Alpine folk dress / SAT 3-26-22 / Ostinato provider in Ravel's Bolero / Sight from Maui's west shore / Classic song with the line Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci And lots of wavy hair like Liberace / Repeated voice role for Steve Carell / Horizontal group hug session
Constructor: Ashton Anderson and James Mulhern
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: none
Word of the Day: Charles ALSTON (38D: Charles ___, artist whose bust of M.L.K., Jr. was the first ) —
The stuff that was supposed to be sassy and flashy just missed me, for the most part. Like, "LATER, MAN" and "REAL ORIGINAL!" both felt ... I mean, they're real expressions, but they just seem a little arbitrary. "LATER, ___" ... MAN, sure, but DUDE, BRO ... GATOR? They all work fine. I don't hate these answers, by any means, but my reaction wasn't "wow, cool." It was more, "yeah, sure, OK." Ideally, you're slangy stuff hits harder than "yeah, sure, OK." I think "CAN I GET AN 'AMEN'!?" is rock solid, the strongest thing in the grid, and therefore perfectly placed in the marquee central position (32A: "Who's with me?"). I really think the clue should have an "!" as well as an "?" since it is a very enthusiastic, rousing question, one that I think of as being shouted or otherwise exclaimed with a loud voice. But still, great answer, nicely placed. I'm also a fan of "SAY NO MORE..." (a perfect little colloquial phrase, first seen last year in a puzzle by, surprise, Nam Jin Yoon, my fav themeless constructor ... or one of them, anyway). I laugh now when I see "MR. SANDMAN" because it appeared in the NYTXW not too long ago and someone, I forget who, one of my readers, I think, told me that they failed to parse the answer correctly and ended up wondering who MRS. ANDMAN was. Oh, yeah, that was the puzzle that had MRS. MAISEL in the symmetrical position (to "MR. SANDMAN"). So that answer amused me. But two other answers did the opposite of amuse me. I find the very idea of a CUDDLE PUDDLE ... I'll try to be tactful and say "off-putting" (34A: Horizontal group hug session). The concept, the cutesy, moist words, just ... yeah, off-putting. And especially off-putting when crossed with the tonally different yet even more off-putting LEPER, which is not a word I would put in any puzzle if I could help it. I had LONER there at first and was very happy with that answer. But the long Acrosses weren't working so I had to pull it and quickly realized it would be LEPER. I'm making a face even as I type LEPER. You can't see it, but you can imagine. I'm also kind of making the face at RES., which I don't think I fully understand. Are "some telephone nos." ... REServed? Ooh, RESidential? That's it, isn't it? Oof. OK. Maybe I'm not going to like RES under any circumstances, then. But I wouldn't have given a thought to so small an answer if it weren't mired in the LEPER CUDDLE PUDDLE (see!? ... off-putting).
I was lucky to know NONPAREIL and DIRNDL and FIFA, all of which really helped me open up the grid. I did not know ALSTON, even though I feel sure I've heard of him before. His crosses were all fair, though STA. didn't mean anything to me (49A: Bank in London, for example: Abbr.). I'm guessing there's a Bank ... Station? And I'm guessing it's in London. I'm guessing it's a train ... station. Ah, looks like light rail and Underground. Even though I've never heard of Bank STA., there was nothing else that "S" could really be, so that's a fair cross for ALSTON. Also didn't know ILYA—had both IVAN and IGOR in there at some point (47D: Slavic form of Elijah). Hardest thing in the grid for me was probably ASNAP, just because I never expect the "A" (53A: Child's play). Had "LIES!" before "LIAR!" but that seems a perfectly reasonable "error," and it didn't hold me back for more than a few seconds or so. I need ("need") to go watch "All That Jazz" now. Because, well, it's on, and the mere fact of on-ness adds an artificial sense of urgency to which I am succumbing. Good day.
"Easy-medium"? Yikes. For me this was the hardest solve in probably a year at least. Just not on my wavelength. And tricky clues on short answers. Although I did eventually get there with only one error: CUDDLE HUDDLE. I've never heard that, but it sounded so perfect there was no way anything but an H could go there.
I hated RES and ADA. For such icky answers, a simple clue is best; as Rex would say, clue it and move on. But I liked the long answers, which oddly came easier than many of the short ones, as noted above.
@Joaqin: me too; DIRNDL always makes me think of the old automatic transmission symbols. PRNDL, actually.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 11:10 to pg, then 0 later. My last word.]
I thought this puzzle was gonna be impenetrable and for about twenty minutes, it was, though I did know DIRNDL., BRANDISH and eventually, NONPAREIL. Then it opened up like the Red Sea* and one answer after another came to me until, in a very leisurely 44 minutes I was done. Very challenging and fun!
Easy-medium here, too, the "easy" because of the lucky and very generous first cross of BERLIN and BRANDISH that carried me seamlessly down the left side. Working my way eastward from POTUS was harder: at that point, I was determined to see if I could get the rest of the way in a continuous solve. FARAD set up a tough block, but some lucky guessing at the long central Acrosses and a couple of very helpful "happened to know" entries (ANTIGONE, SNARE) gave me what I needed for inroads into the two remaining corners. SWAN SONG made a nice finish.
Easy-medium except for the STA/ALSTON/ DOTORG area which hung me up well past medium. I also cringed a little at LEPER. For me NONPAREIL has something to do with bottles of capers. Mostly liked it.
Not easy or medium here. Never heard of CUDDLE PUDDLE, sounds like something you’d name your two, new puppies.
About the only thing I got right away was 14A SEE DOUBLE. I’ve had that going on for about a year now, even had to quit driving. Pretty scary when there’s a couple of trucks coming at you and one is in your lane.
Now that I look back on the finished product I enjoy it more than when I was solving.
I found the bottom half easy and the top more challenging, so .... medium on average, I guess?
I could not make sense of the clue for PAW. I was looking for a three letter word for “nickname”. Is this a reference to the dog in comics or some other famous Marmaduke I’ve missed? I need someone to explain how that clue gives you PAW.
The problem with this is that dukes are basically fists, not hands or paws. Nobody says "can you lend a duke" or does anything with dukes besides fight, which dogs don't (I mean, not with their paws). Too clever by half.
I'm with @chefwen. This puzzle was quite the challenge. Didn't know DIRNDL, only got FIFA by inference when I had three letters. Never heard of CUDDLE PUDDLE and came at it from the right side, figuring it had to be {something}hUDDLE, then it looked like it was trying to form hUDDLEhUDDLE. Wanted the tooth-growing animal to be some kind of shark. Needed a LOT of help from Sergey and Larry. But probably what delayed me most was oboes for the ostinato provider at 40D, all the while cursing the editor for the singular clue.
Slow start, but eventually shouldered my way through the door, persisted, and against all odds, emerged triumphant. Amazing how many answers always seem so obvious after the fact.
I welcome the challenge of Saturday's difficulty UNLESS the difficulty is based on trivia and really, really loose clue/answer connection. You know, like today's. No compulsion to finish this one.
@TrudyJ. Maybe duke=fist/hand(put up your dukes)=PAW, with a dog PAW being equivalent(?) to a human hand. I don't know but if so, this is a good example of the really awful cluing in this puzzle.
I had to look, and sadly cuddle puddle is a thing.
From the web-What happens in a cuddle puddle? These non-sexual events, where people get together to cozy up next to each other, have grown in popularity year after year. You can now even hire a “professional snuggler” on demand on your smartphone.
Challenge for me, as I struggled to get a foothold in the middle. Just one of those “not on my wavelength” type of puzzles.
Thought the long answers were great once I got enough crosses to figure them out, but there were many minutes of blank staring especially with some of the harder clued short fill.
Really did not like this one. It was very frustrating with so many dead ends that were either proper nouns (ELI, GRU, ALSTON, etc) or unecessarily "clever" wordplay, often including abbreviations, so also not really guessable (RES for the telephone number is terrible, terrible, terrible; ADA and STA).
To the constructors: Boys, you are not as witty as you think you are.
Like TrudyJ @4:51, I'm still unclear on PAW. I'm pretty sure I'm going to find the explanation annoying.
How do I know this puzzle was original? This was the 966th appearance OLE in the NYT puzzle, and never – never! – did it have a clue like [Fan belt?]. Brilliant and uber-creative. Two other scary good clues, IMO, were [Lacking zip?] for ENTIRE and [What “chicken” and “egg” are examples of] for SALADS. Note that all three clues turn a very ordinary word into a special event. One of crossword’s lovely moments.
I went from practically all white after my first pass to practically all white plus a couple of answers and a couple of guesses. Then it was getting an answer from a filled-in box followed by a sudden mini splat – then wait. Soon, it would happen again in another area. And on and on it went.
I tried and stuck with CUDDLE NOODLE for a while and absolutely rationalized that answer, visualizing the noodle of people! I loved SWAN SONG at the end. I loved CAN I GET AN AMEN, especially after I parsed it for a long time as CAN I GET A NAME and couldn’t figure out the last letter.
Above all, I loved the overall difficulty, the hill to climb, the mounting victories along the way. Saturday, thy name is today’s puzzle. A magnificent gauntlet, Ashton and James (Mr. Mulhern, who we haven’s seen in almost six years!). High praise and much gratitude!
Just not enough things of interest to keep up the enjoyment level on this one. When I keep bumping into entries like DIRNDL, FEN, ANTIGONE, STA, ILYA . . . where I am like “ok, I guess that could be a word, or a person or whatever”, there is just not enough to hold my interest.
It’s been a while since I can recall a clue that fell as flat as “Ones making the rounds?” For BEERS - yes, ha ha I get it (not). And yes, somebody around the age of 14 probably said totes once or twice about 10 years ago - just because it is technically acceptable doesn’t mean it is desirable to include in your puzzle, especially when the snooze factor is already through the roof.
That SE section is just brutal with the bust/sculptor dude along with something from Ravel crossing the horrendously clued STA - how’s that for some witty wordplay in the Times puzzle on a Saturday ? Wait, you say you have come to expect that from the NYT (unfortunately, so have I).
Pretty much what Rex said. A few gimmes made it less than difficult - but nothing really popped for me. Some strained cluing - DOT ORG is rough. Not sure on the clue for CAN I GET AN AMEN. Backed into ELI, ALSTON and GRU. Little DIRNDLs and petticoats where have you gone?
Haven’t thought of MR SANDMAN in years but this is the second time we’ve seen it recently. Do you need to be boosted to join the CUDDLE PUDDLE - I’ll pass on the group hug thanks.
Posted last night but I guess too late so here’s from Friday’s excellent puzz:
Did anybody have brIs for 57 down: short cut?!!
Remembering auto courts which, before the interstate highway system and modern motels, were a familiar sight along our nation's roads. Mum and pop operations, each was a row of small units each separated by a carport. Okanager's photo yesterday is a wonderful example. My family travelled that Fraser canyon road every summer in our 1938 Buick with me and my sister in the rumble seat. The road was so narrow back then in the 40's that sometimes Dad had to back up to a wide place to let an oncoming car pass! Alice
@Alicat 8:17 re yesterday. Hand up for bris my first pass through and I thought it was a bonzer clue! Then I wanted 56A to be IBIS (even though I knew better just because I really wanted bris to be the answer.
I had a strange experience with this one in that it really looked like I was going to be stuck with about a quarter of the puzzle done after 15 minutes of flailing. Then I saw the MRSANDMAN clue, which I had overlooked, and solved the whole thing in a few more minutes.
Unknowns: NON PARIEL; CUDDLE PUDDLE; ELI; in addition to the previously mentioned SNARE; ALSTON; STA.
'Ostinato' (SNARE):
"In music, an ostinato (Italian: [ostiˈnaːto]; derived from Italian word for 'stubborn', compare English 'obstinate') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include both classical compositions, such as Ravel's Boléro and the Carol of the Bells, and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love" (1977), Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn (1959), The Who's "Baba O'Riley" (1971), and The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (1997).[1][2][3]" ( Wikipedia)
NON PARIEL:
• having no match or equal; unrivaled
'Bank' STA:
"Bank and Monument are interlinked London Underground and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) stations that form a public transport complex spanning the length of King William Street in the City of London. Bank station, named after the Bank of England, opened in 1900 at Bank junction and is served by the Central, Northern and Waterloo & City lines,[14] and the DLR. Monument station, named after the Monument to the Great Fire of London, opened in 1884 and is served by the District and Circle lines. The stations have been linked as an interchange since 1933.[14]" (Wikipedia)
I'm probably the 27th to reply to @sf27shirley, but here goes: "totes" is "Hello fellow youths" slang for "totally" so if an item is "not totes" {something} it's "not totally" {something}" or "kinda" {something}. Took me a while too.
NONPAREIL was nonsense to me, I've never seen this word in my life. Just a real problem area there, with some tricky crosses including KINDA and BRANDISH.
Didn’t like the puzzle much - too cutesy for me, particularly CUDDLE PUDDLE. I continue to dislike @Rex’s suggestion to ban words from puzzles. If you ban leper, what’s next? Cancer? Refugee?
Anyway, that’s not the reason I’m posting. I knew DIRNDL from the Malvina Reynolds song “Where are you going” - “little dirndls and petticoats where have you gone.” The song is worth a listen if you have a few minutes to find it on YouTube.
If, like me, you saw "Wave one's arms?" and immediately wrote in BRANDISH, repeat after me: "I've been doing crossword puzzles for too darned long." You know what I'm talking about, right? CAN I GET AN AMEN?
This, btw, is the only way I'd use "CAN I GET AN AMEN?" If I'm asking "Who's with me?", I'd say: "CAN I COUNT ON YOU ALL?" Or "ANY VOLUNTEERS?" Or even "WHERE'S MY BACKUP?" Your "Amen", I'm afraid, really doesn't do me much good at all.
So I'm singing those two "Pagliaci/Liberace" lines from long ago, every note perfect, only I can't remember what damned song it's from. (This is what a really fuzzy memory is like.) Gotta get back to the first two lines, gotta get back there. Keep singing, Nancy-- it'll come to you, surely it will come to you...
Oh, yes!!!!!! MR. SANDMAN!!!!!
Aand I put the cart before the horse at LOOIE, writing in PLEBE instead. Oh, yes, PLEBE is when you enter West Point, not when you graduate. So dumb of me.
I found this puzzle a challenge. I could have done without the too-cutesy clue for PAW and the "I bet this expression will be 'out' by the time it's really 'in'" CUDDLE PUDDLE. (I had to type in "CUDDLEP" before Google would even deign to give it to me.) But other than those nits, I enjoyed it.
Didn’t like the puzzle much - too cutesy for me, particularly CUDDLE PUDDLE. I continue to dislike @Rex’s suggestion to ban words from puzzles. If you ban leper, what’s next? Cancer? Refugee?
Anyway, that’s not the reason I’m posting. I knew DIRNDL from the Malvina Reynolds song “Where are you going” - “little dirndls and petticoats where have you gone.” The song is worth a listen if you have a few minutes to find it on YouTube.
Neither easy nor medium for me. I’d say more medium-challenging, given that my time was 5:30 slower than my Saturday average. However, it’s nice to be challenged.
Just skimming the clues for a place to start, and somehow I missed the MRSANDMAN lyrics entirely, which would have been a gimme and a solid foothold, if only, if only. Instead I saw the last down as Te-___, three letters, supposed it had to be Te AMO, and started there. Filled from bottom to top, a little like pouring molasses into a cup, but eventually filled in the whole thing, so yay.
Hand up for the HUDDLE/PUDDLE confusion. Got NONPAREIL from the L but I always think of that as those little chocolate candies with the white dots on top that I can never pronounce.
DIRNDL needs to buy a vowel, and as for you @Joaquin, nice one!
FEN thanks to Fenway, "America's most beloved ballpark", as they style themselves. Also the name of one of my cats.
Wouldn't know "totes" without having done crosswords, but it's one of those terms that bothers me at least as much as LEPER bothers OFL.
I thought this was a Saturday that really knows how to Saturday. Nicely done, AA and JM. Artfully Amusing and Just Might be my favorite Saturday in some time. Thanks for all the fun.
Aww -- You beat me to it, @Sun Volt (7:57). I'd already highlighted the link and was about to paste it here myself. And like you, I had no problem with DIRNDL -- knowing the song well from my long ago past. I remember it perfectly -- every word, every note. It's a lovely song, everyone. Go listen to Sun Volt's link.
"Easy-Medium??" You gotta be kidding me. Haven't had this much trouble breaking more than one quarter of the puzzle in a long time. Southwest finally filled after great struggle, but then: nuthin. Stranded. No links.
Thank you MRSANDMAN and CHEMLAB for the toeholds. I'm starting to get a handle on Saturdays!!
CUDDLEPUDDLE almost stopped me, combined with CANIGETANAMEN. I had MEN ending that phrase, and leTLOOSE starting me off wrong. I can’t imagine CUDDLEPUDDLE and I don’t think I want to.
I was slow deciphering some clues. “Duke” eluded me until I got here. Does “Lacking zip” refer to being uncompressed? Not sure why the lanai is seen on the west. I imagine folks orient their patios however they choose. So I take it LANAI is another island? I need to get out more. Of course I've heard Bolero but I kept thinking of Don Quixote. Wouldn’t you think Ostinato is a horse?
Counts as hard for me (21:14), partly due to some REALLY oblique cluing. "Fan belt?" for OLE f'instance. "Fan" suggested OLE just bc that's what I think any time I see a three-letter with a (possible) sports reference, but belt? Wut? You can belt out a song, but do people "belt" an exclamation? Kinda thing that keeps you from entering a fill because you're thinking there must be an answer that makes sense of it. Nope. Likewise PAW for Marmaduke's "Duke." Duke is a fist...? As in "Put up yer dukes," and Marmaduke is a dog ...? Even after getting the fill I couldn't see it until someone pointed it out here. And it wasn't "Oh how clever," but "Seriously, what?" Those were the low points, but I loved "Wave ones arms" for BRANDISH, "Maker of some replacement heads" for ORALB, a few others where the pay off for the oblique clue was worth the nickel.
Not sure I get rex's objection to LEPER as "outcast." It's a common idiom, and there seem to me to be some pretty complex connotations around it having to do with social injustice and ritual purity laws.
Jim C (8:57) -- I don't know who your singer is, but Turn Around is "the Harry Belafonte song". He was the original singer and I'm pretty sure he wrote it too.
Also -- I forgot to ask: Has anyone explained ENTIRE for "Lacking zip?"? I don't get it.
This was tough for me. For the longest while the only answer in my grid was DIRNDL. The SW was my way in and I worked around counterclockwise. Unlike @Nancy, BRANDISH was my last entry. CUDDLEPUDDLE makes my flesh crawl. Strangely I didn’t mind my first try CUDDLEhUDDLE as much, but I refuse to believe that is really a thing. The cluing was inventive. I loved PAW, but I’m a sucker for dogs. If it weren’t for the long chatty answers, I’d probably still be scratching my head at dinner time.
This was the hardest Saturday I've done in ages. Some of the hold-ups were self-inflicted, especially my LOuIE in the SW. Go ahead and try to parse “Words on a ticket” with __M_Tu_E in place! imMaTurE? PG MaTurE? This was made even more difficult because I had leT LOOSE next to it.
Another tough spot was hUDDLE crossing the outcast othER. L_N__tTANAMEN wasn't screaming anything, let alone CAN I GET AN AMEN. But when I finally noticed 50A should be LOOIE, that let me ADMIT ONE, and all the rest of the non-NW filled in. I was staring at that EIL ending of 4D, wondering what other word besides vEIL had that vowel formation. I was still trying to make “threaten” work for 1A but SLAT was the only sure thing I had in there and I was beginning to doubt that.
And here's where the magic of crosswords comes in - I had a sudden inspiration that 14D could be evOKE with nothing in place there. That totally wrong answer opened ENTIRE, KINDA and solved the kealoa OLE vs, rah question and I finished successfully, but a full 10 minutes over my Saturday average, whew.
Ashton and James, although you succeeded in making me feel feeble-minded, it was still a pleasure, thanks!
Surprised to be the first (I think) to mention the commandment against coveting one’s neighbor’s ASS. A little out there for the NYT. Don’t PAW it either. Especially in the middle of the CUDDLE PUDDLE.
OK, moving on. I really liked this because of the clever and challenging cluing. OLE is another case of taking a super-common Xword and finding a clever way to make it fresh (as first noted by @Lewis above). HEN, SALAD and PAW are other examples of making short fill shine. (Agree that RES and ADA didn’t work.)
The SE fell pretty quickly for me, then the SW after some wrestling. Then up through the excellent center stack to take on the NW and finally the super-challenging NE. Mistakes with Kauai and Me too cost me a lot of time there. Seeing Antigone got me through, with the F of FARAD (no idea) and FEN the last to fall.
I agree completely on Leper and Cuddle Puddle. I was doing the puzzle thinking, Oh boy, Rex is going to have something to say about these two. “Cuddle Puddle”? Is that a thing? And “Leper” is just mean and unnecessary. I had Loner first too. Oh well, thanks again for making me laugh.
Easy-Impossible here. SW and NE corners yielded easily and I had what looked like some solid anchors in the NW and FARAD sitting there all alone in the middle and just dead stopped with nowhere to go. There are times where you are on that wavelength flow and all the wordplay just falls in place and you breeze through the puzzle and even the obscure collapses under the weight of the crosses. Today was the opposite of that. Looking at - - SANDMAN and literally nothing was coming to mind. That’s how not in sync I was with this puzzle. Or I see through the Fan belt? clue and write in “rah.” Blrrgh. Or seeing the Melville clue and the only thought I have is “Melville is the basis of that Disney movie all the kids love now?” (Which is actually Encanto, Blrrgh and Blrrgh)
Anyhoo. Cheated once and then I got N’Sync and finished. Blrrgh. I hate a DNF. I feel like if MR SANDMAN had ever occurred to me I would not have DNFed.
Hand up for the PAW clue being too cute by half as well as pretty dated. The cartoonist died 7 years ago at the age of 91. The dog was an improbable 71 at the time. Old cartoon dog. Old slang for hand (fist really). Parallel hand to PAW. That clue would have been fantastic in 1967.
Speaking of extremely dated, SWAN SONG makes me think of Led Zeppelin.
CUDDLE PUDDLE in reference to pups = cute. In reference to people = please keep it to yourselves.
@albatross shell late yesterday - first, reread what @anon/villager wrote again. He never said it was the best answer. Second, the other anon is either holding a grudge from way back or is a LIAR. Rex’s Twitter feed was pretty sedate yesterday, populated mostly with people who had the same issue with that cross (including one guy who had the right answer for the right reason and took it out because the crossing made more sense to him with the other letter - oof). The only person I saw being trashed was Clarence Thomas and I sort of doubt that he is our anon.
BTW - if you think which is not a word I would put in any puzzle if I could help it is a demand to ban a word you really need to consider that you are reacting to what you think was written, not what was actually written.
Had segA for FIFA until the bloody end. LonER not LEPER. Looking for a type of shark instead of GATOR. HTtp instead of HTML. Wondering what the alphabetical last entry on Wiki might be. Wrong kind of ticket had me looking at petITion (i.e., traffic citation summons) instead of ADMIT ONE. Misdirections and obscure trivia in every angle.
Was okay with the CUDDLE part, but if I ever so much as hear someone use the phrase CUDDLE PUDDLE, they will be slapped.
After a relatively easy week, what a nightmare finish.
Thanks for the explanation, @Wanderlust. And btw, the answer to your question about "Lacking zip" as a clue is definitely "too cute by half" -- just like the clue for PAW.
It's good to be clever and imaginative -- but you also have an obligation to be fair and to provide clues that are not tortured beyond recognition. Lewis, as can be seen from his earlier comment, tends to give these sorts of clues a lot more leeway than I do.
Z, I’m no liar. Rex insulted me on Twitter. That’s a fact. Immutable. I never claimed the insult was made yesterday. Reread what I wrote not what you think I wrote. As for your cya of my holding a grudge from way back. I’m not holding a grudge; that’s your projection. Second, you have no idea of the time frame. Where you get way back from is simply something you ginned up from your imagination.
Hated and loved it… can I get an amen? Fantastic. Can someone explain the ADA for letters on a tube? I am not grasping that at all. I wanted TNT at first, then thought of tube as in the London metro… nothing… ADA? Not seeing it…
This was work ! Not an enjoyable experience for me but I finished it, which had a certain satisfaction. Every corner was a struggle and it seemed that it was loaded with proper nouns that had me stymied. Now to read OFL and the gang.
Haven't seen RES used in that sense since phone books went out of style. Doctors and lawyers (in the better old days when lawyers didn't advertise) used to have both their office and residential numbers listed in the white pages under their surname. Home numbers were indicated by Res and the business numbers were indicated by Ofc.
I used to live in London. The Bank STA (a kealoa with STN) was one I avoided if at all possible. A complex of multiple stations linked together, where the Waterloo & City, Central, Northern, District and Circle lines meet with the Docklands Light Railway, it's very busy, with long walks between platforms. The District/Circle line platforms are actually the Monument station which interconnects with the Bank station. The complex is currently undergoing expansion and renovation, primarily due to hitting capacity limits from line transfers.
It's similar to the Chatelet-Les Halles complex of the Paris RER & metro, but without an attached shopping mall. There, 3 of the 5 RER lines connect with 5 of the 16 metro lines in one huge warren of tunnels and platforms.
Nothing easy about this one especially the NW, a real PEST and not KINDA but very much so. My first response for 1A was BRANDISH but the ?? made me hesitate. I didn’t get IBM for Watson and I don’t think there’s been a SLAT under a mattress in in about a century. Yes I found CUDDLE PUDDLE not just off-putting but gag worthy. DITTO for the cutesy “not totes” clue.
It had its moments but for me it was a RELIEF to be done.
@Groupie (6:58) thanks for the clip. I always enjoy a good Seinfeld memory.
FH 65 comments and (unless I missed it, and if so, apologies) nobody noticed the English Professor's grammatical boo-boo? Rex: It was more, "yeah, sure, OK." Ideally, you're slangy stuff hits harder than "yeah, sure, OK." As for the puzzle: I thought it was on the challenging side. But I finished and enjoyed it, except for CAN I GET AN AMEN! which I've never heard anyone use anywhere. I must not hang out with the hipsters.
@anon 10:53 -- Your often-expressed grievance at Rex and how he *mistreats* you borders on a pathological obsession. You would do well to get off this blog ASAP and find a healthier (for you) way to spend your time.
Our usual Saturday trampoline solve bouncing from one corner to the next. Hard to dredge ANTIGONE and GALAPAGOS from long atrophied brain cells formerly used teaching Introduction to Literature classes……having Creon and Voyage TOME by Darwin magically appear without triggering the actual answer is — a CUDDLE PUDDLE of MOTLEY data SEEPS? — frustrating. In a perverse way, I enjoyed this Anderson and Mulhern creation and can forgive them for the MR SANDMAN ear worm that will no doubt resonate.
My husband was a percussionist and our “secret” shorthand for something terminally boring was “like the snare part in Bolero.” Truthfully, though, that continuing ostinato provides such great glue underneath the piece. Like the song with DIRNDL, it’s worth a listen.
SNARE along with FLAW saved me in the SE. having disembarked from the tube At Bank STA multiple times, that clue still went right iver my head and is one of the ones that I think just tried a little too hard. I am still scratching my head over ADA. Help, anyone?
I passed through this whole puzzle and had only IBMS, PEST and SNARE. Hooboy! Took me quite a while to get on our constructors’ wavelength(s) this morning. No idea what belonged in 32A. Thought pooDLE at first (because I knee I had heard my husband talk about supercapacitors but forgot things of that ilk not being in my ken (except for crosswords). Ended up having to channel his chi from the beyond to untangle that center mass. I hope never ever to write or even think about a CUDDLE PUDDLE again! Gave me agita just to write it ip there.
This was a very worthy Saturday! @Nancy, I am embarrassed to say that once I woke up and got some some momentum I had to give myself a well deserved “You idiot!” for not seeing BRANDISH at the off. A classic crossword clue.
Had my coffee, had more coffee and then some more and I conquered it. Toughest Saturday in a while. Liked it overall.
Nancy doing a puzzle with a clue involving a song lyric reminds me of the Cheers episode where Cliff goes on Jeopardy and one of the categories is "Beer."
This puzzle exhausted me. I had to fight my way, letter by letter. After a long time, I had everything but the NW and I needed to go to bed. I cheated to get BERLIN, put in RESENT (a little off the clue), IBM (also a little off), finished, and hit the sack.
Of the 68 words, 22 (nearly a third) were either fiendishly indirect or unknown to me. But I loved all the sparkle. Red plus signs all over the place.
I know that Pagliacci doesn't really rhyme with Liberace but it still delights me.
I caught MRS AND MAN in a CUDDLE PUDDLE recently. When I said “You’re coming with me!” She said LATERMAN, I’m ANTI GONE so SAYNOMORE.
I’m not sure why 23D is Supercapacitor unit. The FARAD is the unit of capacitance derived from the International System of Units. What is the “Super” doing in the clue?
To those who say they’ve never heard of NONPAREIL: if you’ve ever bought a jar of capers, chances are that NONPAREIL was in large letters below the brand,
I thought this puzzle was primo in both the cluing and the fill, short and long. Thank you very much, Ashton Anderson and James Mulhern.
@Mathgent 12:01 RES also used to distinguish RESidence from BUSiness back when phones attached to cords in walls and folks had “live and work” buildings/houses.
@SunVolt=You finish the Stumper? I just did, but what a struggle.
For those of you who thought today's NYT was tough, try it. Allow yourselves a lot of time. (This is not meant to be a humble brag, this is just sheer relief.)
@FH/Anon - 😂🤣😂 - I’ve had autocorrupt “correct” your/you’re so often and have made the same “not paying close enough attention to what I’m typing” mistake myself that it barely even registers. In fact, it took me many precious nanoseconds to even register what mistake you were referring to.
@Paul & Kathy - It should be A SNAP to explain.
@egs - What is the “Super” doing in the clue? - Mostly just bothering you. Since a FARAD is a measure of capacitance and a supercapacitor has lots of capacitance the FARAD can be said to be a measure of a supercapacitor’s large capacitance. The real question is what happens when you suddenly have a supercapacitor during a CUDDLE PUDDLE?
FH @Zed: Yes, I missed my calling. I should have been a proof-reader. Most of the time a typo just leaps off the page to me, especially on restaurant menus. I drive my wife & kids nuts. Once, I was asked to proof a book, written by a former ship captain. My prize 'find' was that he said the engine in a large motorboat was a 'Cummings diesel' (it's Cummins). It's a bit like a harmless disease....
For some reason I’m always initially a bit bummed out when I struggle to finish a puzzle and I come to the blog and @Rex pronounces it is easy-medium. I really HAVE to get over that.
My adventures in puzzling today were:
- proud to get FIFA and Antigone immediately -for some reason I read 1a as “waives one’s arms” and spent a lot of time thinking of synonyms for SURRENDER, then moved on and didn’t reread until I CHEATED and looked up MRSANDMAN -briefly considered whether “the end of Wikipedia” might be ZYBORG…KINDa like a cousin to a cyborg -had LUS (London Underground System?) for Tube letters, and never thought of a toothpaste tube until the end (and they KNEW that would happen)
So yeah, I cheated today so a DNF but I truly enjoyed the puzzle even though it was above my pay grade!
Thanks @Frantic for the link. I’d never heard of CUDDLEPUDDLE and it ONLY makes sense with respect to baby animal litters!
@pablo 12:01p - had issues in the center block but basically worked bottom up and after nearly an hour got it and learned ‘40s Motorette. It was a struggle.
@Anonytmoujs/FH - When you post, please just use the Name/URL option. All you have to do then is type FH as your name, and no one will confuse you with the other Anonymice. Not that they would confuse you with the troll anonymous, as you can both type and spell. Also, we don't correct grammar around here, unless it's your child or former student posting.
@Anon 12:33 You do know FENWAY park was named such because it was built in "The Fens", a marsh in Boston, right? It got the name because it was built in a fen. So, unless in your preferred dictionary, ever so much better than Webster's, Nothing is synonymous with Everything, I think you're wrong there.
I found this puzzle to be a bear. Not a pleasant bear like Boo Boo, but a mean nasty bear like the one that ate the guy in Alaska who though he could make friends with grizzlies but ended up being eaten by one. Wait, that bear wasn't either mean or nasty, he was a morally neutral grizzly bear, just taking sustenance where he could find it. Anyway, I was intellectual sustenance for the constructor last night. I hope he had heartburn all night.
Quick question from yesterday - how you personally insult an anonymous troll? Don't you have to be able to actually identify someone to personally insult them? Discuss
More and more it seems like constructors are trying to outdo each other when it comes to seeing how obtuse they can be with their clues. Not easy, not medium, just a total shite sandwich.
@Pete. Well, I'm an idiot, acting like I knew something I had no clue about. Thanks for educating me about Fenway Park. Also, I liked your reference to Grizzly Man, a very interesting story.
Fenway Park baseball stadium was named after the neighborhood in which it was built, a neighborhood that took its name from the public park called The Fenway built around the fens, and designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.
So the progression here begins with the fens wetland (made by God), around which which was designed and built the public park "The Fenway" (by Olmstead in 1890), which eventually gave the name Fenway to the newly emeriging residential/cultural/university neighborhood that had recently been annexed from the town of Brookline (by popular use circa 1900), which then gave the name Fenway Park to the new baseball stadium (by John Taylor who purchased the land and built the park in 1911).
But the stadium, itself, was not actually built in or on the fens; it is, rather, a third generation namesake of the fens, in the neighborhood that came to be know as Fenway.
MR SANDMAN brought me a nightmare. I asked for two lips like roses and clover but I only got Mrs. DOTORG. I fell down an abyss several times. I still grapple with Mr. Phonetics. He wants to take the lead....I want to take the lead. He always wins despite stepping on my toes. Let's see: How do I spell NONPAREIL? How do the Alpine folks dance with a DIRNDLE? Why in the world is ADA tube letters? I actually had WYS (watch your step)...Wrongy dongy. Is GRU short for gruesome? Who died and made the FINN's the happiest people on this earth? Is FARAD some sort of rich Arab? and holy hot tamales, should I know Elijah's name in Slavic? ILYA? Who dat? So I went back to filling my deviled eggs, took a little bite, added some paprika and the taste was good. I was told to add some CUDDLE PUDDLE but the store didn't have any. I wish I could grow 3,000 teeth in my lifetime. Poquito a poco, this difficult menu was coming to some sort of fruition. I smiled here, I smiled there, but in the end, my BIO FUEL did need something to ooze from the CHEM LAB. I did finish. I did call on some help, I did a few fandango's.... so All Is Well That Ends Well.
I will read everyone when I come back from delivering my "Eggs" to the homeless and hungry folks that keep materializing here in California. Everyone likes them and that makes me happy. What makes me sad is that a carton of a dozen fresh eggs now cost almost 6 dollars. The chicken that lays them is the same price as filet mignon. I'm hoping that my neighbor won't be coveting my ASS anytime soon.
Bottom half was average Sat. NE corner might have been Death Valley. After finishing NONPAREIL by default would be eternally indebted to someone to explain it to me. Watson and others = IBMS. What are IBMS? IBM is a single company. They don’t make pcs any more so what are IBMS? Watson is a technology licensed by a single company known as IBM.
@FH - Once spent a hilarious 25 minutes driving down 28th St. in Grand Rapids counting all the apostrophe misuse. It was one of those "once you start to see them you can't stop" moments. But, yeah, what @Pete said, we're mostly a grammar correction free zone unless a mistake makes the meaning funny.
Huh. Only five ?-marker clues. Seemed like a slew more of em.
staff weeject picks: ADA [subtle, non-?-marker clue]. And OLE [weird ?-marker clue].
Knew MRSANDMAN pretty darn fast, which helped. Did not know CUDDLEPUDDLE, but knew all its crossers, except for NONPAREIL.
fave stuff: MRSANDMAN & LATERMAN. ALLIGATOR. CUTLOOSE. SAYNOMORE. SEEDOUBLE [woulda been a great opportunity for a blurred clue… sooo… dibs, for a runtpuz theme]. BIOFUEL.
Great FriNite Schlockfest movies last night. Bro-in-law brought the schlock classic "Hellraiser", which M&A had never seen before. Scary stuff. M&A chipped in "Attack from Beneath", which was so schlocky it was funny. Had lotsa cool sea monsters, but alas no cuddle puddles. But, I digress …
Rough time gettin outta the chute with this rodeo, at our house. The clues were buckin harder than snot. Finally splatzed in DUDE & IBMS, then SLAT & HEN, which then helped get some of the NW longball answers goin. But then had nanoseconds puddlin up, wantin to smoothly exit out of the NW, due to NONPAREIL and the ultra-feisty (but fun) ENTIRE clue. KINDA clue and that mysterious DIRNDL Alpine gearshift sequence also stunk up the precious nanosecond pool, desperately tryin to escape from there.
In other news: Go, St. Peters! Underdog team [15-seed] is sendin all its opponents' NCAA tourney hopes off to the pearly gates. Like we hope Ukraine will soon do to #1-seedy Putin.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Anderson & Mulhern dudes. Some of them extra-tricky clues were no doubt dreamed up by yer committee, so congratz on pylon it on.
FH @Zed and @Pete: I'm happy not to correct posters' grammar and spelling on this site. Indeed, I never have, that I can recall. But Rex is in a different category. His comments on each puzzle are routinely highly critical, part of which is fine because a) it's his site and b) he is regarded as a legitimate crossword authority, which is why many people visit his site, even those who, like me, disdain many of his non-crossword opinions. But, as we all know, his tone can be high-handed and even imperious, often beyond the point of idiosyncrasy to downright meanness. And, he is an English professor.....so
My first entry was 23D FARAD, eponym of physicist Michael FARADay. In electronics capacitors are usually very small and are measured in microFARADs. So a capacitor that had just one FARAD would be huge (hi egs @12:00 PM); you could say it's a "Supercapacitor".
Thought I had read everything Herman Melville had ever written but didn't recall 31D "Setting for Melville's 'The Encantadas'". Had to wait for crossings to fill in GALAPAGOS. MY absolute favorite Melville opus is TYPEE, which used to appear in crossword grids fairly often. It is the spellbinding archetype of an exotic South Seas Island castaway adventure and the work that made Melville popular before MOBY DICK.
36A RES has appeared 713 times (!) in a NYTXW over the years, 258 of those during the Shortz era (per xwordinfo.com). It commonly gets clued for its Latin meaning of "thing/s" as used in phrases like "In media ___" or "___ publica". The plural ablative declension of RES is REBUS meaning by way of or with things. N.B.: REBUS is already plural.
@MetroGnome…Thanks for the laugh on your post about “totes.” Hey…I had plenty of elder millenial/young GenX friends at work so learned “totes” that way and I may have learned it the hard way. My daughter is an elder millenial but she totes doesn’t say totes for totally.
@GILL I… if you saw my post above you will see that I thought about Tube as the London Underground. Those diabolically EVIL constructors (JK) were referring to a TUBE of toothpaste which is ADA approved. As usual, I enjoyed the rest of your post, ie Mrs DOTORG…[see my ZYBORG reference…END of Wikipedia (Z)]
All the waitresses wore dirndles at Swiss Trudy's Alpine Village in Nanuet N.Y. and Were made by Trudy, the emcee, yodeling and driving force of the cabaret. And yup she was my Mom.
@Nancy - Belafonte’s version is the one I remember as well. Nanci Griffith did a nice cover of it and I’m sure there’s been others. Maybe Joe D has more details in his vast musical database.
OK...I'm back and my ASS is intact. There have been at least three of us asking why ADA (American Disability Act?) are tube letters... Can we get off of grammar (he's old and tired) and explain....gracias in advance.
I'm surprised that the clue for ASS has drawn the comments it has.
Exodus 20:17 as traditionally rendered in English (e.g. King James, Revised Standard Version, Douay) commands us to not covet that which belongs to our neighbor, including the neighbor's ox or ass...a formulation that was thus super-familiar to practically everyone in the English-speaking world from time out of mind until approximately last Tuesday.
More contemporary translations will often use "donkey" in place of "ass", true...which I wouldn't expect to have thrown very many people off or made the clue seem especially puckish or out-there...but perhaps it did.
Whether one is a religious believer or not (and regardless of one's general opinion of the soundness of the KJV translarion in particular in light of modern scholarship), familiarity with such classic Biblical language is absolutely foundational to fully understanding and appreciating centuries' worth of literature and rhetoric (and all manner of art, and moral philosophy, and so much else). I would commend bolstering one's knowledge of it to just about anyone.
@pete - I think the bear was determined to have a mental illness; could probably plead insanity. @CDilly52: does your percussionist husband prefer to play the other 95%of the rep where he counts rests for hundreds of measures? If he enjoys xwords, he could finish a mid week puzzle during most symphonies. Easier to get swat with in a pit, ask me how I know…
@M&A, I agree "Hellraiser" is a hair-raising movie. I saw it back when it was in the theaters in the '80s. My date chose it as the movie to see because he saw the black leather on the figures on the poster, didn't notice the needles sticking out and thought it was a biker flick. Gah.
Per the Stumper (no spoilers) - I must have gotten smarter during the day; after doing the NYTimes Saturday puzzle, a few Runt puzzles, and the Boswords Spring League puzzle of the week (don't ask), I decided to tackle the Stumper. It took a mere 7 minutes longer than today's NYTimes, i.e. 40 minutes total. No cheats today! That's a win in my book.
Ahhh @Bezzer 3:25, @Anony 4:20 and @Norm 4:28. So my final answer is GADZOOKS...That is plain awful. I also will toss in some KINDA SMOKE into the SALADS of DOTORGS. Will Watson turn me blue?
I had "_lat" for "something found under a mattress", so I put down "flat" thinking that was a cute answer. Anything under a mattress would get pretty flat after a while. But, of course, "f" didn't fit at some point, and then "slat" was clearly the right answer (at least, if you are talking about a futon and not a mattress on a foundation).
A newton, a joule, a gauss - they are all reasonably small. But a farad is humungous.
The Back Bay area of Boston was originally mostly a swamp known as the Back Bay Fens, until it got filled in, some time between the Revolution and the building of Fenway Park.
At the time of the Revolution, if you left Boston, you had to pass through a narrow isthmus, with the Back Bay Fens on your right and other swamps on your left.
I refuse to accept that DIRNDL is an actual word. The letter combination rndl had me searching for far too long for a mistake in my crosses. (My head is sore from banging it on my keyboard.) If in fact DIRNDL does exist, the word should be banned forever and removed from all dictionaries including the OED.
Easy-Medium in that it wasn't the 1942 first NYTXW, but if you can go through all the acrosses with only one or two tentative entries, that's not going to be an "easy" puzzle. I got there, but only after what I would call some "challenges." Things like DUDE and LATERMAN, which initially could have been almost anything, didn't help. Whine whine, streak unsullied anyway.
Never heard of CUDDLE PUDDLE and I hope I never do again. Never heard the expression CAN I GET AN AMEN, and found it pretty interesting. Lowed the PAW clue. Lots of clever/challenging wordplay clues — Fan belt, Lacking zip, many others. Lots of dead ends that I eventually was able to chip away at, with many moments crossing between a groan and a AHA.
Help! Bolero and Mr. Sandman have been duking it out in my head all day for earworm supremacy. And now Turn Around has joined the fray. A friend of mine who’s a singer used to include Turn Around in one of her sets. She changed some of the lyrics to the second verse, always apologizing onstage to Harry and his co-writers when she introduced the song. Among other things, she ditched DIRNDLs.
Original: Where are you going, my little one, little one DIRNDLs and petticoats, where have you gone Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown Turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.
Her version: Where are you going, my little one, little one Toe-shoes and soccer balls, where have you gone Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown Turn around and you’re a woman with dreams of your own.
Like many, I found the puzzle to be tough. I battled through three-quarters of it, and then spent just as much time on the SE quadrant as I had on the rest. I made a bunch of mistakes along the way, the funniest of which was CAN I GET ANy MEN! Apparently, I thought “Who’s with me?” suggested Henry V rallying the troops at Agincourt or Parisian revolutionaries about to storm the Bastille. That Y turned the first part of GALAPAGOS into something unrecognizable, but I don’t know “The Encantadas” so I decided to have faith that the word would eventually transform into a reasonable place name.
I had CUDDLE hUDDLE at one point, too, and arched an eyebrow at LEhER as the cross. Was Tom LEhER an outcast of sorts, I wondered, misremembering the name of that writer of satirical songs (Tom Lehrer). And for “The end of Wikipedia?” I found myself with DO___G, and thought don’t tell me this is going to be yet another highly suspect spelling of “durag” – and what would that have to do with Wikipedia anyway? It was getting late and like Cinderella’s coach, my brain turns into a pumpkin at midnight. But I thought back fondly to my long-ago trip to BERLIN, and how I spent a day wandering about in heaven-on-earth on Museum Island.
I was just on Rex’s Twitter feed where he declared “graffiti is good actually”. Anybody have his address handy? You know, save me the trouble of going to the archives.Thanks in advance.
@FH - Yeah. You did it pretty gently. Rex does this without a copy-editor so I don’t think much about it. Typos happen.
This graffiti is pretty good. Care to take the position that Banksy isn’t good? Reminds me of when I was a school principal. We had a retaining wall that was a constant graffiti target. After the district painted it again I got my Art Teacher to have a class paint a mural on it. It stopped the ugly graffiti from reappearing but didn’t stop one of our neighbors from complaining to central office about not wanting to live in the ghetto. I assume @6:06 is related to that neighbor.
You miss the point Z. Rex was praising something that defaced someone else’s property. I very much doubt he’d feel,graffiti was cool if it was practiced on his house. Or, how about you zed?I’m happy to pay you a visit and treat you to some art. How about it? You’re broad minded, right?
@Barbara S…lol on the ear worms! Mr. Sandman won out for me, even though I had to cheat to get it! I’m old enough to know it…but all I remember on lyrics is “Mr. Sandman, dream me a dream…blah blah…I’ve ever seen.” Before my time (just turned 67) but it has been featured in a lot of period movies I think.
I only got to the puz late today because I was determined to go for a walk. Listened to BBC podcast "In Our time." This episode dealt with Sophocles's ANTIGONE. Guess which clue got answered first !
If you feel it necessary to point out a typo, or a grammatical mistake in Rex's post, or to tell him he's wrong, or to tell him he's an ass, feel free to use his email, which he has displayed prominently on the web page. That's if it's really important to you to have it, or him, corrected. Otherwise you're just publicly shaming him for your own amusement. You know, you're being pathetic.
the FARAD was easy to define in simple numbers, but turned out to be far more capacitance then 99.44% of real world circuits could use. off the top of my tin foil hat, only radio/tv transmitters may be.
"One farad is defined as the capacitance across which, when charged with one coulomb, there is a potential difference of one volt." -- the wiki
see, so just two 1's in the definition. what could be easier??? but a coulomb is a LOT of oomph.
Easy-medium my ASS!!!!! Cryptic clues, obscure answers. And is it just me, but I am not a fan of the colloquialisms - the "" or ? clues for 'common language' phrases? I get it after I see the answer sometimes, but I can come up with numerous phrases that can answer the common phrase clues, but the answers could vary regionally, sociologically, etc. so there is not a 1:1 answer for these clues as there is for standard clues. I understand the trend to include common phrase answers in the puzzles vs the old crosswordese, but since its so non-standard and the cluing is so general, these can become a new term category of their own eventually (i.e., Natick, Kealoa) where there are multiple possibilities for one clue.
@LateSolver (9:07) -- I agree with you completely on vague phrases that can be converted to absolutely anything at all -- even phrases that no one has said ever. I propose a contest: We all try to come up with a term for this strange and new phenomenon -- a term as apt as "Natick" and "kealoa". The winner gets...Oh, I don't know. Would @GILL be willing to cook a special dinner?
I hated this puzzle, worst Sat. in years, and headache worthy. After seeing comments and explanations, I hate it more.
I never want to see CUDDLE PUDDLE again. I wish whoever invented that phrase has to imagine a naked Republican coke orgy with Grassley, McConnell and Judge Jeanine whenever they have sex.
CANIGETANAMEN for this cool Saturday puzzle? Many REALORIGINAL entries--and even more so some of those clues! He saved the trickiest ones for...you guessed it: the NW, once again the last to fall.
Single letter writeover: I had CUDDLEhUDDLE, which I think makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a LEhER. Second appearance for MRSANDMAN; must be a helpful letter string for constructors. I've learned to live with ORALB and such. Birdie.
Parred the ninth, completing a front nine with a four-under 32.
Easy medium? Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!! You’re funny Rex! This one was hard in every area for me. Stuff like DIRNDL, ORALB, IBMS, DOTORG, ALSTON, GRU and POTUS were bad enough but the extra-tough cluing for otherwise ordinary words like HEN, OLE and SALADS made it near impossible. Had LonER then I looked up CUDDLEnUDDLE because I thought this was a new trendy word. Alas. It’s LEPER and CUDDLEPUDDLE. So DNF for me. I still do not understand the clue for STA(49A). Saturdays should be tough but they also need to be fair. This one sure was tough but by the end it made me SEEDOUBLE and the end was a mixture of RELIEF and anger. PS - EAGERLY awaiting what Burma does with 51D. LATERMAN!
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DIRNDL looks like the gear selector on a '55 Olds with a Hydramatic transmission.
ReplyDeleteYay Rex posting in the evening!
ReplyDelete"Easy-medium"? Yikes. For me this was the hardest solve in probably a year at least. Just not on my wavelength. And tricky clues on short answers. Although I did eventually get there with only one error: CUDDLE HUDDLE. I've never heard that, but it sounded so perfect there was no way anything but an H could go there.
I hated RES and ADA. For such icky answers, a simple clue is best; as Rex would say, clue it and move on. But I liked the long answers, which oddly came easier than many of the short ones, as noted above.
@Joaqin: me too; DIRNDL always makes me think of the old automatic transmission symbols. PRNDL, actually.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 11:10 to pg, then 0 later. My last word.]
Can you explain ada?
DeleteOn a tube of toothpaste...American Dental Assoc.
DeleteLacking zip = entire?
DeleteLacking zip, as in lacking nothing = entire
DeleteHa! to JOAQUIN’s comment.
ReplyDeleteI thought this puzzle was gonna be impenetrable and for about twenty minutes, it was, though I did know DIRNDL., BRANDISH and eventually, NONPAREIL. Then it opened up like the Red Sea* and one answer after another came to me until, in a very leisurely 44 minutes I was done. Very challenging and fun!
*Historians say, eh, not so much
Easy-medium here, too, the "easy" because of the lucky and very generous first cross of BERLIN and BRANDISH that carried me seamlessly down the left side. Working my way eastward from POTUS was harder: at that point, I was determined to see if I could get the rest of the way in a continuous solve. FARAD set up a tough block, but some lucky guessing at the long central Acrosses and a couple of very helpful "happened to know" entries (ANTIGONE, SNARE) gave me what I needed for inroads into the two remaining corners. SWAN SONG made a nice finish.
ReplyDeleteEasy-medium except for the STA/ALSTON/ DOTORG area which hung me up well past medium. I also cringed a little at LEPER. For me NONPAREIL has something to do with bottles of capers. Mostly liked it.
ReplyDeleteNot easy or medium here. Never heard of CUDDLE PUDDLE, sounds like something you’d name your two, new puppies.
ReplyDeleteAbout the only thing I got right away was 14A SEE DOUBLE. I’ve had that going on for about a year now, even had to quit driving. Pretty scary when there’s a couple of trucks coming at you and one is in your lane.
Now that I look back on the finished product I enjoy it more than when I was solving.
chefwen, you can get eyeglasses with "prisms" to get rid of that double vision; I've had them for years.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete.org relative of.com
DeleteTop level domain .org, .com, .edu etc.
Delete.org
DeleteI found the bottom half easy and the top more challenging, so .... medium on average, I guess?
ReplyDeleteI could not make sense of the clue for PAW. I was looking for a three letter word for “nickname”. Is this a reference to the dog in comics or some other famous Marmaduke I’ve missed? I need someone to explain how that clue gives you PAW.
As in “put up your dukes” (or hands, which in Marmaduke’s case is his PAWs)
DeleteThe problem with this is that dukes are basically fists, not hands or paws. Nobody says "can you lend a duke" or does anything with dukes besides fight, which dogs don't (I mean, not with their paws). Too clever by half.
DeleteThx Ashton & James; you CAN GET AN AMEN from me for this outstanding Sat. puz! :)
ReplyDeleteMed.
Moved slowly, but surely from top to bottom, with only a modicum of pushback.
Knowing MR. SANDMAN was a huge plus in the NW.
Had leT LOOSE, and couldn't parse ADMIT ONE, so the SW was a tad slow to develop.
The SE was also a bit of a struggle, not knowing ALSTON, STA, & SNARE.
Quite pleasantly surprised I made it thru this one with no errors. (whew!)
Excellent adventure, and a most enjoyable solve! :)
@okanaganer 👍 for 0 yd :)
___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
ReplyDeleteI'm with @chefwen. This puzzle was quite the challenge. Didn't know DIRNDL, only got FIFA by inference when I had three letters. Never heard of CUDDLE PUDDLE and came at it from the right side, figuring it had to be {something}hUDDLE, then it looked like it was trying to form hUDDLEhUDDLE. Wanted the tooth-growing animal to be some kind of shark. Needed a LOT of help from Sergey and Larry. But probably what delayed me most was oboes for the ostinato provider at 40D, all the while cursing the editor for the singular clue.
Slow start, but eventually shouldered my way through the door, persisted, and against all odds, emerged triumphant. Amazing how many answers always seem so obvious after the fact.
ReplyDeleteFrenchie CUDDLE PUDDLE. Apparently in a terry cloth Bundt pan.
🧠🧠🧠
🎉🎉🎉
I welcome the challenge of Saturday's difficulty UNLESS the difficulty is based on trivia and really, really loose clue/answer connection. You know, like today's. No compulsion to finish this one.
ReplyDelete@TrudyJ. Maybe duke=fist/hand(put up your dukes)=PAW, with a dog PAW being equivalent(?) to a human hand. I don't know but if so, this is a good example of the really awful cluing in this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI walked away early as well, cluing drove me crazy...
DeleteYup. A duke is a fist. Awful clue.
DeleteI had to look, and sadly cuddle puddle is a thing.
ReplyDeleteFrom the web-What happens in a cuddle puddle? These non-sexual events, where people get together to cozy up next to each other, have grown in popularity year after year. You can now even hire a “professional snuggler” on demand on your smartphone.
non-sexual my A**.
Anyway here's JERRY'S TAKE
Challenge for me, as I struggled to get a foothold in the middle. Just one of those “not on my wavelength” type of puzzles.
ReplyDeleteThought the long answers were great once I got enough crosses to figure them out, but there were many minutes of blank staring especially with some of the harder clued short fill.
Really did not like this one. It was very frustrating with so many dead ends that were either proper nouns (ELI, GRU, ALSTON, etc) or unecessarily "clever" wordplay, often including abbreviations, so also not really guessable (RES for the telephone number is terrible, terrible, terrible; ADA and STA).
ReplyDeleteTo the constructors: Boys, you are not as witty as you think you are.
Like TrudyJ @4:51, I'm still unclear on PAW. I'm pretty sure I'm going to find the explanation annoying.
Not totes = KINDA??
ReplyDelete@sf27Shirley
Deletetotes as in totally
@joaquin -- Hah!
ReplyDeleteHow do I know this puzzle was original? This was the 966th appearance OLE in the NYT puzzle, and never – never! – did it have a clue like [Fan belt?]. Brilliant and uber-creative. Two other scary good clues, IMO, were [Lacking zip?] for ENTIRE and [What “chicken” and “egg” are examples of] for SALADS. Note that all three clues turn a very ordinary word into a special event. One of crossword’s lovely moments.
I went from practically all white after my first pass to practically all white plus a couple of answers and a couple of guesses. Then it was getting an answer from a filled-in box followed by a sudden mini splat – then wait. Soon, it would happen again in another area. And on and on it went.
I tried and stuck with CUDDLE NOODLE for a while and absolutely rationalized that answer, visualizing the noodle of people! I loved SWAN SONG at the end. I loved CAN I GET AN AMEN, especially after I parsed it for a long time as CAN I GET A NAME and couldn’t figure out the last letter.
Above all, I loved the overall difficulty, the hill to climb, the mounting victories along the way. Saturday, thy name is today’s puzzle. A magnificent gauntlet, Ashton and James (Mr. Mulhern, who we haven’s seen in almost six years!). High praise and much gratitude!
Good solid workout, though farntoo much colloquial speech for my tastes.
ReplyDeleteGoogling CUDDLE PUDDLE post-solve yields an interesting mix of very cute images and very disturbing images.
I like the symmetry of CHEM LAB and BIOFUEL, and the symmetrical semordnilap RAIL and LIAR.
Just not enough things of interest to keep up the enjoyment level on this one. When I keep bumping into entries like DIRNDL, FEN, ANTIGONE, STA, ILYA . . . where I am like “ok, I guess that could be a word, or a person or whatever”, there is just not enough to hold my interest.
ReplyDeleteIt’s been a while since I can recall a clue that fell as flat as “Ones making the rounds?” For BEERS - yes, ha ha I get it (not). And yes, somebody around the age of 14 probably said totes once or twice about 10 years ago - just because it is technically acceptable doesn’t mean it is desirable to include in your puzzle, especially when the snooze factor is already through the roof.
That SE section is just brutal with the bust/sculptor dude along with something from Ravel crossing the horrendously clued STA - how’s that for some witty wordplay in the Times puzzle on a Saturday ? Wait, you say you have come to expect that from the NYT (unfortunately, so have I).
Pretty much what Rex said. A few gimmes made it less than difficult - but nothing really popped for me. Some strained cluing - DOT ORG is rough. Not sure on the clue for CAN I GET AN AMEN. Backed into ELI, ALSTON and GRU. Little DIRNDLs and petticoats where have you gone?
ReplyDeleteHaven’t thought of MR SANDMAN in years but this is the second time we’ve seen it recently. Do you need to be boosted to join the CUDDLE PUDDLE - I’ll pass on the group hug thanks.
Before REM there was the great PYLON
I’ll take Matt Sewell’s Stumper over this one today.
In the not on my wavelength camp. Maybe if I waited for coffee...
ReplyDeletePosted last night but I guess too late so here’s from Friday’s excellent puzz:
ReplyDeleteDid anybody have brIs for 57 down: short cut?!!
Remembering auto courts which, before the interstate highway system and modern motels, were a familiar sight along our nation's roads. Mum and pop operations, each was a row of small units each separated by a carport. Okanager's photo yesterday is a wonderful example. My family travelled that Fraser canyon road every summer in our 1938 Buick with me and my sister in the rumble seat. The road was so narrow back then in the 40's that sometimes Dad had to back up to a wide place to let an oncoming car pass!
Alice
@Alicat 8:17 re yesterday. Hand up for bris my first pass through and I thought it was a bonzer clue! Then I wanted 56A to be IBIS (even though I knew better just because I really wanted bris to be the answer.
DeleteI had never heard of a CUDDLE HUDDLE so I decided to google the activity and here is what I found: It is a crock of new-age BS. Check it out:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDPwZf0_oLg
I had a strange experience with this one in that it really looked like I was going to be stuck with about a quarter of the puzzle done after 15 minutes of flailing. Then I saw the MRSANDMAN clue, which I had overlooked, and solved the whole thing in a few more minutes.
ReplyDeleteLearned BIRNDL from Spelling Bee.
ReplyDeleteLoved the 'Marmaduke clue!
Unknowns: NON PARIEL; CUDDLE PUDDLE; ELI; in addition to the previously mentioned SNARE; ALSTON; STA.
'Ostinato' (SNARE):
"In music, an ostinato (Italian: [ostiˈnaːto]; derived from Italian word for 'stubborn', compare English 'obstinate') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include both classical compositions, such as Ravel's Boléro and the Carol of the Bells, and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love" (1977), Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn (1959), The Who's "Baba O'Riley" (1971), and The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (1997).[1][2][3]" ( Wikipedia)
NON PARIEL:
• having no match or equal; unrivaled
'Bank' STA:
"Bank and Monument are interlinked London Underground and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) stations that form a public transport complex spanning the length of King William Street in the City of London. Bank station, named after the Bank of England, opened in 1900 at Bank junction and is served by the Central, Northern and Waterloo & City lines,[14] and the DLR. Monument station, named after the Monument to the Great Fire of London, opened in 1884 and is served by the District and Circle lines. The stations have been linked as an interchange since 1933.[14]" (Wikipedia)
MR. SANDMAN ~ Chet Atkins
___
td npg: 42:28 (found both SB & Wordle were very tough today)
Wordle 280 4/6*
⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
ReplyDeleteI'm probably the 27th to reply to @sf27shirley, but here goes: "totes" is "Hello fellow youths" slang for "totally" so if an item is "not totes" {something} it's "not totally" {something}" or "kinda" {something}. Took me a while too.
Oops … NONPAREIL not non pariel (my bad) :(
ReplyDelete___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
NONPAREIL was nonsense to me, I've never seen this word in my life. Just a real problem area there, with some tricky crosses including KINDA and BRANDISH.
ReplyDeleteDidn’t like the puzzle much - too cutesy for me, particularly CUDDLE PUDDLE. I continue to dislike @Rex’s suggestion to ban words from puzzles. If you ban leper, what’s next? Cancer? Refugee?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, that’s not the reason I’m posting. I knew DIRNDL from the Malvina Reynolds song “Where are you going” - “little dirndls and petticoats where have you gone.” The song is worth a listen if you have a few minutes to find it on YouTube.
— Jim C. in Maine
If, like me, you saw "Wave one's arms?" and immediately wrote in BRANDISH, repeat after me: "I've been doing crossword puzzles for too darned long." You know what I'm talking about, right? CAN I GET AN AMEN?
ReplyDeleteThis, btw, is the only way I'd use "CAN I GET AN AMEN?" If I'm asking "Who's with me?", I'd say: "CAN I COUNT ON YOU ALL?" Or "ANY VOLUNTEERS?" Or even "WHERE'S MY BACKUP?" Your "Amen", I'm afraid, really doesn't do me much good at all.
So I'm singing those two "Pagliaci/Liberace" lines from long ago, every note perfect, only I can't remember what damned song it's from. (This is what a really fuzzy memory is like.) Gotta get back to the first two lines, gotta get back there. Keep singing, Nancy-- it'll come to you, surely it will come to you...
Oh, yes!!!!!! MR. SANDMAN!!!!!
Aand I put the cart before the horse at LOOIE, writing in PLEBE instead. Oh, yes, PLEBE is when you enter West Point, not when you graduate. So dumb of me.
I found this puzzle a challenge. I could have done without the too-cutesy clue for PAW and the "I bet this expression will be 'out' by the time it's really 'in'" CUDDLE PUDDLE. (I had to type in "CUDDLEP" before Google would even deign to give it to me.) But other than those nits, I enjoyed it.
Didn’t like the puzzle much - too cutesy for me, particularly CUDDLE PUDDLE. I continue to dislike @Rex’s suggestion to ban words from puzzles. If you ban leper, what’s next? Cancer? Refugee?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, that’s not the reason I’m posting. I knew DIRNDL from the Malvina Reynolds song “Where are you going” - “little dirndls and petticoats where have you gone.” The song is worth a listen if you have a few minutes to find it on YouTube.
— Jim C. in Maine
Oops! The song title is actually “Turn around.”
@sf27sirley: "totes" is slang for totally, so not totes = not totally = kinda [as slang for kind of].
ReplyDeleteNeither easy nor medium for me. I’d say more medium-challenging, given that my time was 5:30 slower than my Saturday average. However, it’s nice to be challenged.
ReplyDeleteJust skimming the clues for a place to start, and somehow I missed the MRSANDMAN lyrics entirely, which would have been a gimme and a solid foothold, if only, if only. Instead I saw the last down as Te-___, three letters, supposed it had to be Te AMO, and started there. Filled from bottom to top, a little like pouring molasses into a cup, but eventually filled in the whole thing, so yay.
ReplyDeleteHand up for the HUDDLE/PUDDLE confusion. Got NONPAREIL from the L but I always think of that as those little chocolate candies with the white dots on top that I can never pronounce.
DIRNDL needs to buy a vowel, and as for you @Joaquin, nice one!
FEN thanks to Fenway, "America's most beloved ballpark", as they style themselves. Also the name of one of my cats.
Wouldn't know "totes" without having done crosswords, but it's one of those terms that bothers me at least as much as LEPER bothers OFL.
I thought this was a Saturday that really knows how to Saturday. Nicely done, AA and JM. Artfully Amusing and Just Might be my favorite Saturday in some time. Thanks for all the fun.
Aww -- You beat me to it, @Sun Volt (7:57). I'd already highlighted the link and was about to paste it here myself. And like you, I had no problem with DIRNDL -- knowing the song well from my long ago past. I remember it perfectly -- every word, every note. It's a lovely song, everyone. Go listen to Sun Volt's link.
ReplyDelete"Easy-Medium??" You gotta be kidding me. Haven't had this much trouble breaking more than one quarter of the puzzle in a long time. Southwest finally filled after great struggle, but then: nuthin. Stranded. No links.
ReplyDeleteThank you MRSANDMAN and CHEMLAB for the toeholds. I'm starting to get a handle on Saturdays!!
ReplyDeleteCUDDLEPUDDLE almost stopped me, combined with CANIGETANAMEN.
I had MEN ending that phrase, and leTLOOSE starting me off wrong. I can’t imagine CUDDLEPUDDLE and I don’t think I want to.
I was slow deciphering some clues. “Duke” eluded me until I got here.
Does “Lacking zip” refer to being uncompressed?
Not sure why the lanai is seen on the west. I imagine folks orient their patios however they choose. So I take it LANAI is another island? I need to get out more.
Of course I've heard Bolero but I kept thinking of Don Quixote. Wouldn’t you think Ostinato is a horse?
@Southside - you nailed it.
ReplyDeleteCounts as hard for me (21:14), partly due to some REALLY oblique cluing. "Fan belt?" for OLE f'instance. "Fan" suggested OLE just bc that's what I think any time I see a three-letter with a (possible) sports reference, but belt? Wut? You can belt out a song, but do people "belt" an exclamation? Kinda thing that keeps you from entering a fill because you're thinking there must be an answer that makes sense of it. Nope. Likewise PAW for Marmaduke's "Duke." Duke is a fist...? As in "Put up yer dukes," and Marmaduke is a dog ...? Even after getting the fill I couldn't see it until someone pointed it out here. And it wasn't "Oh how clever," but "Seriously, what?" Those were the low points, but I loved "Wave ones arms" for BRANDISH, "Maker of some replacement heads" for ORALB, a few others where the pay off for the oblique clue was worth the nickel.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I get rex's objection to LEPER as "outcast." It's a common idiom, and there seem to me to be some pretty complex connotations around it having to do with social injustice and ritual purity laws.
Jim C (8:57) -- I don't know who your singer is, but Turn Around is "the Harry Belafonte song". He was the original singer and I'm pretty sure he wrote it too.
ReplyDeleteAlso -- I forgot to ask: Has anyone explained ENTIRE for "Lacking zip?"? I don't get it.
Lacking nothing, so all of it - or ENTIRE. Can’t decide if that clue was brilliant or trying too hard to be clever.
DeleteThis was tough for me. For the longest while the only answer in my grid was DIRNDL. The SW was my way in and I worked around counterclockwise. Unlike @Nancy, BRANDISH was my last entry.
ReplyDeleteCUDDLEPUDDLE makes my flesh crawl. Strangely I didn’t mind my first try CUDDLEhUDDLE as much, but I refuse to believe that is really a thing.
The cluing was inventive. I loved PAW, but I’m a sucker for dogs. If it weren’t for the long chatty answers, I’d probably still be scratching my head at dinner time.
This was the hardest Saturday I've done in ages. Some of the hold-ups were self-inflicted, especially my LOuIE in the SW. Go ahead and try to parse “Words on a ticket” with __M_Tu_E in place! imMaTurE? PG MaTurE? This was made even more difficult because I had leT LOOSE next to it.
ReplyDeleteAnother tough spot was hUDDLE crossing the outcast othER. L_N__tTANAMEN wasn't screaming anything, let alone CAN I GET AN AMEN. But when I finally noticed 50A should be LOOIE, that let me ADMIT ONE, and all the rest of the non-NW filled in. I was staring at that EIL ending of 4D, wondering what other word besides vEIL had that vowel formation. I was still trying to make “threaten” work for 1A but SLAT was the only sure thing I had in there and I was beginning to doubt that.
And here's where the magic of crosswords comes in - I had a sudden inspiration that 14D could be evOKE with nothing in place there. That totally wrong answer opened ENTIRE, KINDA and solved the kealoa OLE vs, rah question and I finished successfully, but a full 10 minutes over my Saturday average, whew.
Ashton and James, although you succeeded in making me feel feeble-minded, it was still a pleasure, thanks!
Surprised to be the first (I think) to mention the commandment against coveting one’s neighbor’s ASS. A little out there for the NYT. Don’t PAW it either. Especially in the middle of the CUDDLE PUDDLE.
ReplyDeleteOK, moving on. I really liked this because of the clever and challenging cluing. OLE is another case of taking a super-common Xword and finding a clever way to make it fresh (as first noted by @Lewis above). HEN, SALAD and PAW are other examples of making short fill shine. (Agree that RES and ADA didn’t work.)
The SE fell pretty quickly for me, then the SW after some wrestling. Then up through the excellent center stack to take on the NW and finally the super-challenging NE. Mistakes with Kauai and Me too cost me a lot of time there. Seeing Antigone got me through, with the F of FARAD (no idea) and FEN the last to fall.
REAL ORIGINAL, no sarcasm. CAN I GET AN AMEN?
Hardest Saturday for me in a long time. Really oblique cluing.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely on Leper and Cuddle Puddle. I was doing the puzzle thinking, Oh boy, Rex is going to have something to say about these two. “Cuddle Puddle”? Is that a thing? And “Leper” is just mean and unnecessary. I had Loner first too. Oh well, thanks again for making me laugh.
ReplyDelete"SAY NO MORE. Nudge nudge. A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kwh3R0YjuQ
@Wanderlust. Thanks. This is me bashing my head on my tablet.XXX
ReplyDeleteEasy-Impossible here. SW and NE corners yielded easily and I had what looked like some solid anchors in the NW and FARAD sitting there all alone in the middle and just dead stopped with nowhere to go. There are times where you are on that wavelength flow and all the wordplay just falls in place and you breeze through the puzzle and even the obscure collapses under the weight of the crosses. Today was the opposite of that. Looking at - - SANDMAN and literally nothing was coming to mind. That’s how not in sync I was with this puzzle. Or I see through the Fan belt? clue and write in “rah.” Blrrgh. Or seeing the Melville clue and the only thought I have is “Melville is the basis of that Disney movie all the kids love now?” (Which is actually Encanto, Blrrgh and Blrrgh)
ReplyDeleteAnyhoo. Cheated once and then I got N’Sync and finished. Blrrgh. I hate a DNF. I feel like if MR SANDMAN had ever occurred to me I would not have DNFed.
Hand up for the PAW clue being too cute by half as well as pretty dated. The cartoonist died 7 years ago at the age of 91. The dog was an improbable 71 at the time. Old cartoon dog. Old slang for hand (fist really). Parallel hand to PAW. That clue would have been fantastic in 1967.
Speaking of extremely dated, SWAN SONG makes me think of Led Zeppelin.
CUDDLE PUDDLE in reference to pups = cute. In reference to people = please keep it to yourselves.
@albatross shell late yesterday - first, reread what @anon/villager wrote again. He never said it was the best answer. Second, the other anon is either holding a grudge from way back or is a LIAR. Rex’s Twitter feed was pretty sedate yesterday, populated mostly with people who had the same issue with that cross (including one guy who had the right answer for the right reason and took it out because the crossing made more sense to him with the other letter - oof). The only person I saw being trashed was Clarence Thomas and I sort of doubt that he is our anon.
BTW - if you think which is not a word I would put in any puzzle if I could help it is a demand to ban a word you really need to consider that you are reacting to what you think was written, not what was actually written.
ReplyDelete"Easy-Medium"? WTF??
ReplyDeleteIf this was a paid subscription, I'd cancel.
Had segA for FIFA until the bloody end. LonER not LEPER. Looking for a type of shark instead of GATOR. HTtp instead of HTML. Wondering what the alphabetical last entry on Wiki might be. Wrong kind of ticket had me looking at petITion (i.e., traffic citation summons) instead of ADMIT ONE. Misdirections and obscure trivia in every angle.
Was okay with the CUDDLE part, but if I ever so much as hear someone use the phrase CUDDLE PUDDLE, they will be slapped.
After a relatively easy week, what a nightmare finish.
@Nancy (9:50 am)
ReplyDeleteLacking zip = Lacking nothing (where zip is used to mean "nothing.")
If you are lacking nothing, you are complete or ENTIRE (as in a four star hotel rather than in a motel)
I need someone to explain "ASNAP" to me. I can't parse this as "child's play" or anything else. What does it mean?
ReplyDelete“A Snap” like as in easy
DeleteThanks for the explanation, @Wanderlust. And btw, the answer to your question about "Lacking zip" as a clue is definitely "too cute by half" -- just like the clue for PAW.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to be clever and imaginative -- but you also have an obligation to be fair and to provide clues that are not tortured beyond recognition. Lewis, as can be seen from his earlier comment, tends to give these sorts of clues a lot more leeway than I do.
Z,
ReplyDeleteI’m no liar. Rex insulted me on Twitter. That’s a fact. Immutable.
I never claimed the insult was made yesterday.
Reread what I wrote not what you think I wrote. As for your cya of my holding a grudge from way back. I’m not holding a grudge; that’s your projection. Second, you have no idea of the time frame. Where you get way back from is simply something you ginned up from your imagination.
Hated and loved it… can I get an amen? Fantastic. Can someone explain the ADA for letters on a tube? I am not grasping that at all. I wanted TNT at first, then thought of tube as in the London metro… nothing… ADA? Not seeing it…
ReplyDeleteThis was work ! Not an enjoyable experience for me but I finished it, which had a certain satisfaction. Every corner was a struggle and it seemed that it was loaded with proper nouns that had me stymied. Now to read OFL and the gang.
ReplyDelete@TPrez -- "Tube" as in toothpaste tube. ADA as in American Dental Association.
ReplyDeleteAha! Thank you…
DeleteNever heard of CUDDLEPUDDLE.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen RES used in that sense since phone books went out of style. Doctors and lawyers (in the better old days when lawyers didn't advertise) used to have both their office and residential numbers listed in the white pages under their surname. Home numbers were indicated by Res and the business numbers were indicated by Ofc.
I used to live in London. The Bank STA (a kealoa with STN) was one I avoided if at all possible. A complex of multiple stations linked together, where the Waterloo & City, Central, Northern, District and Circle lines meet with the Docklands Light Railway, it's very busy, with long walks between platforms. The District/Circle line platforms are actually the Monument station which interconnects with the Bank station. The complex is currently undergoing expansion and renovation, primarily due to hitting capacity limits from line transfers.
It's similar to the Chatelet-Les Halles complex of the Paris RER & metro, but without an attached shopping mall. There, 3 of the 5 RER lines connect with 5 of the 16 metro lines in one huge warren of tunnels and platforms.
Nothing easy about this one especially the NW, a real PEST and not KINDA but very much so. My first response for 1A was BRANDISH but the ?? made me hesitate. I didn’t get IBM for Watson and I don’t think there’s been a SLAT under a mattress in in about a century. Yes I found CUDDLE PUDDLE not just off-putting but gag worthy. DITTO for the cutesy “not totes” clue.
ReplyDeleteIt had its moments but for me it was a RELIEF to be done.
@Groupie (6:58) thanks for the clip. I always enjoy a good Seinfeld memory.
FH
ReplyDelete65 comments and (unless I missed it, and if so, apologies) nobody noticed the English Professor's grammatical boo-boo? Rex: It was more, "yeah, sure, OK." Ideally, you're slangy stuff hits harder than "yeah, sure, OK."
As for the puzzle: I thought it was on the challenging side. But I finished and enjoyed it, except for CAN I GET AN AMEN! which I've never heard anyone use anywhere. I must not hang out with the hipsters.
Not easy and not fun.
ReplyDeleteWait...Do not covet thy neighbors ...ASS ??? Sister Cleora never brought that up.
ReplyDeleteAlways not covet thy neighbors wife...not ass. But,I suppose,the same thing to some.
Delete@anon 10:53 -- Your often-expressed grievance at Rex and how he *mistreats* you borders on a pathological obsession. You would do well to get off this blog ASAP and find a healthier (for you) way to spend your time.
ReplyDeleteOur usual Saturday trampoline solve bouncing from one corner to the next. Hard to dredge ANTIGONE and GALAPAGOS from long atrophied brain cells formerly used teaching Introduction to Literature classes……having Creon and Voyage TOME by Darwin magically appear without triggering the actual answer is — a CUDDLE PUDDLE of MOTLEY data SEEPS? — frustrating. In a perverse way, I enjoyed this Anderson and Mulhern creation and can forgive them for the MR SANDMAN ear worm that will no doubt resonate.
ReplyDeleteMy husband was a percussionist and our “secret” shorthand for something terminally boring was “like the snare part in Bolero.” Truthfully, though, that continuing ostinato provides such great glue underneath the piece. Like the song with DIRNDL, it’s worth a listen.
ReplyDeleteSNARE along with FLAW saved me in the SE. having disembarked from the tube At Bank STA multiple times, that clue still went right iver my head and is one of the ones that I think just tried a little too hard. I am still scratching my head over ADA. Help, anyone?
I passed through this whole puzzle and had only IBMS, PEST and SNARE. Hooboy! Took me quite a while to get on our constructors’ wavelength(s) this morning. No idea what belonged in 32A. Thought pooDLE at first (because I knee I had heard my husband talk about supercapacitors but forgot things of that ilk not being in my ken (except for crosswords). Ended up having to channel his chi from the beyond to untangle that center mass. I hope never ever to write or even think about a CUDDLE PUDDLE again! Gave me agita just to write it ip there.
This was a very worthy Saturday! @Nancy, I am embarrassed to say that once I woke up and got some some momentum I had to give myself a well deserved “You idiot!” for not seeing BRANDISH at the off. A classic crossword clue.
Had my coffee, had more coffee and then some more and I conquered it. Toughest Saturday in a while. Liked it overall.
@Paul&Kathy (10:45) Agree ASNAP is tough to parse. As nearly as I can figure, its supposed to be A SNAP as in easy - a child could do it.
ReplyDeleteNancy doing a puzzle with a clue involving a song lyric reminds me of the Cheers episode where Cliff goes on Jeopardy and one of the categories is "Beer."
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle exhausted me. I had to fight my way, letter by letter. After a long time, I had everything but the NW and I needed to go to bed. I cheated to get BERLIN, put in RESENT (a little off the clue), IBM (also a little off), finished, and hit the sack.
Of the 68 words, 22 (nearly a third) were either fiendishly indirect or unknown to me. But I loved all the sparkle. Red plus signs all over the place.
I know that Pagliacci doesn't really rhyme with Liberace but it still delights me.
@Paul& Kathy; as in “it’s so easy, it’s A SNAP”. Another one of those tricky/terrible uses of the article “a” or “the”. I HATE THOSE!
ReplyDeleteI caught MRS AND MAN in a CUDDLE PUDDLE recently. When I said “You’re coming with me!” She said LATERMAN, I’m ANTI GONE so SAYNOMORE.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure why 23D is Supercapacitor unit. The FARAD is the unit of capacitance derived from the International System of Units. What is the “Super” doing in the clue?
To those who say they’ve never heard of NONPAREIL: if you’ve ever bought a jar of capers, chances are that NONPAREIL was in large letters below the brand,
I thought this puzzle was primo in both the cluing and the fill, short and long. Thank you very much, Ashton Anderson and James Mulhern.
RES means "restricted" in the context of telephone numbers.
ReplyDelete@Mathgent 12:01 RES also used to distinguish RESidence from BUSiness back when phones attached to cords in walls and folks had “live and work” buildings/houses.
Delete@SunVolt=You finish the Stumper? I just did, but what a struggle.
ReplyDeleteFor those of you who thought today's NYT was tough, try it. Allow yourselves a lot of time. (This is not meant to be a humble brag, this is just sheer relief.)
@egsforbreakfast, I checked the capers in my fridge and you are indeed correct. Which brings to mind the question, are there pareil capers?
ReplyDelete@mathgent (11:54), first sentence: Never saw the episode, but I am nevertheless amused.
ReplyDelete@FH/Anon - 😂🤣😂 - I’ve had autocorrupt “correct” your/you’re so often and have made the same “not paying close enough attention to what I’m typing” mistake myself that it barely even registers. In fact, it took me many precious nanoseconds to even register what mistake you were referring to.
ReplyDelete@Paul & Kathy - It should be A SNAP to explain.
@egs - What is the “Super” doing in the clue? - Mostly just bothering you.
Since a FARAD is a measure of capacitance and a supercapacitor has lots of capacitance the FARAD can be said to be a measure of a supercapacitor’s large capacitance. The real question is what happens when you suddenly have a supercapacitor during a CUDDLE PUDDLE?
NONPAREIL
Eff me, what an annoying pile of OLDEN dad jokes that was. And if I never see or hear the phrase CUDDLEPUDDLE again, it’ll be too soon. Ugh.
ReplyDelete@pabloinnh. Pretty sure FEN answer has nothing to do with baseball stadium.
ReplyDeleteFH
ReplyDelete@Zed: Yes, I missed my calling. I should have been a proof-reader. Most of the time a typo just leaps off the page to me, especially on restaurant menus. I drive my wife & kids nuts. Once, I was asked to proof a book, written by a former ship captain. My prize 'find' was that he said the engine in a large motorboat was a 'Cummings diesel' (it's Cummins). It's a bit like a harmless disease....
As far as I am concerned, it is the Boston Brinks robbery of 1950, and none other, that holds the title of Caper Nonpareil.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I’m always initially a bit bummed out when I struggle to finish a puzzle and I come to the blog and @Rex pronounces it is easy-medium. I really HAVE to get over that.
ReplyDeleteMy adventures in puzzling today were:
- proud to get FIFA and Antigone immediately
-for some reason I read 1a as “waives one’s arms” and spent a lot of time thinking of synonyms for SURRENDER, then moved on and didn’t reread until I CHEATED and looked up MRSANDMAN
-briefly considered whether “the end of Wikipedia” might be ZYBORG…KINDa like a cousin to a cyborg
-had LUS (London Underground System?) for Tube letters, and never thought of a toothpaste tube until the end (and they KNEW that would happen)
So yeah, I cheated today so a DNF but I truly enjoyed the puzzle even though it was above my pay grade!
Thanks @Frantic for the link. I’d never heard of CUDDLEPUDDLE and it ONLY makes sense with respect to baby animal litters!
@pablo 12:01p - had issues in the center block but basically worked bottom up and after nearly an hour got it and learned ‘40s Motorette. It was a struggle.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle was most fun because of my errors:
ReplyDeleteFor 27D I had FOTUS crossing FAM further crossing REMINDS and could not find the spot (one spot, mind) where I'd gone wrong.
Let me explain.
fOTUS, of course, is Father of the United States.
fAm, well, I know Marmaduke is a comic strip dog, so that must be the name of his human, which makes him fAmily.
And REmINDS, that's when you describe the beginning of a shared adventure to a friend so they'll remember.
So amusingly wrong. Am still smiling, so I thank Ashton and James for the unintended hilarity.
I will SAY NO MORE, except that my favorite correct answer is SALADS for 37A.
But wait...there's also the classic song MRS AND MAN...
Not easy-medium for me...really hard.
ReplyDeleteMade many of the mistakes already mentioned plus SPF before ADA. Had to use "reveal" a couple of times to finish.
Now, on to the Stumper.
@Anonytmoujs/FH - When you post, please just use the Name/URL option. All you have to do then is type FH as your name, and no one will confuse you with the other Anonymice. Not that they would confuse you with the troll anonymous, as you can both type and spell. Also, we don't correct grammar around here, unless it's your child or former student posting.
ReplyDelete@Anon 12:33 You do know FENWAY park was named such because it was built in "The Fens", a marsh in Boston, right? It got the name because it was built in a fen. So, unless in your preferred dictionary, ever so much better than Webster's, Nothing is synonymous with Everything, I think you're wrong there.
I found this puzzle to be a bear. Not a pleasant bear like Boo Boo, but a mean nasty bear like the one that ate the guy in Alaska who though he could make friends with grizzlies but ended up being eaten by one. Wait, that bear wasn't either mean or nasty, he was a morally neutral grizzly bear, just taking sustenance where he could find it. Anyway, I was intellectual sustenance for the constructor last night. I hope he had heartburn all night.
Quick question from yesterday - how you personally insult an anonymous troll? Don't you have to be able to actually identify someone to personally insult them? Discuss
More and more it seems like constructors are trying to outdo each other when it comes to seeing how obtuse they can be with their clues. Not easy, not medium, just a total shite sandwich.
ReplyDeleteA clever clue elicits an "AHA". Fun.
ReplyDeleteA trick clue elicits a WTF even after you "get" it. Not fun.
This puzzle is loaded with the latter.
@Pete-Thanks for the Fenway tutorial, you beat me to it. My cat feels better too.
ReplyDelete@Pete. Well, I'm an idiot, acting like I knew something I had no clue about. Thanks for educating me about Fenway Park. Also, I liked your reference to Grizzly Man, a very interesting story.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is 21 Across ("Not totes" = KINDA)?? Is "Kinda" the brand name of a shoulder bag of some kind?
ReplyDeleteMFCTM.
ReplyDeleteJoaquin (12:06)
TJS (11:22)
.
FH
ReplyDeleteMetroGnome: 'Totes' is a modern idiom meaning 'totally'. Hence "Not totally" is "KINDA"
Pete (1:01 pm)
ReplyDeleteAlmost right.
Fenway Park baseball stadium was named after the neighborhood in which it was built, a neighborhood that took its name from the public park called The Fenway built around the fens, and designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.
So the progression here begins with the fens wetland (made by God), around which which was designed and built the public park "The Fenway" (by Olmstead in 1890), which eventually gave the name Fenway to the newly emeriging residential/cultural/university neighborhood that had recently been annexed from the town of Brookline (by popular use circa 1900), which then gave the name Fenway Park to the new baseball stadium (by John Taylor who purchased the land and built the park in 1911).
But the stadium, itself, was not actually built in or on the fens; it is, rather, a third generation namesake of the fens, in the neighborhood that came to be know as Fenway.
MR SANDMAN brought me a nightmare. I asked for two lips like roses and clover but I only got Mrs. DOTORG.
ReplyDeleteI fell down an abyss several times. I still grapple with Mr. Phonetics. He wants to take the lead....I want to take the lead. He always wins despite stepping on my toes.
Let's see: How do I spell NONPAREIL? How do the Alpine folks dance with a DIRNDLE? Why in the world is ADA tube letters? I actually had WYS (watch your step)...Wrongy dongy. Is GRU short for gruesome? Who died and made the FINN's the happiest people on this earth? Is FARAD some sort of rich Arab? and holy hot tamales, should I know Elijah's name in Slavic? ILYA? Who dat?
So I went back to filling my deviled eggs, took a little bite, added some paprika and the taste was good. I was told to add some CUDDLE PUDDLE but the store didn't have any. I wish I could grow 3,000 teeth in my lifetime.
Poquito a poco, this difficult menu was coming to some sort of fruition. I smiled here, I smiled there, but in the end, my BIO FUEL did need something to ooze from the CHEM LAB.
I did finish. I did call on some help, I did a few fandango's.... so All Is Well That Ends Well.
I will read everyone when I come back from delivering my "Eggs" to the homeless and hungry folks that keep materializing here in California. Everyone likes them and that makes me happy. What makes me sad is that a carton of a dozen fresh eggs now cost almost 6 dollars. The chicken that lays them is the same price as filet mignon.
I'm hoping that my neighbor won't be coveting my ASS anytime soon.
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s ASS. I missed this one in religious class.
ReplyDeleteBottom half was average Sat. NE corner might have been Death Valley. After finishing NONPAREIL by default would be eternally indebted to someone to explain it to me. Watson and others = IBMS. What are IBMS? IBM is a single company. They don’t make pcs any more so what are IBMS? Watson is a technology licensed by a single company known as IBM.
ReplyDelete“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” - YTMV - But I do love the biblical justification for having ASS in the puzzle.
ReplyDelete@FH - Once spent a hilarious 25 minutes driving down 28th St. in Grand Rapids counting all the apostrophe misuse. It was one of those "once you start to see them you can't stop" moments. But, yeah, what @Pete said, we're mostly a grammar correction free zone unless a mistake makes the meaning funny.
A Polaroid SX-70 is not a SLR (single less reflex) camera.
ReplyDeleteApologies, the SX-70 is indeed the first "instant"SLR.
ReplyDeleteHuh. Only five ?-marker clues. Seemed like a slew more of em.
ReplyDeletestaff weeject picks: ADA [subtle, non-?-marker clue]. And OLE [weird ?-marker clue].
Knew MRSANDMAN pretty darn fast, which helped. Did not know CUDDLEPUDDLE, but knew all its crossers, except for NONPAREIL.
fave stuff: MRSANDMAN & LATERMAN. ALLIGATOR. CUTLOOSE. SAYNOMORE. SEEDOUBLE [woulda been a great opportunity for a blurred clue… sooo… dibs, for a runtpuz theme]. BIOFUEL.
Great FriNite Schlockfest movies last night. Bro-in-law brought the schlock classic "Hellraiser", which M&A had never seen before. Scary stuff. M&A chipped in "Attack from Beneath", which was so schlocky it was funny. Had lotsa cool sea monsters, but alas no cuddle puddles. But, I digress …
Rough time gettin outta the chute with this rodeo, at our house. The clues were buckin harder than snot. Finally splatzed in DUDE & IBMS, then SLAT & HEN, which then helped get some of the NW longball answers goin. But then had nanoseconds puddlin up, wantin to smoothly exit out of the NW, due to NONPAREIL and the ultra-feisty (but fun) ENTIRE clue. KINDA clue and that mysterious DIRNDL Alpine gearshift sequence also stunk up the precious nanosecond pool, desperately tryin to escape from there.
In other news: Go, St. Peters! Underdog team [15-seed] is sendin all its opponents' NCAA tourney hopes off to the pearly gates. Like we hope Ukraine will soon do to #1-seedy Putin.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Anderson & Mulhern dudes. Some of them extra-tricky clues were no doubt dreamed up by yer committee, so congratz on pylon it on.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
Ain't that great? My son lives in Jersey City and the city is going crazy.
Delete@Anonymous (2:26 pm)
ReplyDeleteActually it was an SLR - the first of a whole line that Polaroid marketed in the 1970's and 1980's.
I know this because James Garner and Mariette Hartley told me so - and they would never lie.
FH
ReplyDelete@Zed and @Pete: I'm happy not to correct posters' grammar and spelling on this site. Indeed, I never have, that I can recall. But Rex is in a different category. His comments on each puzzle are routinely highly critical, part of which is fine because a) it's his site and b) he is regarded as a legitimate crossword authority, which is why many people visit his site, even those who, like me, disdain many of his non-crossword opinions. But, as we all know, his tone can be high-handed and even imperious, often beyond the point of idiosyncrasy to downright meanness. And, he is an English professor.....so
Maybe it's partly because I'm real tired today, but this puzzle was so hard for me! I couldn't solve it without some reveal squares.
ReplyDeleteMy first entry was 23D FARAD, eponym of physicist Michael FARADay. In electronics capacitors are usually very small and are measured in microFARADs. So a capacitor that had just one FARAD would be huge (hi egs @12:00 PM); you could say it's a "Supercapacitor".
ReplyDeleteThought I had read everything Herman Melville had ever written but didn't recall 31D "Setting for Melville's 'The Encantadas'". Had to wait for crossings to fill in GALAPAGOS. MY absolute favorite Melville opus is TYPEE, which used to appear in crossword grids fairly often. It is the spellbinding archetype of an exotic South Seas Island castaway adventure and the work that made Melville popular before MOBY DICK.
36A RES has appeared 713 times (!) in a NYTXW over the years, 258 of those during the Shortz era (per xwordinfo.com). It commonly gets clued for its Latin meaning of "thing/s" as used in phrases like "In media ___" or "___ publica". The plural ablative declension of RES is REBUS meaning by way of or with things. N.B.: REBUS is already plural.
@MetroGnome…Thanks for the laugh on your post about “totes.” Hey…I had plenty of elder millenial/young GenX friends at work so learned “totes” that way and I may have learned it the hard way. My daughter is an elder millenial but she totes doesn’t say totes for totally.
ReplyDelete@GILL I… if you saw my post above you will see that I thought about Tube as the London Underground. Those diabolically EVIL constructors (JK) were referring to a TUBE of toothpaste which is ADA approved. As usual, I enjoyed the rest of your post, ie Mrs DOTORG…[see my ZYBORG reference…END of Wikipedia (Z)]
All the waitresses wore dirndles at Swiss Trudy's Alpine Village in Nanuet N.Y. and
ReplyDeleteWere made by Trudy, the emcee, yodeling and driving force of the cabaret. And yup she was my Mom.
@Nancy - Belafonte’s version is the one I remember as well. Nanci Griffith did a nice cover of it and I’m sure there’s been others. Maybe Joe D has more details in his vast musical database.
ReplyDelete@mathgent - Always enjoy your comments. Many thanks for the props; I appreciate 'em!
ReplyDeleteOK...I'm back and my ASS is intact.
ReplyDeleteThere have been at least three of us asking why ADA (American Disability Act?) are tube letters...
Can we get off of grammar (he's old and tired) and explain....gracias in advance.
I'm surprised that the clue for ASS has drawn the comments it has.
ReplyDeleteExodus 20:17 as traditionally rendered in English (e.g. King James, Revised Standard Version, Douay) commands us to not covet that which belongs to our neighbor, including the neighbor's ox or ass...a formulation that was thus super-familiar to practically everyone in the English-speaking world from time out of mind until approximately last Tuesday.
More contemporary translations will often use "donkey" in place of "ass", true...which I wouldn't expect to have thrown very many people off or made the clue seem especially puckish or out-there...but perhaps it did.
Whether one is a religious believer or not (and regardless of one's general opinion of the soundness of the KJV translarion in particular in light of modern scholarship), familiarity with such classic Biblical language is absolutely foundational to fully understanding and appreciating centuries' worth of literature and rhetoric (and all manner of art, and moral philosophy, and so much else). I would commend bolstering one's knowledge of it to just about anyone.
@pete - I think the bear was determined to have a mental illness; could probably plead insanity.
ReplyDelete@CDilly52: does your percussionist husband prefer to play the other 95%of the rep where he counts rests for hundreds of measures? If he enjoys xwords, he could finish a mid week puzzle during most symphonies. Easier to get swat with in a pit, ask me how I know…
@M&A, I agree "Hellraiser" is a hair-raising movie. I saw it back when it was in the theaters in the '80s. My date chose it as the movie to see because he saw the black leather on the figures on the poster, didn't notice the needles sticking out and thought it was a biker flick. Gah.
ReplyDeletePer the Stumper (no spoilers) - I must have gotten smarter during the day; after doing the NYTimes Saturday puzzle, a few Runt puzzles, and the Boswords Spring League puzzle of the week (don't ask), I decided to tackle the Stumper. It took a mere 7 minutes longer than today's NYTimes, i.e. 40 minutes total. No cheats today! That's a win in my book.
ADA = American Dental ASSociation, hence toothpaste TUBE
ReplyDeleteAnonymous @3:08 -- Well said.
ReplyDeleteADA = American Dental Association -- letters on a tube of toothpaste.
ReplyDeleteAhhh @Bezzer 3:25, @Anony 4:20 and @Norm 4:28. So my final answer is GADZOOKS...That is plain awful.
ReplyDeleteI also will toss in some KINDA SMOKE into the SALADS of DOTORGS. Will Watson turn me blue?
I had "_lat" for "something found under a mattress", so I put down "flat" thinking that was a cute answer. Anything under a mattress would get pretty flat after a while. But, of course, "f" didn't fit at some point, and then "slat" was clearly the right answer (at least, if you are talking about a futon and not a mattress on a foundation).
ReplyDeleteToo hard
ReplyDeleteA FARAD is an unusual sized unit.
ReplyDeleteA newton, a joule, a gauss - they are all reasonably small. But a farad is humungous.
The Back Bay area of Boston was originally mostly a swamp known as the Back Bay Fens, until it got filled in, some time between the Revolution and the building of Fenway Park.
At the time of the Revolution, if you left Boston, you had to pass through a narrow isthmus, with the Back Bay Fens on your right and other swamps on your left.
I refuse to accept that DIRNDL is an actual word. The letter combination rndl had me searching for far too long for a mistake in my crosses. (My head is sore from banging it on my keyboard.) If in fact DIRNDL does exist, the word should be banned forever and removed from all dictionaries including the OED.
ReplyDeleteThis was hell, the hardest in months, and only finishable with the help of Google — multiple times.
ReplyDeleteEasy-Medium in that it wasn't the 1942 first NYTXW, but if you can go through all the acrosses with only one or two tentative entries, that's not going to be an "easy" puzzle. I got there, but only after what I would call some "challenges." Things like DUDE and LATERMAN, which initially could have been almost anything, didn't help. Whine whine, streak unsullied anyway.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of CUDDLE PUDDLE and I hope I never do again. Never heard the expression CAN I GET AN AMEN, and found it pretty interesting. Lowed the PAW clue. Lots of clever/challenging wordplay clues — Fan belt, Lacking zip, many others. Lots of dead ends that I eventually was able to chip away at, with many moments crossing between a groan and a AHA.
ReplyDeleteHelp! Bolero and Mr. Sandman have been duking it out in my head all day for earworm supremacy. And now Turn Around has joined the fray. A friend of mine who’s a singer used to include Turn Around in one of her sets. She changed some of the lyrics to the second verse, always apologizing onstage to Harry and his co-writers when she introduced the song. Among other things, she ditched DIRNDLs.
ReplyDeleteOriginal:
Where are you going, my little one, little one
DIRNDLs and petticoats, where have you gone
Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown
Turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.
Her version:
Where are you going, my little one, little one
Toe-shoes and soccer balls, where have you gone
Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown
Turn around and you’re a woman with dreams of your own.
Like many, I found the puzzle to be tough. I battled through three-quarters of it, and then spent just as much time on the SE quadrant as I had on the rest. I made a bunch of mistakes along the way, the funniest of which was CAN I GET ANy MEN! Apparently, I thought “Who’s with me?” suggested Henry V rallying the troops at Agincourt or Parisian revolutionaries about to storm the Bastille. That Y turned the first part of GALAPAGOS into something unrecognizable, but I don’t know “The Encantadas” so I decided to have faith that the word would eventually transform into a reasonable place name.
I had CUDDLE hUDDLE at one point, too, and arched an eyebrow at LEhER as the cross. Was Tom LEhER an outcast of sorts, I wondered, misremembering the name of that writer of satirical songs (Tom Lehrer). And for “The end of Wikipedia?” I found myself with DO___G, and thought don’t tell me this is going to be yet another highly suspect spelling of “durag” – and what would that have to do with Wikipedia anyway? It was getting late and like Cinderella’s coach, my brain turns into a pumpkin at midnight. But I thought back fondly to my long-ago trip to BERLIN, and how I spent a day wandering about in heaven-on-earth on Museum Island.
I was just on Rex’s Twitter feed where he declared “graffiti is good actually”.
ReplyDeleteAnybody have his address handy? You know, save me the trouble of going to the archives.Thanks in advance.
I suppose if people like crap clues like the duke one, and totes, and zip, etc., that's what we'll keep getting. Too bad for the rest of us.
ReplyDelete@FH - Yeah. You did it pretty gently. Rex does this without a copy-editor so I don’t think much about it. Typos happen.
ReplyDeleteThis graffiti is pretty good. Care to take the position that Banksy isn’t good?
Reminds me of when I was a school principal. We had a retaining wall that was a constant graffiti target. After the district painted it again I got my Art Teacher to have a class paint a mural on it. It stopped the ugly graffiti from reappearing but didn’t stop one of our neighbors from complaining to central office about not wanting to live in the ghetto. I assume @6:06 is related to that neighbor.
Maybe the biggest slog for me in like the last four years of Saturday puzzles. The NW was just not gonna happen for me.
ReplyDeleteThank you to those who mentioned today's Saturday Stumper. Good one!
ReplyDeleteYou miss the point Z.
ReplyDeleteRex was praising something that defaced someone else’s property.
I very much doubt he’d feel,graffiti was cool if it was practiced on his house.
Or, how about you zed?I’m happy to pay you a visit and treat you to some art. How about it? You’re broad minded, right?
@Barbara S…lol on the ear worms! Mr. Sandman won out for me, even though I had to cheat to get it! I’m old enough to know it…but all I remember on lyrics is “Mr. Sandman, dream me a dream…blah blah…I’ve ever seen.” Before my time (just turned 67) but it has been featured in a lot of period movies I think.
ReplyDelete@Zed
ReplyDeletePlease tell Shortz that I'm getting tired of alerting you about tomorrow's puzzle.
I only got to the puz late today because I was determined to go for a walk. Listened to BBC podcast "In Our time." This episode dealt with Sophocles's ANTIGONE. Guess which clue got answered first !
ReplyDeleteIf you feel it necessary to point out a typo, or a grammatical mistake in Rex's post, or to tell him he's wrong, or to tell him he's an ass, feel free to use his email, which he has displayed prominently on the web page. That's if it's really important to you to have it, or him, corrected. Otherwise you're just publicly shaming him for your own amusement. You know, you're being pathetic.
ReplyDeletethe FARAD was easy to define in simple numbers, but turned out to be far more capacitance then 99.44% of real world circuits could use. off the top of my tin foil hat, only radio/tv transmitters may be.
ReplyDelete"One farad is defined as the capacitance across which, when charged with one coulomb, there is a potential difference of one volt."
-- the wiki
see, so just two 1's in the definition. what could be easier??? but a coulomb is a LOT of oomph.
@JB
ReplyDeleteAs pointed out in numerous posts today, ADA stands for American Dental Association (toothpaste tube).
Easy-medium my ASS!!!!! Cryptic clues, obscure answers. And is it just me, but I am not a fan of the colloquialisms - the "" or ? clues for 'common language' phrases? I get it after I see the answer sometimes, but I can come up with numerous phrases that can answer the common phrase clues, but the answers could vary regionally, sociologically, etc. so there is not a 1:1 answer for these clues as there is for standard clues. I understand the trend to include common phrase answers in the puzzles vs the old crosswordese, but since its so non-standard and the cluing is so general, these can become a new term category of their own eventually (i.e., Natick, Kealoa) where there are multiple possibilities for one clue.
ReplyDelete@LateSolver (9:07) -- I agree with you completely on vague phrases that can be converted to absolutely anything at all -- even phrases that no one has said ever. I propose a contest: We all try to come up with a term for this strange and new phenomenon -- a term as apt as "Natick" and "kealoa". The winner gets...Oh, I don't know. Would @GILL be willing to cook a special dinner?
ReplyDeleteDIRNDL would have come up organically in this context and this context alone in my life:
ReplyDeleteMe: "Hey gramps, what was the hottest song of 1925?"
Gramps: "Shoot; can't remember. DIRNDL..."
So. Here's an example of what you can do with a few coulombs. Not a first-try DIY project.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.instructables.com/The-833-A-Stereo-Amplifier/
More than enough to drive your monitor speakers.
Most enjoyable
ReplyDeleteDon't understand "paw"--is that some sort of slang for a nickname?
ReplyDeleteMarmaduke is a cartoon dog, so I think it's meant to be "duke" as in "put up your dukes," hence duke = paw.
ReplyDeleteI hated this puzzle, worst Sat. in years, and headache worthy. After seeing comments and explanations, I hate it more.
ReplyDeleteI never want to see CUDDLE PUDDLE again. I wish whoever invented that phrase has to imagine a naked Republican coke orgy with Grassley, McConnell and Judge Jeanine whenever they have sex.
CANIGETANAMEN for this cool Saturday puzzle? Many REALORIGINAL entries--and even more so some of those clues! He saved the trickiest ones for...you guessed it: the NW, once again the last to fall.
ReplyDeleteSingle letter writeover: I had CUDDLEhUDDLE, which I think makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a LEhER. Second appearance for MRSANDMAN; must be a helpful letter string for constructors. I've learned to live with ORALB and such. Birdie.
Parred the ninth, completing a front nine with a four-under 32.
I had a CUDDLE hUDDLE. Answers like that cost me a perfect solve, but I'm happy with what I got. My mind (and body, today) are not in top gear today.
ReplyDeleteDiana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Easy medium? Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!! You’re funny Rex! This one was hard in every area for me. Stuff like DIRNDL, ORALB, IBMS, DOTORG, ALSTON, GRU and POTUS were bad enough but the extra-tough cluing for otherwise ordinary words like HEN, OLE and SALADS made it near impossible. Had LonER then I looked up CUDDLEnUDDLE because I thought this was a new trendy word. Alas. It’s LEPER and CUDDLEPUDDLE. So DNF for me. I still do not understand the clue for STA(49A). Saturdays should be tough but they also need to be fair. This one sure was tough but by the end it made me SEEDOUBLE and the end was a mixture of RELIEF and anger. PS - EAGERLY awaiting what Burma does with 51D. LATERMAN!
ReplyDeleteTo D,LIW - I stepped on the same booby trap! Now I don’t feel so bad.
ReplyDeleteEAGERLY & TIMELY
ReplyDeleteSAYNOMORE on how BEER'S brewed,
CUTLOOSE, ADMIT you toke.
CANIGETANAMEN DUDE?
RELIEF with just ONE SMOKE.
--- MR. ILYA "SANDMAN" ALSTON
ReplyDeleteREAL RAIL
Former POTUS, MOTLEY PEST,
rep RESENT the LIAR class,
OLDEN LEPER, FLAWed at best,
pound SAND,MAN, up your ASS.
--- ELI BERLIN
KINDA for “not totes”. Give me a break
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete