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Walls in a cinema / THU 2-3-22 / Beverage brand whose name means fresh in Hindi / Homophone of a synonym for obey / 1942 romance movie heroine / IV device found in many homes nowadays / Beginning of an ordered sequence / Big bygone bird
Thursday, February 3, 2022
Constructor: Adam Wagner
Relative difficulty: Medium (I picked up the gimmick pretty quickly; your mileage may vary)
Theme answers:
- 16A: Where a [steeping] bag may be found (TEA CUP)
- 18A: Warm [coats] (DOWN JACKETS)
- 20A: Shakespearean [foot] (IAMB)
- 33A: [Watts] in a cinema (NAOMI)
- 39A: Key [time] (MOMENT OF TRUTH)
- 64A: Agcy. making [tax] laws (IRS)
- 65A: One who makes [bait], perhaps (ANGLER)
- 2D: One for whom [Tibet] is an issue (DALAI LAMA)
- 4D: [Hurt], say (SAD)
- 27D: [TV] device found in many homes nowadays (ROKU)
- 38D: [Goat] keepers' kin (SHEPHERDS)
- 63D: [Squatted], say (SAT)
Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao, [mijaꜜzaki hajao]; born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the history of animation. [...] Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. He directed numerous films with Ghibli, including Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), and Porco Rosso (1992). The films were met with critical and commercial success in Japan. Miyazaki's film Princess Mononoke was the first animated film ever to win the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year, and briefly became the highest-grossing film in Japan following its release in 1997; its distribution to the Western world greatly increased Ghibli's popularity and influence outside Japan. His 2001 film Spirited Away became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, and is frequently ranked among the greatest films of the 2000s. Miyazaki's later films—Howl's Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008), and The Wind Rises (2013)—also enjoyed critical and commercial success. Following the release of The Wind Rises, Miyazaki announced his retirement from feature films, though he returned to work on the upcoming feature film How Do You Live? in 2016. (wikipedia)
• • •
When did you have your initial "Aha!" moment with this puzzle? Mine came right here:
 |
| [33A: Walls in a cinema] |
First thought: "That's not a thing; there is no word for 'walls in a cinema'." Then: "Ooh, is there an actress named 'Walls'!?" Then: "Hmmm ... no. There's an actress named 'Watts," and *her* name starts with 'N', but ... Ohhhhhhhhhhhh." And that was that. You can see that by the time I made it to NAOMI, I had already been baffled by the DALAI LAMA clue and the IAMB clue. After discovering the gimmick, the ride to the end of the line was very pleasant (except for that bumpy journey through the ZEROTH Pass). I balked at [Nonunion?] for UNWED until I realized "oh, 'nonunion' is an adjective!" (I'd been reading it as a noun). The clue on HE'D is so bizarre, having literally nothing to do with the contraction HE'D, that it gave me more trouble than almost anything else in the grid. Even after the last letter I had a brief moment of "hed ... what is hed? Oh HEEEEE'D. ugh." My wife told me yesterday that when she was little it took her a while to realize that the characters KANGA and ROO together spelled the word "kangaroo." She lived so completely in that world that she never thought about the 'meanings' of their names. Anyway, when she told her class this, she said there was at least one student who was like, "wait ... what? WHAT!?" Funny the things your brain just doesn't bother noticing (49D: Offspring of Kanga = ROO). Anyway, congrats to this theme concept and especially to the theme clues, which managed to sound completely plausible in both the "l" and "t" versions. I mean, [Key lime] (!!) => [Key time] => MOMENT OF TRUTH. That's perfect. I think I'm dealing with pies, but then comes ... The MOMENT OF TRUTH! Dum dum DUM! Fantastic.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. the "1942 romance movie" in the ILSA clue [1942 romance movie heroine] is "Casablanca." I assume most of you know that. But some younger solvers ... maybe not? It's hard to know what people know and what they don't know. Older people? Kids these days? Middle-age Gen-X guys? What do they know? Do they know things? Let's find out!
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158 comments:
This was one of those puzzles that I finished without getting the theme. If Rex hadn't explained it, I'd still be wondering why Google tells me that Naomi Walls is an insurance broker.
A marvel of construction - a dozen themers and not a “T” or “L” in all the clues! - and a lot of fun to solve. Win/Win.
How did I live this many years without ever hearing or reading the word ZEROTH? I do, however, drink TAZO tea (does that make me a TEaTOTALER?).
And regarding 60A - I was planning to watch the World Origami Championships on tv, but it was only available on Paper View.
My solve was much like @Rex describes. Got the theme at NAOMI Watts. The naticks were a big problem but didn't diminish the delight of this puzzle. My time was about 4 times Rex's. So I had 4 times the pleasure. Har!
Totally agree on ZEROTH. Awful. I have used the word, humorously, but in my mind I spell it ZEROETH. Btw, there is a symphony by Anton Bruckner subtitled "Die Nullte", which means the zeroeth. But what really bugged me was the clue for ET ALIA. It means "and others" and is not the same as "et cetera".
61 and I knew the Dalai Lama, Ilsa, and Naomi Watts but I've never heard of Jason Derulo. Loved the puzzle
"When did you have your initial "Aha!" moment with this puzzle?" After I had finished slogging through it and gotten the happy music without understanding a single one of the theme clues, which might as well have been of the "18A: -" ilk. I still hadn't recognized all of the themers until I read @Rex's writeup. Medium-Challenging for me.
Okay. I'm a bit slow on the uptake (pick up your chin), so I didn't figure this out until NAOMI (Watts). Suddenly, the DALAI LAMA worrying about libel, wearing "warm coals" as DOWN JACKETS, and IAMB as "Shakespearean fool" made sense.
Until then, my mind was doing all kinds of mental parkour trying to logicize a libelous LAMA, picture parka pockets packed with piping pebbles, and IAMB the fool. (Homophony intended, natch)
And then I thought "this is the theme?? Pffft! I'd only be impressed if there were no other
'L's in...the...cl...oh, hey! That's a neat trick."
But neat trick or not, the enjoyment was not so much. Especially some of the fill - yes, I'm just gonna say it-ZEROTH was a WTF because as surprising as it may seem I'm not a physicist. Nor do I play one on TV.
Also the clue and answer for 56A where "whoop-de-do" = HOOHA. Um, I've used HOOHA at times, but it has nothing to do with "whoop-de-do(n't)". Perhaps whoopie, but it ends there. I gotta get outta this thought cycle before I embarrass myself. Oops. Too late.
Cluing mostly not on my wavelength, but that happens through no fault of anyone.
Have no idea who this DERULO character is either. TAZO was only very, very vaguely familiar and that "Z" was the last letter of that word to fall. Three guesses why. Grr.
Not terribly fun for me, but I can imagine others liking this a lot.
Bully for them. 😉
🧠🧠.75
🎉🎉.5
Oh, right. "Steeping bag" was also part of the theme. Compared to some of the others, though, I had little problem imaging a tea bag all nestled and snug and, apparently, asleep in its cup. Don't judge me.
Loved, loved, loved the theme!. It took me forever to see it, though. I got past the revealer and answered ANGLER as the only word that would fit, and wondered how an ANGLER would make bail. The revealer then filled itself out, but did not trigger anything. I was headed north again and had NAO with a probable M from MOA, and I was still thinking (So there is a NAOMI Walls?) It finally hit me then, and so much of the puzzle began to make sense.
!00% agree with Rex about the HAYAO/ZEROTH crossing. The DERULO/SECO crossing also gave me pause. Flirted with an A there. I lost precious time figuring those out as I also had a typo elsewhere that was preventing the happy music.
I never saw the HE'D answer (got in on the crosses), so I had to go back and look at it after reading the review. That was a good clue.
I would hate to have to choose a favorite clue today, as there were so many excellent ones. It would have to be a theme-related one, and probably the Goal keepers kin.
Ugh. Solved the entire puzzle in decent time without ever coming close to figuring out the trick. Very unsettling experience.
I solved the puzzle without ever figuring out the theme ... I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed?
No fun at all. Too many obscure names. Had everything from 46 across so had the revealer and just couldn’t convert it. There is normally an order to themers, like only across and symmetrically placed. They were randomly placed here with no indication they were themers. This puzzle was a mess.
I figured out the gimmick quickly, and upon finishing I said to myself "check with Rex, because WHAT THE HELL IS 'ZEROTH' SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!"
I knew you would mention it. Thanks.
In programming, the first element in an array is the zeroth element. People who use git would know this
In programming, the first element in an array is the zeroth element. People who use git would know this
Ha! I must have been already half asleep when I solved this last night. I got the theme to get "down jackets" and "moment of truth" but I think I missed most of the themed clues. "I didn't know the Dalai Lama had a libel problem." "I guess goalkeepers kind of shepherd balls away from the goal?" Oh, well.
So the real genius here, as far as I’m concerned, is that the constructor made sure there were NO Ls or Ts in the non-theme clues so as not to sully the theme, and yet none of those non-theme clues stands out as being awkward or weird.
That gave me an extra little “Aha!” after finishing the solve. Bravo!
Couple of nervous crosses at DERULO/SECO (I guessed that the vowel in SECO would have to agree with VINO) and HAYAO/ZEROTH. I was pretty sure on ZEROTH, but HAYAO seemed impossible.
I got the theme at NAOMI, although by that time I had already filled in DALAI LAMA and IAMB and figured they would make sense to me later.
Loved this one. Back-to-back excellent puzzles.
Never heard of Jason DERULO (despite the fact that he's apparently "very famous"). And SECa is "dry" in Portugese, so definitely a Natick for me. Blah.
Derulo famous? Maybe to his mom.
My favourite thing about this puzzle is that every L in a clue transforms into a t - the theme clues are the only clues containing the letter L, and even when there's multiple Ls they all switch to Ts. The rest of the clues sometimes feel a little forced to make it work (see "moviemaker" instead of the more standard "filmmaker", for instance) but by and large it's a well-clued grid even with that restriction.
My aha came early, with LIBEL/TIBET, and it was huge, a major “Hah!”. That early theme-crack didn’t spoil the rest of the puzzle, however, as there were enough not-knows to arrest my brain. So, while I wasn’t stumped for long, my spirits never slumped.
A lovely piece of constructing in making the clues sound natural and in making the long theme answers symmetrical. I loved [Paper view?] for OPED, the pay-per-view soundalike.
A post-solve look found some lovely treasures: The cross of SLY and ANGLER, the dog crossing of OTTO and SPOT, the palindrome pals NAN and OTTO, and a PuzzPair© pair – AT FIRST and ZEROTH, and A-ONE and the backward TOPS.
Fun from the starting gun. Adam Wagner, this was AWsome. Thank you so much for making it!
Glad I'm not alone in finishing the thing without getting the trick. I even thought for a minute that the clue for IAMB was a typo. In retrospect, this clue seemed the most obvious to provide an entry to figuring out the theme. Never made the connection, even with all the confusing clues/answers elsewhere.
@Donkos: For modern languages, it's certainly true that array indices start at 0, but there are older languages (still used) that start at 1.
Asimov’s books prominently feature he zeroth law of robotics. If crosswords can include trivia from Harry Potter, Isaac Asimov is fair game too, in my opinion.
I don’t pay a lot of attention to the themes, especially when they are this tricky, so this puzzle just looked like a collection of nonsense to me (although I could tell that there was something fishy going on). Got to the revealer way too late - would have been much smoother sailing if I had put more effort into discerning the theme.
Rex gave his made-up-word of the day to ZEROTH, which seems like a pretty mild infraction. I would give mine to HED, SECO, DERULO, MENA, HAYAO . . .
I'm an old, un-hip fart and even I've (vaguely) heard of Jason DERULO, though I spelled it DIRULO at first and certainly could not name any of his songs. If I've heard of a pop singer, he's famous.
If you know who R. Daneel Olivaw is you have no problem with ZEROTH.
I was 75% done before it clicked in. I haven’t decided if I like it or not, yet. On the one hand it is clever and apparently original (always a little fearful of a constructor showing up and saying they did this theme 12 years ago) and forces true puzzlement throughout the solve (I had most of the themers written in with no clue why they worked), so as a puzzle it works. But is it “wordplay?” No. Is it even actually “letter play?” Not really. It is “glyph play.” What next? A bunch or rn words that are really m words? I guess this was fine as a one time thing, buts let’s never do it again.
I got the O in DERULO from the O in “vino” in the crossing clue. Hand up for being stuck in the old man silo (does Rex use that word today if it wasn’t in yesterday’s puzzle?) and having no clue on this particular Jason. Just checked the view count on the first video that showed up. 300 million views. Yep. Pretty famous. I strongly suspect he doesn’t care that I’ve never heard of him. From a general construction perspective, that’s a terrible cross. But DERULO is definitely famous enough to be crossworthy.
HAYAO! I know the guy and it still took every crossing for the vowels. If the people familiar with the person don’t really know his first name maybe the first name shouldn’t be in puzzles?
**wordle alert**
Followed yesterday’s eagle with a bogie today. And kind of disappointing, too, as I had a chance for a birdie.
Wordle 229 5/6*
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
As for yesterday, I started with “roast” with -o-st being correct. I immediately thought of “moist” because Rex hates the word “moist,” a fact I find terribly amusing. So I eagled because of a lucky first guess and a Rexian idiosyncrasy. Thanks Rex.
@ScottK - 👋🏽👋🏽👋🏽
Was at sea until I got to the revealer. Then everything clicked into place.
Been solving for almost as long as Rex has been blogging. This was the cleverest one ever, to my mind. It's coincidental, but that it appeared today feels like a happy-birthday treat .
Exactly what OFL said about that TAZO mess. I solve on paper so running the alphabet looking for the happy music was not an option. Eventually, I just said the hell with it, and it's a DNF, but one I'm blaming on the constructor and not myself, so there.
I think of "woodworking" as requiring something a little more subtle than an ADZ, but I'll let it go per Joaquin's Dictum.
Caught on at DOWNJACKETS, some help from the Acrostics there, as the letters that I had suggested those words. Also see a lot of DOWNJACKETS around here this time of year.
And there's ROO. Hey ROO, as they almost say in To Kill A Mockingbird.
Nice concept and well executed. Thanks for the fun, AW All's Well that ended well. More like this would be fine with me.
Thx Jason, for the challenge. Sorry to say, I wasn't up to it.
Tough.
Double dnf at the cross of ETALIA / TAZO & DERULO / SECO.
Good mental exercise, but just didn't get the job done.
At least I caught on to the 'L' to 'T' trick about halfway thru, but that was no help for my errors.
Still, as always, enjoyed the trip, and appreciated the workout! :)
@Trey / @RooMonster / 👍 for 0 yd
___
yd pg: 12:53 / Wordle: 3
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Wordle 229 3/6
🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛
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Rolled in a nice birdie today. Dropped it center back of the cup. One-under after one in round two.
@albatross shell late last night - 34 minutes of smart discussion on the football story.
My eagles are spread out. I have three total. No aces. I do have the same number of birdies as pars (9), but I assume that will not always be so. Six bogies and two double bogies, so five under par after 29 plays.
A second great Thursday, with aha after aha. I must forgive the run of dull Thursdays. It was quite a challenge.
Zeoth, btw, isn't a technical term as far as I know. It's a back formation used humorously to mean "the one before the first" or "where do start" after figuring out the rule for "next".
Got the happy music but didn’t know why. I hadn’t a clue about the theme until I came here.
Still can’t believe the ZEROTH is a word. Guess I’ll have to look it up.
Worst.Puzzle.Ever. Zeroth? Hayao? Crap. Et alia is not and so on.
When I realized that to complete _ER_TH, I needed to know a brand name for something I don’t drink and the first name of a Japanese filmmaker whose movies I’ve never seen, I conceded that this puzzle is not for me.
OMG. Yes, Rex! How could I not mention "the TAZO to ZEROTH to HAYAO pipeline"?? That section was a waking nightmare for me.
HE'D went in immediately, but I'm not sure if it was clever or cheap. My money's on the latter because I'm rarely the former.
Hmm. Didn't even notice there were no "Ts" in the clues either. Even more impressive.
@Joaquin 622am Paper View is a staple at our house. 😉
Welcome home, @Lewis! Wow! You and @Nancy created a masterpiece IMHO. Fun theme and beautiful fill that required some real effort. You two together are a force of nature - when will we see more??!!
Zeroth and Ranking
"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to use zeroth, but the word, which was coined by physicists 120 years ago, does often show up in scientific contexts. (It comes from zero, which is itself from Arabic ṣifr.) These days zeroth is frequently used to suggest a level of importance that is even higher than first. Renowned Soviet physicist Lev Landau used zeroth this way when he classified all the famous physicists according to the relative value of their contributions to science. He put Niels Bohr and Max Planck, for example, right up there in the first class, and lesser-rated physicists in the second through fifth classes. Where did he think Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton belonged? They were unmatched, he felt, so they went in his zeroth class." (M-W)
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td pg: 8:05 / Wordle 229 4/6
🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Peace ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
First time I've ever wanted to punch the "Congratulations" pop-up. I never-ever understood what was happening to me. Diabolical.
DOWN JACKETS has the same number of letters as "dying embers", which is either a really good trick or a really funny accident.
There's also a zeroth law of thermodynamics, which is originally where Asimov borrowed from. Niche, but fair, IMO.
Whenever I say, at work, "This is like what happened in '2001'. You know - - the movie 2001? 2001 A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick?" Blank stares....
This was ridiculous…hated it…
Normally I like to see Thursday trickery in the grid - not as a misdirect in the clues. That said - this was enjoyable enough and made me think. No idea on HAYAO - but knew ZEROTH because it is a thing - maybe not in comic book circles but definitely in the math and CS world. Like the entire SE corner. General fill was clean - but pedestrian.
Pleasant Thursday solve.
@PabloInNH To properly carve the seat for a Windsor chair you need, in order, an ADZ, a scorp and a travisher and several hours of hard work. Or a CNC milling machine where you just spend 3 minutes fastening the wood to the moveable table, then you sit and watch it being carved, or go out for a cup of coffee. You still have to sand both, but if you used the ADZ, you'll more likely use a scraper than sandpaper.
I enjoyed this theme and caught on to it pretty quickly—IAMB was what clued me in, allowing me to see that "fool" in the clue was actually "foot." But I got stuck at the end because of a few Naticky spots that took me a while to work out. I knew ILSA from Casablanca, but I couldn't remember if it was spelled with an E or an A. MENA wasn't much help, though it did seem more sensible than MENE. Similar problems with HAYAO. I had a vague idea of Miyazaki's first name, but I wasn't sure about that second vowel, and the extinct bird wasn't any help. Finally, ZEROTH gave me issues because a) it's not an everyday word, as Rex points out and b) it's crossing a totally made up word, more of a sound really. I initially had ZEROTO as in "Zero to ten," but after thinking about it for a minute, ZEROTH came into view and made sense with the word "ordered" in the clue (-th suffixes make many cardinal numbers ordinals in English). Once that was clear, the puzzle was solved.
Ha, me too!
Question for Z:
If Rex doesn't read the comments, what does he mean when he says let's find out regarding what digfferent demographic groups know?
FH
Z: A better metric of Wordle performance, IMHO, is your average score. Multiply the number of times you got what you call par by 4, your 'birdies' by 3, 'bogies' by 5 etc. Then divide the total by the number of times you've played. For your data this comes out to 4.03 if my arithmetic is correct
The crossword. Enjoyed it but more-or-less Naticked where everyone else was. The L to T switch was cute once-realized but I had happily written in DOWN JACKETS from the crosses without knowing why until after I'd finished....
solved it, but the theme eluded me, probably because i was not doing the puzzle in lower case letters. but who does that?
Hey All !
OK, what a center clusterf**k as Rex noted. ZEROTH??? Non-word, and no amounts of mathematical terminology is going to convince me it's real. Also, HAYAO? Get the HAYAO outta here with that! Had to Goog for that one, as plum stuck. Did know ROKU, NAOMI (those two after figuring out theme) and TAZO, but hoo boy, if you didn't know those, your completion is impossible.
Did like the theme, but even after getting the Revealer, still hadn't an idea of what in tarhooties was happening. Can't remember where I figured it out, but it was a genuine "Aha!" moment. "You have to change the L's to T's in the clues for the answers to make sense!" "HOOHA, ROO!" (OK, maybe I didn't say that last part.) Heck, even CROSS YOUR TS was a toughie.
DERULO could be spelled 964 different ways, with interchangeable vowels if you don't know the name.
Wanted ANkLEt for ANGLEF first, but clue tense wasn't matching. Awl-ADZ, SATurn-SATYRS (shot in the dark there), lOOkSINON-ZOOMSINON, LORNA in, but took out to find out it was correct. (Always want Norma first for some reason.)
In the OO news, ZOO, MOO, HOO, and of course, ROO! ITLL DO. Har.
yd -2, should'ves 2 (easy four letter words, which had me spewing four letter words!)
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Fooled me completely. Amazingly creative trickery. Finished without a clue as to the theme.
...another 60+ person who recognizes Jason Derulo. He was in Cats, the movie and has a popular Instagram account.
Well I had to come here to find out what a great puzzle this was, so clearly this one went over my head. It all makes sense now, and it was solveable, sort of, without getting what was going on. Just not the joyfest it might've been if I'd caught on. Like others have mentioned, I just kind of wondered what had happened that made libel such an issue for the DALAILAMA. Thought it was a bit of stretch establishing that goal keepers and shepherds were related. When I'm not fly fishing I'm flipping the bail on my spinning reel in order to cast, so ANGLER was OK, sort of. I figured something was going on with that teabag asleep in the TEACUP, but just couldn't nail it. LOL, basically came here figuring I'd learn how to get from Key Lime to MOMENTOFTRUTH, that's how lost I was. And now I know, so there's that.
I got the trick with TEACUP, but what a beasly puzzle!
Off to find the LA Times.
Oh, did I ever suffer! Until I got all the way down to the revealer, I thought I was losing my everloving mind. IAMB for "Shakespeare's fool" was driving me crazy. DALAI LAMA for "One for whom libel is a major issue" had me tearing out my hair. And these were the answers that I actually filled in. What about all those answers that I couldn't fill in?
When you put a really fiendish trick in the clue and not in the answer, I think it's even more fiendish. That conceit has gotten me more than once. This is an absolutely brilliant puzzle -- so brilliant that I won't even complain about all the proper name trivia. That, and not the masterful trick, was what kept me from finishing. Three letters that I didn't fill in: the TA?O/?ER?TH/HAYA? cross and the DERUL?/SEC? cross.
But those are the three letters that I don't care a fig about and there's no $100,00 first prize for finishing this thing. As far as I'm concerned, this was a "solve!!!" for me. And a very, very challenging one.
@Pete-I guess my experience with ADZES is the long-handled kind that are used on logs for squaring them. I'll take your word for it that they can be used for finer work.
I do know what a scorp is, and it's nice to see that word again.
Medium for me, and lots of fun. Looking back, I liked that the first theme clue I'd encountered was "Shakespearean fool," because the puzzle did such a great job at fooling me. Since my daughter started teaching early modern English drama twenty years ago, I really have brushed up on my Shakespeare, and I was quite chagrined that I couldn't come up with a name. Then, I squinted hard to make sure that "Walls of Hollywood" wasn't really "Watts," shrugged, and continued on my clueless way. Eventually, the MB of IAMB switched on the light bulb. I had one MOMENT of triumph in getting "Key lime" from the initial M, but this was a trick that kept on giving: IV and that sleeping bag eluded me until very late. I thought "libel" was genius. A delightful brain-twister.
Do-overs: Apriori, ETcetc. "Is this really right?" HED, ZEROTH. No idea: DERULO, HAYAO.
Same. No idea how I finished it since I didn't even realize that Naomi is Watts not Walls. If it weren't for this blog I would still just be fuming over the inexplicable fill.
Caught the theme early on after much confusion over the DALAI LAMA having libel issues. Such a very clever theme so cleverly presented. And very satisfying after never ever having caught Sunday's devilish theme. Still angry about that.
However, turned out I DNF'd without realizing it. I read the clue for 31D and already had ZEROT (I drink Tazo tea every day and never realized the provenance of the word) and happily put the letter "o" at the end. ZEROTo--y'know, like 0 to 60. That's the beginning of a sequence, I reasoned reasonably. This also meant I had OOOHA for 56A and I thought OOOOOH Rex was going to be all over that with suitable disdain and ire about another variation on OOH or OHH. And a particularly bad variation. I will note, as Frantic did, that these days, HOOHA has taken on an entirely new meaning.
Loved the puzzle.
HOOHAH.....My sane guesses involved my partner doing the fandango tango with me.
Do I stare at warm coa whatever...I read it as coaTs from the git go. I did a Flash Gordon and said "SO WHAT?" Is that it? Big finger licken deal...I want more for my money...
Because I tend to run my highbrowism with bats in the belfry, I didn't even see the clever, CLEVER CLEVERNESS of this puzzle..... until the ding dong front doorbell rang high and loud...
HOO HA, Adam....you fancied my tickle. I saw what you did with NAOMI. I had to use a magnifying glass to make sure those were really L's with lowercase T's....The devil's in the details and this lady proudly wears Prada.
I got to the reveal: CROSS YOUR TS and I said " I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT." I actually squeaked with delight... just like a fat little pig wallowing in some home-made mud.
I had one little frazzle.....I had to ask my bestie for help. Is it TANG? no.....Phone ringing: It's TAZO you nincompoop. OKAY then, can you please tell me if ZEROTH is a real word? I'll have to go look in my OED tome.
I TRULY enjoyed this puzzle. I did...yesidid.
Now to continue my further enjoyment and give @Nancy and @Lewis the college try....
@9:14 gets it right.
as to ZEROTH, all real programming languages count things at 0. it's one half of a bit's possible values, and it counts. otherwise, not used anywhere else in the STEM world. very Natick.
at least, not a rebus nonsense. well... may it was.
I think I got the theme with SHEPHERDS. I had ROKU already (we have one), and decided not to worry about what IV meant -- you know, tech. Then I started to ponder about goalies and shepherds -- maybe the folks with the brooms in curling are called that?--when it suddenly dawned on me that they were keeping goats. Aha! I think I may have had DOWN JACKETS from the crosses, but didn't understand it at first. As for IAMB -- I had IA, saw Shakespeare in the clue, and that was enough for me: IAgo! And like @Frantic, I thought bags could be sleeping in a TEA CUP after the tea was gone. (I'm SMUG about using loose tea, so I'm not up on modern tea-bag lingo.)
Many ANGLERs tie their own flies, but those are lures, not bait. The latter has to be dug up (worms) or netted (minnows and other baitfish). But OK, it's a crossword, close enough.
I love Miyazaki, but I can't even remember his surname (call him Miyakazi about 1 time in 3), let alone his first. Fortunately, the terminal O is pretty inferrable, and checkers didn't quite fit at 34D. I've seen TAZO in stores, but didn't realize it was a brand of tea--thought it was some kind of herbal product. Fortunately, I'd heard of ZEROTH, though I'd have spelt it with another E, so that turned out OK.
I know 4G, but what's LTE? Once I had the crosses the letters looked familiar, but I have no idea what they may stand for. Meanwhile, we're all waiting for 5G, but apparently it makes planes crash. The big phone companies are saying that it's not their problem, the aviation industry needs to update its tech. I love these inter-capitalist conflicts.
Gotta run, I'm off to get my new tooth fitted.
Thought angler had something to do with flipping the bail on a reel
Absolutely loved this. Took me a long time to get the theme, despite side-eying ANGLERS and SAT as oddly clued. It took IRS for me to figure things out, and things fell quickly from there.
ZEROTH is junk of the lowest order, but everything else...well, I have much higher praise than ITLLDO. As Rex noted, the "uncrossed" clues are all plausible -- very well done. And no T's (or superfluous l's or I's) in any clue -- wow! That is some high-quality craft right there.
More importantly, I got a feeling of playfulness from this one, which is rare these days in the NYT (crosswords and in general).
The only time I will ever comment on Wordle, but...first-ever DNF today. Disappointing, but I was due for a comeuppance after three consecutive eagles (all dumb luck, of course) on Monday through Wednesday. I feel like someone on the ultimate back-nine rollercoaster at Augusta -- one-putt eagle on 13, dunk-from-the-fairway eagle on 14, one-putt eagle on 15, then four balls in the pond at 16.
Medium-tough. HAYAO was a WOE and add me to the “ZEROTH just looked weird contingent”, so I had a fair amount of trepidation/hesitation in that area. I already had several of the theme answers when I finally hit the reveal so it was nice when they all actually made sense. Clever and fun, liked it a bunch and Jeff at Xwordinfo gave it POW.
To myself at 9:47am “beastly”. @Nancy and Lewis’ puzzle in the LA Times offers great fun and a snappy reveal. It’s a welcome relief from the torture today.
@pabloinnh - No, it's the real thing. Watch the master at work. You can start with a scorp if you a) have patience, and b) are working in softer wood, and c) have enough sense to not do what he does.
I figured that is there is a sixTH,sevenTH, eighTH,etc. then the starting zero might also have a TH. Got the theme early but it did not help much--great fun puzzle, IMO. 3/6 for Wordle.
Some us solved it without figuring out the gimmick. In other words, they got it with twelve unclued entries. Wow!
Happy to be reminded of SPOT in the Dick and Jane books. I don't suppose that they use them any more.
I've never seen ZEROTH in all the mathematics I've read. Someone said that it is a term in programming.
Great theme, beautifully carried out. The rest was a little clunky.
*** Wordle Alert ***
Lucked out today. An eagle. Big thrill seeing all those green squares on my second guess.
I'm going to do the Nancy-Lewis creation now.
I'm a very literal solver so this puzzle was a disaster for me. This is my third dnf of the year and apparently to celebrate I made it a triple dnf. SECA/SECO was my last entry and the only one I knew might be wrong. SECO is one of those sleeper bits of crosswordese. When fairly crossed it flys under the radar for years until it's crossed with an unknown and then I find myself floundering in whack a vowel land.
What made this a triple dnf day was having OOOPA at 56A. To me it was that sound the waiters in Greek restaurants make when they light up that dish of whatever. Like @Frantic Sloth HOOHA does not mean "Whoop-de-do" to me.
As for SHEPPERD, well that's a shining example of my bad spelling. The only reason I can get through these puzzles is because they are crossed and they tend to self correct my misspellings. When they don't the results aren't pretty.
ZEROTO seemed like a perfectly
logical answer. ZEROTH just looks wrong and makes no sense to me. What do you get for some one on the ZEROTH anniversary? Absolutely nothing of course.
I did get the theme after filling in the revealer. By then I was nearly done and it was of no help with any of the dnfs.
Sun-Wed all -0 maybe what I like so much about the SB is its literalness
Between the NYT and the LAT today, we have winners all-around. Congrats to Adam Wagner and our own @Lewis and @Nancy. Two great puzzles!
2D and 27D completely negated this puzzle's theme (since they employed capital Ts, which aren't crossed). I got the gimmick from the Naomi Walls (Watts) clue, but not knowing how many gimmick answers there were meant it was sheer guesswork all the way and those two answers don't correlate with the rest of the puzzle. If not for those two constructor errors, this would've been a fantastic puzzle.
Aaand... I was today's years old when I realized the Kanga/ROO thing. Sigh. (In my defense I originally read Winnie the Pooh in a different language, which is what I grew up speaking, in which the translation was incredible, but skipped this particular pun. So I guess I never connected the dots when I read it later in English.)
@jberg:
I know 4G, but what's LTE?
it was/is the next performance step up from vanilla 4G. stands for Long Term Evolution. it's been around for some years, and is, again I think, the only version of 4G in use. whether it runs noticeably better than original 4G, I've no idea. mostly not even mentioned in ads or specs any longer. and, unless your in some stadium (in a Big City) watching the game on your phone, you'll never see a 5G signal that's noticeably better than LTE. Verizon went all in on high power 5G and got wiped out by the others who exploited a loophole in the definition of '5G' which allows them to call LTE with a smidgen more bandwidth '5G'.
"what "proofreader" these days is working on handwritten text!?!?!"
I'm a proofreader, and I just finished doing something just like that. Created a book from 15 years of letters, mostly handwritten, from a prisoner to his pen pal on the outside. In published form, most ended up transcribed, but some were reproduced in their original handwritten form. It was very interesting, and I felt like I got to know the guy. He was very intelligent and probably should not have been stuck in a prison. It's a pretty good statement on sentencing reform, among lots of other themes.
This had me jumping all over. I had the revealer and thought maybe it meant the answers turned at the Ts or something. Finally I saw what was going on at MOMENT OF TRUTH ( funny!) and then had the pleasure of going back to fill in DALAILAMA, IAMB, TEACUP, DOWNJACKETS, IRS, and SHEPHERDS. Some of the shorter fill I already had, so never went back to find the clever clue. I appreciated Rex’s list. I thought the ROKU could have been IV for internet video.
I finished with a blind guess AZ for TAZO and then at the O in ZEROTH, and last the L in DERULO. I got lucky for all of them.
Pretty much everything @Frantic said in her first post EXCEPT I never figured out how “cross your Ts” figured in so I came to see what Rex said. Did I finish? Technically yes but I really don’t feel like I did. Luckily the non-themers were interesting enough to keep me going.
Okay I got the theme but I don’t really get the theme. The revealer says cross your Ts, yet what you’re really doing here is crossing your Ls. I don’t know exactly why but it was a little bit of a clunk. And I agree with someone else who said the clue for ET ALIA is iffy. While I can see how the interpretation of “and so on” could be applied, etcetera seems more apropos.
Overall a good puzzle though and really intriguing that there is not a single L in any of the clues beyond the themers. That took some doing but was probably fun for the constructor.
@Nancy and @Lewis: I’ve started on your LAT creation, about halfway. So far I’m seeing the usual polished results of your combined deft skills. You’re making me work for it, but on Thursday that’s a good thing.
Would have loved this one ….IF I had understood the theme gimmick sooner. Light 💡 went on at LIBEL/TIBET clue at the end of solve. (That NW corner was empty til the end).
When there is an odd discrepancy between clue and answer, I arm conditioned to look for letter changes in the answers - NOT the clues 🕵️♀️. Don’t think that will happen again. Fool me once… 😜. Or twice ….😜 or…. 😂
Anyway, good one!
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EVERY time I have gotten an eagle in Wordle (my fourth today) I have used my original word when I first got it in two OR an anagram of that word. Today I used the anagram and the first reveal narrowed my placement of “right letter/wrong place” plus what was next to that letter. Yes, luck, luck, luck and yesterday I parred (using a different word) and my “lucky” word would NOT have helped me. I don’t know how long I’ll find this game compelling but I do think it helps for me to do this to exercise the logic brain cells.
Wordle 229 2/6
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lhis lheme was quile lough lo unlangle, bul I evenlually gol il and had a lerrific lime.
Thanks to another recent Thursday puzzle, it finally occurred to me to look for the trickery in the clues instead of the grid. Kudos to Adam Wagner for creating this classic puzzle. Especially loved the clues for TEACUP and IAMB. The puzzle was so good I’m not even going to mention that ridiculously awful HAYAO ZEROTH cross.
The revealer reminded me of a trip long ago to the upland steppes of Mongolia where we hung out with SHEPHERDS by day and slept in CROSS YOURTS at night.
Happy Birthday, Casablanca. You’re now 80. And you will always have Paris!
Well..... Adam,@Nancy and @Lewis are all invited to my bar. It's happy hour and the drinks are on the house.
Should we applaud the entry of Jimmy Eat World? I've never met him before, but he's welcome to open a tab any time.....
good job, amigo/as....
Love the theme!!
ROKU aha! never had one but heard of, the "T" was what actually gave it to me.
Neat. Tazo, passed their gardens on the way to Darjeeling, appropriately. Dalai Lama, India as well.
Miyazaki, trippy, great, beautiful.
in all so many good memories from a few uncrossed "t's"
Zeroth- would be happy to forget that one, but probably wont be able to.
OMG Kanga-Roo. grew up with AA Milne, gave to college mates uninitiated in Pooh, read to my children and now to a grandchild. a bonus, bonus day, as weather promises ice- and a warm tea perhaps?
And "pie ingredient" has the same number of letters AS MOMENT OF TRUTH. And because I put that in early, I had erected quite a hurdle to overcome.
Like many others, finished the puzzle scratching my head. Then came here, where the mystery was explained. Then, I did (ruefully) enjoy going back through all the clues and circling each word missing a crossed "t" before going on to read the rest of today's review.
I got it, sort of, at DOWN JACKETS but at that point all I knew was that coals had somehow become coats. MOMENT OF TRUTH was what sealed the deal. I did kind of think cluing SHEPHERDS was off, because their akin not to goat keepers but goatherds, as you may recall from the lonely goatherd in The Sound of Music.
My real gripe is ESPANA. N with a tilde is a separate letter from N, if you ever had to learn the Spanish alphabet. Other non-English letters are CH, LL and RR, and Y is "i griega" or Greek I. Or that used to be the case. Apparently the Academia has ditched CH, LL, and RR, and changed the Y to "ye".
Very clever, Adam!
Great job, @Louis and @Nancy! Congrats!
Alternate clue for ZEROTH -- power of one
see Zeroth power
@ScottK 7:58 - the Zeroth Law of Robotics is not Asimov (he had 3 laws of robotics). The fourth law (called the Zeroth Law because it was over-arching to the other three) was created by Daneel Olivaw and Giskard Reventlov and could be phrased as 'A robot may not harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.'
I didn't like it. That was genuinely painful! I especially am no fan of HOOHA and don't really see how it works as an answer to "whoop-de-doo." No one is like "Hooha!" All "hooha" means is someone's private arena.
Data point of one: I'm an Xennial (barf) and I knew Ilsa but not Derulo until I got "ulo" and then I was like, oh yeah I've heard that name somewhere. I wouldn't have been able to identify him in photos at all. I had Jason Isbell in my head ... another guy I can't identify but have heard his name.
Et Alia doesn't means "and others"; Et Cetera means "and so on"
OpEd pieces are specifically NOT the newspaper's views. They are the views of (usually) respected observers with varrying points of view, which are printed OPposit the EDitorials
Enough said about the ugly H'ED
SLIDE IN isn't really synomoous with hurrying to home plate - it's a way to get there without being tagged, whether you are hurrying or not
And most egregious - ALPHA, not ALFA, comes before Bravo
Just did the Nancy-Lewis. Beautiful piece of work. Excellent theme, flawlessly executed. Some great clues including "Parliament newcomer" for a five-letter word.
@Frantic (9:00) “… no Ts in the clues either.” Good eye! I didn’t notice until you mentioned it. You’re right - even more impressive. Oh and BTW, here’s yet another interpretation of HOOHA. 😂
@Nancy and @Lewis: Well I’ve said it before . . . your really a pair to draw to. Well done!
Came here just to see how many people didn't know Jason Derulo, probably the single biggest pop music star whose name you wouldn't know if you didn't listen to pop music (7 top ten hits, including a #1 hit last year)
@Pete-Very cool video. I always enjoy watching an expert at work, and I found out what a travisher is, so good times all around. Thanks.
I had to fill in the revealer to get this theme and then I rushed back to fill in all the white space I had left above. And yes, I guessed at DERULO/SECO, successfully and left the ZEROTH Z blank. I circled the two questionable squares in 31D and had to laugh that the circle actually filled in the HAYAO/ZEROTH cross correctly. So technically, I only had one wrong square - truthfully, three were unknown to me.
I'm with the other folks who didn't connect the theme with ANGLER because I'm always opening and shutting my fishing reel BAIL when casting. I had to look it up, post-solve, to make sure the reel gadget was spelled BAIL rather than bale - I don't think I've ever seen it written before. My co-worker didn't count ANGLER either, because he was bailing out his boat.
I do have a bunch of black ink at 8A as I went east rather than south, guessing that Francia was the Italian version of "France" (Google tells me it is. Also in Spanish, so hah.)
Adam Wagner, great Thursday trick and super construction in avoiding the Ls and Ts. Explains the kind of weird clue for UNWED - couldn't use "single."
My favorite comments this morning.
Joaquin (6:22)
Z (8:21)
Sir Hillary (10:21)
I wonder if Naomi Walls knows she made the NYTimes crossword today. It’s a big deal. “Mad Money host Jim” Cramer got congratulated for making it Monday
@Photomatte - Huh? What are you talking about? The T’s in TV and Tibet look crossed to me.
Regarding the clue for ET ALIA, the literal translation, “and others,” has a T in it, As a result, we got a clue (not a definition) which suggests a loose connotation in service of the “no T’s in the clues” aspect of the puzzle. A stretch? Absolutely. But one mandated by the theme.
@Trey - Boy Howdy.
@Everyone else who isn’t up on their Asimov - the prolific author invented the three laws of Robotics and later had a character, R. Daneel Olivaw, extrapolate the ZEROTH Law that @Trey mentions.
**wordle and math alert**
@Anon9:25 - Ooh, Wordle Advanced Metrics. First, you got my average wrong (3.82758620689655 - Gotta love spreadsheets), but an average really doesn’t tell us much. Over enough plays the average will end being very close to 4.0 (that is, scores of 2,3,4,5, and 6 will probably approximate a bell curve*, a score of 1 being a rare outlier, so 4 should be the average over time). I suppose “ 0.17241379310345 below the expected average of 4.0” tells us something if everyone did this, but “5 under par over 29 holes” does the same in an easier to calculate way.** What amazes me the most is that the seemingly very not-mathematical Rex intuited that 4 is “Par” early on. Or maybe he saw it somewhere else.
BTW - I’m guessing I misreported or you misread my distribution. It is currently 0,3,9,9,6,2 and no DNFs.
*This assumes that results are random. They aren’t really, but I think they will be close enough to random that we can act as though they are.
**Using my distribution, You ignore the 4’s. Compare 3’s and 5’s (-3 for me) and 2’s and 6’s (-1x2=-2 for me) to get my -5. Takes about 7 nanoseconds to calculate.
@Nancy and @Lewis, great puzzle!
My favorite clues (out of many good clues) were:
Note before F
Parliament newcomer
The only clue I did not like:
Alternative to email…(If the answer ever was correct it was WAY too long ago)
Keep the puzzles coming!
@ joaquin, Thaks for the chuckle building to an LOL,
Funnpuzzle once I caught onto the theme (about half way through when I jumped around down to the reveal)) Before that I could not accept putting in "sad" Nd "Iamb" because made no sense. Didn't notice that there were no other ls"l"s in the clues, but did wonder if there were some thaat would be confusing.
Kind of agree with "zeroth " complaints but "taco came to mind and closed that.
Fun pz.
As a card carrying member of OFL’s “ culturally and generationally segmented and siloed, huge swaths of older solvers,” I guess I have to say thanks for sharing that DERULO song. Doesn’t fit in my TEA CUP, of course, but a fitting counterpoint to DESI which yesterday might have gotten the same response from a different “ culturally and generationally segmented and siloed” demographic. Certainly worthy of Jeff’s POW award which it received. I spent way too much time with NAOMI buttseyed in the crosshairs of the grid scratching my head. All that was wanted for a Thursday. Now back to see if others found it an equally challenging but satisfying experience.
Wordle 229 2/6*
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Got pretty lucky today.
I loved this theme. It took me a while to figure it out but once I got it everything fell into place. Lovely Thursday puzzle.
"Preposterous" is right. This exercise epitomizes why I hate, hate, hate irrelevant gimmicks in crossword puzzles. One doesn't learn anything from a mess like this. It's wholly inappropriate outside of, say, Games magazine, whither [assuming it still exists] I hope WS will return, yesterday.
Cool theme, maximized the sufferin.
Started out by splatzin AWL in instead of ADZ at 1-A. Extra precious nanoseconds were hurl, in the process.
Finally caught onto the theme mcguffin at NAOMI (yo, @kitshef). Got all its crossers, looked again at the NAOMI clue, and mumbled to self: "Huh, that there {Walls in a cinema} clue's got a typo in it …", followed by an audible ggrrooaann (yo, @AnoaBob) of ahar moment of truthiness.
fave sparklers: ZEROTH [har]. DALAILAMA. JUSTIFY. OTHELLO. FLUBS. ROKU.
staff weeject pick: HED. Was wonderin ATFIRST if the "obey" synonym might be WED, which was already in the puzgrid, and so that was why they had to be so day-um indirect.
no-knows: DERULO. TAZO. HAYAO. LTE [I thought maybe it was somehow "LIE?", ATFIRST, as theme was still psychin m&e out]. MENA. SECO [As in: more nano-SECO's down the draino].
12 themers. Quite a feat. thUmbsUp.
hanx, Mr. Wagner dude.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
different:
**gruntz**
The Wordle as golf idea is weak.
Using the same starter word everyday sounds really boring.
I'll pass on the LATX today.
@Anonymous 12:47
ALFA is the spelling in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. (Presumably because it is a more, um, phonetic spelling than alpha?)
Really liked this one!
ZEROTH is definitely a programming thing. It also reminds me of the funny phrase "zero or more" which you see often in the documentation of a scripting language or API (application programming interface).
For 3 down I initially had LOOKS INTO. It had so many correct letters it took a while to fix.
[Spelling Bee: yd pg -1; missed this word (again!) so end of QB streak.
td: 6:25 to get to pg. Stalled at pg -4 for now.]
P.S... HOOHA is not accepted by SB today.
This was probably my second least favourite puzzle I've done since I started solving almost a year and a half ago (only behind the one that broke my 252-day streak). Even after getting the revealer, I didn't see what was going on because first I was looking for Ts crossing somewhere in the answers and I also expected to see "dot your Is" in there as well as I've only ever heard the expression with both parts.
Once I finally got it (don't remember which one was my Aha moment), I still didn't realize that ROKU was a themer until I read Rex's review. Just thought IV was some tech abbreviation that I wasn't aware of. (I think a fair case can be made that the horizontal line at the top of an upper-case I is not "crossing" the vertical line, but I can also see the other side...) I also didn't understand the answer for [Primer dog] until I saw @mathgent's comment.
Fortunately I knew most of the PPP and got the others with crosses, but I was definitely aware that there would be lots of solvers experiencing WOEs with them.
Oh well, not every puzzle can be everyone's cup of TAZO, sleeped or otherwise.
Anon 2:57
True. But really it's because Romeo is actually pronced Ruh-MAY-oh ;)
A thank you for the kind comments about Nancy and my puzzle in today's LAT and WaPo -- and to any that may still come. We had a great time making this. I am amazed at Nancy's wit and how quickly she comes out with brilliance.
Sheer brilliance.
Both with the idea, and then the cluing!
I know most constructors focus on simply filling the grid, but this was a puzzle where the clues were so critical, indeed essential, to making the theme a brilliant success. And even though I had grokked the theme pretty quickly, there were still clues that had me puzzled . . . .
On to more important news:
Wordle 229 4/6
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One over after 22 holes.
Awww, Lewis. You are so sweet. And such a talented and fun collaborator! We did have a rollicking good time working on this.
It's really gratifying that so many Rexites took the time to amble over to the LAT website today. I'm amazed that after coping with today's "bear" in the NYT, any of you had sufficient energy or brain power left for tackling a second puzzle:) I was wondering as I wrestled with the NYT puzzle this morning: Will anyone in the world want to do yet again another puzzle on the same day? Happily, many of you did.
Thanks to @Frantic; GILL; Hartley; Joaquin; Whatsername; mmorgan; Mathgent and Beezer for your very nice and much appreciated comments.
Shockingly had Nancy Walls, she was on SNL for a while, had a stint on the office, she is married to Steve Carell.
Great Puzzle, Adam. Just tricky enough for a thursday! Almost 40 minutes but no cheating! "Got it" at TEACUP/DOWNJACKET/SAD. Lotsa fun! --Rick
@Nancy and @lewis--what a terrific puzzle!
Thank goodness for the blog that tells me why my time was off the charts long. Never got the theme.
I'm always tripped up when the crappy gimmick is in the clues instead of in the puzzle.
Very late commenting today due to my wife’s shoulder replacement surgery, which they now do as an outpatient procedure. Total time in hospital= 5 hours. Amazing that because of Covid they’ve had to acknowledge that many of the overnight stays, occupational therapy, etc. were not there for any reason other than $.
AnyHOOHA, Iloved this puzzle. Enough said for this late in the day.
Zeroth was popularized by Isaac Asimov's Foundation series when he expands the three laws of robotics to include a fourth law that supercedes the other three, referring to it as the Zeroth Law.
@Nancy & @Lewis
Great job, you two!!!
I thought she was bailing out the boat.
This trips over itself trying to be clever. I'd say it's too clever by half, but I think it's too clever by ZEROTH. Waaaaaay too many Naticks.
I’m off to Vegas!!!
Wordle 229 1/6*
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It would have easier, I think,if those twelve words were just unclued. I lose all confidence when I don't understand.
It's not gonna be a normal distribution, there are gonna be a lot more 6s than 1s and a lot more 5s than 2s. Rayleigh or Weibel type distribution. The golf analogy is good, since eagles are rarer than double bogies for most golfers.
Thanks to...
@commenters who pointed out the lack of Ls and Ts in the non-theme clues and
@Nancy and Lewis for the extra fun.
To me, this is a tribute to the artistry and creativity of crossword constructors. First of all, the constructor has to have an idea (cross your Ts). Where does this come from anyway? It’s a special kind of creative gift bestowed upon lcrossword creators that germinates these seeds of ideas into puzzles like this. Whether you like it or not, our constructor had an idea and carried it through to the reveal.
I picked it up at TEA CUP, but that was after getting lots of very confusing answers through the crosses and deciding to wait it out to see what would develop viz a reveal, hoping (as I do) to figure it out before I get there.
I did get it before the reveal only because I broke for tea as I wandered into the very blank NE corner. Waiting for the kettle to whistle, I was reminded of my daughter at a very you ng age wanting to use a new word “steep.”
We were in New Mexico and had returned from a family hike. She was just 4, but a veteran camper. Always curious, she wanted to follow a path that our map indicated was too challenging, and I asked her to come back and stay with us because the path was too steep for kids, and explained the new concept of “steep.” She bad heard the word in the context of “steeping” tea but not mountains.
We returned to our camp (by then we had “graduated from tent to tent camper) and I started some hot water, both to wash and for tea. Kate asked if she could have some with milk and honey. I prepared mine and hers - mostly milk and honey. She tasted and made a “leas than satisfied” face. I asked what’s wrong and she said, “more milk and honey please, it’s too steep.”
Kudos to our constructor today for a clever idea well executed and an enjoyable Thursday.
Thank you for the “moment of truth” Been at this on and off since 9am. My brain thanks you.
I had FOIST, HOIST,and JOIST before MOIST. Double bogie because I followed the keyboard.
I am an engineer and even thought zeroth was wrong. While it's common to start series at a 0 (like you'd graph an axis), I feel like it would be zeroEth l, if I were to actually use it. Only got it here because I could make the leap that the creator I guess did.
Only after completing the puzzle (by I'm not sure what miracle) did I grok the theme. Adam Wagner, spawn of the devil! Maybe it's because I haven't done crosswords steadily for all that long, but I can't remember the last time that the theme involved an operation on the clues rather than on the answers. The basic befuddlement mid-solve made this take about 50% longer than usual for Thursdays.
ZEROTH is fine (and attested in mathematics, sorry @mathgent), although if I were to write it myself, it would be "zeroeth". Actually, scratch that: it would be 0^{th}. It's handier than you might think. Do I feel SMUG knowing this? Not in the least.
I only know DERULO because I have kids of a certain age (recently 18, and soon to be 21). His birth name is spelled "Desrouleaux". Some years back my kids and I were having fun running a lyric of "Talk Dirty" back and forth through Google Translate, from English to Russian to English, where "Your booty don't need explaining" morphed into "Your treasure is not necessary to explain." I love Google Translate, but the results can be pretty funny, e.g., "Dear colleagues," in Russian turns out to be "Expensive colleges,".
SB: td 0, yd -1, same place that got @okananager. Sam, I will not be caught out on this again!
I've been doing Wordle too. Recent string of birdies was broken by a par today: having gotten the last four letters right on the second stroke, I guessed wrong on the third stroke.
Francia and vino are Italian as well as Spanish. It would have been helpful if the constructor/editor had given a little help with that. Spagna fits just fine, though secco does not. Did not enjoy this one. Che sorpresa!
@Rex
Kinda got it at 20A, thinking, "That's so weird, there's a typo in the clue" because IAMB was a definite. Then, going down, hit the revealer and remembered (from a second before) "key lime" which had to start with MOMENT, and, done.
@Whatsername 1258pm Thanks, but I can't take credit. I didn't even notice the missing Ts in all the other clues until someone else (sorry - I forget who!) pointed it out. Now, that HOOHA machine - brill! 😁
Blecch. I'm so glad I didn't bother to do this piece of crap. Looking at the finished grid, it would be a perfectly decent themeless without all the fussery in the clues. @Blue Stater 2:14 nailed it perfectly.
@Nancy and @Lewis's creation, otoh, was cleverly themed, wittily clued, and perfectly delightful.
@Smith re late last night: When I was moving to Brooklyn in 1979 I saw an apartment on Fort Greene Place between Lafayette and Hanson Place. Maybe that was your block? It was a 2-bedroom – I was looking with a roommate – and I really liked it. But the roommate thing fell through and I couldn't afford to take it on my own. I vaguely remember the landlord as being a very nice Asian guy. I ended up only about seven blocks away, as it turned out.
And now some music to enjoy politely, whilst you partake of a spot of tea.
@Nancy@Lewis
Erotic jigsaw
LOVEPUZZLE
Good theme. Better clues.
Tough competition from the Times. Better theme lesser clues. Bigger pain in the ass. And well worth it.
@Z Your scores were correctly reported. Anon's math was off or her/his understanding. Obviously you cannot be under par and have an average over par. On todays puz your ambiguity stems from your beliefs of what a crossword should be and the fact this one was clever and fun even though it did not conform to your standards. Enjoy the cleverness skill and workmanship of all types of crosswords. Keep your principles but do not let them rule you. The world Horartio.
But do as thou wilt. Only the anons will judge thy soul.
@Frantic please keep in mind the 3 post limit we have here. I do not want to remind you again
I use zeroth all the time and had no difficulty with it. That is, it took me a while to figure out that was the answer, but sure, if you start indexing from zero, then the list has a zeroth element (although it’s also seen with a hyphen: zero-th).
But never mind what I think of it. Merriam-Webster dates the earliest known use of the word as far back as 1850. A dictionary entry that’s been in the language for a century and a half has at least as much validity as, I dunno, DERULO, TAZO, or ROKU (wtf is a ROKU? OK, I wikipedia’ed it, so now I know. Even if I can’t buy one where I live, but I have to roll with that.)
So, sorry, no sympathy if you had problems with ZEROTH. Plus it’s 18 points in Scrabble, which makes it worth knowing.
@Anon 11:05
What 3 post limit?
There is no such thing on this blog.
i did a ctrl+F for these words and unless i somehow missed something...has really no one acknowledged the error in this puzzle? the trick is that all the L's are actually uncrossed T's. (except for the capital I which is also an uncrossed T.) there are no "real" L's in any of the clues as a result. EXCEPT ONE. 41D - "teachers helpers." which, by this puzzle's rules would have to then be "teachers' hetpers"...which is not a thing. they very obviously went to a lot of trouble to not use real L's...so why here? one already weak clue just to add to the ruse? i don't buy it.
otherwise, pretty enjoyable. unfortunately DNF because after i had everything filled in, i didn't get the happy music and went over the puzzle multiple times and couldn't find my error. i figured it had to be something to do with HED (which i didn't understand until i read the blog, for which i am always thankful) or OOOHA, but the crosses all looked right. i had "ZERO TO..." for "beginning of an ordered sequence" which seems like a lot more logical answer than ZEROTH, but, oh well. still very fun, but man...those are two big nits.
Rex, I share your admiration for the "cross your T's" theme, even though it departs from the common Thursday NYT practice (used other days, as well) of placing an asterisk by theme clues.
But my main reason for writing a response is that I, for one, found "ZEROTH" a beautiful answer. I say this as a person deeply rooted in humanities and arts, who's also a longtime subscriber to SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and fond of the NYT Tuesday science section. You've had this habitual loathing for "words that nobody uses," which is a very parochial bias. First, because there are plenty of people who indeed use the words you dismiss; and second, because it's a legitimate goal of a crossword, esp. a challenging one, to test our knowledge of unfamiliar words--or our willingness to be taught, via cross-fills, a lesser-known word that expands our knowledge of the world. I myself find a kind of poetic elegance in creating for the word "zero" a suffix that brings it into relation to familiar words like "fourth" or "thirteenth." Such, at any rate, was carried off by the folks involved in thermodynamics, which is a quite fascinating field, even for one such as I, who am untutored therein, but admire its difficulty and complexity. Your disdain extends, more generally, to things you regard as old, passé, and archaic, which is odd for a teacher of Old and Middle English (both of which, along with several ancient and modern languages, I too read).
All of this is meant in a friendly spirit, and by way of encouragement to expand your horizons a bit. Or at least dial down the defensive crouch you often get trapped in. My favorite blogs of yours are those that celebrate a puzzle's intelligence.
My “aha” moment also came pretty quickly (down jackets). At first, I thought maybe it was a broader typo theme but the “change l to t connection become clear later. Overall, I enjoyed this one.
Tons of themers. Adam Wagner is a (relatively) new constructor who already has six NYT puzzles since his debut in April of last year.
I have to be honest and say DNF on this one. Naticks at DERUL_/SEC_, T__O/ETALI_/_ER_TH/HAYA_. I agree that ZEROTH is preposterous except to a VERY advanced math person. Is it ETALII or ETALIA? A famous kealoa waiting on the cross--that never came.
I began by noticing the revealer clue (you know, extra lines). Reading it suggested I'd better find out what's going on by solving that revealer. So when it turned out to be CROSSYOURTS, and that little 63-down clue read "Squalled, say," and the rest of that section yielded SAT, the jig was up. It wasn't in the grid, which I naturally thought ATFIRST, it was in the clues!
A fun idea spoiled by too many unknowns. People, please make your crosses fair!
P.S. I had ZeroSINON for 3d before knowing that ZEROTH existed. Wait...does it?
Oh my goodness. Even after getting the revealer early on. Even after noting a couple of times that a "t" would make more sense than an "l," I still didn't "get" it. Even after getting the answers - except for one wrong - a real duh moment that was too.
I better pay more attention the rest of the day!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
ISEE IT'LLDO
NAOMI why are you UNWED?
FIRST, your MOOD is NOT the best.
Don't be SMUG, be AONE IN BED,
at the MOMENTOFTRUTH SAYYES.
--- OTTO DERULO
So lame in comparison to yesterday's sweet puzzle. Crap gimmick and pile of pissers made this one enough to imagine skipping Thursday puzzles.
CROSSYOURTS indeed.
In my case, the best of the themers is NAOMI WATTS, clued by "walls in a cinema”. I’ve liked her exceptional screen presence over the years--including the face of King Kong -- and maybe a few SATYRS.
Otherwise, I had troubles with DERULO, TAZO, MOA, HAYAO, ZEROTH.
ZEROTH ?
@Stephanie: that isn't the clue for 41 down.
Thanks to @mathgent ("they got it with twelve unclued entries. Wow!") for making me feel so clever. I enjoyed the journey anyway, hoping something would become clear, but no. So the major fun for me was reading Rex's list of what the theme answers really were, each one a delight, and reading such an upbeat review of the puzzle.
You constructors who have puzzles published elsewhere - if you could get the hard-coded URL into the puzzle, we syndies could get to them. In syndiland, it's March 10 when we get the February 3 puzzle, and the LA Times only goes back to Feb 26 today. I asked Lewis for the link to his puzzle once before, but it was a big deal for him to get it. I guess it's even a big deal on the day it appears, as the site is coded in a way that the puzzle URL doesn't show. I'm trying to write to the LA Times, but my email bounced; I have to use a form that only gives me 150 characters. I asked them to email me so I can explain our issue.
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