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Filipino national hero ___ Rizal / FRI 3-18-2022 / De segunda ___ (secondhand: Sp) / Island that's part of Maui County
Friday, March 18, 2022
Good morning, and thanks for joining me on the final Malaika MWednesday of the month! Before jumping in to the puzzle, I wanted to call out that the two constructors (+ Rachel Fabi, friend-of-the-blog) have edited a pack of sixteen puzzles that you can enjoy with a donation of $15 that will help people get access to safe and affordable abortion care. After all, abortion is health care! More info is here.
Relative difficulty: Medium (I hardly got stuck, 15:44)
Word of the Day: JOYCE (___ Bryant, 20th-century singer/civil rights activist) —
What a lovely Friday puzzle! I am very partial to themeless puzzles with 72 words and stacked answers, like this had in NE and SW. I think there's something magical about piling those long entries on top of each other, and having the shorter crosses fit into place.
Third, it felt like a lot of language clues. In reality, there were only four: MANO (hand, in Spanish) and HOSE (pants, in German) and SANS (without, in French) and TORO (bull, in Spanish). These stood out to me because two could have been clued as English words. What did y'all think about this cluing decision?
Bullets:
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Joyce Bryant (born October 14, 1927) is an American singer and actress who achieved fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a theater and nightclub performer. With her signature silver hair and tight mermaid dresses, she became an early African-American sex symbol, garnering such nicknames as "The Bronze Blond Bombshell", "the black Marilyn Monroe", "The Belter" and "The Voice You'll Always Remember". (Wikipedia.)
• • •
Three things stood out to me while solving:
First, this was such a conversational, colloquial puzzle. It felt like the grid was trying to chat with me. Truly jam-packed with fun, in-the-language phrases: BEST CHANCE, ONE AT A TIME, ON THE BACK BURNER, POINT TAKEN, SO TO SPEAK, ON TIPPY TOE (this was easily my favorite entry in the grid), NO SLOUCH, I CAN RELATE, and WANNA TRADE ([Exchange words] was such a brilliant clue for that).
Second, there were a few entries that seemed to have the "Will Shortz Voice." I think that [Attractively bold-faced self-assuredness] is a hilariously clunky way to clue SWAG. Similarly, I associate STARTER KITs (great entry!!) with this meme, which was nowhere to be seen in the clue [Basics to build with].
Third, it felt like a lot of language clues. In reality, there were only four: MANO (hand, in Spanish) and HOSE (pants, in German) and SANS (without, in French) and TORO (bull, in Spanish). These stood out to me because two could have been clued as English words. What did y'all think about this cluing decision?
Bullets:
- Did BLTS (Things stuck with toothpicks) need an Abbr. indicator?
- [Like the more interesting twin, some would say] is a delightful clue for EVIL
- Power USER is a term I am very familiar with, but I'm not sure how common it is among other ages. I associate it with Microsoft Excel....
- Ideas on the clue [Cross products] for PENS? I think it refers to the fact that a pen is a product that can be used to make an X, but let me know if that's wrong.
- I have never heard of an "undercard," but Google tells me that it lists matches (that is, BOUTS) at a boxing event.
- Is the clue for BATS (They may emit as many as 200 beeps per second) referring to echolocation? In my very, very limited reading about echolocation (it's all from Gregor the Overlander lol) I've heard people talk about clicks, not beeps.
- Garfunkel and OATES was new to me, but upon reading the Wiki page, I do actually know Kate Micucci who was a Ukulele Girl back when Ukulele Girls were.... happening. Do y'all know what I'm talking about? That was a thing, right? Sort of in the Zooey Deschanel Era.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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127 comments:
Found this tougher than usual. Just could never get a flow going and my wavelength was vacationing on Mars, so nowhere near here.
But! Some really nice longs: ON TIPPY TOE, ON THE BACK BURNER, POINT TAKEN, WANNA TRADE, SO TO SPEAK and on and on.
Not really a fan of the stop-and-go Fridee, but it's better than a pushover, no?
@Karl Grouch Thanks, dude! 😘
🧠🧠🧠
🎉🎉🎉
Easy-medium. I pretty much always fail at spelling CACAO which I confuse with COCOA which gave me __ORRY for the 34a “do most of the work for, as a team” clue. So I ended up with wORRY for while which made sense to me because someone always has to do the worrying for the team, right?
Delightful Friday with lotsa sparkle, liked it a bunch!
ON THE BACK BURNER I filled in without any letters in place, a huge jump start to a most enjoyable puzzle.
ON TIPPY TOE made me smile as did many of the other answers.
Loved it.
Malaika, I liked this one too; lots of juicy answers. Now looking at 7 down gives me a start, in STARTERKIT I can only see STAR TREK IT. "Exchange words" is a brilliant clue for WANNA TRADE. And I got HOSE because of lederhosen...
As I was walking down a street in Switzerland a young boy, 10 years old or so, came up and started to talk to me in Swiss German. (I swear, he was wearing lederhosen and looked like the illustration for "German boy" from an old encyclopedia.) Schweizerdeutsch is very different from high German, of which I knew some, so I replied in that: "Sorry, I don't understand Swiss German". Without missing a beat, he switched to impeccable flawless high German, and we had a great conversation for several blocks. 10 years old!
FYI Cross is an elite pen maker. When I was an architect and our client's rep was trying to recruit me to work for his boss, he took me to lunch and gave me one as a present. Classy ploy, but didn't work.
Looking at -O--O-CH for "Pretty darn good" I entered TOP NOTCH.
[Spelling Bee: Thurs 0, as reported yd.]
A slight addendum to "undercard." You are correct that it means the list of bouts in a boxing event. But the undercard matches are the less promotable ones. So if, for example,, the 'main event" is a world championship fight, the "undercard" is the list of all the other matches. Assume it's like an eye chart. The main event is at the top of 'the card" in big bold letters (at least metaphorically); all the other matches are lower down; hence "under"
@Malaika - Back in the day, Cross PENS were a bit of a status symbol. They were (are?) very slim and sleek. Cool looking, but difficult to use because they were so slim and slick.
Cross PENS were often gifted for graduations, bar mitzvahs, and other major events.
cross is a fancy pen manufacturer. I think that's what they te going for
Fairly smooth aside from the NW. My cosmetics brand at 1A was ulta (I should've keyed off the "Longtime" part of the clue); I wasn't familiar with the Spanish phrase and couldn't believe it'd be as obvious as MANO; I thought the more "interesting" twin (in a two-dog litter) might be the runt and I had no idea about the type of ale or what Tinder shares are. Perhaps worse, I thought the trumpet key at 2D had to be flat. Solving clockwise from the north, ON TIPPY TOE gave me AVON, which in turn gave me the NO part of 4D, which confirmed MANO and I was done shortly thereafter.
Thx Claire & Brooke; my kind of Fri. puz! :)
Med.
Seemed tougher than the clock indicated; slightly under avg.
Got zilch in the NW, but dropped DISAPPEAR right in and all the downs fell easily.
Had an English teacher in h.s. who was a REED grad; with the 'R' in place, it was a gimme.
The rest was hit and miss SO TO SPEAK; had an educated guess at JOYCE / JOSE (could've been rOYCE / rOSE) for all I knew. Thx, @Malaika for the JOYCE excerpt, and for your excellent commentary in general. All the best to you; peace, 'til we meet again! :)
Fun solve! :)
@Eniale 👍 for yd's SB result :)
@okanaganer 👍 for 0 yd :)
Added those two from dbyd to my List.
___
yd npg: 18:17 (couldn't spell this one right) / W: 3*
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Malaika. Garfunkel and OATES was new to me, too but I do know Hall and Simon.
Hard to pick at this one. Maybe a “?” after “Recipe Shortening” and I get Gor Details but dont associate Gory with Sensational in any way but that’s about it. Nice long fills but overall easy for a Friday. Was on both the receiving and giving end of engraved Cross Pen and Pencil sets back in the day when we still signed stuff and wrote stuff. My Dad only used his to sign important things and such. Funny the memories a puzzle can conger up.
Please enjoy this SEINFELD MOMENT
Some random reactions:
• Five magnificent NYT answer debuts to add to the canon: BEST CHANCE, ON TIPPYTOE, PONT TAKEN, STARTER KIT, and WANNA TRADE. Claire and Brooke ought to be paid extra for this!
• The grid included a lovely O-tail oleo in trochaic pentameter: MANO / THEO / ERGO / TORO / SHINTO.
• Regarding the singer-and-civil-rights-activist-Bryant clue, when “Anita?” flitted through my brain, it gave me a chuckle. Some of you may relate.
• I see you ISEE and ICEE.
• This was my Special K day, as that letter was very good to me. It alone gave me ON THE BACKBURNER, and it along with T gave me POINT TAKEN.
• In the 6th column, going from bottom to top, BATS becomes STAB, and that STAB goes right into BACK. The amazing thing is that just last Sunday we also had a STAB going into BACK. What are the odds?
This grid was filled with personality and put up a fight, especially in the NW. Just what I love on a Friday. Thank you both for a terrific time!
Naticked by ROSE and ROYCE, who turned out to be JOSE and JOYCE.
Yesterday, I was cleaning out a file cabinet. In among the sheet music from when I took guitar (in the early '70s) and letters from long-ago girlfriends was a Cross pen set presented to me for reasons I no longer remember.
Almost impossible to get a toehold today. I did put in EVIL at 18A early on, but wound up taking it out when nothing worked. And I put in EYES at 43A, but took that out, too. So my first word that stuck was SHINTO, at 44D.
Once I did get started, SE fell pretty quickly, but the rest gave resistance all the way to the end. Not a typical Friday at all … harder than most Saturdays.
Shame Rex could not have been here for this as he would have loved it.
CADDYSHACK
This one definitely put up a fight, but very appropriate for a Friday. Needed all of the crosses to come up with an ENID for example. I’m obviously clueless on PPP so I just had to fight my way through the JOYCE/JOSE cross, and some other rough areas like the PPP/French cross (LIPA/SANS) and SHINTO and OATES crossing a very unfortunately clued HOSE - why clue that in a foreign language ? Anyway, not everyone is Jeff Chen and we know we are not gonna get sub-20% PPP grids very frequently, so this one will just have to CARRY the day.
I think you missed a language answer: ERGO.
Medium sounds about right. No section was automatic but no section really stalled me out, either. My first entry was Tumblr REPOST (@Conrad - Freud would have something to say about your Tinder slip) which briefly made me fear 1D was lagER and the ensuing beer snob flame war to follow, but no. It was an AMBER ale and BLTS with the AVON lady.
Speaking of… BLTS is one of those abbreviations that is now its own word. I feel like this happens more with acronyms than initialisms (radar and sonar come to mind) but I’ve seen enough fancy BLTS on menus to think BLTS is now a stand alone word. So I’d say no abbreviation indicator needed.
Anyway, each section was like the first, nothing much to start, get an anchor answer and then a second and then the section would fall. A fun solve.
As for the foreign words, the only one that got the arched eyebrow was going German for HOSE. Maybe if the puzzle was otherwise foreign language free (and hopefully lederHOSEn occurred to everyone), but seriously? for a perfectly clueable set of letters like HOSE? Stop.
I did like the Faustian clue for KIA. Had to get YUCKY in place to get past the deal with the devil. Speaking of devils, I see Dua LIPA is caught up in plagiarism lawsuits. Based on what I can tell the suits seem frivolous, but I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the lawsuits and some discussions of crossword plagiarism that have occurred here.
So CROSS pens aren’t big HS graduation presents anymore? It struck me as kind of weird when I got one. I’m going off to college soon, the very definition of transient life style, and you’re giving me this expensive PEN to keep track of? I don’t remember when I lost it, but I certainly didn’t have it by college graduation.
Finally, yesterday's Dordle. I started with “blame” which gave me a yellow A. Purely to try out more of the RSTLNE set and at least one more vowel I tried “tapir.” I chuckled at it being right, but also that the a,i, and r were in the right place for the other word. How many words do you know that end in IR? Tried “fakir” and was done in three guesses. Those two words just cannot be high in anyone’s list of guesses, can they?
Some nice long entries - but also a lot of useless trivia and I’ll pile on the foreign word bandwagon too. Had WANt to initially - figured the cluing would include the casual condition looking for WANNA. Same with BLTS. Walking Dead clues now? The JOSE x JOYCE cross was unfortunate.
I don’t discuss it with many but I’m a closet Dua LIPA fan. Liked POINT TAKEN and ONE AT A TIME.
The grid looked promising initially - but fizzled out in the end.
I see @SouthsideJohnny mentioned PPP. This isn’t as low as yesterday’s, but almost no NYTX ever is. This one is in the normal, not excessive, range, 17 of 72 for 24%. I include answers like PENS and SAGA because of their clues. There’s also the interesting LANAI which gets the proper name clue today, making it PPP, but even when it gets a porch clue it’s a fairly inaccessible word to most new solvers and almost crosswordese to veteran solvers. Also, along with ERGO, it probably belongs in the foreign word list. At any rate, that’s three PPP answers that didn’t have to be, REED makes four, and so just by changing four clues this puzzle could have had a PPP of 18%.
More on the Dua LIPA lawsuits.
Agree!!
This was a very fast Friday solve for me, so I expected to see a lot of "too easy" comments. But I guess it simply turned out to be a wheelhouse event for moi (felt the need there to toss in a bit more foreign language).
Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clue for this grid:
PHX of the NBA (4 letters, answer below)
I did have to clean up one letter before the happy music played. I so badly wanted an R at 32A/D, so that the combination would be "ROSE ROYCE," a companion answer to KIA! But I did figure it out without any assistance/cheats, so I'm counting the solve as a success (it's my birthday, so I'm taking that as a gift).
I owned and lost a few engraved Cross pens in my young adult days. Have relied on Bic and other cheap options for the remaining decades.
Answer to the HDW clue:
SUNS (begins with the S at 22D and moves up to the NE)
The doublespeak rolls off her pen so seamlessly and glibly...
@Z -- FYI, last night one of the Jeopardy answers was "ultimate Frisbee".
Slower than usual. Doesn't help when you substitute LEGS for EYES at 43A and SEXY for GORY at 31D.
My 40th H.S. graduation reunion is coming up this autumn. Yikes. Our band parents organization gave each senior band member a CROSS pen and pencil set, engraved with your name, and a very nice leather bound notebook, also embossed with your name, as a graduation gift. I still have both.
Most excellent Friday. Stumbled around until the SE fell, then up the middle to the NW. The language entries were more than fair so didn't bother me, thanks for asking, M. Loved reading about Joyce Bryant. TGIF.
Me too!
Naticked by Joyce and Jose
Cross is a company that makes writing instruments such as pens. Perhaps now a days nice pens are a bit archaic but they are actually quite beautiful and many are beautifully engineered and works of art (and not disposable)
Peace to all
CROSS Brand name pens and other luxury items
Claire Rimkus doesn't ring a bell, but I know I've liked all of Brooke Husic's puzzles. At least her NYTimes ones, the hard ones at her site make me feel like a slug that just emerged from the ooze. I don't know who did what in creating this, but both the grid and clueing were top rate fun. Thanks ladies.
A "cross product" is also a mathematical operation for vectors. Since the constructors are both scientists I assume this was an intentional play on words in the clue for PENS.
I'm only familiar with it because Steve Jobs dropped out of REED College.
I have several sets of Cross Pens and Pencils, one or two embossed with my name. They were a big local thing when I was growing up in Providence.
Great puzzle! Much of the middle was blank for a long long time and then like magic it was all filled in! Correctly!
The JOSE/JOYCE cross needs a defender. I had _OSE so JOSE was an obvious choice, which produced JOYCE, a much more common name than ROYCE. In fact I never heard of anyone named ROYCE.
Hey All !
That NW corner was EVIL. Partly my fault for not putting in answers that were maybes. If I'd'a put AVON and EVIL in like I was thinking, maybe I could've came away with a sans cheat solve. As it happens, I didn't put anything in there, and had to Goog the Spanish phrase. Dang. Was able to finish after the MANO cheat, and got puz 100% correct. MAN O MAN.
Puz started out with hardly any answers at first pass through, and thought, "Hoo boy! Here we go", but solve proceeded nicely after that. Until the complete Stop in that NW.
That Naticky J didn't get me today (#humblebrag) as I figured JOSE would be a Filipino name more than ROSE. Funny how you get a male and female name with the J, then an opposite male and female name with the R.
Further NW musings, ON TIPPY TOES. Wanted ON ones TOES, but too short. Then ON a tip TOE, but again, too short. What the heck is it? standing on TOE? Too long. Argh! Ooh, maybe stand on TOE. Fits... After the MANO look-up, finally saw ON TIPPY TOES, let out a "TIPPY TOEs?", and was transported back to my youth.
So nice themeless, ladies. Very non-YUCKY. 😁
yd -4, should'ves 4 (Man, hate when the ole brain doesn't wanna work)
No F's (three days in a row!) GORY
RooMonster
DarrinV
I decided to allow myself one cheat before I threw the puzzle against my wall -- not the ones that were annoying me like what turned out to be JOSE and JOYCE and OATES as clued, but the 4-letter cosmetics brand at the top where I could glance at the TIPPY TOp of the grid and not see anything else. (I already had DISAPPEAR and all of the NE).
AVON enabled me to solve this thing. soLe instead of ONLY at 33D made that section much harder. But between the proper names -- I haven't even mentioned and the vague and not-exactly-fair vernacular phrases, this puzzle mostly frustrated and annoyed me. I didn't mind ON TIPPY TOE when it came in (though I always say ON TIPTOES) and I quite liked NO SLOUCH, SO TO SPEAK and especially ON THE BACK BURNER. But I CAN RELATE seemed a stretch. WANNA TRADE didn't seem clever; it just seemed deliberately ungettable from the clue.
And choosing "Clear indication" to clue I SEE? Yes, I know, you want something that's never been done before, but I mean really. This doesn't work logically, grammatically or any other way.
I'll go back and read the comments now to see if there are any other PROTESTERS. If the objective was a challenging puzzle: mission accomplished. But if the objective was a puzzle that's also fair: not so much.
Oh, and I had stage for PHASE and set for KIT but when I finally took those out, things fell together. And I didn’t know JOYCE or JOSE, but it was clear that a J was required when I had the rest of their names.
Hard to judge difficulty level - started it after work, and a glass or more of wine (not while working - not that there's anything wrong with it). Entered some guesses that I wouldn't let go of, stalled with maybe forty percent "finished." Came back in the morning - ah, VALVE, not _flat for trumpet key. ONLY, not sole. Suddenly it all went fairly quickly and smoothly.
Well, except for one thing - even awake, had KI_ and couldn't see KIA. Slap forehead after getting from cross.
German answer reminded me of an episode of "The Late Late Show" with Tom Snyder, with George Segal as guest. They were talking about German being spoken in the house - Snyder asks Segal if he knows this one that the family said: Lassen Sie sich gehen, aber nicht in den Hosen.(sorry if I mangled that - it's been 45 years since German in high school, and 25 years or so since that aired.)
The A.T. Cross Co., founded 1846, produces PENS. Nothing to do with mathematics.
Hi all! Long time rex reader, first time commenter. I know this is probably not something most readers of Rex's blog really care about, but I want to point out that the tumblr method of sharing is not REPOST, but REBLOG. As a tumblr power USER user since 2009 when I was 20 years old (I do not take this as a point of pride), this made the NW of the puzzle unsolvable until I realized the the constructors used the wrong/far less used term.
Otherwise, loved this puzzle (and still love any reference to the dumpster-fire that is tumblr)!
Hey, I got a CROSS pen from the language department in Upstate NY when I moved to MH, and now I learn it's a status symbol! I still have it. Somewhere.
Bounced around here and there with long answers going in in a nice aha! fashion, and they led to the shorter fill, so all in all pretty speedy. Didn't know EDNA at all, same for OATES as clued. HOSE from lederhosen, and ZERO sum slowed things down. Nice misdirect there.
Segunda MANO was of course a gimme and I can't see "secondhand" without thinking of the guy who went to the jeweler's to buy one for his watch.
Sorry.
Thought this was a great Friday, just hard enough to make me feel smart when I could do it quickly. Well done, CR and BH, I Could Really Be Happy doing ones like this every Friday. Thanks for all the fun.
@Nancy. I wonder if feeling tricked made you dislike this puzzle and call it unfair. *Clear indication* has a "?" so you know it's tricky. Saying "I SEE" is an *indication* that something is *clear*(understood). Exchange words/WANNATRADE is a typical Fri/Sat type clue where one must consider parts of speech. In this case one must think of *Exhange* as a noun rather a verb.
The PPP failed me today and I was stymied by the JOYCE/JOSE cross. ENID? No. I also never knew Garfunkel teamed up with OATES, although the crosses gave me that. TIPPYTOE felt wrong, I always include an S because who can do it on one toe? Not even Misty Copeland! I really struggled in various spots not seeing an opening until the fog cleared and suddenly the long conversational answers were obvious. It was a wavelength issue. All in all this was a very worthy Friday and a tiny bit of suffering is to be enjoyed.
Lewis, your ever optimistic outlook on everything is quite wonderful. If I had thought of Anita Bryant when presented with this clue, I would have had a hard time chuckling. The fact is the clue would have only fit Anita if it read: 'anti-civil rights activist'.
Exactly what @Frantic said, plus this. I wanted Garden Variety? to be Hose. But then I got my German Pants down.
@All - If you don't speak German, or are to lazy to go to https://www.translate.google.com
@Colortinis' joke translate to "Let yourself go, but not in your pants", a witticism I can't believe I haven't heard in my almost 70yrs of walking around here.
Speaking of here, I had a question from yesterday. Assuming we're talking about maps in the cartography sense, what maps aren't AREAMAPS? Isn't that what maps are? Pick an area, and put as much info as possible on the piece of paper you have. They could be a map of your block or a map of the world, but it's just the size of the area you choose.
Whatever happened to Cross PENs anyway? I remember them from the 80s and probably early 90s -- as said, they were at least marketed as luxury pens, but I don't recall them being any better than any ordinary pen. They had a nice weight to them, but these days I prefer a simple Pilot G2 gel pen. Googling shows me the company is still around, and still makes expensive pens, but I just don't see them around much any more, and given Malaika's unfamiliarity with them, they seem to have lost the cultural cachet they once had.
As for the Dua LIPA lawsuit -- it's one of those things that on the surface seems legitimate to a layperson. The similarities between the songs are undeniable, but there are musical tropes and patterns and rhythms that are repeated through music and are bound to recur through how music is created and structured. Hell, look at blues which in its most conventional form is three chords in 12 bars. Adam Neely has a great breakdown in this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnA1QmZvSNs
Should have been a fairly easy Friday puzzle, but I got snarled up in the NW. "Key on a trumpet" misdirected me; I was almost certain the answer was BFLAT, so even though I had guessed AVON for 1A and EVIL for the twin clue, I thought those must be wrong and it took awhile for me to puzzle out my error. Of course, now looking back at it, the preposition "on" should have tipped me off, as BFLAT is the key "of" a standard trumpet. Oops.
CoCoa/CACAO also took some time to work out, but I appreciate the clue acknowledging the existence of moles without chocolate (there are many -- it's not all mole poblano or mole negro. Mole amarillo with its hoja santa leaves is perhaps my favorite, and not chocolate to be seen there.)
Otherwise pretty smooth and enjoyable and finished at Friday average.
A beep is a short, single tone, typically high-pitched, generally made by a computer or other machine [Wikipedia].
BATS don't beep. The only animal that beeps is the roadrunner, and only in the cartoon.
That didn't prevent me from easily solving the clue from the crosses, but that doesn't excuse the editor.
@Harley70 - Garfunkel never teamed up with Oates. Garfunkel and Oates are a comedic folk duo made up of Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci. They've both also appeared in a lot of TV and film, though I wouldn't necessarily call them household names. (At least I had to look up their real names.) Their music is tongue-in-cheek, a bit twee, raunchy, sometimes a bit intentionally corny, and definitely does not take itself seriously.
Gee, thanks for the abortion promo to lead off a puzzle review. And abortion is health care ? Not for the baby.
So much to like! Crunchy, sparkly, clever cluing, lively phrases, only six threes leaving room for 12 longs, learned some things. Wonderful!
ONTHEBACKBURNER was probably the key entry. Very descriptive phrase. Pots on the rear burners don't need to be stirred often.
Love it.
How are MOANS associated with foot dragging?
Close enough for crosswords but I think that CACAO is the plant that "cocoa," an ingredient in mole sauce, is made from.
Wow, was it @Tom T who said this puzzle was easy? I’m more in the @Frantic and @ Nancy camp…or a hybrid of their comments. I started the puzzle feeling very dense and had no clue as to most of the colloquialisms (not that some weren’t clever). I then decided to go to the grocery (unheard of for me while working a puzzle!) returned and somehow managed to finish. Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed but today I was just happy to be done.
I don’t know if this is one of Nancy’s “unfair” clues but I really resisted the ONEATATIME for “Don’t rush.” Hmmm…I might have gotten it quicker with “Don’t rush the door.” To me, “don’t rush” would be colloquial for “take one thing at a time” so I feel it is a partial.
Trumpet key gave me fits and I’d like to place the blame on the Bflat clarinet clue a few weeks ago. 🤣 But seriously, I think that should have been “Piano:key, trumpet:____”.
Finally, YES, fond memories of childhood with the “tippytoe” thing as I figured out while rolling my eyes…
In conclusion, I think it’s obvious I DID get up on the wrong side of the bed today!
Yep, I’m agreeing with the rating before reading anything else. Two down and 52 across were major WOE that took way more time than the rest of the solve. Gotta see if others were trapped in bflat and wtf deserts as well?
This puzzle drove me BATS. Other than that, I liked it.
@Nancy, With you all the way on the annoyance factor today. "wanna"? No.
I’m with @Nancy today. Not on my wavelength or in my wheelhouse and the PPP was just frustrating. Tough? Oh yes! Fair? At TIMEs no. A few things I never heard of: Power USER (although I’m familiar with Excel), undercard listing, spoon straws, Garfunkel & OATES, and SWAG as clued. But it was the reference to foreign languages/countries which really bogged me down. Spanish (2), German, French, Japanese, and Filipino.
The highlight of this puzzle for me was the reAPPEARance of our old friend SLOP ITCH.
Thank you Makaila for guest hosting this week.
@Mathgent…I THINK CACAO IS cocoa in Spanish. This reminds me that when my sister-in-law and I visited my daughter during her semester abroad in Spain, my SIL complained that she didn’t understand WHY folks looked at her like she was crazy when she ordered hot cocoa. My daughter said…that is because you sound like you are saying “[nonsense] coconut”! I got a lecture also on the proper way to say cafe americano so that it didn’t sound like gibberish so SIL was not alone…
I got MANO as my one surefire entry in the upper half-puz, probably due to knowin the epic schlock-flop flick "Manos, the Hands of Fate". Next thing was AGED/AGO, which led m&e off to fillin in the whole lower half-puz.
Lotsa cool stuff in this rodeo, includin: Well, almost everything. Sooo … themelessthUmbsUp.
staff weeject pick (with only 6 candidates!): SLO. An ode to M&A's upper half-puz YO,SLOUCH solvin ability, today.
fave clue: {Like the more interesting twin, some would say} = EVIL. I've known very few twins, over the many M&A years. But I now know a real nice gal in Germany that gave birth to twins a couple years ago, so I'll have to keep an eye & mostly ear on their developments. And speakin of Germany ...
Always thought pants = HOSEN, auf Deutsch, bie der vay.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Claire & Brooke darlins. Great job.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
@Peter P, 11:06am. Two Garfunkels! Who woulda thunk it? Thanks. This second Garfunkel is much cuter than Art.
I just made myself a Cross pen expert. They were ubiquitous in my parents’ house in the late 50s and 60s. I wasn’t sure why. I can still find a gold or silver ballpoint version in a drawer in my house today. I suddenly know why. The company has been in Providence RI since 1846 and that’s my home state. It must have been a buy Little Rhode mentality or a big discount. They sit in drawers because who can bother spending $7.95 to order a ballpoint refill in the age of disposable. There’s a rollerball version around but same problem. I don’t think pens, even one from Cartier, have the same cachet they once had, unless of course one lives or works in a very rarified atmosphere.
@OFL, substitute:
Did BLTS (Things stuck with toothpicks) need an Abbr. indicator?
stupid clue. any sliced bread sandwich, cut into diagonal quarters will be toothpicked.
Ideas on the clue [Cross products] for PENS? I think it refers to the fact that a pen is a product that can be used to make an X, but let me know if that's wrong.
yes you are. Cross makes stupid pens of nearly all steel (so they weigh a ton), very thin, and slippery as a greased pig. considered, by sum, as high class.
Minor point but club sandwiches come with toothpicks but never blt’s in my experience.
A bunch of odd coincidences today. I was flying around with my ON-THE-BACK BURNER jet pack and eating an. EGG ON toast while scouting a route up SOTOS PEAK. Now, I’m not one of those PRO TESTERS of these jet pack things, so when the HOSE SYSTEM broke at the ACME of my flight, I just cried MANO MANO MAN.
Wonderful puzzle today. Thanks Claire Rimkus and Brook Husic.
I certainly felt that I needed to do some pushups to get my brawn and brain to at least try the fandango tango.
I seemed to have lost my morning kerfuffle. I had a coin toss competition while doing the flip flop dance. I seemed to want heads and all I got were tails. My flip was at at 26D. where I used my Cross product to call: I WANNA HEAR...! My first flop. I flipped when 29D was WANNA TRADE? We'll look at that. I think there's a name for that.
I am a Spanish speaker from day one and yet I could not see MANO as that de segunda___. I had USOS...as in second usages. Ay dios mio. Then I couldn't remember TORO for 53D. Bonk my head a few times to get Rioja out of there. By the way (and I love Spanish wine) TORO wines are YUCKY. They have a very, very strong oak taste and it will leave your lips and tongue and chin, as red as a well smacked bottom....and who wants that?
My flops were figuring out APPS for short courses; not knowing what an undercard is...does it have any taste? And thinking SWAG was either some ill gotten money or maybe a little piece of fabric. Wrong continent...
I was not literally on the wavelength I needed to be. So I did my usual...I get up and make coffee.
What caffeine accomplishes can be amazing. The ding dong did the dong ding I needed. Poco a poco the long answers were let in. The guests at my door were most welcome. I let them in, we had a good chat and I felt good for the company.
I ate some delicious dessert after my friend left.
By the way...if you're ever itching for some "primo" Mole and you're in desperate need of a vacation, go to Oaxaca, Mexico and order some "Mole Negro" at Los Pacos.
Malaika, I love your cheerfulness on this blog. Fresh air.
I was VERY afraid that "Attractive self-assuredness" was going to be BDE rather than SWAG and was glad when I saw the four letters.
Cross pens are kinda aged, I think. I mean who even uses pens?
@Andrew E - I had the exact same response to "REPOST" as a fellow former Tumblr power USER. Then I started wondering whether I had invented that whole thing. I tried so hard to make the "BLOG" part work!
Nice STARTER pack pic, Malaika - gave me a much needed chuckle after a close call in the NW.
Count me among the VALVE PROTESTERS. Believe me, they’re there, even if they don’t comment. The key is the thing that you press to operate the VALVE. Two separate parts. Harrumph. And don't try to tell me it's that VALVEs are of key importance to trumpets, because not all trumpets have VALVEs. Air, ear, embouchure are all key, but not VALVE. Again I say harrumph (but with tongue in cheek, SO TO SPEAK.)
My stepfather-to-be gave me a Cross PEN for HS graduation. I still use it and it’s still my favorite - never a skip and I love the feel of it. Are the newer ones still the same quality?
Took forever to cast off ‘up on tipTOE’, which is all I could come up with when ‘on tipTOE’ didn’t fit. ISEE now that the what-I-thought-was-excess-verbiage “just a teensy” in the clue was leading to TIPPY. POINT TAKEN. That, with wanting B FLAT for the key and OLAY for the cosmetic brand made the NW more of a struggle than it should have been. But I clawed my way up from ON THE BACK BURNER, and my frustration DISAPPEARED into yesterday’s ether.
Funny thing is, after B FLAT fell flat, I started looking for things that might be key to trumpet playing, like accuracy, tone, pitch, endurance.
It didn’t give me trouble, but is “Soul seller” an EVIL clue for KIA?
MOANS seems kind of dark for “Sounds that might accompany foot-dragging.” Maybe I’m just too caught up in the Ukrainian plight. I awoke to thunderstorms last night and thought for a second it was bombs.
Some excellent key work (and tonguing) by these musicians playing excerpts from Scheherezade, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, born this day in 1844.
Total DNF here, as I never heard "ON TIPPYTOE" and never hope to ever hear it. Plus, Segunda MANO I never heard or read in Spanish. Literally "second hand" so I probably should know it. Plus was looking for an alternative to -FLAT but never found it though VALVE was obvious in retrospect. So was AMBER as an ale variety.
I remember the men who fought at Agincourt would stand a TIPTOE when the battle was mentioned in the future. Henry V was required reading, in my day. But not TIPPYTOE.
For some reason, I had heard of Dua LIPA and got the other weird answers like SWAG. But not TIPPYTOE.
@OffTheGrid (6:55) Thanks for the link. I’m always up for a Seinfeld moment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Andrew E (10:06) Welcome! I don’t know Tumblr from Twitter but it’s nice to hear your take on the matter. Don’t be a stranger.
MFCTM.
okanaganer (2:36)
Pete (9:23)
SandyG (9:37)
Beezer (11:45)
Sticking in foreign words when English will do is a sign of intellectual laziness. It’s just a way of increasing difficulty (it is a Friday) without working at it.
Right?!
I had an average time, but but this had way too many names I had never heard of (as clued): JOYCE Bryant, Dua LIPA, ENID from “The Walking Dead,” JOSE Rizal. And JOSE crossing JOYCE was pretty much a Natick.
@Anonymous 12:10 "stupid clue. any sliced bread sandwich, cut into diagonal quarters will be toothpicked." I don't agree it's stupid for that reason. A crossword clue may and usually does have multiple possible answers, so why pick on that aspect? I'm more with @Sgt. Mac with the criticism that it's club sandwiches which are the usual "toothpick" sandwich and a BLT with a toothpick, while seen, is a bit less usual. At least in my experience. My BLT usually come either cut in half or whole, while clubs are almost invariably in quarters (or more rarely, halves.)
Which, of course, leads us to the immortal Midge Hedberg's take on club sandwiches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyFvGL3Z5F8
CROSS was a brand name of ball point pens. Usually shiny gold or silver. Most likely vintage now!
I had one of my rare Google days today, sigh. I only Google on a NY Times puzzle a couple of times a year; today, I could not finish the NW. The entire puzzle was filled in and I was looking at STEEL to the east and JO___ above ON THE BACK BURNER and nothing, nothing, was in the NW.
I put MANO in as my first entry today but the sly trumpet key had me thinking musical key. So I scratched out MANO and wrote _flat in for 2D. And scratched that out too when nothing worked. I tried to stretch "on tip-TOE" every which way - it wasn't happening. Why I could only think of "brown" ale is beyond me.
But after Googling 32A, that Y of JOYCE gave me ON TIPPY-TOE, gave me back MANO and all the rest of the NW. But you can't say I'M NO SLOUCH today!
AMBER was my Wordle word today - a kealoa meant I got it in four, not three.
Claire and Brooke, nice job, great cluing, thanks for the Friday challenge.
Malaika,
Abortion is not healthcare. That's Orwellian speech to disguise what it actually is.
Yes, Cross is a "luxury" engravable pen/pen set, known to Boomers like me who wrote most letters, reports, notes by hand. Executives had Cross pens, and guys who retired after 50 years got an engraved set.
Very nice! And very challenging for me. For one thing, the conversational phrases that Malaika found fun are the type I always struggle with: needing to come up with an equivalent, my mind goes blank. After the fact, yes, I thought these were great. But coming on one after another of them felt like repeatedly hitting a wall. Solving: I couldn't get anywhere up top, so seized on the gift of IKEA-PERK-SANS to start out in the SW corner and built the rest from there. Last in: VALVE x BLTS, and happy to finish.
@Pete 10:45. I figure the AREA in area map means the local area specifically. If I check into a hotel in Corpus Christi, and they offer me a map, I assume it will be an area map. If instead they were to give me, say, a map of COVID vaccination rates by Canton in Switzerland, that would be interesting but not helpful to me.
Haven’t commented this week because it has been crazy busy at work, but just wanted to say that I’ve enjoyed your writeups, Malaika, and I hope you’ll be back soon!
Today was tough in a good way for me. Lots of great answers and clues - those for TSP and EVIL were faves. PPP doesn’t bother me as much as most, and on the JOYCE/JOSE cross, I figured the latter was JOSE and not rOSE because many Filipino names are Spanish. (Speaking of which, I hd bo idea there was a TORO wine region.) i will say, though, that even I thought the clue for ENID was a stretch. I watched that show and remember her, but she was a pretty minor character (whose undead head ended up n a spike).
The one distinguishing feature of Cross PENs: after about 5 minutes of continuous writing one gets the Cross Cramp.
Cross brand pens used to be very popular many years ago. Don’t know if they still are. My mother gave me one when I graduated high school.
I used to be a big boxing fan, so undercard, or prelims, was familiar to me.
I think of beeps for bats, clicks for whales.
Garfunkel & Oates has a few specials and a onetime TV series. A cute & fun duo singing bawdy songs with peppy music.
@Teedmn…I feel your pain!
@Mathgent…thanks for the shoutout! @GILL I, @Pabloinh, and @Joaquin can comment but my read is there is NO forgiveness (really no ear) for USA English in Spain, especially when you are in smaller cities and town. Spanglish not recognized as well as mangled Spanish. We were very glad to have our daughter there for communication! Btw…I cannot believe this now (as an oldster) but I rented a car…somehow got to our lodging in Madrid (without my daughter) that wasn’t far from the Prado, then traveled by car (me driving!) to Toledo, Ciudad Real (my daughter had been there as a h.s. exchange student), Cordoba, Sevilla, and Granada. Seems like I was told to say “grah thee us” at various points (Castilian?) rather than “grah see us”
And again…I really don’t mean no forgiveness…I really just mean that you will NOT be understood. I’ve never been to Barcelona…perhaps it’s different.
@okanaganer: That @Rex had never come across the Cross brand before was surprising. I collect fountain pens, and among my favorites is an old Cross sterling silver with a 24K nib. Still writes like water flowing up on the beach. My daily pen is my Dad’s old Parker. Never fell for the Montblanc craze, but I have a few. So glad to see fountain pens coming back (a little).
@Roberto and @Georgia. Amen to the Boomers and our fountain pens 😉
@Lewis; absolutely I thought “Anita” first! Shame in this old Peacenik.
In my family the youngest generation have no need of CROSS or any other pens - they only type. In fact I can barely read their "handwriting" if they do by any chance send a card.
@okanoganer and @bocamp - when do you guys sleep? If you're usually on Pacific time you're up and posting awful early!
Fun, clever, challenging, and educational. What more could I ask? I agree completely with @Rex’s take on the conversational feel and applaud our constructors today. Thanks for a challenge and a half. This took me so ling to get started. Clawed my way in the SE as my first “chunk.” Thankfully, my mostly educated guesses on ONE AT A TIME, ON THE BACK BURNER, and POINT TAKEN, gave me enough purchase to grind my way through. Learned REED College not only exists (and in Oregon) but its mascot is the griffin.
Best Friday jn a very long time!
A Cross pen was a standard graduation present in a certain time I shall not date.
Has anyone mentioned that Cross makes PENS?
[Spelling Bee: @bocamp, that word you had trouble spelling took me about 5 tries. Darned double double letters.
td: 5 sec to get pan (my 1st word), 12 min to pg.]
@Lewis, love your insights and how you express them! “The grid included a lovely O-tail oleo in trochaic pentameter: MANO / THEO / ERGO / TORO / SHINTO” is just one shining example. I also appreciate you sharing about the grid debut words. Before I saw your post I was wondering if PROTESTERS might be one. I checked xwordinfo and it wasn’t shown in red, but when I clicked on it, it said this was the only occurrence in the Shortz era. What am I missing?
@Beezer 2:36. Spanglish is my all time favorite way to speak the mangled. There are some very colorful ways to say certain words that make sense only to a Cuban living in Miami....
Just so you have a little "comida" for thought:
Ciera la widow que etah reinando. Close the widow because it's raining (my favorite)
Pero like supposably hablamos different: We speak another language...
Please help keep your piso clean: Don't pee on the floor.
You'll want to take the guagua (wa-wa) to ver un show. Take the bus and go see the show.
It's fun and my sisters and I are experts at mangling every sentence we can.
Congratulations on your solo venture throughout Spain. I actually learned to drive a little Seat 600 in Spain. Went everywhere singing "Bottle of wine...fruite of the vine...when you gonna let me get sober....
Try driving throughout Italy....
Gratheas...El gust es mio.
Started with Olay & something 'flat'; needless to say, the NW was the last area to fall.
@Eniale (2:58 PM)
8:00 PM bedtime makes for early rising. Been more or less on that schedule for years.
@okanaganer (3:07 PM)
Yeah, I danced around with that one for a few minutes, then moved on. Ended up at -1, so wasn't too unhappy. Ditto on the first word today! :)
___
td pg: 20:47 / W: 3*
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~
@A -- Thank you for your kind words! It looks like PROTESTERS was used in a "Variety" puzzle in March of last year, so they didn't count it as a NYT debut. But if you just count the regular crossword, Shortz era and before, this is a debut.
I too was stuck on BFLAT, also TOPNOTCH crossing CAIN as the more interesting twin (though i suppose he was Abel's brother but not necessarily twin).
I used to do Sudoku but got bored with it a couple of years ago. It seemed so repetitious. Same thing now with the BEE. Wordle is more interesting than either but we'll see.
@A - With love and respect, pshaw on your trumpeter. Try this, starting at the 4:55 mark.
@Native Spanish speakers - I get the segundo mano translates to second hand, but does it have the same connotation as in English, i.e. used or relayed?
@Kitshef - It's just that sometimes the vernacular becomes ridiculous. And, would you ever say to the concierge "do you have an area map" rather than "do you have a map of the area"?
@Gill 12:25p - I worked on a project in Oaxaca that ended up in numerous trips and many meals at Los Pacos. The food was great and reasonable - such a friendly place. The black mole is outstanding - although I don’t think I ate a bad one in the entire city. My wife became spoiled on the tlayudas and fresh crema.
Thanks for shaking loose some fond memories.
@Beezer 2:36 - I went to Spain to live with a family who spoke no English at all for my Junior Year Abroad. Hardest thing for me was learning "ceceo", which is the th sound for za, ce, ci, zo, and zu. I had only two years of Spanish in college and nothing before that so I was over my head for quite a while. I have to say my wonderful family and most other folks I ran into were remarkable patient and kind, although I should add that even with my limited vocabulary I had a decent Spanish accent, so I can't speak to that.
Like @GILL I, I like to fool around with Spanglish. A Spanish teacher friend and I like to speak what we call "trucker Spanish" which we do with the worst possible Deep South American accent we can muster. Fun is where you find it.
@Son Volt. So glad to hear your wife liked the Tlayudas and that you went to Los Pacos.
I haven't been back in a while but boy do I remember their mole samples!!!
I make Tlayudas but, try as I might, they don't taste the same. It's the corn used in making the tortillas that makes that dish so darn good.
Next time you go back, don't be afraid to try their street food. All the tacos have some sort of mole on their carnitas.
Gads...my mouth is watering now .
Regarding REPOST - Maybe CROSS POST would be more accurate because I think it is most commonly used for going CROSS platform. So a Tumblr link on Twitter is being REPOSTed, or a Tweet being shared on Facebook is being REPOSTed. One specific account I follow on Twitter REPOSTs a Tumblr link every Sunday.
@Lewis - I saw you mention that last night. I only saw Final Jeopardy, so missed it. And yes to whoever followed up, Frisbee™️ is not a part of the official name of the sport, just the oh so modest “Ultimate.” The most commonly used disc is made by Discraft.
As to the Area Map question, if you’re being literal I’d say yes, every map is an Area Map. But colloquialisms are not literal. “Special purpose map” or “Specific purpose map” are closer meanings. If I’m at a B&B in northern Michigan the area is going to be a lot larger than if I’m at the downtown Marriott in Chicago, but each area map is going to highlight “nearby” points of interest.
I always love it when someone misuses “Orwellian” or, even better, “baby.” I suppose at the anti-women’s rights café when you order fried chicken they’ll ask if you want it sunny side up or over easy.
@Eniale... I am not a morning person, so I always solve after supper, and in Pacific time the puzzle comes online at 7pm... perfect. If Rex (or his stand-in) posts in the evening, it is usually about 9 to 10 pm our time, also perfect for me to comment. (However it often trips me up referring to today/yesterday, as my Thurs. evening is Fri. after midnight eastern time.)
Unfortunately from Tues to Sat puzzles, Rex almost always waits til the early morning to post... about 3 to 4 am our time (yikes!). By the time I get around to it-- late morning-- it's mid afternoon back east.
@bocamp... I can't imagine going to bed at 8 pm. A few years ago I had a job that started at 8 am but my commute to Kelowna was almost 90 minutes, so I had a 10:00 bedtime to get up at 5:30. And that seemed SO early to me! Getting up in the dark?... ugh.
Cross is a brand name for high end fountain pens.
@Anonymous 2:15 - Hah! Yes. About the only thing Cross pens were good for showing off you had a Cross pen and maybe signing papers. Nothing comfortable or ergonomic about them for any sustained usage(at least to me). Gimme a cheap Bic Crystal ballpoint over that any day. Their luxury or pseudo-luxury status utterly mystifies me. Great marketing and perceived status, I guess. C'est la capitalisme.
Malika's review felt a lot like one of Rex's. I don't know of something therefore it's not important or meaningful. I've been a Garfunkel and Oates fan for 20 years. I use Cross pens. I've seen boxing matches. But because Malaika doesn't know these things they are stupid and irrelevant. Sigh.
I was sure that 9A "What a rebellious teenager may be going through" was going to be ANGST. I was disappointed when PHASE finally filled in. Aren't we all, from cradle to grave, going through a PHASE of one kind or the other? Saying it's just a PHASE seems dismissive.
I'm stinging a little bit from seeing my EVIL twin Anoa Blob described at 18A as being "the more interesting twin". Yeah, he's a globe trotting, adventurous bon vivant while I'm a stay at home book worm word nerd, but hey, it's just a PHASE.
The only thing I know in German is "Iss mein unter hosen" so I was taken aback when 47A "Pants: Ger." turned out to be HOSE. Is that an abbreviation for HOSEN? Is that the reason for the abbreviated "GER." in the clue? I join other PROTESTERS who thought giving a common English word like HOSE a foreign language clue was gratuitous.
@Pete 10:45…I think I spoke to area map…(yesterday?) I said I don’t think of “area map” as something handed out to a site with tourists. I thought the clue would have been better if “something given out with your rental car.”
And why am I on this blog so late?
Thanx @ GILL I and @pabloinnh for your comments!
I once spent a week in Manila, for an academic conference, and was taken to see the home of JOSE Riscal. I'd never have known it otherwise; but it did save me from putting in Anita Bryant. I'd never heard of JOYCE, though, and I was up on tipTOE to get a better view, so it took me forever to get that corner. After wondering whether stout was a kind of ale, I finally saw the AVON/VALVE cross, and everything fell into place.
I had evapoRate, then DISsiPate before DISAPPEAR; that was kind of fun.
Growing up in Wisconsin, the prestige pens were Parkers, but I always preferred the Shaeffer fountain pens--I used to do the puzzle with one. I didn't hear about Cross until I came East.
I greatly enjoyed this beautiful puzzle. I pity today's commenters who managed to find all kinds of fault with it. Why do you do crosswords? And y'all accuse @Rex of being a sourpuss.
@Lewis, thanks!
@Pete, haha! I came so close to posting Maynard playing Scheherezade!
@M&A, @Anoa, I was curious about HOSE, too, so I looked around and it appears it’s a singular word meaning what we call one pair of pants. HOSEn is more than one pair. There was a remark that you might hear die Hosen referring to one pair of pants, but it wouldn't be standard usage. rocketlanguages.com Funny HOSEn story, @Colortini!
Also thanks to @GILL for the spanglish humor and @Peter P. for the club sadwich humor. Laughed so long at that last one the receipt for the donut bit extended the laughter. MyK always puts toothpicks in the BLTS cause with much mayo much bacon and lettuce and a thick properly salted and peppered slice of tomato things fall apart easily. I now make them with toothpicks too. Two per half-sandwich.
A fine and dandy Saturday. Great fill. Off the beaten path clues.
Not sure where humor on the VALVE issue starts or ends (unsurprisingly) but my thought on trumpet key was the water key which I knew more often as the spit valve. Was everyone thinking this or just me? https://images.app.goo.gl/8VD3C4YqHKbydFsu8
@anon551pm
Better reread the review. There is no disparaging in today's review. There is just stating the extent of her knowledge and a polite asking of more info from the commenters here.
Both Thurber stories mentioned yesterday are available free online in audible form. Just do a title author search. The Wood Duck is quite suggestively dense without the standard Thurber humor (mostly).
@Anonymous (5:51) “because Malaika doesn't know these things they are stupid and irrelevant.” Did you even read the review? She said nothing of the kind, not even remotely.
@Z - Somehow, whenever I use the HTML <ImFuckingJokingHere> So, what map isn't an area map? </ImFuckingJokingHere>, blogger rejects my post rather than displaying everything in the universally accepted I'm Fucking Joking Here font. Sorry for the confusion.
Nice puzzle. One objection...the clue for "WANNATRADE" should suggest it's a question, i.e., "EXCHANGE WORDS?" or "EXCHANGE WORDS, SOMETIMES"
ONLY ONEATATIME
AMBER is EYE CANDY, SOTOSPEAK, SANS pants,
ONTHEBACK side dandy, NOSLOUCH as your BESTCHANCE.
--- JOYCE OATES
Junk-free enjoyable solve. Maybe a bit on the easy side but that’s on the editor for sloting maybe a day or two early. Or maybe everything was in my wheelhouse today ERGO my relatively fast time.
Wondering if Cross ballpoint PENS have DISAPPEARed from the market? Used them years AGO at work but finding refills became increasingly difficult - moot now that virtually everything I write (other than the NYT Xword) is done on a keyboard.
Understand how program and SYSTEM can be equated but, as an oldtime IT guy, a single program comprises ONLY one PHASE in a system. Knew 32A couldn't be Anita but wasn't familiar with either JOYCE or JOSE so Naticked there - otherwise, SANS difficulté pour un vendredi.
A bit twee, and pisser infested. Parker was the status pen - Cross more an also-ran.
Hmmm...close, but no cigar for me today. It's that "name thingy" again. (she sighed)
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Oh, that NW! Again! Puzzle was tough enough to get started (My very first "gimme," LEGS, 8 on a spider, was wrong!), but after starting over in the SW it went along pretty smoothly. Looking at that gridspanner, I wondered if it could be ONTHEBACKBURNER right away, but held off until I had a couple of letters hit in the right spot. After that it quickly came down to You-Know-Where. I had nothing. I knew 3-down ended in -TOE, but only considered TIP. The baby-talk variation never occurred to me. Finally cracked when I abandoned the RMK-looking answer for 2-down and tried VALVE. That's not exactly a "key." Damn clue almost destroyed me, but at least VALVE gave me AVON.
I too assumed Anita Bryant, the gay-hater. Never heard of JOYCE. I tell ya, that NW was BRUTAL. So...easy-challenging? After looking at the completed grid, I have to say this pair is NOSLOUCH at puzzle-making. Birdie.
P.S. In the if-you-can't-beat-em-join-em category, I tried Wordle:
YBBYB
BBBBB
GGGGG
which I'm told is a birdie. Sorry, I don't have the tech chops to print out those colored blocks.
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