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River-crossing platforms in Frogger / TUE 2-8-22 / He sold his namesake company to Disney for over $4 billion / Bird in duolingo's logo / Scrabble relative played without a board
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Constructor: Jack Joshi and Jackson Janes and Adam Aaronson
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: Fruit ... units? — I have no idea, there's no revealer or clever phrase or nothin'. All I see are themers that start with a fruit and end with a unit of measurement [the indicator for which appears in brackets at the end of the clue]:
Theme answers:
- LEMON BARS (17A: Tart snacks [pressure])
- TOMATOMETER (28A: Movie scale with a "Certified Fresh" tier [length])
- BANANAGRAMS (44A: Scrabble relative played without a board [mass])
- FIG NEWTON (59A: Longtime Nabisco cookie [force])
The bar is a metric unit of pressure, but not part of the International System of Units (SI). It is defined as exactly equal to 100,000 Pa (100 kPa), or slightly less than the current average atmospheric pressure on Earth at sea level(approximately 1.013 bar). By the barometric formula, 1 bar is roughly the atmospheric pressure on Earth at an altitude of 111 metres at 15 °C.
The bar and the millibar were introduced by the Norwegian meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes, who was a founder of the modern practice of weather forecasting. (wikipedia)
• • •
CILANTRO is delicious and I don't eat pizza rolls any more but I remember thinking TOTINO'S were delicious when I was a kid, so throw in FIG NEWTONS and LEMON BARS (the best!) and you've got a very tasty puzzle. I am noticing now, though, that the puzzle defruited (or defooded) only half the theme fruits. That is, you can eat the first and fourth, but you can't eat the second and third (well, you could eat BANANAGRAMS, but those tiles would probably be pretty uncomfortable going down). I needed several crosses to get George LUCAS (16A: He sold his namesake company to Disney for over $4 billion)—most Tuesdays you'd probably get a first name in the clue to help you out. My initial errors included SLIDE for SLOPE (4D: It may be slippery), NO SALE! for NO DEAL! (46D: "I refuse your offer"), and ... hmm, looks like that's it. We've already been over GROAN for GET IT!? Nothing too tricky going on with the cluing today. DOT is the answer to the "Fiji" clue because of the DOTs over the "i" and "j" and "i" in "Fiji" (34A: One of three in Fiji?). I am grateful for the PALIN clue today (64A: Michael of Monty Python). And the Twitter bot account @nytxw_checker will surely be grateful for TIT (27A: ___ for tat) (can bots experience gratitude? probably a can of worms I don't wanna open ...)
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113 comments:
Monday easy. My only writeover was ICED up for ICED IT at 11D. I did notice the "IT" crowd: besides ICED IT there were GET IT, SNAP TO IT and T IT.
This is a fine Tuesday. @Rex is overthinking IT. I'm glad LOLCATS went in from crosses. I don't know what IT is and don't want to know. Hope I never see IT again. We didn't have any interweb or social media in my day, and we liked it!! Also, Kids these days! Am I right?
Well,… it is a consistent set and pretty constrained. Is it a theme? You know the old saying, “Tuesday has to tuezz.”
A couple of corrections…
What a three point shooter needs, apparently, is a hot pink jersey and range. (the “from the logo” treys are at the end)
R.I.C.E. is the treatment for a sprain.
Complaints/nits to pick:
1. Like Rex, I was annoyed by three answers ending it "it"
2. This senor and senorita make a second appearance.
3. A graft of a plant is absolutely NOT a transplant.
That is all.
I actually figured Rex would have an issue with the plural/not plural on the themers, but there is some consistency as the first and third are plural while the second and fourth are not. Maybe a stretch? As a scientist, I liked the theme, worked for me.
@Rex loves "tight" themes. Could there be a tighter theme than "fruits + units of measure"? Yet somehow I knew Rex would pan it; just didn't know why.
I've never played Frogger so I was unable to start at my usual 1A starting point, but that turned out to be my only speed bump. Easy and fun.
Spent a little too much time thinking about the brackets until the second one and then realized it didn’t much matter. Also spun a little over Lucas until there were enough Downs. Mostly Tuesday with a splash of Wednesday. Wanted Transplants to be Organs at first.
This puzzle buzzed with energy and freshness, it brought me to life, jolted away any lethargy in me, and I left it feeling All Systems Go. Congratulations to JJ & JJ on your NYT debut puzzle, and to AA, whose name atop a puzzle makes me light up.
Freshness came from such as GAMESTOP, TOMATO METER, TOTINOS, Frogger, Deadpool – the first two being NYT answer debuts. There were actually seven debuts, including the most lovely SNAP TO IT. Freshness also came from clues I've never seen before. It went slower than my typical Tuesday, and that was a gift, since it lasted longer.
I had LAG before BUG, and FOR SURE before FOR REAL, and seeing NEWT crossing FIG NEWTON made me want to use the former as slang for the latter.
As your resident alphadoppeltotter, a role I’ve inexplicably taken, I must report that this puzzle has an unusually low number of double letters – four – where anything under five qualifies. It’s been many many moons since I’ve made an “unusually low” or “unusually high” report, and it’s not because I haven’t been tracking. It’s simply been a drought, perhaps related to climate change.
In any case, bravo, guys, for a sparkling ride through the grid. This was a blast. Thank you!
WTH was that??
Well, you could have fooled me that this was constructed by three dudes in a dorm room.
Yeah. Not really.
Theme was meh.
Not my wavelength.
Not my colloquialisms.
Not my cuppa.
Basically hated it, sorry to say.
🧠🧠.5 (Found it hard for the Tuesdee)
🎉
P.S.
Yes, @Z - on a bicycle. Just to tour at your leisure. And now, geography?? What's next - Name That Isomer?
@Nickyboy. The clue does not mention a plant. Transplant and GRAFT can have similar meaning in surgical procedures.
Hamlet, Act V, scene I
HAMLET: Let me see.
[Takes the skull]
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell
me one thing.
Not sure a revealer would have closed the loop here or not. I like the concept fine - even though the ultra geek in me gets uncomfortable with the unit mash up.
Charter member of the I despise 38d club. Strauss would be happy with the second appearance of DANUBE this week. Only know LOL CATS from the NYTXW. Hmm - BESO, AMOR, TIT, OOH BABY and even TRIO - I like where this is going.
Enjoyable Tuesday solve.
Ok. You’re right this time. Not being mean, just truthful. This theme was just a 🤷🏼♀️
Liked this Tuesday puzzle, but did not find much that made me think, "OOH BABY," in the clues or answers or the Hidden Diagonal Words. There's a diagonal SOT near the center of the grid, joining the horizontal SOTS (66A) at the notorious LEMON BAR, eating BRATs, drinking CILANTRO infused beers, and griping about the IT team at the office.
And there is, in the SW, an ascending diagonal ROO (hello, @ RooMonster).
Your PAL IN puzzling,
Tom T
Shouldn't clue for 59A have been "Cookie named after town at the 16th mile of the Boston Marathon?"
Probably the most 'meh' puzzle I've done in quite a while. I felt nothing. And also wasn't excited by NEWTON crossing NEWT.
Well, I saw a "Frogger" clue crossing a "memes" clue to start with and my heart sank but as it turned out the rest of this played Monday easy for me, as virtually all my first guesses turned out correctly, except for BADREP, which was easily fixed, and then I was done,
CRANIAL reminded me of the Ann Landers question "Have you got a geranium in your cranium?". Haven't thought of that one for a while.
And it's nice to see that the constructors paid attention to our CILANTRO/SOAP discussion of a while back and saw fit to clue it as fact, to which I can only say, see?
Our local listserv has frequent examples of folks using REIGN when they mean REIN, leading to some low comedy.
Nice Tuesday guys. You misdirected me with BARS as a unit of measurement but I caught on soon enough. JJ, AA, and JJ, Justly Join the Awesome Achievement group. Jumping Jehosaphat! Thanks for the fun.
Didn’t get me very excited, or very disturbed either. Love love love CILANTRO and never heard of TOTINOS. That bot is really a thing?!?
Ah, yet another reminder that Father Time is slowly passing me by - right out of the gate we have the Frogger game crossing LOLCATS (or is it LOL CATS ?). Well, it’s definitely 2022 !
Interesting that it is only Tuesday and Will has already blown away the (alleged) common usage requirement for foreign words and phrases (BESO). No surprise there though (it’s good to be King).
Not sure about the three point shooter clue - Westbrook makes like what, 1 out of 5 that he chucks up and he’s a gazillionaire. Don’t the Mavs have a point center (Porziņģis) who has more three point shot attempts than rebounds (!) (?). Well, not the constructors’ fault that the NBA isn’t really a basketball league anymore (unless you consider “horse” basketball).
Anyone else growing fatigued by the “verbal synonym” type clue/answer convention where one phrase (“This is gonna be good!”) leads to something like “OOH BABY”? I guess they have their place - my interest at least is waning though.
Rex was so overjoyed that PALIN wasn’t his good and dear friend Sarah that he forgot to bitch about SOTS - hopefully none of his fellow faculty members will find out and bring him up for a disciplinary hearing.
Would’ve preferred Palin clued for Sarah because I enjoy reading the tantrums that her name elicits.
Even though I lived through the 90s, never once have I used PHAT. Never said it or used it in writing until just now. Anyone remember it being an active word in their vocabulary?
After reading the constructors' notes, have to like this offering. Trio of young friends: lovely. Also appreciate Michael PALIN instead of the other one.
Thx Jack, Jackson and Adam for this crunchy Tues. puz! :)
Med+
A few unknowns made this slightly tougher than usual for a Tues.
New to me (or hazy) were: LOGS, FIFA, LEMONBARS, TOMATO METER, OWL, BANANAGRAMS, RYAN, PALIN, GAMESTOP & TOTINOS.
Fair crosses made for a successful adventure.
Enjoyed this one a lot! :)
@jae
Croce's 681 was just as you described it; felt good to get one right after so many near misses (whew)! See you next Mon. :)
@A (4:25 PM yd) 😊
@Barbara S. 👍 for 0 dbyd
___
yd pg: 9:34 / yd Wordle: 5
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Liked it. Just challenging enough. No real clunkers. Easy, based on number of times I consulted my wife: not any.
Ooh, Name That Isomer! But who would the host be? Bill Nye for his crossword friendliness or Neil Degrasse Tyson? Or maybe we go max controversy and go with Fauci? Whoever we get to host, the band has to be change ringers.
Frogger? GAMESTOP? "I can has cheezburger?" This is what passes for culture in our troubled times?
What my pal Lewis calls "freshness", I call extremely annoying, in-your-face youthiness. I'm with @Frantic. This puzzle is almost calculated to exclude my demographic, so don't expect me to have anything good to say about it.
Wordle 234 4/6
🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟨🟩
⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Very workmanlike par today. 2-under after 6.
Tougher than the average Tuesday for me. And not much fun.
Frogger ain’t fresh or youthy. I’m guessing if you go to your preferred App Store you’ll find hundreds of variations.
Speaking of, GameStop is about as fresh and I wasn’t at all sure that it was still doing business.
@Z 831am Well, slap me silly and call me heathen that I don't have change ringing on my playlist. Come to think of it...don't have a playlist. Am I too geeky to live if I admit to finding that fascinating?
Name That Isomer Night at Z's Placebo & Tentacle Pub needs them.
One of those crapshoot types. Yuck.
Wordle 234 4/6
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Hair transplant is a graft.
And M-W first definition of Transplant:
move or transfer (something) to another place or situation, typically with some effort or upheaval.
Fits pretty well with graft.
And the second definition about transferring an organ says organ or tissue. It also fits technically.
Plus you might even find some pun going on with a graft being a "trans(ported)" plant.
The name of the DOT over a lower case i or j is called a “tittle”.
I first looked at the NW and thought about holy little ant hills. Who is Frogger?...who utters "I can has cheeszburger?...and who is that retailer of Nintendos?....I came out uttering "ay chihuahua con fruit..."
Is this Tuesday? I will have to shift my CRANIAL frijoles around and think new.
I did. It worked.
My two wham bangs were (surprise) BESO and AMOR....I knew FIFA as well because I really enjoy soccer. I had trouble with TOTINOS because I'm un-American and hate pizza.
I scratched and scribble away and thought this is a fruit/foodgasm puzzle. What's not to like? I wanted to invite LEMON, TOMATO, BANANA and FIG to my bar. Mrs. CREPES CILANTRO will be serving you tonight. She makes a bodacious SLAW gin martini and you'll be rolling your eyes and coo" OOH BABY, is this FOR REAL?"....Everyone's invited.
When I finished I really thought that my ivories were tickled. I did a smile here, a fandango tango there, and thought about REESE and her buttercups.
Nice and fun job, you TRIO, you....
You talkin' to me, @Zex? :)
Okay, okay, so Frogger's from 1981. It's still an "arcade action game". And GAMESTOP is still a "video game company".
"Youthiness" and the youth demographic is not about what year a product comes out -- it's about the age demographic of the people who have any interest in the product at all. When you spot a bunch of over-70-year-olds at arcades playing Frogger or shopping at GAMESTOP, let me know. On second thought, don't let me know -- the thought would just depress me.
I used to play Frogger. Which means it can't be fresh. Right on, Z.
Mike likes speed (as opposed to me). So his reflections concerning the theme are expected. If it takes over a nano sec to figure out ...
I admit to missing the fruit aspect of the theme. I suppose the clues could have had "fruit, measure" appended to them instead of just the type of measure, but might that have been a little too easy on a Tuesday?
I liked the theme a lot. The rest of the puzzle? Perhaps not a lot, but enough. Maybe a bit too heavy on the hip-o-meter. But a good one for publication. Glad Shortz (or whoever) accepted the puzzle.
Hey All !
So, apparently the Rotten Tomatoes website has a TOMATO METER. News to me. I thought it was a Fresh Percentage, or somesuch. Obvy I don't frequent that website.
I dispute Rex's POC assisted Themers. BANANAGRAMS with the S is the name of the game, it's not BANANAGRAM. And no one bakes a single LEMON BAR. Granted, FIG NEWTON should've added the S, as there are more than one in a package.
Gonna spark the controversy: is a TOMATO a fruit, or vegetable? ARENT I a stinker? Today, it's a fruit.
11D could've been clued "Locked up the game" or "Final uncatchable score" or something similar. PHAT was slang for cool, rad, awesome. Supposedly stood for Pretty Hot And Tempting when describing a sexy woman. Not my coinage, don't shoot the messenger. 😁
yd -5, should'ves 3
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
BANANAGRAMS
"A Family Creation
That's just what Rena Nathanson and her late father were looking for when their family invented the game at a beach house in Narragansett, R.I., six years ago.
"We wanted a game that we could play faster than Scrabble," Nathanson says.
Her father, Abe, had been frustrated by the slow, plodding nature of Scrabble. But he loved word games, so he ditched the board, took the tiles and began to form and reform words. The family joined in and acted as guinea pigs for the game, creating the basic rules as they played.
"We came up with the game Bananagrams, and we started playing it just with friends and with family, and we became very addicted to it," Nathanson says.
The family had some games made for local toy stores, and they immediately sold out. Then, in 2006, the Nathansons launched the game at the London Toy Fair." (Bradley Campbell / NPR)
___
td pg: 5:45 / Wordle: 3
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Well, ya either loved this one or ya didn't, and boy did I didn't. Just awful, relentlessly hip, lots of stretchers --> mistakes. On to Wednesday....
What @Frantic said. FOR REAL. What she said exactly is what I spoke aloud when I got done with this travesty of a Tuesday: “What the hell was that?”
What was it? Well it was INAPTly difficult IMHO with three ITS. Seriously? Three constructors couldn't think of another two-letter word? Somewhere in the SMOG of my brain I recall reading that the [unwritten?] rule for duplicates is they need to have entirely different meanings. So let’s see - GET IT, ICED IT, SNAP TO IT. Oh yeah I can really see the uniqueness of each one of those. DOH.
No AMOR lost from this señiorita.
Oh and if my blood pressure wasn’t already rising, RIGS sent it over the roof.
@Zex - the only reason I know GameStop was still a thing was because last year (or was it two years ago), there was a subreddit* ("r/superstonk") dedicated mostly to boosting the stock up as a big middle finger to large institutions shorting the stock. But the Gamestop story was fairly big news.
I'm not entirely sure LOLCATs and I Can Has Cheezburger is much of a thing anymore. I associate that with more mid-2000s/early 2010s. A college classmate of mine owned I Can Has Cheezburger before selling it off somewhere in the 2010s, so that's mostly why I'm somewhat still aware of them.
Puzzle today was on the easy side of Tuesday for me, just about 60% of average Tuesday time.
@RooMonster - Tomato is both a fruit and a vegetable, depending on the context (like many things, context is key.) Similarly, peppers are botanically a fruit, as are squashes, as are peas, as are cucumbers, as are okra, etc. Why tomatoes get singled out for this "factoid" is beyond me. We eat plenty of things we classify as vegetables that are botanical fruits. While we're on the subject of technical classifications, you might be surprised to learn that bananas (and avocados) are botanically berries, but strawberries and raspberries are not. Crazy, huh?
* subreddit: Forum/community/section of Reddit**
** Reddit: A social media website/message board with about 50 millions users
@"How am I supposed to know GAMESTOP!?.. folk" - Well, it was all over the news a year or so ago (probably the before-times, now that I think of it). Wall Street heavily shorted GAMESTOP because they expected it to go out of business, and that pissed off gamers, so they drove up the price of GAMESTOP stock to the point that the GAMESTOP shorters had to post billions of dollars in margin calls, putting some of them out of business. It was huge news, pointing out that hedge funds and derivative financial instruments and the whole damned financial system is just a fraud at this point. But hey, how are you supposed to know?
Super easy tuesday, almost PRed. Only thing stopping me was the top right which took me too long.
I'm with @Nancy on grid's opening with LOLCATS, LOGS, and GAMESTOP: that video-related TRIO really went against this old person's grain. Maybe it reminded me of the odious "Gamergate." Anyway. I warmed up to the puzzle once I understood the theme, enjoyed guessing GRAMS, and also enjoyed not being able to guess the force (nod to Lucas and the Force) without a bunch of crosses. FIG NEWTON was a nice treat to end on.
@Lewis, not just NEWT but also ANEW x NEWTON.
Do-over: GOOD eye. Help from previous puzzles: PHAT. No idea: RYAN, GAMESTOP, LOGS, PALIN.
I'm a bit disappointed. First, with three constructors with alliterative names, I was hoping for some of the same in the puzzle, but no. Second, a simple 3-letter word duplicated in today's mini, always a downer. And most important, the words in brackets telling us what kind of unit to look for. That pretty much gave it all away.
I saw the clue for 58D and immediately though "comp LIT," something people actually say. So when I saw SCI, I spent many nanos wondering how a comparative SCIence course worked. I almost asked my scientist wife, until I realized we were computing, not comparing. I don't think that's a standard abbreviation, but I could be wrong.
Also, an egg is an ovum, so that clue seems too basic.
OTOH, I really liked the NEWTS/FIG NEWTON crossing. If only this were a 3D puzzle, we could have crossed them both with 'former Speaker.'
By the way, GAMESTOP has been big news in the past year, after somebody on a Reddit subforum pointed out that the number of shares that had been sold short was greater than the number of shares that existed. (Like @Zex, the shortsellers expected the company to go under.) So the subreddit participants started to buy shares, driving their price up approximately one gazillion percent, and possibly bankrupting a hedge fund (not sure of the details on that). Then the SEC ordered halt to trading, producing an outcry that they were siding against the little guy.
How doe the creators and/or the editors of this puzzle know that the GRAMS Banana GRAMS refer to GRAMS mass and not GRAMS force? Even in a crossword puzzle, you just can't make shit up. It's one or the other, but you can't just post-hoc assume it's one rather than the other. I demand corroborating documentation or an admission of error!
Enjoyed the puzzle even if the cluing and I were not always in sync. Had TOMATO right away from the eponymous site but took crosses to get METER. ABIDE came slowly because I read “follow” in the clue to mean trail not obey. OOH BABY not a phrase in my vernacular either so needed crosses for that as well. But clever set of themers and lots of gimmes.
As has been pointed out, GAME STOP was on the front page of the NYT and WSJ for several weeks less than a year ago. Totally fair fill any day. I have not played FROGGER for twenty years but then again I have not seen Bye Bye Birdie for forty.
@Roo (9:36) Knowledge is knowing a TOMATO is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put IT in a fruit salad. Philosophy is wondering if that means a Bloody Mary counts as a smoothie.
How about the Comp Sci? Who says that?
@Frantic
Great minds...
Wordle 234 4/6*
⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩
⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
I didn’t find this a scintillating theme, but I was diverted by the uniting of fruit and units of measurement as an original conceit. And I learned about BANANAGRAMS for the first time. Does BANANA just refer to the container? Never played Frogger, didn’t know GAMESTOP, so was pretty hamstrung to start, but things got better from there.
EXCEPT THAT I’m unreasonably annoyed at REESE Witherspoon for not spelling her name REEcE and thereby causing me a DNF. I wish the RYAN in the puzzle had not been Reynolds, but Phillippe, her ex. With the incorrect C in place, the cross read “Comp cCI” which didn’t mean anything, but I thought “Oh well, technical jargon I don’t know.” ALAS, DNFing on a Tuesday is low.
I was so sure that “Atmospheric condition that can be caused by wildfires” was going to be a portmanteau word with SMOG and either “fire” or “smoke” that I kept trying crazy things like FROG (obviously wrong) or SMOK (obviously silly). Sometimes SMOG is just SMOG.
It took me a minute to fathom LAO as the answer to “Vientiane local.” In my head I was putting an E at the end of “local” and thought the answer should be LAOs till I finally realized the clue was referring to a person born and raised in Vientiane.
Thanks to past puzzles for LOLCATS (and BTW, have you seen Midas, the four-eared cat?), thanks for spelling AMOEBA in the best possible way, and thanks for the “it may be slippery” clue for SLOPE. PHAT may be oh-so-90s, but it’s alive and well in Spelling Bee.
Not that anyone’s interested but last night when I posted my results for “Dordle” I meant “Wordle.” I’ve been known to play Dordle, too, but don’t keep stats. Anyway, today’s Wordle was my second Eagle!
Wordle 234 2/6
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
OK, enough crowing outta me. (GET IT? Eagle? Crow? Right, I'm gone.)
Tuesday puzzles usually mean no BARS, but this one NEWTONed me to suffer at METER. I’m going to GRAMS now to pray for fewer proper nouns tomorrow.
Well, I didn't know LOGS, GAMESTOP, or LOLCATS but I managed to solve them.
Where I went wrong was LAi crossing TiTINOS. Guess I don't know my junk pizza. I vote for making my own.
Enjoyed working out TOMATOMETER - and then saying it 3 times.
@jberg - I would say comp sci is a pretty common and standard abbreviation. I actually know it better than comp lit; my wife has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, and I've heard the term used a lot in her presence (and outside, as well.) That said, it is weird for me to see it written out. My experience with it is almost exclusively spoken.
Obviously the NYT's policy on repetition has been relaxed, as noted here today and in days of yore. But today, we get a double-triple (apologies to the NBA fans).
We have 3 ITs (ICEDIT, GETIT, SNAPTOIT), all on the east side and 3 NEWs (ANEW, NEWTON, NEWT) all in the SE corner. In fact, all the NEWs are interconnected.
I don't keep stats, but this edition seems to be overly reliant upon phrases, containing more than typically seen in a puzzle. What once was a relatively rare treat, relieving solvers from being thoroughly versed in ancient mythology and various esoteric facts of geography, is now the primary feature. The dessert has become the main course.
The NYT puzzle is becoming a slightly more challenging TV Guide or People magazine puzzle.
@Unknown (10:44). Got my CS degree in 1986. Spent 32 years in the industry.
I never heard anyone say "COMP SCI." It might be written out that way occasionally, but it was far more common for me to see it written as "CS" and everyone just used the initials in conversation.
FORREAL: Of or like a heavily wooded area.
NODEAL: Of or like a connecting point.
Alternative clue for NEWTS: Pol Gingrich and others.
Nice to see 1920s-1930s Italian opera impresario Dino ARENTI.
I took two years of university physics sixty years ago. I suppose that the current curriculum for that subject matter has very little overlap to what I studied. So, maybe they measure pressure in BARS these days, but it's new to me. I'm familiar with pounds per square inch (psi). There's a metric equivalent but I don't think it's BAR.
***** Spoiler for YESTERDAY's Wordle *****
Something new for me came up while solving yesterday. After trying ATONE first, I entered DRIED next. I don't usually use double letters early -- I probably should have done FRIED to test RIE in the middle. But, anyway, the program colored the first D yellow and the second D black. The answer was ELDER. That seems to mean that there is exactly one D and that it's not in either the first or fifth position. But so would two yellows or making the first D black and the second D yellow. So the program doesn't have a unique response to every try.
**********************************************
The best thing I can say about the puzzle is that there it has only 14 Terrible Threes.
Hey, don’t forget the backwards ITs in TO’TI’NOS TI’NT and AREN’TI!
Cheeky puzzle, what with Micheal PALIN and NEWTS (he got better) and the lone TIT. LOLCATS and OOH BABY added to the fun vibe. And if you’re going to resort to the POC on IDOS, don’t you have to cross IT with FOR REAL?
Cheeky clue for RIGS by the BRAT TRIO, too.
OWL reminded me of @Nancy’s and @Lewis’ wonderful clue for OWLET from last Thursday’s LA Times puzzle - was it “Newcomer to parliament?” Wait, no, it was “Parliament newcomer?” so you get the capital P. Loved it.
CHI-town. Fun fact, Hernando, MS is also the “Windy City.” The Windy City Grill is no @Zex’s Parenthesis and Monacle, but IT'll do.
IDA B. Wells lived in CHI-town after leaving the south, but she was born in Holly Springs, MS. I’ve been to the Ida B. Wells museum there. @Rex should’ve made her the word of the day. From the NYT obit section entitled “Overlooked”:
“Wells is considered by historians to have been the most famous black woman in the United States during her lifetime, even as she was dogged by prejudice, a disease infecting Americans from coast to coast.
She pioneered reporting techniques that remain central tenets of modern journalism. And as a former slave who stood less than five feet tall, she took on structural racism more than half a century before her strategies were repurposed, often without crediting her, during the 1960s civil rights movement.”
It’s John Williams’ birthday today (explains all the recent Star Wars activity). Here’s one you may not know.
Medium. Clever and unusual, liked it. A fine debut for Jack and Jackson from my grad school alma mater. Are the Flying Tomato Brothers still selling terrific pan pizza somewhere in Chambana?
@mathgent: Meteorologists use millibars to measure barometric air pressure. One bar is 100,000 Pa. It's metric, but not part of SI.
Pete and maybe Jberg,
Who went out of business shorting GME?
Melvin capital took a bath syrely. But they still have around 12 billion in assets.
Plotkin also took a haircut personally. Who know how much. Rumors put it in the niighborhood of 400 million. Which would leave him at least another 400 million to play with.
FWIW Melvin is looking for cas for a new fund where the strategy is going long.
I immediately knew Comp was followed by SCI. Used to hang out at the Stanford radio station, KZSU, and a lot of the folks I knew there were fans of our pioneering Comp SCI department. Some, I suppose, went on to become billionaires in what was later called Silicon Valley.
Me? I used to drink a lot of beer with geology majors headed for a career in the oil business. The Comp SCI folks preferred tea, or if they drank any alcohol, it was fine red wine, some of it produced at Ridge Winery not that far away. Indeed, some of those Comp SCI folks went on to found wineries of their own.
All in all I was not thrilled with the puzzle. Yeah, the themers combined units of measurement with fruits (or are they vegetables?). Big deal. Yesterday's puzzle was a lot more fun, and Monday Easy.
Oops, the Ida B. Wells link failed. It's the Wikipedia article - easy to find and a very worthwhile read.
from the lower brain stem, FROGGER is a vewy, vewy early video game, 80s-ish. you know, the kind in video arcades (do they still exist)? let's go see... "Frogger[a] is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and manufactured by Sega."
the wiki
we have a winna!! so, that's a geezer clue/answer. GAMESTOP, not so much.
@Nancy - Not just you.
But I tend to agree that this puzzle is guilty of BAD RAPPP (random acts of PPP).
Now that it has been mentioned, I do recall the GAMESTOP stock escapade. Wasn’t the preferred platform of the GAMESTOPpers forced to change some policies, leading to accusations that the billionaires didn’t like being outflanked.
Hand up for taking “Comp Sci” in 1983. I’m pretty sure that’s how it appears in course catalogs.
@A - Placebo & Tentacle. Respect the Sacred Brand!
@pmdm - I never much played it. Joust, Tempest, Galaxian, those were my games. Tempest was my personal fave because it reduced the first person shooter to it most basic elements.
**wordle alert**
@mathgent - The first yellow D tells you right letter wrong place. If the second D were also yellow that would mean there are two D’s in the answer, neither is the first or last letter. You are correct that having the first D in black and the last D yellow is essentially the same information. I assume the algorithm rule is something like, “first mark all fully correct letters green, second mark the first instance of all letters that are in the answer yellow, third mark all remaining letters black.” That second rule may or may not require the algorithm to start on the left.
Little known fact: LEMONBARS were invented in ((City in Wisconsin (weight)).
I was left wanting a revealer. Perhaps the parentheticals (pressure,length, etc.) could have been left out of the clues, and a revealer could be something like “Cost-cutting action or a clue to the ends of 17A, 28A, 44A and 59A”, with the answer being “Measure”.
But it is still an enjoyable find at the core of this theme, and I liked the puzzle. Thanks, TRIO.
hey, folks!! has everyone forgotten the many arguments about COMP LIT??? I guess so.
@Barbara S. SMOG is already a portmanteau.
@Nickyboy
You are so right. A graft is not a transplant. That was not "close enough for crosswords" It was wrong.
I found this very difficult for a Tuesday. or a Wednesday or a Thursday. ?so was surprised by the "medium" and the early comments
Here's the thing about CILANTRO. Those who find it distasteful usually claim it tastes like soap. This tells us that CILANTRO haters have eaten soap. So how can you trust their taste opinions?
Thanks @beverlyc for making me think of it --
"toma" rhymes with "roma"
and "ometer" matches itself in thermometer
TOMATOMETER
I'm actually getting a bone GRAFT on my tooth implant in a few weeks. I texted someone that I was getting a bone graph Then I realized later it was GRAFT not Graph, you idiot. I think I had not heard that word in years and now it's been on my mind. The dentist told me they will use bone from a cadaver! But told me not to worry, they clean it and sterilize it and that it is a really great product! I've got a 20 year old implant, but it's starting to lose bone. He said they really can't take it out or my whole mouth will collapse on itself. Isn't getting old wonderful?
Yesterday I was reading something and there is was: ALGAL blooms! Oh yes, I'm going to Biloxi and I saw an article about Biloxi beaches being contaminated with fecal matter. Some of this is due to those good old ALGAL blooms! YIPPEE!!
Wordle 234 3/6
⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨
🟩⬜🟩🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Fruity theme. Measures up to TuesPuz-iness.
Have played lotsa BANANAGRAMS, at our summer getaway lodge, back before the Mega-germ Era. M&A was always a sorta so-so competitor, as usually about 25% of his word choices got challenged & tossed. But to my credit, I almost always finished the rounds earliest.
No-knows: TOMATOMETER. IDA. TOTINOS. Not too forebodin a list to do work-arounds on. Lost tolerable loads of nanoseconds.
Probably NYT is snubbin Sarah PALIN now, cuz she's suin em.
faves by GOFAR: FIGNEWTON/NEWTS. CILANTRO. FORREAL. DANUBE.
staff weeject pick: DOD. Entirely defense-able.
Thanx for gangin up on us en masse, Adam+Jack+Jack son. (The three IT-dudes.) And Go fellow Illini!
Masked & AnonymoUUs
**gruntz**
@amyyanni…since you retired recently (as did I) I would HOPE you never said or used PHAT! I was 35-45 during the 90s…not something a practicing attorney would say or use (even to their friends) at that age and my children were still too young to use the term. But, I am familiar with it so no problem.
I dunno. I enjoyed the puzzle and (as I am wont to do) didn’t notice the multiple ITS.
Hey, wasn’t GameStop the company that turned Wall Street on its heels not that long ago? It showed how a relatively small group of folks (gamers, etc) can manipulate the market. Ok. If it wasn’t GAMESTOP then it was something similar.
On an ending note…I recently made a discovery that Trader Joe’s have THE best “fig bars” (Cookie newton is tm’d)! I know that type of cookie is not everyone’s cuppa but if it is…and you have a TJ’s near you…try them out, you won’t be disappointed.
Does TOMATOMETER rhyme with thermometer?
@Zex, I thought that was @Z's place. Sorry, the puzzle's irreverence was obviously a BRAT influence. ;-) But Parenthesis and Monacle has a nice ring to it. Totally different vibe, to be sure - maybe a coffee shop for mystery writers?
@The Joker:
This tells us that CILANTRO haters have eaten soap.
Not especially odd, at all. For those of a certain age and upbringing, bad words from a juvenile yielded a healthy visit from the bath soap bar. Really bad ones got one the lye soap; not sure one can even buy such in these Snowflake Days.
Today's puzzle was made much, much more enjoyable by @SouthsideJohnny's 8:15 critique on Bball as played today. Still laughing. I used to think Westbrook was an exceptionally talented but problematic player. I no longer see the talent. The slope IS slippery. For me, it's not the presence but rather the preponderance of modern "culture" that's troublesome. Seems the need to be current and "pop" has left little room for the greatness of the past. There's a place for both.
@Nancy, I kind of know what you mean about “culture during our troubled times” but I have to tell you that I recently flipped through some channels and stumbled upon an old Betty Boop animated cartoon. I’m not a spring chicken, but had never seen one as a child. Let me just say “our” culture was pretty cruel then. I KNOW you do not go back to Betty Boop days but I don’t think we can indict the most recent generations for their lingo and viewpoint in any given set of “troubled times.” And…that may not be what you were getting at. If so, please disregard.
Well look at that....
Back in my formative years, whenever my best friend told me he couldn't hang out because it was "family game night with bananagrams," I thought he meant that his crazy grandmother was coming over to play Monopoly with he and his sibs.
Guess you learn something new every day.
My favorite comments this morning.
Anonymous (11:38)
Zex (12:01)
@Southside:
I think it was Russell (anyway, someone of his vintage) who opined that the three point line should be where shots are inside the line and vewy, vewy close to the basket. Reward for height and playmaking. I suspect I'm not the only one who's lost interest in the game, college or Pro.
@Nancy — You cheered me up in (of all places) my doctor’s waiting room this morning. As. I sat there trying to concentrate on my Times editorial section while dreading whatever fresh hell my impending checkup would unleash, I scanned the letters and … there you were 💕! I hope the kiss I mentally blew made it from Atlanta to Manhattan. Thanks for the day brightener!
@Anon 11:49 - The snippet of the comment you disputed is entirely tangential to the main point of my post and, well, completely wrong: "On June 22, 2021, White Square Capital, a London-based hedge fund that was reported to have suffered "double-digit" losses betting against GameStop, announced that it would be shutting down.[107][108]" Wikipedia. I would say that other than that, your comment was excellent, except where was no other portion.
Pete,
You need a lessen in the diffence between a fund and a business. White Square shut dow a particular fund; it did not go out of busibness.
Your post was excellent, except the parts that were wrong. Which is the entire post.
But please, do go on linking to Wki pages to explain financial companies and instrumnets to me.
Just FYI -- I am a cilantro taster (scientifically speaking, if you are able to taste all the elements of cilantro, it tastes BAD. Those who like it are not tasting all the elements.) Having never tasted soap, except occasionally by accident in the shower, I have never said "it tastes like soap," just that it's nasty.
But I appreciated the puzzle's acknowledgement that cilantro is not universally loved!
Otherwise -- ok puzzle. Agree with OFL that the theme fell a little flat.
Happy Tuesday, everyone.
When I got the theme, only after finishing, I thought: "BAR" is not a SI unit, while METER, GRAM, and NEWTON are. Went to xwordinfo.com and Jeff said exactly that (science guy). But I imagine it would be hard to find a fruit+"pascal" term.
In Canada, weather is reported using Celsius for temperature, km/h for wind, and kilopascal for pressure, so we're used to the unit though always with the kilo prefix. (100 kPa = 1 bar =~ typical sea level air pressure.) Right now, it's 103.3 kPa here (corrected for elevation). You're welcome!
Pressure is a funny one because there are so many different ways of measuring it. PSI, bars, atmospheres, inches of mercury, mm of mercury. I've used them all! Anyway,...
[Spelling Bee: yd pg-2, missed these words.
td made pg in 9 minutes; bocamp you were fast today!]
Thanks for noticing, @Joe Bleaux (2:15)! I am thrilled that you did. Do you realize that you are the only person who's mentioned my letter to me at all today -- both in my real life and in my online life? Of course it's a very short letter, but still... So, if I made your day, then please know that you've also made mine.
@Pete…sorry I did not see your post about GameStop before I posted…
@Nancy
Maybe more people would have commented on your letter to The NY Times if you had included your Wordle score. 😂
BTW, Mitch McConnell just denounced the RNC's position on Jan. 6th.
@Joe Bleaux! Good to see you, buddy.
@ amyyanni Given your age and demographic, one would not expect that you used PHAT in your daily vocabulary. But certainly you at least recognized it as a word?
Thought today was fun & crunchy, even if the *theme* was somewhat manufactured. I hear y'all with your complaints, and I think, So what? It was a well-crafted puzzle. (Though I agree that a GRAFT is not a transplant, but that's on the editorial team.)
Final thought before we get to the real important stuff: If you feel a need to comment on this blog more than 3 - 4 times a day, I gently suggest getting out more.
And for the truly important stuff: the rare DNF
Wordle 234 X/6
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
Yeah, that sucked big time.
[Wordle: arrgh it's killing me; I should probably turn hard mode off:
⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Haha, @JC66. And what great news about Mitch! I'll go watch the evening news in a bit. So I'd better go slice up the avocado now.
I solve Wordler in hard mode. My average is 4 and I've never had a 6 or dnf.
@JC66- Kudos for Sen. McConnell for doing the right thing vis a vis 1/06. It was also nice to read today that the minority leader expressed support for Senator Josh Hawley when he condemned AG Merrick Garland for asking for reduced sentences for rioters arrested during the protests of 2020 over the death of George Floyd, specifically referring to the case of Montez Terriel Lee Jr., who was convicted of the arson of a pawn shop that resulted in the death of a man. It’s nice to know there are at least a few honest politicians left !
@Love My Country:
Hawley sure doesn't. He loves insurrection. Fist and all.
sb: um, Jumanji? Or at least Ganjaman.
@Anon 11:29 My (half) apologies, it only put White Square Capital out of the hedge fund business, 3 of the original principles and one secretary are still in business.
big fan of units of measurement, so I liked it. The fruity addition was good, too. Had to look up LOLCATS from a previous puzzle. Had to look it up again today. Still don't understand.
This one gets 0% on the TOMATOMETER. Next!
Quite the poser for a Tuesday if you don't know your trivia PPP. (Referring to myself.)
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Probably a little harder for me than most, because I never heard of the first three themers. I used to love FIGNEWTONs before going wheat-free. (agree there are too many NEWs down there)
The GRAFTS/transplant thing is a stretch, but okay. Just not very Tuesdayish. By and large, though, this puzzle had a fresh energy about it. I'm not all "OOHBABY" about it, but I did enjoy the solve. Interesting to see the follow-up from these three. With REESE reprising a recent DOD title, this one gets a birdie.
A reveal to tie this all together was needed. Something like: Bushel and a peck, or a hint to 17, 28, 44 and 59 across - Fruit units.
NEWTON SLAW
IF our GAMESTOPs IT's a crime,
OOH,BABY IT is FORREAL,
we CAN GOFAR OVERTIME,
but with 'IDOS' there's NODEAL.
--- ESTHER NEWTON
I think 27A merits a BS2.
I'll give you cheezburger.
Frogger is from 1981,and I vaguely remember trying my hand at it.
GameStop was founded in 1984.
Those two aren't exactly youthy.
NO BADRAP
OOH, AREN'TI a BRAT, when I SNAPTOIT?
Once INAPT, ink is PHAT: a NEAT tat on a TIT.
--- REESE LUCAS
Will not always accommodate requests
Okay, so these are fruits and measures. GOT IT. So what else?
What I didn’t get were LOGS and LOLCATS in the NW and LUCAS the billionaire in the NE. Other than that, Monty Python’s allusion to Sarah PALIN was not FAB.
Cheers Burma!
Several commenters seem to indicate that LOGS was too new an answer for older solvers. As clued, it's from Frogger, an arcade game that premiered 41 years ago in 1981.
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