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Dog breed whose coat resembles dreadlocks / WED 3-9-22 / Sponsored boys at baptism / Mother of Beyonce and Solange Knowles / Martial artist/actor who played the emperor of China in 2020's "Mulan" / Flowering plants associated with the Augusta National golf course
Wednesday, March 9, 2022
Constructor: Peter Gordon
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: I honestly don't know ... — I think it's apostrophes
Theme answers:
- "LET'S HAVE IT" (16A: "You and I should eat that")
- STUDENT I'D CARD (26A: Kid at a college bar who seems, to me as a bouncer, too young to allow in)
- EGG SHE'LL PAINT (43A: Easter item that the woman is going to decorate)
- "WE'RE WOLVES!" (59A: What the couple dressed in lupine costumes said)
Teri Ann Garr (born December 11, 1944)[ is a retired American actress, comedian, dancer, and singer. She frequently appeared in comedic roles throughout her career, which spans four decades and includes over 140 credits in film and television. Her accolades include an Academy Awardnomination, a BAFTA Award nomination, and a National Board of Review Award. [...] Garr had a supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola's thriller The Conversation(1974) before having her film breakthrough as Inga in Young Frankenstein(1974). In 1977, she was cast in a high-profile role in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Garr continued to appear in various high-profile roles throughout the 1980s, including supporting parts in the comedies Tootsie(1982), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Sandy Lester, and then appearing opposite Michael Keaton the next year in Mr. Mom (1983). She reunited with Coppola the same year, appearing in his musical One from the Heart (1982), followed by a supporting part in Martin Scorsese's black comedy After Hours (1985).
Her quick banter led to Garr being a regular guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman. In the 1990s, she appeared in two films by Robert Altman: The Player (1992) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994), followed by supporting roles in Michael (1996) and Ghost World(2001). She also appeared on television as Phoebe Abbott in three episodes of the sitcom Friends (1997–98). In 2002, Garr announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the symptoms of which had affected her ability to perform beginning in the 1990s.(wikipedia)
• • •
Rest of the grid is very straightforward, except for maybe YAKUTSK. I had IRKUTSK. Is that a place? It is. But I'm not really up for thinking about Russia at the moment, so I'll move on. The hardest part of the grid for me was between PAGERS and MISDO, two hard answers bound together by two *kealoas, both of which I botched (I had LOOS for LAVS, AVERS for AVOWS). The PAGERS clue is clever—I had to get it down to PA-ERS and still it took another few seconds for me to get it. MISDO was not so pleasant to finally get, as no one says MISDO anywhere ever outside of crosswords. Harrumph. I thought 1A: Italian sauce with meat and tomatoes wanted an actual sauce, not a sauce brand, so RAGÙ surprised me ... until I realized that RAGÙ is, in fact, a sauce. It was a sauce before it was a brand. Somehow the brand completely obscured the reality of the actual sauce from me. Brands are pushy that way, I guess. I enjoyed remembering the PULI, which is a silly-looking dog (but still a very good boy, yes he is ...) and I really enjoyed seeing TERI Garr, which is perhaps a strange thing to say as a crossword solver, since she has shown up in the grid a lot over the years, but I just watched "Tootsie" (1982) earlier this week, and not long before that I watched Scorsese's "After Hours" (1985) and a lesser-known Coppola movie called "One From the Heart" (1982), and each time I was reminded what an astonishing talent she is. The subtle gestures and pauses and facial expressions, and the timing. All while remaining believably human. Never over-the-top. Just magnificent.
A genuinely great comedic actress who is completely charming and absorbing every time she's on screen. One of my true movie loves. She rarely got starring roles, but the roles she got ... wow. Sincerely, she is at least as good as Jessica Lange in "Tootsie." She and Lange were both nominated for the Supporting Actress Oscar. But Lange won. And then Hoffman lost to Ben Kingsley (as Gandhi). Comedic actors get no respect. Speaking of Hoffman, he's going to be filming a movie down the street from me this year (yes, in Binghamton, NY), so ... expect to hear about that. Also, if you know Mr. Hoffman, tell him I'd be happy to show him around. Annnnnyway, TERI Garr rules. And if you know her, you can tell her I'll show her around Binghamton too. Any time. The end.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*kealoa = short, common answer that you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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102 comments:
I adore Peter Gordon puzzles. What a treat to wake up to one of his offerings. My take was (surprise, surprise) quite different from Rex’s - the aha moment was gentle and delicious. I imagine some will get their nose out of shape with the themer clues, but not me: they’re worth it if they have me reconsider a common phrase with an apostrophe tossed in, “asking me to look at these answers in different ways, to imagine that they say what we would not expect them to mean.” Very cool. I didn’t have to bother to go back and truly analyze the differences in the themers, how the apostrophes and pronunciation changes worked. Rex does all the heavy lifting, and for that I’m truly grateful. But usually his thorough analyses under a microscope don’t spoil my fun.
Hard to come up with other themers. I’LL REPUTE? WE’LL WATER? Nah.
Although we’ll water reminded me that AZALEAS is in the grid, and man oh man does Mom fret over those all summer. Now that Dad isn’t here with his green thumb, Mom is doing her best to preserve his magnificent legacy out back, and this means bossing me around about what to do. Those AZALEAS. . . how many times was I out there last summer futzing around with the new sprinkler, trying different positions, cussing, sweating, all while Mom watching through the window. You haven’t lived until you’re busy outside and look up to notice someone’s visage slowly materializing in the window. Hella creepy. (Once, I told her I’d go to the carport to figure out how to get her car’s side-view mirrors to retract properly when the car turns off. Said I’d do it on the condition that she didn’t supervise me. When I finished, I got out of the car and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw her peeking around the brick wall of the carport vestibule. Watching.)
GUESS WHO. Sheesh. Those hands are usually a little damp, right? You have to sit there and force a smile while everyone watches to monitor your delight at this fun little game being played at your expense. I wonder if the Maasai warriors do this to each other. Can you imagine?
Loved the clue for PAGERS. Isn’t that just the worst feeling? Walking up to the door and seeing a bajillion people milling around. You know a PAGER is in your immediate future. How dare these &%$holes decide to eat at the same time.
Miracle on Ice – the movie. Ok. So all these college hockey stars are on the US team. Whenever Coach Brooks asks them where they’re from, they answer their city/state. Then when he asks them who they play for, they say their college. Buncha egos. This scene is a spoiler, so watch the movie first, but it shows them being forced to skate sprints on the ice late into the night after a loss. This is, hands down, one of The greatest moments in cinematic history. I get goosebumps and cry every time.
Rex: Eggshell paint refers to the finish. Paint comes in flat, egg shell, semi-gloss, and enamel in order of increasing shininess.
My favorite answer today was 26A: STUDENT ID CARD. It brings back memories of my sophomore year, 60 years ago. At that time I had the all-time world's-worst fake ID. It was my library card. Under my name, I had typed in the words, "Age 49". You'd be amazed at the number of times I successfully used it. Things were more relaxed in those days and as long as someone wasn't causing any trouble, the Berkeley cops would look the other way.
Cool puzzle, despite YAKUTSK being a complete WOE to me.
I'm with Rex on this one, especially that first themer. Very weak. EGG SHELL PAINT: eggshell is a finish that has a light sheen to it, between matte (or flat) and semi-gloss.
Help me.
Help me understand what in the holy hell is happening here on this day.
First of all, switch yesterday and today because yesterday was harder and today is so Tuezzing like a boss.
Just what is this theme?? As far as I can tell, it's really wordy clues to *yawn* vanilla answers. The only one that even comes close to clever was WEREWOLVES as a twist on WE'RE WOLVES. Whee.
Beyond that I see no common thread, no clever humor, and no challenge. I'm willing to blame myself for being a lunkhead if that's the issue.
But, I don't think it is.
Missed opportunity: clue 32A as a plural. Can you imagine more ABBAS running around?
🧠
🎉
Brilliant and fresh. That’s Peter Gordon. He is amazing. This is his 103rd NYT puzzle, yes, but on top of that he has his own indie site (Fireball, and the puzzles there are very tough) for which he creates many puzzles every year. Yet his puzzles remain crisp and alive. Look at today’s theme – phrases whose meanings change completely by the addition of an apostrophe – so inventive! Never been done before. And he came up with four terrific theme answers. (And if @LMS can't come up with good alternative answers, they can't be come up with!)
Not to mention that the grid is peppered with fresh cluing, like [Short johns?] for LAVS and that great play on “waiters” in the PAGER clue. And zingy answers like RIZ BITS and YAKUTSK. Then there’s the K party in the SW.
I did like, especially after yesterday’s International Women’s Day puzzle, the proliferation of women’s names – IRIS, TERI, JUNE, MIA, ALEXA, JAN, and TINA. I also liked seeing the backward SIRI to go with ALEXA, and the lovely PuzzPair© of RAT and YAKS.
Peter, your puzzles never cease to crackle. You are a Crosslandia treasure. Thank you for that, and for this!
I didn't grok the "'" so I dnf'd the theme. However, key thing, I enjoyed the solve. I read Jeff Chen first(because Rex wasn't posted yet)and saw the theme explanation.
Someone suggested the other day that posting one's Wordle results was part of the Wordle craze. So.......
Wordle 263 3/6
⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
I seem to be quite ordinary with an avg. of 3.9, no 1's or 2's and one 6.
@LMS. Regarding your restaurant comment, Yogi Berra might say, "Nobody eats there anymore, it's too crowded".
Question for people who loved the puzzle: Like Rex, I don't understand the first themer, which doesn't seem to be anything without its apostrophe. How is LETS HAVE IT a thing? What are we missing?
Sailed through this one in record time, paying no attention to the theme, then scratched my head over the themers for longer than it took to do the puzzle. Which is actually a fun way to start the day. Well done, Peter Gordon,
The ADULT in ADULT MOVIE is a very different thing from the ADULT in ‘adult education’ or ‘adult diapers’. Now I’m a little worried about the ‘adult game party’ invite from the neighbors across the street.
Very happy that there is not some other slang word ending in HAT, as PULI was a complete unknown.
@Ando.
Goes off on
Yells at
Reads the riot act to
Lets have it
Unfortunately for you and for all of us, the great comedic actor Teri Garr has been incapacitated for some time. She still makes appearances occasionally, but usually in a seated position. As for Dustin Hoffman, he's still a great actor, but for good reason has been partially sidelined by the #metoo movement. As for the puzzle, I agree with you about the theme being all but incomprehensible.
@Kitshef. You nailed LETS. Thank you.
Didn’t get the same aha from the theme that others did - it just seemed contrived. Very interesting that it probably took OFL about as long to discern the theme as it did for the constructor to come up with it. Some of the wind went out of my sails when I saw another of the “county seat” clues, this one from PA but it could have been Timbuktu.
No clue who JETLI is, but his presence is nicely counterbalanced due to the special guest appearance by the lovely Ms. Garr (moment of silent admiration and quiet contemplation, please). I usually get a rash when I see the foreign words and phrases, but will concede that the clue for ARIA (number that’s usually in Italian) is a winner (and YAKUTSK is a cool word as well - sounds like a giant woolly mammoth country - Oh My God - what’s happening to me ?).
I know the NYT is very lax about insisting that the PPP have at least some sort of passing interest/relevance - and I don’t know her from Adam - but is Beyoncé’s mother’s first name really where we want to go ? Heck, I even felt bad when Einstein’s wife (wives ?) got dragged into the fray. How about TINA Turner - she’s plenty good enough for any day of the week.
It sticks out as a complete outlier with the other themers, but I gathered that the answer to 16A, You and I should eat that, is a phonetic play on LET'S HAlVE IT (in other words, let's halve it (split it). But that admittedly involves dropping a letter and producing an awkward pronunciation. But it's the only way I can make sense of it.
@ Barbara S yesterday: Nice catch on the diagonal (HDW) MERMAID. She swam right by me and I didn't notice! In the months of my diagonal obsession, that's the first 7 letter word I've encountered.
Today's HDW could be clued, Source of adolescent angst.
Answer: ZITS (ends with the S at %A)
Rex’s consistency in his broad brush disdain of certain constructors is admirable I guess. Yes - the theme is as simple as that - it’s not very exciting but it's neatly built and clean. Maybe a Monday level toughness?
Side eye to the YAK - YAK cross and MISDO. Liked AZALEAS and GETTYSBURG.
The great Burton Cummings - fitting for a midweek puzzle
Enjoyable Wednesday solve.
I thought this was fine but I could not parse the first one because I thought it had something to do with lettuce (let us).
Thx Peter, lots to chew on; enjoyed the challenge! :)
Med+
Slow, but steady going except in a couple places where I started to wonder if there might be some kind of rebus.
Had trouble parsing the themers.
Played lots of Risk at college; recall Kamchatka, but not YAKUTSK.
Took some time in the post-solve to grok the themers; liked the gimmick!
Fun workout! :)
@pabloinnh 👍 QB yd
___
yd (g: 16:47; pg: 18:47) / W: 3*
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Teri Garr was beautiful in Young Frankenstein …. A hilarious movie.
I understand that it took lots of overtime to complete because the cast was always cracking up, especially at the shenanigans of Marty Feldman (he of the moveable hump )
Did anyone else notice that the Risk game board (at least according to Wikipedia) has the country as YakuRsk not YakuTsk. I actually remembered the other neighboring country of Irkutsk but that didn’t work with the crosses.I confess to resorting to Google when Irkutsk didn’t work.
Overall no a fan of this puzzle. Thought I grokked the theme with WE’RE WOLVES, which I liked a lot, but the others either made little sense or had little punch.
— Jim C. in Maine
If you do meet Dustin Hoffman, be glad you are male so he won’t be groping you.
LETTS HAVE IT: A big problem in their neighborhood
At least part of the reason LETS HAVE IT was hard to reparse back into the base phrase for me is that I want to add in a person, LETS him HAVE IT.
I don’t know what it is, but I enjoy the Fireball more than Gordon’s NYTX offerings. This puzzle is fine, but would not have convinced me to subscribe to his independent offerings. I also do his NewsFlash offerings. Yes, they are heavy on the PPP because they focus on lots of current events, but you know that going in. The newsflash puzzle one of the better ways to keep up on recent deaths. I’d say there’s an average of 1.5 recent deaths per puzzle that I missed hearing about.
@Joaquin - There was a bar in Holland, MI that was as much of a dive bar as that town would have in the late 70’s. My ID clearly said I was underage and yet just showing the bartender my actual ID would get me served. I imagine he and similarly math challenged bartenders is why those little calendars with the actual cut off date were invented.
I knew RAGU was a thing before RAGU™️ because I do crosswords. What Rex said about the brand totally subsuming the source term in American culture. Can you imagine an Italian restaurant in the US describing their sauce as RAGU? I am pretty sure the only place I’ve seen RAGU as not the brand name is xwords.
@LMS - Nice avatar.
I think the original phrase in the first themer is meant to be “lets have it” as in “tells off and then some” or, more literally, as in “allows to take”
But in that case the newly punctuated phrase would be almost exactly as common as the original phrase.
It’s so weird.
This was awful. The first themer does not make sense as compared to the others. How did this puzzle get Okayed?
@Jim C in Maine - Look again. The map has the R spelling but the list of territories below has the T spelling. Of course, the actual spelling is Якутск or Дьокуускай.
One of my favorite Letterman moments was an anniversary show he did with a singing announcer who would announce each segment and guest. When he introduced Teri Garr by song he finished it with "...and she was in the Coppola film that didn't do well" referring to One From the Heart. She (jokingly) shot daggers from her eyes at Dave for that whole interview. What a great guest she was!
Let’s vs. Lets
Let’s is a contraction of let us.
Lets is the third-person singular present tense form of the verb “let.”
Crossword Fiend:
16a. [“You and I should eat that”], LET’S HAVE IT. This one plays on the verb phrase let (someone) have it, and it feels broken because of that missing object.
I was so sure the answer to 15A was going to be Seymour...
LETS HAVE IT kind of ruined it for me. I understood the theme fine; STUDENT I(')D CARD was a banger of an answer; WE(')RE WOLVES made me smile. But I just couldn't parse what unapostrophed phrase LET'S HAVE IT was supposed to be riffing on. The NYT crossword blog suggests "gives the what for", which, to me, requires an object as @Z suggested. I just can't make LETS HAVE IT parse like that without LETS him/her HAVE IT. I don't think it stands alone as a phrase like that. Some commentators suggested that maybe the apostrophe is "HA'VE" for "halve". That's a stretch, and it would also require a second apostrophe on "let's", where all other answers only use one apostrophe.
Unfortunately, that was enough to sour me. I stared at 16A for five minutes after finishing trying to make it parse with the other theme answers.
Anyhow, I fell for the irKUTSK/YAKUTSK kealoa. Played a lot of Risk in my day -- irKUTSK came to me instantly, but over the years YAKUTSK has faded as a Risk region.
@Z - The term "ragu" is, in fact, used in Italian restaurants here in the US. You'll see it most in the phrase "ragù alla Bolognese". It's not an obscure term if you cook a lot or read a lot about cooking. There is also the French "ragout."
I had to read Rex today because I had no idea what was going on in this puzzle. And now I find that Rex claims not to have gotten it either.
Well all I can say is that Rex's not getting a puzzle is very different from my not getting a puzzle. Rex figured out the apostrophes. I was completely clueless.
I kept looking for the revealer that would make everything clear, but there wasn't one.
Should I have figured out the gimmick? Yes, I really feel that I should have. It's a good one.
But I enjoyed the puzzle anyway. Because I didn't understand the gimmick, I needed lots of crosses -- which made the puzzle more challenging, and thus more enjoyable.
YAKUTSK????
Solved as basically themeless until WEREWOLVES appeared, then got it, then saw the others but actually didn't think LETSHAVEIT was a themer despite its position. But now that you all have explained it...
Apex before ACME, thinking, wow, another X, then fixed, but chuckled at CRUX giving the X back.
In JUNE LETSHAVEIT PINK; @LMS's mother's garden will EXTRUDE AZALEAS
Can someone please explain the pagers clue? I know what a pager is, I just...don't get why waiters would be handed them at busy restaurants. Thanks.
Since I have nothing to say about the puzzle beyond what's been said, I will post a book my dad gave me when I was a kid. Rex's inclusion of the We Are Wolves reminded me of it.
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (Wolves S Chronicles Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0440496039/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apan_glt_i_HJY851C26GJYYAQRGXF5
You've no idea what it's like to be me. Every singly mistake you idiots make typing that I don't catch, but someone else does, gets blamed on me. You somehow manage to produce a mistake proof opus, and you strut like peacocks, but forget to mention all I do.
With this in mind, you can only imagine how happy I am to see all my efforts show up as an inspiration for a major work of art. An entire crossword puzzle dedicated to unfixed typos. What the world would be like without out me. The very notion of EGGSHELLPAINT instead of eggs she'll paint. Simultaneously hilarious and horrible. Do you see now all that I do for you?
I can't thank Mr. Gordon enough for having produced a monument to me. Auto Correct.
Hey All !
Good thing with YAKS, you can do SE them as a pack animal to transport the needed utensils to then eat it when your done. #YAK filled foodstuffs.
Anyway, agree LETS HAVE IT doesn't work as well as the others. EGG SHE'LL PAiNT also feels a tad wonky. Other two are neat.
New Triple Kealoa found today, had _L__ for 57D Whole bunch, so seeing that L, knew it wasn't ATON, so threw in ALOT. Lo and behold, SLEW. Dang.
After seeing the Z's in NE, and an X and two J's, plus the K fest in the SW, figured Peter would be going for the pangram. Alas, no Q's, or... F's! Seriously? No respect.
Simple way to add an F. Change JUNE to FUND, DAY to DEA, and viola, you get Downs RENT, DADS, and FAN. Let's show the F's some love! 😁
Aside from that, neat idea for a puz, but slightly HEARS off to my ears. Or maybe I need to go to YAKUTSK and drink a MALT.
yd -5, should'ves 5 (dang it, hate when I miss easy words)
No F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
@anon 9:10 it's a play on the word "waiters". In a busy restaurant there may be people waiting for a table.
Hand up for finding the LETSHAVEIT answer being nearly inscrutable and it didn't help that it came first. The others became clear when I saw the old "missing apostrophe trick", except that took forever.
You guys and your fake STUDENTIDCARDs. I grew up in very rural Upstate NY and was getting a beer when I was fifteen with no ID at all. Nothing to be proud of but that's the way it was. Of course the drinking age was then eighteen, and that has now changed. sometimes I wonder how we all lived through it.
Today I learned PULI. Hard to believe I have done so many crosswords and not run into this guy. Easier to believe that I have run into this guy and forgotten it.
Nice gimmick, PG. I'll put aside my Petty Grievances for now and say well done you, and thanks for the fun.
Had some trouble with the YAKS milling around in the SW and resisted filling in the SE because I simply could not accept that MISDO was a legitimate answer. MISDO?? Sounds like made-up word for a bad hair DAY. I did think the theme was clever though once I figured it out, which didn’t happen until I saw WEREWOLVES.
In these parts, you don’t HEAR of 43A as a type of PAINT finish - which choices are flat, satin, semi-gloss and enamel. EGGSHELL is not a factor unless you’re trying to choose between it and ecru.
I came here hoping that someone would explain 16A. @Lets call ...(8:41) did it beautifully.
Not only is an apostrophe inserted into a word, it turns the word into a contraction.
Even though the clue for 16A went over my head, I enjoyed the puzzle. Lively cluing. Only 12 threes. Wide variety of entries.
I just Googled Peter Gordon and found an interview Deb Amblen did of him. He graduated from MIT with a major in mathematics. He started making crosswords at Games magazine when Will Shortz was the editor. Mike Shenk mentored him there.
I suppose that Jeopardy has a way to break a tie if the game ends that way. The producers would have to edit it into the recording.
GUESS WHO?
Who?
WEREWOLVES!
Aiiiieeee!!! Grrrr, riiiiiip, spurt, gnaw.
This is one where Rex should have at least admitted his ignorance and apologized for his RANTing and exaggerated sighing over not getting SHELL and SHE’LL as well as EGGSHELL PAINT, a very common thing. You can still slam the puzzle, but it wasn’t that hard to see how that one fit the theme.
Also had Irkutsk before YAKUTSK. I played Risk endlessly as a kid, and it was definitely YAKUTSK, not YAKUrSK. I know of Irkutsk in real life - it’s right next to Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. Now that I’m playing games like Settlers of Catan and its ilk, Risk seems so basic. I could almost always win with my strategy of taking and holding North America (worth five armies per turn, but only three places to defend).
So many kealoas! AVOWS/ avers, ACME/apex, EIRE/Erin. And we need to know Beyonce’s and Solange’s relatives?
So the theme requires a bit of thought. Maybe a lot of thought. Maybe a whhole lot of thought. I seem to like it better after the theme was explained to me. In a way, that's a fail.
To one of the many who have no name: There was a Pizza Uno restaurant close to where I live (apparently destroyed by the pandemic) that used to hand out pagers to customers if there was a waiting time for a table. When your table was ready, your pager would buzz. I never had used a pager when I went there and had no idea what to do when the pager buzzed. Felt like a dope. But at least it does explain the clue, which like the theme went totally over my head. Like the pager.
If you are still struggling with LETS/LET'S, see Kitshef 7:11.
@Anonymous (9:10 AM)
Re: PAGERS:
I'm afraid this one went over my head, too. :(
@The Big Ragu (9:34 AM)
Thx for the explanation. :)
___
"People love to eat out. How many times have you gone to a restaurant and had to wait for a table? It used to be that someone would take your name and then yell out or call over an intercom when your table was ready. Some restaurants still do this, but many now use restaurant pagers.
You've probably seen these devices. The pager is a small plastic box that the hostess hands to you when she takes your name. You are then free to roam about within the immediate vicinity of the restaurant. Eventually, the pager lights up or vibrates, signaling that your table is ready. You take the pager back to the hostess and are led to your table." (howstuffworks.com)
___
td pg: 20:23 / W:2*
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Mr, Cheese (7:49) Loved loved loved TERI Garr in young Frankenstein. I read somewhere that she originally auditioned for the role of Gene Wilder’s fiancé but Mel Brooks had her read for the role of Inga and liked her accent so much he immediately cast her as Swedish dingbat. “Put zee candle beck!”
@Anonymous (9:10) Some restaurants use small handheld pagers to LET you when your table is ready. This allows you to go to the bar, mill about or go outside so everyone waiting isn’t ALL clustered in the entry area. Then when your table is ready, instead of yelling your name to the masses, they send a message to your pager and it starts vibrating and lighting up and makes you feel really special because you been chosen. I’ve even seen them used in medical clinics with large waiting areas.
I was trying to work "Let's have it" into "Let shave it" but it made no sense.
Thanks @Kitshef for the LETSHAVEIT explanation! @Frantic, I think it’s clear from the comments that you weren’t/aren’t “dense “ when it comes to themes. For me, if a theme doesn’t come up and slap me in the face I spend about 15 seconds after I’ve finished to try to figure it out, shrug my shoulders and go to @Rex. In this case, even with @Rex, I couldn’t parse out LETSHAVEIT…I thought there must be some expression I’ve missed in tennis, like…the lets have it…kind of like the ayes have it. 🙄
Also, who amongst us PAINTS Easter eggs? Ok, maybe an artist, but c’mon, you DYE Easter eggs and sometimes the kits came with decals or things to make them look swirly or batiqued.
You’d think after saying that, that I didn’t like the puzzle. Not so! The puzzle had enough sparkle for me to brighten my day.
What the YAKUTSK was that?
Excuse me while I try to go find some apostrophes and an aspirin.
@Joaquin, perhaps the funniest part of your story is not that you were trying to use a library card as a fake ID, but that as a sophomore in college you were trying to pass yourself off as 49.
I did a middle of the night solve without a glitch but gave up trying to make sense out of the awkward themers. Even seeing/not seeing the apostrophes, it didn’t work for me then and doesn’t give me a thrill now. There was, however, lot of things to chobble on in the short answers so I was more than pleased overall. YAKUTSK, LAVS, TINA, PAGERS, MISDO, IRIS were among my favorites.
Medium. Clever. It took a bit of staring to figure out the apostrophe trick. Liked it more than @Rex did.
Weird. I got the theme right away and the only resistance was PHAT and PULI (?). Very nice puzzle.
Again:
Let’s vs. Lets
Let’s is a contraction of let us.
Lets is the third-person singular present tense form of the verb “let.”
16 a "You and I should eat that" : LETSHAVEIT
LETS HAVE IT uses lets
LETSHAVEIT as an answer to the clue, LET'S HAVE IT uses the apostrophe to confer "us" or "You and I."
LET SHAVE IT
Yo! Lunkheads! Raise your hands!
[murmuring crowd] me: 👋....and [crickets].
Well, duh. Nothing like Rex's rambling thought process to open one's eyes.
And yeah - my idiotic bad.
I don't necessarily agree with most of his nitting needles, and LETS HAVE IT was clear to me, but EGGSHELLPAINT? Pffft! (some here have pointed out its meaning, so...still pffft! Sorry. 🤷♀️)
And as far as TERI Garr goes, zeh feelink is moochel! (Hi, @Whatsername!)
@Auto Correct 924am Bite me. 😉
@Beezer 1025am You're too kind, and maybe I'm not dense, but I have to respectfully disagree with you about painting Easter eggs. I used to paint them, but they kept breaking apart in my hand. Yolky mess, that. Then I dyed.
Aw nuts. M&A couldn't even get his wrong YAKUTSK guess right … went with IRKTUSK.
Teri Garr is great. Remember her most vividly from "Young Frankenstein".
They recently had them a tie game on Jeopardy!. In that case, they present one extra answer, and the winner has to buzz in first and give the right question.
HELLJUSTGO woulda been a better themer, in one way. But LETSHAVEIT was subtly neater -- somethin I would expect, from the Gordonmeister. His way, U get four *different* pronoun contraction dealies: One with -'s, one with -'d, one with -'ll, and one with -'re. Primo stuff.
fave themer: STUDENTIDCARD. har. Durin the solvequest, M&A didn't understand the theme mcguffin until he got down to EGGSHELLPAINT, tho.
staff weeject pick: JAN. Aptly crossin JUNE, btw. Never ever saw a Brady Bunch episode, so had to take the clue's word for it.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Gordon dude. Off now, to try the Fireball puz. [Gordon ... HELLFIREBALL, huh @Muse darlin?]
Masked & Anonymo8Us
**gruntz**
I managed to EXTRUDE the first three theme answers from dense cranial matter without having a clue about what was going on - as in, "Maybe CARD refers to the obviously too young student - what a CARD!" I did eventually figure that one out, with a gratifying "Ohhhh!!" but never understood 16A or the reference to the paint finish. At least the WEREWOLVES were easy to transform into costumed humans. Thanks to @Rex and commenters for the much needed parsings and explanations.
To the Wordle fans: My Chicago son walks by the Lyric Opera on his way from the train to the office, and often texts me a photo of the changing messages on the sign jutting out from the building. Today's looked like this:
LYRIC&OPERA:
TWO GREAT
WORDLE
GUESSES
Nice to see the wit from the marketing team.
Thought the 59A was amusing but did not get what was going on with the rest. egg shell paint could have worked another way for the clue, except it didn't. So I never caught on to the add an apostrophe. Now I can appreciate the others except 16A.
At first I didn’t think I liked this puzzle, but I’ll at ease that. Love it or hate it? We’ll do neither if I have a say.
I think that YAKUTSK is getting very nervous watching the Ukraine debacle. However, having waged a long and extensive campaign against winged insects, at least they have a no fly zone.
I thought the conceit of this puzzle was very clever, and each of the themers worked well, though some still apparently don’t get the first one even after @kitchefs excellent explanation. Thanks for a great solve, Peter Gordon.
P.S. if you don’t get what I’m feebly attempting in my first paragraph, think of the phrases “I’ll at ease” and “well done.”
LOL. I don't have to imagine ragu on the menu. It's printed right on it.
If you're on The Big Island, swing by The Four Seasons Beach Tree (Kailua-Kona) I'll treat you to a meal. And explain why Calvinism is so.... wanting.
MAFALDE BOLOGNESE
Beef, Veal & Pork Ragu, Pancetta, Soffritto Parmigiano-Reggiano
Or you can wait til I get back to Philly and we can head to any of a half dozen restaurants south of say, Spruce Street. All with more than one ragu on he menu.
Yeah, apostrophes. I didn't notice that, so the theme made no sense. ah well -- gotta run I have an online meeting.
It's fun to see SUER RAT in the grid.
I'm with Rex on the first themer -- the non-apostrophe version is only really "in the language" with an object following LETS (e.g., LETS him HAVE IT), and the apostrophe version already does feel "in the language," unlike the apostrophe versions of all the other themers.
I disagree with him on the second one, though, which doesn't involve "changing punctuation" -- it is, indeed, just an apostrophe added. No one writes the abbreviation of identification as I.D. (I think that's what he's implying?). It's always just ID.
@TOM T, Thankyou thankyou Thankyou! Yours is the only logical explanation for LETS HAVE IT, and it makes that into a very amusing clue. I only got the trick at the bottom, when I laughed out loud at "We're wolves!" As for "Student I'd card", there are probably places everywhere where a kindly old bar owner takes a few select students under his wing, and gives them a cocktail education. A dorm mate found such a place in East Palo Alto and we went pretty often. It must have had its local fans for the food, but it was definitely not the kind of place anyone would have been handed a PAGER. Often enough we were the only patrons sitting at the bar. It's probably a miracle that we always made it safely back to campus, but we did.
When I was 21, and sometimes took young women to trendy restaurants, I remember getting a PAGER, and if the neighborhood was interesting enough, I didn't mind the wait. The problem was, the food at such places was invariably overrated. The places I came to love for their food didn't bother. They would simply give you a time to come back, and if you were wise, you would show up maybe ten minutes before that time, and lo and behold, you had a seat and you were a happy camper.
In a couple of hours, I'm having lunch at our town's best authentic Italian restaurant. I'll keep my eye peeled to see if they have a choice of RAGUs.
MFCTM.
Lets call ...(8:41)
The Big Ragu (9:34)
egsforbreakfast (11:57)
thanx to so many Dog Shows, PULI had its place in lower brain stem memory. also, if you ever see one, you'll not forget it.
I keep hoping to see the mother of all combination plural of convenience (POC)/POC enabler "ASSESSES" in a grid. Today there is a close second to that with 51D ASSES.
The grid had an old school look to it in that there seemed to be no restraint in boosting letter counts by tacking on gratuitous Ss. They're all over the place including at least five (!) of the two for one variety where a Down and an Across both get a letter count bump by sharing a single S at their ends. I don't remember seeing that many before and there were even a couple more that flirted with being two for ones at the ends of RITZ BIT/GATE and HUTU/ABBA.
Another indication of the degree to which the S helped the fill is that there were 22 of them or about 12% of all the letters in the grid. That's nearly twice the 6% frequency for S in standard English texts per Cornell.edu. This grid is definitely POC marked!
If "a couple (are) dressed in lupine costumes" and still have to say WE'RE WOLVES then they are not likely to win Best Costume prize at that party.
It's hard to believe that Rex has never heard of eggshell paint. Seriously, anyone else out there?
From all my hours wasted playing Risk at university, YAKUTSK was a well known location.
[Spelling Bee: Mon pg -1 (missed this "word" which M-W insists has apostrophes.
Tues (yd) 3:45 to pg, then QB later.]
Is it really legit to have ERIE and EIRE in the same puzzle?
Villager
This puzzle was indeed medium challenging (or worse) because although I got the "trick clues" I had no idea what was going on. Painting easter eggs using eggshell Paint was baffling enough, as was Let's Shave It. But why would anyone dress up as a plant,and such a curious one as a lupine at that? But my biggest gripe is the incredible chauvinism of finding it odd that Zeta is only a quarter of the way through the Greek (Attic Greek, at any rate) alphabet. The final letter is, of course O-mega ["Big O" if you must know, opposed to the "Little O" of o-micron]. Else where would "Alpha to Omega" spring from? Just because the English language ends with a Zee, why should any other language? And why should we be making light or fun of it? (And both French and England's English, as Professor Higgins reminds us, ends with the letter Zed). Aside: Although the Russian army has now adopted the letter "Z" as a symbol, Many of us will think it still means "He Lives" as in the 1969 film "Z".
re: Dr. A (7:56 A.M.) I wouldn't worry too much about being groped by Dustin Hoffman these days. Besides being 84 years old, he's also about 5'3" tall. A good kick in the nuts should do it - just aim low.
Sometime between my last comment and now Rex added an EGGSHELL note. ✋🏽 For being surprised he was unfamiliar with the finish.
@mathgent - There was a tie after Final Jeopardy within the past couple of weeks. There was a single tie-breaker question. This is the only time I’ve ever seen this happen. Of course, I am only an occasional viewer so maybe it happens all the time. Based on the reaction of the guy who had been ahead going into Final Jeopardy the tie was a math error or brain fart. He could have bet one more dollar and guaranteed his victory by being correct, which he had been. Also, I suppose they really should change the last round name to Final Jeopardy*.
@Auto-Correct - We all know that’s an alias and your real name is “Auto-Corrupt.”
@Peter P - Yep, you’re right, I have seen it. But it’s always as you describe it and what is salient to me is that a restaurant owned by a fifth generation Italian family (if it’s even owned by the original family) is putting Italian on their menu. So I roll my eyes at the pretension and go on to the English description, eliding past and not noting the Italian.
Ooh, John Calvin catching a stray.
I went back just now to verify EGGS SHE'LL PAINT had an Easter clue. My wife painted Easter eggs when the kids were little. My mother did too, though she didn't enjoy it as much. Even the mothers of my more secular Jewish friends sometimes did, because hunting for Easter eggs is so much a part of American culture, and hiding them can be so much fun (I was the official hider in my house).
There is such a thing as official Easter egg paint. You'll find it on the holiday aisle of your local drugstore chain in season. Quite literally, EGGS SHE'LL PAINT. And it occurs to me that painting Easter eggs is probably the most sex-linked chore in all America. Dads may hide them, but only Moms paint them, in any nuclear family I've seen. In contrast, many men like to cook, and a lot of us do laundry and wash dishes, or at least load the dishwasher.
Some of my favorite Philadelphia restaurants with decidedly non-Bolognese ragus on the menu:
Mercato-- a lovely short rib ragu
Vetri--Pork ragu
Moonstruck--Duck ragu
None of them uses the phrase alla Bolognese to describe their ragu. Not at all as Pete described it.
Ragu is a common word on menus in the US.
I am happy to stand corrected on painting Easter eggs! @Frantic, if I was drinking coffee I woulda spit it out to laugh at your “yolky mess” comment! We always hard boiled the eggs! I guess I thought of egg-painting as that art where folks poke a needle in the egg on both ends and blow out the yoke so the painted egg can live on in non-rotten posterity!
Also, somebody above had said they read it as LET SHAVE IT…hand up for me on THAT too when a spent my 15 seconds trying to figure out the theme.
I was well into adulthood before I knew there was anything other than flat, semi-gloss, and gloss finishes. Mebbe I’ll Google if eggshell has always been a finish or whether I was just stoopie…
And I just NOW looked at the @LMS avatar. Loren, you are so damned brilliant! Does it ever embarrass you? 🤣🤣🤣
Yup, I was as confused as the next solver. Any possible explanation of the first two themers went whizzing over my head, and although I grasped the apostrophe trick in the last two, I was incapable of going back and applying it to LETSHAVEIT and STUDENTIDCARD. I was one of those people eying SHAVE as a possible player. And to make matters worse, I got confused at one point and thought GODSONS was one of the themers, giving rise to the question: what the devil are GOD'S ONS?? Well, it was late at night, my brain was shot, and my tablet was fast running out of electrons, giving rise to Incipient-Dead-Battery angst which, as most of you know, can be a fatal distraction. Fortunately not quite fatal in this case. I finished the puzzle (after a vigorous tussle with MISDO, PAGERS, and LAVS), and thought wearily that I'd just have to forget about the theme until Rex enlightened me in the morning. Well, Rex and you guys, as it turned out. Thanks to @kitshef and others for finally illuminating LETS HAVE IT.
Anyone else look at the four-letter space for "Salmon, e.g." and think "Surely not fIsh?" Anyone else EXTRact rather than EXTRUDE? Hooray to the SB for teaching me PULI. And, man, do I ever wish that I'd wasted whole terms of my college education playing Risk, as many of you seem to have done. I nearly fell victim to yet another kealoa at "Desertlike", but KINK gave me ARID and banished "sere".
Kinda wish 37D had been clued "Blues-inflected Canadian rock band, with 'The'". Yeah, I know, PPP, but I always loved The GUESS WHO.
@Barbara S.:
Anyone else EXTRact rather than EXTRUDE?
well, no... one is Pulled the other is Pushed, i.e. force out. but, then, I've worked in various factories.
I did agree with rex on the MISDO; that hung me up.
In more important news, after yesterday's ace, it was back to a birdie:
Wordle 263 3/6*
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
I think the main problem with this theme, which I don't think anyone else has quite spelled out, is that "let's have it" is a phrase already, and a pretty common phrase at that. The other 3 theme entries, with the apostrophe in place, are nonsense phrases that would never be used other than in a crossword clues specfically designed to force this odd grammar: "we're wolves", "student I'd card", "egg she'll paint".
"let's have it" is I suspect actually MORE common than "lets have it" so it doesn't really fit.
Harshly and uninterestingly difficult. Very difficult. And so, very harsh and very uninteresting. *Way* too difficult for a Wednesday.
Rex,
Comedic actors get no respect?
Has any actor ever gotten more Hosannas than that creep Charlie Chaplin?
Marissa Tomei not only got respect but a nice shiny statuette for a comedic performance.
Roberto Benigni ditto.
I think we only recently beat the Kevin Kline win for A Fish Called Wanda into the ground.
Only people without a sense of humor would describe Cuba Gooding Jr's Oscar turn as comedy.
And for someone who claims to love Jean Arthur, it's odd to overlook Charles Coburn's award-winning performance in The More The Merrier.
And that's off the top of my head.
The Jeopardy tie-breaker must be fairly new. They used to let the tied players both come back the next day. I always figured if I were on Jeopardy (as if!), and had the lead going into Final Jeopardy, I'd wager for the tie, thinking I already know I can beat this person, and might draw stiffer competition tomorrow.
@Anon 2:59 - So when a tooth is EXTRActed it goes willingly?
@Peter P - I see you’re still upholding your Lent commitment. 😂🤣😂
@Barbara S - These eyes would have gone with this song. I have always loved the opening grunt.
re: Jeopardy!
I passed the test a couple of times, but never got the invite. Sigh. But we were briefed on how the show worked. Now, this was some decades ago, but still. They taped two days a week, 5 shows per day. Back then the champeen was limited to 5 wins. One reason for that was: the out-of-towners were scheduled for the first day of taping, so if the fifth day's show winner was an out-of-towner, s/he only had to foot the bill for one night's hotel stay. Back then, may be still, winners don't get the moolah until broadcast. Don't know whether they've change that to accommodate long term winners. 5 days in the hotel (if you got through the second day), or frequent flyer miles if you want to sleep in your own bed.
You might have noticed that the contestants follow a pattern: every other week they all come from the LA/SoCal area; that was the second day's taping. I suspect the change to tie-break is to ensure that all 10 contestants brought in for the tapings get a shot. Or may be the producers decided that the lone new comer would get blasted by two good players?
@kitshef - Jeopardy TIE breaker
@Z:
huh? who said EXTRACT implies willingly? it certainly isn't being EXTRUDEd. well, mostly. fact is, I recently wondered about baby teeth to my hygenist (no idea why, of course). they always fall out rootless. or so it appears. how do the gums manage to hold them so long? the answer is: the permanent tooth EXTRUDEs the baby tooth out of the jaw, and (somehow) the root is destroyed in the process, while leaving nothing behind. bet you didn't know that.
p.s.
@Barbara S. darlin:
1. yep, on very briefly considerin FISH before PINK for {Salmon, e.g.}. Refused to write it in, tho.
2. yep, on guessin EXTRACT before EXTRUDE for {Force out}. Did write it in. Dictionary says this, btw, for EXTRACT: "Remove or take out, esp. by effort or force". Sooo … we were definitely actin within our rights.
3. M&A played lotsa Risk, mostly durin summer vacations off from grades 9-11. Sat for hours, while some kid with stockpiled defenses held out in Australia. That didn't impair m&e in the least, from gettin YAKUTSK wrong, tho.
M&Also
No one at Jeopardy cares. The host doesn't care and certainly the producer doesn't care. But for what it's worth, I personally HATE the new Jeopardy "in the event of a tie" rule. Thanks, @Z, for giving the background of what prompted the show to come up with the new tiebreaker procedure, but I still hate it. There's a big luck element that makes the process only slightly better than a coin toss. All that work you do to get there and then everything rests on the category they come up with for the sudden death, "this decides everything" single question. In my case, you just know that the tiebreaker category would be Rap Singers or TV Spinoffs.
I liked having double winners, both of whom get to come back the next day. They both would seem to have earned it, so why not?
Well I'll be hornswaggled. Turns out I was right. I should get another shot at the show.
@Z (4:17) - Perhaps you have me confused with someone else, but I've never said anything about Lent or my religion here, so far as I know.
@Z (2:05) - Well, here in Chicago it shows up in the restaurants of first and second generation families. It's hardly pretentious. To me, it's a normal word used to describe a type of meat sauce in Italian, just like words like "salsa" and "guacamole" and "pico de gallo" are used to describe Mexican sauces. Are those pretentious? We say "jus", for whatever reason, for a type of thin gravy. Is that pretentious? Crudités anyone?
I think @Indyjeff343pm nails one of the difficulties people have with LETSHAVEIT. Both are common phrases. Another is LET'S HAVE IT is often used as follows: A: I have bad news about about your work on the Smith account. B: Let's have it. American idiom dictionary and M-W both say the apostrophe is correct. Meaning we have switched to the royal US for this idiom? Also LETS HAVE IT in the sense of READS THE RIOT ACT TO is difficult to phrase to use without the object (me you them us Fred) between the LETS and the HAVE. In READS THE RIOT ACT TO the object is tacked on after the TO.
WEREWOLVES also has a bit of a problem as clued. If they were dressed as WEREWOLVES woudn't they also be in lupine costumes? At least if there was a full moon? And in that case they might just say WEREWOLVES?
I thought the other 2 answers were were most excellent. And I do know people who paint eggSHELLs. WEREWOLVES was cute anyway. Maybe both answers being as clued in WEREWOLVES is even a smartypants plus. And the complexity of sorting LETSHAVEIT is such a knot of spelling and grammar I imagined only @Z could love it.
@TOM T
Did you catch that long diagonal that had every letter in it was in diagonal word I pointed out the other day? I was going to wait to see if you mentioned it but it was a day you posted late I think.
I also missed posting on Japanese pinball Sunday that the Cryptoquip that Saturday was about an actor who loved those machines named Al Pachinko or what ever it is. What are the odds? No wonder people get holes in one in Wordle. Or maybe WS is connected. They did him once recently. Or was that the Jumble?
I thought maybe it was there is never a tie in pushing the button. Has there been?
There’s nothing pretentious about ragu. It’s used in neighborhood red sauce spaghetti houses and the latest euro trash hotspot.
sanfranman59 has pointed out that there is no pronunciation change in the first themer as there is in the others (although some people do pronounce 'werewolf' with a long e). But that may be part of the reason LETS/LET'S caused so much trouble.
Still doesn't work as clued. Better if clued: He said we could eat the salmon
Good insight about 1st themer
الوان حجر بازلت
تركيب ارضيات حجر بازلت
حجر بازلت عباسية
تركيب ارضيات بازلت
ADULT KINK
I'D SAY TINA and TERI KING
WERE_WOLVES with SEVERE will:
when one HEARS, "LET'SHAVE that thinig.",
the other ASKS,"Is it INSTILL?"
--- ALEXA JUNE YAKUTSK
The song says Two out of three ain’t bad but in a themed crossword, three out of four IS bad. It took way too long to get LETSHAVEIT and when I finally understood it my reaction was just a groan. Too bad. It was pretty good until that point. The editor could have and should have demanded a re-write for that entry.
Must be Kealoa Week. INSTILL/INSTaLL, AVOW/AVer, LAVS/LooS--and for the sockdolager: YAKUTSK/irKUTSK!
The DOD is my old favorite, many-time sash-wearer TERI Garr, of whom I've always been a huge fan, and today's WOD. Her bio as it appears here does not include a marvelous guest shot on STTOS, as a ditzy secretary in the episode "Assignmrnt: Earth." I am extra pleased that OFF has given her such a well-deserved tribute.
To me this puzzle's theme is WAY less complicated than some, including Our Fearless Fussbudget, believe. Here it is: Add the Apostrophe. Admittedly, this makes for some tortuous cluing, but that is essentially it.
HUTUS and PULI might be a little strong for a Wednesday, but are at least fairly crossed. Despite the obvious struggle to win on Scrabble points, it's not a pangram (no F). Birdie.
A couple of missteps gave me a DNF. PULI?
Diana, LIW
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