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Ingredient in lemon curd / TUES 6-7-22 / Many a mideasterner / Short pants? / Much of Chad and Mali
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Hello, everyone! It’s Clare, coming at you a little delayed — this time for the first Tuesday in June. I’m on a little vacation in Berlin and enjoying the trip a lot; I was in Prague before this and am heading to Dublin soon. The weather has been almost perfect, the food has been delicious, and the company has been just alright (hi, Dad!). I’ve been trying to get up to watch the Warriors in the NBA finals, but this time difference has the games in the middle of the night, so it’s pretty challenging! Fingers crossed they pull it off.
Anywho, on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: Fairly easy
THEME: TECH BOOMS (58A: Big times in Silicon Valley … or a hint to 17-, 25-, 35- and 49-Across?) — Each theme answer relates to technology and ends with something that might make a “boom” sound
Theme answers:
That was a pretty nice puzzle; and, it turns out it’s a debut from Carly Schuna. The theme was current, and the theme answers worked well together. I sort of saw where the puzzle was going but didn’t know how it would pull together for the revealer, and I think the revealer mostly works. I’m not sure about whether “boom” works for all of them, but I didn’t really mind because the theme felt clever.
- PHOTO BOMB (17A: Make a goofy appearance in someone else's picture)
- TWEET STORM (25A: Multipost rant online)
- COMPUTER CRASH (35A: What the "spinning beach ball of death" might indicate)
- EMAIL BLAST (49A: Message sent to many recipients)
Bo Derek (born Mary Cathleen Collins, November 20, 1956) is an American actress and model. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy 10 (1979). Her first husband John Derek directed her in Fantasies; Tarzan, the Ape Man (both 1981); Bolero (1984) and Ghosts Can't Do It (1989), all of which received negative reviews. Widowed in 1998, she married actor John Corbett in 2020. Now semi-retired, she makes occasional film, television, and documentary appearances.
• • •
That was a pretty nice puzzle; and, it turns out it’s a debut from Carly Schuna. The theme was current, and the theme answers worked well together. I sort of saw where the puzzle was going but didn’t know how it would pull together for the revealer, and I think the revealer mostly works. I’m not sure about whether “boom” works for all of them, but I didn’t really mind because the theme felt clever.
Some of the fill of the puzzle struck me as a little uncommon, which is probably part of the reason I enjoyed the solve. Like, having RAVEN (20A: "Nevermore" speaker, in poetry) in the puzzle instead of the usual “Poe” was a nice change of pace. Or, even some of the fill just at the top — BORAX, SNOTS, SABLE. You don’t see those much.
The long downs, as usual, were my favorite part of the puzzle. Seeing DAMMED, CRUMPLES, and MIMICKED was fun. My favorite clue/answer in the whole puzzle was 12D: Subway line as EAT FRESH. And, just next to it, I really like how PROLONGS (11D: Drags out) is a down and feels apt. The sports terms were nice (REB, PACER, MLB), even if they were relatively basic.
33D: "What's the big idea?!" as HEY made no sense to me, though, and I spent quite a while there figuring that something must be wrong for that to be the answer. Also, do people really call Arnold Schwarzenegger ARNIE (40A)? Seems odd to me. Some of the puzzle seemed geared a little older (BUSMAP, PBS, DEREK, BORAX, MRT, ALF, SAL, etc…), but you also had these very current tech terms as the theme; so, it was a slightly odd juxtaposition.
Not too much else to say about the puzzle! Nice debut, good theme, some surprising fill. Good start to the day.
Misc.:
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
- 31A: Annoying complainer = both my dad and me on this trip; the number of times we’ve each complained about our feet hurting from all this walking (I hit 50k steps in one day!) is astronomical.
- 51D: Impressive venue to sell out… ARENA. That’s cool and all, but try being BTS and selling out a stadium four nights in a row, as they did in the new Las Vegas stadium. That huge theater where the Grammys were held days before? That was the overflow room BTS used to live stream the concert for those who couldn’t get tickets to the stadium.
- I only know it as the “rainbow wheel of death” and not the “spinning beach ball of death” (35A), but a quick Google search tells me I seem to be in the minority on that one. I like my version better.
- SHARKS don’t have bones (27D)? I feel like, somewhere in my brain, I’d registered that before but then forgot. How odd! I’d say that fact makes them seem less scary somehow, but I’m still terrified of them. I remember some years ago getting the chance to get a scuba diving certification but having a meltdown because I’d be in the ocean with SHARKS. (I persisted and didn’t even see any.)
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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78 comments:
Nice puzzle. Nice write up. Hope you REBound from middle of the night Warrior watching, Clare.
Easy, breezy, fun Tuesday. @Clare covered it very well. Only major overwrites were on the short stuff: Rbi before REB at 5D (because I misread the clue as "baseball"); Pvt before PFC at 53A; and cDc before FDA at 56D, corrected before I got to the clue twin at 59D.
This is a Berliner: https://kochkino.de/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/L1040731-1-scaled.jpg
When he was governor here, I never heard him referred to as ARNIE. Sometimes, "The Governator."
Amy: hi Clare, sounds like a wonderful trip. Yes, it is a lovely debut puzzle. Your review is spot on. Thanks.
I was sloow to get the meaning of the big game clue (too much tennis watching here, I guess), but enjoyed the puzzle.
Ooh, very clever theme wordplay – two-word phrases perfectly echoed by the revealer, and with just the right letter counts to fit grid symmetry. That is wow-worthy IMO.
And I learned a new meaning for SABLE, plus that sharks have no bones, which flung me right into research, and I learned that yes, just as I thought, sharks are vertebrates, but their spinal columns are made of cartilage – a strong cartilage because it’s calcified.
Very nice to have WEST in the appropriate half of the puzzle (barely), and how sweet that the “Nevermore” speaker is almost “never” backwards. Speaking of “backwards” and “appropriate”, very nice to have a backwards RECAP so close to the revealer.
(Candidate for a new grid term: PROLONGS for appealing lengthy answers.)
All the theme answers are vibrant, bolstered by a lovely supporting cast (TARTARE, ESPRIT, CRUMPLES, POSH, EAT FRESH), giving your puzzle, Carly, great APPEAL. Congratulations on your debut, kudos for crediting those who have helped you along the way (in your notes on XwordInfo and WordPlay, and I’m eager to see what you come up with next. Thank you!
My lemon curd recipe, handed down from my grandmother, uses whole eggs as an ingredient. So YOLK seems very odd as an answer.
From a very easy Monday to a very hard Tuesday.
RX is another verb-to-noun transition. It used to mean ‘take’. “Rx one daily” = “take one daily”.
Fraulein Clare,
A good and breezy and informative write-up; thank you!
Gute Reise!
Neat theme - can’t remember anything similar. Grid seemed atypical early week with the segmented corners. Keep the TARTARE - I’ll have the TOSTADA and the CREMA in my espresso.
Another SAL today - liked that entire NW corner.
Not sure we’ll see the spinning anything upon a CRASH.
A young PFC - Donald
Enjoyable Tuesday solve.
This puzzle is the sunny Arizona retirement community of crossword puzzles, so a definite improvement on yesterday’s graveyard. Still, a little more BTS and a little less “Nevermore” would be appreciated here. Not as dead as yesterday, but still with a cultural center somewhere around 1979. There’s some 1980’s TV, but then an actor who died in 1976 and CB’ers (Smokey and the Bandit - 1976) and a movie star whose movies were all in black and white. Despite a “modern” theme, the only two entries in the puzzle that are this century are a single themer and a slogan. Otherwise this puzzle could have run in 1999.*
I am joking, of course, but only half-joking. There’s a whole lot of xwording going on out there and all of it is fresher and more current than the NYTX. The puzzle makes money for the NYT, which makes me think they are blind to how moldy their product frequently is. Like I said yesterday, it’s not about any single entry, but why go Mae WEST with your cluing instead of Kanye WEST? Why go with Bo DEREK and not DEREK Jeter? Heck, even the PBS clue is moldy, going with a show that’s been on since 1974 instead of something like Wolf Hall, you know, hugely popular in the past decade.
Anywhoo… Otherwise a fine effort.
*Even the Spinning Beach Ball of Death is dated, as it mostly just means a program has crashed. Force restarting a Mac used to be necessary a few times a year (same with a PC and the blue screen of death), but I can’t remember the last time I had to force restart any computer.
Love Berlin so much. Wildly jealous of Clare.
Lonely NYTXW Editors Tee-Hees (LNETHS) report: Well, we had BOOB on Sunday SKINNYDIPS on Monday, and AREOLA today. Looking forward to POLE DANCER tomorrow and TOPLESS JELLO WRESTLING on Thursday. I'm assuming by the weekend we'll have rebus squares where we draw in images from the Kama Sutra. I wish the crossword department would invite me in for a short in-service on how many non-puzzle places one can find nakedness on the internet. Maybe they don't know.
This was a delightful puzzle with a great theme. A wise constructor built this.
I did not know BORAX is still a thing. I am also doubtful in a cell phone age that CBERs are a thing. Short pants are called TROU where exactly?
The triple stack of TWEETSTORM, WHINER and ANGST reminded me of many fond times scrolling past our own Anonym-oti.
BTW, it's "Ich bin kein Berliner." German word order! (I assume we are all a bit of language geeks around here)
Enjoyed the very timely shout out to SAL Mineo. The theme entries were pretty benign but had some amusement value - didn’t get the thread that tied them all together until I saw the revealer, which is also cool. Nice Tuesday with enough good cluing like “Watching the big game” for SAFARI to keep things interesting, so two good efforts so far this week. Keep it going guys and gals (and whatever else in between) over at the Times !
The only reason I knew it was ARNIE is because I recently finished an older NYTXW that had the same answer. Although, I always want to put THEBODY because that instantly comes to mind.
After taking a many weeks-long break from this blog, it was a pleasant surprise to return to read Clare's positive review of the puzzle.
Oh, and then there was ZZD @7:45 doing his very best rex imitation. Spot on.
Nice puzzle. SUBWAY clue was awesome.
If I had one small nit to pick, it was Clare's use of the word ANYWHO in her write-up. For some reason that word just grates on me.
My favorite answer today was CRUMPLES. It has a satisfying sound. It also made me think of CRUMPets and now I want one for breakfast. I too am jealous of Clare. How lovely to be going to Dublin next, but the CDC and the FDA have convinced me to stay home a bit longer as a senior. The puzzle was very well done with a solid theme. I think EATFRESH will be my mantra today.
I thought this was a Tuesday marvel, with its inspired and witty array of TECH terms and their associated BOOMS and the vision to see how they could work symmetrically in a gird. I liked how the direst of the BOOMS, the COMPUTER CRASH got the marquee billing. A terrific debut.
Happy travels, Clare!
I never heard the term “spinning beachball of death”, perhaps because I was a PC user afraid of the blue screen of death instead. Which reminds me of the computer crashing haikus; https://tomrobinson.com/OLD/faves/haiku.htm
So maybe this is another one aimed at my generation. Good.
Was enjoying all the fireworks in the themers, which were all familiar, until I got to TECHBOOMS, which was new to me and therefore something I could not have guessed. So it goes.
Hand up for liking CRUMPLES. I don't think I have ever seen the speaker of "Nevermore" clued as Poe, since he only says that indirectly as the poet.
Only erasure today was at SNOTS, which I was very much hoping would be SNIPS, something my mother used to say to describe brats. "That little snip needs a talking to.". Memory Lane.
@Gary Jugert-pretty sure TROU is the short version of the word trousers, and not the short version of the garment in question. Bet you hear from some others on this one.
Congrats on the debut, CS. Classically Smooth and an enjoyable solve. Thanks for all the fun.
Zed, I would say you're very lucky if you never have to force-restart your computer, although I agree with you it's less often than it used to be. I haven't seen the blue screen of death for years, though. Nowadays, the computer just freezes.
Hey All !
Neat theme. TECH + BOOMS. Wondering how this theme hadn't been thought of before.
Neat double-letter BOOM in SE. Got a MM, OO, EE, DD.
Thanks for the SHARKS lesson, Clare, them having hard cartilage. I pictured blobby pieces of flesh oozing through the oceans. Har. Of course, jellyfish have no bones (or brains, which blows my brain, how can something exist without a brain?)
@Gary Jugert 7:51
TROU is "short" for trousers, ergo, Short pants. You might've heard it in the phrase "drop TROU".
yd -3, should'ves 2
Duo 36, missed 1-3-6-8 (six a bonehead miss, again not seeing a yellow letter...)
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Lime @Lewis, I did my own deep dive (so to speak) i to shark anatomy. I was under the impression that only the huge Australian-area Elephant SHARKS we’re cartilaginous vertebrates but no. Then, upon reading that said cartilage calcifies, wondered about the difference between calcification and ossification to understand when is calcified vertebrae not a bone. Fascinating creatures sharks.
In addition to being such a delightful catalyst for shark education, this debut puzzle absolutely sparkles. Tuesday appropriate but with a tad of resistance because if the word play and very clever clueing. ON SAFARI ‘s clue was brilliant. So much to enjoy. I look forward to more from Carly Shuna.
@Anonymous 9:14. Agreed. My 2013 MacPro desktop needs force restarting probably once every couple of months. Typically, the computer just freezes and is unresponsive to mouse or keyboard input. Sometimes, though, it is the infinite spinning beach ball where mouse input works, but CMD-OPT-ESC does nothing. And very, very rarely (like once every couple of years), I've had the dreaded kernel panic screen (on this and my Mac laptops.) So it does happen, but it seems Zed's system is more stable or Zed is lucky (or I'm terribly unlucky.)
Also, I've never heard "Spinning beach ball of death." Just "spinning beach ball." Most of the time, a spinning beach ball does not indicate a major problem, unlike the blue screen in "the blue screen of death." There is no non-critical blue screen. The equivalent on a Mac might be the gray kernel panic screen. Spinning beach ball can just mean the system is working on something, it's spinning up external drives, it's waiting to finish a process, etc. Most of the time, the spinning beach ball is just "wait, I'm trying to finish up some things" and does not require any sort of restart. (And usually you can switch to another window and continue on your merry way as the app with the beach ball does its thing). I see spinning beach balls multiple time daily on my Mac.
The puzzle actually ran slower than an average Tuesday for me for some reason. It's a lovely puzzle with fresh, sparkling fill. I'm unsure of where my slowness came, other than it must have just taken me a little longer than usual to parse and come up with each answer, and that built up. For example, I just couldn't grok what "'Get out' key" was getting at until I had two of three letters in. Seems so obvious in retrospect, though.
eNnui for ANGST lost me some time, especially as SONATINA fit so nicely there in the cross. eNnui obviously doesn't fit the "dread" part of the clue, but seeing "Existential" immediately brought eNnui to mind. Oh, and while I got CREMA right away, I spelled it CREMe, which lost me time at the end trying to figure out what letter(s) in my puzzle were amiss. I never checked the cross initially.
BTS stans are quite annoying
Odd reaction to the puzzle, somewhere around in-between land. I try to ignore pop culture, which I find a bit distasteful at times, so I don't mind skewing a little older. Shrug.
To those who are interested in the spinning beachball of death (I use a Mac so I am quite familiar with it), see Jim Horne's comment at XWordInfo.com. Too true.
Thanks so much for the kind words, everyone! I am really happy most of you enjoyed the puzzle!
@Zed, I 100% agree with you! The NYT puzzles are definitely not my favorites of all the puzzles I solve. As you have likely heard, the editors change a lot of clues and I think the clues tend to skew boring and to an older audience. In this case, I wanted (and fought) to keep Mae WEST and Bo DEREK both as clued that way because they are the only women mentioned in the puzzle.
Clue for Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) found in today's grid:
React to a nytxword dnf, maybe (4 letters, answer below)
Fortunately, I did not face the dnf finish today, although I did have a typo to clear up (TARTAeE/TeOU) as a biproduct of using the app instead of paper solve.
Hand up for PROLONGS as a term for exceptional long answers, @Lewis.
Here's the short answer to the HDW clue:
SIGH (begins at 27D, moves SE)
Nice write-up, Clare. As an ASIDE, my son is returning to his home in Hamburg today, after scuba diving (no report of SHARKs) in Malta.
For some reason, I thought SONATINA but wrote in SONATINe, which made it really, really hard to see COMPUTER CRASH. Even worse, I mixed my TOSTADA in with a TOSTito, ending up with TOSTADo, and thinking the degraded clue was referring inappropriately to Obama. In my partial defense, I think ABASED is something you did to yourself, while degraded is something others did to you. But maybe that's just me.
Fortunately, I was so surprised to learn that sharks have no bones back in my sophomore year of high school (60 years ago) that I have never forgotten it.
I do have to say that "Litmus ______" is one of the lamest partials I've encountered. But maybe I'm just feeling grumpy because of sonatine.
RX means prescriptions.
I enjoyed the solve, but didn’t get the theme until I came here. And I still only sort of get it.
Liked all of the themers, especially PHOTO BOMB, and the clue for ON SAFARI.
I chuckled at ROTS next to CLOT and again when I remembered SNOTS was there too. I'm never too old for some gross-out humor, I suppose.
Thx, Carly, fun Tues. adventure! :)
Hi Clare; good to see you, and thx for your 'ausgezeichnet' write-up. I grew up a Celtics fan during the Cousy/Russell era, but now pull for the Warriors. 🤞
Med.
Pretty much on the constructor's wavelength for this one.
Echoing @Zed's (7:45 AM) comment re: the 'spinning beach ball'. Force quitting the app and reopening it always works for me. Can't recall the last time I had to force quit the computer. That being said, ymmv as @Anonymous (8:41 AM) points out. Iow, the clue is valid, albeit for some of us, the 'beach ball' very seldom (if ever) requires a total re-boot.
Two famous ARNIEs I can recall offhand: Schwarzenegger & Palmer.
A most enjoyable puz! :)
@jae
Successful Croce in just under two hrs., which places it in the easy-med range for me. Found the left half much tougher than the right. See you next Mon.! :)
Am embarking on a new NYT xword schedule: rather than solving when the puz comes out (at 7:00 PM, PST), I'll wait for the 'day of', hoping to gain the benefit of fresh solving energy (and perhaps, better insight). :)
___
yd 0 (lucked out on the final word) / W: 5* / WH: 2 / Sed: 18 / Duo: 35
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
My goodness! Quite an impressive debut here. Easy enough - no, perfect actually - for a new solver to gain some Tuesday confidence and yet a grid/theme with tons of APPEAL for those more experienced. Well done Carly! Hope to see you cartwheeling into the Crossword circus again soon.
SONATINA was new to me and the fact that SHARKS are boneless. A spinning beach ball of death was not a familiar term but I am unfortunately very well versed in the mechanics of starting up an ancient old desktop after a static blue screen CRASH. I keep putting it off but really must get myself a new setup that’s in PACE with the modern world. Any of you COMPUTER aces out there have any recommendations?
@Carly - re ...they are the only women mentioned in the puzzle, you could have clued 32a as "Victoria Beckham's 'Spice Girl' moniker".
Excellent puzzle. To me it felt very different from what the Times typically foists on us.
@Roo. I can't resist your softball question, "how can something exist without a brain?"
My answer: Look at all the Republicans.
When did we add a "k" to mimic ? And "flake out" doesn't help any. Otherwise a decent Tuesday and Clare provides a welcome break from OFL's deep dive into theme analysis.
I had to resort, unsuccessfully, to a force restart a few days ago when greeted by a totally black screen on my chrome book. In a stste of panic, I took to my phone hoping for advice. Finally I found someone suggesting the screen brightness button. Duh ! But "Hurray". I know my phone does its own thing when it's in my pocket, but I didn't know my laptop did its own thing at night.
@Clare
Having done 300+ dives, I can tell you that SHARKS (see avatar)are more afraid of you than you are off them. Granted it only takes one exception so it's always best to be cautious.
re: spinning beachball of death, never had a PC and always used Macs. Like some others here, I haven't experienced a crash in years.
A very cute play on words and a second very nice early week puzzle in a row. Best news of all: no Luddites like me were harmed in the solving of this puzzle. I'm pretty sure I've seen the term PHOTOBOMB in earlier crosswords though I wouldn't have known it on its own. I don't even know how to "make an appearance" in my own picture. (Don't ask. I have some Zoom stories. Or more accurately some non-Zoom stories...)
I knew TWEET STORM and COMPUTER CRASH but not EMAIL BLAST. So that's what it's called when 75 people you don't know -- and really didn't especially want to hear from -- each put "reply all" on their emails to each other and, bam, you're included on all 75, willy-nilly? There should be a law against such a thing.
Enjoyable and almost completely junk-free. Kudos, Carly. A very nice Tuesday.
@kitshef (7:18) - That bit about "Rx" originally meaning "take" is quite interesting, and I had to jump down the rabbit hole on the etymology. The generally accepted wisdom is that Rx comes from the Latin "recipe," which means "take," and was initially used as a verb in the type of usage you gave, like "Rx one daily" and only took on the noun sense of "prescription" in the early 20th century.
There is an alternate theory of the Rx symbol that it is derived from the Egyptian eye of Horus. A third theory is that is comes from the astrological sign for Jupiter. Neither of those strike me as convincing as the accepted derivation.
Thanks for the guest commentary Clare and 2THUMBS RAISED to Carly for a POW award for her debut puzzle. Don’t often do or respond to Tuesday grids, but today is an exception worth noting. I was especially pleased to have the generational balance between the theme entries and texting mysteries as juxtaposed to the MRT, ARNIE, WEST & ALF from early times. Giving everyone a fair shot seems like a good thing, though now I need to read previous posts to understand the WHINER ANGST that seems sure to have been glossed over from my Pollyanna outlook.
This was a delightful puzzle to work “in real blog time” after returning from Turkey and Greece. I’m glad Clare liked it but even though I enjoyed it I think it skewed pretty old. Perhaps it was intended to strike a balance given the social media references. I wonder how long ALF and Bo DEREK can merit NYT puzzle inclusion. May Mae West live on because I think she has classic status.
@Gary Jugert…I have never heard the term “drop trou” IRL and it just makes me wonder if I just didn’t hang out with the right people.
Count me as one who has rarely gotten that circle of death (whether beach all or rainbow wheel) since I got a MacBook instead of a PC laptop. Maybe I’m lucky or the programs I use are just not worthy of a computer crash.
On a side note, I just sneezed about four times in a row. I love my flowers and abundance of greenery but my sinuses tell me the Mediterranean climate has something good to offer other than constant sunshine!
Alternate clues:
3D. Anti-scurvy fanatic
10D Ike’s boy?
CLOVER
SONATINA
BTW, I saw on PBS that the CDC recommends not taking RXS INXS.
@RooMonster 9:19 asks “how can something exist without a brain?” I saw an interview with Peter Navarro last night, and I can assure you that it is possible.
Really nice debut for Carly Schuna.
This TuesPuz was mostly easy, but had little hard spots, which is always nice for a solvequest that gets yer attention. (yo, @CREMA & SONATINA.)
BOMB, STORM, CRASH, BLAST … TECH stuff that makes BOOMS. Sorta got it.
staff weeject pick: MLB. Had my fave team in the clue. (M&A used to live in Rochester, MN).
fave bonus innards: MIMICKED. ONSAFARI. boneless SHARKS clue. honey of a CLOVER clue.
Thanx for the techtalk, Ms. Schuna darlin. And congratz on yer explosive debut. Cool constructioneer photo at xwordinfo.chen, BTW. Raises the bar.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
p.s. Thanx for the primo subjob, Clare darlin. Happy European travels. M&A recommends Jyllinge.
**gruntz**
HEY, C'MON! TROU? GIMME?
BTW, "IRES" ROTS.
@Lewis - no 5 favorite clues yesterday? They're my favorite thing
Let’s go Celtics Let’s go Celtics Let’s go Celtics
🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟪🟨 🟩🟪 🟪⬜🟩🟩 🟪⬜⬜🟨🟨 ⬜🟪🟪⬜
🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩
#phrazle
https://solitaired.com/phrazle
p.p.s.s.
Almost forgot to mention: Any puz that has SNOTS & ROTS in it has lotsa M&A's undyin admirations.
Gnarly, Carly.
M&Also
It's "The Pinwheel of Death."
This puzzle dragged some of the computer nerds out of the woodwork. Speaking for the geezers of the dial-telephone, three-baseball-teams-in-NYC days, this was a pleasant and intelligently clever puzzle. My congrats to the author/creator (or whatever you call the person who creates x-word puzzles.)
Hi Clare!; I'm surprised you didn't comment that so many clues or answers were so dated (like @Zed said). Enjoy Berlin; I had a memorable time there in 1987 when the Wall was still up.
I spent a day in East Berlin and lost track of time at some sort of trade expo; I noticed it was after 11pm and my visa expired at midnight. I was making my way through the very gloomy dark deserted streets trying to remember where Checkpoint Charlie was, when I rounded a corner and literally collided with a soldier/cop/guard who was brandishing an automatic weapon. All I could think to do was to smile; he smiled back and let me proceed. (I think he was scared too.) Then at the border I was sent into a deserted room and the door was locked behind me. I noticed some pamphlets on a table saying, in English "Are you really free?", which I thought was odd, so I left them alone. Than after about ten minutes a guard burst through the door, strode to the middle of the room, and looked around theatrically. Spying the pamphlets, he read through them in heavily accented English, then screamed at me in German: "Was ist los?" Etc, etc, etc. I just said in English "I dunno; they're not mine!" Eventually he let me go too. Much fun.
[Spelling Bee: yd pg-1, missed this 6er which was a definite should've. Stupid brain. @bocamp 10:42am... I lucked into getting your word too.]
@anon 12:46 -- Yikes! I post them on two sites, and posted them on the other yesterday, but not here! My apologies to you and to anyone else who were looking for them here. And... they're coming right up!
My five favorite clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Places to find dishes of different cultures (4)
2. Mini freezer? (5)
3. Buildings with many wings (10)
4. Pilot green-lighter, in brief (2)(4)
5. Wheely good invention? (4)
LABS
BRAKE
BIRDHOUSES
TV EXEC
TIRE
OMG on the 50 k steps!! Something to whine about🤣🤣
My personal peeve is when did we lose "Alright is all wrong"?
Zz
Would go with @Zed again today for the win, what with Bo Derek (could've cross referenced Derek with 21A), Alf, and Sal Mineo, but there are the saving graces Tweet Storm and Photo Bomb.
I'll be Dammed though, I'd have been very entertained if they'd clued Car that looks like a spaceship for 65A.
Cber, Taro, Snots & Asper, LLP. Short-lived law firm done in by the name.
This was a relief after my god-awful solves of the last two Tuesdays (the tuneful chairs and the pins puzzles). I’d liked them both but I took forever to finish them. I was worried that my Tuesday IQ levels were tanking, although excited to think that I’d discovered a correlation between intelligence and days of the week – maybe a Nobel-level breakthrough? Well, no trips to Oslo in my immediate future – I sailed through this one like a speedboat on a fjord.
I liked the explosive imagery of the theme and the onomatopoeic quality of the last words of most themers. Sis, bam, BOOM. Like @Nancy, I’ve never heard the expression EMAILBLAST, but I like it. And it looks a bit like the name of that actor, EFREMZIMBALIST. Another interesting aspect of the puzzle was the ton of emotion in the fill: IRES, WHINER, ANGST, ESPRIT, APPEAL, LIT UP, GIMME, HEY, ABASED.
ASIDE: One of my favorite ASIDEs in Shakespeare is in the Balcony Scene, when Romeo creeps in on Juliet giving her soliloquy about him, and interrupts it in order to ask himself/the audience, in an ASIDE, whether he should interrupt it to talk to her.
JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO, aside
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET
’Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
…
An ASIDE interrupting a soliloquy – what’s not to like?
I guess you have to be Canadian to see MEDIA near ASPER and think of Izzy ASPER, MEDIA tycoon, politician, and philanthropist. He’s long gone now, but was in the news a lot in his day. He was born in Manitoba to Ukrainian immigrants and he never lost a sense of gratitude to Canada for taking in working people like his parents, who might otherwise have been swept up and destroyed in the myriad European conflicts of the twentieth century. In his later years, Izzy got the idea for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to "explore the subject of human rights with a special but not exclusive reference to Canada, to enhance the public's understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others and to encourage reflection and dialogue" (quoted in Wikipedia). He never saw it completed, though, as he died about a decade before the opening.
I loved the ABS clue [Six-pack contents] and fell right into it with “Ale”, even though I’d just been talking about the plank position here two days ago. I think my only write-over was “root” for TARO. Oh yeah, and the other brief problem was Pvt/PFC. I’d never heard the latter: private first class.
OK, gotta go. Writing this rambling post exactly killed the wait time before my fourth COVID shot. Off to get jabbed!
Medium-tough. Delightful. A fine debut and POW at Xwordinfo. Liked it a bunch!
Late to my morning tete-a-tete here.
Well, I think everything has been said...has it not?
The spinning beach ball I get is Siri asking me if I need driving direction, AGAIN!. Or am I mixing that up? I know I get that when I ask my TV to find "Julia"...or am I mixing up this as well. I have a MacBook Air...should I look out for a spinning ball? If I get it, should I cry? I only know one TECH BOOM type guy. He's my son-in-law. If something stares at me from the computer and it looks mean, I call him. I'm a WHINER but not a FLAKE. GIMME some TARTARE and I'll sing you a SONATINA. You can hide your AGNST if you want!
All this is to say Ay caramba, Chiquita!...What a fun Tuesday, Tonight I'll dance the fandango tango in your honor. It should be a BLASt (if I don't fall on my fondillo).......
Oh...by the way, @kitshef 7:18. I've been making lemon curd for a long time - maybe not as long as your grandmother - and I've always used the entire egg. 4 to be exactly and they have to be the jumbo kind that a free range, happy chicken, lays in the morning. I use Ina Garten's recipe...It's easy and delicious.
When I hear Arnie I think Arnold Palmer
@ Gill I - I just looked up Ina Garten's recipe. Pretty similar but Nana used less sugar - probably as it was expensive and scarce during the War. I've noticed I always find commercial lemon curd too sweet, probably as my taste buds are accustomed to Nana's version.
Also, for reasons lost to history, we always call it "melon crud" in our family.
@Barbara S (2:37) -- Oh, so we're comparin favorite ASIDEs now, are we? Here's mine -- from "The Skin of Our Teeth":
Sabina, the maid, comes to the front of the stage:
Sabina
I can't invent any words for this play, and I'm glad I can't. I hate this play and every word in it.
Now, why, you ask, would I remember those lines, much less admire them? It's because while my brother's school, Riverdale, was putting on nifty, fun musicals like "Guys and Dolls" and "The Mikado" (both of which my brother got to sing solo in, btw), my school, Dalton, was putting on serious and artsy plays like Christopher Fry's "Boy With a Cart" (you don't want to know from it, you really don't) and "The Skin of Our Teeth". When my classmate Judy Crowell (she was excellent in the part, btw) came to the front of the stage as Sabina and pronounced those deathless words of Thornton Wilder, it was all I could do to keep from jumping on stage right next to her and yelling out: "Me too, Sabina!!! Me too!!! Boy do I ever agree with you!!!"
Great debut, Carly!
To be a first time constructionist is daunting.
To earn a Jeff Chen POW! with your debut is impressive.
To have Rex on vacation is LUCKY! (Although I’m sure even that curmudgeon would have appreciated your work).
Well done!
Work computer sometimes get the spinning wheel of death when I get photo-bombed at work - meaning too many pix coming in at once - maybe combined with too many other things running (most of them browser-based).
So, which is it - Ich bin Berliner, or Ich bin ein Berliner? Or, is either wrong? Or a jelly doughnut? The Daily Illini was printed in a Berliner format.
Have to post this as it will, in all likelihood, be the only time it happens for me (average guess per phrase floats around 3):
Phrazle 100: 1/6
🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩
Disappointed in Clare's comment on Prague. I mean PRAGUE! Give us something. A nice Berlin story by the proletariat here. No Prague stories?
Anyone?
An eagle sewed up.
Also JFK phrased it correctly.
Felix was a Frankfurter.
Ich bin ein Hambuger.
A bit tough for a Tuesday. As for "Eat Fresh" and Subway? I have two words: John Oliver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDdYFhzVCDM
@Peter P - If you have a 9 year old computer that’s crashing all the time it’s time to do some basic maintenance/clean-up or maybe, just maybe, get a new computer. You should be able to apple key-tab to finder, launch activity monitor, and find what’s causing the crashes. Disk Utility also will repair permissions (at least it used to), which also solves lots of issues. All computers last longer these days, but 9 is still geriatric in computer years.
@Carly - I did notice that, but didn’t want to delete a perfectly good second day rant. I will say the puzzle seemed refreshingly low on PPP generally, which I like but probably contributed to the paucity of women.
Nice debut puzzle for Carly Schuna. The DAMMED WHINER is off today so we’ll never know how he would have rated it. Jeff Chen gave it the POW (Puzzle of the Week) award. I’d say there’s a touch too much gluey stuff like FDA, RXS PBS, ESC, CDC, CBER to merit that UNDUE praise. But the theme was clever and fun to solve so putting that ASIDE it passes the TEST.
@zed: Fine. You wanna double date with the Dereks? You take Jeter, I'll suffer along with DOD Bo. Have a nice time, you guys!
The kids are gone, back to the east, and the old nest is empty again. Visits are whirlwinds, and I haven't been doing so well with my usual shtick. A couple puzzles I didn't even DO!! Horrors! But they're gone now. Add to all that a head cold I picked up somewhere in there. That too seems to be fading, so, as Paul Newman said at the very end of "The Color of Money:"
Hey. I'm BACK!
This is a very nicely open grid, easy to get around, with a current theme set among some older fill. One writeover when I was looking for a boneless sea creature and had H in second spot, I too quickly entered wHAleS. But wait, I remembered, they HAVE to have bones. That's what we do scrimshaw on. Then: wow, SHARKS fits in the same space. How about THAT?!
An EKE sighting knocks the eagle down to a birdie. Like this one:
BBYBY
BGYYB
GGGGG
ESPRIT CRUMPLES
C'MON, GIMME a clue, my UNDUE ANGST is FRESH,
HEY, I APPEAL to you, don't PROLONG the DAMMED TEST.
--- ARNIE LEE DEREK, PFC
"Ich bin ein Berliner" translates to "I am a jelly donut."
Und "Ich bin kein Berliner" means you are not . . .
Puz not a BLAST nor a BOMB. Bo DEREK, yeah baby. READ the corners DEAR.
Wordle birdie
BBBBG
BBYYG
GGGGG
Easier than yesterday's Monday - but, as always, a pleasure to solve.
Diana, LIW
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