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Relative difficulty: Medium (7:57)
THEME: Aptly named sports players
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: BAT (Animal that symbolizes good fortune in Chinese culture) —
Hey besties! Off-schedule Malaika MWednesday as Rex handles his power outage. Hope everyone in a similar situation is safe and warm!
- Aptly named Olympic sprinter-- USAIN BOLT
- Aptly named six-time All-Star first baseman-- PRINCE FIELDER
- Aptly named tennis great-- MARGARET COURT
- Aptly named NBA MVP, in a manner of speaking-- TIM DUNCAN
Word of the Day: BAT (Animal that symbolizes good fortune in Chinese culture) —
Chinese art is rich with images of bats. Bats fly joyously across fabrics and tapestries, jewelry and porcelain, and are carved into jade and ivory, and adorn the columns and facades of palaces and the thrones of emperors. As symbols of good luck and happiness, bats have few rivals in Chinese culture, and their admiration for bats is ancient. The Chinese word for bat is ‘fu,’ pronounced the same as the word for good fortune.
• • •
Really intrigued to see what you folks think of this puzzle! (Unrelated to anything, my manager's manager called me out on how I over-use the word intrigued and now it is all that I hear myself say.) I think it will depend greatly on whether you know the people in it. Puzzles where the theme answers are people's names can be polarizing that way. This theme was able to slightly avoid that because "sprinter" clues BOLT and "first baseman" clues FIELDER and etc, but still, some of the sizzle is gone when you've never even heard of the person being mentioned. (I'm one for four, and found this pretty meh as a result.)
I didn't like how the last theme entry broke the pattern with a sudden switch to homophones (DUNCAN sounds like "dunk in," is what the clue gets at)-- to me it just felt like the constructor couldn't find anything better.
There's not a ton of theme content in this puzzle-- that's the kind of thing I never would have noticed before I started constructing!! But now that I'm more grid-savvy, I see that sort of thing and expect some fun long non-theme answers. I liked PRISTINE, GEMSTONE, PLUS ONES, and TWINKLES, even though that last clue (Puts out light, as a star) felt pretty tortured. I don't like that whole "as a ..." construct in cluing. [Use a beam on, as for cutting] was another instance, for LASE. Why not just say [Cut using a beam] ???
There were also some fun medium-sized answers-- HELP ME, ZIPS IT, EEYORE. I liked the clue for RASTA mentioning "I and I," which was new to me.
Bullets:
- I didn't finish this puzzle. My i-had-one-margarita brain saw [Decide] instead of [Decided] and put "opt" instead of SET-- "I.R.O." felt like it could be a valid agency, and "cup" is a word
- Also I had "on a" instead of ONO. I've never heard of the term HMOS so those first three letters could have been anything
- Why clue PAIN as a word in French when it is a word in English?
- My Spanish teacher was a big fan of Almodovar, so we watched "Todo Sobre Mi MADRE" in class, and at least one other of his movies. I can't remember which one had gazpacho in it... but then we made gazpacho. Excellent.
- I never thought I would see the day where YAS queen was in a Times puzzle. Phew.
- Any Youths (TM) out there with thoughts on SIP TEA?? It sounds so very very "How Do You Do Fellow Kids" to me.... Like, "tea" can be gossip... sure..... but no one is like "Yes I am ready to sip tea right now!!" It's more like "What's the tea?"
I like playing the "what else could have been a theme answer" game!! Would love to hear any that y'all come up with, and don't limit yourself to sports players!
Malaika
P.S. I didn't want to put this in the main write-up since it's so specific and unrelated but Rex has made the decision to give me platform, so here I am, using it. I adored the Oz books when I was younger. There are about a dozen of them, and I read them multiple times. I'd lug them back from a library in a tote back that was practically splitting at the seams. In those books, Oz is real. In the way that, like, Narnia is real, or H*gwarts or etc.
And it's so cool! There's fun world-building stuff, like how no one ever starves because you can plant anything. Like if you plant a biscuit in the ground, it will grow a biscuit tree. And eventually Dorothy comes to the very valid conclusion that life sucks on Earth, and so she should bring her family to Oz where they can enjoy a life of luxury. And... she does!! And it rocks!
So I freaking hate how in the movie it's a dream. I feel like that wrecks the whole point of the series which is that.... magic is real and fun and exciting and whimsical! And that dumb ZEKE clue reminded me of that. But I will be an adult and admit that most people do not share these opinions and so for y'all it was probably a fun reminder of a fun movie. Okay that's all.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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ReplyDeleteWow Malaika great writeup tonight. Did not know that about the Oz books. Every time I've watched the movie I've thought, how awesome must it have been to see that in 1939. When it changes from black and white into color...in 1939!! My oldest sister was born in 1938, and dad still used to love dancing with toddler me to "Follow the Yellow Brick Road", in the 1960's.
ReplyDeleteYes just a lot of names. A name theme, but many other trivial names as well: ADAM, BOSCH, ZEKE, ILIAD, EEYORE, ANSEL, PINK (she's great, but why clue as a name?), ANAIS, ICET. I was 2/4 in having heard of the theme names.
And agree with you about PAIN... why oh why clue that as French? No need. I mean, good for me I ace the French clues cuz Canadian, but still.
[Spelling Bee: yd(Tues) 14 min to pg, then another 10 to QB.]
Started out pretty tough for a Wednesday (for me) the only one I knew was USAIN BOLT. Ignored all the others and just filled in around them, then it got easy. Puzzle partner helped the the sports people I had never heard of. I can only follow so many things and if it isn’t football, I’m helpless.
ReplyDeleteHad JAKE for a while at 23A, no idea where that came from. ZIPS IT jogged me back to ZEKE.
I just found it confusing to see Margaret Court’s name in the same puzzle as YAS QUEEN.
ReplyDeleteNot many people know that Margaret Court is a vile person. Look her up. She's as bad a person as she was a good tennis player.
DeleteYou nailed this one, Malaika! And your nod to L. Frank Baum and Oz reminded me of the summer I discovered the first edition collection of all of the original 14 Oz books and literally didn’t want to put them down. I was apprehended in my shady bower under the arch formed by the spirea bushes in front of my Grandparents’ house. I had moved an old army blanket and wrapped my bed pillow in an old sheet to keep it clean. We had always been encouraged to read as kids and had already had the first book read to us when Gran showed me the shelf with the entire set of 14 books! What I neither knew nor appreciated at the ripe old age of almost 7 was that all of these precious volumes were First Editions with color plates that I learned were discontinued for all of the books in the 1930s. Of course I was in big doo-doo for taking them outside and exposing them to dirt and sunlight. My librarian-self shudders at the memory and every time I look at the collection and dare take them out of their sealed cases wearing my white gloves I think of
ReplyDeletemy young self immersed in Oz, oblivious to the perils of the elements compared to those on their pages! .
My husband read all 14 to our daughter throughout the 3 1/2 long years of evenings with me at work all day and at law school at night. She was 2 when they began. They would start the evening with some Oz and when my husband thought she was sleepy enough, he switched to bis own bedtime reading, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Our daughter got hooked on both as she grew a little older, and remembers so fondly that special time she had with her father. She even developed her own description for what she deemed my “law school moods.”
I always drove her to day school in the mornings and she would be munching on breakfast from the back seat and we would chat and sing songs. If she felt the trip was especially fun, she would remark that “must have been an Oz night at school,” or in the alternative, she could always tell when finals were coming and ask, “How many more sleeps until you have to go to Mordor again?”
The Oz collection still stays at my house but my daughter has started the series with library copies with their 9 year old foster daughter whom they hope to adopt if the stars align properly. Such a lovely little detour today, Malaika!
My very favorite part of the puzzle today was the clever clue for LOSE. That one stumped me for quite a while. I k re the theme people and the solve was fine but not very challenging. Enjoyed Malaika’s writeup lots more.
Totally agree about Oz. I was so obnoxiously precocious about wanting to read the book of every movie I saw, especially all the Disney movies. I read Bambi, Peter Pan, etc. And while as an adult I understand how they wanted to put a cute spin on the story where the Oa characters are all from her waking life, I absolutely preferred and prefer the book ending. It’s so much more…well, intriguing!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the puzzle but one thing bugged me. DAYO never comes immediately before the words “Wanna go home” in the song unless my memory has really failed me, but the clue implies that it does, doesn’t it? Otherwise you could claim any word in a song “comes before” any other random word.
Or am I just celebrating this Wednesday a little early? Have a good one!
ReplyDeleteI batted .750 on the names, although Cecil is (to me) the better-known FIELDER. The one I didn't know was the homophone DUNCAN. I've heard of "spill the TEA" but had to infer SIP. I guess that disqualifies me as a "fellow youth."
I’ll take homophobic sports figures for 44, Alex. That’s one way to sap the joy out of a solve.
ReplyDeleteWILLIE THROWER was a quarterback.
ReplyDelete@David Sinclair. What are you talking about?
ReplyDeleteGreat write-up, Malaika, and I agree completely with your observations. Usain Bolt was a gimme, the other names were either completely unfamiliar or only vaguely remembered once most of the crosses were in.
ReplyDeleteCluing DAYO this way wasn’t right - it definitely implied the word immediately precedes “…wanna go home”, which it does not.
I’ve loved all the Oz books since childhood, so it was really nice to read Malaika’s tribute to them.
I really wanted 3D "unhappy apple consumer" to be iMad. Aside from my "amusing" mistake, puzzle was meh for me too.
ReplyDeletePPP theme - I’ll spare you the rant since Malaika did a nice job explaining why they are always suboptimal.
ReplyDeleteAs for the as a … clue construction, that’s the difference between a Friday/Saturday clue and a M-W clue. Puts out light is a late week clue. Add the softener, Puts out light, as a star and we have a Wednesday appropriate clue. I’m not saying the Wednesday clue wouldn’t be better if it were rewritten, but that does seem to be what’s going on, Add Clue Softener to you tricky clues when cluing an early week puzzle.
it just felt like the constructor couldn't find anything better. I get the meaning but this phrase really is nonsensical, isn’t it? Don’t we always assume that the themers we get are the best the constructor could find so, almost by definition, they didn’t find anything better. But we use the phrase with that slightly pejorative connotation. It’s one of those phrases that causes that slight eye twitch whenever I hear or read it. “She’s marrying him?!?” “She couldn’t find anyone better.” Well, of course she couldn’t because if she had she’d be marrying that guy. Just a nonsense phrase if you think about it for one precious nanosecond.
@Zen Monkey & @JJK - You memory isn’t failing but, But!, the clue doesn’t say “immediately,” now does it? The daylight comes and I wanna go home.
Again I was hoping to see a good Rexrant ™ today, only to be disappointed.
ReplyDeleteYou’ve got three good themers, and rather than come up with a fourth, you cram DUNCAN in there and ruin the good thing you had going. If you can't find a good fourth themer, why not stick with three, and use APTRONYMS as a revealer in the TIM DUCAN spot?
Known only from crosswords: ENOKIS (is that a correct pluralization?), YAS, 'TEA' to mean gossip.
P!NK rules.
Tiger Woods.
ReplyDeleteThe clue for DAYO was OK. It was clear that it did NOT mean immediately before because that would be "WE", which cannot work in the puzzle. However, there's probably a better clue.
ICET/SIPPEDTEA
SPRAY WAXED
SNOTTY SASS
ROAST MEAT
Theme related fill:
ERROR & BAT-baseball
SET-tennis
I always thought it was "me wanna go home" but Google says its "he wanna go home". Who knows?
DeleteOh, great puzzle! Kept me guessing more than a typical Wednesday due to tricky cluing, provided a clever why-haven’t-I-ever-thought-of-that theme, and featured a terrific handful of wordplay clues. Thus, I felt perfectly satisfied at the end, wanting to give Joseph a “Good one!” slap on the back and a thank-you hug.
ReplyDeleteExtra props for the a-one clues for ADAM [Apple consumer with an unhappy story to tell?], and SPRAY [Mist a spot?] – which have never been used before in major venue puzzles (and I checked).
I love it when I leave a puzzle with a boost in energy and the sense that I’ve just experienced one of the highlights of my day, even if it turns out to be a magnificent day overall. Thank you for this, Joseph!
I just can’t sugarcoat yesterday and today - back to back drudgery. Please ESTOP.
ReplyDeleteGlanced at the time and briefly thought I was faster than Rex today. Then I kept reading. Oh well.
ReplyDelete@Anonymoose 6:25 – Margaret Court.
ReplyDeleteStill solving online this AM, ugh. At least I'll be using my pencil tomorrow for some Thursday hijinks.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I thought this was pretty easy, but I knew all the names. I think we want DUNKIN' for Tim, and not DUNK IN, as Malaika suggests, as in "Tim, the Dunkin' Duncan" (said nobody ever).
Big Oz fan here too, I was torn between ZEKE and HUNK, but ZIPSIT fixed that.
Nice concep6 and nicely done, and that makes this a fine Wednesday. Except for the online part.
Did anyone else try Jeff Bagwell for the first baseman clue?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThoroughly loving the reminiscences of all you Oz readers. Charming tales. Agree on DAYO, @ZenMonkey: the lyric is "Daylight come and me want to go home," I believe.
ReplyDeleteGreat gentleman, Harry Belafonte.
Liked the puzzle. SIP TEA feels forced but it's gettable. And @Mattie, IMad is perfect for unhappy Apple customer. Hope to see that in a puzzle soon!
Easy for a Wednesday. More like a Monday. The only resistance was that I kept on thinking of Cecil FIELDER. Who is YAS Queen? got it from the crosses, never heard of it.
ReplyDeleteI feel a little (or maybe a lot) of empathy for the non sports-fans out there, and am thankful it wasn’t a grid full of TV actors, novelists, cartoon characters, dead presidents or whatever.
ReplyDeleteDefinite example of the wheel house effect today - I have no clue what a YAS Queen is, but I confidently dropped in John and Yoko’s Plastic ONO (Elephant’s Memory) Band.
I have what is probably a micro-nit today, but I don’t understand to what extent a Cue stick would be “on a rack”. I can envision a CUE stick being stored in a wall-mounted or free standing rack, or perhaps someone left it on the pool table - but I have never seen a CUE stick on a rack.
My two cents re: 44A - MARGARET COURT has views that I find repugnant and belong in the 1850s. But that should have nothing to do with including her in a crossword that is based on sports figures with names that correspond to their sport. The puzzle is neither an endorsement of nor an argument against her views.
ReplyDeleteIt's a puzzle, not an op-ed essay. Every single person used in a NYT crossword will have their supporters and their detractors. We have enough to worry about without being stressed by the inclusion of someone we don't like in a danged crossword puzzle (an activity that's intended to provide us with a few minutes of diversion from all those stressors).
OK. Maybe that was four cents. So sue me.
The Almodovar film with gazpacho is "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."
ReplyDeleteROLLIE FINGERS (pitcher)
ReplyDeleteSCOTT SPEED (racing car driver)
Thx Joseph, for this sporty offering! :)
ReplyDeleteEasy-med.
Pretty smooth all the way, except for the RASTA / ANSEL cross; pretty easy to guess the 'S', tho.
Knew all the sports figures, altho a bit hazy on PRINCE FIELDER. Thot first of his dad, Cecil.
Felt good to be able to drop PLUS-ONES right in.
A couple of faves: BOSCH series (Amazon Prime); DAY-O (Banana Boat Song) ~ Harry Belafonte
Another excellent Wednes. puz! :)
@A (1:22 PM yd) / @RooMonster (11:17 PM) 👍 for Phrazle 2's. :)
@okanaganer (2:49 PM yd) 👍 for QB
Missed that word from dbyd, as well; got to remember to look at words which don't include the center letter, when adding suffixes!
___
yd's: 0 (in under 30) / W: (fail) / Phrazle: 3
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
I was waiting to see what Rex would say about MARGARET COURT... would have been an interesting diatribe.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteDidn't love the puzzle, but since I'm in my 60s and a long-time sports fan, all the names in the theme answers were familiar and I breezed through this one faster than the average Wednesday. Malaika, I read the first OZ book last summer and loved it, but I didn't realize there were so many more. Thanks to you, they are now on my reading list.
ReplyDelete@Joaquin, I disagree completely.
ReplyDeleteIncluding an historical figure in a puzzle is a way of celebrating their achievements and contributions. It is more than just a trivia test, especially when it is one of the theme answers. Margaret Court is repugnant.
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ReplyDeleteNo need for such hatred? Please explain that to Ms. Court.
DeleteI only knew two out of four theme answer names, but I loved this clever puzzle anyway. Which is rare for me since I normally don't like puzzles based on proper names. (And this one stirred in even more non-theme proper names for good measure.) But it offered some nice resistance and I had a very good time solving it.
ReplyDeleteAs a tennis player, there was no way I was going to wait for crosses to come up with the "aptly named" tennis player. I started to think of potential last names. LOB? SMASH? VOLLEY? BACKHAND? WIMBLEDON? Oh, yes, of course -- COURT!!!
I knew USAIN BOLT right off the bat because I had the "U" from SMUG.
Never heard of PRINCE FIELDER (but I had enough crosses for FIELDER). Never heard of TIM DUNCAN (nice pun!) and it could just as well have been ToM DUNCAN since I didn't know the exclamation point pop star. But I decided that an exclamation point looked a lot more like an "I" than it looked like an "O".
Big last task: Changing IT'S to TIS at 22A. PRISi?N? for "Mint" had been driving me crazy.
I never wrote it in, but I wanted LAHR at 23A. Who's ZEKE?
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ReplyDeleteYou seriously think beliefs are innate? You can’t change them?
DeleteGreat write up, and I agree with most of it!
ReplyDeleteI dunno about your “Sip tea” assessment. As a gay 30 something, this is certainly in the vernacular!
I really don’t know where to begin with the places that screamed HELP ME today but I’ll give it a try. SIP TEA? Artemis program? NASE? ZIPS IT? YAS queen? RASTA as clued? And finally, three out of the four Proper Named themers. And speaking of names, I don’t recall a puzzle where nearly half the crosses were a Person, Place or Pop culture term. I mean, look at them: 6 9 14 17 22 23 24 34 36 39 44 47 49 57 58 and 60 Across. PLUS ILIAD and ENOKI which I didn’t count. This is not OK. Make it ESTOP!!!
ReplyDeleteI did know USAIN BOLT so I got the theme of course but the others were total mysteries. I briefly thought they might be made up names. So disillusioned by this puzzle was I that I went to the constructor notes to see if there was something I was missing. Therein it was stated that one name was rejected as being “just a bit too out of the public eye to be worthy for inclusion.” I’m a pretty big sports fan but apparently I’m looking through the wrong public eye. Or maybe I just need to get out more.
Meh.
I'm not a sports fan, so I was surprised at how fast I whipped through this. USAIN BOLT was a gimme, and I knew MARGARET COURT as a tennis great, though not in her modern incarnation. That makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteMany people read the Wizard of Oz books as a subversive political commentary. I liked the movie, the first book I enjoyed - though I honestly don't remember the ending and I never got into the sequels, which is surprising, since I pretty much inhaled all fantasy books as a kid.
Even without the theme names, there were too many names in this puzzle. Add the themed ones and this suddenly became one of my least fave puzzles, ever.
ReplyDeleteI finished it with a pretty decent (for me) time, so I'm not complaining that all those names made it hard, they just made it a terrible solving experience.
There's no "aha" moment with a name. It's either you know it or you don't. Nothing to figure out, nothing to give you that feeling of accomplishment when you grok the answer. You either know it and slap it in right away or you don't know it and just have to make inferences and guess at letters via crosses.
Neither of those things is fun.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteOSCAR WILDE? Har.
Nice enough THEME, although seems more TuesPuz-ish. (I can see the person who hates when us commentors say that cringing right now!)
Funny writeover, had DoYa first for DAYO, misreading clue as plural and thinking it was some rap song I'd never heard of. Then remembered the Belafonte song. The SIPTEA/PAIN P was a toughie. Agree why not clue PAIN as a regular word? SIP TEA made the most sense there, even though I'm not a hip youth. Kids these days...
Nice handling of the 13's. Those are always tough to get into a grid. To me, they don't seem to make it a "top and bottom" puz, as sometimes it seems like two separate puzs. You know what I mean.
SEEYA and ESTOP stacked is neat. Have a TWINKLE of an idea to come up with a story using all the Across and Down answers in order, but it would probably suck, so gonna spare y'all. 😁
@bocamp
Thanks! I was rather surprised. yd's Duotrigordle went down in flames! Have you ever gotten a first word to be an answer? I believe it'll happen to me some day. Probable odds, and what-not.
yd -2, should'ves 1
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Famed competitive ballet men:
ReplyDeleteDEREK JETER
AXL ROSE
Wow! It seems we have a Superwoman on our blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated by your 4:23 a.m. post, @CDilly52 and it's not because of the 14 "Oz" books that you dragged outdoors into the elements as a child. (I only read one "Oz" book, btw -- does that mean I had a fantasy-deprived childhood?)
No, my fascination -- you might even say awe -- is due to the fact that for 3 1/2 years you held a full-time job and went to law school at night, all while parenting a 2-year-old child. Your husband certainly sounds quite exceptional -- light-years beyond wonderful, in fact -- but still. How did you ever find the energy????
I felt so tired reading about your 3 1/2 Superwoman years, that I trotted back to my bedroom and lay down for a spell to recover:) Again, Wow!
@anon 9:40 I don't really think beliefs are innate, and if you examine your own, you might find some that have changed over time. I know mine did after going to college.
ReplyDelete@CDilly, usually, when I come across a comment here that reminisces about childhood experiences or people someone met in the past, I tend to scan rapidly and go to the next entry, but I'm glad that yours' attracted my attention. It brought back many memories of solitary pleasure that I derived from a love of reading at an early age. Not an Oz fan, but all those Chip Hilton and Nancy Drew hours are still with me today, about years later. Thanks for the reminder.
ReplyDeleteI'm with @Juaquin and others that we should not be vetting athletes, actors,or historical figures for their social views to decide whether or not they can be included in a puzzle. Jackie Robinson was just celebrated, as MLB does every year, for breaking the color barrier in that sport in 1947. How many players prior to that were racists ? How many U.S. Presidents were slave owners/racists ? How many celebrated actors, novelists, Churchmen ? Erase their acheivements from our collective memory ?
BTW, Margaret Court, 44-5 at the French, 51-9 at Wimbledon, 52-6 at the US Open.
On the tough side for me - and so, after quite a Wednesday work-out through most of the grid, I enjoyed the switcheroo to a homophone for TIM DUNCAN, a nice laugh as a theme closer.
ReplyDeleteHelp from previous puzzles: YAS. No idea: PRINCE FIELDER, ANSEL, SIP TEA. Resisted until the end: SLAPS as a congratulatory gesture: I could only imagine them accompanying, "You cad!' - and not a "Way to go!" high five.
Nice enough puzzle. Got all the themes from crosses despite not knowing the baseball or tennis player. The PANAM/ANSEL cross with NASA lurking nearby sent me to Google, but everything else solved itself.
ReplyDeleteI will now go read the Oz books. I'm a little embarrassed as as English major to admit I didn't know there were Oz books at all, let alone 14 of them.
We'll never solve the "who should be excluded from puzzles" conversation, but I am hopeful the young group of constructors coming into the scene will be wiser than in the past. Including Court is a fail in my mind, and even more perplexing is commenters saying she just has "different views than you." It's an apologist's euphemism for "boys will be boys." We have the power to reason, and when we arrive at hateful thoughts, we also have the power to shut our traps.
@Nancy, Burt Lahr played the hired hand, Zeke, at the Kansas farm as well as the Cowardly Lion. Likewise, Bolger was Hunk/Scarecrow, and Jack Haley was Hick/Tinman.
ReplyDeleteI thought the puzzle was cute and fun and don’t care that DUNCAN just sounds like “dunkin.” I either did not know (or forgot) about the Margaret Court thing. I remember her name but I didn’t watch tennis then (I’ll have to look at what years she played after I post)
@CDilly52….you took the words right out of my mouth! I think I saw the movie before I could read (um, there was no bedtime reading for me) but we had both The Land of Oz and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz in our book shelf and I was like…”so the movie’s wrong, it wasn’t a dream…yay”! Many folks don’t know that there were others that found themselves in Oz (was it ship wreck for Betsy and Zeb?). Anyway, other notable characters included Billina the Hen (who could talk while in Oz), TikTok, and Jack Pumpkinhead. What a stroll through memory lane!
And lol, @Nancy…I delivered my first child three weeks after I started law school. Memorable because I drove to class after one week (against doctors orders) and my Civ Pro prof proceeded to Socratically grill me mercilessly. After class, I talked to my prof and he gasped and clapped his hands up to his face McCauley Culkin Home Alone style, and said “Ms Beezer! YOU’RE the pregnant student! I am SO sorry”! Ya can’t just make this stuff up!
PS to above comments…
ReplyDelete-I forgot Princess Ozma
-I did not have a C-section and thought two weeks was ridiculous for “not driving”
-If it wasn’t obvious, my prof thought I had just decided to skip class for a week
"I was apprehended in my shady bower under the arch formed by the spirea bushes in front of my Grandparents’ house."
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful sentence, CDilly52 at 4:23 am. Your whole write-up, a pleasure to read -- thank you!
@Beezer (10:48). Two Superwomen.
ReplyDeleteI got one smile from this puzzle, for ADAM. And I enjoyed hearing about the OZ books, both from Malaika and from CDilly52.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t know the four theme names, or ANSEL or PINK. I've seen ICET in puzzles. I wanted yes or yay for the queen. YAS?
Despite all that, the only section that gave me trouble was the SE (SCROD, PINK, RBS, DAYO, TIpDUNCAN) but I worked it out in my usual time, so I guess everything was fairly crossed.
The most jaw-dropping thing to me was hearing of an educated person who has never heard of HMOS. What paradise she must live in!
wasn't aware there was a series, and never read even "The Wizard...", if that's even the title of the 'first' installment. if Oz is real, then how does that first entry end? is she back in Kansas, or not?
ReplyDeleteOh, and just so folks know: Technicolor, et al, existed during the silent era. a 2 color process for some years at the start, and not often used. by the time of "Oz", it was a 3 color, 3 film strip, beam splitter camera; said camera about the size of a refrigerator. for those with a bit of physics background, that means you need nearly a supernova's supply of light to run the thing. fainting from the heat of all those lights was common.
ReplyDeleteBlaze it,
ReplyDeleteJo
No problem here with "I and I," and I'm a little surprised that anyone might never have heard of HMOs -- but PLUS ONES is a plural??!! In what universe?
ReplyDeleteIf you’re going to have USAIN, PRINCE, MARGARET, and TIM in your theme, please don’t fill the grid with more names. ICET. PINK. EEYORE. BOSCH. ADAM. ZEKE. ANSEL. ANAIS. ONO. It’s an impressive guest list, but can’t they go somewhere else instead? This party is way past its occupancy limit. At least ROB and EDDY had the good sense not to be people.
ReplyDeleteGood to see you again Malaika; thx for your excellent review! :)
ReplyDeleteHad Lahr, before ZEKE; obv didn't read the clue properly. :(
@Zed (7:05 AM)
Good 'puts out light' analysis!
pabloinnh (7:46 AM)
That was my take on TIM, as well.
@Joaquin (8:33 AM) / @Anonymous (9:27 AM) / @Anonymous 9:40 AM)
Good points in all three posts!
@Rob (9:14 AM)
Noted individuals included in xw's do not necessarily 'celebrate their achievements and contributions'. Louis Jenkins & Margaret Farrar made this clear in the Sunday, Feb. 22, 1942 NYT puz with, 'He wrote a best seller in prison': (spoiler).
@RooMonster (9:57 AM) yw :)
I agree, with 32 start words it's bound to happen eventually. The question then is: can we get the 2nd, 3rd, etc. w/o wasting a turn? 🤔
___
td pg: 11:59 / W: 3*
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@jazzmanchgo
ReplyDeleteI went to a wedding recently and only knew 2 of the many PLUS ONES.
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ReplyDeleteI wasn't at all sure about SLAPS as congratulatory gestures. Don't you cLAP someone on the back while saying "way to go!" SLAPS sounds too much like something else, especially after the Academy Awards.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, @Fillory! had CLAPS in all the way thru until the last clue happened to be (1-Down) and I knew it was SMUG hence SLAPS not CLAPS
DeleteMore of a Friday time today. I'm just not a sports person.
ReplyDeletePLUSONES today PLUSONE yesterday, what are the odds?
yd -0, td -0
I thought the clue for PLUS ONES was really sad. Do any of you want to be an "unnamed guest"? I sure don't. I like it when people know my name. I'm happier when people know my name.
ReplyDeleteHere's something to "cheer" you up, you poor unappreciated and unrecognized PLUS ONES.
@Anon 11:27 -- Margaret Court is planning to do all that????
ReplyDeleteSooo and ergooo … Aptly named couple playin catch = MITT ROMNEY & LUCILLE BALL?
ReplyDeleteDidn't know the FIELDER & DUNCAN dudes, btw. Lost precious nanoseconds. But still a cute theme idea.
staff weeject pick: YAS. Make it a themed, since it's in the dead center. {Aptly named person who can talk backwards fluently?} = YAS.
Are U then supposed to say SEEYAS, to royals? Just askin for a Brit friend.
faves: PRISTINE/GEMSTONE. Most of the rest of the longballs are plurals, so they get points off -- but still kinda like TWINKLES. Also partial to OBTUSE and ZIPSIT.
Fairly smoooth, uneventful solve. No major moanas to report.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Greenbaum dude. And congratz on yer first themed puz.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
aptly named runt:
**gruntz**
@oknanger: I saw Wizard of Oz in 1939 and, yes, it was miraculous. I was seven and I hid under my seat when the flying monkeys arrived. I turn 90 tomorrow which is also Walmart Supercenter's 90th Bday.
ReplyDelete@Leslie (10:10) I agree with you 100%. Feelings, beliefs, thoughts and hopefully actions change over the course of time with one’s experiences in life.
ReplyDelete@Gary (10:47) “We have the power to reason, and when we arrive at hateful thoughts, we also have the power to shut our traps.” Very well put.
I was about 6 years old the first time I watched Wizard of Oz. I wondered why they put a grown-up in the role of Dorothy. Sure looked like an adult to my first-grade self. It almost spoiled it for me because it seemed kinda ridiculous and embarrassing for the actress, or like they were trying to put one over on us. But it was such a good story, so I went with it. And she really played the part well.
ReplyDeleteAfter many viewings every year at Easter time, I finally saw it on a color TV. What a revelation when the screen turned to color!!!
Also, the story of the making of the movie and what was done to poor Judy Garland is pretty heartbreaking.
Liked the puzzle. Loved the review. I wonder what Rex would have had to say about the Tim Duncan clue and answer. I thought it was fine but I bet Rex wouldn't have.
Medium-tough. Not knowing PRINCE and SNOoTY before SNOTTY were my only problems, but I still struggled a bit. Might have been the pre dinner scotch.
ReplyDeleteInteresting theme idea that kinda works, mostly liked it.
Gary Player (golf)
ReplyDeleteGrant Balfour (baseball pitcher)
Chuck Long (football quarterback)
Gilbert Arenas (basketball)
Anna Smashnova (tennis)
Marina Stepanova(400meter hurdler and former world record holder)
I realize that most of these either don’t quite work in the theme or are overly obscure. I was just having fun with this, and was particularly taken with Marina Stepanova.
Call me a FLAKE, but I thought ZIPSIT should have been clued as “What you do to win at musical chairs.” That clue could have been written to cross-reference ARSE as well.
BTW, if the first answer you filled in was 30A, that was a NAAN starter.
Nice write up Malaika. And an enjoyable puzzle, Joseph Greenbam.
@Nancy, thanks for including me but I do NOT think I was and I bet @CDilly feels the same way. Getting support from your spouse and family is certainly critical to get through and not lose your sanity, though!
ReplyDelete@egsforbreakfast - great list!!!!!! Stepanova can go with Duncan in the homophone category. I also like that if you know 30A, you can call it a "NAAN disclosure agreement". Dad out....
ReplyDeleteThis is not the first appearance of YAS.
Where is that picture of Steve Buscemi from? I'm pretty sure I've seen that, but can't remember where. Spot on for the write-up.
I wish I'd never heard of an HMO. Remember when political arguments where about that?
4 for 4 on knowing the themers; YAS sports!
Having seen another Almodovar film, y tu mama tambien, helped get to madre - mothers and women a motif for him.
Egs - good ones!
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ReplyDelete@egs -- That is truly fabulous! Balfour and Stepanova, especially.
ReplyDeleteAnd, also, why didn't I think of Anna Smashnova?
Martha,
ReplyDeleteJudy Garland was 16 when she filmed TWOZ, hardly a grownup.
@Joe D from yesterday, thanks, and I appreciate the tutorial. I was obviously a bit rusty! Also, thanks for checking on the Schuberts, I meant to go back but ran out of time.
ReplyDeleteAgree today’s THEME was “sub-optimal” (Hi, @Zed) but a few of the clues TWINKLEd, like “Shake, as a tail,” “More than right” and “Apple consumer with an unhappy story…”. I was two for four (BOLT and COURT) on the themers.
I didn’t mind the clue for PAIN at all - who needs more of the English kind? I could almost smell bread baking. More good smells wafting down the east side with MEAT over ROAST. If DAYO had been mAYO we’d have had the makings of a substantial sandwich.
Nits - SIP TEA and ICE T, HALOED, weird plurals PLUSONES and ENOKIS.
Can someone HELP ME get the clue “Statistical calculation” for ERROR? I mean, technically, sure, but shouldn’t it be miscalculation? Oh, wait, baseball stat. Cute.
Today is the birthday of Bolivian composer Simeon Roncal (1870-1953). Another one previously unknown to me, but I love this deceptively casual-looking patio performance of his Decepción. These guys should be famous.
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ReplyDeleteMargaret Court doesn't have "fellow-travelers". Margaret Court has some nice tennis memories and a houseful of trophies.
ReplyDeleteFor Pete's sake, would you choose your villains more carefully? There are actually real villains out there. Your way-over-the-top kind of thinking trivializes -- and in some ways helps to inoculate -- the real ones.
Second day in a row where they tell us the theme, "appropriately named [athlete]" right in the clues, thereby dumbing down the whole puzzle experience. No one else seems bothered by this, so I won't go on aat length.
ReplyDeleteI never read the Oz books as a child, but my second son got into them, so I read them all -- or all I could find -- as an adult. In addition to the 14 by Baum himself, there many authorized by his estate and published after his death. There were 19 by Ruth Plumly Thompson, and about 5 by other writers. So, yes, the whole 'it was all a dream' thing is nonsense.
@Nancy, I'm with you on the PLUS ONES. It's just laziness; the proper way is to ask your guests if they'd like to bring someone and send that person an invitation. But people under a certain age don't get it, so I guess youth must be served.
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ReplyDelete@jazzmanchgo said...
ReplyDeleteNo problem here with "I and I," and I'm a little surprised that anyone might never have heard of HMOs -- but PLUS ONES is a plural??!! In what universe?
Answer; In the Crossword Universe where you can pluralize anything in any form you like. Similar rule for abbreviations. Anything goes.
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ReplyDelete@egs-
ReplyDeleteThe Tigers have a pitcher named Tarik Skubal. I always wonder about the break on a "skubal".
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ReplyDeletesmoke a joint and chill out smh ^^^
ReplyDeleteThis long time San Antonio Spurs basketball fan enjoyed seeing TIM DUNCAN as a themer. He played all 19 seasons in the NBA with one team, the Spurs. (These days players can switch teams two or three times in a single season!) TIM ranked number 8 on ESPN's 2020 list of all time top players, behind only Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird.
ReplyDeleteTIM was Rookie of the Year and went on to play in 15 NBA All Star games---15 times out of 19, not too shabby, right? He won Most Valuable Player 2 times during regular seasons and 3 times during playoffs. And if that's not enough to make him crossword worthy, he won 5 NBA Championship rings.
The fill got some significant help from the plural of convenience (POC) right out of the gate 1A SLAPS. I always notice when some of the longer fill is too short for their respective slots. Needing a gratuitous tacked on S to get the job done definitely takes away from any TWINKLE they might contribute to the puzzle, as happens today with TWINKLE, LEG REST, PLUS ONE and PHOTO ID. Also of POC note are a couple of two for one types where two entries, a Down and an Across both get a letter count boost from a single, shared final S. For some advanced sleuthing, there's a stealth POC where the S is inside a phrase, at 23D ZIPS IT. I would give the grid fill a POC assisted RATING.
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ReplyDeleteI spent my morning in a field of glorious daffodils. I wasn’t going to post, but now that I’m home with my feet up I’m glad I stopped by. I don’t have much to say about the puzzle, except that it was of average Wednesday difficulty, the theme names were a cute idea, and YAS is beyond me but I didn’t need to cheat. I was very interest, however, to read Malaika’s love note to the Oz books. I had no idea it was a series and one that deviated from the movie. I’m not above reading classic children’s literature and I’m “intrigued” enough to give these a try. Thank you Malaika for the excellent book review!
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ReplyDeletesorry you were silenced
DeleteI don’t know which clue or answer was the seed that germinated to become this religious pissing match (I know the participants are so vested in their own point of view that they perceive they are engaged in some type of verbal holy war), but jeez, what a useless waste of oxygen these repetitive regurgitations of the same points are. Almost impossible to “just don’t read the posts” when they comprise more than 50% of what gets approved. In my opinion this whole type of environment of intolerance starts from the top down, as Rex seems to believe that he is so special that even the New York Times shouldn’t subject him to topics, people, concepts or opinions that he finds disagreeable.
ReplyDelete@East Coaster
ReplyDeleteI have to read them and I'm going to ask @Rex for a raise. 😂
Does anyone here think YASQUEEN will stand the test of time?
ReplyDeleteIf someone is scrolling through the NYTXW archives in 2032, my guess is that they will really puzzle over that one . . . .
Not a fan of Margaret Court . . . . came here just to see what Rex would say about her inclusion; but I'm not so narrow-minded that I think she should never appear in a puzzle. That being said, much of MC's stellar record came from her winning numerous Aussie Opens in an era when very few traveled Down Under for that tournament.
Too Much, Too Off Topic - I'm deleting them all.
ReplyDeleteReally, we try not to interfere but this is the kind of "discussion" that led to Rex's 3 Post Edict.
Nothing you've deleted will be missed or mourned, @Busy Moderator. What's more, I'm sending Rex a brief (but exquisitely worded) telegram pushing for your long overdue and generous raise:)
ReplyDeleteModerators,
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking out the garbage. I’ll gladly sing your pRAISES to Rex.
Will YASQUEEN stand the test of time? After watching this video I'm going with, "yes."
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ReplyDeleteSee, if Musk takes over Twitter, and lets Trump back in, then he'll take over Blogger and get rid of these pesky moderators. Then the food fights will be non-stop. I can't wait.
ReplyDeleteAs an Aussie, Margaret Court is a poor excuse for a human being and is directly against who I am. However she was one of the greatest tennis players of all time, and her views, while horrible, are not so bad that she shouldn't be included in a sporting themed crossword, where her name is ideal.
ReplyDeleteDid not love seeing raging homophobe MARGARET COURT's name here. If only ANNA SMASHNOVA had been more successful, we could have had two 13-letter aptly named tennis players to choose from.
ReplyDeleteThis made me laugh. 2 days after the "tea sipping" controversy in this thread, Morning Brew runs this item:
ReplyDelete"Corporate tea to sip this weekend: White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch on Netflix."
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ReplyDeleteYeah, I got them, and yeah, adding more PPPs SEEMs like piling on. The groaner pun at the end didn't help either. There is some nice compensatory fill here, so we sink a long par putt.
ReplyDeleteDid not know about the good luck BAT; everything else about him is unsavory; maybe that's why I don't win more often. Example: I double-bogeyed today's Wordle. Still, that constitutes a (Phew!) win. Bleedover (pluralized): PLUSONE.
This is the 5th appearance of YAS for " ___ Queen" in less than three years. Seeing that clue with a 3-letter answer makes it an automatic fill-in for me now. Of course, they could throw me off once in a while with the answer RED, going forward.
ReplyDeleteOBTUSE THEME
ReplyDeletePRINCEFIELDER, USAINBOLT, and TIMDUNCAN
RULEd the RATINGs in sports,
but someone SENTIN a PHOTO debunkin'
the PLUSONES that MARGARETCOURTs.
--- ANSEL ADAM
Apt sports names a decent THEME.
ReplyDeleteI will not remember YAS Queen. 'TIS just not there.
A very, very unlikely wordle birdie today:
BBBBB
BGBYB
GGGGG
Got all of it except for - wait for it - parts of a couple of names. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteDiana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Wanted Gilbert Arenas when I first saw the clue.
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