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One-named ancient satirist or a Pokemon character / WED 5-25-22 / Convert into a higher-level language, as computer code / Hinged bit of hardware / Art of bone carving
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Constructor: Christopher Youngs
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- PODIUM CAST (17A: Group of winners at a film awards show?) (podcast)
- CRANIUM APPLE (27A: Target for William Tell?) (Cran-Apple)
- MEDIUM SCHOOL (46A: Where séance leaders get their degrees?) (med school)
- TEDIUM TALK (62A: Lo-o-ong lecture from a parent?) (Ted Talk)
The noun referring to one who takes an assumed identity in order to deceive is variously spelled imposter and impostor. Impostor has the edge, and it is the form recommended by most English reference sources, but imposter is not wrong. Not only is it nearly as common as impostor, but it is also nearly as old. Impostor came to English from the French imposteur in the late 16th century, and imposter first appeared almost immediately thereafter. And though the -or spelling has always been more common, imposter has always been present to some degree. // In fact, imposter is more common than impostor in some areas of English. In a search covering a few dozen of the most popular blogs in the English-speaking world, for instance, the ratio of imposter to impostor is about 6:5. Imposter is also a little more common than impostor in 21st-century Australian and New Zealand news publications that make content available online. The two forms are neck and neck in British and American news publications from this century. Meanwhile, in a Google Books search—which covers millions [of] books, journals, and magazines—limited to 2000 to the present, impostor remains about three times more common than imposter. (grammarist.com) (emph. mine)
• • •
The grid is absolutely teeming with 3- 4- and 5-letter fill of the commonest variety, which makes it hard to know what to talk about besides how uninteresting it all is. SCRIMSHAW is about the sassiest, liveliest thing here today (54A: Art of bone carving). The short stuff isn't horrendous, just, well, to reuse a word I've used a lot already today, flat. I won't bother listing it all out; you can just look at the grid and see for yourself. If the theme had been a sizzler or even if the longer answers had been winners, all the repeaters that populate the bulk of the grid wouldn't be nearly so disappointing, or even noticeable. Short fill can be familiar and merely adequate if the marquee stuff really shines. Today, it did not.
["See, EPIDERMIS means your hair ..."]
Notes:
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
- 6D: One-named ancient satirist ... or a Pokémon character (LUCIAN) — choose your fighter, I guess. The second half of this clue is depressing to me. A sad, random afterthought that I guess is supposed to act as a bone to ... some class of solver, I don't know. Or maybe it's the puzzle's one very weak attempt to be "current" (never mind that Pokémon is old by now). Anyway, LUCIAN is rolling over in his non-Pokémon grave, and I sympathize with him. "Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm." (wikipedia). A writer after my own heart.
- 14A: Monopoly token replaced by a cat in 2013 (IRON) — I love cats, as you likely know and/or are tired of hearing about by now, but the IRON was a great token and I miss it. That is, I miss it theoretically. Monopoly is a soul-crushingly dull game that I haven't played in decades, so I don't miss it miss it.
- 49A: Unfinished crusade of the 1970s in brief (ERA) — Equal Rights Amendment. The first version was introduced in Congress in 1923.
- 19A: Reminder of a past injury (SCAR) — here's how to know if the answer to a clue like this is SCAR or SCAB: ... it's just SCAR. "R" is a more common letter, so guess "R." Also, a SCAB will be fresher, so it'll probably have a neutral "wound covering"-type clue, whereas SCAR is likely to be clued in reference to the "past." But again, just guess "R." There are way, way more appearances of SCAR, and anyway half the SCAB clues refer to strikebreakers.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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108 comments:
same error. imposter instead of impostor.Also didn’t get why two long nonthemers conained “im”
I also had IMPOSTeR, and who knows the word DECOMPILE? So, a Natick there. Otherwise an easy puzzle.
I was working my way down the grid and got to MEDIUMSCHOOL. AHA OHO. I thought of MEDIUM as another word for Middle and thought that might the gimmick. Have a wacky theme entry with a real term, Middle(a synonym)School, waiting in the wings. Made sense but only for that entry. Caught the IUM later and liked it. Also of note, the first vowel in each themer changes sound. This puzzle was a pleasure even if not earth-shaking.
I’m not very good at this. So I don’t often manage to complete the Wednesday puzzle. But I did manage this one and I enjoyed it
Oh, sodium it!
FH
A puzzling question: Is 'compiling', or 'decompiling', more, or less "phenomenally boring" than 'parsing' or 'syntactical analysis'?
FH
To Anonymous at 6.41 AM: Kudos! Too many show-offs around here who would never admit they struggle with a Wednesday puzzle. I remember when I first started to do the NYT puzzle and was not aware that they went from easy on a Monday to very challenging on a Saturday. Sometimes I thought I was a genius; other times a moron. With practice, even the Fridays and Saturdays become tractable
A lot of people say that fill-in-the-blanks are good clues to start with for new solvers. I don’t get that. Today, for example, I had bomb threat, blood orange, and Oscar isacs. And no clue on team ___ , Aria del ___ or ___ Wong, so wasted time thinking about those.
Was happy to come so close on Oscar, as a two months ago that would have been a complete WoE. Thanks to Moon Knight, the name was (almost) lurking in my brain.
This is a tight theme, in that Christopher made the choice to use IUM-ending words that weren’t elements (element words like “sodium” or “barium”), and that’s a very short list to work with. So not only was it clever to come up with this theme in the first place, but it was doubly so for coming up with theme answers based on in-the-language words and phrases, like PODCAST and MED SCHOOL.
The theme answers work, too. They aren’t ha-ha funny, but, IMO, they don’t have to be, so long as they work. It provides a good skeleton for a puzzle, and if that puzzle brings a satisfying and enjoyable solve, as this did for me, then it’s worth a bravo and a thank you.
I liked the cross of AROMA and EMITS, and the A-train of ALPHA / GAIA / OVA / HERA / AROMA. The answer SCRIMSHAW made me look up SCRIM, which I once knew the meaning of but forgot, but now I know it again – and that’s a bonus.
So, for your admirable display of cleverness, Christopher, and for bringing plusses beyond that, bravo and thank you!
How this puzzle ever made it to the NYT I’ll never figure out. Completely tepid.
On the whole felt pretty meh, but I thought the clue for USURY was legitimately funny.
I worked with computers from the days of punched cards and TTY terminals. We would COMPILE a high-level language like FORTRAN or COBOL into low-level assembly language, which is a half-step removed from actual hardware instructions. If we went the other way (usually for nefarious purposes), we called it "reverse compiling" or "reverse engineering". I hadn't heard DECOMPILE until today.
I knew Rex was going to hate decompile. As a software engineer, I know this term. The problem is that decompiling has a very specific use and is not a common development tool. It is so “inside baseball” that I’m sure lots of programmers got stuck here as well.
I also had to look up scrim. The maker of scrimshaw is a scrimshander. Cool.
I admire the way in which @Lewis always tries to find a way to appreciate a puzzle. In his/her world, there's no such thing as a bad grid--there's a little bit of good in all of them. But how the words "satisfying," "enjoyable," and "bravo" can be used on this puzzle is a mystery to me. I'm with Rex all the way on this one, right down to the weird Pokeomon addition to the LUCIAN clue. I can't believe this was accepted by the NYT. I'd expect to see a puzzle this dull only in the Wall Street Journal.
Add letters for a goofy phrase - this should follow the go big or go home mantra. TED TALK and CRAN APPLE? The puzzle is harmless and cute - just not a lot of splash.
DECOMPILE was my favorite entry - liked SCRIMSHAW and OSAGE. Two S’s in DISs?
Enjoyable enough Wednesday solve.
Retired computer geek here. Decompilers - tools that decompile executable code into readable, editable code - save the day when source code is lost. They were a key tool to get many companies through the Y2K challenge with so few problems.
I know quite well what decompile means, and found the word delightful. Interesting to some of us, and non-techies can surely decompile the meaning and spelling from crosses. Oh, maybe not the meaning, if you don't know what a compiler does--translate code people can understand into bytes computers like.
If I can wrestle nominally easy literature references, I think different experts can cope with decompile.
I, um, did not mind DECOMPILE in the least, and generally enjoyed this. However, I ended up with CRAbIUMAPPLE because I didn’t look at the down answer and because I figured maybe “crabium” is an archery term and because “crab apple” is certainly a thing.
Of radioactive element, of radioactive element! (Fr.)
Not one of Rex's more enjoyable reviews. Defending IMPOSTeR at length (IMPOSTOR makes Word of the Day not for any intrinsic interest, but just so that he can insert a very long spelling note) -- that's eye-rolling enough, but then he goes way overboard in decrying DECOMPILE. Obviously because he's really mad about getting a DNF (as people call it). I conjecture that he simply overlooked the clue for 11 Down, found his error, and then went "pffft" at DECOMPILE about five or six times before finally venting his spleen at the keyboard. With such gems as "This grid is desperate, starved for entertainment, starved for interesting fill or genuine pleasure of any sort". Oy!
Nice to have @Lewis around in such circumstances. (Nice to have him around period, but sometimes we need him.)
Monopoly (the game) is not soul-crushingly dull so much as it is just soul-crushing, as explained by Louis CK here.
Do we really need the endnote on SCAR? Talk about a TEDIUM TALK -- doesn't everyone know the difference between that and SCAb? Do we need to have it explained, or to be told "go with the R, it's more common"? Actually, I have better advice, and perhaps I direct this primarily at Rex himself: don't forget to look at the Down clues at the crosses!
I was unable to determine what the quasi-theme was, so no help there. A lot of the PPP was very far out of my wheelhouse, so bumping into LUCIAN, PRAM, GAIA, HERA et c turned this into a bit of a slog today. Even stuff like KNIT for a bone healing was a stretch for me.
Agree that the clue for USURY did sparkle. The "theme" is definitely weak though, and actually subtracted from the solving experience in my opinion (I mean PODIUM CAST-really ???)
Amy Y: we have roofers here and since our condo association is made up of 5 two story bldgs and I'm on the 2nd floor, it sounds as if there's a lively soccer game going on overhead. Grateful for the distraction of the puzzle, however mundane.
A "won't pass the breakfast test" Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) from this grid:
Clue:
Shakespeare's “Monster, I do smell all horse ______, at which
my nose is in great indignation."
It could also be clued:
With "off," what today's puzzle can do to some people (apparently)
I figure you can discern the 4 letter answer, which resides in the eastern portion of the grid.
I enjoyed the puzzle, which was more MEDIUM difficult for me. I moived through most of it at a steady pace, but struggled in the south and SE (TEDIUM took a while to get).
Thx, Christopher; I UM impressed with this fine piece of work! :)
Med.
Very smooth sailing, with one exception: I had IMPOSTeR and took far too long to figure out what DECeMPILE was supposed to be. :(
Love SCRIMSHAW; what a great word!
Most enjoyable adventure; no TEDIUM here. :)
@jae (6:59 PM yd)
Thx for the heads-up re: Wallace's commencement address; loved it! :)
@Zed (8:19 PM yd)
Agree wholeheartedly re: your take on SWADDLE!
___
yd: 0 / Duo: 34/37
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
I believe it was the great, sarcastic philosopher Tweedy Bird who said, “I cwacked my widdle cwanium” to such shocking effect, and I was reminded of it today. For that, I thank the constructor.
And yes, I started with Imposter, but I feel like a pleb for thinking it. Impostor is so much more elegant. Again, I thank the constructor. What a calumny it would’ve been if I’d have ever had to use the written word in a crisis. How embarrassing it might’ve been.
DECOMPILE doesn't seem like the worst jargon to me since it breaks down to DE (common prefix) and COMPILE (non-jargon word). Of course if you already have DECEMPILE maybe it's harder to see DE as a prefix.
I think it's laughable that people still refer to USURY as a crime. At what point does the interest rate become usurious? At one point, 15% applied. Now credit card companies seem to bottom out at 30%. Pay day loans average out at 400-500% APR. USURY should be marked as archaic.
DECOMPIL[E]ing is great if you want to steal someone else's code. That's why people developed obfuscators, to prevent meaningful decompiling, and thus make stealing harder. As someone who has decompiled with malicious intent, obfuscated to prevent decompiling with malicious intent, I felt not the slightest frisson of excitement in seeing it in the puzzle.
We used to have tons of OSAGE orange trees around here - I guess the farmers used them as fences next to the roads back in the day. They have all been cut down, probably because they're so messy. I miss them (on someone else's yard, not mine).
The theme is simple enough: wordplay (kind of) derived from the "ium" ending of many elements. The write-up comment about the theme was a bit odd, seemed to me. And I am a bit surprised over the comments about DECOMPILE which until now I though was a fairly common word.
TTrimble parsed the write-up quite accurately, seems to me.
Anyway, I liked the puzzle. Much more than the constructor (or is it constructer). Maybe a bit more PPP than I prefer. And the clue "throw shade at" confirms my hate of slang. But still - a nice puzzle. Hopefully Chris will continue to create more puzzles that please him more than this one.
Easyish here, and I spelled it IMPOSTOR, which was helpful as DECOMPILED was new to me but sort of made sense when I had it written in.
Actually caught the theme at PODIUMCAST, which sure made things easier.
LUCIAN? OK. Poe Dameron is a Star Wars character of whom I have not heard, and OSAGE orange I'm going to have to look up. Hand up for finding SCRIMSHAW delightful, both the word and the craft. Enough whaling in these parts in the past to have seen some nice examples in various places.
Am still mystified as to how OFL can find a single word to be "boring", a phenomenon I have yet to experience.
Perfectly serviceable Wednesday Coulda Yanked my chain a little harder, but thanks for some fun.
It's silly, really, to critique a puzzle with the seriousness you'd bring to a passage from Shakespeare, but there are several reasons why this puzzle didn't do anything for me:
First and foremost, the puns aren't funny. I didn't crack a smile.
Second, the pronunciation changes from the original to the pun -- and for me that takes away from the effect. Your eye sees the wordplay but your ear doesn't hear the wordplay.
Third, some of the invented phrases are tortured. MEDIUM SCHOOL and TEDIUM TALK are okay but what's a PODIUM CAST and a CRANIUM APPLE?
The cast is on the podium, but it is, maybe, an "ARGO" CAST, not a PODIUM CAST. The apple sits on the cranium, but it is not a CRANIUM APPLE.
I know, I know -- I'm picking nits. But I didn't much enjoy this.
Pete,
You sound evil. Usury is condemned, and has been for nearly all of history. Every major religion forbids it. That you find it hard to draw the line is hardly proof that the line exists.
Not much of a puzzle. Easy and dull. Just read up on SCRIMSHAWING. Everything I didn't know filled itself in with crosses.
Another horrible day in America. Logging off.
Hey All !
DNF, at the crossing O of you know where. Even looked over the puz before hitting Reveal Puzzle, and couldn't find it. When it comes to all things computery, DECEMPILE sure seems like it could be something, to me.
Moving on, thought the theme sorta funny. Took a while to figure out, but got it after finally figuring out the first one. Had daISES for IRISES first, har, wrong flower. Which got me MEDD as the start of 46A, further stymieing me. But it (almost) all worked out in the end.
SCRIMSHAW I've heard of, but didn't know it is a whittler. I have an Uncle who does SCRIMSHAWing. He sent me a rather cool model car made out of wood. (I dropped it, and one of the headlights came off! Oops)(I suppose I should glue it back on.)
Prayers out to Uvalde, TX.
yd -5, should'ves 4
Duo 35, missed 1-2-4
No F's (SCAM!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
The minus sign indicative of a negatively charged ion is written as a superscript. F- is just a baaad grade
Hah. I agree with everything Rexie has to say today. And I mean everything, right down to "A writer after my own heart". And I hated losing the iron ! Do you think the cat people were pissed off all those years that Scottie was a token ?
This puzzle was so mindnumbing that I got the "something is wrong message" or whatever the hell it is, and didn't even care. One positive : I now know what scrimshaw is.
Whenever you see the word "wacky" early in an OFL comment, you know what's coming.
Why did 2D and 52D have French-pointing words in the clues? For that matter, why was 62A “from a parent”? Clues just seemed to have oddly superfluous stuff today.
@Anon 9:30 - Anon, you sound like an idiot, or a foreigner unfamiliar with the basic structure of things here in the good old US of A. We here in America live in a constitutional representative democracy, not a theocracy. Laws are made by and for the people to manage a functional civil society. People are free to follow, or not, whatever religion, major or otherwise, they choose. We do not codify religious dictates as law. I said "I think it's laughable that people still refer to USURY as a crime". I was referring to criminal law, not moral, law. If you want the two to be equal I can recommend several countries to which you can emigrate, if you don't live there already. In Afghanistan they will stone you for usury - for even charging any interest at all. Have fun. Tell you wife not to pack most of her cloths, you'll can buy tents for her to wear when you get over there.
Kind of a ho-hum theme but it works. I don’t say that as a negative comment because even the constructor in his notes expressed similar thoughts and himself was surprised it got accepted for publication. But it was pleasant enough and the right level of difficulty so I have no complaints.
The clue for 1A gave me visions of @Nancy enjoying a beautiful day in the PARK. Hoping that’s the case anyway.
I’ve been watching “The First Lady,” a new (and so-so IMHO) series based on the lives of Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford, and Michelle Obama. The most recent episode highlighted Betty Ford’s efforts in working toward ratification of the ERA. I did not recall her having played such a proactive role at the time. Perhaps because she was so quickly discouraged by her husband’s political handlers, portrayed as Dick Cheney and a particularly smarmy Donald Rumsfeld.
If Joe gets this in 2, I'll eat my hat:
Phrazle 73: 3/6
🟨⬜🟪 🟨🟨🟪⬜🟨🟪🟪⬜ 🟪🟪 ⬜⬜ 🟨🟪⬜🟪🟩
🟩🟩🟩 🟨⬜🟪🟩🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩 🟪🟪 🟩🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
I, UM, was like OFL on IMPOSTeR as were many others, but just filling the grid only with the across clues led to 18A being aChe for several long minutes when the dread warning ⚠️ appeared! Luckily I was able to follow the good advice T. Trimble offers above so INSTEP, LEAR & ERRS arrived faster than a trio of ambulance chasing attorneys to DECOMPILE the obvious bad code. Thanks Christopher for a very Wednesday grid—approachable and cute as OPIE was back in the day. You obviously achieved your goal in constructing and that’s always a win for this UMP.
Easy peasy despite spelling IMPOSTeR apparently the slightly less common way. It still looks wrong with the O to me.
My oldest kid was a computer word so the I knew about DECOMPILERs, just had no idea that's what they did.
The IRON was my favorite token, but since we have our old set, I'm not too upset about the replacement. Best article ever about Monopoly: Monopoly, Milton Friedman's Way
Rex Parkor, Crosswerd Bloggor, is cerrect. When werds can be spelled two (er mere) difforent ways, any and all spellings of the werd should be considored cerrect fer the perpose of the grid, even if it results in anothor werd being spelled completely wrong.
It's appalling that editers such as Will Shertz haven't implemented a way to give Rex Parkor, Crosswerd Bloggor, credit for entoring incerrect answors.
Phrazle 73: 2/6
🟨🟪🟪 🟨🟩🟩🟪⬜🟪⬜⬜ 🟪🟪 ⬜⬜ ⬜🟪⬜🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Which hat should I eat?
You are too amazing, Joe!
I’m with Rex!
If I had to guess at the genesis of this theme, it would be that our constructor might have been listening to someone drone on and started thinking of the adult “drone” sound in the “Charlie Brown” shows (waaaa-waaaa-waaaa) and thought TEDIUM TALK , and thus a theme was born. Maybe? That’s the best I can come up with for this somewhat of an oddball.
Other than the head-scratcher of an easy theme and the fact that I misspelled IMPOSTeRS, this was very easy. Clue for USURY was the best bit fir me.
I'm sure DECOMPILE got under many a solver's EPIDERMIS. I DECOMPILEd many a program during my software development career in order to expose lost source code. This is no more arcane than, say, Pokemon characters or Star Wars cast members.
Easy. LUCIAN (either clue) was my only WOE. I looked for some sort of “what’s going on here” clue/answer, but no dice. Mostly with @Rex on this one.
Perhaps the real theme is TEDIUM. That’s what I experienced through most of this, as I plodded along from the ancient Pokémon character to the computer coding lingo to the Star Wars actor to the Greek gods.
If ever there was a puzzle with a desperate need for a revealer, this was it. And in what world does PODIUM CAST describe a group of anything anywhere? MEDIUM SCHOOL may be flat, but at least it makes sense.
The highlights of this puzzle were the clues for the U words USURY and UMP and the answer for 54A which kept reminding me of the prison film “The Shankshaw Redemption” with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. If it had won any of the seven Oscars it was nominated for, Tim and Morgan could have become a PODIUM CAST.
I won't tell you which puzzle, but if you take Rex's advice, you'll end up with a write-over in another puzzle today.
I believe it was LUCIAN who said “ Those who play in a stadium should not smoke opium.”
Is SHAG a euphemism for RODIN HOLE? That was the word on the street in SODOM.
I was hoping for a revealer that would explain why IUM was added to four so-so phrases to produce four kinda wacky phrases. It is what it is, I guess.
I, um … sorta … liked it. Heck, any puz that offers up decompiles & bone carvin is at least aimin hard to please.
{Place with no gun controls, IM&AO?} = HELIUM LITHIUM INK.
staff weeject pick: DIS. Nice all-weeject rows #5 & 11, btw.
fave themer: TEDIUMTALK.
fave other stuff: SCRIMSHAW. USURY [vowels & clue]. SALAAM/GAIA [vowel-o-rama].
Thanx for the delirium, Mr. Youngs dude.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
**gruntz**
DECOMPILE: Process that follows after 22 football players jump on a loose ball or on players that have already jumped on said ball.
I thought it was a common usage. I spelt IMPOSTOR with an E but the obvious COMPILE made me change it to an O. That made me wonder how I never realized it was incorrect, which really made me appreciate Rex's lengthy explanation.
In someways I think DECOMPILE is a perfect wednesday word. Technical, obscure, and deduce-able.
But I enjoyed the solve and appreciated the clues for CROW LUCIAN HASP IRON (still do not like Monopoly) HOLE plus the OPIE OGLE, the OSAGE VILLA, and I live in the boondocks down the road from the historic SODOM SCHOOL. Speaking of which did you see that the Sothern Baptists are as bad as the Catholic Church. Probably us atheists are just as bad but lack the power to cover it up as well.
I see the bad news from Texas as well. I feel about like the Warriors' coach.
I see the guns have been declared innocent and without a trial too.
I agree! Loved this one. Perfect Wednesday.
Best thing about today? Rex including the "Medium Cool" reference. Astonishing movie, everyone should see it.
@Joe De
What a woird way with werds yeu get. All wit or all wet. I make no judgomont.
IMPOSTOR looks wrong but sounds right?
@Nancy: (10:23) when I read your comment, I agreed with you out loud. So . . . pass the salt please.
@Joe (10:32) I am humbled in the presence of your genius. All hail the Phrazle Master!
OK, I’ll throw my hat into the ring:
1) Bulbous purple flowers ablaze
2) Prison accommodation bathed in sunlight
3) Group of (hereditary) Queens’ husbands
I don’t know if this puzzle is good or bad, but it was a relief from all the problems I had yesterday, mostly of my own making. The dumbest was not reading the clue for (Tuesday’s) 50D [Waves], and thinking the answer was some form of sushi. Yeah, it was that kind of solve.
OK, today. First of all, NEER. I assume the clue [“… ____ the twain shall meet”] is a reference to Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West.” But in a(n admittedly non-exhaustive) search of sites that reproduce this poem I only see “NEvER.” @Nancy, I believe you know and like Kipling – do you or anyone have any insight on this? (Or care?)
No problem with IMPOSTOR or DECOMPILE. The combination of DE and COM at the beginning of a word is neat, I think (see also decommission, decompose, decompress), because COM seems to build up and DE seems to tear down. I liked ADAPT in the middle of the grid as the themers are all ADAPTations of existing words or terms. I have a SCRIMSHAW ring! I don’t wear it much, but I put it on this morning. It’s a tall ship under full sail, very intricate.
SERIOUS RABBIT-HOLE WARNING!
The combination of LUCIAN (today) and CALUMNY (recently) brings up a highly obscure art historical point which I feel duty-bound to illuminate. Somewhere in his writings, LUCIAN describes a painting entitled CALUMNY by an artist named Apelles. That painting is long lost, but a number of artists in the Renaissance read about it in LUCIAN and took up the theme, painting their own versions based on his description. The most famous of these is Sandro Botticelli’s The Calumny of Apelles. It’s a beautiful and complex work, featuring ten allegorical figures (the wiki article mistakenly says nine) that together portray the theme of slander. There’s a king (Midas-like with donkey’s ears) on his throne to the right and the victim of slander lying nearly naked on the floor. And these two are surrounded and linked by the figures of Truth, Repentance, Perfidy, Calumny, Fraud, Rancour, Ignorance and Suspicion. You can read the whole analysis in the article if you’re so inclined. Man, I love this stuff, and I’m always grateful to puzzles when they launch me in arcane directions.
1) ALLIUM FIRED UP
2) SOLARIUM CELL
3) PRINCE CONSORTIUM (I know, this one's cheating)
Pete:
decriminalizing (not like DECOMPILING) doesn't mean that USURY just went poof into oblivion. it's still around, as the numbers you've offered demonstrate. federal USURY is an oxymoron, but some states have some level of USURY bans.
"Congress imposed a federal criminal penalty for unlawful interest rates through the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Statute), and its definition of "unlawful debt", which makes it a potential federal felony to lend money at an interest rate more than twice the local state usury rate and then try to collect that debt."
the wiki
oddly, for the uninformed, all three of the Warring Religions ban, more or less, USURY. not that many, if any, abide by said bans.
@Pete:
We do not codify religious dictates as law.
Riiiiiiiiiiight!! Tell that to your daughter when she wants an abortion. Tell that to your son when he takes his AR-15 and massacres a school. But, oddly, in the beginning The Founders worked diligently to remove religion specific language, while today's Right Wingnut Party Like It's 1829 cabal do intend to turn the country into a White Evangelical Paradise. I can't wait.
Thanks, 🦖. Learned about Lucian - interesting 🤗!
Thought it was kinda fun, clever-ium!
And thinking of the difference between a TED talk and a TEDIUMTALK - A lecture from a percent - made me laugh.
🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
IMPOSTOR vs IMPOSTeR: Ngram (not much of a disparity)
"Scrimshaw is scrollwork, engravings, and carvings done in bone or ivory. Typically it refers to the artwork created by whalers, engraved on the byproducts of whales, such as bones or cartilage. It is most commonly made out of the bones and teeth of sperm whales, the baleen of other whales, and the tusks of walruses. It takes the form of elaborate engravings in the form of pictures and lettering on the surface of the bone or tooth, with the engraving highlighted using a pigment, or, less often, small sculptures made from the same material." (Wikipedia)
___
td: 9.25 (0) / W: 4* / WH: 2
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@pete 10:08 ha ha ha. You know this is going to make him cry and then whine to the mods.
@Anonymous (6:41) Good for you! Keep at it and before you know it, you’ll be sailing through Thursdays.
@Anonymous (6:53) I had that same experience when I started out solving the Times crosswords. I remember commenting to my puzzle mentor that I didn’t understand why some days I could just fly through the grid and other days I could barely get a foothold. After she stopped laughing she explained the progression of difficulty, and ALL of a sudden I didn’t feel so dumb. Or so smart either.
Well...let's see:
Today I danced with @Nancy and @Whatsername. Their toe-tapping was NSYNC with mine...How about that!. I wanted to smile today (what a NOTION!)...instead the TEDIUM blues took over. So...I decided to go somewhere else for fun...
I bumped into ENOS, GAIA and HERA walking into the OASIS Bar located in RURAL GUAM. The bartender that day was SODOM. He's genial and will raise an ARM and yell SALAAM to you. He'll pour you a SHOT of MEAD and talk DIS and dat about the USURY SCAM committed by LUCIAN. "No-one wants to hear TEDIUM TALK yells SCAR face OPIE....we want to hear PIPER sing in his ALTO RANGE about the AROMA of HAMS." "I..UM can't sing that one he muttered...but I can do a ditty about IMPOSTORS like RODIN trying to COPY the LOST art of SCRIMSHAW. " "Nah," EMITS the CAPO. "Time to TOSS in the EPIDERMIS and call it a day."
If you're real quite you can actually hear SHERYL Crow about the END of an ERA.....
I don't agree with Rex's critique of this puzzle. I liked the theme answers, especially TEDIUM TALK. When my brother or I did something wrong, Mom would offer to "not tell Dad" if we promised we would never do the offending action again. She knew that avoiding the seemingly hours-long lecture would be worth the promise.
SCRIMSHAW is evocative of Captain Ahab to me because in my memory of Moby Dick, his peg-leg was made up of scrimshaw-ed whalebone. A quick search of this fact on Google did not turn up any evidence to support my belief so if anyone knows for sure, let me know.
I did fall into the IMPOSTeRS group but DECeMPILE had me change it to O so no problem in the end.
Thanks Christopher Youngs, I enjoyed your Wednesday puzzle.
The only thing that makes playing Monopoly fun is the rampant cheating, which we perfected in my family as children, and passed on to kids and grandkids (by shamelessly cheating...)
For me, the theme got off to a slow start, with PODIUM CAST falling flat and CRANIUM APPLE flying wide of the mark, but at least understanding the IUM addition allowed me to guess the more satisfying MEDIUM SCHOOL and TEDIUM TALK with no crosses. I thought the strengths of the puzzle were elsewhere, in SCRIMSHAW, PIPER, LUCIAN, and the challenge of decoding DECOMPILE.
Vowel trouble: crosswords have taught me that "elixir" ends in -ir, not -er, and that "limousine" has a u. And now that "The Great Imposter" could lead me astray like the girl in the song ("All her friends they just watch her/ For they know the great imposter"). Fortunately, I had a college friend majoring in comp sci who often mentioned COMPILErs so could make the needed change. However, I wrote in GAeA, despite remembering GAIA from past puzzles; I refuse to yield on that one, DNF or not.
@jberg here. I knew the word DECOMPILE but had assumed it meant the opposite. Live and learn. I’d also forgotten LUCIAN so struggled to make LUCIus work.
The theme was fine. I had to get all the way to. TEDIUM TALK before I understood it. Maybe if I’d got it sooner I’d have found it boring, but I didn’t.
Goodbye till Monday!
Thanks, 🦖. Learned about Lucian - interesting 🤗!
Thought it was kinda fun, clever-ium!
And thinking of the difference between a TED talk and a TEDIUMTALK - A lecture from a parent - made me laugh.
🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
🤣
Okay, I've gotta put it out there... I've never once in my life heard of a satirist named Lucian, but I absolutely know of Lucian from Sinnoh's elite four. The Pokemon part of the clue saved me on that one, I'm sure I can't be the only one.
"19th and 20th century scrimshaw, scrimshaw crafted before 1989 (elephant) or before 1973 (sperm whale ivory, walrus ivory etc.) is legal. It is prohibited after that year for commercial import in the U.S. under the Marine Mammal Protection Act."
the wiki
Visited Nantucket in the early 70s. Lots for sale then.
Like many others I have worked in programming and had heard the term DECOMPILE, however exactly like Rex I finished with DECEMPILE and didn't see my mistake until I went through all the answers. Yeah, it's not too exciting if you're not into computer stuff, but hey remember that puzzle with the "famous" opera NESSUN DORMA that we opera haters had never heard of? So there.
For a while I also had CHERYL for the singing Crow; I blame age.
If anyone had told me SCRIMSHAW was charging too much interest, I would probably have believed them.
[Spelling Bee: yd pg in 8:15 but stalled at -1, missing this 7er.]
OFL mentioned Bette Davis a couple of days ago and invoked her Oscar winning roles. But her turn as Charlotte Vale was better than either. And poor Charlotte--cooped up in her lonely room-became something of an expert in the art of scrimshaw. Watch Now Voyager. (Read less Rex)
@Nancy & @Whatsername – thanks for the kudoses, but I'm actually having a lot of difficulty with the afternoon Phrazle.
Lucian, Lucien: what's the dif?
Back in the days when computer programs had to be typed onto cards, assembled in a tray, submitted the night before so they could run overnight, the ultimate frustration was to receive 'DOES NOT COMPILE' as next morning's result. All it took was one card misplaced. DECOMPILE makes perfect sense, even if Rex hasn't heard of it.
@GILL: Always a pleasure to be NSYNC with you.
Reminds me of that junior high school joke. What was Mozart doing at 36? Decomposing.
@orangeblossomspecial:
That's why you always kept them tightly in a card box, and left a vewy, vewy thin diagonal line across the top of the cards. The thinner the line the better; makes it easier to see proper order when you had to put them back in the box after you tripped over an exposed cable in the glass room and sent them sailing away.
Good for the CREMATORIUM.
So much dated PPP today - GAIA, ENOS, HERA, ADEN, OPIE, GUAM, IRISES, UTE, LUCIAN, SODOM, RODIN... as a millennial solver, this was a real slog. When the most culturally-relevant name in your puzzle is SHERYL Crow, it might be worth taking another look at your word list.
Wonderful! This made me smile.
Yesterday we got CALUMNY and today we get USURY. More of that for me, please! Both USURY and its close relative "usufruct" share the same roots, from the Classical Latin ūsus, "use". Usufruct has been in a NYTXW grid only once, in 1963 under the editorship of Margaret Farrar. Usufructuary has never appeared in a NYTXW puzzle. There, the gauntlet has been thrown down.
In case any of yous are curious about the source of the clue for 16A NEER "...the twain shall meet", it's from the famed American lyricist Elmer Fudd (1940-) and goes "East is East and West is West and NEER the twain shall meet, which is good because they wun on the same twack."
Just how much difficulty, Joe?, say I with pure Schadenfreude as I rub my hands together:)
Did I somehow beat you in the afternoon Phrazle? Probably not. Sigh.
Phrazle 74: 3/6
🟪⬜ 🟪🟩 ⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬜⬜ ⬜🟪⬜⬜
⬜🟪 🟩🟩 🟪🟨🟪🟩 🟩🟩 ⬜🟪⬜🟩
🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩
@ King_yeti Why should they not contain "im"? I liked the echo. Since "im" was not in the themers - those were ium I'm left wondering SO? Wheat's yer problem?
I found fun in the clues with 1A and 59A ,two places for a green spot plus 34D, a spot in a green.
And I smiled at 18D Crime of great interest.
I didn't quite get the themes just saw that they all had words ending in ium, which helped with the last two. When I fininshed and looked back and realized they were all familiar phrases without the "ium" I smiled at the theme and enjoyed how clever it was.
Enjoyable puzzle
Nice job!
So many dissing "Cranium apple". That was the funny one.
And I thought podium cast a good term for a group of winners at awards. I liked those two better than medium school, which tho it fit the clue, just fell flat for me.
And Nancy, I think their problem as puns is that they were not puns - not meant to be. Different kind of word play.
@Nancy – well you finished it, which is more than I can say. This is what my first guess looks like:
🟪🟪 ⬜🟪 ⬜🟪⬜⬜ 🟪🟪 🟨🟩⬜⬜
That's as far as I've gotten. Every letter is different, which is something I never do. I have the last word narrowed down to a few likely suspects but no phrase is coming to me...yet.
DECOMPILE was the spiciest answer on this grid.
Mods,
Given that I’ve said nothing offensive, uncivil or ad hominem, I’m forced to conclude, again, you favor some speech and censor what you dislike.
Though this post will never see the light of day, I invite you to learn about civil and natural law.
It undergirds our society, though the board you patrol doesn’t know it. But you can be better. Check out Aquinas. Or if he’s too religious for you try Hadley Arkes up at Amherst. You’ll like it. Aries undresses Scalia about how natural law underpins,well, all Western jurisprudence.
I've been in IT for 15 years and it's always "decompiling", never "reverse compiling"
Finally got it.
Phrazle 74: 3/6
🟪🟪 ⬜🟪 ⬜🟪⬜⬜ 🟪🟪 🟨🟩⬜⬜
🟪⬜ 🟪🟩 ⬜🟨🟪🟪 🟪⬜ ⬜🟩🟪🟩
🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩
I hated that one.
I also worked in software from the punch card days until 2002, and am quite familiar with the term DECOMPILE.
Continuing the nyt's string of duds. Craniumapple?
@anon 8:32 This is rich! The forum bully lecturing us on how to be better people! Ha! I told you before that your insults
toward every one here isn't going to land you in a spot in Heaven. GOD Your Father says to love one another and you only exhibit hate.
.Do you have so little self-awareness that you really don't know how offensive, cruel and rude you are?
@Barbara S (12:01 pm) -- It's "never".
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
Substitute "ne'er" for "never" and you destroy the music of the poem. Whoever suggested such a thing obviously has a tin ear, and Kipling is surely spinning in his grave.
Phrazle 74: 3/6
⬜⬜ ⬜🟪 ⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟪⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩⬜ 🟩🟩 ⬜🟨🟨⬜ 🟪🟪 ⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩
#phrazle
First phrazle not counting a joking attempt a month ago that was tainted when I realized a subtle clue had been given. These things are a pain.
CRANIUMAPPLE bad? Well if Tell was aiming at his son's cranium or his Adam's apple it wouldn't be good.
Monday called; he wants his puzzle back. This is filler if I ever saw it. Per se, a par. On a Wednesday? Bogey.
TEDIUM pretty much sums up the solving experience. The gimmick is LOST on me - half-baked. It needs a snappy reveal and something to tie the HOLE thing together more than just the three common IUM letters. The wackiness of the new words formed by the addition of IUM just ARENT ALL that and thus remain stuck in IDLE. WS, the xword UMP should have TOSSED this one out. Instead he RAN with it. ENOS better than this. The END.
SHOT ATOM
To sit IDLE ain't just TEDIUM,
it could ALSO END in peril,
her threats AREN'T ALL just MEDIUM,
when you OGLE and LEAR at SHERYL.
---ISAAC PARK
Too easy on the CRANIUM to be MEDIUM. SHERYL Crow, yeah baby.
Wordle birdie today. After 54 'holes' on wordle, 4 'eagles', 21 'birds', 19 'pars', 10 'bogeys'. 19 under not bad.
My CRANIUM was stuck in PARK for the Wordle today. I almost LOST. Gotta keep your ION the ball…
Wordle 375 6/6*
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟨🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Today and yesterday were both less than MEDIUM, but not to the level of TEDIUM.
And that is with a lot on my mind. Still at the end of a long-lasting cold, still eye tearing from cataract surgery, and now - wait for it - I have ROOT CANAL today. Oh I do know how to party.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Villa is an Italian word, that is the clue was referring to the Italian Riviera, not French.
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