Oxymoronic stage name for the D.J. Norman Cook / TUE 3-22-22 / New York city where Mark Twain is buried / Hard-to-find game cards in collector's lingo / Streaming service rebranded with the suffix Max in 2020 / Vodka brand that sounds like a toast / Heavy metal band whose name includes an actual heavy metal / Feminist Millet who popularized the concept of the patriarchy
Constructor: Adam Wagner
Relative difficulty: Medium (a few proper nouns might've EDGED this UP to Medium-Challenging for some)
THEME: MAGNET (69A: Object represented visually twice in this puzzle) — IRON is attached to both ends of a U-shaped MAGNET (there are two such MAGNETs in the grid, both of them containing unchecked (circled) squares that spell out the chemical symbol of iron, i.e. "F" and "E" (for "Fe")):
Theme answers:
IRON FILING (28D: Debris from welding or power drilling)
IRON MAIDEN (29D: Heavy metal band whose name includes an actual heavy metal)
PUMPED IRON (9D: Lifted weights, informally)
WAFFLE IRON (10D: Breakfast appliance)
Word of the Day: FATBOY SLIM (17A: Oxymoronic stage name for the D.J. Norman Cook) —
Well this certainly has more visual interest than most Tuesdays. More whimsy and more unorthodoxitude (unchecked squares!). I had to solve it on the NYT puzzle site (ugh) because my software warned me that it couldn't replicate certain visual elements and thus "the solving experience may be compromised," but I don't think it was necessary. It definitely helps to have the pictures of the (obvious) MAGNETs there, but having roughly U-shaped black-square arrangements in the same place achieves pretty much the same effect. I would've had to infer the MAGNET part, sure, but that would've been part of the fun—to see the IRON answers come into view and realize that their position vis-a-vis the black square arrangements mattered. But here, the entire gimmick is just handed to me before I've even started the puzzle. What's more (worse?), the pictures of MAGNETs in the grid make the revealer completely unnecessary. It's redundant. We can *see* the MAGNETs, we don't need to be told that they are "represented visually" in the grid ... whereas we *would* need to be told (or a revealer would at least be theoretically useful) if those MAGNET pictures were just black squares. What I'm saying is that this puzzle would probably work best *without* the pictures. I get that the NYT wants to show off its fancy puzzle layout capabilities, but all that does today is sap the grid of some of its challenge, some of its mystery (i.e. some of its pleasure).
A single IRON FILING is very odd. I didn't even write FILING in at first because when FILINGS, plural, didn't fit, I figured it must be some other phrase. Who ever heard of a MAGNET with a single IRON FILING attached to one of its poles? The clue itself says "debris" ... which really does suggest multiple FILINGS. Beyond that, I thought the theme was conceptually cute, and the theme answers were all vivid and fun to uncover, though painfully easy to uncover—once you see what the first IRON answer is doing, you've already got a huge clue to getting the next three: just add IRON. I'm kind of startled by FATBOY SLIM, in a good way, though not in a Tuesday way. FATBOY SLIM appears in the NYTXW for the first time today, despite the fact that he has not released an album under that name for the better part of twenty years. What I'm saying is, he had several *huge* songs around the turn of the century, so he's not "obscure," but it's weird that he never appeared in his own original fame window (or shortly thereafter). I mean, the Times is (or was) notoriously belated in coming around to contemporary pop culture names, but 20+ years belated? That's belated. Anyway, I have no idea how recognizable his name will be to solvers, but if you're roughly Millennial or Gen X, it seems highly likely that his name will at least ring bells. I know his name well, and remember being stunned to find out, some years after I'd first heard of him, that FATBOY SLIM had (under his real name, Normal Cook) been in The Housemartins, one of my very favorite bands in college. A completely different musical style.
[SHEEPLE!]
Speaking of belatedness, what is the deal with HBOGO still appearing in grids? How long ago was this puzzle accepted? Either the NYTXW accepted this puzzle 2+ years ago and is just getting around to publishing it now, or people still have HBOGO in their wordlists. If the former, that lag time seems criminal (though not as bad as the lag time sometimes used to be, that's for sure). If the latter, please, I beg you, remove HBOGO from your wordlists now. You can add HBOMAX if you haven't already, but always be ready to override your damned software. Bygone answers are inevitable, but there's something particularly sad and weak about a bygone streaming service. It was around for a decade, but now it's gone. SUNSETted, if you will (I won't—you can keep your horrid businessese to yourself). Also, HBOGO repeats GO (from "GO SEE"), so it's bad on two counts. Sticking with GO-words, I didn't know HIDALGO, but luckily I did know ELMIRA, which is just [points out window] over there. Down the road about an hour or so. Surprised anyone outside central New York knows it, but you do see it in puzzles every once in a while. No other obvious potential sticking points today, that I can see. OK, time for breakfast. I really want waffles now, or maybe EGGS Benedict, but knowing (lazy) me it'll just be oatmeal again. Oh who am I kidding, I love my oatmeal! I love routine! Waffles are for weekends. See you tomorrow.
ULTIMA at 14A was a WOE, and this Boomer only vaguely recalled FATBOY SLIM. That made the NW a bit challenging for an early week puzzle. Luckily, FIE and ATTEND were gimmes and WE DID IT was easily inferred, so that led to GUFFAW and ELAINE, which brought ULTIMA in focus and stimulated the synapses that held FATBOY SLIM. Guessed at HIDALGO when señor didn't fit at 52A. Stretching the synapses back to high school Spanish, I think it's a contraction of "hijo de algo," or "son of somebody," or, apparently, "gentleman."
When I opened the puzzle (I always use the NYT app—it’s fine by me), my first though was “kid’s menu.” Fortunately, the solve was just challenging enough for a Tuesday. I agree with Rex (nice to have you back!) that the puzzle would have worked without the visual aid, but then it would have been too hard for a Tuesday. Also, placing the letters FE in the magnets was a nice touch.
Some random thoughts: • I solve online, saw the two magnets, and was intrigued before square one, aptly making this magnet puzzle for me a big draw. • This being a four-IRON puzzle, ECHO made for a bonus theme answer. • I liked the double-E fest (7), and the trio of rhymes with a lah-di-dah rhythm: WAZE/LIAISE, FROG/AGOG, NAE/SOIRÉE. • Best description I found for the T-rex’s actual sound was in an article that described it as a “deep low thrum” that you could hear from miles away like “those loud bass notes vibrating in your car”. • In the online grid (which is what we see on @rex's blog), the vertical theme answers are a fraction of an inch away from actually touching the magnets. What would have been cool, would have been be if, upon a successful solve, there was an animation where those answers were suddenly sucked into touching the magnets with a satisfying ca-chunk.
A fun excursion with hidden pleasures. Thank you, Adam!
Surprisingly, I knew FATBOY SLIM and ANN, neither of which is the kind of thing I normally know, so the only puzzler was KATE, who I feel like I should know but didn’t.
I feel like it would have been a better puzzle if 28D had been IRON WAFFLE, 29D had been IRON PUMPED, 9D had been MAIDEN IRON, and 10D had been FILING IRON, so that gimmick would be that the magnets pulled the IRON towards them, out of their regular position.
(1) Would have been tad more elegant to have FE in *both* unchecked squares. Do magnets attract FLUORINE? (2) Did not realize how hard it would be to find a second answer of IRON XXXXXX!
When I saw the gimmicky grid my instinct was to hit "Reveal Puzzle", scan it quickly and move along with my day. But...I like doing xwords so I DIDIT. The four themers were my first four entries, with @Rex's hesitation at FILING(s). So it became a themeless until I saw the F & E were part of it. I don't get @Rex's HBOGO Groan. The clue is clear that HBOGO is no more. Is it okay to print ALLAH? Will there be a fatwah? Hope not. Hi APU, miss you on the TV.
Thx Adam, for this 'MAGN'i'F'ic'E'nt Tues. puz! :)
Med.
Liked the red MAGNETs in the grid. Certainly aided in the solve.
Missed the F & E significance in the circled squares. D'oh!
Just a wee prob with FDA; for some unknown reason, I wanted CDC and ended up with aDa. Another case of not checking the grid before entering the final word. :(
Other than that faux pas, a fine and most enjoyable adventure. :)
@Eniale (2:53 PM yd) 👍 for exc SB results! :) ___ yd pg: 4:07 (0 in 27:48) / W *3
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Still solving on paper after all these years, so no pictures here, which I think leads to a much better aha!. Especially since this was easy enough that I thought the only trick was having the F and E make IRON, which was doing the attracting, so I went back and found the other IRONS attached to the magnets. (Big) AHA! I said, and how did I miss that first time around?
Nice to make some new friends, like FATBOYSLIM and ANN as clued and even ELAINE (still haven't seen Seinfeld). NIA the Crossword Girl is starting to feel like an old friend.
Don Quixote is usually described as an HIDALGO, and @XConrad is right about its origin. Spanish is also handy for ULTIMA (last), even if you don't know linguistics.
Nice Tuesday, AW. A Winner, and more fun the more I looked at it, for which thanks.
Theme was cute, but more of a constructioneering feat than a solving treat. The fill was pretty good considering the theme-imposed restrictions, but not enough to un-Tuez this one.
I would have to assume that the puzzle was accepted at a time when HBOGO was still a thing, or it would have been handed back to the constructor to re-work before it was accepted. I would agree that the NYT needs to work on its lag time.
Print my puzzle out from the website each morning. No 🧲 which was just fine by me. The black magnets were more than enough hint.
Wasted an inordinate amount of precious nanoseconds staring at ATTEaD because ANa seems more common in xwords than ANN. It seems like I’m always debating between Ana and Ava and ANN barely appears. Anyway, finally saw the error I was making. Other big writeover was DISSidents before DISSENTERS. Despite involving more letters to fix that actually took me fewer precious nanoseconds to clean up.
Fe₂O₃ was a team I played on for several years. Like @anon7:25 I thought the unchecked squares needed an Fe rebus. And I was really looking for some rust in the puzzle.
We do get a Parks and Rec clue and the NAE NAE, but with FATBOY SLIM and IRON MAIDEN taking more than three times the space, the cultural center of the puzzle is still early 1990’s. As I’ve lamented repeatedly, the NYTX thinks 1995 is “fresh.” Not to hammer the point to death, but LOU Rawls died 16 years ago and APU Nahasapeemapetilon first appeared 32 years ago.
BTW - I found a website that converts text to subscript and superscript. Adding it to my bookmarks right next to the uʍop ǝpᴉsdn text generator. The latter is especially useful if you want to add a spoiler and not get deleted by the mods.
I agree with Rex - it would have been much better without the pictures of the magnets. After that there was no “aha” value to picking up the significance of the IRONs. Agree that the IRON FILING is really sloppy - it’s hard for any group to constantly bring their A-game, and apparently the editorial staff at the NYT is no exception.
Icky foreign word of the day goes to HILDALGO which is common usage in multi-lingual families I’m sure - the rest of the world, probably not so much. SHEEPLE breezes through six furlongs in 1:10 4/5 to take the fake word of the day by 3 1/2 lengths.
For some reason, AGOG FROG up there in the NE tickles me, and I am not one to look for that kind of thing. Appreciate the cleverness today, and especially on a Tuesday. The magnets are nifty.
Someone made the anpbsurd claim that the culturalcemter of this puzzle is the 1990s. As proof he cites Parks and Rex—a sitcom which debuted in 2009, and naw as— Adan e spawned by a musical,hit from 2013. Apu has recently been in the news as being culturally problematic, and of course Iron Maiden is on tour right now.. and of course Lou Rawls biggest hits wee two decades before the. 1990s. I have no idea what this ide is on.or on about.
A *very* bad Natick at 44A/45D, compounded by the presence of an unchecked square. Also, I'm a linguist, and I've never heard the term ULTIMA used for a final syllable, although I see it at the bottom of a long list of uses in Wikipedia. To be fair, though, I have heard "penultimate stress" for stress on the next-to-last syllable (nearly always the case in Russian). Better clue: ____ Thule.
With all the objections raised by OFL, not a good day, on the whole.
I solve on-line,but the red and white magnets didn’t appear until post happy music. Still, it was a very easy solve. The constructor explains on xwordinfo that it was originally a very complicated scheme meant for a Thursday. Editors decided to have him dumb it down for a Tuesday. The result is ……ok.
I would pick a nit with welding as a producer of IRONFILINGs. The filings (as more than implied in the name), come from filing and other abrasive interactions between iron and harder metals.
33A RARES looks like an over-the-top in-your-face-Anoa-Bob POC. But according to the clue, it is actually found ITW. These kinds of educational clues are RARES, but welcomes.
Fun puzzle, Adam Wagner. Sorry your initial version didn’t run as a Thursday. It would have been fun to try to suss it out.
An example in which the new app technology added something needless and even undesirable - like pointing big fat arrows to the black square formations with a caption "see, these are magnets, and that's why iron is sticking to them in case you are too dumb to suss out the theme when you are done."
Totally gratuitous. No one ever would have thought these pictures of magnets were needed in order to recognize magnets at the completion of the puzzle until the new puzzle app technology gave someone the bright idea to add them - or, better, the bad idea masquerading as a bright idea.
I've been doing a (very) little work with steel lately, and can attest to the fact that filings has no singular. Not only that, but you needn't be a magnet to have it stick to you. Filings, millings, and grinding dust will stick to you, then fall off, but in places most assured to have your partner step on a sharp one and get very annoyed with you. Also, that's not a magnet, that's a cartoon image of a magnet.
I tore apart my workshop yesterday looking for my magnets. I have about 20 tiny ones, 1/4" discs, and one big one. They've been driving me crazy, the tiny one for months, the big one for years. The small ones have been in my bench tray sticking to every damned steel tool I have in the tray, magnetizing it, so that whenever I have to pick up a rule or a chisel it's covered with FILINGS. When I actually needed some of them, they were nowhere to be found. I don't remember the exact day when I got so pissed at them that I just chucked them all, but am perfectly willing to assume that day existed.
I had no idea what HBOGO referred to, as I had _BOGO and thought there was some play on Buy One, Get One I never encountered. If I had had HBO__ I would have had a slight chance to dredge up the GO part (I've never had HBO in any form) but as it was I was lost.
The only HILDALGO I know was the eponym of the movie, which was "based on true life" but was a total fabrication. HILDAGO was a horse, so he's not to blame for that.
Solving in print format, without the pictures of magnets, I kept trying to fill the bottom right with “ladle” or to remember the name of the basket on a stick in lacrosse games. I saw the cup shape, but attached them to the connected diagonal lines.
Gosh. Maybe the entire grid could have been filled with IRON. Some suggested clues:
1. How best to describe a sand wedge?
2. Try to take the wrinkles out of something that doesn't have wrinkles?
Answers:
1. IRON IRON 2. IRON IRON
Now that would have been really something! Right?
Well, no, not exactly.
Many of you seem to have liked this puzzle, so I guess I'm an outlier. But I found it just a little bit too...repetitive. And please understand that I'm not saying that ironically.
Neat theme with plenty of awkward fill. I liked HIDALGO and FATBOY. ONENESS, SHEEPLE, SESTET etc and things like Kamala’s statement drag this thing down and glom up the overall experience.
Not sure Rex’s take on HBO GO - clear as day. I like LIAISE and of course MAIDEN.
Hand up for having rolled my eyes when I saw the magnets in the NYT app puzzle. I can often be dense when it comes to grid art, but even I could have made the connection without the 🧲
Ok. It hasn’t been THAT long since HBOGO was replaced with HBOMAX so I think that clue is fair.
Since I put in SEXTET at first I spent WAY too much time staring at X HEEPLE. D’oh!
Also, am I the only female that shudders every time I see a reference to IUD? Like…okay let’s have a doc insert a small foreign object into your body as far as it can possibly go without it actually being called surgery. [shudder] Anyway, count that as a puz answer I’d be happy to see disappear.
Wowza, what a Tuesday! We had a leap forward in digital visuals with the colorful little MAGNETS. They woke me up before I even started solving. The F and E were a nice extra to be discovered after I finished. I appreciated the placement of the long IRON downs attracted to the pull of each MAGNET. So, the theme was a big time winner for me. A fun surprise on a Tuesday is a very good thing.
My favorite answer is WAZE and boy do I love that app. It can be stressful to drive into or around the NYC area. If you get stuck in traffic it’s calming to be able to see why and how long it’ll last. Of course it’s even better to check WAZE first and plan a faster route, but who remembers to do that? I know it’s been around for a long while but so have I and I haven’t needed to look in the App Store for an improvement with more bells and whistles.
I lived in Elmira for a bit. Not much excitement there in those days. Since I don’t fly gliders, I couldn’t wait to leave Mark Twain behind and head to Boston.
I haven’t heard of SHEEPLE before and it’s pretty great. Not any of those in Ukraine for sure!
Strictly speaking, iron is not a heavy metal. It would need to be toxic in small amounts to be able to make that claim. NYT's should do better at not contributing to scientific ignorance.
I liked the visual of the MAGNETs, although I also agree puz would have been figureoutable without the visual. And it would've been better if the MAGNETs appeared after the solve (online version.) @Lewis' suggestions of the I's being "sucked into" the MAGNETs would've been tres cool, too. Get on it, NYT! 😁
Had IRON FIrING in, as SKOL Vodka was s new one for me, and FILING wouldn't work as the correct answer in the ole brain. SKOr Vodka sounded as plausible a name to me as SKOL, and also as a toast.
Two other wrongs that led to my DNF, fat fingered TYPO at AyON/KAyE, only looking at KAyE, thinking, "Hey, I don't know the name, but KAyE is definitely a name." And DISSENdERS/dAG. dAG, TAG, dang.
Liked the fill, came out way cleaner than it seemed it should. Had the one-space-twixt repeated letters from the IRONs to work around. Double-letter fest in NE corner. 5 sets in that little corner.
Two sets of Double F's. Start the day off right. 😁
Neat puz, Adam. It was a good draw. (Get it? Har.)
saw the magnets and groaned, but then saw the kamala clue and let out a delighted (and VERY audible) giggle. theme was a little heavy-handed but ultimately enjoyed this puzzle. we did it, joe!
Baby Boomer (1959) here - I had no trouble coming up with FATBOYSLIM with just a few letters in. Though I could not name one of his songs if my life depended on it. I hate orphaned squares ( F and E) Once I noticed IRON in both 10D and 9D the rest came quickly. Pretty good for a Tuesday I have to admit.
After getting Naticked yesterday with the AMIS/URIS cross, this one was a wheelhouse puzzle for me. In the mid-late 90s/early 90s I couldn't take two steps without hearing Big Beat music, whether it be Fatboy Slim or The Propellerheads or The Chemical Brothers. I showed my 5- and 7-year-old daughters the Christopher Walken "Weapon of Choice" video a few months ago, and they just thought it was the greatest thing ever. Unfortunately, IMHO, Big Beat didn't really age well, and I can only take it in the smallest doses these days. "Praise You" still gets occasional play in this household. IRONMAIDEN, on the other hand, is timeless. :) Run to the hills!
If they wanted to continue the slight GenX slant of the puzzle (but way beyond Tuesday level, if not too niche for a mainstream crossword), they could have clued ULTIMA as a ground-breaking video game RPG (role playing-game). Extra points if they mention Lord British. I never much got into table top RPGs, but Ultima III and IV kept me out of my parents' hair for countless hours.
Only reason I know of ELMIRA is that it's on the way from Binghamton to Corning when I visited the Corning Glass Museum years ago while seeing friends in B'ton. I had no knowledge of the Mark Twain connection, but with the EL in, it was a good guess.
Very smooth puzzle, extremely easy theme after filling in one IRON and realize the other three must be IRONS as well, so at least half the letters are free squares at that point. Even FE fell in quickly once I had the F, I figured the other must be an E for "iron."
I solve on the printout so I didn't know they were magnets until I got 69A from the crosses. Then I saw the four vertical IRONS. I don't like themes like this which are only apparent after solving.
I'd heard of WAZE but I didn't know what it did until I read Hartley70 (9:31). What a great use of the internet. I just checked and found that we have it here in San Francisco. Not as useful now when so many people are working from home.
I'm still doing Wordle first thing out of bed every morning but the charm is wearing off. Maybe because I'm understanding how to solve better. Second straight birdie this morning.
I solved the paper version which had no pictures of magnets. Made the puzzle a little harder. I liked the magnets and the puzzle. Would have liked the puzzle more if the pictures were there. The paper version should have had a note asking you to access the version with the pictures. Other than that, a nice day for a hike to Overlook Tower in the Catskills.
Ah, Elaine..."STELLA"..."Maybe the dingo et your baby."
Jim Backus to Gilligan..."We're planning a little soiree this evening..."
An Engish Professor at an American college should know everything about Mark Twain, but it's good to have you back,Rex. Your last pinch hitter was sheer genius on your part.
I have to wonder if this was meant to be one of those ‘enhanced’ puzzles with graphic elements that appear after you finish solving — such as the join-the-dots meta puzzles they sometimes use. If that’s the case, maybe someone just forgot to tick a box or write the appropriate conditional into the puzzle file or something.
Would certainly make more sense for the magnets to appear after you’ve solved the theme reveal than giving it away before you’ve even started.
OK. . . All those who read that On-And-On dissertation about Norman Cook - Raise Your Hands. Next. . . All those who cared deeply enough about the difference between Iron Filings and (GASP) an Iron Filing -Raise YOUR hands. . . As usual, when you having NOTHING to say, you go ahead and take a half-hour to say it. Good Day.
It is a RARES day indeedy when I actually sing and dance to a "cute" Tuesday. I did. My little IRON icon was just an upside down and right side up thingie filled with a FE. Is that not cute? or what.... A little side thought (which I do in my spare time)...Seeing IRON reminded me of Biltmore, in Havana. All the HIDALGOs - none of whom paid taxes - had these huge fences with spear-like tips surrounding their million dollar mansions. This was before security videos, so people like the Bacardi's, had to protect their rum bottles and the H Upman's had to hide their cigars. I guess it worked because nothing got through their property. Squirrels and dogs and cats and the next door neighbors would be seen dangling from the tops. Che would come by, drink some rum and smoke a cigar, and order the "debris" sent to an undisclosed location. I just loved FAT BOY SLIM. ULTIMA is my favorite spot to go and try some lip stuff that'll make my lips look like a Kardashian. Love to use WAZO in my car....except, I inevitably end up staring at some car carnage. I do have a WAFFLE IRON that I used exactly one time. BUT....I do make some bodacious EGGS Benedict for my birthday.
@Nancy yesterday: HAH! Now if you and I go to see "La Boheme" together, would you clap with me when "Mimi" finally kicks the bucket?
No pics here on my printed-out grid so the idea of MAGNETs didn’t occur to me until I got to the revealer.
Found this much harder than the usual Tuesday. I’d like to say that this puzzle landed with a thud, but I actually did like it in spite of all the repetition — four IRONs, two GOs, two pronoun I’s, two INs, and two UPs — and foreign words like HIDALGO, GOSEE, and IMOK.
WAZE certainly includes maps, but I think if it as a GPS system not a crowd-sourced map. Discovered that you can change the generic Siri-like voice that talks to you while you’re driving and now have a distinguished Englishman informing me of my route and warning me when there’s a “level crossing” (train tracks) ahead.
@unknown9:33 - Google before posting saves embarrassment. Ready for a real shocker? To an astrophysicist people are mostly metal. I just learned that yesterday and the flagrant disregard for common definitions and definitions from other sciences made it stick.
Perhaps it's not well known, but many of the attributes on Google maps are provided not by professional cartographers, but from a volunteer group of users and "fans". The top contributors used to get a trip to Google HQ every year. Not sure if they still do this or not.
@Anon 8:47 - I keep telling you, no drinking before breakfast, and especially, no getting totally faced by 8:47. You do realize that @Zed contrasted Parks & Rec (or as you like to call it, Parks & Rex ) as current compared to the rest of the puzzle? Not cited as proof, but noted as an outlier.
Late this morning due to home repairs, repairmen, and dogs who are freaked out by the noise they’re making. But IM OK.
Well since I solve my puzzle with a pencil and paper the way God intended, I had no issues with the MAGNET symbols but had to come here to find out the significance of the circles. IS IT ME or are those elemental tables just forgettable? I must have slept through whatever class those were taught IN school. Happy to see SHEEPLE, one of my favorite portmanteaus, and my old pal ELAINE as SEEN on TV.
Rex does not like the NYT app. I thought that when I was first forced to use it. But now I love it with its many features. I think Rex could l like it too if he gave it a chance. Had never heard of Fatboyslim, but with some crosses and the hint that it was an oxymoron I had no trouble filling it in. Very entertaining puzzle so I thank you Adam for creating it. Hope to see you again soon.
@GILL (11:20) -- Yes, and stamp my feet, too. But only when Mimi dies. Not when Carmen dies. I love, love, love "La Habanera". And anyway, Carmen's a mezzo who doesn't make my eyebrows ache.
I do wonder if we'd get out of "Boheme" in one piece, though, if we did that. Which reminds me...
I was 16, on a train tour of the U.S. with a group of other teens when we were dragged out of San Diego where we were staying and shuttled off to Tijuana by bus for a (oh, God it was a stifling hot day in July!) afternoon bullfight. Watching the poor bulls, punctured viciously with sharp lances by the picadors and dripping blood all over the ring before the gutless matador even showed up -- you call that a fair fight do you??? Well I sure don't!!! -- I felt really queasy. Queasy from the heat and queasy from all the blood. To take my mind off my misery, and also because I had the profound sense of justice and fairness that tends to run deep in 16-year-olds, I started shouting as loudly as I could:
"Come on, bull!!! Let's go, bull!!!"
No one paid any attention. I tried again:
Ole, toro!!! Ole, ole, toro!!!"
What can I tell you? I took French and Latin in high school, not Spanish. No one paid any attention. I think now, from what I've learned listening to Rafa Nadal, maybe I should have said "Vamos, toro!!!"? @GILL? @Pablo?
Anyway, since I wasn't doing anything to actually help the poor bleeding bull, I told our group leader that I was feeling sickish and could I get a coke at the bar to settle my stomach. Given permission, I actually had a rum and coke (they don't card you in Tijuana) and stayed there in the healing coolth of the blessed shade for the remainder of the bullfights. Would you believe that there were to be many of these abominations in one afternoon?
They showed great restraint, those Mexican bullfight fans. It's amazing that I left the arena in one piece. I'm not 16 anymore and you'd better believe that I wouldn't do something so gratuitiously stupid today.
Fun fact: IRON is the heaviest element, happens to be a metal, that is emitted from a supernova explosion. In point of fact, the star goes supernova when it starts to fuse IRON, which takes more energy to do than the energy released from fusion of the IRON. The fusion process generates, up til then, generates enough energy to keep the star's gravity from collapsing the star. Once IRON fusion starts, gravity takes over, the outer parts of the star make a bee-line to the core, which then causes the remnants of the star to blow to smithereens. So, in the sense of 'naturally' occurring elements, IRON is a heavy metal.
Here's where the other Heavy Metals come from: https://www.space.com/strontium-heavy-element-formed-neutron-star-merger.html
I’m still an Across Lite holdout so didn’t see the illustrations. I don’t feel like I missed anything and it certainly didn’t make solving any harder or less enjoyable.
It would've been more fun if they'd just made the magnet squares red. A hint of a clue. DNF because I somehow managed to live this long thinking Guffaw was spelled Gaffaw. What a Goofaw I am.
Re. HBOGO going away. Nothing goes away in the NYT puzz. Compared to Uris, HBOGO was a minute ago.
@Zed, Google Before Posting Saves Embarrassment (GBPSE). It just moved from theory to law. Every Good Boy Does Fine and you just did.
Thanks to "How the Universe Works". Saw an/the episode when one of the astronomers/cosmologists gets a little batshit when he details that his brethren, in times past, decided that any element beyond H and He is a 'metal'. It was kind of funny.
Medium-tough. I think the magnets in the app version helped keep this in the Tuesday range as opposed to the late week original intent of the author. Liked it.
What an IRONic puzzle! Actually, that word could have been the revealer since MAGNET was so obvious. It would have been one more IRON in a puzzle that already had four of them, but it would have been more clever than the thud of MAGNET.
I was surprised that Rex didn’t go into High Dudgeon (or at least Medium Dudgeon) over SHEEPLE. it seems like that portmanteau, once clever, has been coopted by the lunatic anti-vax/anti-mask crowd. The kind of thing idiots like Marjorie Taylor Green spew about reasonable rules to protect all of us from illness and death. Also, DISSENTERS could have been clued as anti-SHEEPLE.
Fascinating to learn that T-Rexes did not ROAR, and thanks @Lewis for telling us what sound they did make.
@Rex I had a friend in college who was from Horseheads, but naturally he said he was from ELMIRA.
My grouchy uncle used SHEEPLE waaay more than half a century ago to the unending irritation of my poor cousins, who were just kids when I was already grown up and married, sigh. Uncle had reason to be grouchy, having been displaced as a child in Germany during the war after his father and brother (my Papa) had left for the USofA. But it was so sad that he took it out on his kids. So that's what I think of when I see SHEEPLE.
I use the NYT app, so had the magnets. My guess is that without them it would have been perceived as too hard for a Tuesday, but I would have preferred it with just black squares.
As it was, very fast. The magnets made the IRON part obvious and then it was just wait for the rest to appear.
I was astonished that somehow I knew FATBOYSLIM. Had SLIM, thought about oxymoron, and pop, there was the name. No idea about his music and wouldn't know him I saw him, just weird.
This TuesPuz theme was quite magnetic, in an ironic way. The printed version at our house featured just the black magnet squares, so had to figure out for ourselves that they weren't only mighty pretty, giant U's.
staff weeject picks: F & E. Cute lil unchecked runt pups. I had CDC instead of FDA for way toooo looong, thooo, sooo … the whole theme mcguffin had to wait to fully reveal itself unto m&e at the end ... after RCRES didn't quite click, for them "Hard-to-find game cards".
fave fillins included: FATBOYSLIM. PERFUME. WEDIDIT. ISITME. HERHONOR. SUNSET goin down, at the end. FE-SS.
Thought HBOGO was more than fair, since it was clued up regardin its renamin to HBOMAX. @RP: Is all TV history to be out of bounds? That'd eliminate a slew of stuff, from yer wordlist, dude. Speakin of repeatin GO, tho … also should apply to the O+G repeaters, in HIDALGO, AGOG & FROG, for yer G & O nitfest completeness. har
And then also … Even if U got nuthin historic(al) at all in yer puzgrid, by the time it gets over to the compilation books, it'll be full of that there stuff. Even waitin a short while to publish the original puz would get U some of this. Just sayin.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Wagner dude. Good job. I'da had the first four Across clues start with the letters I, R, O, and N, tho. But, M&A is kinda weird like that.
Do mods take lunch breaks? It is 1:15 and the most recent post is from 12:01, after refreshing. I wonder because yd I answered BarbS when to me she was the most recent comment, but later when I looked there were many between us and one of them had answered her question, so I felt as though it looked like I was answering an already answered Q.
Nice to see my old friend HIDALGO today. In Spanish it comes from "hijo de algo" literally "son of something". An HIDALGO was a man of noble birth, but very often also a man without the means to maintain a noble lifestyle. Don Quixote is the classic example of an HIDALGO. Poor man had a nag for a horse and a servant girl for an (imaginary) girlfriend.
And, just like Tonto in the Lone Ranger series, his assistant, Sancho Panza, was way smarter than his leader.
@Nancy-I suppose you could say "vamos toro!" at a bullfight but the type of people who go to and enjoy these things would most likely think you were loca.
You've been to one more bullfight than I have, as I just wouldn't be able to do it. If I were in your situation in Mexico, I think the proper thing to say to your friends would be "vamonos"-let's get out of here!
@Nancy 12:35 You can give me "Carmen" any Tuesday from now until handsome Don Jose finds a way to seduce me. We watched Ana Antonacci perform as Carmen at The Royal Opera House. I think it was around 1995 or so. Her voice is so perfect for the role as sexy, charming, voluptuous seductress. I love her! Mimi can finally die in peace... As far as bullfighting....I was a groupie at one time. I'll post a picture of me with my "amigas" drinking and gawking at the bullfighters. We were celebrating "San Fermin" and the running of the bulls in Pamplona and like everyone else, we were drunk and happy and dancing most of the weekend. I was waiting in a bar for my friends to show up and in walks "El Viti." He actually flirted with me and asked if he could buy me a "copita." He's a short man but VERY charismatic. I said yes and drooled my vino down my chin while he talked about bulls. He actually wasn't my type, though. Not that it matters but he was about 4 inches shorter than I and, well, I have a hard time keeping my head down.
Those days are long past and I really wondered why I ever went to bullfights. I am now the sort of person who will pick up a snail from the sidewalk and make sure it gets to the vegetable garden.
El Viti...El Viti...El Viti es cojonudo....como El Viti, no hay ninguno. Hi @Pablito!
So this is why all the IRONs in the grids lately. The Shortz repetition strategy reaches its apex. Don’t think the puzzle needed it.
I was put off by the IRON reps at first, but they turned out to be a cute theme, so ok. No illustrations on my printout thank goodness, just the blocks, which were a mystery until the revealer. Coincidentally just used MAGNETs to secure a cover on my Saab vert in advance of the stormy weather. Liked the FE and actually the E was a help in getting GEE since I had no idea about HBO-O.
Interesting to note SEEN IN, chasing on last week’s SEEN IT and SEE NOTE.
Nice symmetrical entries WE DID IT and ONENESS, which imply their own kinds of magnetism.
I learned the meaning of HIDALGO, which I only knew as a movie starring Viggo Mortensen, based on the legend of an American horseman and his mustang, HIDALGO. Some horses can indeed be gentlemen. OTHERs not so much. Wonder what FESS and EARP’s mounts were like?
March 22 is big day in the music world, especially opera, theater, movies and TV. Two giants, Stephen Sondheim (1930) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948). Then you may know George Wyle (1916-2003) by the themes for Gilligan’s Island or It’s About Time, or his Most Wonderful Time of the Year. His family is probably getting some New Use money for that one about now. Then there’s the Finnish opera composer, Tauno Pylkkanen, whose romantic music I’ve been enjoying this morning.
translated text: Lord, oh the Great and Almighty, Protect our beloved Ukraine, Bless her with freedom and light Of your holy rays. With learning and knowledge enlighten Us, your children small, In love pure and everlasting Let us, oh Lord, grow. We pray, oh Lord Almighty, Protect our beloved Ukraine, Grant our people and country All your kindness and grace. Bless us with freedom, bless us with wisdom, Guide [us] into [a] kind world, Bless us, oh Lord, with good fortune For ever and evermore.
Very cute! I thought the bright red magnets were charming, and I enjoyed the array of different sorts of IRONs, especially the pairing of instruments of pleasure and pain - the WAFFLE IRON and the IRON MAIDEN. The F and E were the cherries on the top. I'm with @Hartley 70 9:31 - a delightful Tuesday.
Do-overs: WAyz, Awed. Help from previous puzzles: NAE. No idea: ULTIMA, FATBOY SLIM, ANN.
@Smith - Even before the Age of Mods there would be multiple answers to a question, so I wouldn’t worry about it. It always seems that when I don’t answer a question because “oh, there’s going to be 20 answers” is when I come back 5 hours later and nobody answered.
@Anon12:47 - Yep. I think that is where I saw it. And it’s not even as if I watched the whole episode, but it stuck at least in part because of how often commenters here will insist a clue is wrong because it’s used a different way.
@JD - True. But I agree with Rex that I’d prefer it if all constructors took it out of their wordlists.
@Anon11:55 - I’m impressed you could figure out what was being said. One minor defense of the other anon, my autocorrupt is constantly changing “Rec” to “Rex.” I was writing an email yesterday about our local Parks and Recreation department and had to uncorrect “rex” twice.
thanks to this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Boy_Restaurants), having gotten BOYSLIM, the only earworm left was bigBOYSLIM. in due time, crosses forced the right answer. never heard of the guy. but I mostly listen to Guy Lombardo lps anyway. since girls always seem to gravitate to a Big Guy, I guess to get away with starting Bar Fights, Big and Fat are often interchangeable with regard to a Boy.
Something there is in me that dislikes the word LIAISE. The IAI or the awkwardness of the verb formation from liaison? Although word usage by year suggests LIAISE and liasion were both rare for about a century with LIAISE being used more often. Then LIAISE took off in the 1940s (WWII?) and then liasion taking off in the 1950s (sexual tryst usage?).
Six letters, four vowels. The list of scrabble words starts with AALIIS ABASIA and ends with ZOOIER ZOUAVE. Only 2 words beginning with S. The one in this puzzle SOIREE and the one not SOUARI. If you use names like ELAINE you get many more.
SE slowed me down. The rest went in somewhat easily. In retrospect I like that SE corner anyway. Nice collection of words and clues.
Solving from NYT crossword app from Googleplay, I had only black square magnets. I didn't get those cutiepie magnets before or after the solve. That was fine with me and even preferred for solving, but I do like how they look.
Sometimes a single entry in a grid can win me over and thereafter the puzzle can do no wrong. And sometimes the opposite happens. When I saw the clue for 28D "Debris from welding or power drilling" I was perplexed. I've done some welding and seen lots of it being done and have several drills and a slew of drill bits in my work shop and the clue made no sense because there's no common debris (remains, rubble, accumulated loose fragments) from those two activities.
When the answer turned out to be IRON FILING my solve buzz became a solve bummer. If it's debris then it has to be FILINGS and neither welding nor drilling produces FILINGS. Using a FILE to shape or smooth metal produces FILINGS. Those are the tiny grains of metal debris that result from the act of FILING (and are used in school to demonstrate magnet fields). So I don't think that calling out that answer is NIT PICKING (hi egs @9:00) because it is already a flat out, full grown head lice infestation wrong.
About the best spin I can put on IRON FILING is that it is a singular of convenience, a SOC if you will, and for a themer no less.
I'm still using Across Lite, so when I see the note "features not supported in this file format", I just open the online version on my other monitor. Saw the magnets, said "Ok, magnets or something". Not really worth the bother; I still haven't come across a puzzle that gives me any urge to switch.
Writeover: DISSIDENTS for DISSENTERS. I can't believe FATBOY SLIM was 20 years ago!
[Spelling Bee: Mon. 2:20 to pg, but stalled at -1; missed this. Tues: 11:40 to pg.]
@Smith No lunch breaks for mods. Union meeting to discuss health insurance, automatic cost of living raises, and Uber delivered free lunches. They only have the morning coffee break so far.
@Anoa I do not weld but I believe that "powdered" iron or some kinds of iron filings are used in some kind of welding that results in said filings ending up as debris on workshop tables or floors. Drilling holes in iron results in something I would call iron filings or maybe shavings. Googling iron filings welding also gives you cleaning up magnets covered with filings left over from welding. Can you explain?
Someday I will know that a clue is wrong and it will offend my superior knowledge and experience. I will arrogantly pontificate about it on the blog and you will be grateful.
albatross @ 4:07 welders will often clean up and smooth out the welded areas with a grinder or disk sander and this will produce some metal debris that could be picked up with a magnet, as long as the metal being welded is ferrous (containing at least some IRON) but whatever you call this debris, it isn't IRON FILING. The only sensical meaning of IRON FILING to me is the act of smoothing or shaping IRON with a FILE. This will produce IRON FILINGS that make those distinctive patterns when exposed to a magnet.
If a drill bit is properly shaped and sharpened* it will produce thin shavings because the drill bit actually cuts into the metal. If the bit is dull it will not drill into the metal but will make a loud screeching noise and overheat which will harden the metal and make it even more difficult to drill.
*Set us up with a pitcher of beer at a local beach bar and I will do a detailed tutorial on how to sharpen drill bits. Throw in some welding lore and it might take two pitchers!
At least you stick to your guns. Yesterday, you said it was an iron ore mine, not iron mine, which is the term I've only heard. Today, you tell me in order to get metal filings, that a file must be used. I worked at a metal testing lab for over 45 years, and besides the lab itself, there was a machine shop and a grinding shop. All over the machines and floors were tiny bits of metal, that we called filings, no files involved.
@Zed 11:47. Your point about RARES still being a POC is correct. I guess my point was really that it turns out not to be a word manufactured desperately to deal with an intractable constructing problem. Calling it a POC was Ill-considered baloney-of-convenience on my part, which is not terribly unusual.
Interesting discussion regarding FILING today - usually we collectively drift so far off course that it becomes an exercise in futility. However today it seems as though those of us PICKING NITS have come to a consensus that FILING at least problematic - I would enjoy hearing @Lewis’s perspective as an experienced constructor - on the mark, or did it barely hit one of the outside sections of the dart board of acceptability?
@SouthsideJohnny6:08 - As an entry it’s fine, the issue is the clue. I can normally lawyer the clue into some sense, but I couldn’t find any usage anywhere. I do take some issue with worrying about the singular, that’s fine. But all I could find was that IRON FILINGs are only from FILING IRON, not welding and drilling. Part of the issue is that usually there are non-technical usages for technical terms that justify a clue. IRON FILING doesn’t seem to be used in any other context. Maybe the issue was that something so tautologically defined is hard to clue.
@Southside Johnny -- I agree with @Z that as an entry it's okay. If you Google "iron filing meaning" you will find several respectable dictionaries defining it in singular. I did raise an eyebrow when I filled it in, though, because I've always used the plural when it came to magnets attracting them -- and that little discomfort is probably what a lot of commenters felt today. I don't know enough about the processes that produce iron filings, however, to comment on the clue.
No little red magnet images in my newspaper’s print edition. Just as well. The images do not add anything to the solving experience. In fact they take away the fun of figuring out what the U-shaped black squares represent. So no more images on the grid please. The two circled letters F and E are supposed to represent iron on the table of elements. But that is pretty ho-hum. And once you got one long answer with IRON the gig was up. Nothing glaringly bad about this one. It just didn’t thrill.
If a typo is a typing error, then what is a writing error? A "writeo?" Anyway, I had the exact same "writeo" as @M&A. Early on, pre-McGuffin, I had CDC in there. Then I stumbled across my second IRON and thought, hey, you can't do that--there's already an IRON in the grid! Soon I found two more, including IRONFILING, several of which were used to demonstrate MAGNET power in middle school science class. By that time the jig was up. (No art here; I get my puzzles in newsprint.) Then RcRES was easy to correct--and when FDA came in, I already knew that the southern loner would be an E. Clever, these Wagners.
ATON of DOD candidates today, including old faves ELAINE (JLD), UMA, ANN and NIA, as well as an in-clue appearance of Kamala. But the day belongs to HERHONOR Judge Judy Scheindlin. She's the real deal.
Back on track with Wordle:
BBGYB YYBBB GGGGG
I have now used the same starting guess twice: eagle-birdie. Useful word. Also in my wheelhouse.* I may have to adopt it permanently.
Though perhaps a tick or two heavy on the PPPs, this puzzle gave me good enjoyment, and was just right for a Tuesday. A tap-in birdie.
Funny how sometimes it's the tiny words that can mess one up. I got it, but getting that F and E made me feel a lot more confident. I was able to iron out any remaining wrinkles.
BTW - I tracked down a site that switches text over completely to addendum and superscript. Adding it to my bookmarks right close to the uʍop ǝpᴉsdn text generator. The last option is particularly helpful to add a spoiler and not get erased by the mods. text generator instagram
BTW - I tracked down a site that switches text over completely to addendum and superscript. Adding it to my bookmarks right close to the uʍop ǝpᴉsdn text generator. The last option is particularly helpful to add a spoiler and not get erased by the mods. text generator instagram
At least you stick to your guns. Yesterday, you said it was an iron ore mine, not iron mine, which is the term I've only heard. Today, you tell me in order to get metal filings, that a file must be used. I worked at a metal testing lab for over 45 years, and besides the lab itself, there was a machine shop and a grinding shop. All over the machines and floors were tiny bits of metal, that we called filings, no files involved. blue cow squishmallow
.png)
I don’t understand the significance of the uncrossed, circled "E" and "F".
ReplyDeleteThe chemical symbol for iron is Fe from the Latin ferrum
DeleteThank you.
Delete
ReplyDeleteULTIMA at 14A was a WOE, and this Boomer only vaguely recalled FATBOY SLIM. That made the NW a bit challenging for an early week puzzle. Luckily, FIE and ATTEND were gimmes and WE DID IT was easily inferred, so that led to GUFFAW and ELAINE, which brought ULTIMA in focus and stimulated the synapses that held FATBOY SLIM. Guessed at HIDALGO when señor didn't fit at 52A. Stretching the synapses back to high school Spanish, I think it's a contraction of "hijo de algo," or "son of somebody," or, apparently, "gentleman."
Nice touch having Fe as the two single letters in the middle of the magnets
ReplyDeleteBank auditor in It’s a Wonderful Life. Wants to hurry and finish to see family in Elmira
ReplyDeleteWhen I opened the puzzle (I always use the NYT app—it’s fine by me), my first though was “kid’s menu.” Fortunately, the solve was just challenging enough for a Tuesday. I agree with Rex (nice to have you back!) that the puzzle would have worked without the visual aid, but then it would have been too hard for a Tuesday. Also, placing the letters FE in the magnets was a nice touch.
ReplyDeleteSome random thoughts:
ReplyDelete• I solve online, saw the two magnets, and was intrigued before square one, aptly making this magnet puzzle for me a big draw.
• This being a four-IRON puzzle, ECHO made for a bonus theme answer.
• I liked the double-E fest (7), and the trio of rhymes with a lah-di-dah rhythm: WAZE/LIAISE, FROG/AGOG, NAE/SOIRÉE.
• Best description I found for the T-rex’s actual sound was in an article that described it as a “deep low thrum” that you could hear from miles away like “those loud bass notes vibrating in your car”.
• In the online grid (which is what we see on @rex's blog), the vertical theme answers are a fraction of an inch away from actually touching the magnets. What would have been cool, would have been be if, upon a successful solve, there was an animation where those answers were suddenly sucked into touching the magnets with a satisfying ca-chunk.
A fun excursion with hidden pleasures. Thank you, Adam!
Surprisingly, I knew FATBOY SLIM and ANN, neither of which is the kind of thing I normally know, so the only puzzler was KATE, who I feel like I should know but didn’t.
ReplyDeleteI feel like it would have been a better puzzle if 28D had been IRON WAFFLE, 29D had been IRON PUMPED, 9D had been MAIDEN IRON, and 10D had been FILING IRON, so that gimmick would be that the magnets pulled the IRON towards them, out of their regular position.
(1) Would have been tad more elegant to have FE in *both* unchecked squares. Do magnets attract FLUORINE? (2) Did not realize how hard it would be to find a second answer of IRON XXXXXX!
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the gimmicky grid my instinct was to hit "Reveal Puzzle", scan it quickly and move along with my day. But...I like doing xwords so I DIDIT. The four themers were my first four entries, with @Rex's hesitation at FILING(s). So it became a themeless until I saw the F & E were part of it. I don't get @Rex's HBOGO Groan. The clue is clear that HBOGO is no more. Is it okay to print ALLAH? Will there be a fatwah? Hope not. Hi APU, miss you on the TV.
ReplyDeleteThx Adam, for this 'MAGN'i'F'ic'E'nt Tues. puz! :)
ReplyDeleteMed.
Liked the red MAGNETs in the grid. Certainly aided in the solve.
Missed the F & E significance in the circled squares. D'oh!
Just a wee prob with FDA; for some unknown reason, I wanted CDC and ended up with aDa. Another case of not checking the grid before entering the final word. :(
Other than that faux pas, a fine and most enjoyable adventure. :)
@Eniale (2:53 PM yd) 👍 for exc SB results! :)
___
yd pg: 4:07 (0 in 27:48) / W *3
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Still solving on paper after all these years, so no pictures here, which I think leads to a much better aha!. Especially since this was easy enough that I thought the only trick was having the F and E make IRON, which was doing the attracting, so I went back and found the other IRONS attached to the magnets. (Big) AHA! I said, and how did I miss that first time around?
ReplyDeleteNice to make some new friends, like FATBOYSLIM and ANN as clued and even ELAINE (still haven't seen Seinfeld). NIA the Crossword Girl is starting to feel like an old friend.
Don Quixote is usually described as an HIDALGO, and @XConrad is right about its origin. Spanish is also handy for ULTIMA (last), even if you don't know linguistics.
Nice Tuesday, AW. A Winner, and more fun the more I looked at it, for which thanks.
Theme was cute, but more of a constructioneering feat than a solving treat.
ReplyDeleteThe fill was pretty good considering the theme-imposed restrictions, but not enough to un-Tuez this one.
🧠🧠
🎉🎉
I would have to assume that the puzzle was accepted at a time when HBOGO was still a thing, or it would have been handed back to the constructor to re-work before it was accepted. I would agree that the NYT needs to work on its lag time.
ReplyDeleteNatick for me at the crossing of sKol and Kate. Could have been sCol/Cate.
ReplyDeletePrint my puzzle out from the website each morning. No 🧲 which was just fine by me. The black magnets were more than enough hint.
ReplyDeleteWasted an inordinate amount of precious nanoseconds staring at ATTEaD because ANa seems more common in xwords than ANN. It seems like I’m always debating between Ana and Ava and ANN barely appears. Anyway, finally saw the error I was making. Other big writeover was DISSidents before DISSENTERS. Despite involving more letters to fix that actually took me fewer precious nanoseconds to clean up.
Fe₂O₃ was a team I played on for several years. Like @anon7:25 I thought the unchecked squares needed an Fe rebus. And I was really looking for some rust in the puzzle.
We do get a Parks and Rec clue and the NAE NAE, but with FATBOY SLIM and IRON MAIDEN taking more than three times the space, the cultural center of the puzzle is still early 1990’s. As I’ve lamented repeatedly, the NYTX thinks 1995 is “fresh.” Not to hammer the point to death, but LOU Rawls died 16 years ago and APU Nahasapeemapetilon first appeared 32 years ago.
BTW - I found a website that converts text to subscript and superscript. Adding it to my bookmarks right next to the uʍop ǝpᴉsdn text generator. The latter is especially useful if you want to add a spoiler and not get deleted by the mods.
ReplyDeleteI went to summer camp in the Finger Lakes with some folks from Elmira.
ReplyDeleteFun puzzle!
I agree with Rex - it would have been much better without the pictures of the magnets. After that there was no “aha” value to picking up the significance of the IRONs. Agree that the IRON FILING is really sloppy - it’s hard for any group to constantly bring their A-game, and apparently the editorial staff at the NYT is no exception.
ReplyDeleteIcky foreign word of the day goes to HILDALGO which is common usage in multi-lingual families I’m sure - the rest of the world, probably not so much. SHEEPLE breezes through six furlongs in 1:10 4/5 to take the fake word of the day by 3 1/2 lengths.
For some reason, AGOG FROG up there in the NE tickles me, and I am not one to look for that kind of thing. Appreciate the cleverness today, and especially on a Tuesday. The magnets are nifty.
ReplyDeleteSomeone made the anpbsurd claim that the culturalcemter of this puzzle is the 1990s. As proof he cites Parks and Rex—a sitcom which debuted in 2009, and naw as— Adan e spawned by a musical,hit from 2013. Apu has recently been in the news as being culturally problematic, and of course Iron Maiden is on tour right now.. and of course Lou Rawls biggest hits wee two decades before the. 1990s.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what this ide is on.or on about.
A *very* bad Natick at 44A/45D, compounded by the presence of an unchecked square. Also, I'm a linguist, and I've never heard the term ULTIMA used for a final syllable, although I see it at the bottom of a long list of uses in Wikipedia. To be fair, though, I have heard "penultimate stress" for stress on the next-to-last syllable (nearly always the case in Russian). Better clue: ____ Thule.
ReplyDeleteWith all the objections raised by OFL, not a good day, on the whole.
I solve on-line,but the red and white magnets didn’t appear until post happy music. Still, it was a very easy solve. The constructor explains on xwordinfo that it was originally a very complicated scheme meant for a Thursday. Editors decided to have him dumb it down for a Tuesday. The result is ……ok.
ReplyDeleteI would pick a nit with welding as a producer of IRONFILINGs. The filings (as more than implied in the name), come from filing and other abrasive interactions between iron and harder metals.
33A RARES looks like an over-the-top in-your-face-Anoa-Bob POC. But according to the clue, it is actually found ITW. These kinds of educational clues are RARES, but welcomes.
Fun puzzle, Adam Wagner. Sorry your initial version didn’t run as a Thursday. It would have been fun to try to suss it out.
An example in which the new app technology added something needless and even undesirable - like pointing big fat arrows to the black square formations with a caption "see, these are magnets, and that's why iron is sticking to them in case you are too dumb to suss out the theme when you are done."
ReplyDeleteTotally gratuitous. No one ever would have thought these pictures of magnets were needed in order to recognize magnets at the completion of the puzzle until the new puzzle app technology gave someone the bright idea to add them - or, better, the bad idea masquerading as a bright idea.
Otherwise, the puzzle was fine.
ReplyDeleteI've been doing a (very) little work with steel lately, and can attest to the fact that filings has no singular. Not only that, but you needn't be a magnet to have it stick to you. Filings, millings, and grinding dust will stick to you, then fall off, but in places most assured to have your partner step on a sharp one and get very annoyed with you. Also, that's not a magnet, that's a cartoon image of a magnet.
I tore apart my workshop yesterday looking for my magnets. I have about 20 tiny ones, 1/4" discs, and one big one. They've been driving me crazy, the tiny one for months, the big one for years. The small ones have been in my bench tray sticking to every damned steel tool I have in the tray, magnetizing it, so that whenever I have to pick up a rule or a chisel it's covered with FILINGS. When I actually needed some of them, they were nowhere to be found. I don't remember the exact day when I got so pissed at them that I just chucked them all, but am perfectly willing to assume that day existed.
I had no idea what HBOGO referred to, as I had _BOGO and thought there was some play on Buy One, Get One I never encountered. If I had had HBO__ I would have had a slight chance to dredge up the GO part (I've never had HBO in any form) but as it was I was lost.
The only HILDALGO I know was the eponym of the movie, which was "based on true life" but was a total fabrication. HILDAGO was a horse, so he's not to blame for that.
Solving in print format, without the pictures of magnets, I kept trying to fill the bottom right with “ladle” or to remember the name of the basket on a stick in lacrosse games. I saw the cup shape, but attached them to the connected diagonal lines.
ReplyDeleteGosh. Maybe the entire grid could have been filled with IRON. Some suggested clues:
ReplyDelete1. How best to describe a sand wedge?
2. Try to take the wrinkles out of something that doesn't have wrinkles?
Answers:
1. IRON IRON
2. IRON IRON
Now that would have been really something! Right?
Well, no, not exactly.
Many of you seem to have liked this puzzle, so I guess I'm an outlier. But I found it just a little bit too...repetitive. And please understand that I'm not saying that ironically.
Neat theme with plenty of awkward fill. I liked HIDALGO and FATBOY. ONENESS, SHEEPLE, SESTET etc and things like Kamala’s statement drag this thing down and glom up the overall experience.
ReplyDeleteNot sure Rex’s take on HBO GO - clear as day. I like LIAISE and of course MAIDEN.
Cool idea that fizzled in the end.
Hand up for having rolled my eyes when I saw the magnets in the NYT app puzzle. I can often be dense when it comes to grid art, but even I could have made the connection without the 🧲
ReplyDeleteOk. It hasn’t been THAT long since HBOGO was replaced with HBOMAX so I think that clue is fair.
Since I put in SEXTET at first I spent WAY too much time staring at X HEEPLE. D’oh!
Also, am I the only female that shudders every time I see a reference to IUD? Like…okay let’s have a doc insert a small foreign object into your body as far as it can possibly go without it actually being called surgery. [shudder] Anyway, count that as a puz answer I’d be happy to see disappear.
Wowza, what a Tuesday! We had a leap forward in digital visuals with the colorful little MAGNETS. They woke me up before I even started solving. The F and E were a nice extra to be discovered after I finished. I appreciated the placement of the long IRON downs attracted to the pull of each MAGNET. So, the theme was a big time winner for me. A fun surprise on a Tuesday is a very good thing.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite answer is WAZE and boy do I love that app. It can be stressful to drive into or around the NYC area. If you get stuck in traffic it’s calming to be able to see why and how long it’ll last. Of course it’s even better to check WAZE first and plan a faster route, but who remembers to do that? I know it’s been around for a long while but so have I and I haven’t needed to look in the App Store for an improvement with more bells and whistles.
I lived in Elmira for a bit. Not much excitement there in those days. Since I don’t fly gliders, I couldn’t wait to leave Mark Twain behind and head to Boston.
I haven’t heard of SHEEPLE before and it’s pretty great. Not any of those in Ukraine for sure!
Strictly speaking, iron is not a heavy metal. It would need to be toxic in small amounts to be able to make that claim. NYT's should do better at not contributing to scientific ignorance.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteA circled F! Respect. Har.
I liked the visual of the MAGNETs, although I also agree puz would have been figureoutable without the visual. And it would've been better if the MAGNETs appeared after the solve (online version.) @Lewis' suggestions of the I's being "sucked into" the MAGNETs would've been tres cool, too. Get on it, NYT! 😁
Had IRON FIrING in, as SKOL Vodka was s new one for me, and FILING wouldn't work as the correct answer in the ole brain. SKOr Vodka sounded as plausible a name to me as SKOL, and also as a toast.
Two other wrongs that led to my DNF, fat fingered TYPO at AyON/KAyE, only looking at KAyE, thinking, "Hey, I don't know the name, but KAyE is definitely a name." And DISSENdERS/dAG. dAG, TAG, dang.
Liked the fill, came out way cleaner than it seemed it should. Had the one-space-twixt repeated letters from the IRONs to work around. Double-letter fest in NE corner. 5 sets in that little corner.
Two sets of Double F's. Start the day off right. 😁
Neat puz, Adam. It was a good draw. (Get it? Har.)
yd -3, should'ves 1
Six F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
saw the magnets and groaned, but then saw the kamala clue and let out a delighted (and VERY audible) giggle. theme was a little heavy-handed but ultimately enjoyed this puzzle. we did it, joe!
ReplyDeleteBaby Boomer (1959) here - I had no trouble coming up with FATBOYSLIM with just a few letters in. Though I could not name one of his songs if my life depended on it. I hate orphaned squares ( F and E) Once I noticed IRON in both 10D and 9D the rest came quickly. Pretty good for a Tuesday I have to admit.
ReplyDeleteHidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clue for this grid:
ReplyDeleteOver in France (4 words, answer below)
This one fell into place easily; ELMIRA made sense from the crosses, which helped with HIDALGO. ELMIRA also ran parallel to ELM a few columns over.
Apparently HBOGO was HBOGOne before I ever knew it existed.
GEARED, GUFFAW, & ELAINE were gimmees in the NW, which made ULTIMA less of a woe.
Hey, IRON FILINGs can absolutely be singular. I realized that as I ate my grit this morning!
HDW answer:
FINI (begins AT 17A, moves to SE)
After getting Naticked yesterday with the AMIS/URIS cross, this one was a wheelhouse puzzle for me. In the mid-late 90s/early 90s I couldn't take two steps without hearing Big Beat music, whether it be Fatboy Slim or The Propellerheads or The Chemical Brothers. I showed my 5- and 7-year-old daughters the Christopher Walken "Weapon of Choice" video a few months ago, and they just thought it was the greatest thing ever. Unfortunately, IMHO, Big Beat didn't really age well, and I can only take it in the smallest doses these days. "Praise You" still gets occasional play in this household. IRONMAIDEN, on the other hand, is timeless. :) Run to the hills!
ReplyDeleteIf they wanted to continue the slight GenX slant of the puzzle (but way beyond Tuesday level, if not too niche for a mainstream crossword), they could have clued ULTIMA as a ground-breaking video game RPG (role playing-game). Extra points if they mention Lord British. I never much got into table top RPGs, but Ultima III and IV kept me out of my parents' hair for countless hours.
Only reason I know of ELMIRA is that it's on the way from Binghamton to Corning when I visited the Corning Glass Museum years ago while seeing friends in B'ton. I had no knowledge of the Mark Twain connection, but with the EL in, it was a good guess.
Very smooth puzzle, extremely easy theme after filling in one IRON and realize the other three must be IRONS as well, so at least half the letters are free squares at that point. Even FE fell in quickly once I had the F, I figured the other must be an E for "iron."
Watch me whip, watch me nae nae! Peace, guys!
p
I solve on the printout so I didn't know they were magnets until I got 69A from the crosses. Then I saw the four vertical IRONS. I don't like themes like this which are only apparent after solving.
ReplyDeleteI'd heard of WAZE but I didn't know what it did until I read Hartley70 (9:31). What a great use of the internet. I just checked and found that we have it here in San Francisco. Not as useful now when so many people are working from home.
I'm still doing Wordle first thing out of bed every morning but the charm is wearing off. Maybe because I'm understanding how to solve better. Second straight birdie this morning.
SOIREE! French is such a great language.
I solved the paper version which had no pictures of magnets. Made the puzzle a little harder. I liked the magnets and the puzzle. Would have liked the puzzle more if the pictures were there. The paper version should have had a note asking you to access the version with the pictures. Other than that, a nice day for a hike to Overlook Tower in the Catskills.
ReplyDeleteThen sushi. Yum.
Ah, Elaine..."STELLA"..."Maybe the dingo et your baby."
ReplyDeleteJim Backus to Gilligan..."We're planning a little soiree this evening..."
An Engish Professor at an American college should know everything about Mark Twain, but it's good to have you back,Rex. Your last pinch hitter was sheer genius on your part.
I have to wonder if this was meant to be one of those ‘enhanced’ puzzles with graphic elements that appear after you finish solving — such as the join-the-dots meta puzzles they sometimes use. If that’s the case, maybe someone just forgot to tick a box or write the appropriate conditional into the puzzle file or something.
ReplyDeleteWould certainly make more sense for the magnets to appear after you’ve solved the theme reveal than giving it away before you’ve even started.
With all the complainers about "so last century" references, what about "Allah" fer chrissake ?
ReplyDeleteOK. . . All those who read that On-And-On dissertation about Norman Cook - Raise Your Hands. Next. . . All those who cared deeply enough about the difference between Iron Filings and (GASP) an Iron Filing -Raise YOUR hands. . . As usual, when you having NOTHING to say, you go ahead and take a half-hour to say it. Good Day.
ReplyDeleteCame for the crossword. Stayed for the self-styled "fourth best band from Hull".
ReplyDeleteThanks for the bonus Housemartins, Rex.
It is a RARES day indeedy when I actually sing and dance to a "cute" Tuesday. I did.
ReplyDeleteMy little IRON icon was just an upside down and right side up thingie filled with a FE. Is that not cute? or what....
A little side thought (which I do in my spare time)...Seeing IRON reminded me of Biltmore, in Havana. All the HIDALGOs - none of whom paid taxes - had these huge fences with spear-like tips surrounding their million dollar mansions. This was before security videos, so people like the Bacardi's, had to protect their rum bottles and the H Upman's had to hide their cigars. I guess it worked because nothing got through their property. Squirrels and dogs and cats and the next door neighbors would be seen dangling from the tops. Che would come by, drink some rum and smoke a cigar, and order the "debris" sent to an undisclosed location.
I just loved FAT BOY SLIM. ULTIMA is my favorite spot to go and try some lip stuff that'll make my lips look like a Kardashian. Love to use WAZO in my car....except, I inevitably end up staring at some car carnage.
I do have a WAFFLE IRON that I used exactly one time. BUT....I do make some bodacious EGGS Benedict for my birthday.
@Nancy yesterday: HAH! Now if you and I go to see "La Boheme" together, would you clap with me when "Mimi" finally kicks the bucket?
No pics here on my printed-out grid so the idea of MAGNETs didn’t occur to me until I got to the revealer.
ReplyDeleteFound this much harder than the usual Tuesday. I’d like to say that this puzzle landed with a thud, but I actually did like it in spite of all the repetition — four IRONs, two GOs, two pronoun I’s, two INs, and two UPs — and foreign words like HIDALGO, GOSEE, and IMOK.
WAZE certainly includes maps, but I think if it as a GPS system not a crowd-sourced map. Discovered that you can change the generic Siri-like voice that talks to you while you’re driving and now have a distinguished Englishman informing me of my route and warning me when there’s a “level crossing” (train tracks) ahead.
Favorite answer: SHEEPLE.
@unknown9:33 - Google before posting saves embarrassment.
ReplyDeleteReady for a real shocker? To an astrophysicist people are mostly metal. I just learned that yesterday and the flagrant disregard for common definitions and definitions from other sciences made it stick.
@egs - Being real makes it no less of a POC.
Perhaps it's not well known, but many of the attributes on Google maps are provided not by professional cartographers, but from a volunteer group of users and "fans". The top contributors used to get a trip to Google HQ every year. Not sure if they still do this or not.
ReplyDelete@Anon 8:47 - I keep telling you, no drinking before breakfast, and especially, no getting totally faced by 8:47. You do realize that @Zed contrasted Parks & Rec (or as you like to call it, Parks & Rex ) as current compared to the rest of the puzzle? Not cited as proof, but noted as an outlier.
ReplyDeleteAbout your challenge to a game of logic .....
Late this morning due to home repairs, repairmen, and dogs who are freaked out by the noise they’re making. But IM OK.
ReplyDeleteWell since I solve my puzzle with a pencil and paper the way God intended, I had no issues with the MAGNET symbols but had to come here to find out the significance of the circles. IS IT ME or are those elemental tables just forgettable? I must have slept through whatever class those were taught IN school. Happy to see SHEEPLE, one of my favorite portmanteaus, and my old pal ELAINE as SEEN on TV.
@Roo: SKOL! A regular “F” Fest today.
Loved this. It FE lt good.❤️🤸🏽♀️❤️
ReplyDeleteEasy fun! This solver can’t argue with visuals!👏🏽
🧲 fe 🧲 fe!
And who said 🦖can’t roar? [ours does!)
🤗🧲🦖🦖🦖🦖🦖🧲🤗
Rex does not like the NYT app. I thought that when I was first forced to use it. But now I love it with its many features. I think Rex could l like it too if he gave it a chance. Had never heard of Fatboyslim, but with some crosses and the hint that it was an oxymoron I had no trouble filling it in. Very entertaining puzzle so I thank you Adam for creating it. Hope to see you again soon.
ReplyDelete@GILL (11:20) -- Yes, and stamp my feet, too. But only when Mimi dies. Not when Carmen dies. I love, love, love "La Habanera". And anyway, Carmen's a mezzo who doesn't make my eyebrows ache.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder if we'd get out of "Boheme" in one piece, though, if we did that. Which reminds me...
I was 16, on a train tour of the U.S. with a group of other teens when we were dragged out of San Diego where we were staying and shuttled off to Tijuana by bus for a (oh, God it was a stifling hot day in July!) afternoon bullfight. Watching the poor bulls, punctured viciously with sharp lances by the picadors and dripping blood all over the ring before the gutless matador even showed up -- you call that a fair fight do you??? Well I sure don't!!! -- I felt really queasy. Queasy from the heat and queasy from all the blood. To take my mind off my misery, and also because I had the profound sense of justice and fairness that tends to run deep in 16-year-olds, I started shouting as loudly as I could:
"Come on, bull!!! Let's go, bull!!!"
No one paid any attention. I tried again:
Ole, toro!!! Ole, ole, toro!!!"
What can I tell you? I took French and Latin in high school, not Spanish. No one paid any attention. I think now, from what I've learned listening to Rafa Nadal, maybe I should have said "Vamos, toro!!!"? @GILL? @Pablo?
Anyway, since I wasn't doing anything to actually help the poor bleeding bull, I told our group leader that I was feeling sickish and could I get a coke at the bar to settle my stomach. Given permission, I actually had a rum and coke (they don't card you in Tijuana) and stayed there in the healing coolth of the blessed shade for the remainder of the bullfights. Would you believe that there were to be many of these abominations in one afternoon?
They showed great restraint, those Mexican bullfight fans. It's amazing that I left the arena in one piece. I'm not 16 anymore and you'd better believe that I wouldn't do something so gratuitiously stupid today.
Up the irons!
ReplyDelete@Unknown:
ReplyDeleteFun fact: IRON is the heaviest element, happens to be a metal, that is emitted from a supernova explosion. In point of fact, the star goes supernova when it starts to fuse IRON, which takes more energy to do than the energy released from fusion of the IRON. The fusion process generates, up til then, generates enough energy to keep the star's gravity from collapsing the star. Once IRON fusion starts, gravity takes over, the outer parts of the star make a bee-line to the core, which then causes the remnants of the star to blow to smithereens. So, in the sense of 'naturally' occurring elements, IRON is a heavy metal.
Here's where the other Heavy Metals come from: https://www.space.com/strontium-heavy-element-formed-neutron-star-merger.html
MFCTM.
ReplyDeleteConrad (6:22)
Hartley70 (9:31)
@mathgent 12:40PM. Thank you. I’m touched to make your list. 💕
DeleteA ferritic puzzle, terrific!
ReplyDeleteI’m still an Across Lite holdout so didn’t see the illustrations. I don’t feel like I missed anything and it certainly didn’t make solving any harder or less enjoyable.
It would've been more fun if they'd just made the magnet squares red. A hint of a clue. DNF because I somehow managed to live this long thinking Guffaw was spelled Gaffaw. What a Goofaw I am.
ReplyDeleteRe. HBOGO going away. Nothing goes away in the NYT puzz. Compared to Uris, HBOGO was a minute ago.
@Zed, Google Before Posting Saves Embarrassment (GBPSE). It just moved from theory to law. Every Good Boy Does Fine and you just did.
@Zed/11:35
ReplyDeleteThanks to "How the Universe Works". Saw an/the episode when one of the astronomers/cosmologists gets a little batshit when he details that his brethren, in times past, decided that any element beyond H and He is a 'metal'. It was kind of funny.
Medium-tough. I think the magnets in the app version helped keep this in the Tuesday range as opposed to the late week original intent of the author. Liked it.
ReplyDeleteWhat an IRONic puzzle! Actually, that word could have been the revealer since MAGNET was so obvious. It would have been one more IRON in a puzzle that already had four of them, but it would have been more clever than the thud of MAGNET.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised that Rex didn’t go into High Dudgeon (or at least Medium Dudgeon) over SHEEPLE. it seems like that portmanteau, once clever, has been coopted by the lunatic anti-vax/anti-mask crowd. The kind of thing idiots like Marjorie Taylor Green spew about reasonable rules to protect all of us from illness and death. Also, DISSENTERS could have been clued as anti-SHEEPLE.
Fascinating to learn that T-Rexes did not ROAR, and thanks @Lewis for telling us what sound they did make.
@Rex I had a friend in college who was from Horseheads, but naturally he said he was from ELMIRA.
ReplyDeleteMy grouchy uncle used SHEEPLE waaay more than half a century ago to the unending irritation of my poor cousins, who were just kids when I was already grown up and married, sigh. Uncle had reason to be grouchy, having been displaced as a child in Germany during the war after his father and brother (my Papa) had left for the USofA. But it was so sad that he took it out on his kids. So that's what I think of when I see SHEEPLE.
I use the NYT app, so had the magnets. My guess is that without them it would have been perceived as too hard for a Tuesday, but I would have preferred it with just black squares.
As it was, very fast. The magnets made the IRON part obvious and then it was just wait for the rest to appear.
I was astonished that somehow I knew FATBOYSLIM. Had SLIM, thought about oxymoron, and pop, there was the name. No idea about his music and wouldn't know him I saw him, just weird.
This TuesPuz theme was quite magnetic, in an ironic way. The printed version at our house featured just the black magnet squares, so had to figure out for ourselves that they weren't only mighty pretty, giant U's.
ReplyDeletestaff weeject picks: F & E. Cute lil unchecked runt pups. I had CDC instead of FDA for way toooo looong, thooo, sooo … the whole theme mcguffin had to wait to fully reveal itself unto m&e at the end ... after RCRES didn't quite click, for them "Hard-to-find game cards".
fave fillins included: FATBOYSLIM. PERFUME. WEDIDIT. ISITME. HERHONOR. SUNSET goin down, at the end. FE-SS.
Thought HBOGO was more than fair, since it was clued up regardin its renamin to HBOMAX. @RP: Is all TV history to be out of bounds? That'd eliminate a slew of stuff, from yer wordlist, dude. Speakin of repeatin GO, tho … also should apply to the O+G repeaters, in HIDALGO, AGOG & FROG, for yer G & O nitfest completeness. har
And then also … Even if U got nuthin historic(al) at all in yer puzgrid, by the time it gets over to the compilation books, it'll be full of that there stuff. Even waitin a short while to publish the original puz would get U some of this. Just sayin.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Wagner dude. Good job. I'da had the first four Across clues start with the letters I, R, O, and N, tho. But, M&A is kinda weird like that.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
and as a bonus …
**gruntz**
Do mods take lunch breaks? It is 1:15 and the most recent post is from 12:01, after refreshing. I wonder because yd I answered BarbS when to me she was the most recent comment, but later when I looked there were many between us and one of them had answered her question, so I felt as though it looked like I was answering an already answered Q.
ReplyDeleteNice to see my old friend HIDALGO today. In Spanish it comes from "hijo de algo" literally "son of something". An HIDALGO was a man of noble birth, but very often also a man without the means to maintain a noble lifestyle. Don Quixote is the classic example of an HIDALGO. Poor man had a nag for a horse and a servant girl for an (imaginary) girlfriend.
ReplyDeleteAnd, just like Tonto in the Lone Ranger series, his assistant, Sancho Panza, was way smarter than his leader.
$5 says that if the magnets hadn't been drawn in, Rex would have complained that the black squares didn't really look like magnets.
ReplyDelete@Nancy-I suppose you could say "vamos toro!" at a bullfight but the type of people who go to and enjoy these things would most likely think you were loca.
ReplyDeleteYou've been to one more bullfight than I have, as I just wouldn't be able to do it. If I were in your situation in Mexico, I think the proper thing to say to your friends would be "vamonos"-let's get out of here!
@Nancy 12:35
ReplyDeleteYou can give me "Carmen" any Tuesday from now until handsome Don Jose finds a way to seduce me.
We watched Ana Antonacci perform as Carmen at The Royal Opera House. I think it was around 1995 or so. Her voice is so perfect for the role as sexy, charming, voluptuous seductress. I love her! Mimi can finally die in peace...
As far as bullfighting....I was a groupie at one time. I'll post a picture of me with my "amigas" drinking and gawking at the bullfighters. We were celebrating "San Fermin" and the running of the bulls in Pamplona and like everyone else, we were drunk and happy and dancing most of the weekend.
I was waiting in a bar for my friends to show up and in walks "El Viti." He actually flirted with me and asked if he could buy me a "copita." He's a short man but VERY charismatic. I said yes and drooled my vino down my chin while he talked about bulls. He actually wasn't my type, though. Not that it matters but he was about 4 inches shorter than I and, well, I have a hard time keeping my head down.
Those days are long past and I really wondered why I ever went to bullfights. I am now the sort of person who will pick up a snail from the sidewalk and make sure it gets to the vegetable garden.
El Viti...El Viti...El Viti es cojonudo....como El Viti, no hay ninguno.
Hi @Pablito!
So this is why all the IRONs in the grids lately. The Shortz repetition strategy reaches its apex. Don’t think the puzzle needed it.
ReplyDeleteI was put off by the IRON reps at first, but they turned out to be a cute theme, so ok. No illustrations on my printout thank goodness, just the blocks, which were a mystery until the revealer. Coincidentally just used MAGNETs to secure a cover on my Saab vert in advance of the stormy weather. Liked the FE and actually the E was a help in getting GEE since I had no idea about HBO-O.
Interesting to note SEEN IN, chasing on last week’s SEEN IT and SEE NOTE.
Nice symmetrical entries WE DID IT and ONENESS, which imply their own kinds of magnetism.
I learned the meaning of HIDALGO, which I only knew as a movie starring Viggo Mortensen, based on the legend of an American horseman and his mustang, HIDALGO. Some horses can indeed be gentlemen. OTHERs not so much. Wonder what FESS and EARP’s mounts were like?
March 22 is big day in the music world, especially opera, theater, movies and TV. Two giants, Stephen Sondheim (1930) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948). Then you may know George Wyle (1916-2003) by the themes for Gilligan’s Island or It’s About Time, or his Most Wonderful Time of the Year. His family is probably getting some New Use money for that one about now. Then there’s the Finnish opera composer, Tauno Pylkkanen, whose romantic music I’ve been enjoying this morning.
Ukranian composer Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912) gets the feature. Known for his opera Taras Bulba, he also wrote the music for Prayer for Ukraine. Originally for children’s choir. This performance from 2017, with the Swedish children’s choir and Ukranian children’s choir, stands out from the growing crowd.
translated text:
Lord, oh the Great and Almighty,
Protect our beloved Ukraine,
Bless her with freedom and light
Of your holy rays.
With learning and knowledge enlighten
Us, your children small,
In love pure and everlasting
Let us, oh Lord, grow.
We pray, oh Lord Almighty,
Protect our beloved Ukraine,
Grant our people and country
All your kindness and grace.
Bless us with freedom, bless us with wisdom,
Guide [us] into [a] kind world,
Bless us, oh Lord, with good fortune
For ever and evermore.
Very cute! I thought the bright red magnets were charming, and I enjoyed the array of different sorts of IRONs, especially the pairing of instruments of pleasure and pain - the WAFFLE IRON and the IRON MAIDEN. The F and E were the cherries on the top. I'm with @Hartley 70 9:31 - a delightful Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: WAyz, Awed. Help from previous puzzles: NAE. No idea: ULTIMA, FATBOY SLIM, ANN.
@Smith - Even before the Age of Mods there would be multiple answers to a question, so I wouldn’t worry about it. It always seems that when I don’t answer a question because “oh, there’s going to be 20 answers” is when I come back 5 hours later and nobody answered.
ReplyDelete@Anon12:47 - Yep. I think that is where I saw it. And it’s not even as if I watched the whole episode, but it stuck at least in part because of how often commenters here will insist a clue is wrong because it’s used a different way.
@JD - True. But I agree with Rex that I’d prefer it if all constructors took it out of their wordlists.
@Anon11:55 - I’m impressed you could figure out what was being said. One minor defense of the other anon, my autocorrupt is constantly changing “Rec” to “Rex.” I was writing an email yesterday about our local Parks and Recreation department and had to uncorrect “rex” twice.
thanks to this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Boy_Restaurants), having gotten BOYSLIM, the only earworm left was bigBOYSLIM. in due time, crosses forced the right answer. never heard of the guy. but I mostly listen to Guy Lombardo lps anyway. since girls always seem to gravitate to a Big Guy, I guess to get away with starting Bar Fights, Big and Fat are often interchangeable with regard to a Boy.
ReplyDelete@A (2:30 PM)
ReplyDeleteThx for the link; absolutely beautiful! 🇺🇦 🇸🇪
___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@tom t
ReplyDelete4 words? Spaces letters?
Got BOY and then knew FAT SLIM. Memorable name.
Something there is in me that dislikes the word LIAISE. The IAI or the awkwardness of the verb formation from liaison? Although word usage by year suggests LIAISE and liasion were both rare for about a century with LIAISE being used more often. Then LIAISE took off in the 1940s (WWII?) and then liasion taking off in the 1950s (sexual tryst usage?).
Six letters, four vowels. The list of scrabble words starts with AALIIS ABASIA and ends with ZOOIER ZOUAVE. Only 2 words beginning with S. The one in this puzzle SOIREE and the one not SOUARI. If you use names like ELAINE you get many more.
SE slowed me down. The rest went in somewhat easily. In retrospect I like that SE corner anyway. Nice collection of words and clues.
Solving from NYT crossword app from Googleplay, I had only black square magnets. I didn't get those cutiepie magnets before or after the solve. That was fine with me and even preferred for solving, but I do like how they look.
Sometimes a single entry in a grid can win me over and thereafter the puzzle can do no wrong. And sometimes the opposite happens. When I saw the clue for 28D "Debris from welding or power drilling" I was perplexed. I've done some welding and seen lots of it being done and have several drills and a slew of drill bits in my work shop and the clue made no sense because there's no common debris (remains, rubble, accumulated loose fragments) from those two activities.
ReplyDeleteWhen the answer turned out to be IRON FILING my solve buzz became a solve bummer. If it's debris then it has to be FILINGS and neither welding nor drilling produces FILINGS. Using a FILE to shape or smooth metal produces FILINGS. Those are the tiny grains of metal debris that result from the act of FILING (and are used in school to demonstrate magnet fields). So I don't think that calling out that answer is NIT PICKING (hi egs @9:00) because it is already a flat out, full grown head lice infestation wrong.
About the best spin I can put on IRON FILING is that it is a singular of convenience, a SOC if you will, and for a themer no less.
I'm still using Across Lite, so when I see the note "features not supported in this file format", I just open the online version on my other monitor. Saw the magnets, said "Ok, magnets or something". Not really worth the bother; I still haven't come across a puzzle that gives me any urge to switch.
ReplyDeleteWriteover: DISSIDENTS for DISSENTERS. I can't believe FATBOY SLIM was 20 years ago!
[Spelling Bee: Mon. 2:20 to pg, but stalled at -1; missed this.
Tues: 11:40 to pg.]
@Smith
ReplyDeleteNo lunch breaks for mods. Union meeting to discuss health insurance, automatic cost of living raises, and Uber delivered free lunches. They only have the morning coffee break so far.
@Anoa
ReplyDeleteI do not weld but I believe that "powdered" iron or some kinds of iron filings are used in some kind of welding that results in said filings ending up as debris on workshop tables or floors. Drilling holes in iron results in something I would call iron filings or maybe shavings. Googling iron filings welding also gives you cleaning up magnets covered with filings left over from welding. Can you explain?
Someday I will know that a clue is wrong and it will offend my superior knowledge and experience. I will arrogantly pontificate about it on the blog and you will be grateful.
ReplyDeleteI'm grateful just thinking about it .... ��
Deletealbatross @ 4:07 welders will often clean up and smooth out the welded areas with a grinder or disk sander and this will produce some metal debris that could be picked up with a magnet, as long as the metal being welded is ferrous (containing at least some IRON) but whatever you call this debris, it isn't IRON FILING. The only sensical meaning of IRON FILING to me is the act of smoothing or shaping IRON with a FILE. This will produce IRON FILINGS that make those distinctive patterns when exposed to a magnet.
ReplyDeleteIf a drill bit is properly shaped and sharpened* it will produce thin shavings because the drill bit actually cuts into the metal. If the bit is dull it will not drill into the metal but will make a loud screeching noise and overheat which will harden the metal and make it even more difficult to drill.
*Set us up with a pitcher of beer at a local beach bar and I will do a detailed tutorial on how to sharpen drill bits. Throw in some welding lore and it might take two pitchers!
At least you stick to your guns. Yesterday, you said it was an iron ore mine, not iron mine, which is the term I've only heard. Today, you tell me in order to get metal filings, that a file must be used. I worked at a metal testing lab for over 45 years, and besides the lab itself, there was a machine shop and a grinding shop. All over the machines and floors were tiny bits of metal, that we called filings, no files involved.
DeleteMount Saviour Monastery is near Elmira. And the cemetery contains a CSA burial ground for those who died in the Union prison camp.
ReplyDelete@Zed 11:47. Your point about RARES still being a POC is correct. I guess my point was really that it turns out not to be a word manufactured desperately to deal with an intractable constructing problem. Calling it a POC was Ill-considered baloney-of-convenience on my part, which is not terribly unusual.
ReplyDeleteInteresting discussion regarding FILING today - usually we collectively drift so far off course that it becomes an exercise in futility. However today it seems as though those of us PICKING NITS have come to a consensus that FILING at least problematic - I would enjoy hearing @Lewis’s perspective as an experienced constructor - on the mark, or did it barely hit one of the outside sections of the dart board of acceptability?
ReplyDeleteIt appears that anon8:47’s reading ability is on a par with their typing/spelling ability.
ReplyDelete@egs - I like bologna.
ReplyDelete@SouthsideJohnny6:08 - As an entry it’s fine, the issue is the clue. I can normally lawyer the clue into some sense, but I couldn’t find any usage anywhere. I do take some issue with worrying about the singular, that’s fine. But all I could find was that IRON FILINGs are only from FILING IRON, not welding and drilling. Part of the issue is that usually there are non-technical usages for technical terms that justify a clue. IRON FILING doesn’t seem to be used in any other context. Maybe the issue was that something so tautologically defined is hard to clue.
Wrong! I worked at a metal lab with a machine shop and grinding shop, we called them filings, no files involved.
Delete@Southside Johnny -- I agree with @Z that as an entry it's okay. If you Google "iron filing meaning" you will find several respectable dictionaries defining it in singular. I did raise an eyebrow when I filled it in, though, because I've always used the plural when it came to magnets attracting them -- and that little discomfort is probably what a lot of commenters felt today. I don't know enough about the processes that produce iron filings, however, to comment on the clue.
ReplyDeleteNo little red magnet images in my newspaper’s print edition. Just as well. The images do not add anything to the solving experience. In fact they take away the fun of figuring out what the U-shaped black squares represent. So no more images on the grid please. The two circled letters F and E are supposed to represent iron on the table of elements. But that is pretty ho-hum. And once you got one long answer with IRON the gig was up. Nothing glaringly bad about this one. It just didn’t thrill.
ReplyDeleteIf a typo is a typing error, then what is a writing error? A "writeo?" Anyway, I had the exact same "writeo" as @M&A. Early on, pre-McGuffin, I had CDC in there. Then I stumbled across my second IRON and thought, hey, you can't do that--there's already an IRON in the grid! Soon I found two more, including IRONFILING, several of which were used to demonstrate MAGNET power in middle school science class. By that time the jig was up. (No art here; I get my puzzles in newsprint.) Then RcRES was easy to correct--and when FDA came in, I already knew that the southern loner would be an E. Clever, these Wagners.
ReplyDeleteATON of DOD candidates today, including old faves ELAINE (JLD), UMA, ANN and NIA, as well as an in-clue appearance of Kamala. But the day belongs to HERHONOR Judge Judy Scheindlin. She's the real deal.
Back on track with Wordle:
BBGYB
YYBBB
GGGGG
I have now used the same starting guess twice: eagle-birdie. Useful word. Also in my wheelhouse.* I may have to adopt it permanently.
Though perhaps a tick or two heavy on the PPPs, this puzzle gave me good enjoyment, and was just right for a Tuesday. A tap-in birdie.
*ALIEN
EASEIN, BOY
ReplyDeleteSEE, KATE was an IRONMAIDEN
who might WAFFLE ERE she'd ponder,
she AGREED one DAY TO stop waitin',
so WEDIDIT for HERHONOR.
--- LOU EARP
Funny how sometimes it's the tiny words that can mess one up. I got it, but getting that F and E made me feel a lot more confident. I was able to iron out any remaining wrinkles.
ReplyDeleteDiana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
@D,LIW - iron out - good one
ReplyDeleteBTW - I tracked down a site that switches text over completely to addendum and superscript. Adding it to my bookmarks right close to the uʍop ǝpᴉsdn text generator. The last option is particularly helpful to add a spoiler and not get erased by the mods. text generator instagram
ReplyDeleteBTW - I tracked down a site that switches text over completely to addendum and superscript. Adding it to my bookmarks right close to the uʍop ǝpᴉsdn text generator. The last option is particularly helpful to add a spoiler and not get erased by the mods. text generator instagram
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAt least you stick to your guns. Yesterday, you said it was an iron ore mine, not iron mine, which is the term I've only heard. Today, you tell me in order to get metal filings, that a file must be used. I worked at a metal testing lab for over 45 years, and besides the lab itself, there was a machine shop and a grinding shop. All over the machines and floors were tiny bits of metal, that we called filings, no files involved. blue cow squishmallow
ReplyDeleteWrong! I worked at a metal lab with a machine shop and grinding shop, we called them filings, no files involved. blue cow squishmallow
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete