Relative difficulty: Medium? (super easy except for three longer answers I've never heard of before, all of which required every cross)
THEME: New Years of the world ... (I think that's all there is) —
Theme answers:
SPRING FESTIVAL (16A: Chinese New Year, celebrated on Feb. 1, 2022)
ROSH HASHANAH (26A: Jewish New Year, celebrated on Sept. 25, 2022)
SOLLAL (28D: Korean New Year, celebrated on Feb. 1, 2022)
NOWRUZ (29D: Iranian New Year, celebrated on March 21, 2022)
SONGKRAN (55A: Thai New Year, celebrated on April 13, 2022)
Word of the Day: NOWRUZ (29D) —
Nowruz (Persian: نوروز, pronounced [nowˈɾuːz]; lit.'new day') is the Iranian New Year, also known as the Persian New Year, which begins on the spring equinox, marking the first day of Farvardin, the first month of the Iranian solar calendar. It is celebrated worldwide by various ethnolinguistic groups and falls on or around March 21 of the Gregorian calendar. In 2021, Nowruz fell on March 20.
As the spring equinox, Nowruz marks the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes night and day is calculated exactly every year, and families gather together to observe the rituals.
Happy Chinese New Year to all who celebrate! I don't really understand how this puzzle "celebrates" anything, though. This felt like school—like I was being taught the names of three different New Year's celebrations (SOLLAL, NOWRUZ, SONGKRAN, none of which I've encountered before), and while I don't mind learning, I don't know how any of this adds up to a *puzzle*. It's trivia, and it isn't a particularly cohesive chunk of trivia, either. The New Year's celebrations feel haphazard—chosen for no clear reason except that they can be arranged symmetrically. It felt really weird to me that CHINESE NEW YEAR (14! Same as SPRING FESTIVAL) wasn't referred to as CHINESE NEW YEAR, but the Chinese term does in fact translate as SPRING FESTIVAL, and you couldn't very well have "New Year" in the grid and also in all of the clues for the themers. The biggest question of the day, then, is why a puzzle appearing on CHINESE NEW YEAR / SPRING FESTIVAL didn't try to make some kind of puzzle magic out of the fact that CHINESE NEW YEAR and SPRING FESTIVAL are both 14 letters long. Symmetry comes built-in! Why just list random New Yearseseses? I don't really get it. The one interesting physical feature of today's grid, besides mirror symmetry (as opposed to the more common rotational symmetry) is that it is 14 squares wide (as opposed to the more common 15). This allows SPRING FESTIVAL to become a grid-spanner, and also allows both ROSH HASHANAH and SONGKRAN, as answers with an even letter count, to sit dead center in the grid. I would not have minded at all seeing SOLLAL or NOWRUZ or SONGKRAN in a late-week grid, or in a theme that had anything puzzle-y about it. Any wordplay at all. It's just that "uh, here are some other random New Years" does not seem like a strong theme concept to me. But I can't say I didn't learn anything.
The rest of the grid, the non-theme part, is so easy that there's nothing really to say about it. Four-letter answers as far as the eye can see. ABOUT US is probably the most interesting thing in the grid outside the New Year's names (30D: Explanatory page on a company's website). I like that RAFAEL Nadal is sitting next to CHAMPS, since just this past weekend he won the Australian Open, passing longtime rival Roger Federer and anti-vaxx numbskull Novak Djokovic in number of Grand Slam singles titles (21!). Outside the theme, the only time I struggled with the puzzle today came as I tried to enter the middle of the grid from the top. Got the "S" from NOSH and the "T" from TATA, which gave me S----T for 21A: Lines at a theater? (SCRIPT) ... which was easily the hardest clue of the day. A baffling clue *right* at the gateway from one section of the grid into the other. If I'd just looked at the clue for ROSHHASHANAH at that point, I would've moved along quickly, probably, but I tend not to look at longer answers until I've worked shorter crosses, so I jumped into that weirdly isolated center section and luckily found RAFAEL pretty quickly. After that, no more hesitations. Just the low-key grind of getting every cross on SOLLAL, NOWRUZ, and SONGKRAN. And I thought BEAK was BILL at first (57A: Big toucan feature). And I started writing in LIMA at 15A: Capital where natives say "Arrivederci!" ROMA) because I had -MA and "Capital" + "-MA" just activated some solving instinct. Oh, the teeny corner in the SE was odd because I couldn't get in via SONGKRAN (no idea about that "N") and NERD was clued as [Peter Parker in "Spider-Man," for one], which I guess is accurate, but didn't register At All. The whole concept of NERD has been so diluted that I don't think nerdery hits as hard, as a character trait for Peter Parker, as it did when Spider-Man was first created, in the mid-'60s. Nerds no longer seem anti-heroic in our culture. But sure, NERD. OK. Have a nice day.
This was a pretty easy puzzle, but I liked it a lot.
I celebrate the normal New Years but I liked learning all the different New Years that those other people celebrate, and also how to spell them. Diversity is a wonderful thing and we should all do it.
Speaking of diversity, today is the first day of Black History Month, and I’m all for it because we really don’t hear enough about black people lately. And we’ll start it off With Chinese New Year. What a country! Here in Los Angeles tonight is yet another good time to get drunk and fire your gun in the air.
Today is also the Tet holiday. That’s Vietnamese. Hey did you ever see the photo of that one guy? He sure had a lousy Tet offensive, that’s for sure.
One thing I like about solving crosswords is the new stuff I learn. And today I learned about SOLLAL, SONGKRAN, and NOWRUZ. Well, “learned” may be a stretch; it would be a miracle if I can come up with even one of these in the future. But at least I will now recognize them if I read them in their proper context - so there’s that!
It's 14 squares wide, but 16 high, so only one less square than the standard 15x15. The festival names were fairly crossed and interesting. Two overwrites: ROSH HASHANNA before HASHANAH at 26A and @Rex Bill before BEAK at 57A.
I do have a (minor) gripe: Based on the clue, the word at 15A should be ROMe. For it to be ROMA, the clue should have been "Capitale where natives say 'Arrivederci!'"
Yes, almost all the non-theme clues are very straightforward, but when 80% of your themers are opaque to 90% of your audience, all I can think is what the actual heck is this doing on a Tuesday?
Not to mention ELIE and MAYA, which takes us to six WoEs, which probably sets some kind of record for any day of the week.
Biggest complaint, though, is that one of the themers is an English translation (SPRING FESTIVIAL), while the others are not translated. It should be all or none.
A big problem in construction was those narrow lead-ins to the SW and SE corners. The only way in was through the first and last letters, respectively, of an unfamiliar Thai holiday. That made solving the bottom choppy. I’m with Rex today: this was educational, but not much fun.
"Nerds no longer seem anti-heroic in our culture." Nice try, Rex.
Every complaint that Rex has about this puzzle is basically that his solving time was slowed. God forbid that we should have to use crosses to arrive at the right answers.
One of the better Tuesdays we have had lately, IMO.
Expected something about robots from the visual look of the grid.
Went through smoothly, considering I knew almost none of the holidays outside of ROSHHASHANAH. But I got tripped up by drawing a blank on a SKEIN of yarn. And with the SONGKRAN & ELIE crosses it took a second effort to hear the happy music.
Chopped up grid made for less than optimum Hidden Diagonal Words day. I did like the diagonal letter string in the Center, SEYR, which if read from NE to SW includes two diagonal words that can be found in this conversation:
A: Those loaves on the top rack ... are those ... um ...
B: Ryes? Yes.
(YES also appears in 35D, YESSES. And in the Mini today it appeared as YESES. Go figure.
Had @Conrad's spelling confusion for ROSHHASHANAH and misread a clue number which created a major bottleneck in the mid-Atlantic, but otherwise it was fill-in-the blanks with a smattering of WTF's.
The names for the start of a new year in various locales are interesting, also random and instantly forgettable, so there's that.
Seeing a PRIM PTIG in the NE was my favorite part of this one.
I think I've seen better CC puzzles in USA Today. Could Complain about this one, but I'll give her a pass based on past work. Thanks for some minimal fun.
Yeah, that grid design! Fun to look at, but irritating to solve. That said, I liked the theme more than most seem to have done. Maybe because once I got the initial N I realized that I knew NOWRUZ. I have no idea how or why I knew it, but there it was. What a thrill!
You know what else is 14 letters long? YEAR OF THE TIGER, that's what. I wrote in a couple letters of that for 16A before I ran into some hostile crosses.
It does seem odd, when you have five different New Year holidays on five different dates, to run the puzzle on one of those dates. If it'd been me, I'd have run it on January 1.
In addition to learning many holidays, also learned the word YESSES (35D). As for tennis, amusing to change just letter and you get Novax. Rabbit, rabbit everyone.
Had Spool before SKEIN and I thought NOWRUZ had to be somehow wrong. I didn’t even look at the clue for 16A - the entire thing came from the crosses. Odd that this is rated as Easy yet 3 of the longer answers none of us have ever heard of.
Agree with @Rex and @Joaquin about learning new terms - always a plus in a puzzle, assuming that the crosses are fair and the word is appropriate for the day of the week in terms of difficulty. @Kitshef (7:08) had an interesting observation about SPRING FESTIVAL being the only answer in English. That is odd.
My initial impression was that this was not a Tuesday puzzle based on these relatively unknown holidays, but the crosses were easy for the most part, so my time was very much a good Tuesday/Wednesday time (one minute slower than by best Tuesday and equal to my best Wednesday). For that reason, later in the week would seem inappropriate.
Potential issues could be the crossing of MERLE (if you have no clue about country music) and SOLLAL, UTES (if you know nothing about college sports) and NOWRUZ, and both SOLLAL and NOWRUZ crossing ROSH HASHANAH (in the unlikely event you have never heard of the Jewish New Year, or if you know the word but may be unclear about the spelling). I can see these as being sticking points for some.
The grid almost reminded me of a calendar in that it was broken into somewhat square-ish segments, which would be appropriate for a New Year's theme, but there are only 9 of these segments and not 12.
Interesting as pointed out above that the grid is not square - does this happen much? I do not recall seeing this as a comment before.
Almost took a pass on the puzzle with foreign words as it’s theme, but stuck it out. Come tomorrow, I won’t be able to recall NOWRUZ and SOLLAL if my life depended on it, so nothing really exciting there. Rex is reasonably complimentary regarding the construction aspects, and even the content - so this will likely have a decent fan base. Fortunately the rest of it was Tuesday-level so I forged ahead. I guess the constructor gets a nod of the head for turning so much gibberish into something appropriate for an early-week slot - thank goodness for that. Would hate to see what a mess this could have made surrounded by Friday or Saturday crosses.
I originally thought the last part of the Thai entry would be RAT, which gave me TERD for the Spider-man dude - so I was wondering if there was a four letter word for SQUARED UP that began with a U, but fortunately cooler heads prevailed.
Nice to see all the New Year names; knew only ROSH HASHANAH.
Amazing comeback by RAFAEL in the Australian Open.
Liked this one a lot! :)
@albatross shell (2:36 PM yd)
I do remember your poser: 'the unassisted triple play, without touching the ball'. It engendered some very interesting discussion. :) ⚾️
@jae
Spent 1/2 the day on Croce's 680; it was fairly easy except for the NW & MW which took hours to suss out. Still ended up with a really bad blunder at the 'fish ingredient' / 'instructor' cross (that was inexcusable). Another miscue (somewhat excusable) was at the cross of 'infomercial' / 'pass'. Otherwise, another invigorating, mind-expanding adventure! See you next Mon. :) ___ yd pg: 13:33 / Wordle: 4 (even par after 26)
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
I’m wondering why only the Chinese new year holiday is translated into English instead of represented phonetically. Why do we have NOWRUZ and not NEW DAY, ROSH HASHANAH and not HEAD OF THE YEAR, but SPRING FESTIVAL and not CHUN JIE?
Pretty much what Rex said. A bunch of new years trivia does not a theme make. Granted, this was only Tuesday difficult, but this is the kind of trivia-fest that gives puzzles a bad name. It’s CC so you know it will be competently made, but I want wordplay, not trivia.
Given the Maus kerfuffle and the Nazi marches in Orlando it seemed like a good day for an ELIE Wiesel clue.
@TJS - I was watching my favorite ESPN show about sports yesterday and they were discussing new coaching hires. With one in particular (the Raiders, maybe?) the were joking that the NFL, the NFL!, now hired head coaches who struggled socially in high school, not just those who struggled academically in high school (that is, hired NERDs, not just jocks). So, yeah, what Rex said.
@Conrad - I paused at the Romaloa for exactly that reason, but thought maybe “Arrivederci!” was signifying the Italian spelling. I’m with you, though, I don’t think that clue really demands the A.
In the spirit of diversity, perhaps I’ll start celebrating all of these New Years, many of which I just learned today. In these trying times, an excuse to celebrate the joys of other cultures seems a good thing to do.
The unknowns required really working the crosses, and that’s a good thing. It is after all a… crossword puzzle! And I thought I really good one. The extra work still kept it in the Tuesday difficulty range.
I had the same reading the encyclopedia feeling Rex had with this one. Wasn’t unenjoyable - just felt like being lectured to. Was trying to see a tiger as grid art - but not so sure. Goofy grid with easy shorts - thankfully knew SKEIN.
I will be going to Flushing to pick up jiaozi today.
I'm actually tired of seeing the word Nerd used in puzzles, particularly clued as a means of describing a person. It is boring and honestly a little tedious, laden and out of time, for my tastes. I liked the grid but overall found it quite easy. Agree SCRIPT was the best clue.
I wrote in "yearofthetiger" as a gimme, then had to change almost every letter.
@Rex, you're a Tiger fan. The Year of the Tiger was also 1984, when Detroit went wire-to-wire first place, from opening day until winning the world series. They started the year 35-5, which I think is a one-off accomplishment.
I disagree with @Rex regarding the theme. I find that Ms. Burnikel set out to celebrate the new year on a global scale and achieved her goal rather nicely by (thankfully) prividing us with crosses to hello with the spelling if the transliterated words.
In undergrad, I took pot luck on my freshman year roommates and lucked out by meeting Lila, a brilliant, clever and hilariously funny young woman from Skokie (as are many if the students at Illinois). She came complete with the Skokie accent and the boisterous Jewish family, parents Albert and Eleanor. Through Lila, who became a dear friend and a (literally) world class journalist, I was introduced to such wonderful traditions in her Reformed Jewish family, Hillel, and to the Jewish calendar of holidays, all of which have rich traditions and delicious food.
One year, as ROSH HASHANAH approached, Lila was chatting on the phone with her mom (I could always tell from the loud laughter and Lila’s “OK Ma, OK!” In response to what she described as the usual Jewish mother questions) I remembered that I wanted to see if I could get the recipe for hamantaschen, the delectable triangle shaped cookies filled with delicious sticky poppy seed jam (for want of a better word). So I pass Lila a note and she starts laughing and says “Ma, Carol has a question for you.”
Now I am on the phone with my adopted Jewish mother which means that before I can get a word in edgewise, I have to answer all the preliminary questions: Are you eating (so thin you were last time you were here!); Are you seeing any nice boys (such a catch, a sweet girl like you!), etc. once Eleanor has all the requisite data, I ask, “I know that Lila isn’t going to be able to get home for ROSH HASHANAH this year because of her big project that is due and I thought I would make her some hamantaschen just like yours if you would share your recipe. Would you?”
Whereupon the laughter ensues. I am confused and tried another question: “Are they that hard to make?” “Is the recipe a family secret?” When Eleanor finally answered me (still chuckling) she said “I don’t know from recipes for dessert but I will give you the phone number for Bernie Brothers Bakery.” True story.
Some tough spots today, but I enjoyed it and was exposed to some new names for nee year celebrations. I say ‘exposed to’ only because I will never remember any of them other than ROSH HASHANAH that I already knew.
@Muse Last Night (actually early this morning do you ever sleep?) - 🤣😂🤣 - Tilting at windmills? Oh look, “tilt” has been a noun since 1507 and a verb since 1594 but we can’t have the NYT using nouns as verbs or verbs as nouns! 🤣😂🤣
@Trey - A 14x16 grid is unusual, but not unique. Mirror symmetry is more common, but my impression is that 14x16 grids often have mirror symmetry. If you do indie puzzles, which don’t need to fit into a defined space in a printed paper, you will find all kinds of unusual grids popping up.
**Wordle Alert** Par. Yesterday the possible first letters were B, F, L, M, N, R, S, T, and W. Having the L in the wrong place on my first guess was a lucky thing. Saw lots of DNFs on Twitter.
I used to work for a church that had a large Hmong immigrant population. It's a group that spans the border between Cambodia and Laos. They had their own Hmong New Years day, but they also celebrated Cambodian New Years, which was on a different day. Of course they celebrated with us on January 1st, also. Chinese, also. Basically they liked parties, I think. They used the church as their social center, held their big parties there. I remember overhearing the minister talking to one of their leaders:
Minister: you were spotted carrying cases of beer in yesterday. You know this is a Baptist Church? We aren't allowed to do that? Hmong Leader, calmly: OK, we'll do something about packaging next time. Minister looks at me and throws his hands up. We smile.
Oh, the puzzle. Wasn't worth writing about. All those bottlenecks from section to section, many involving words I didn't know or had no interest in. But one could always start cold in the next section and rip back through it. Yuck. First time in 4 days I actually got my Times, and it was no fun.
Hey All ! As noted by others, grid is 14 x 16, which @Trey 8:16, happens once in a while. Sometimes it's 14 x 15, or vice versa. I always* notice the grid size.
*Well, I usually miss it! Sort of a hack, if you see 12 or 14 in the last square of the first Across row, and have two Blockers along that row, it's usually a 14 or 16 wide grid.
No one mentioned the 44 Blockers. High number, that. Usual max is 38.
@jberg Hands up for YEAR OF THE TIGER. Splatzed that one right in, only to discover the NW Downs not jiving.
Also found out I didn't know how to spell ROSH HASHANAH. Thought it was HASHANNA.
Was hoping for a @Clare write-up today, as BTS make an appearance. She's probably going nuts right now!
Early tomorrow morning (well, sunrise) it'll be another great day in Punxsutawney PA ... Groundhog Day! I was there on 02/02/02. I have a couple of Groundhog Brew beers to prove it! Over/under on seeing its shadow? @Z?
CC can make her puzs pretty junk free. EST and STS about the worst.
Grid looks like a stick figure jumping over stantions. Jumping for joy for the New Yearses?
I am on the same page as Rex with this one. It's not enough that the fill was Tuesday level - both fill and themes should have a consistent degree of difficulty.
@Z, yeah, I wasn't really disagreeing, I was just trying to refer to the nerdiness of many of OFLs' complaints, like todays' theme discussion. I guess I was too obscure. And actually, the lengths he goes to are hilarious.
Is the grid a picture of something? Or, does it represent something?
This 16x14 grid has one fewer square than a 15x15. 16x14 equals 15 squared minus one. One of the most useful identities in algebra. (x+1)(x-1)=x^2 - 1.
******* Wordle Alert ******* My first word came through for me this morning. Two greens and a yellow. That set me up for an eagle, my third since I started playing about a month ago.
I went to NYT Wordplay to see if it explained the strange grid. It didn't. But it dId say that the NYT just bought Wordle for the low seven figures. I suppose that that means that people will have to go through the NYT to get the puzzle soon.
Rare, even for an early-weeker. Zero red plus signs in the margins.
Sorta. It's true that the `84 Tigers have the best record after 40 games, but I always wondered why that was a thing. Do you know who has the best record after 30 games? How about 50, 60" How about the best firts half (81 games)?
That Tiger team is vastly overrated. In fact, they never sniffed another pennant and won only one other AL East crown. Frankly, the 1928 Yanks with their 33 and 7 mark after 40 games were a much better team. They won 106 games to the Tigers 104 and of course lost only 45 times to the Tigers whopping 58. Not even a close call.
If anyone cares, the best record after 50 games is the 1939 Yanks who were finishing a four-year run as AL Champs. Coincidentally that run started by usurping the 1935 Tigers crown. And the Tigers would end the Bombers run in 1940. Both the 1936 ands 1940 Tigers are superior to the 1984 team. Especially the 35 iteration.
Funny how the constructor used the native words (albeit Anglicized) for all holidays except the Chinese new year (spring festival instead of Chunjie or any variant thereof)
Provincial me had no idea about three of these New Year's celebrations, and I enjoyed being enlightened. @CDilly52 9:12 - I love your story. Coincidentally, after learning SOLLAL, SONGKRAN, and NOWRUZ, my question was, "I wonder what they eat?"
What a diss to Chinese New Year. At least I know I really appreciate it when people celebrate my birthday by telling me when their birthday is and what gift they would like.
I have nothing but kudos for a puzzle that celebrates diversity. Not sure what JOHNX is getting at in his post that starts off today's ramblings, but I really hope the picture he is referring to was not the famous photo of the Buddhist priest who set himself on fire. If it was, that would be in appallingly bad taste, by anyone's standards. His comment about "normal New Years" - - somebody please tell me he is simply being sarcastic.
Wordle 227 3/6
⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
3 over par after 20 rounds. Yesterday killed me. Hard mode, which turned it into a guessing game. Enjoy Wordle while it is still free. Now that the NYT has purchased it, someone's gotta pay.
Well I thought the fairy tale gold dust landed wonderfully on this Tuesday. I enjoyed all of it just like I enjoy anything CC puzzles. I had absolutely no trouble seeing SPRING FESTIVAL rival with the the other cohesive trivia....I sometimes like trivia. The only little sigh that sprang from my mouth was the clue for MAYA. I really wished CC had clued in Angelou and her "I Know Why the Caged Bird sings." I think the last time I celebrated the New Year was when I was in my early 20's in Spain. Everyone drinking Cava and then staying up till breakfast time and having "chocolate con churros." Now, we go to bed around 8 and hope we're still breathing in the morning. Had a few write-overs. sass/GALL, stye/PENS and hero/NERD. Also never heard of SOLLAL, NOWRUZ and SONGKRAN. Did they go to a bar? Speaking of:
PRIM and PRIG came to my bar last night. They were full of GAS, so ALPO, the bartender made them a MALT full of SLOE. The GAS ceased and everyone SANG "SKIP to my loo."
This was fun and lookie here...I spelled ROSHHASHANAH correctly. Now, if only I can guess how to spell Hanukkah. I read somewhere that there are 24 different ways. Someone could make a Sunday puzzle on just that word!
Feeling contrary today, so here are some unpopular opinions:
-I feel like Maya Rudolph is one-note [ducks rotten fruit]. She's talented but needs a great ensemble around her. She was entertaining in The Good Place, but did anyone see her short-lived variety show with Martin Short? Sloooow death. -I'm over Wordle. It's Mastermind with letters. NYT just paid seven figures for the rights, so they're not going to give it away for long. -JOHN X's shtick is so, so, so played. Single A Hemingway. Warren Zevon plagiarism. What the kids call a tryhard.
One I wasn't sure how to spell and the rest I didn't know at all, so this was quite a challenging Tuesday for me. I'd call it an "educational" puzzle, which is a good thing, I suppose, except that I won't remember any of it in the future. In fact the future is now, since I don't remember any of it already.
To clue NERD (crossing SONGKRAN) with a Spiderman reference is cruel and unusual punishment. I was helped by the fact that there's no other ERD-word other than NERD. BTS was fairly crossed so I won't complain about it/them. Can't wait to read the blog and seed what the reactions are; I did see JOHN X on the way down here and he was hilarious.
Agree with Rex today this was kind of an odd theme and very easy but also agree with @Nancy that it was educational. Although I didn’t know any of these new year terms, I’m quite sure I will have forgotten them by the time I finish posting this.
It's long been interesting to me how cultures oceans apart can have such similarities. Pyramidal structures, deities and ritual, all the religions that describe some version of what we call the golden rule, currency, warfare. Never thought of new year celebrations until this puzzle.
At least the Chinese and Koreans agree on when the new year starts.
This felt more like a crosstrivia than a crossword. The peak moment of my solve was figuring out that a trunk in a studio was a TORSO. Major aha! Also liked ABOUT US. But I SAY NO to all of the proper nouns not only in the themers but also in the fill. PAPA, IMAN, ELIE, ET AL, please find another grid to hang out in.
The lines at a theatre are *dialogue* and not a SCRIPT which includes front matter and stage directions as well as dialogue. To say that the lines are the script is like saying that a ceiling is a room. Yes, I know there’s a clever idea afoot but it doesn’t quite work. (Or have I been reading Rex for too long?)
Also wondering how all of those S’s got into YESSES.
@Unknown 10:27 - Yes, @John X was being sarcastic/satirical.
@Anon10:11 - I can’t really argue with what you say. I will only observe that from 1983 to 1993 the AL East won four of 10 World Series, The AL West three, and the NL just three, one most memorable for a 1984 Tiger’s home run. Then there’s the 10 inning Game 7 Complete Game Shut Out by another 1984 Tiger to clinch the 1991 championship. All to say the competition those 1984 Tigers were up against was better than anyone those Yankee teams faced nor did those Yankee teams have to worry about their top players become opponents. As for 35-5 - we stop there because it was followed by them getting swept by the Mariners. Blrrgh. But, yeah, there are probably comparable 40 game runs you can find but aren’t remembered just because they weren’t the start of the season. And even with that run, the Blue Jays hung tough for much of the season.
@mathgent - Interesting but now I’m wondering how it is “useful.”
I agree with @Nancy that the puzzle was educational and that my memory of each New Year is dimming as I write this, especially the spelling. The crosses were fair for the themers so no problem for those without the arcane knowledge (or firsthand knowledge).
@Roo, I thought of Clare also as I filled in BTS!
@Joseph Michael, the double S for YESSES gave me pause also and was surprised to see it is considered acceptable, although not preferred (at least by OED)
@amyyanni…I LOVE the NOVAX bit! Aside from his ridiculous stance on THAT subject, I’ve never liked him…he has always seemed like an arrogant jerk to me. While I love me some Roger, I have rooted for Rafa ever since he hit the scene in spite of his not so attractive “tics” when playing because he is so darned sweet!
While I suppose you could eat them during a celebration of the new year, hamantaschen are typically associated with the holiday of Purim, as they resemble the three-pointed hat of Haman.
I’ll certainly say that this was an educational puzzle. If anyone knew all of the themers without help from the crosses, I crown you the New Years King/Queen. But the crosses were certainly fair.
If you are one to point out POCs (Hi, Anoa B.), YESSES has to take the cake by doubling its singular letter count.
On the whole, the puzzle was pretty chopped up with 9 mini regions, but still enjoyable. Thanks, Zhoukin Burnikel.
@Anon11:12 - Didn’t you just ask this question in the past couple of days? I’m four under (-4) after 27 holes. I’ve never gotten the answer in zero guesses.
@Wordle won’t be free for long people - Not necessarily. There’s the idea of a “loss leader” in marketing. A product a retailer loses money on in order to draw people into the store. Free software with in-app purchases is similar. Charging for Wordle would certainly result in backlash. My guess is the NYT has other ideas on how to monetize it that are similar to the “loss leader” idea.
Tuesday is seldom an exciting solve, so I’m not surprised at the negativity of the commentariat. Still, new beginnings at the start of the new month seemed appropriate—especially given the 14x16 grid with its blocks of mini-puzzles. ZB has been a consistent presence in the PAST decade, so today’s start & stop grid experience is forgivable though unexpected. I liked it better than many, but really needed @Lewis to put his usual positive spin on it for full appreciation.
All but one of the New Year fests were new to me, but the crosses were so Easy I was able to get them all, and it was a very enjoyable solve. Of course I did know ROSH HASHANA since I usually have had more Jewish friends than Gentile though born and raised Catholic. And what a great story about the hamentashen!
In fact today seems to have inspired a bumper crop of great stories in the Comments.
Yesterday brought a warm, if not heated, argument about woke vs. something-else-ness. If it's Tuesday, it must be 'Science Times', and today we get a report from Dennis Overbye about the Webb telescope. You should read it.
If not, I'm here to tell you that Overbye, likely without intent since the piece appeared on-line well before yesterday, makes the case for woke.
Here, two excerpts.
"In case of failure, everything could still be up for grabs, I believe, except the decision to build such a telescope in the first case. Building it required the best of humans: cooperation and devotion to knowledge, daring and humility, respect for nature and our own ignorance, and the grit to keep picking up the pieces from failure and start again. And again." [my emphasis, and qualities not possessed by those of the something-else-ness]
and
"Odysseus tells the story of his life and voyages, how he got back to Ithaca but was then bored and set off with his men on a voyage through the Pillars of Hercules into the great unknown western sea. When his crew got nervous and wanted to turn back, he told them to buck up.
“Consider the seed from which you sprang,” Dr. Giacconi intoned. “You were not made to live like brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge.”
Then a great storm rises up and sinks them.
“The search for knowledge does not always end happily,” Dr. Giacconi laughed.
Onward anyway."
You can live in your hidebound past, or you can embrace learning and knowledge and progress. You cannot have both.
@Z, I read that the NYT has set the goal of having 10 million subscribers by (fill in the date I forget), and games, recipes, and other apps are part of that strategy.
Their own article said, "For lower prices, (the NYT) also offers subscriptions to a games app (Games), a recipe app (Cooking) and, as of last year, Wirecutter, a product-recommendation site The Times bought in 2016. This month, The Times spent $550 million to buy the sports news website The Athletic, hailing the 1.2 million subscribers the site brings with it.
The traditional advertising model for paper doesn't really translate to digital for them. They want subscribers. Come for the game, stay for the news? Probably won't happen with Wordle. But as part of a larger strategy, it may advance toward the goal.
Z, You can't really argue with anything I've said then proceed to argue with what I've said. The `36-`39 Yanks had plenty of competition. Plenty. Hell, off the top of my head the `39 Bosox had Jimmie Foxx, Bobby Doerr, Joe Cronin, Teddy Ballgame. Even an aged Left Grove. And ato start their run they had to beat a hell of a Tiger team. Detroit was loaded: Charlie Gehringer, Al Simmons, Goose Goslin, Hank Greenberg ( i know, i know....) Mickey Cochrane. thats 5, FIVE Hall of famers. Not to mention Schoolboy Rowe and Tommy bridges throwing the pill. You really don't know baseball nearly well enough--ceratinly not prewar baseball ---- to argue it.
Primo Giant U splatzed into the center of this E/W symmetric(al) puzgrid. Educational TuesPuz theme. Like.
staff weeject pick: TET. On 1 Feb, 2022. Not in the puz, but was certainly scheduled for today, probably down in the SE corner where the new-yearless NET finale is. [M&A blames Spotify for the blatant omission.] Possible SE corner re-dux:
ACROSS. 61. Time running in reverse? 67. Big stars attract them 70. Not the sharpest tool in the shed DOWN. 62. ___-cow easy 63. Under the weather 64. Holiday that rhymes with "net"
Superb quad weeject stack in the N polar region, btw. Unsplit TATA's, today.
Thanx for the fun New Year wingding thing, Ms. CC darlin. Still one of my fave constructioneers, and that there giant U sure didn't hurt yer cause.
Have to agree with Rex that this puzzle wasn't really celebratory enough. I would have liked to see maybe a 128x128 grid with all the New Years of every country and culture, and a bunch of interesting facts about all of them, and maybe designed in a way so that SPRINGFESTIVAL is shaped like a dragon and ROSHHASHANAH is shaped like an apple; etc. Unfortunately the creator couldn't be bothered and just chose answers because it was possible to arrange those answers into a crossword puzzle. Pathetic!
Yes, the NYT bought Wordle in the "low seven figures," but couldn't be arsed to pay their Wirecutter employees a living wage without them going on strike. Late-stage capitalism at its finest. Shameful.
Anon 12:12, Huh? What are you talking about? Z contended that the 1936-1939 Yankees didn't have formidable opposistion. I say they did. And to, briefly, make my claim I picked teams they had to play at the beginning, 1936, and the end, 1939 of their run. All my data are correct. In 1940--a year not under discussion-- the Tigers won the AL stopping the Yankees run. They were able to do so, because despite Z's dubious claim, the Yankees did have competition. Sharp competetion. The bombers just happend to be superior. In fact, the 1940 AL season is well known. The top three teams, Tigers, Indiands and Yanks were separated by just two games. As i say, plenty of competition. You mention the other DiMaggio-- a misnomer since there three Doimaggios who played in the Bigs--- Dom was surely on the 1940 Red Sox. That team however finished more than 20 games out. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Informative cnet article re: NYT purchase of Wordle:
"Wardle reassured players that the game will remain free and that he's working with The Times to make sure game streaks are preserved in the move of ownership."
Visually what a lovely grid. easy fill delightful way to learn all those new holidays to celebrate agree Spring Festival a bit of a clunker, Year of the Tiger or .......?
@CDilly52 (9:12) - A wonderful story well told! Mazel tov!
But I must point out that Lila’s family was not “Reformed Jewish”, but rather Reform Jewish (unless they had changed their ways and as a result become reformed - small “r” - Jews).
I was sure it would be "Year of the Tiger" as we've been painting tigers for the last month in my Chinese ink painting class. Agree that it was odd to only have one of the New Years festivals be in English. NOWRUZ sounds vaguely familiar, but even though I lived in Thailand for three years as a baby, no recollection of any mention of, uh, what was it again? And spelling ROSHHASHANAH is always an adventure.
I can never remember that it's IMAN not IMAm. I don't know why she's obviously not a cleric. I lived in Somalia for three years too.
MAYA Rudolph was very funny in The Good Place, with a bit of that SNL trying too hard vibe, but I did not recognize her name at all.
This grid had a dark, ominous look to it when I opened it up. Fortyfour (!) black squares chop it into a bunch of mini puzzles that foreshadow lots of 3 and 4 letter entries ahead. But the big "How did this pass muster?" is the translation for SPRING FESTIVAL vs the transliterations for SOLLAL, NOWRUZ and SONGKRAN as mentioned by previous commenters. How many of us will be able to recall those transliterations a few hours from now anyway? And if one doesn't cotton to the themers, there's not much left to enjoy.
YESSES in the rightmost column at 35 Down did catch my eye (Hi eggs @11:24). It's a letter count boosting POC (plural of convenience) that amps up YES by a whopping 100%. Does it add 100% more of interest or value to the unPOCified YES? I SAY NO (24D). It does, however, enable three more POCs at RUBS, UTES and STS, so it's definitely grid fill friendly. Still waiting for the greatest of all time double duty POC/POC enabler ASSESSES to make an appearance.
Anyone seen TA TA (18D) in a grid lately? More evidence for the ongoing repetition meta, right?
I'm of Korean descent, grew up in a region with a significant Jewish population, and used to live in Thailand, so most of the themers were gimmes for me. Only NOWRUZ was completely new, and that was easy enough to get from the crosses.
My only gripe is that, as a Korean person, I have only ever seen the holiday romanized as "Seollal" so I got tripped up on that one. A quick Wiki search tells me that SOLLAL is in fact valid, but it threw me for a loop, especially because that's the one I *should* know.
Finished up with a nice birdie to post an even par 72 for the round. Nice opening round, will see how things go over the weekend when they toughen up the pin placements.
@Eniale 1:08 – actually Mario Lanza premiered it in a 1957 movie of the same title (retitled "Seven Hills Of Rome" for the USA). But just about every Italian-American singer went on to record it.
Tangential paragraph: My neighbor and I were having shower drainage problems earlier, so the landlord sent a plumber over to check out the situation. I could swear he (the plumber) called me "honky" as he was coming up the stairs. "How's it goin', honky?" he asked affably, brandishing an electric snake. I've been laughing about it all afternoon. I really hope that's what he said, I'd be disappointed to find out I misheard him.
@JC66, if you're here – I tried playing SUBWAYDLE, it's not fun. You have to guess three subway lines that constitute one journey, in the correct order, but you don't know what the starting and ending points of the journey are – unless you press the "Hint" button. Even using the hint didn't help because the journey I got would be made (by any normal person) using only one subway line. But since it makes you use three, you wind up having to travel out of your way and then backtrack. I think it needs some tweaking.
@jberg Jan. 1 was a Saturday. Not a good day for this one.
@ Corvid Cowboy Yarn. As in try knitting.
@whatsername @Nancy said it was "educational" not that it was educational. For confirmation: she had forgotten it all so certainly not educational.
The mirror symmetry in this one did very little to add any thing to the puzzle. I often enjoy mirror symmetry. Here it just made for a pile of isolated disconnected mini puzzles. One the one hand it needed this to make the largely unfamiliar theme answers to be tuesday gettable. On the other hand it also made the isolated corners have few ill effects.
My hardest was the Y in MAYA. The crossing phrase ISAYNO was difficult to parse for me. I never realized that HASH was at the center of the Jewish New Year Celebration. My Jewish friends never told me. They never told me about any brownies either.
@Anoa Is YESSES 200% more boring than YES?
All in all it was a bit offbeat and a bit o fun to solve. But not a style I would want cloned very often.
Worked very easy despite not knowing the many New Years term, but the crosses were typically short and easy. I had the same complaint that there was little connection between sections to carry through, so I had to start fresh, especially in the SE and SW.
Coworker spoiled Wordle for me today. At least with my puzzle subscription I will be able to continue to play after the buyout - only a matter of time, unless they use it a gateway puzzle to hook people into a subscription.
@albatross (7:25) Yes, “educational” for me in the same way as @Nancy. I also forgot it almost immediately. A few years ago I judged a debate contest for homeschooled high school seniors. One of the issues debated was whether or not the Internet has enhanced education. The con side argued that while the internet does provide an unlimited amount of information, that in itself does not equate to education. Their basis was the argument that education means REtaining knowledge as opposed to merely OBtaining it and that simply looking up a random fact does not constitute the study of that fact to the extent that it can be recalled in long-term memory. I awarded them the win.
One glitch not mentioned so far: REmAKE for the movie do-over. I was whipping around filling in those weird new years on crosses, and didn't give REmAKE a second thought. It was as natural as can be. Until I tried to make sense of that list-ender. Then it finally dawned: Oh, you don't mean a do-over of THE WHOLE MOVIE, you just mean, like, a scene. Oh, okay.
Weird, boxy construction, almost like the head of a dragon--how about that! IMAN is DOD, and our education continues. Birdie.
It is what it is. Sure it could have been better. But it isn’t so terrible I think ZB used the black squares to represent a Chinese lantern. Rex missed that. You can miss a lot of things when you’re a speed solver.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
.png)
114 comments:
This was a pretty easy puzzle, but I liked it a lot.
I celebrate the normal New Years but I liked learning all the different New Years that those other people celebrate, and also how to spell them. Diversity is a wonderful thing and we should all do it.
Speaking of diversity, today is the first day of Black History Month, and I’m all for it because we really don’t hear enough about black people lately. And we’ll start it off With Chinese New Year. What a country! Here in Los Angeles tonight is yet another good time to get drunk and fire your gun in the air.
Today is also the Tet holiday. That’s Vietnamese. Hey did you ever see the photo of that one guy? He sure had a lousy Tet offensive, that’s for sure.
One thing I like about solving crosswords is the new stuff I learn. And today I learned about SOLLAL, SONGKRAN, and NOWRUZ. Well, “learned” may be a stretch; it would be a miracle if I can come up with even one of these in the future. But at least I will now recognize them if I read them in their proper context - so there’s that!
Rex,
Why insult Djokovic? What's he got to do with the price of tea in China?
Great puzzle CC!
It's 14 squares wide, but 16 high, so only one less square than the standard 15x15. The festival names were fairly crossed and interesting. Two overwrites: ROSH HASHANNA before HASHANAH at 26A and @Rex Bill before BEAK at 57A.
I do have a (minor) gripe: Based on the clue, the word at 15A should be ROMe. For it to be ROMA, the clue should have been "Capitale where natives say 'Arrivederci!'"
Really ugly grid composed of nine mini-grids.
Theme answers are mostly gibberish. Plus Mogadishu-born model and cosmetics mogul.
I did enjoy the NE corner with PRIM/PRIG and ROMA, whose anagram is ROAM, a synonym of ROVE, and they crossed.
Yes, almost all the non-theme clues are very straightforward, but when 80% of your themers are opaque to 90% of your audience, all I can think is what the actual heck is this doing on a Tuesday?
Not to mention ELIE and MAYA, which takes us to six WoEs, which probably sets some kind of record for any day of the week.
Biggest complaint, though, is that one of the themers is an English translation (SPRING FESTIVIAL), while the others are not translated. It should be all or none.
A big problem in construction was those narrow lead-ins to the SW and SE corners. The only way in was through the first and last letters, respectively, of an unfamiliar Thai holiday. That made solving the bottom choppy. I’m with Rex today: this was educational, but not much fun.
"Nerds no longer seem anti-heroic in our culture." Nice try, Rex.
Every complaint that Rex has about this puzzle is basically that his solving time was slowed. God forbid that we should have to use crosses to arrive at the right answers.
One of the better Tuesdays we have had lately, IMO.
Expected something about robots from the visual look of the grid.
Went through smoothly, considering I knew almost none of the holidays outside of ROSHHASHANAH. But I got tripped up by drawing a blank on a SKEIN of yarn. And with the SONGKRAN & ELIE crosses it took a second effort to hear the happy music.
Chopped up grid made for less than optimum Hidden Diagonal Words day. I did like the diagonal letter string in the Center, SEYR, which if read from NE to SW includes two diagonal words that can be found in this conversation:
A: Those loaves on the top rack ... are those ... um ...
B: Ryes? Yes.
(YES also appears in 35D, YESSES. And in the Mini today it appeared as YESES. Go figure.
Had @Conrad's spelling confusion for ROSHHASHANAH and misread a clue number which created a major bottleneck in the mid-Atlantic, but otherwise it was fill-in-the blanks with a smattering of WTF's.
The names for the start of a new year in various locales are interesting, also random and instantly forgettable, so there's that.
Seeing a PRIM PTIG in the NE was my favorite part of this one.
I think I've seen better CC puzzles in USA Today. Could Complain about this one, but I'll give her a pass based on past work. Thanks for some minimal fun.
Yeah, that grid design! Fun to look at, but irritating to solve. That said, I liked the theme more than most seem to have done. Maybe because once I got the initial N I realized that I knew NOWRUZ. I have no idea how or why I knew it, but there it was. What a thrill!
You know what else is 14 letters long? YEAR OF THE TIGER, that's what. I wrote in a couple letters of that for 16A before I ran into some hostile crosses.
It does seem odd, when you have five different New Year holidays on five different dates, to run the puzzle on one of those dates. If it'd been me, I'd have run it on January 1.
In addition to learning many holidays, also learned the word YESSES (35D).
As for tennis, amusing to change just letter and you get Novax.
Rabbit, rabbit everyone.
Had Spool before SKEIN and I thought NOWRUZ had to be somehow wrong. I didn’t even look at the clue for 16A - the entire thing came from the crosses. Odd that this is rated as Easy yet 3 of the longer answers none of us have ever heard of.
Agree with @Rex and @Joaquin about learning new terms - always a plus in a puzzle, assuming that the crosses are fair and the word is appropriate for the day of the week in terms of difficulty. @Kitshef (7:08) had an interesting observation about SPRING FESTIVAL being the only answer in English. That is odd.
My initial impression was that this was not a Tuesday puzzle based on these relatively unknown holidays, but the crosses were easy for the most part, so my time was very much a good Tuesday/Wednesday time (one minute slower than by best Tuesday and equal to my best Wednesday). For that reason, later in the week would seem inappropriate.
Potential issues could be the crossing of MERLE (if you have no clue about country music) and SOLLAL, UTES (if you know nothing about college sports) and NOWRUZ, and both SOLLAL and NOWRUZ crossing ROSH HASHANAH (in the unlikely event you have never heard of the Jewish New Year, or if you know the word but may be unclear about the spelling). I can see these as being sticking points for some.
The grid almost reminded me of a calendar in that it was broken into somewhat square-ish segments, which would be appropriate for a New Year's theme, but there are only 9 of these segments and not 12.
Interesting as pointed out above that the grid is not square - does this happen much? I do not recall seeing this as a comment before.
Almost took a pass on the puzzle with foreign words as it’s theme, but stuck it out. Come tomorrow, I won’t be able to recall NOWRUZ and SOLLAL if my life depended on it, so nothing really exciting there. Rex is reasonably complimentary regarding the construction aspects, and even the content - so this will likely have a decent fan base. Fortunately the rest of it was Tuesday-level so I forged ahead. I guess the constructor gets a nod of the head for turning so much gibberish into something appropriate for an early-week slot - thank goodness for that. Would hate to see what a mess this could have made surrounded by Friday or Saturday crosses.
I originally thought the last part of the Thai entry would be RAT, which gave me TERD for the Spider-man dude - so I was wondering if there was a four letter word for SQUARED UP that began with a U, but fortunately cooler heads prevailed.
Thx CC; perfect Tues. puz! :)
Easy+
Smooth sailing all the way.
Nice to see all the New Year names; knew only ROSH HASHANAH.
Amazing comeback by RAFAEL in the Australian Open.
Liked this one a lot! :)
@albatross shell (2:36 PM yd)
I do remember your poser: 'the unassisted triple play, without touching the ball'. It engendered some very interesting discussion. :) ⚾️
@jae
Spent 1/2 the day on Croce's 680; it was fairly easy except for the NW & MW which took hours to suss out. Still ended up with a really bad blunder at the 'fish ingredient' / 'instructor' cross (that was inexcusable). Another miscue (somewhat excusable) was at the cross of 'infomercial' / 'pass'. Otherwise, another invigorating, mind-expanding adventure! See you next Mon. :)
___
yd pg: 13:33 / Wordle: 4 (even par after 26)
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
I’m wondering why only the Chinese new year holiday is translated into English instead of represented phonetically. Why do we have NOWRUZ and not NEW DAY, ROSH HASHANAH and not HEAD OF THE YEAR, but SPRING FESTIVAL and not CHUN JIE?
This puzzle did not work for me.
Pretty much what Rex said. A bunch of new years trivia does not a theme make. Granted, this was only Tuesday difficult, but this is the kind of trivia-fest that gives puzzles a bad name. It’s CC so you know it will be competently made, but I want wordplay, not trivia.
Given the Maus kerfuffle and the Nazi marches in Orlando it seemed like a good day for an ELIE Wiesel clue.
@TJS - I was watching my favorite ESPN show about sports yesterday and they were discussing new coaching hires. With one in particular (the Raiders, maybe?) the were joking that the NFL, the NFL!, now hired head coaches who struggled socially in high school, not just those who struggled academically in high school (that is, hired NERDs, not just jocks). So, yeah, what Rex said.
@Conrad - I paused at the Romaloa for exactly that reason, but thought maybe “Arrivederci!” was signifying the Italian spelling. I’m with you, though, I don’t think that clue really demands the A.
In the spirit of diversity, perhaps I’ll start celebrating all of these New Years, many of which I just learned today. In these trying times, an excuse to celebrate the joys of other cultures seems a good thing to do.
The unknowns required really working the crosses, and that’s a good thing. It is after all a… crossword puzzle! And I thought I really good one. The extra work still kept it in the Tuesday difficulty range.
I had the same reading the encyclopedia feeling Rex had with this one. Wasn’t unenjoyable - just felt like being lectured to. Was trying to see a tiger as grid art - but not so sure. Goofy grid with easy shorts - thankfully knew SKEIN.
I will be going to Flushing to pick up jiaozi today.
Enjoyable enough Tuesday solve.
I'm actually tired of seeing the word Nerd used in puzzles, particularly clued as a means of describing a person. It is boring and honestly a little tedious, laden and out of time, for my tastes. I liked the grid but overall found it quite easy. Agree SCRIPT was the best clue.
I wrote in "yearofthetiger" as a gimme, then had to change almost every letter.
@Rex, you're a Tiger fan. The Year of the Tiger was also 1984, when Detroit went wire-to-wire first place, from opening day until winning the world series. They started the year 35-5, which I think is a one-off accomplishment.
I disagree with @Rex regarding the theme. I find that Ms. Burnikel set out to celebrate the new year on a global scale and achieved her goal rather nicely by (thankfully) prividing us with crosses to hello with the spelling if the transliterated words.
In undergrad, I took pot luck on my freshman year roommates and lucked out by meeting Lila, a brilliant, clever and hilariously funny young woman from Skokie (as are many if the students at Illinois). She came complete with the Skokie accent and the boisterous Jewish family, parents Albert and Eleanor. Through Lila, who became a dear friend and a (literally) world class journalist, I was introduced to such wonderful traditions in her Reformed Jewish family, Hillel, and to the Jewish calendar of holidays, all of which have rich traditions and delicious food.
One year, as ROSH HASHANAH approached, Lila was chatting on the phone with her mom (I could always tell from the loud laughter and Lila’s “OK Ma, OK!” In response to what she described as the usual Jewish mother questions) I remembered that I wanted to see if I could get the recipe for hamantaschen, the delectable triangle shaped cookies filled with delicious sticky poppy seed jam (for want of a better word). So I pass Lila a note and she starts laughing and says “Ma, Carol has a question for you.”
Now I am on the phone with my adopted Jewish mother which means that before I can get a word in edgewise, I have to answer all the preliminary questions: Are you eating (so thin you were last time you were here!); Are you seeing any nice boys (such a catch, a sweet girl like you!), etc. once Eleanor has all the requisite data, I ask, “I know that Lila isn’t going to be able to get home for ROSH HASHANAH this year because of her big project that is due and I thought I would make her some hamantaschen just like yours if you would share your recipe. Would you?”
Whereupon the laughter ensues. I am confused and tried another question: “Are they that hard to make?” “Is the recipe a family secret?” When Eleanor finally answered me (still chuckling) she said “I don’t know from recipes for dessert but I will give you the phone number for Bernie Brothers Bakery.” True story.
Some tough spots today, but I enjoyed it and was exposed to some new names for nee year celebrations. I say ‘exposed to’ only because I will never remember any of them other than ROSH HASHANAH that I already knew.
@Muse Last Night (actually early this morning do you ever sleep?) - 🤣😂🤣 - Tilting at windmills? Oh look, “tilt” has been a noun since 1507 and a verb since 1594 but we can’t have the NYT using nouns as verbs or verbs as nouns! 🤣😂🤣
@Trey - A 14x16 grid is unusual, but not unique. Mirror symmetry is more common, but my impression is that 14x16 grids often have mirror symmetry. If you do indie puzzles, which don’t need to fit into a defined space in a printed paper, you will find all kinds of unusual grids popping up.
**Wordle Alert**
Par.
Yesterday the possible first letters were B, F, L, M, N, R, S, T, and W. Having the L in the wrong place on my first guess was a lucky thing. Saw lots of DNFs on Twitter.
I used to work for a church that had a large Hmong immigrant population. It's a group that spans the border between Cambodia and Laos. They had their own Hmong New Years day, but they also celebrated Cambodian New Years, which was on a different day. Of course they celebrated with us on January 1st, also. Chinese, also. Basically they liked parties, I think. They used the church as their social center, held their big parties there. I remember overhearing the minister talking to one of their leaders:
Minister: you were spotted carrying cases of beer in yesterday. You know this is a Baptist Church? We aren't allowed to do that?
Hmong Leader, calmly: OK, we'll do something about packaging next time.
Minister looks at me and throws his hands up. We smile.
Oh, the puzzle. Wasn't worth writing about. All those bottlenecks from section to section, many involving words I didn't know or had no interest in. But one could always start cold in the next section and rip back through it. Yuck. First time in 4 days I actually got my Times, and it was no fun.
Hey All !
As noted by others, grid is 14 x 16, which @Trey 8:16, happens once in a while. Sometimes it's 14 x 15, or vice versa. I always* notice the grid size.
*Well, I usually miss it! Sort of a hack, if you see 12 or 14 in the last square of the first Across row, and have two Blockers along that row, it's usually a 14 or 16 wide grid.
No one mentioned the 44 Blockers. High number, that. Usual max is 38.
@jberg
Hands up for YEAR OF THE TIGER. Splatzed that one right in, only to discover the NW Downs not jiving.
Also found out I didn't know how to spell ROSH HASHANAH. Thought it was HASHANNA.
Was hoping for a @Clare write-up today, as BTS make an appearance. She's probably going nuts right now!
Early tomorrow morning (well, sunrise) it'll be another great day in Punxsutawney PA ... Groundhog Day! I was there on 02/02/02. I have a couple of Groundhog Brew beers to prove it! Over/under on seeing its shadow? @Z?
CC can make her puzs pretty junk free. EST and STS about the worst.
Grid looks like a stick figure jumping over stantions. Jumping for joy for the New Yearses?
yd -13, should'ves 7
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
My husband is from Korea and I've never heard of Sollal.
I am on the same page as Rex with this one. It's not enough that the fill was Tuesday level - both fill and themes should have a consistent degree of difficulty.
Greater?
Baptist you say? Well there's your problem right there.
@Z, yeah, I wasn't really disagreeing, I was just trying to refer to the nerdiness of many of OFLs' complaints, like todays' theme discussion. I guess I was too obscure. And actually, the lengths he goes to are hilarious.
Is the grid a picture of something? Or, does it represent something?
This 16x14 grid has one fewer square than a 15x15. 16x14 equals 15 squared minus one. One of the most useful identities in algebra. (x+1)(x-1)=x^2 - 1.
******* Wordle Alert *******
My first word came through for me this morning. Two greens and a yellow. That set me up for an eagle, my third since I started playing about a month ago.
I went to NYT Wordplay to see if it explained the strange grid. It didn't. But it dId say that the NYT just bought Wordle for the low seven figures. I suppose that that means that people will have to go through the NYT to get the puzzle soon.
Rare, even for an early-weeker. Zero red plus signs in the margins.
157 Strat,
Sorta. It's true that the `84 Tigers have the best record after 40 games, but I always wondered why that was a thing. Do you know who has the best record after 30 games? How about 50, 60" How about the best firts half (81 games)?
That Tiger team is vastly overrated. In fact, they never sniffed another pennant and won only one other AL East crown. Frankly, the 1928 Yanks with their 33 and 7 mark after 40 games were a much better team. They won 106 games to the Tigers 104 and of course lost only 45 times to the Tigers whopping 58. Not even a close call.
If anyone cares, the best record after 50 games is the 1939 Yanks who were finishing a four-year run as AL Champs. Coincidentally that run started by usurping the 1935 Tigers crown. And the Tigers would end the Bombers run in 1940. Both the 1936 ands 1940 Tigers are superior to the 1984 team. Especially the 35 iteration.
Funny how the constructor used the native words (albeit Anglicized) for all holidays except the Chinese new year (spring festival instead of Chunjie or any variant thereof)
Provincial me had no idea about three of these New Year's celebrations, and I enjoyed being enlightened.
@CDilly52 9:12 - I love your story. Coincidentally, after learning SOLLAL, SONGKRAN, and NOWRUZ, my question was, "I wonder what they eat?"
What a diss to Chinese New Year. At least I know I really appreciate it when people celebrate my birthday by telling me when their birthday is and what gift they would like.
I have nothing but kudos for a puzzle that celebrates diversity.
Not sure what JOHNX is getting at in his post that starts off today's ramblings, but I really hope the picture he is referring to was not the famous photo of the Buddhist priest who set himself on fire. If it was, that would be in appallingly bad taste, by anyone's standards. His comment about "normal New Years" - - somebody please tell me he is simply being sarcastic.
Wordle 227 3/6
⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
3 over par after 20 rounds. Yesterday killed me. Hard mode, which turned it into a guessing game. Enjoy Wordle while it is still free. Now that the NYT has purchased it, someone's gotta pay.
Medium. Nice job on the crosses CC! Learning something is good, liked it.
Well I thought the fairy tale gold dust landed wonderfully on this Tuesday. I enjoyed all of it just like I enjoy anything CC puzzles.
I had absolutely no trouble seeing SPRING FESTIVAL rival with the the other cohesive trivia....I sometimes like trivia. The only little sigh that sprang from my mouth was the clue for MAYA. I really wished CC had clued in Angelou and her "I Know Why the Caged Bird sings."
I think the last time I celebrated the New Year was when I was in my early 20's in Spain. Everyone drinking Cava and then staying up till breakfast time and having "chocolate con churros." Now, we go to bed around 8 and hope we're still breathing in the morning.
Had a few write-overs. sass/GALL, stye/PENS and hero/NERD. Also never heard of SOLLAL, NOWRUZ and SONGKRAN. Did they go to a bar?
Speaking of:
PRIM and PRIG came to my bar last night. They were full of GAS, so ALPO, the bartender made them a MALT full of SLOE. The GAS ceased and everyone SANG "SKIP to my loo."
This was fun and lookie here...I spelled ROSHHASHANAH correctly. Now, if only I can guess how to spell Hanukkah. I read somewhere that there are 24 different ways. Someone could make a Sunday puzzle on just that word!
Love it. And he shall henceforth be known as Novax Djokovic!
Feeling contrary today, so here are some unpopular opinions:
-I feel like Maya Rudolph is one-note [ducks rotten fruit]. She's talented but needs a great ensemble around her. She was entertaining in The Good Place, but did anyone see her short-lived variety show with Martin Short? Sloooow death.
-I'm over Wordle. It's Mastermind with letters. NYT just paid seven figures for the rights, so they're not going to give it away for long.
-JOHN X's shtick is so, so, so played. Single A Hemingway. Warren Zevon plagiarism. What the kids call a tryhard.
One I wasn't sure how to spell and the rest I didn't know at all, so this was quite a challenging Tuesday for me. I'd call it an "educational" puzzle, which is a good thing, I suppose, except that I won't remember any of it in the future. In fact the future is now, since I don't remember any of it already.
To clue NERD (crossing SONGKRAN) with a Spiderman reference is cruel and unusual punishment. I was helped by the fact that there's no other ERD-word other than NERD. BTS was fairly crossed so I won't complain about it/them. Can't wait to read the blog and seed what the reactions are; I did see JOHN X on the way down here and he was hilarious.
I had a chance for my first eagle today and I blew it. Bummer!
Wordle 227 3/6
🟨⬜🟩⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Agree with Rex today this was kind of an odd theme and very easy but also agree with @Nancy that it was educational. Although I didn’t know any of these new year terms, I’m quite sure I will have forgotten them by the time I finish posting this.
@CDilly52, A great story, well told.
It's long been interesting to me how cultures oceans apart can have such similarities. Pyramidal structures, deities and ritual, all the religions that describe some version of what we call the golden rule, currency, warfare. Never thought of new year celebrations until this puzzle.
At least the Chinese and Koreans agree on when the new year starts.
This felt more like a crosstrivia than a crossword. The peak moment of my solve was figuring out that a trunk in a studio was a TORSO. Major aha! Also liked ABOUT US. But I SAY NO to all of the proper nouns not only in the themers but also in the fill. PAPA, IMAN, ELIE, ET AL, please find another grid to hang out in.
The lines at a theatre are *dialogue* and not a SCRIPT which includes front matter and stage directions as well as dialogue. To say that the lines are the script is like saying that a ceiling is a room. Yes, I know there’s a clever idea afoot but it doesn’t quite work. (Or have I been reading Rex for too long?)
Also wondering how all of those S’s got into YESSES.
@CDilly52 -- Loved your story!
YESYES!
Good one. Good fun.
🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
@Unknown. I am curious. You say you are 3 over par after 20. Par is 4 so 3 over is 7. Max score is 6. ???
@Unknown 10:27 - Yes, @John X was being sarcastic/satirical.
@Anon10:11 - I can’t really argue with what you say. I will only observe that from 1983 to 1993 the AL East won four of 10 World Series, The AL West three, and the NL just three, one most memorable for a 1984 Tiger’s home run. Then there’s the 10 inning Game 7 Complete Game Shut Out by another 1984 Tiger to clinch the 1991 championship. All to say the competition those 1984 Tigers were up against was better than anyone those Yankee teams faced nor did those Yankee teams have to worry about their top players become opponents.
As for 35-5 - we stop there because it was followed by them getting swept by the Mariners. Blrrgh. But, yeah, there are probably comparable 40 game runs you can find but aren’t remembered just because they weren’t the start of the season. And even with that run, the Blue Jays hung tough for much of the season.
@mathgent - Interesting but now I’m wondering how it is “useful.”
I agree with @Nancy that the puzzle was educational and that my memory of each New Year is dimming as I write this, especially the spelling. The crosses were fair for the themers so no problem for those without the arcane knowledge (or firsthand knowledge).
@Roo, I thought of Clare also as I filled in BTS!
@Joseph Michael, the double S for YESSES gave me pause also and was surprised to see it is considered acceptable, although not preferred (at least by OED)
@amyyanni…I LOVE the NOVAX bit! Aside from his ridiculous stance on THAT subject, I’ve never liked him…he has always seemed like an arrogant jerk to me. While I love me some Roger, I have rooted for Rafa ever since he hit the scene in spite of his not so attractive “tics” when playing because he is so darned sweet!
While I suppose you could eat them during a celebration of the new year, hamantaschen are typically associated with the holiday of Purim, as they resemble the three-pointed hat of Haman.
I’ll certainly say that this was an educational puzzle. If anyone knew all of the themers without help from the crosses, I crown you the New Years King/Queen. But the crosses were certainly fair.
If you are one to point out POCs (Hi, Anoa B.), YESSES has to take the cake by doubling its singular letter count.
On the whole, the puzzle was pretty chopped up with 9 mini regions, but still enjoyable. Thanks, Zhoukin Burnikel.
@Anon11:12 - Didn’t you just ask this question in the past couple of days? I’m four under (-4) after 27 holes. I’ve never gotten the answer in zero guesses.
@Wordle won’t be free for long people - Not necessarily. There’s the idea of a “loss leader” in marketing. A product a retailer loses money on in order to draw people into the store. Free software with in-app purchases is similar. Charging for Wordle would certainly result in backlash. My guess is the NYT has other ideas on how to monetize it that are similar to the “loss leader” idea.
Jews eat hamantaschen on Purim, not Rosh Hashanah.
Did anyone notice the person on the grid layout with their arms extended at the elbows? Not sure what's going on at the knee area...
Also, have you guys discovered Wordle?? Check it out, if not.
Oh, and what an ass Mike continues to be...
Tuesday is seldom an exciting solve, so I’m not surprised at the negativity of the commentariat. Still, new beginnings at the start of the new month seemed appropriate—especially given the 14x16 grid with its blocks of mini-puzzles. ZB has been a consistent presence in the PAST decade, so today’s start & stop grid experience is forgivable though unexpected. I liked it better than many, but really needed @Lewis to put his usual positive spin on it for full appreciation.
All but one of the New Year fests were new to me, but the crosses were so Easy I was able to get them all, and it was a very enjoyable solve. Of course I did know ROSH HASHANA since I usually have had more Jewish friends than Gentile though born and raised Catholic. And what a great story about the hamentashen!
In fact today seems to have inspired a bumper crop of great stories in the Comments.
Yesterday brought a warm, if not heated, argument about woke vs. something-else-ness. If it's Tuesday, it must be 'Science Times', and today we get a report from Dennis Overbye about the Webb telescope. You should read it.
If not, I'm here to tell you that Overbye, likely without intent since the piece appeared on-line well before yesterday, makes the case for woke.
Here, two excerpts.
"In case of failure, everything could still be up for grabs, I believe, except the decision to build such a telescope in the first case. Building it required the best of humans: cooperation and devotion to knowledge, daring and humility, respect for nature and our own ignorance, and the grit to keep picking up the pieces from failure and start again. And again."
[my emphasis, and qualities not possessed by those of the something-else-ness]
and
"Odysseus tells the story of his life and voyages, how he got back to Ithaca but was then bored and set off with his men on a voyage through the Pillars of Hercules into the great unknown western sea. When his crew got nervous and wanted to turn back, he told them to buck up.
“Consider the seed from which you sprang,” Dr. Giacconi intoned. “You were not made to live like brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge.”
Then a great storm rises up and sinks them.
“The search for knowledge does not always end happily,” Dr. Giacconi laughed.
Onward anyway."
You can live in your hidebound past, or you can embrace learning and knowledge and progress. You cannot have both.
I'm OK with Wordle moving to the NYT as long as they don't put Sam Ezersky in charge of the word list.
So earlier today I said I'd seen better CC puzzles in USA today, and I opened today's USA Today puzzle, and there was CC.
Not only that, the title is "Tear of the Tiger", as mentioned by some other members of the commentariat.
Coincidence? Prescience? Proof of the interconnectedness of the universe?
I'm going with dumb luck.
PS-USA puzz was fun, easy, and had no foreign holidays whatsoever.
@Nanct, Sorry you missed your eagle. Here’s how it’s done.
Wordle 227 2/6*
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@Z, I read that the NYT has set the goal of having 10 million subscribers by (fill in the date I forget), and games, recipes, and other apps are part of that strategy.
Their own article said, "For lower prices, (the NYT) also offers subscriptions to a games app (Games), a recipe app (Cooking) and, as of last year, Wirecutter, a product-recommendation site The Times bought in 2016. This month, The Times spent $550 million to buy the sports news website The Athletic, hailing the 1.2 million subscribers the site brings with it.
The traditional advertising model for paper doesn't really translate to digital for them. They want subscribers. Come for the game, stay for the news? Probably won't happen with Wordle. But as part of a larger strategy, it may advance toward the goal.
Z,
You can't really argue with anything I've said then proceed to argue with what I've said.
The `36-`39 Yanks had plenty of competition. Plenty. Hell, off the top of my head the `39 Bosox had Jimmie Foxx, Bobby Doerr, Joe Cronin, Teddy Ballgame. Even an aged Left Grove. And ato start their run they had to beat a hell of a Tiger team. Detroit was loaded: Charlie Gehringer, Al Simmons, Goose Goslin, Hank Greenberg ( i know, i know....) Mickey Cochrane. thats 5, FIVE Hall of famers. Not to mention Schoolboy Rowe and Tommy bridges throwing the pill.
You really don't know baseball nearly well enough--ceratinly not prewar baseball ---- to argue it.
Primo Giant U splatzed into the center of this E/W symmetric(al) puzgrid.
Educational TuesPuz theme. Like.
staff weeject pick: TET. On 1 Feb, 2022. Not in the puz, but was certainly scheduled for today, probably down in the SE corner where the new-yearless NET finale is. [M&A blames Spotify for the blatant omission.]
Possible SE corner re-dux:
ACROSS.
61. Time running in reverse?
67. Big stars attract them
70. Not the sharpest tool in the shed
DOWN.
62. ___-cow easy
63. Under the weather
64. Holiday that rhymes with "net"
Superb quad weeject stack in the N polar region, btw.
Unsplit TATA's, today.
Thanx for the fun New Year wingding thing, Ms. CC darlin. Still one of my fave constructioneers, and that there giant U sure didn't hurt yer cause.
Masked & Anonymo4+1Us
**gruntz**
Have to agree with Rex that this puzzle wasn't really celebratory enough. I would have liked to see maybe a 128x128 grid with all the New Years of every country and culture, and a bunch of interesting facts about all of them, and maybe designed in a way so that SPRINGFESTIVAL is shaped like a dragon and ROSHHASHANAH is shaped like an apple; etc. Unfortunately the creator couldn't be bothered and just chose answers because it was possible to arrange those answers into a crossword puzzle. Pathetic!
@11:50
ya got it wrong by at least a year. 1940 gave them, in addition, the Other DiMaggio. don't be a piker.
@Z (11:27) Hope you’re right about Wordle. My first thought was I hope it will at least be part of our subscription.
@kitshef (11:43) “as long as they don't put Sam Ezersky in charge of the word list.” 😄 I’ll second that.
OK, I don’t usually do this because I don’t like to brag but today … I have to brag.
Wordle 227 2/6
🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Yes, the NYT bought Wordle in the "low seven figures," but couldn't be arsed to pay their Wirecutter employees a living wage without them going on strike. Late-stage capitalism at its finest. Shameful.
My favorite comments this morning.
C Dilly52 (9:12)
Greater ... (9:26)
Gill I. (10:29)
Anon 12:12,
Huh? What are you talking about? Z contended that the 1936-1939 Yankees didn't have formidable opposistion. I say they did. And to, briefly, make my claim I picked teams they had to play at the beginning, 1936, and the end, 1939 of their run. All my data are correct. In 1940--a year not under discussion-- the Tigers won the AL stopping the Yankees run. They were able to do so, because despite Z's dubious claim, the Yankees did have competition. Sharp competetion. The bombers just happend to be superior. In fact, the 1940 AL season is well known. The top three teams, Tigers, Indiands and Yanks were separated by just two games. As i say, plenty of competition.
You mention the other DiMaggio-- a misnomer since there three Doimaggios who played in the Bigs--- Dom was surely on the 1940 Red Sox. That team however finished more than 20 games out. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
That’s exactly what people are calling him, sometimes expanding it to Novax Djocovid.
p.s.
Better 67-A re-dux clue: {Big stars can attract one}.
M&Also
@Trey, I'm neither a country-music fan nor am I into sports at all - but I do puzzles, so MERLE and UTES gave me no pause at all.
@Wanderlust, Novax Djerkovich?
Where's Joe Dipinto or someone to remind us about Dino or Perry singing "Arrivederci Roma, goodbye goodbye to Rome, lalalalala di la la -oma?
pg-1
Oh -0 after all; didn't see easy 5-letter as last one.
Informative cnet article re: NYT purchase of Wordle:
"Wardle reassured players that the game will remain free and that he's working with The Times to make sure game streaks are preserved in the move of ownership."
More, from Wardle's Twitter feed.
___
td pg: 3:31 / Wordle 227 2/6
🟨🟨⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Visually what a lovely grid.
easy fill delightful way to learn all those new holidays to celebrate
agree Spring Festival a bit of a clunker, Year of the Tiger or .......?
All you Wordle commentators: Stop it. If you must comment, wait until you've done at least 100 and then give your average.
Euclid: I think you're confused about what wokeness really is
I think Rex’s "anti-vaxx numbskull” is fairly self-explanatory.
@CDilly52 (9:12) - A wonderful story well told! Mazel tov!
But I must point out that Lila’s family was not “Reformed Jewish”, but rather Reform Jewish (unless they had changed their ways and as a result become reformed - small “r” - Jews).
Boy some tough crosses in this puzzle. NOWRUZ crossing UTES and SONG KRAN crossing SKEIN (I had STEIN but changed it at the last second).
[Spelling Bee yd 0; QB for 4 days!]
@kitshef 11:43am: Well said! With Sam running Wordle, we would get words like calla and farro every other day.
I was sure it would be "Year of the Tiger" as we've been painting tigers for the last month in my Chinese ink painting class. Agree that it was odd to only have one of the New Years festivals be in English. NOWRUZ sounds vaguely familiar, but even though I lived in Thailand for three years as a baby, no recollection of any mention of, uh, what was it again? And spelling ROSHHASHANAH is always an adventure.
I can never remember that it's IMAN not IMAm. I don't know why she's obviously not a cleric. I lived in Somalia for three years too.
MAYA Rudolph was very funny in The Good Place, with a bit of that SNL trying too hard vibe, but I did not recognize her name at all.
This grid had a dark, ominous look to it when I opened it up. Fortyfour (!) black squares chop it into a bunch of mini puzzles that foreshadow lots of 3 and 4 letter entries ahead. But the big "How did this pass muster?" is the translation for SPRING FESTIVAL vs the transliterations for SOLLAL, NOWRUZ and SONGKRAN as mentioned by previous commenters. How many of us will be able to recall those transliterations a few hours from now anyway? And if one doesn't cotton to the themers, there's not much left to enjoy.
YESSES in the rightmost column at 35 Down did catch my eye (Hi eggs @11:24). It's a letter count boosting POC (plural of convenience) that amps up YES by a whopping 100%. Does it add 100% more of interest or value to the unPOCified YES? I SAY NO (24D). It does, however, enable three more POCs at RUBS, UTES and STS, so it's definitely grid fill friendly. Still waiting for the greatest of all time double duty POC/POC enabler ASSESSES to make an appearance.
Anyone seen TA TA (18D) in a grid lately? More evidence for the ongoing repetition meta, right?
I'm of Korean descent, grew up in a region with a significant Jewish population, and used to live in Thailand, so most of the themers were gimmes for me. Only NOWRUZ was completely new, and that was easy enough to get from the crosses.
My only gripe is that, as a Korean person, I have only ever seen the holiday romanized as "Seollal" so I got tripped up on that one. A quick Wiki search tells me that SOLLAL is in fact valid, but it threw me for a loop, especially because that's the one I *should* know.
[Spelling Bee: td pg in < 3 minutes; soon got to 0. QB for 5 days!]
Skein????
Anonymous 12:23. Thank you! I thought maybe I had forgotten ehich fokd fir which holiday. My apologies to all whom I may have offended!
@CDILLY52…I don’t think you offended anyone and your story was great…but did you mean to thank @anonymous 11:23? I didn’t see a 12:23…
On a related note... Happy Imbolc everyone!
Wordle 227 3/6
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
🟨🟨⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Finished up with a nice birdie to post an even par 72 for the round. Nice opening round, will see how things go over the weekend when they toughen up the pin placements.
Re Wordle
Got a birdie
Who the ----- cares?
Where did this wordle golf thing come from?
@Eniale 1:08 – actually Mario Lanza premiered it in a 1957 movie of the same title (retitled "Seven Hills Of Rome" for the USA). But just about every Italian-American singer went on to record it.
Tangential paragraph:
My neighbor and I were having shower drainage problems earlier, so the landlord sent a plumber over to check out the situation. I could swear he (the plumber) called me "honky" as he was coming up the stairs. "How's it goin', honky?" he asked affably, brandishing an electric snake. I've been laughing about it all afternoon. I really hope that's what he said, I'd be disappointed to find out I misheard him.
@JC66, if you're here – I tried playing SUBWAYDLE, it's not fun. You have to guess three subway lines that constitute one journey, in the correct order, but you don't know what the starting and ending points of the journey are – unless you press the "Hint" button. Even using the hint didn't help because the journey I got would be made (by any normal person) using only one subway line. But since it makes you use three, you wind up having to travel out of your way and then backtrack. I think it needs some tweaking.
In more ways than 1....
Holy Shit. Just a minor football story hitting to open Black History Month.
@Amyyanni 8:13
Rabbit, rabbit!
First words I've spoken on the blog, anyway
New type of puzzle - forget the theme, just do the crosses. You could even do that with eye chart letters. Wait…
Wordle folks: The NYT has bought Wordle. They say it will remain free to play.
@1:25
Well, I don't think I'll take a MAGAist's word for it.
@jberg
Jan. 1 was a Saturday. Not a good day for this one.
@ Corvid Cowboy
Yarn. As in try knitting.
@whatsername
@Nancy said it was "educational" not that it was educational. For confirmation: she had forgotten it all so certainly not educational.
The mirror symmetry in this one did very little to add any thing to the puzzle. I often enjoy mirror symmetry. Here it just made for a pile of isolated disconnected mini puzzles. One the one hand it needed this to make the largely unfamiliar theme answers to be tuesday gettable. On the other hand it also made the isolated corners have few ill effects.
My hardest was the Y in MAYA. The crossing phrase ISAYNO was difficult to parse for me. I never realized that HASH was at the center of the Jewish New Year Celebration. My Jewish friends never told me. They never told me about any brownies either.
@Anoa
Is YESSES 200% more boring than YES?
All in all it was a bit offbeat and a bit o fun to solve. But not a style I would want cloned very often.
Now to go see what @Zs football stiry is.
Worked very easy despite not knowing the many New Years term, but the crosses were typically short and easy. I had the same complaint that there was little connection between sections to carry through, so I had to start fresh, especially in the SE and SW.
Coworker spoiled Wordle for me today. At least with my puzzle subscription I will be able to continue to play after the buyout - only a matter of time, unless they use it a gateway puzzle to hook people into a subscription.
SB first for me today - a QB!!!
Oh. Old news.
@albatross (7:25) Yes, “educational” for me in the same way as @Nancy. I also forgot it almost immediately. A few years ago I judged a debate contest for homeschooled high school seniors. One of the issues debated was whether or not the Internet has enhanced education. The con side argued that while the internet does provide an unlimited amount of information, that in itself does not equate to education. Their basis was the argument that education means REtaining knowledge as opposed to merely OBtaining it and that simply looking up a random fact does not constitute the study of that fact to the extent that it can be recalled in long-term memory. I awarded them the win.
No offense taken
No hash. No brownies.
Useless comment. Not funny.
It's me again - no sense of humor.
One glitch not mentioned so far: REmAKE for the movie do-over. I was whipping around filling in those weird new years on crosses, and didn't give REmAKE a second thought. It was as natural as can be. Until I tried to make sense of that list-ender. Then it finally dawned: Oh, you don't mean a do-over of THE WHOLE MOVIE, you just mean, like, a scene. Oh, okay.
Weird, boxy construction, almost like the head of a dragon--how about that! IMAN is DOD, and our education continues. Birdie.
It is what it is. Sure it could have been better. But it isn’t so terrible I think ZB used the black squares to represent a Chinese lantern. Rex missed that. You can miss a lot of things when you’re a speed solver.
https://www.tocl.ca/products/antique-circa-1900s-spectacular-single-light-chain-suspended-hand-carved-wooden-chinese-lantern-with-original-handpainted-glass-panels
GALL ALERT
ABOUT those 'YESSES', I teased,
I'm a PRIG and PRIM girl,
and those DEFT SLOE RUBS CEASED
when ISAYNO to MERLE.
--- MAYA RAFAEL
A Smurf and an unknown novelist. That is no way to begin a Tuesday crossword. A Tuesday!
Otherwise, a rather fun one.
Speed solving will never be my problem. I loke to enjoy. (Can you imagine speed eating? Ha!)
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords, that's ok, I'll wait, I'm not a speeder
This was pretty good, mainly because the five celebrations were helpfully set up by their crosses. though not by the NERD, Peter Parker.
Otherwise easy, except for starting out in the NW with “yore” instead of PAST.
ABOUTUS
ISAY you are NO PRIM PRIG,
you SAY YESSES EVEN moreso,
with DEFT SLOE RUBS I'm big,
to ENTER your AGILE TORSO.
--- MERLE HERBERT
Post a Comment