalleest population (Loving).
Hawaii--spefically poor Molokai-- has the county smallest in area. Kawa, Kala...?..something.
The 1A/1D cross was, as far as I can remember, the worst Natick I've ever seen in any crossword anywhere. Inexcusable.
@Barbara S. (2:05 PM)
Good to hear from you. Thx for the Legend of Seville! :)
@okanaganer (2:20 PM)
Those p's were fun to pick out; I'm still working on the -4 non p's.
___
Started my football career as a LINEMAN (center), but the coach must have seen something in me that led to a switch to QB; played that position from then on. 🏈
FREEGANism
"Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food.[1] The word 'freegan' is a portmanteau of 'free' and 'vegan'.[2] While vegans avoid buying animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general."
"Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with 'dumpster diving' for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting in abandoned buildings, and 'guerrilla gardening' in unoccupied city parks.[3]" (Wikipedia)
An interesting segue from FREEGANism to Frankenfood:
Possible spoiler for anyone working on BEQ's 1427 xword.
A fun coincidence and somewhat tangential to today's MONSTER entry is a clue in the BEQ puz I'm working on – ''Frankenfood ingredients':
"The term Frankenfood comes from the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, relating genetically modified foods to the MONSTER that Dr. Frankenstein created. In order for Frankenfood to be created, the DNA of the food needs to be manipulated." (DelightedCooking)
___
td 0*
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Barbara S - Thanks. I must admit to guiltily changing “nay” to “neigh” in the third verse. I just couldn’t help myself. Gives a whole different meaning to the poem. In my version the lead mule is played by Bojack Horseman.
Whenever New Yorkers defend a parochial clue in the NYTX I am reminded of that famous map. What I didn’t realize until just now is that it’s based on a map from 1936. Now I wonder if Ben Franklin did the original back in 1776 or something.
I don't know about the pianist soft porn thing but I do know that clarinetists make the best girlfriends.
@The Joker:
Only to Jewish guys. :):) [Let's see if this ever sees the light of the innterTubes.]
@Z, Remember "Personal foul on the defense, number 31. The runner was down and he was givin'him the business" while pantomiming someone punching a guy in the face. I loved that guy.
So I just read the description of the "Freegan" philosophy. Sounds like the guy my ex ended up with. Hah !
It was fun figuring out FREEGAN (couldn't get last letter till suddenly Vegan occurred to me). SB had taught me BIBIMBOP and BOBA. But it was still a DNF for me; don't know beans about salami but should definitely have got IMPROV.
yd missed 2 of the pg and also a couple of others; td pg -3; I'm properly awed by @okanoganer, @bocamp, @roo.. et al
Add me to the found this super-easy camp. Shaved more than 10% off my Friday PB - from 10:04 all the way down to 8:57. But as well as being on the puzzle's wavelength was the good luck to be able to plonk down BIBIMBAP with no crosses and then, after the ITTYBITTY, MORRIS, BIL combo had prevented me being able to leave the NE, being able to plonk down VISIGOTHS without crosses on the very next clue I looked at and then getting VISAGE immediately off the V. [We have a family song from a trip to the Forum in Rome when the kids were little about how "No One Sacks Like a Visigoth - sung to the tune of Never Smile at a Crocodile, so that helped].
After that it was a breeze, notwithstanding my effort at entering the implausible in retrospect oohTHaTSTHESPOT. Luckily the gimme SITH cleared that one up instantly.
Given the grid structure, I'm guessing over half the variance in difficulty in the puzzle was the ease or difficulty people had in getting 1A,4D, 9A, 9D, 30D, and 31D.
Thanks, @Eniale! Spelling Bee td 0, but it took me a while to get my last word and I was shocked that it was accepted! (Merriam Webster does not have a listing for it.)
News flash:
SB td O, and it's been a while, so yay.
What stood out ot me is that whether you spell it SCHMEAR or SMEAR, the term refers to spreadable stuff, normally cream cheese. In no way could the *lox* be a SCHMEAR.
With that said, my own mind has reached equally tenuous guesses while struggling with a ? clue, so I don't judge.
EENY-WEENY, ITSY-BITSY and ITTY-BITTY walked into the kealoa bar and ordered the name of the town with a side of marina marinara. That comes with sliders on the ferris wheel said the bartender.
The day got away from me, but I'm so glad I decided to do the puzzle just now - I thought it was terrific. It won me over with VISAGE x VISIGOTHS and continued to delight me with HOT STREAKS and HOLY SMOKES, the paired FREEGAN and LINEMAN, and the parallel ITTY BITTY ESTATE TAX. I appreciated ed the nod to Governor EVERS, a rare voice of sanity in Wisconsin politics these days.
recent crosswords helped me with this one i guess, as i filled in things easily that i wouldn't ordinarily know, like VISIGOTHS, MAGI, and BIL. even ASSYRIA came easily with a few crosses and i actually stopped to wonder where my brain got that one from. unfortunately tho, another DNF because i'd never heard of SAPID (i had TASTY originally) and wasn't familiar with STUD vs draw, so the D would've been a run-the-alphabet cheat except...i thought they did mean the kind of tears that run down your face, so i had HOT STREAMS and MOFI seemed just as plausible as KOFI. i also wrote in TATT before TATS, hating the spelling but momentarily forgetting that "ink" in this sense can be both singular and plural. (and EVERT seemed another plausible didn't-know name.) overall even though i failed, was surprised to see this one rated medium-challenging as i did move through the bulk of it pretty quickly for a friday.
thankfully did not consider itsy bitsy or any other "holy" exclamations so i didn't get tripped up with either of those. had JETLAG before ANEMIA and SLOTS before SEMIS. thought about CANDY BAR before GALAXIES.
Played MUCH easier to me than yesterday - 6 minutes faster!! Don't get me wrong, it took sometime and effort (and a lucky guess or two in the NW) but I finished without help. Always a moral victory.
@Anoa Bob i don't pay for a NYT subscription either, but i use a javascript toggle extension for chrome, in which you simply disable javascript and presto, the paywall disappears. you won't get to see accompanying images, but you can read the article just fine. anyway, out of curiosity i read the article which is about this:
https://ratsbegone.org/
from the article: "Besides its innovative design and noxious chemicals, the rat trap also has a secret weapon: Oreo cookies. “Peanut butter Oreos are the best,” said Jim Webster, Rat Trap Distribution’s director of operations, while installing the contraption outside of Casa La Femme.
The scent of the cookies, crumbled and placed in the top compartment of the two-part trap, along with sunflower seeds, acts as a lure. For a week or so, rodents will be free to crawl through the device’s holes and snack as much as they want.
Once the rats become regulars and “get comfortable,” Mr. Webster said, the device will be turned on, and a platform will drop them into the lower part of the contraption, which serves as a catch basin not unlike a dunking tank at a carnival booth.
Mr. Webster emptied four jugs of a mysterious blue “proprietary” formula into the bottom part of the machine. He said the formula was mostly alcohol and had vapors that “knock the rat unconscious.” He topped the solution off with sunflower oil to “eliminate odor” from decomposition."
i don't know about humane, and i didn't realize peanut butter oreos were a thing, but there you have it. the article also goes on to say that two rats can produce fifteen thousand descendants in a year, and "hundreds" of rats have been killed & collected in these traps since being set up at one location in august. i wonder if the food "lure" just entices more rats to keep on coming, though.
@SouthsideJohnny i'm not a big fan of tofu myself, but as for how it's made, it is what it is. i assume you don't eat cheese of any kind... ;)
It's been a while since I last commented here.
Today's I found strikingly easy, with close to (if not actually) record time for a Friday. And: I liked it. THAT HITS THE SPOT: for me, truer words were never spake as the answer went right in as soon as I came to it. VISIGOTHS: mwah. (@Southside: you've reminded me of George Costanza who declared victory in Trivial Pursuit because, no, the answer is not Moors, but Moops. But seriously: the Visigoths were badasses. Famous for the Sack of Rome, which was kind of a big deal.) Why does everything have to be within the last 10 years to elicit pleasure from Rex? I mean, c'mon: VISIGOTHS. Never grows old.
So much to say. BESTRODE: totally a word (ehhh... [chews carrots] what's up, @small town doc?), and quite a magnificent and lordly one. HOT STREAKS, TAPIR: love 'em. SABOTAGE. Ever wonder about that? Some of you may know that a SABOT is a kind of wooden Dutch shoe, and yes this does have something to do with the word SABOTAGE, but should I explain? Oh, I guess. From Wikipedia: "The English word derives from the French word saboter, meaning to "bungle, botch, wreck or sabotage"; it was originally used to refer to labour disputes, in which workers wearing wooden shoes called sabots interrupted production through different means." (Like making loud noises by applying wooden sabots to wooden floors.)
SAPID just sounds like the type of word that Rex would find annoying. I think that would only enhance its appeal for me.
And I like FREEGAN, the word and the idea. (Plus: why not? Waste not, want not.) I'm guessing Diogenes might have been a FREEGAN in his day. (It's also said that he would sometimes masturbate in public. Just like, you know, one of those "classical pianists" and how "they always look". There would be quite a lot to say about that.)
I like @kitshef's take on Dr. Frankenstein (MONSTER). The other day I heard (the sound but not video from my TV) that scene from Young Frankenstein where they do a song and dance of "Puttin' on the Ritz", and I couldn't possibly explain why the whole thing caught me in that moment as so hilarious. Perhaps it needs no explaining?
I was a tad too proud of myself for holding back on BIBIMBAP and how to spell it on this puzzle occasion. (I know it as BIBIMBoP.) If you haven't tried this dish, do yourself a favor. So tasty.
SB: I'd been on a fairly long streak (I don't keep count), but fell short by 2 on yd's (haven't closed the tab yet). My last word for today's, and my reaction to it, exactly matches @okanaganer's. Offsetting that: I think the day before yd's was a record time for me.
Happy weekend, all.
I was imagining the puzzle IRing a few. I was IREd by even trying to imagine IRING as a spoken or written verb. Merrily we (a)iring go. Now that puzzle is iring me. So is my current keyboard which after an update or something I did has Z and Y in switched positions. What is the story? I live just a few miles from the guy who made up this crayz keyboard. Christopher Scholl or somesuch. Never saw an IRING in the wild. Kind of an oxymoron too.
I bogged down in the Sw but got the rest. I lived in Morris County for a decade plus. That helped. Had to work pretty hard. Center to SE to NE to NW. And died in the Sw.
SAPID TAPIR is a weird read.
In fact quite a few is that right answer really the answer questions. Almost an entertaining mini-theme.
I wanted UTURN for SPLIT but was guessing it was bowling.
Certainly the humanity of the monster and the monstrosity of the humans is a theme in the Frankenstein fable.
LES LET LINEMAN LIBEL LAVA was a bit-o-fun. And I'll give an amen to the YISIGOTH VISAGE corner. With an ASSYRIA bonus. Knew all 3.
Kibimbap and Koba looked pretty good to me. Otherwise, an easy puzzle.
Thanks stephanie @9:58 for the OREO and rats connection. I agree, sounds like this would just help maintain a robust rat population rather than reduce it. Scariest part was the "mysterious blue proprietary formula". And the need to control the smell of rat decomposition. Bon appétite!
Doing a "javascript toggle extension for chrome" is a notch or two above my pay grade. I'll just depend on the commentariat for elucidation!
Thank you for the visual on “sapid.” So accurate. Made me laugh.
BOBA/BIBIMAP was a total NATICK for me, so NE was last to fall, otherwise pretty smooth and enjoyable with one other GIANT exception:
"SAPID"
said no human being ever. On my all-time top five list for most cringeworthy crosswordese answers.
Oh, wait, no, there were two: IRES. Another one I see coming and I'm praying praying PRAYING just for once it's going to resolve to IRKS, which is a word actual humans use but xword constructors almost never do, Maybe one in ten.
And I hate GENOA salami too, but at least it's a real thing, so I'm fine with it in a puzzle even if I prefer the hard version in my sandwich.
Did I say NE? Meant NW for hardest corner thanks to that NATICK. Which btw is a town I drive through every time I take the Mass Pike in or out of Boston so it's not actually a NATICK for me.
Surpised that SAPID is new to so many people. Maybe it's older crosswordese? For me it's right up there with ALAI as in "Jai ___" which used to be required to show up at least once between Monday and Thursday.
And yes, surely there's a more interesting clue for MORRIS. How about "Homophone for title character of a breakthrough E. M. Forster novel"?
Interesting. I read that differently. In most improv, the performers who aren't involved in the current scene stand in a line at the back of the stage, commonly referred to as the back line. So when you decide to start or enter a scene, you come off the back line. (Unlike Rex, I love improv, and performed regularly for a few years)
Yeo!
If anyone is still around who wonders why I hate and stay away from the usual starting point in the NW, I give you today's puzzle.
1a. Unluckily (the Korean is the most perfect killer in the world, per Shun in "Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins"), I am not Korean, ergo I had no chance at this.
1d. From somewhere deep in the memory of a former crossword, I dug up BOBA and hoped it was right.
5d. I don't live in New Jersey--but my son does. Also grandson, in another town. Still I did not know, but between MORRIS and NORRIS I guessed that the -MB- combo was a little more likely than -NB- for that dish, which I can't spell even now without looking directly at it.
2d. I object to IRES clued as a verb. Yes I know it's included in the listing, but to me IRE is the noun and IRK is the verb. It's called "in the language."
Is it any wonder why I loathe NW corners?
All these corners, though, are choked off: one way in, one way out. The way out of the NW was ITTYBITTY, so yeah, I was fearful it could be saved. But the center went down nicely, and in fact the rest of the solve was easy. I had one hiccup when I assumed that fatigue was caused by AsthmA, which fits both the space and the clue. Bit of an inkblot there.
Had to lift the DOD from the clue list; Sophia Loren's AIDA is unforgettable. Never mind about dubbing the singing. Two features detract from a very nice offering: those tight corners--and the one in particular you-know-where. Par.
"Heavy on the trivia"? No, pisser infested.
AFLAC goose. Not duck.
Quite a few honestly wrong answers from your Lady Di. Cannot get them all. I knew I had a not mess going on in the central area.
Do not know sports lingo or names, so that was not any help either.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
LET SPLIT
“HOLYSMOKES!”, said THE devil,
“You ARE LOVELY and HOT,
SENORA, LET us REVEL,
what you GOT HITSTHESPOT.”
--- BIL MORRIS
This one’s a dud - not a STUD.
Okay, the NW was the killer in the 1A,D corner. The rest of it? Not too tough and worth the effort.
Learned some words with some good guesses : SOLUTE (sugar...), SAPID (...flavorful), GENOA (...salami), FREEGAN (portmanteau...).
I do have an ITTY BITTY complaint : I don’t think GOT OPEN rises to the level sports "lingo”. It is more common, every language, in sports and elsewhere.
I liked the puzzle.
...everyDAY language.
Don't know if it was said before, but "ires" is a noun. The verb is "irks".
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