NyQuil shelfmate / SAT 5-21-22 / Devotees of Team Edward and Team Jacob, in fandom slang / Antioxidant drink brand / Opposite of dewy-eyed / Minella monkey puppet / Accomplished old-style
Constructor: Ryan McCarty and Yacob Yonas
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: "Jules et Jim" (49A: Catherine, e.g., in "Jules et Jim") —
The film is based on Henri-Pierre Roché's 1953 semi-autobiographical novel describing his relationship with young writer Franz Hessel and Helen Grund, whom Hessel married. Truffaut came across the book in the mid-1950s while browsing through some secondhand books at a shop along the Seine in Paris. He later befriended the elderly Roché, who had published his first novel at the age of 74. The author approved of the young director's interest in adapting his work to another medium.
The film won the 1962 Grand Prix of French film prizes, the Étoile de Cristal, and Jeanne Moreau won that year's prize for best actress. The film ranked 46 in Empiremagazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. The soundtrack by Georges Delerue was named as one of the "10 best soundtracks" by Time magazine in its "All Time 100 Movies" list. (wikipedia)
• • •
Well that was a proper Saturday. That, or my specific brain just gunked up at particularly bad moments, causing difficulty to pile up where others would not have encountered it. There were definitely a couple of choke points, specific answers that eluded me, and whose elusiveness then had a cascading effect. I thought I was really flying at first, dropping ALIT SAT AREOLA COMMAS REDDIT and OREO COOKIE with no trouble at all. But then, a hitch. I don't know why POSIT didn't come immediately to mind for 4D: Put forward. It should have. But my brain just kept saying "why doesn't ASSERT fit" and so I looked at 19A: Chic, and with MOD- in place I wrote in MODERN. . . a brutal error. I had also stared at 5D: Isn't oneself? a little earlier and couldn't make it do what I wanted it to do, namely, be a first-person version of the verb "isn't" (AM NOT? AMN'T?). You know, like the verb "isn't" but ... for "oneself" (i.e. me). This is what is called, in the vernacular, overthinking it. Anyway, never read "Motorcycle Diaries" so couldn't parse MED STUDENT, and the Rolls (Royce!) clue, wow, just a crusher (1A: Rolls dough, perhaps? = CAR PAYMENT). So basically I dashed out of the gate and then face-planted. FUN!
Was proud to see through the NINJA TURTLE clue pretty quickly (9D: Michelangelo, e.g.), but then wow did I slip on that BATH TOY. Could Not Parse It To Save My Life. If I could've remembered the brand-name BAI, I would've been in much better shape, but as for antioxidant drink brands in three letters, I've got POM and then I'm out. Sigh. Wasn't sure about Selena's "Baila ESTA Cumbia" either, but eventually ESTA seemed the only option. I put MUSTARD on my barbecue meat. I'm sorry, but the M--T--- pattern seemed to demand it. In my defense, the MEAT part of this answer feels a bit redundant. You could easily use this same coating for just RUB. Anyway, MUSTARD barbecue, anyone! It's not so far-fetched, actually. Carolina mustard BBQ sauce is definitely a thing.
Two more grid hazards awaited me, and both of them had the letter combo "DV" in them, weirdly. I tried to make UNISOM fit at 50A: NyQuil shelfmate (ADVILPM), and when that didn't work, I gave up and let the crosses take care of it ... only I needed a Lot of them to see that final lump of -LPM at the end. Had ROAD rage before 'ROID rage, which continues to sound very dated and '90s and "Avoid the Noid"-era, to my ears (was the Noid on 'ROIDs? ... it kinda seemed that way at times). Maybe 'ROID was a hotter abbr. when there weren't more widely known technical names for the banned substances that athletes were taking (it's all just PEDs, or "performance-enhancing drugs," now), and as for the phenomenon of 'ROID rage, it feels historical / mythical today. Or maybe we just don't talk about it. I don't know. Road rage, on the other hand, is more with-us than ever.
The other "DV" answer that tripped me was the simple DVR (57D: Save for later, in a way). Not expected the verb use of that initialism, so I was briefly blocked from seeing most of those long Acrosses at the bottom, although the worst mistake I made down there was writing in OPERA COATS (?) instead of OPERA CAPES (29D: Luxury attire for white-tie events). As bad a flow-killer as my MODERN-for-MODISH mistake earlier in the solve. Once I broke through the DVR part, the rest of the SE corner was easy. In fact, there were several patches of the puzzle that fell without much effort at all. The NE, for example. And, after I finally remembered the seems-forever-ago werewolf / vampire book series name ("Twilight"), and thus remembered TWIHARDS (33D: Devotees of Team Edward and Team Jacob, in fandom slang), the SW wasn't too much trouble either—swooshed right back up in the center of the grid where BAI had been giving me so much trouble. I enjoyed this puzzle, but mostly in the way you enjoy surviving a harrowing ordeal. There's that rush of "I made it!" but you wouldn't *exactly* say you'd want the lion chasing you again. The fill in this one is solid but doesn't offer much in the way of surprise or sparkle, so the pleasure is definitely in the fight itself. Maybe TWIHARDS didn't wow me because I'd seen it before (and like 'ROID rage, it feels dated to me now). And don't GOOD VIBEs usually come in groups? And don't ventriloquist's usually carry "dummies"? "Ventriloquist's HAND PUPPET" is not a phrase I've ever heard (55A: Ventriloquist's prop, maybe). Still, the answers were generally solid, and the cluing was often clever, and it's nice to get a proper Saturday every now and again. Keeps you on your toes. Good luck with the (absolutely brutal, out-of-season, apocalyptic) heat today, if you live anywhere [points to huge section of the eastern part of the country] in this area. See you tomorrow.
Hmm - AREOLA, WOOD, MEAT RUB, DRIVES HOME piqued my juvenile self. I liked most of this - and surprisingly made it through unscathed. The full OREO COOKIE didn’t hit and HAND PUPPET felt awkward.
Always nice to whiz through a puzzle and see Rex call it medium-challenging – it happens once or twice a year. Unlike yesterday, it did not feel like a wheelhouse puzzle as I did not know DAN or ESTA or BAI and blanked on NIA, so HEDDA was the only proper name that went in easily.
MARRY UP: My grandmother was proposed to by Charlie Chivers, of Chivers jams. She turned him down because that would mean, in her words, "marrying above my station". Instead, she married my grandfather, a crude ape of a man, and was never really happy during the time I knew her until he died. She was a victim of British classism (albeit self-imposed).
As Joker said … MEAT RUB made my mind wander. Not to mention AREOLA as an answer to “nipple ring.” FUCKNO (ha ha, John X), that can’t be an intentional pair.
I enjoyed the grid layout today - a bit of a change of pace from the grid-spanning across entries we frequently get on Saturday. The BATH TOY duck looks right at home in the center there.
Learned another music sub-genre today - since there is an EMO-POP, I’m wondering what the other one is - maybe ALT-EMO or something like that. Is there a list published in the rock and roll hall of fame, or maybe ROLLING STONE magazine ?
DIDST sounds like an absolutely atrocious word, not at all surprising that it’s pretty much extinct - a case of linguistic Darwinian selection gone right.
Loved this puzzle. Two little nits: Anyone buying a Rolls is unlikely to have a car payment, and Oreos come in other colors. Neither was a problem though, and this made for a fine Saturday morning coffee go-with.
@mikebernsVIE: There's also Shari Lewis's Lambchop. And for that matter, Kermit the Frog.
Needed a lot of help from Sergey and Larry for this one. Had to look up "Team Jacob" to get TWIlight, and I had enough crosses to get the rest. Kealoa'd on ___RUB: beef? pork? Fell face first into the Michaelangelo trap. Got OPERA right away but the CAPES part took some effort.
Loved it. Was it Lewis on here that grokked me to the "faith solve"?
Regardless, archetypal faith-solve for me. Coughed and sputtered. Finally turned over, ran choppy for a bit, then started humming. The RPMs kept climbing. One aha moment after another - you know, "Doh, of course."
CARPAYMENT, BATHTOY, MARRYME, could go on. Thanks Ryan and Yacob.
Wow, that was a workout, but fun and satisfying. The whole NE corner came last (and very slowly) for me. Never heard of TWIHARDS but it came from crosses. CAR PAYMENT was masterful, and hard, and when it came, along with COMMAS, the little light bulbs all went off at once. I expected Rex to complain about MEAT RUB as a form of green paint. This had many great clues with terrific misdirection, and many great answers. I’m happy.
@Rolls Royce pay in cash people: Actually, over 40% are leased,I couldn't find a split between the financed / cash purchase on the balance. The real kings of the lease market are the luxury models (upper end Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Lexus, etc) which are leased about 70%+ of the time, with finance (18%) and cash (12%) making up the balance. I would doubt that the percentage of people paying cash for their Rolls Royce is up more that 25%.
Why on earth would you think that people don't pretend to be richer than they are? Have you not been paying attention?
Just wandering into the frat house to weigh in (lookin' at you early posting goofballs 😹).
Every answer was an Aha for me. Almost hyperventilated. Modish took forever because there was Mod just above and well... Road Rage before Roid Rage. Tees v. Wood. Rock Band before Rock Idol (damn, just pictured @Z's Kiss video again, thanks for that). Emo Pop? Oxymorons?
It's a little known fact that George Jetski was a Russian immigrant who Married Up and changed his name to please Jane.
"The technical term for a ventriloquist's dummy is ventriloquial figure." Tried that before Hand Puppet. No I didn't! Just looked it up, more worthless information.
An Anon@yesterday said they looked things up and was going to be frank about it without using Cheated. It can also mean Check, which I did.
Nice Saturday puzzle. I love the dirty minds of the commenters too! A few nits:
JETSKIS (some Yamaha products) - Jet Ski is a registered trademark of Kawasaki, so technically NO Yamaha products are Jet Skis. Yamahas are "Wave Runners."
MEATRUB - this falls into the "no one has ever said this" category. Real 'Q cooks (that's BBQ) use DRY RUBs.
Very much enjoyed this one--just enough challenge to be satisfying without being frustrating--and a nice variety of fun words.
But TWIHARDS is just ugh. Knew exactly what it was referring to, but that particular construction is just...not a thing to anybody in the general public (out of curiosity I put it into Google trends, and you literally can't even see it on the graph when compared to similar things like "Trekkers" or "Juggalos").
That was brutal for me. On my first pass (downs) I got five answers. On my first across pass, six more, none intersecting. And of those eleven, three turned out to be wrong. It took me forever to finish.
Nice Saturday indeed. I think I may have found it easier than OFL, which always makes my morning a little brighter.
1A was in decipherable so I started with the obvious CRAP, which led to ROCKSTAR, no, then ROCKICON, no, and finally ROCKIDOL yay. And the NE was done. EBB led to the vanquishing of the SE, and so it went. I admit to not grokking MICHELANGELO for far too long. Oops.
EMOPOP? I guess. Took forever to come up with TWIHARDS, mostly because my pro shop item was an IRON.
Also YOUHEARDME does not seem synonymous with "that's right" to me, especially if there's a change in speaker, which is the way I was reading it.
Anyway, just the nittiest of nits for this one, which was mostly great and led to lots of ahas! but no real AHAS! Just hard enough to make me feel smart when I got done.
Nice job RMC and YY. Required Midlevel Cogitation but was not 2 Y's for me, and thanks for all the fun.
I was disappointed by how easy this puzzle was to solve. It went down like an average Friday. With the name Ryan McCarty attached my hopes were set high. On his own he's created some of top notch Saturday puzzles of late. This collaboration isn't one of them. On his xwordinfo comments he seem to be aware that this puzzle is on the easy side.
I must be losing my frat boy cred because my first thought at finally sussing out the MEAT of MEAT RUB was a snarly/snarky “Is there a tofu RUB? How about a good salad RUB?” Yeah Yeah, MEAT RUB is a thing, but the adjective seems superfluous to me.
@JD - My Kiss video? I had nothing to do with it. I was just saying that people of a certain age might remember a certain feminine name for a different reason than Little Women. 🤣😂🤣😉😉 Also, thanks for the background on George. I never knew that. Explains the whole marxist subtext of that cartoon.
Regarding CAR PAYMENTS - My money guy has been yelling about not paying cash for things because “money is so cheap.” I do seem to remember having a mortgage interest rate higher than 10% on our first home… Anyway, even if you have a half million lying around to spend on a car your accountant might advise you to borrow. And also what @Captain Obvious said.
Regarding EMO POP doubters here, my 25 year old son was a huge EMO POP fan in high school. What distinguishes it from EMO or EMO Punk or POP? No clue, but I’m positive he could give a long disquisition on the topic if you asked.
@Sixthstone - Is Pepsi okay?
Easy NE and SW, medium middle and SE. I think close to half of my 19 minutes was spent in the NE. Untwisting my OREO COOKIE was the key to finally unlocking the corner and finishing the puzzle. A fine solve, even if Onan’s sticky fingers are all over it.
It was a Saturday puzzle, there’s no doubt about that. Lots of white space but that’s the way I like it. I don’t even feel qualified to critique something so well done but I do just have two things to say:
1. Here in the heart of BBQ America, that stuff you put on the MEAT is called DRY RUB.
2. Someone SMART needs to find the person who occupied the White House during the previous presidential term and DRIVE HOME the basics of how VOTED OUT works. Yeah, YOU HEARD it right the first time.
This was a dud for me. Fairly fast solving time for a Saturday so I guess it was in my universe, and I only needed to to check or research a few, but I thought the clues were dull mostly.
PHDS held me up the most.
I am glad most of you (so far) enjoyed it. We had a half foot of snow overnight in Denver, so we're handling the heat fine.
When not meandering in arcane thought-labyrinths, here's what I think about on my long DRIVES HOME from work:
A lot of CAR PAYMENTS have artificially low interest rates (0-2%). If you have the cash, put it into a safe-ish investment, make the payments on the car (be it Yugo or Rolls Royce), and the delta is usually your friend.
I've heard smart people say that leases make better sense than buying. But I never understood why. When a lease is up, you keep paying on a different car. When a loan is paid up, you have a car that costs nothing more than the maintenance.
I like to let other people buy or lease the car during its steepest depreciation phase, then swoop in in the early used years. You exit the game with more value that way.
There are variations on the theme. A few years ago, I payed straight up cash for my father-in-law's 2005 Toyota Tundra pickup truck, 225,000 miles. ALL IN ALL, a very astute move on my part.
Great puzzle, Ryan and Yacob. Really enjoyed it. Fun, doable, interesting saturday for this Father/Son team! (25 mins) Especially liked NINJATURTLE and its clue, and the bottom stack of HANDPUPPET, DRIVESHOME, and STARSHAPED. Thanks!!!!
So you lie on your back for years and years, with paint dripping onto your face, unable to take a bathroom break, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel -- only to have your name appropriated by a NINJA TURTLE who is then immortalized in the pages of the NYTCW. Life can be so unfair.
But I'm glad to see that the OREO COOKIE got its very distingished full title today.
Brilliant clues for CAR PAYMENT (1A); ALIT (22A); BATH TOY (28A); and MARRY UP (21A). MARRY UP is my favorite clue/answer in the puzzle. STREET SMART is very nice too.
Now I know saying "BITE ME" is extremely rude, but I have no idea what it actually means.
Writeovers: ROaD Rage before ROID RAGE. ITa before ITO. And I kept wanting pILLS for those REFILLS. For the "Schedule with little room for spontaneity", I never thought of the rather prosaic SET PLAN. I wanted some nasty Schedule from the IRS, but couldn't think of anything.
This filled in pretty nicely up top, but got harder and harder as I traveled South. STREET SMART finally helped break the puzzle open for me. A really nice challenge -- and happily one without too much PPP. (Hi, @Barbara S from yesterday.)
Hey All ! My take on the CAR PAYMENT clue isn't about a Rolls Royce. It could just mean any car, as in you are Rolling your dough by driving it. I'm sure I'm wrong...
Tough SatPuz for me. Ending up Googing twice, and Reveal Word twice! Dang. Forgot about BAI, one Reveal, and wouldn't have gotten ITO either, second Reveal. Had oUtS for DUBS, royally messing me up down there. And was going to complain about oUtS crossing OUT. Har.
Neat seeing the whole OREO COOKIE there. ROCKIcOn before IDOL, PHDS tricky, oPEd before SPEC, MODern-MODISH, CriMeS-COMMAS, ALLINone-ALLINALL, and probably another one or two I'm forgetting.
I had that sinking Friday-on-a-Saturday feeling when the SW up to the NE swath filled in flowingly but the SE and NW dragged it back into Saturday territory.
You might think that with YOU HEARD ME and NINJA TURTLE sticking their heads up into the NW, that might have smoothed things out a bit but waiting till the last moment to read 8D's clue for EKE meant that a useful gimme came late to the rescue.
In the SE, NIA, LUSH, SMART, ALLOTS and STAR-SHAPED were all in place yet my overwhelming urge to put in jaR for "Save for later, in a way" (which I didn't actually put in place) had me trying really hard to find bANjo as a ventriloquist's prop. Um, right.
Eventually I got rid of my wrong guess of some sort of raP for the 43D genre and the HAND PUPPET maneuvered into place and it was all over for the ALPHA PHDS.
This was one of the easier Saturdays in awhile. The answers were just crunchy enough to tickle the brain but not so arcane or obscure as to remain unsolvable. Never heard of MODISH (19 Across) but the Down answers filled in the tricky parts. That's right, YOU HEARD ME, I was POSITive of those. Always nice to start Saturday off with a bang!
Wow. Oreo cookie instead of the daily "oreo"? How refreshing, not. I hope Mondelez pays the NYTimes plenty for the constant advertising.
Speaking of comma not... this thing was all over the place, from 1950s snobbery: "marry up?" "opera capes?" to aughts tweens: "twihards?" And let's not forget Jules et Jim in between.
In BBQ there're "wet rubs" and "dry rubs". Are they used on meat? Well yeah, they are. But nobody says "meat rub." (Mustard is for flavorless boiled or grilled sausages called "hot dogs," not BBQ, by the way. And it makes a pretty good base for Carolina sauce, which is not a rub.)
I saw Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction late in its run in a seedy theater in Times Square. I was alone and the place was nearly empty. At one point in the film, John Travolta and Bruce Willis meet in a bar, and Willis says something to Travolta that I missed. Dammit! There was no one near me I could ask, but Travolta asked Willis “What did you say?” I couldn’t believe my luck! Travolta missed it too, in the movie, and Willis was going to repeat it! Willis looked at him for a few seconds, and then said: “You heard me.”
Rats! You can’t win. I tell that story in class when I urge my students to ask questions – you can ask me to repeat something – “What did you say?” is a good question.
1 across of puzzle 44 in the NYT Hardest Puzzles collection #2 has Meat Rub as the fill for the clue “barbecue chef’s coat”—i didn't think much of the clue/fill then and didn’t care for today’s equivalent either.
Lots to like in this puzzle, but ADVILPM stumped me. I had TWIHerds, no clue who they were, and for successful defenses I thought we were talking sports. When I can’t sleep ADVILPM doesn’t cut it. I need a hammer.
I tried salt rub first. MARRYUP and BATHTOY, and the three long crosses in the NW get a thumbs up from me.
Ah, yes...it's Saturday after all. Time to do a hopeful little tap-dance and maybe sing. I did both. But...I also tripped and fell a few times. Made the same mistakes that Rex made; got up and brushed the dust off and continued to my finale. It, unfortunately, ended in one big thud. Here I was, really flowing, when all of a sudden TWIHARDS made me think CRAP. My MODISH POSIT held a sign over my head that said: BITE ME....and while you're at it, just RUB some of the MEAT on my rubber ducky. I think I've only completed about 3 Saturday puzzles without a looky loo into the vast sea of names I don't know. My smile...should you care: I remember seeing Jules et Jim with my dad in a theatre in Buenos Aires. It was such a treat for me because it was just the two of us. No sisters, no wife, just us. My dad was my IDOL and I loved spending anytime with him. Anyway, we went to see it and we both loved it. I think it was subtitled - can't really remember - but afterwards, we both yakked away about it as we made off to our favorite little restaurant on Quintana. I ordered what I always did: Croquetas de jamon and an avocado stuffed with tiny shrimp. Dad had his usuall asado along with chimichurri to smother the tender steak. The things we remember!!!...like @Barbara S and her mental flings while dancing with her vacuum. ESTA señora sabe bailar su Cumbia.
You can "get" by, you can "squeak" by, but you CAN'T "eke by". "Eke out" is the phrase, meaning to stretch an inadequate supply of something by adding a bit of something else. If you run out of top-class olive oil, you can eke out what you've got with a drop of groundnut oil. You can eke out your income with an evening job. But "I only just eked by" doesn't exist.
Challenging for me, fun to wrangle with, satisfying to finish. Like others, I had an easy start in the NE with ACLU x ROCKIDOL et.al.; the resulting westward protruding JETSKIS and REFILLS confirmed that this Michelangelo was the NINJA TURTLE, but the yield in crosses from that promising column of letters was zero. So it became a tale of 4 remaining mini-puzzles. I had to EKE out the SW from HEDDA and the thankfully mostly correct ROaD, the SE from the lone AMIE, and finally the NW from SAT and a vaguely remembered MED STUDENT. Trouble in the mid-section arose from resistance to believing MEAT RUB and SET PLAN were actual things. I thought the long Downs were great, also MARRY UP, BATH TOY, and the clues for CAR PAYMENTS and ACTS.
Help from previous puzzles: NINJA TURTLE, EMOPOP. No idea: DAN, BAI, TWIHARDS, ESTA. Do-overs: ROaD, Rag before RIB.
Son Volt at 6.54AM, I don't think Billy Strayhorn would have made a very good job of singing "Chuck E's in Love", but then again I don't think he would even have tried. And maybe Rickie Lee Jones would have been wise to stick to what SHE's good at. You have to admire the chutzpah, but the result was truly awful when compared with the original. And Knitty Contessa at 10.36AM, try pronouncing "modish" correctly, with the long "o", and you will see the clue has nothing whatever to do with Mod!
MARRY UP is from my Cher mondegreen. For years I thought the first line of "Half Breed" was "My father married up your Cherokee". Yeah, it sounds dumb, but I figured Cher was being folksy/colloquial. "Ya got your Siouxs, ya got your Navajos, ya got your Seminoles, well...daddy married up one o' your Cherokees."
It wasn't until years later that I realized she was saying "married a pure Cherokee". But how was I was supposed to know the stress fell on the wrong syllable? And why can't she tap her right foot in rhythm? Here, watch this video. You know you want to.
@Nancy put a curse on me yesterday so it took me three guesses to finish the first Phrazle today. Though my second guess was a perfectly good phrase that matched four out of the eight letters.
Yep Saturday and still sad that yesterday’s post disappeared into the Ethernet …. Apparently a server problem that wiped also the email links for my presentation to our library book club….I needed a GOOD VIBE morning. Instead I get an OREO COOKIE?
At least HAND PUPPET brought good times from decades past, so if like OFL you didn’t get Sesame Streeted in you youth or years of parenting, enjoy Shari Lewis .
Can’t fault the difficulty level - (fine), but do fault unnecessarily misleading clues. Harrumph! (Would a good fill word 🤗) So it was mostly good 🧩 🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
So I just found out on the Wordplay Blog that the other NINJA TURTLES are named Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael. Imagine that!
Am I the last person in 21st-century America to know that? Go on, you can tell me. I'm completely braced and prepared. I can take it.
In fact, I was so enchanted by the amusing drollness of the NINJA TURTLES names that I Googled them to learn more. Maybe I should make the turtles part of my life in some way? But then--
After viewing the site with the lovely reproductions of some of the best of Michaelangelo's art, Leonardo's art, Raphael's art, and Donatello's art, I scrolled back up to look at the NINJA TURTLES themselves, presented in full technicolor...
They are the ugliest damn critters I've ever seen! Bye, bye, NINJA TURTLES! Bye, bye.
This got me thinking of ventriloquists on TV. The point is supposed to be that they can throw their voice, but on TV we can’t tell Edgar Bergen was even big on radio. Why do we like it?
Oh, the puzzle. Yeah, TWIHARDS. I thought TWI must be something like WII, but I gather it’s a TV series. But why does it have teams? Maybe REDDIT could explain.
This is @jberg. My phone won’t let me login for some reason.
Hah! This puzzle had some brilliant word play clues that were just out of my wheelhouse and above my pay grade. I was just happy that Saturday morning cartoons with my son helped me with Michelangelo once I had the J. Like @Zed, I spent most of time in the NW, although not having watched Twilight, I originally had WIIHEADS…seemed reasonable there could be teams that compete on WII.
So. I was totally convinced at first that “Rolls dough” had to do with COUNTERFEIT…so much so that I spent time thinking there might be a Saturday rebus that cheekily started at 1a. Yeah…I know that plates are involved in that but I thought a roller might also be involved.
As for CARPAYMENT…if you pay for a car in cash, isn’t that still a CARPAYMENT or does it only refer to financed installments?
I also stupidly held onto the idea that a ventriloquist always uses a dummy, so some kind of STOOL was in my head. Really, the only ventriloquist I liked as a kid was Shari Lewis so HANDPUPPET should have at least entered my mind before I got the double Ps.
Always amazes me when a) I complete a Saturday in below average time after failing to solve the Friday* and b) solving a Saturday that Rex declares "challenging" (or, "medium challenging" in this case).
* As for that Friday puzzle, I always struggle when there are multiple Naticks, which I faced yesterday with NENA/ESTA, CARA/ALDO, and GONZO/VELAZQUEZ. Just too many guesses required to get all of them correct.
Ah, Rex, you're making me salivate with your riff on mustard-based BBQ sauce. I lived for years in Columbia, SC, the home of this delectable concoction. You have to be careful, though -- the No. 1 purveyor of the stuff is Piggie Park, which was started by the unrepentant racist Maurice Bessinger. He once put a sign up in his restaurant that said the law forced him to serve black people (he used a different word) but every penny they spent would go to the KKK. He's dead, but not dead enough for me to swear I would never eat there. A better choice if you're ever in Columbia: the Black-owned Big T's BBQ.
I got the NE and SW fairly quickly in this one, but it took me a while to get the rest. Still, my time was closer to my best than to my average, so I was surprised to see Rex rate it medium-challenging.
For some reason, I may be the only person who put ROID right in instead of ROad. Maybe it's because I just saw a guy at my hotel in Panama with massive muscles and a face full of acne. I didn't need to see his tiny testicles to conclude that he was pumped up on ROIDs. Definitely not someone I would want to encounter in a rage.
I read "rolls dough" as "dough that rolls" and thought that made some kind of weird sense, as in the money that you used to pay for the car now "rolls," like a car rolls down the street.
@Nancy I suppose there are some that do not even know what Mutant Ninja Turtles are. There was a amusing story on PBS maybe via the BBC about art being moved out of an English museum to a cave in the country for safe keeping. An art expert meets a 10 year old local kid who is obsessed with the Ninja Turtles as much as the professor is obsessed with the artists with the same names. They talk to each other and the kid's analysis of the Turtles dovetails the professor's ideas about the artists. The professor thinks the kid is a child prodigy and wants him to give a lecture on art. A painting gets stolen by a group of children and sold for 15 pounds at a flea market.
Anyway here is a song for the day sung by your favorite lyricist:
little richard rubber duckie videos https://g.co/kgs/o4x2LX
@Rex and @other David—. when you refer to mustard as a base for barbecue sauce, please refer to SOUTH Carolina. In North Carolina it’s vinegar based in the East and tomato based in the West. Here in Charlotte it can be either, but definitely not mustard!!
Very crunchy Saturday puzzle! Thank you, Ryan and Yacob! byw— is there a Team Yacob??
@Nancy (10:06, 12:22) re Michaelangelo and the NINJA TURTLES -- perfect, even by your steadily hard-to-beat wit.
But give the Turtles a chance: their names preserve their namesakes in dark ages, until a time comes to know them better. If I'm in high school and a teacher says "Donatello," maybe I perk up for a minute, think of pizza, and want to know more.
Watch the first NINJA TURTLES movie sometime time when you don't feel like thinking. I guarantee the time will pass harmlessly.
A little easer than average SatPuz, at our house. Got a late start on it, tho … due to other pressin tasks.
M&A is such a fancy dresser. Thought the answer to 29-D was gonna be SPORTCOATS. Lost valuable nanoseconds, haven to upgrade my wardrobe.
staff weeject pick: BAI. Not to be confused with BAE. Sooo … don't be like ever-confused M&A.
fave sparkly-plus ones: NINJATURTLE. TVGUIDE. RHINO. YOUHEARDME. STREETSMART. FUN. CARPAYMENT clue. MEATRUB/RIB combo. A few pesky no-knows here and there, but the only real moana was at TWIHARDS/HEDDA. Guessed right, tho -- I think HEDDA must justa sounded like it was somethin I'd heard of one time in the distant past.
M&A just don't get it, on how a themeless puz collaboration would ever work out right. Does one do the lower puzhalf, one do the upper puzhalf, and hope things meet up ok in the middle? Or just send the whole puzgrid back and forth, takin turns addin on the next entry -- and see who stalls out (or gets ultra-desperate, reduced to tears) first? har. Confuses the M&A, but either way, sounds like quite a hootfest.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mssrs. McCarty & Yonas dudes. Real good job.
@Nancy, the cartoon versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are MUCH cuter than the “whatever it is” version in the movie. My son had outgrown TNMT by then so I just saw green trailers and thought…yuck. I guess cartoons are passé now (and maybe more expensive than FX) but, if done well, I preferred them.
I completed today’s puzzle while waiting to get a flat tire repaired. Yesterday’s also went quickly. It’s a thrill for me to complete a Friday and Saturday. Roy
The thing that killed me with it is that I instantly jumped to the (correct) conclusion that the "?" was pointing at 'dough' (which of course meant money, not pre-baked bread); now just had to figure out how 'rolls' fit in with money - bank rolls, counterfeiting, bank telling, etc. I had been so quick to congratulate myself for breezing past the question mark on 'dough', that it never occurred to me that it was also pointing at the 'Rolls' as well.
I don't know if I've seen that before (even on Saturday) where TWO words in a question mark clue have to be looked at sideways but in two entirely independent ways. Any other examples of that being done before?
I may be late to the party here but nobody called out the factually inaccurate CRAP — 7 is not a crap out. 2, 3 and 12 are the crabs. Will has checked out and his ghost successor(s) are not up to snuff.
@the joker makes a good point: I can't imagine anyone buying a RR on PAYMENTs.
@anon 7:59: The clue mentions "ill-timed." If the shooter already has a point to make, rolling a 7 is indeed a CRAP out. Pass the dice.
Tough work indeed, even for a Stayrday. Yeah, I know: I made a Freudian typo and decided to leave it in. Wonder what @Burma will do with MEATRUB, not to mention AREOLA and BITEME.
Natalie WOOD, whom I just re-watched as Judy in "Rebel Without a Cause," is DOD.
This was even harder for me, because TWIHARDS made absolutely no sense to me. I was forced to *STET* because none of the crosses would move. In the blog I found out that it was about all those vampire movies, whose appeal I never could understand. I invite a serious fan to TRY and explain.
Horrendous meltdown with five (5!) bogeys in a row. 72nd hole tomorrow: my b-day.
Oh, the puz: Triumph points by the trainload. Eagle. YOUHEARDME.
I always TWIHARD but I HEDDA really hard time solving this one. Too many CRAP non-words (like BAI, DVR, NIA and ITO (which could have been clued: Judge in the OJ Simpson trial Lance ______) Had tees before WOOD, our before THY and CrimeS before COMMAS which had me LOLLing in the MUD for far too long. CARPAYMENT’s clue was a groaner, EMOPOP can BITEME. ALLINALL, it was a joyless slog with not much FUN and ALLOTS not to like. BAI now!
I forgot DIDST. Not a word. Sorry. Archaic junk fill. At least Burma is going to get GOODVIBES from all of the nudge-nudge wink-wink words including HANDPUPPET, BATHTOY and WOOD. * I gotta get my mind outta the MUD.
I wanted 'tees' at first; buying any golf club at a pro shop is going to be spendy. Liked seeing WOOD and MEATRUB on the same line. Wordle par due to options for the first letter.
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Some answers kind of write their own jokes, like MEATRUB
ReplyDeleteHappy to see my team in the answer if not the clue, after the wild comeback last night. Go DUBS!
ReplyDelete@The Joker 6:12 AM
ReplyDeleteIn addition to MEATRUB there's also BATHTOY and HANDPUPPET. The middle of this puzzle is just having a good ol' time.
The SE was my biggest problem area because for the longest time I had FUCKNO in 44D.
Does anyone believe that those who have a Rolls Royce had to borrow $$$$ and make payments?
ReplyDeleteBTW, My Yugo is almost paid for.
Hand puppet? S'awright! Señor Wences's "Johnny" was one, literally.
ReplyDeleteHmm - AREOLA, WOOD, MEAT RUB, DRIVES HOME piqued my juvenile self. I liked most of this - and surprisingly made it through unscathed. The full OREO COOKIE didn’t hit and HAND PUPPET felt awkward.
ReplyDeleteLoved the Rolls clue and BATH TOY.
Rickie Lee is fantastic here
Enjoyable Saturday solve.
Shari Lewis was another ventriloquist who used hand puppets. There are many.
ReplyDeleteAlways nice to whiz through a puzzle and see Rex call it medium-challenging – it happens once or twice a year. Unlike yesterday, it did not feel like a wheelhouse puzzle as I did not know DAN or ESTA or BAI and blanked on NIA, so HEDDA was the only proper name that went in easily.
ReplyDeleteMARRY UP: My grandmother was proposed to by Charlie Chivers, of Chivers jams. She turned him down because that would mean, in her words, "marrying above my station". Instead, she married my grandfather, a crude ape of a man, and was never really happy during the time I knew her until he died. She was a victim of British classism (albeit self-imposed).
ANOTHER SEINFELD MOMENT
ReplyDeleteAs Joker said … MEAT RUB made my mind wander. Not to mention AREOLA as an answer to “nipple ring.” FUCKNO (ha ha, John X), that can’t be an intentional pair.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the grid layout today - a bit of a change of pace from the grid-spanning across entries we frequently get on Saturday. The BATH TOY duck looks right at home in the center there.
ReplyDeleteLearned another music sub-genre today - since there is an EMO-POP, I’m wondering what the other one is - maybe ALT-EMO or something like that. Is there a list published in the rock and roll hall of fame, or maybe ROLLING STONE magazine ?
DIDST sounds like an absolutely atrocious word, not at all surprising that it’s pretty much extinct - a case of linguistic Darwinian selection gone right.
Loved this puzzle. Two little nits: Anyone buying a Rolls is unlikely to have a car payment, and Oreos come in other colors. Neither was a problem though, and this made for a fine Saturday morning coffee go-with.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete@mikebernsVIE: There's also Shari Lewis's Lambchop. And for that matter, Kermit the Frog.
Needed a lot of help from Sergey and Larry for this one. Had to look up "Team Jacob" to get TWIlight, and I had enough crosses to get the rest. Kealoa'd on ___RUB: beef? pork? Fell face first into the Michaelangelo trap. Got OPERA right away but the CAPES part took some effort.
Closer to Challenging than Medium.
I threw "water glass" in as a ventriloquist prop right off the bat and felt pretty chuffed. 🤣
ReplyDeleteLoved it. Was it Lewis on here that grokked me to the "faith solve"?
ReplyDeleteRegardless, archetypal faith-solve for me. Coughed and sputtered. Finally turned over, ran choppy for a bit, then started humming. The RPMs kept climbing. One aha moment after another - you know, "Doh, of course."
CARPAYMENT, BATHTOY, MARRYME, could go on. Thanks Ryan and Yacob.
Wow, that was a workout, but fun and satisfying. The whole NE corner came last (and very slowly) for me. Never heard of TWIHARDS but it came from crosses. CAR PAYMENT was masterful, and hard, and when it came, along with COMMAS, the little light bulbs all went off at once. I expected Rex to complain about MEAT RUB as a form of green paint. This had many great clues with terrific misdirection, and many great answers. I’m happy.
ReplyDeleteThx, Ryan & Yacob; nicely done! :)
ReplyDeleteEasy-med.
Very smooth solve; no major hitches along the way.
Worked from the top down, finishing with ROID (originally had ROaD), but GOOD VIBE wasn't having it.
I wonder if the black squares represent a NINJA STAR?
Think I've got PLUS ONES down pat now.
Fun Sat. puz; like it a lot! :)
@Joe / @Roo 👍 for your PhrACEs yd! :)
___
yd: Duo: 34
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Had Heatrub for a time as I like BBQ spicy. This was a fun Saturday.
ReplyDelete@Rolls Royce pay in cash people: Actually, over 40% are leased,I couldn't find a split between the financed / cash purchase on the balance. The real kings of the lease market are the luxury models (upper end Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Lexus, etc) which are leased about 70%+ of the time, with finance (18%) and cash (12%) making up the balance. I would doubt that the percentage of people paying cash for their Rolls Royce is up more that 25%.
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth would you think that people don't pretend to be richer than they are? Have you not been paying attention?
i've always seen "the front page of the internet" for a reddit slogan
ReplyDeleteJust wandering into the frat house to weigh in (lookin' at you early posting goofballs 😹).
ReplyDeleteEvery answer was an Aha for me. Almost hyperventilated. Modish took forever because there was Mod just above and well... Road Rage before Roid Rage. Tees v. Wood. Rock Band before Rock Idol (damn, just pictured @Z's Kiss video again, thanks for that). Emo Pop? Oxymorons?
It's a little known fact that George Jetski was a Russian immigrant who Married Up and changed his name to please Jane.
"The technical term for a ventriloquist's dummy is ventriloquial figure." Tried that before Hand Puppet. No I didn't! Just looked it up, more worthless information.
An Anon@yesterday said they looked things up and was going to be frank about it without using Cheated. It can also mean Check, which I did.
Nice Saturday puzzle. I love the dirty minds of the commenters too! A few nits:
ReplyDeleteJETSKIS (some Yamaha products) - Jet Ski is a registered trademark of Kawasaki, so technically NO Yamaha products are Jet Skis. Yamahas are "Wave Runners."
MEATRUB - this falls into the "no one has ever said this" category. Real 'Q cooks (that's BBQ) use DRY RUBs.
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ReplyDeleteVery much enjoyed this one--just enough challenge to be satisfying without being frustrating--and a nice variety of fun words.
ReplyDeleteBut TWIHARDS is just ugh. Knew exactly what it was referring to, but that particular construction is just...not a thing to anybody in the general public (out of curiosity I put it into Google trends, and you literally can't even see it on the graph when compared to similar things like "Trekkers" or "Juggalos").
That was brutal for me. On my first pass (downs) I got five answers. On my first across pass, six more, none intersecting. And of those eleven, three turned out to be wrong. It took me forever to finish.
ReplyDeleteIs it still Saturday? Heck, is it still May?
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ReplyDeleteNice Saturday indeed. I think I may have found it easier than OFL, which always makes my morning a little brighter.
ReplyDelete1A was in decipherable so I started with the obvious CRAP, which led to ROCKSTAR, no, then ROCKICON, no, and finally ROCKIDOL yay. And the NE was done. EBB led to the vanquishing of the SE, and so it went. I admit to not grokking MICHELANGELO for far too long. Oops.
EMOPOP? I guess. Took forever to come up with TWIHARDS, mostly because my pro shop item was an IRON.
Also YOUHEARDME does not seem synonymous with "that's right" to me, especially if there's a change in speaker, which is the way I was reading it.
Anyway, just the nittiest of nits for this one, which was mostly great and led to lots of ahas! but no real AHAS! Just hard enough to make me feel smart when I got done.
Nice job RMC and YY. Required Midlevel Cogitation but was not 2 Y's for me, and thanks for all the fun.
I was disappointed by how easy this puzzle was to solve. It went down like an average Friday. With the name Ryan McCarty attached my hopes were set high. On his own he's created some of top notch Saturday puzzles of late. This collaboration isn't one of them. On his xwordinfo comments he seem to be aware that this puzzle is on the easy side.
ReplyDeleteyd -0
Who let Onan in the room?
ReplyDeleteI must be losing my frat boy cred because my first thought at finally sussing out the MEAT of MEAT RUB was a snarly/snarky “Is there a tofu RUB? How about a good salad RUB?” Yeah Yeah, MEAT RUB is a thing, but the adjective seems superfluous to me.
@JD - My Kiss video? I had nothing to do with it. I was just saying that people of a certain age might remember a certain feminine name for a different reason than Little Women. 🤣😂🤣😉😉
Also, thanks for the background on George. I never knew that. Explains the whole marxist subtext of that cartoon.
Regarding CAR PAYMENTS - My money guy has been yelling about not paying cash for things because “money is so cheap.” I do seem to remember having a mortgage interest rate higher than 10% on our first home… Anyway, even if you have a half million lying around to spend on a car your accountant might advise you to borrow. And also what @Captain Obvious said.
Regarding EMO POP doubters here, my 25 year old son was a huge EMO POP fan in high school. What distinguishes it from EMO or EMO Punk or POP? No clue, but I’m positive he could give a long disquisition on the topic if you asked.
@Sixthstone - Is Pepsi okay?
Easy NE and SW, medium middle and SE. I think close to half of my 19 minutes was spent in the NE. Untwisting my OREO COOKIE was the key to finally unlocking the corner and finishing the puzzle. A fine solve, even if Onan’s sticky fingers are all over it.
NW - half my time was spent in the NW.
ReplyDeleteIt was a Saturday puzzle, there’s no doubt about that. Lots of white space but that’s the way I like it. I don’t even feel qualified to critique something so well done but I do just have two things to say:
ReplyDelete1. Here in the heart of BBQ America, that stuff you put on the MEAT is called DRY RUB.
2. Someone SMART needs to find the person who occupied the White House during the previous presidential term and DRIVE HOME the basics of how VOTED OUT works. Yeah, YOU HEARD it right the first time.
7D MOD slowed me down from also entering 19A MODISH. Had Newish first.
ReplyDeleteThis was a dud for me. Fairly fast solving time for a Saturday so I guess it was in my universe, and I only needed to to check or research a few, but I thought the clues were dull mostly.
ReplyDeletePHDS held me up the most.
I am glad most of you (so far) enjoyed it. We had a half foot of snow overnight in Denver, so we're handling the heat fine.
When not meandering in arcane thought-labyrinths, here's what I think about on my long DRIVES HOME from work:
ReplyDeleteA lot of CAR PAYMENTS have artificially low interest rates (0-2%). If you have the cash, put it into a safe-ish investment, make the payments on the car (be it Yugo or Rolls Royce), and the delta is usually your friend.
I've heard smart people say that leases make better sense than buying. But I never understood why. When a lease is up, you keep paying on a different car. When a loan is paid up, you have a car that costs nothing more than the maintenance.
I like to let other people buy or lease the car during its steepest depreciation phase, then swoop in in the early used years. You exit the game with more value that way.
There are variations on the theme. A few years ago, I payed straight up cash for my father-in-law's 2005 Toyota Tundra pickup truck, 225,000 miles. ALL IN ALL, a very astute move on my part.
Paid, not payed, cmon
DeleteI'm going to spend all day hearing John Mulaney quote JJ Bittenbinder saying "STREET SMARTs!"
ReplyDeleteGreat puzzle, Ryan and Yacob. Really enjoyed it. Fun, doable, interesting saturday for this Father/Son team! (25 mins) Especially liked NINJATURTLE and its clue, and the bottom stack of HANDPUPPET, DRIVESHOME, and STARSHAPED. Thanks!!!!
ReplyDeleteSo you lie on your back for years and years, with paint dripping onto your face, unable to take a bathroom break, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel -- only to have your name appropriated by a NINJA TURTLE who is then immortalized in the pages of the NYTCW. Life can be so unfair.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm glad to see that the OREO COOKIE got its very distingished full title today.
Brilliant clues for CAR PAYMENT (1A); ALIT (22A); BATH TOY (28A); and MARRY UP (21A). MARRY UP is my favorite clue/answer in the puzzle. STREET SMART is very nice too.
Now I know saying "BITE ME" is extremely rude, but I have no idea what it actually means.
Writeovers: ROaD Rage before ROID RAGE. ITa before ITO. And I kept wanting pILLS for those REFILLS. For the "Schedule with little room for spontaneity", I never thought of the rather prosaic SET PLAN. I wanted some nasty Schedule from the IRS, but couldn't think of anything.
This filled in pretty nicely up top, but got harder and harder as I traveled South. STREET SMART finally helped break the puzzle open for me. A really nice challenge -- and happily one without too much PPP. (Hi, @Barbara S from yesterday.)
Stared for a long time at GOA_VABE after entering ITA for Spanish diminutive suffix and ROAD rage.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteMy take on the CAR PAYMENT clue isn't about a Rolls Royce. It could just mean any car, as in you are Rolling your dough by driving it. I'm sure I'm wrong...
Tough SatPuz for me. Ending up Googing twice, and Reveal Word twice! Dang. Forgot about BAI, one Reveal, and wouldn't have gotten ITO either, second Reveal. Had oUtS for DUBS, royally messing me up down there. And was going to complain about oUtS crossing OUT. Har.
Neat seeing the whole OREO COOKIE there.
ROCKIcOn before IDOL, PHDS tricky, oPEd before SPEC, MODern-MODISH, CriMeS-COMMAS, ALLINone-ALLINALL, and probably another one or two I'm forgetting.
ALLOTS of FUN, though!
yd -3, should'ves 1
Didn't do the Duo...do do do
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Good thought re rolls
DeleteI had that sinking Friday-on-a-Saturday feeling when the SW up to the NE swath filled in flowingly but the SE and NW dragged it back into Saturday territory.
ReplyDeleteYou might think that with YOU HEARD ME and NINJA TURTLE sticking their heads up into the NW, that might have smoothed things out a bit but waiting till the last moment to read 8D's clue for EKE meant that a useful gimme came late to the rescue.
In the SE, NIA, LUSH, SMART, ALLOTS and STAR-SHAPED were all in place yet my overwhelming urge to put in jaR for "Save for later, in a way" (which I didn't actually put in place) had me trying really hard to find bANjo as a ventriloquist's prop. Um, right.
Eventually I got rid of my wrong guess of some sort of raP for the 43D genre and the HAND PUPPET maneuvered into place and it was all over for the ALPHA PHDS.
Thanks, Ryan and Yacob, this was fun.
This was one of the easier Saturdays in awhile. The answers were just crunchy enough to tickle the brain but not so arcane or obscure as to remain unsolvable. Never heard of MODISH (19 Across) but the Down answers filled in the tricky parts. That's right, YOU HEARD ME, I was POSITive of those. Always nice to start Saturday off with a bang!
ReplyDeleteWow. Oreo cookie instead of the daily "oreo"? How refreshing, not. I hope Mondelez pays the NYTimes plenty for the constant advertising.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of comma not... this thing was all over the place, from 1950s snobbery: "marry up?" "opera capes?" to aughts tweens: "twihards?" And let's not forget Jules et Jim in between.
In BBQ there're "wet rubs" and "dry rubs". Are they used on meat? Well yeah, they are. But nobody says "meat rub." (Mustard is for flavorless boiled or grilled sausages called "hot dogs," not BBQ, by the way. And it makes a pretty good base for Carolina sauce, which is not a rub.)
I saw Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction late in its run in a seedy theater in Times Square. I was alone and the place was nearly empty. At one point in the film, John Travolta and Bruce Willis meet in a bar, and Willis says something to Travolta that I missed. Dammit! There was no one near me I could ask, but Travolta asked Willis “What did you say?” I couldn’t believe my luck! Travolta missed it too, in the movie, and Willis was going to repeat it! Willis looked at him for a few seconds, and then said: “You heard me.”
ReplyDeleteRats! You can’t win. I tell that story in class when I urge my students to ask questions – you can ask me to repeat something – “What did you say?” is a good question.
I object to 19A Chic is not MODISH. Chic is the antithesis of mod.
ReplyDelete1 across of puzzle 44 in the NYT Hardest Puzzles collection #2 has Meat Rub as the fill for the clue “barbecue chef’s coat”—i didn't think much of the clue/fill then and didn’t care for today’s equivalent either.
ReplyDeleteHmmm …. Maybe it’s actually LUSH that is being paired with MEAT RUB. More fun for everyone.
ReplyDeleteLots to like in this puzzle, but ADVILPM stumped me. I had TWIHerds, no clue who they were, and for successful defenses I thought we were talking sports. When I can’t sleep ADVILPM doesn’t cut it. I need a hammer.
ReplyDeleteI tried salt rub first. MARRYUP and BATHTOY, and the three long crosses in the NW get a thumbs up from me.
Ah, yes...it's Saturday after all. Time to do a hopeful little tap-dance and maybe sing. I did both. But...I also tripped and fell a few times. Made the same mistakes that Rex made; got up and brushed the dust off and continued to my finale. It, unfortunately, ended in one big thud.
ReplyDeleteHere I was, really flowing, when all of a sudden TWIHARDS made me think CRAP. My MODISH POSIT held a sign over my head that said: BITE ME....and while you're at it, just RUB some of the MEAT on my rubber ducky.
I think I've only completed about 3 Saturday puzzles without a looky loo into the vast sea of names I don't know.
My smile...should you care:
I remember seeing Jules et Jim with my dad in a theatre in Buenos Aires. It was such a treat for me because it was just the two of us. No sisters, no wife, just us. My dad was my IDOL and I loved spending anytime with him. Anyway, we went to see it and we both loved it. I think it was subtitled - can't really remember - but afterwards, we both yakked away about it as we made off to our favorite little restaurant on Quintana. I ordered what I always did: Croquetas de jamon and an avocado stuffed with tiny shrimp. Dad had his usuall asado along with chimichurri to smother the tender steak. The things we remember!!!...like @Barbara S and her mental flings while dancing with her vacuum.
ESTA señora sabe bailar su Cumbia.
Wow! One of my fastest Saturdays ever at 18:31 (I am not a speed solver)
ReplyDeleteRe: MEAT RUB, Leonard Cohen lyrics from "Recitation."
ReplyDeleteYou came to me this morning, and you handled me like meat.
You'd have to be a man to know how good that feels, how sweet.
My mirrored twin, my next of kin, I'd know you in my sleep
And who but you would take me in, a thousand kisses deep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtsP8PEjdps
Easy-medium. Loved the 1a clue but the rest was a tad bland.
ReplyDeletepom before BAI which was my only WOE.
Liked it.
You can "get" by, you can "squeak" by, but you CAN'T "eke by". "Eke out" is the phrase, meaning to stretch an inadequate supply of something by adding a bit of something else. If you run out of top-class olive oil, you can eke out what you've got with a drop of groundnut oil. You can eke out your income with an evening job. But "I only just eked by" doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteChallenging for me, fun to wrangle with, satisfying to finish. Like others, I had an easy start in the NE with ACLU x ROCKIDOL et.al.; the resulting westward protruding JETSKIS and REFILLS confirmed that this Michelangelo was the NINJA TURTLE, but the yield in crosses from that promising column of letters was zero. So it became a tale of 4 remaining mini-puzzles. I had to EKE out the SW from HEDDA and the thankfully mostly correct ROaD, the SE from the lone AMIE, and finally the NW from SAT and a vaguely remembered MED STUDENT. Trouble in the mid-section arose from resistance to believing MEAT RUB and SET PLAN were actual things. I thought the long Downs were great, also MARRY UP, BATH TOY, and the clues for CAR PAYMENTS and ACTS.
ReplyDeleteHelp from previous puzzles: NINJA TURTLE, EMOPOP. No idea: DAN, BAI, TWIHARDS, ESTA. Do-overs: ROaD, Rag before RIB.
Son Volt at 6.54AM, I don't think Billy Strayhorn would have made a very good job of singing "Chuck E's in Love", but then again I don't think he would even have tried. And maybe Rickie Lee Jones would have been wise to stick to what SHE's good at. You have to admire the chutzpah, but the result was truly awful when compared with the original. And Knitty Contessa at 10.36AM, try pronouncing "modish" correctly, with the long "o", and you will see the clue has nothing whatever to do with Mod!
ReplyDeleteMARRY UP is from my Cher mondegreen. For years I thought the first line of "Half Breed" was "My father married up your Cherokee". Yeah, it sounds dumb, but I figured Cher was being folksy/colloquial. "Ya got your Siouxs, ya got your Navajos, ya got your Seminoles, well...daddy married up one o' your Cherokees."
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until years later that I realized she was saying "married a pure Cherokee". But how was I was supposed to know the stress fell on the wrong syllable? And why can't she tap her right foot in rhythm? Here, watch this video. You know you want to.
@Nancy put a curse on me yesterday so it took me three guesses to finish the first Phrazle today. Though my second guess was a perfectly good phrase that matched four out of the eight letters.
Yep Saturday and still sad that yesterday’s post disappeared into the Ethernet …. Apparently a server problem that wiped also the email links for my presentation to our library book club….I needed a GOOD VIBE morning. Instead I get an OREO COOKIE?
ReplyDeleteAt least HAND PUPPET brought good times from decades past, so if like OFL you didn’t get Sesame Streeted in you youth or years of parenting, enjoy Shari Lewis .
THEY - CRIMES - CAN also LEAD TO LONG SENTENCES.
ReplyDelete,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Off to a bad start comma very bad start period
Can’t fault the difficulty level - (fine), but do fault unnecessarily misleading clues. Harrumph! (Would a good fill word 🤗)
So it was mostly good 🧩
🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
So I just found out on the Wordplay Blog that the other NINJA TURTLES are named Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael. Imagine that!
ReplyDeleteAm I the last person in 21st-century America to know that? Go on, you can tell me. I'm completely braced and prepared. I can take it.
In fact, I was so enchanted by the amusing drollness of the NINJA TURTLES names that I Googled them to learn more. Maybe I should make the turtles part of my life in some way? But then--
After viewing the site with the lovely reproductions of some of the best of Michaelangelo's art, Leonardo's art, Raphael's art, and Donatello's art, I scrolled back up to look at the NINJA TURTLES themselves, presented in full technicolor...
They are the ugliest damn critters I've ever seen! Bye, bye, NINJA TURTLES! Bye, bye.
@nancy 12:22
Deleteprobably last in the 20th century. sorry.
The last Twilight movie came out in 2012 and Twilight has pretty much vanished from the cultural landscape. TWIHARDS is weird to see in a 2022 puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThis got me thinking of ventriloquists on TV. The point is supposed to be that they can throw their voice, but on TV we can’t tell Edgar Bergen was even big on radio. Why do we like it?
ReplyDeleteOh, the puzzle. Yeah, TWIHARDS. I thought TWI must be something like WII, but I gather it’s a TV series. But why does it have teams? Maybe REDDIT could explain.
This is @jberg. My phone won’t let me login for some reason.
Phrazle 66: 2/6
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Hah! This puzzle had some brilliant word play clues that were just out of my wheelhouse and above my pay grade. I was just happy that Saturday morning cartoons with my son helped me with Michelangelo once I had the J. Like @Zed, I spent most of time in the NW, although not having watched Twilight, I originally had WIIHEADS…seemed reasonable there could be teams that compete on WII.
ReplyDeleteSo. I was totally convinced at first that “Rolls dough” had to do with COUNTERFEIT…so much so that I spent time thinking there might be a Saturday rebus that cheekily started at 1a. Yeah…I know that plates are involved in that but I thought a roller might also be involved.
As for CARPAYMENT…if you pay for a car in cash, isn’t that still a CARPAYMENT or does it only refer to financed installments?
I also stupidly held onto the idea that a ventriloquist always uses a dummy, so some kind of STOOL was in my head. Really, the only ventriloquist I liked as a kid was Shari Lewis so HANDPUPPET should have at least entered my mind before I got the double Ps.
Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clue for today:
ReplyDeleteBeaker articulation
Answer:
MEEP (begins in 17A square, moves to NE)
Always amazes me when a) I complete a Saturday in below average time after failing to solve the Friday* and b) solving a Saturday that Rex declares "challenging" (or, "medium challenging" in this case).
* As for that Friday puzzle, I always struggle when there are multiple Naticks, which I faced yesterday with NENA/ESTA, CARA/ALDO, and GONZO/VELAZQUEZ. Just too many guesses required to get all of them correct.
Ah, Rex, you're making me salivate with your riff on mustard-based BBQ sauce. I lived for years in Columbia, SC, the home of this delectable concoction. You have to be careful, though -- the No. 1 purveyor of the stuff is Piggie Park, which was started by the unrepentant racist Maurice Bessinger. He once put a sign up in his restaurant that said the law forced him to serve black people (he used a different word) but every penny they spent would go to the KKK. He's dead, but not dead enough for me to swear I would never eat there. A better choice if you're ever in Columbia: the Black-owned Big T's BBQ.
ReplyDeleteI got the NE and SW fairly quickly in this one, but it took me a while to get the rest. Still, my time was closer to my best than to my average, so I was surprised to see Rex rate it medium-challenging.
For some reason, I may be the only person who put ROID right in instead of ROad. Maybe it's because I just saw a guy at my hotel in Panama with massive muscles and a face full of acne. I didn't need to see his tiny testicles to conclude that he was pumped up on ROIDs. Definitely not someone I would want to encounter in a rage.
I read "rolls dough" as "dough that rolls" and thought that made some kind of weird sense, as in the money that you used to pay for the car now "rolls," like a car rolls down the street.
ReplyDelete@Nancy
ReplyDeleteI suppose there are some that do not even know what Mutant Ninja Turtles
are. There was a amusing story on PBS maybe via the BBC about art being moved out of an English museum to a cave in the country for safe keeping. An art expert meets a 10 year old local kid who is obsessed with the Ninja Turtles as much as the professor is obsessed with the artists with the same names. They talk to each other and the kid's analysis of the Turtles dovetails the professor's ideas about the artists. The professor thinks the kid is a child prodigy and wants him to give a lecture on art. A painting gets stolen by a group of children and sold for 15 pounds at a flea market.
Anyway here is a song for the day sung by your favorite lyricist:
little richard rubber duckie videos https://g.co/kgs/o4x2LX
What’s a motorcycle dairy, anyway? Do they have MEDSTUDENTs take the milk to market? And why would anyone read a book by some guy named Chegue Vara?
ReplyDeleteHeat Wave!
ReplyDeleteWe are 20 degrees Celsius (40F) below seasonal norms!
@Rex and @other David—. when you refer to mustard as a base for barbecue sauce, please refer to
ReplyDeleteSOUTH Carolina. In North Carolina it’s vinegar based in the East and tomato based in the West. Here
in Charlotte it can be either, but definitely not mustard!!
Very crunchy Saturday puzzle! Thank you, Ryan and Yacob! byw— is there a Team Yacob??
@Nancy (10:06, 12:22) re Michaelangelo and the NINJA TURTLES -- perfect, even by your steadily hard-to-beat wit.
ReplyDeleteBut give the Turtles a chance: their names preserve their namesakes in dark ages, until a time comes to know them better. If I'm in high school and a teacher says "Donatello," maybe I perk up for a minute, think of pizza, and want to know more.
Watch the first NINJA TURTLES movie sometime time when you don't feel like thinking. I guarantee the time will pass harmlessly.
I had TWITARDS instead of TWIHARDS for a long time (Hedda meant nothing to me), kinda prefer mine...
ReplyDeleteA little easer than average SatPuz, at our house. Got a late start on it, tho … due to other pressin tasks.
ReplyDeleteM&A is such a fancy dresser. Thought the answer to 29-D was gonna be SPORTCOATS. Lost valuable nanoseconds, haven to upgrade my wardrobe.
staff weeject pick: BAI. Not to be confused with BAE. Sooo … don't be like ever-confused M&A.
fave sparkly-plus ones: NINJATURTLE. TVGUIDE. RHINO. YOUHEARDME. STREETSMART. FUN. CARPAYMENT clue. MEATRUB/RIB combo.
A few pesky no-knows here and there, but the only real moana was at TWIHARDS/HEDDA. Guessed right, tho -- I think HEDDA must justa sounded like it was somethin I'd heard of one time in the distant past.
M&A just don't get it, on how a themeless puz collaboration would ever work out right. Does one do the lower puzhalf, one do the upper puzhalf, and hope things meet up ok in the middle? Or just send the whole puzgrid back and forth, takin turns addin on the next entry -- and see who stalls out (or gets ultra-desperate, reduced to tears) first? har. Confuses the M&A, but either way, sounds like quite a hootfest.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mssrs. McCarty & Yonas dudes. Real good job.
Masked & Anonym007Us
some STREETSMARTs required:
**gruntz**
@Nancy, the cartoon versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are MUCH cuter than the “whatever it is” version in the movie. My son had outgrown TNMT by then so I just saw green trailers and thought…yuck. I guess cartoons are passé now (and maybe more expensive than FX) but, if done well, I preferred them.
ReplyDeleteI completed today’s puzzle while waiting to get a flat tire repaired. Yesterday’s also went quickly. It’s a thrill for me to complete a Friday and Saturday. Roy
ReplyDeleteTwihards cross with Hedda sank me. Nice puzzle!
ReplyDeleteI take issue with the second Phrazle because technically it is missing a word. Nevertheless:
ReplyDeletePhrazle 66: 2/6
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I put in TwiTARD before Twihard which was a little mean of me, I do admit. I did have a chuckle when I caught on to my mistake.
ReplyDelete"Rolls dough?" was brutal and brilliant.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that killed me with it is that I instantly jumped to the (correct) conclusion that the "?" was pointing at 'dough' (which of course meant money, not pre-baked bread); now just had to figure out how 'rolls' fit in with money - bank rolls, counterfeiting, bank telling, etc. I had been so quick to congratulate myself for breezing past the question mark on 'dough', that it never occurred to me that it was also pointing at the 'Rolls' as well.
I don't know if I've seen that before (even on Saturday) where TWO words in a question mark clue have to be looked at sideways but in two entirely independent ways. Any other examples of that being done before?
I may be late to the party here but nobody called out the factually inaccurate CRAP — 7 is not a crap out. 2, 3 and 12 are the crabs. Will has checked out and his ghost successor(s) are not up to snuff.
ReplyDeleteHey that’s what I came here to say.
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ReplyDelete@the joker makes a good point: I can't imagine anyone buying a RR on PAYMENTs.
ReplyDelete@anon 7:59: The clue mentions "ill-timed." If the shooter already has a point to make, rolling a 7 is indeed a CRAP out. Pass the dice.
Tough work indeed, even for a Stayrday. Yeah, I know: I made a Freudian typo and decided to leave it in. Wonder what @Burma will do with MEATRUB, not to mention AREOLA and BITEME.
Natalie WOOD, whom I just re-watched as Judy in "Rebel Without a Cause," is DOD.
This was even harder for me, because TWIHARDS made absolutely no sense to me. I was forced to *STET* because none of the crosses would move. In the blog I found out that it was about all those vampire movies, whose appeal I never could understand. I invite a serious fan to TRY and explain.
Horrendous meltdown with five (5!) bogeys in a row. 72nd hole tomorrow: my b-day.
Oh, the puz: Triumph points by the trainload. Eagle. YOUHEARDME.
I always TWIHARD but I HEDDA really hard time solving this one. Too many CRAP non-words (like BAI, DVR, NIA and ITO (which could have been clued: Judge in the OJ Simpson trial Lance ______) Had tees before WOOD, our before THY and CrimeS before COMMAS which had me LOLLing in the MUD for far too long. CARPAYMENT’s clue was a groaner, EMOPOP can BITEME. ALLINALL, it was a joyless slog with not much FUN and ALLOTS not to like. BAI now!
ReplyDeleteI forgot DIDST. Not a word. Sorry. Archaic junk fill. At least Burma is going to get GOODVIBES from all of the nudge-nudge wink-wink words including HANDPUPPET, BATHTOY and WOOD.
ReplyDelete* I gotta get my mind outta the MUD.
GOOD WOOD ACTS
ReplyDeleteAn AREOLA PLUSONE, what the MEDSTUDENT DUBS:
YOU have HANDs ALL full of FUN, GOODVIBEs when the MEATRUBs.
--- DAN HEARD, PHD
I wanted 'tees' at first; buying any golf club at a pro shop is going to be spendy. Liked seeing WOOD and MEATRUB on the same line.
ReplyDeleteWordle par due to options for the first letter.