Relative difficulty: Slightly to the harder side of Tuesday (mostly because the first longer answer was basically unclued and the second one ... I know only vaguely)
THEME: SLEEP-WAKE CYCLES (57A: Body's internal clock patterns, regulated by the phenomenon seen in the circled letters) — circled squares form a wave across the grid that spells out CIRCADIAN RHYTHM. You also get the answer TWENTY-FOUR HOURS at the top of the grid (16A: Approximate length of 57-Across), as well as DAY up top (5A: Light time) and NIGHT down below (66A: Dark time)
Word of the Day: circadian rhythm (spelled out in the wavy circle-line across the grid) —
A circadian rhythm (/sərˈkeɪdiən/), or circadian cycle, is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. It can refer to any process that originates within an organism (i.e., endogenous) and responds to the environment (entrained by the environment). These 24-hour rhythms are driven by a circadian clock, and they have been widely observed in animals, plants, fungi and cyanobacteria.
The term circadian comes from the Latincirca, meaning "around" (or "approximately"), and diēm, meaning "day". Processes with 24-hour cycles are more generally called diurnal rhythms; diurnal rhythms should not be called circadian rhythms unless they can be confirmed as endogenous, and not environmental.
Although circadian rhythms are endogenous, they are adjusted to the local environment by external cues called zeitgebers (German for "time givers"), which include light, temperature and redox cycles. In clinical settings, an abnormal circadian rhythm in humans is known as a circadian rhythm sleep disorder.
• • •
What does the wave represent? I am not quite understanding the visual representation. It looks like an EKG or other hospital monitor ... but are circadian rhythms measured this way? If you do a google image search on [circadian rhythm], all the visuals you get are basically dial-shaped, like a clock face (not surprisingly), showing day on one side and night on the other, or something like that. Something like this, actually:
or this:
or this:
You do have the DAY / NIGHT thing going on, but those answers are so small they hardly register. As for the "circadian rhythm" wave: there's no doubt that a "wave" is a common enough representation of a cycle, but the connection between the visual (the puzzle's whole reason for being) and the word it contains just seems weak. Also, I know the phrase primarily in the plural: circadian rhythms. That's how it appears in the title of this page at UCLA Sleep Disorder clinic, for instance, and it must be the way the phenomenon is commonly talked about, otherwise I'm not sure why it would exist in the plural in my head. Its appearing in the singular here certainly isn't an error or inelegance, just a grid-fitting tweak that jarred my ear a bit. Notice that while "rhythm" is in the singular, the revealer is in the plural. More grid-fitting. Notice also that the wave isn't exactly regular, i.e. flattens out at the top of its cycle (for two squares) but then spikes at the bottom. Again, the grid is a harsh taskmaster, so you make your theme material work however you can. I don't think any of the grid accommodations here are egregious or disqualifying, but when you make a visual element into the marquee event, little glitches and incongruencies stand out (if you bother to look and don't just get on with your day like a normal person).
The fill was rough, especially through the wave, which is not surprising. As I've said before, trying to fill a grid neatly around a word that runs on diagonals is very hard. If you put TWENTY-FOUR HOURS in your grid, well, it just sits on one line and behaves itself and you just have to do the normal amount of architectural work to accommodate it, whereas when a phrase does what "circadian rhythm" does, hoo boo are you in for a rough ride. Seems like it should be the same amount of trouble—same number of letters as TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, after all; but when you leave the straight plane of the Across, now you're involving all the other Across planes in your shenanigans and the grid will really start to buck and thrash on you. This is why you get FAA and DOFOR and AONE and RAE all clumped in a wet bunch there in the middle, and then the OTTO OHM OHH wad in the east, oof, that was probably the roughest part of the grid for me. I'm never good at those [Good name for someone who works in some profession]-type answers, and having the "O" at 38A: Apt name for a car mechanic? (OTTO) all I could think of was "... OILY? Are people named OILY?" And then I wanted ERGO for THUS (40D: Start of a conclusion). And *then*, after I got THUS, I really Really wanted AHA for 44A: ""Now" I get it!" ("OHH!"). Oof, that one answer, "OHH!," gave me more trouble than anything else except the revealer, which I needed almost every cross for (that WAKE part was ???). I wanted OHM for 41D: Physicist Georg with electrifying discoveries? but AHA wasn't letting me go with it. And even when I went with it, I ended up with "AHH!" for 44A: ""Now" I get it!," which, come on, seems at least as right as "OHH!" Just a wreck, and a wreck happening on some of the junkiest fill in the grid. Not too much fun. I did run into a classic example of a kealoa* today, though, which wasn't fun either, but it does allow me to illustrate the phenomenon rather neatly with a grid shot:
The only way this could be a more perfect example of the type is if the word "Observatory" were not in the clue. Maybe it's supposed to help you decide between LOA and KEA, but not being an observatory aficionado, it didn't help me at all. And as you can see, I had the "A"—which also didn't help me at all. That is the hallmark of the kealoa*—there's no way to decide between two (or more) options until you get some crosses ... and then you get one (or more) ... and it *still* doesn't help you. This happens with a bunch of common crossword answers: ATON v ALOT, ELUDE v EVADE, etc. A kealoa is a little hassle, not a Natick**-level catastrophe. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[UPDATE: the thing about having smart readers is, well, you will hear about it if you go crashing ignorantly into their specialities. Thankfully, I have not only smart but (mostly) kind readers. So thank you to reader Bill L. for sending me the following email this morning:]
*kealoa = a short, common answer that you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.
**Natick = an impossible crossing (see blog sidebar for full definition)
This was relatively easy but no snooze. It was interesting and fun. I ATTACKed the circles right away and after 3 or 4 were filled I quickly GROKked CIRCADIANRHYTHM. I contined across that section and then south. Very clever puzzle with 5 theme answers (I didn't notice DAY & NIGHT until I was finished). I loved it.
Other: A TASTE of EATS consisting of TORTILLAS with MAYO, good to the last CRUMB(S) and a tenderLOIN if you're still hungry. Not a very LOWFAT meal. Wash it down with your favorite beer or AMBER ale from a KEG. Don't forget a HEATH bar for dessert. Then go home in your ALTIMA or Impala. Better yet, take a LIMO(S).
I enjoyed this puzzle. The other themed clues helped me fill in the circles that spell out CIRCADIAN RHYTHM, which is perfectly fine as the singular. Each person has his/her/their own CIRCADIAN RHYTHM.
The fill wasn’t bad, except for OTTO (as clued; to me, not even close as a homophone for "auto"). And OHH is a no.
I have a peculiar fondness for left-right symmetry grids, although my first thought on seeing this one was “please don’t be a Golden Arches puzzle”. It wasn’t so all is well.
ONE DIME I did not like. Make it ON A DIME and DEFAT/TEN.
Opel for a car mechanic name, anyone? Fits with MAYO and ergo.
Interestingly, CIRCADIAN RYTHYM also fits perfectly into 57 across, so I very confidently popped that in as the theme answer before I had done any surrounding fill... Once I got down there, it wasn't too hard to undo, but it was a funny coincidence!
On the easy side of medium for a Tuesday. I had virtually none of OFL's issues, other than the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad OHH. I marvel at the construction, with the serpentine circled squares and very little junk. The rhyming pair of FAA and Issa RAE didn't bother me in the slightest.
A case of the theme driving the grid. The segmented blocks of short fill glommed this thing up. Thought the DAY - NIGHT pair was the best part of the puzzle.
Starting with a straight trivia cross at 1a/1d was a harbinger. Rex highlights most of it - the THUS, OHH, OHM block is rough.
I found it lovely to have a theme dedicated to one of those life processes that goes on behind the scenes. Most themes give an enigma to be cracked, or fête something or someone famous, but how many remind us of the hidden world underlying our everyday experience? Sometimes something makes me pause and gasp at how miraculous life is, fills me with wonder and gratitude, and today that something was this puzzle’s theme.
Oh, I appreciated the construction chops that it took to put this together, plus the never-before-used clues for LOW FAT and ONE DIME, not to mention the reminder of the DALAI Lama, as I recently finished “The Book Of Joy”, basically by him and Desmond Tutu about how to be happy and make the world a better place, a book that I found motivating and inspiring and wish everyone read.
But what sticks with me most about this puzzle is the feeling it left me with, that brief brush with the ineffable, that moment of awe. Thank you for making this, Karen!
Even before reading Bill L's elegant note I was delighted with this puzzle. I found it easy with a nice flow. Don't understand Rex's complaint about a singular CR. Agree with him and perhaps everyone who did the puzzle that AHH is not even close to being acceptable. But I imagine that the constructor, Karen Steinberg, and Will Shortz and his team all labored mightily to fix this, but could not find a solution. This excellent puzzle will likely be remembered not for its excellence but for this one bad entry. Alas.
If you take any point on a circle, say 12 o’clock , and move the circle along a straight line, as the 12 o’clock point rotates, it will trace out a sine wave.
@smalltowndoc: I find that the "apt name" clues often depend on a serious Midwest accent to make sense, and today's is no exception. I grew up on the east cost, where we pronounce "auto" AW-toe. I now live in Michigan (where they say AH-toe) so it was nice to see ANN Arbor and MSU. Although they definitely don't go together. GO BLUE!
This was the hardest Tuesday in a while, and I'm not sure why. I was distracted by the wavy circles, but I had TWENTYFOUR HOURS right off the bat, not from the clue--from the crosses. ARE SO, A TASTE, DO FOR--clues like this always slow me down a bit. "Thrum" for STRUM. Like Rex, I'd always heard "sleep wake cycle." None of this adds up to much difficulty, but there you have it.
A graphic at this site shows the circadian rhythm the letter writer describes (and the basis of this puzzle). You have to scroll down a bit to see it: https://www.buckinstitute.org/blog/time-to-improve-your-health-focusing-on-circadian-rhythms/
I think my favorite thing about this puzzled is I learned what PIED means. I just entered it on faith and looked it up after. That's pretty cool that I have never heard of it before cuz I'm older than dirt. I guess a downside is that it is only Tuesday and I'm already dipping my toe into the "solve on faith" pool - but if we keep getting reasonably clean (as in low arcane PPP) grids this good be a very pleasant week for us solvers.
Thank you Karen Steinberg for a delightful puzzle from start to finish! This morning was an oddity in my suburban neighborhood. It was absolutely quiet for a change: no mowers, no leaf blowers, no garbage trucks, no heavy equipment in operation at my neighbor’s lot. Instead there was dappled sunshine, coffee, and an enjoyable puzzle to start my day.
@Lewis Thank you for the book recommendation. I can use something uplifting to read in view of sad current news events.
All that constructing time and effort lavished on a puzzle that's all about the construction chops it took to create it but that will have absolutely no effect on the solver's solving experience.
I think of these creations, impressive though they might be as far as the difficulty of achieving them, as "masturbatory puzzles". You don't have to think of them that way, of course, though somehow I always do.
But when you ignore the tiny little circles as I did and just solve it as a themeless, it's not a half bad Tuesday. There were some nice clues and a lovely lack of proper names.
You obviously have real constructing talent, Karen. Next time, can you bring solvers into the enterprise and give us something we need to GROK in order to finish the puzzle? Today we were just observers of the trick and not active participants.
I think I read somewhere that the “standard” American accent, what you hear most on the news and radio and podcasts, is Nebraskan/Midwestern (although Nebraska is more Great Plains than midwestern IMO). Hence, no problem with OTTO sounding exactly like auto here.
Liked this one even more than yesterday’s. Having TORTILLA before running into OHH probably helped. I’m curious why that wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone. I think I’ve eaten at Chipotle’s twice in my entire life, but what else would a tex-mex like restaurant be warming?
@Anoa Bob from late last night - The hallux is different than the other toes. I do think the actual reason we have a different word for its finger counterpart is the thumb’s opposability, not the other structural differences.
I loved the theme; thanks to Bill L. for making it even more lovable. I don't agreee that 16-A is basically unclued; it's clued by the clue for 57-A. I needed some crosses to see what the latter would be, but got the former just from the last O. What else could it be?
What on earth is IFC?
I grew up in Wisconsin, so the clue for OTTO gave me no trouble; nice variation, I thought. OHH was tougher -- I started to put in aHa, then remembered that it might be OHo, and waited for crosses. Fortunately, OHM was unambiguous.
Kealoa is pretty bad in this case, because the great majority of the big astronomical telescopes are on Mauna Kea. There is a solar observatory on Mauna Loa with one major telescope, but compared to the dozen or so bigger facilities on Mauna Kea...
Hey All ! Very neat puz. I'm sure Karen has less hair now, from tearing it out trying to get any kind of clean fill. The center section, with its six 4's, two 3's, two 5's, and the "wave" in there, holy frijole, I'm surprised how good the fill Is there.
I believe the top half probably wasn't too difficult to fill, but the center-to-bottom section, wow, what a nightmare.
Anyway, turned out a quite cool puz. I'm surprised, as Jeff gave YesterPuz the POW. This one had to be in the running.
Re: Cheater Squares explained (from YesterComments and @albatross) - Cheater Squares (or blocks, or, as I call them, Blockers) are the black squares used to make filling the grid easier, they don't change the total word count in a grid. Normally, Blockers are used to separate one word from another. Take row four in this puz as an example, it has two Blockers, making three separate words. Without them, it'd only be one word (a 15) going Across. Now look at the Blockers under SLC and OHM. If they weren't there, you'd still have only one word Down, and one word Across, ergo, the total word count didn't change. I hope I've described that well.
It was covered by crosses, so I didn't need to know PICOT, but I yearn for the tap-tapity-tap of well tatted needlework knowledge, and so I asked Uncle G afterward, and I've become a PICOT fan. It's pretty.
We rescued a TOM CAT from an alley years ago and he turned out to be the funniest and toughest cats ever. You couldn't play with him as he'd tear your arm from the socket, but if he crawled up on your lap he'd let you pet him forever. When he got old, he lost a fight with a stellar jay at his outside watering dish and subsequently spent most of his remaining years inside.
The boring result of selecting CIRCADIAN RHYTHM as the theme: SLEEP-WAKE CYCLES and TWENTY FOUR HOURS become marquee answers. Bouncing ball, good, the rest, blah.
Yays:
The word GROK is my new favorite.
Aren't we all a bit more pro-AMBER thanks to Jurassic Park?
RED ALERT! ALIENS! Right next to each other.
Gotta yay all TORTILLAs. Remember the scene in Napoleon Dynamite when grandma calls them tor-till-as?
Boos:
DO FOR and ARE SO and YOU IN and OK SURE. Maybe more junky than it should be? Could be? DEFER / DOFOR are a mini theme I'd DIE FER.
OHH... dagnabit! So close to OHO I almost started an OHO party, but alas I'm left weeping in a darkened alley of half-baked smelly OHHs.
Uniclues:
1 "You like anchovies? Gross," say. 2 Post-murdery feelings of Biblical brother. 3 Noted guru plans to bring peace against the will of many. 4 Tours bikini-clad city in style. 5 The same-ole same-ole emergency as always. 6 The one in the mirror looking fine in a see-thru tank top. 7 Chomp, chomp, chomp, ohh. 8 Accountants ledger entry for leftovers.
1 ATTACK A TASTE 2 CAIN ACHY 3 DALAI PLOTS 4 LIMOS MIAMI 5 DIE CUT RED ALERT 6 YOU IN A-ONE MESH 7 HEATH SLAY 8 CRUMBS, TORTILLA
My rating: tough for a Tuesday + an impressive theme and construction feat. I found it slow going until I got a few circles into the RHYTHM and had my AHH moment. Getting the rest of the wave in place helped the bottom half go much more quickly and got me SLEEP-WAKE CYCLES from the initial S. I thought it was a smashing grid-spanner and found the grid's closing NIGHT very satisfying. For me, a cut-above Tuesday for sure.
Not Tuezzy, other than OHH. For once, I looked down for the revealer referenced in 16A, saw the circles and proudly filled in CIRCADIANRHYTHM at 57A. I really appreciate finding these 3 words of the same length and making a wonderful theme.
Funny how including a minority female in the form of Issa RAE is on the no-no 'ese list today rather than a cause for celebration. Speaking of Issa, "A Black Lady Sketch Show" on HBO made me laugh harder and more often than any comedy I've seen in a while. She and the other actresses are SO talented and find truly inventive subjects and characters for their sketches.
We all know what a kealoa is, but today does not count as one just because Rex doesn't know the observatory. Just googled famous observatories, and the Mauna Kea Observatory is literally the first image that pops up. On a related note, images are being released from the new gold plated Webb telescope that has opened up a million miles away (after being MARRED by some space dust). Looks almost 5 billion years into the past - just mind boggling.
Today's actual kealoa: areso/amtoo. Runner up: oksure/uhsure/imgood (I think we just saw this one). OHH has been covered by dueling 7:38am anonymice.
@Zed, you may remember that the first choice you make at Chipotle is whether to have your TORTILLA heated in that little round iron.
SPRY is a word that is meant to be a compliment, but is actually a bit ageist and sexist. What is the age entry point to be considered spry? Never heard of a man being spry. Not complaining about it in the puzzle, just musing.
Thx, Karen, for this crunchy, clever Tues. construction! :)
Med+
Some welcome resistance in this one. Took a while to GROK the theme.
Got DIE-CUT & ANN, but didn't know 'Marriage Story' or the 'Midsize Nissan', so the NW was slow to develop.
Moved methodically down and around finishing at EGO.
Wanted CIRCADIAN RHYTHM before SLEEP WAKE CYCLE, so a 'half-a-pop' (semi-malapop).
Learned both CIRCADIAN & PICOT from SB.
Had aHH before OHH, so TORTILLA was lukewarm.
Bottom line: a somewhat challenging adventure, but most enjoyable! :)
@jae
What a coincidence! lol; was stuck at the same cell as you. Finally, made an inspired guess which resulted in a successful solve. Took 1 1/2 hrs., so comparatively easy for a Croce. See you next Mon. :) (btw, successfully executed the 'acrobatic maneuver' in h.s. gym class) ___ yd's Duo: 34 / practice Duo: 33
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
For me, the puzzle was disappointingly easy. I filled in the wavy and long answers immediately, and zoomed through the rest in record time.
The one thing that bothered me (aside from the lack of resistance) is the human circadian rhythm is closer to 25 hours. When humans in experiments with no windows wake and sleep naturally, that's the cycle length. So at first I wrote out 25 hours as the long answer and thought that was a good trick, but the crossword answer turned out to be 24. Oh well.
Like @Nancy, I solved as a themeless and forgot to even look at the circles until I came here, despite the fact that I was able to GROK the theme quite early. A few of the proper names were a little tough but the crosses were fair with the exception of 41D/44A which was annoying with the AHA/AAH/OHO/OOH(??) thing going on there.
The best part about this was what I learned of the CIRCADIAN RHYTHM from Rex’s illustrations. Quite interesting that peak efficiency and fastest reaction both come out around the time most people are getting off work. No wonder everyone sprints to the parking lot so quickly. And I now know why I can’t stay awake past 9 o’clock. Here I thought I was just getting old but now I know it’s the melatonin kicking in. what a great system!
The OTTO clue/answer has appeared at least once recently in a nyt puzzle, I think--although I occasionally do a New Yorker puzzle, so it may have been there. Anyway, I confidently popped in that answer based on past puzzling experience (pun not intended, but noticed).
But relying on past puzzling experience can lead to trouble (hello, OHH), which happened to me briefly on 1A, where I plunked in ruck (an ALAN who appeared very recently) instead of ALDA without even paying attention to the rest of the clue. It didn't take long to see my error from the crosses.
Wondered about the circles, then finished the puzzle, turned off the computer and the bedside lamp, and gave in to my CIRCADIAN RHYTHM without noticing the wavy phrase. Doh.
I'm an 82 year old man, and when I was in my early 70's my son commented "you're very spry for your age." He's in the medical field and it made me feel great. Sadly, he couldn't say the same thing today.
OHH la la. I thought this tres clever and quite enjoyable. Anything to do with sleeping and waking up is something I've been consumed by lately. In my youth I could get by with 4 hours. Now that I'm old and feeble I'll say the "Now I lay me down to sleep, please dear lord don't let me cheat". You see, I usually have to take a little white pill and it allows me to drift away for a good ten hours. But when I WAKE up, I'm still drowsy as hell and I have trouble putting. my shoes on. Mr. Bill...maybe you know the answer to this? How do animals know the exact time to go out and do their job. Their timing is always perfect and daylight time changes don't seem to affect them. Is it the way the sun sets and rises? Interesting this CICADIAN thing. @burtonkd. That little round iron thing used to heat up the TORTILLAS is called a comal. They do wonders on pancakes as well.
Circadian rhythms are very important in dealing with highway safety regulations affecting the schedules of truck drivers. So this is hardly an esoteric topic.
Brilliant comment by Nancy (8:57). I blame the editors. Like Jeff Chen, they admire the craftsmanship of a puzzle without worrying about whether there's any fun in it.
After entering the two grid-spanning themers and putting the required letters in the circles, the challenge for the constructor was to fill in the blanks, not to find colorful words.
All of this was pretty easy for me. Never saw “Marriage Story” but the downs up there were easy. Had to wait on the aHH/OHH. But Observatory made Mauna LOA a snap rather than the proverbial kealoa. My husband was a serious astronomy buff and read Sky and Telescope religiously and Mauna LOA was one of the ones in the US we never visited, but I had certainly heard of it and seen pictures.
Since the top third was a snap, I had TWENTY FOUR HOURS and when it was completed, the other theme answers lit up. I read the reveal and looked at the wavy line of circles and filled them in only because I have a serious sleep disorder and during the diagnosis learned a great deal about CIRCADIAN RHYTHM. Obviously not the knowledge depth of Bill L. (Thank you Bill for writing and @Rex for including Bill’s informative letter). It took me way too long to understand just how important sleep is.
@Sheryl - more recent studies have put the human period at just over 24 hours. The 25-hour study was found to be flawed. I was going to post the same comment but thought "mabye I'd better double-check that".
Nice puzzle Karen. Anytime a grid gets a mixed review from the commentariat that should alert the constructor that they/he/she has hit the xword sweet spot. Personally, I had a good time solving after a nice night’s rest, so thumbs up here. As a 79 year old, I feel @JC66’s chagrin at the accumulation of those old circadian cycles…thank heavens that Crossworld keeps at least some mental muscles flexible. And for @JBERG here’s the opening about graph from the IFC website: “ Established in 2000 and since becoming a leader in the independent film industry, IFC Entertainment consists of two distribution labels that are devoted to bringing the best of independent and foreign films to the largest possible audience: IFC Films and IFC Midnight.” The Sundance Channel is a refreshing option for anyone who can’t bear the tripe of commercial tv programming.
Mentally spry still counts, and I can no longer say I've not heard spry to refer to a man. This is my week to ponder 82 year olds, as I met an 82 year old cyclist at cafe that I rode with in a bike club 25 years ago. He wasn't particularly spry on the bike, but he's still out there doing it, to the joy of all of us.
@Sheryl, I remember that 25 hour circadian rhythm result every time I wake up a little groggy.
I found this one pretty easy, and experienced the entire AHA>OHO>OOH thing. I think OOH is OK for finally understanding something, and I save OH for a sarcastic response for being told something obvious.
The pronunciation of a short o has always been something my New England wife and Upstate NY me have always differed on. She thinks I make it sound more like a short a, as in "frag pand", which is ridiculous, of course, whereas she once baffled me by asking for a "clock", while in another room, and I thought she was saying "cloth". Nevertheless, we persist.
Anyone desiring a thorough understanding of PIED is invited to read PIED Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins. "Glory be to God for dappled things-" and he's just getting started with the "dappled things".
Nice concept, KS. I Knew Something was up right away and was pretty sure I knew what it was, and got that nice smug feeling when my suspicions were confirmed. Thanks for all the fun.
True, circadian rhythms are not exactly waves. Saw them as cycles as in sleep cycles… though agree w 🦖it isa less precise word- visual matchup. There are two waves - night-day-night-day —so maybe that fits a circadian rhythm. 🤔Could be a moot point. 🤗
Anyway, good one for a Tuesday - very fast because coincidentally my SLEEPCYCLE was messed up last night.
Are you looking for a bike you can ride NGHT or DAY? Come on down to SLEEPWAKECYCLES. We’re open TWENTYFOURHOURS!
I had never noticed until today that DALAI anagrams to Adlai. Two wonderful examples of humanity personified.
I wonder if IFC offers sides of coleslaw. SARI, I’ll see myself out.
I liked this puzzle quite a bit. Nice concept with decent fill considering the waves of constraints inherent in the conceit. Thanks a bunch, Karen Steinberg.
pabloinnh, Hopkins is always a good idea. And Pied Beauty is aces. But for visual imagery I'll take The Windhover. Maybe the first major modern poem in English.
I'm glad that Bill L. filled in, but you don't have to be a physiologist or neuropsychologist to understand the connection between circular motion and sinusoidal waves, because it's really trigonometry. @Anonymous7:47AM has roughly the right idea. If you place a blot at 12 o'clock on a wheel, apply uniform circular notion to the wheel, and then track the height of the blot as a function of time, you get a sinusoidal wave. Like this.
What @Anonymous was describing is actually a cycloid, the curve you'd see if you place a reflector at the rim of a bicycle wheel and watch the reflection in the dark as the bike moves to the right. Like this (look from 0:10 to 0:15).
There's nothing like a visualization to get math across!
Since I'm scheduled to hit 73 tomorrow (modulo a rogue bus), I offer the twin disciplines of yoga and tai chi to those past any age who'd like to become more spry. They work. But, as one doctor confirmed to me: the first part of the body to deteriorate is the ankle. Both teachings stress (in a good way) the same two aspects - balance and flexibility. You won't be able to take out Chuck Norris (wish that were so) if you've slid much past 60, but you'll be much less likely to trip, fall, and bust something.
Here's a man I once studied with, before yoga but the same time as tai chi who can: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/well/live/how-karate-helped-an-aging-expert-age-better.html
I was briefly thrown after putting in TWENTYFOURHOURS, I immediately threw in CIRCADIANRYTHM for 57A. Then wondered why none of the downs were fitting until I realized that went in the circles...
Easy. No real problems with this one, which was pretty smooth given the constraints. Interesting Tuesday and I appreciated Bill L’s note on CR. Liked it!
Agree with @burtonkd 10:04 – I've never understood the need to always qualify SPRY with "for one's age" or somesuch rot. It comes off as an insult. If you're spry you're spry, period. "Nimble" as a clue would have been fine.
Like others, I was expecting CIRCADIAN RHYTHM at 57a. I ended up not even noticing it in the circles. The net result: this puzzle made me want to take a tomcat-nap.
Here's the very first vocal recording of a song you all know. I'm not quite sure if the instrument heard is a cor anglais or an oboe— the musician is credited with playing both on the album. I think it's a cor anglais. But wind players are invited to debate.
Alrighty then. The Circles. E/W puzgrid symmetry. Learned somethin new [that CIRCADIANRHYTM ain't SLEEPWALKCYCLES]. Guardians of the Galaxy clue reference [one of M&A's fave flicks]. OHH crossin OHM [staff weeject intersection pick]. DAY & NIGHT bonus Easter eggs. TuesPuz thUmbsUp.
Also a nice selection of ohh-no-knows or near-no-knows: * KIDD/DIANE. The KIDD dude has a faint ring to him, but M&A don't follow the NBA. * (MC)REN. M&A also don't follow rap. * ECCO. M&A don't follow Danish shoe trivia. * IFC. M&A don't follow what Sundance does. * PICOT. M&A just didn't follow this, at all.
faves: That cool isolated area in the puzgrid center parts. Different & spooky & slightly desperate. Like.
That's enough for now; gotta go pop popcorn & watch the hearings...
Thanx for the fun, Ms. Steinberg darlin. Real nice job. Evidently it's now time for M&A to wake up.
I did a little happy bounce in my chair and I think I let out an audible "yes" when I saw the TWENTYFOUR HOURS at 16 Across. I then immediately filled in CIRCADIAN RHYTHM in the cyclic circles running across the grid's equator without any help from crosses. Talk about bowling in my lanes!
The CIRCADIAN RHYTHM is a popular topic in Intro Psych and it gets a much more extensive examination in the upper level Biopsychology course. As Sheryl @10:23 and kitshef @11:07 note, the body's internal clock runs slightly longer than 24 hours and requires regular resetting by exposure to the external 24 hr. DAY NIGHT cycle. This is why it is easier to sleep later than usual than it is to get up earlier than usual. It's also why jet lag is more pronounced when traveling from west to east than from east to west.
Most of us know the importance of diet and exercise in maintaining optimum health but probably fewer of us are aware that CIRCADIAN RHYTHM regularity is the third pillar or mainstay of overall health. All physiological systems, including the immune system, benefit form CIRCADIAN regularity. I could go on and on and on but I'll stop now.
Can’t believe this. I am doing my Msc thesis on exactly this theme and have my proposal defense in two days. This felt like a cosmic sign to me, really loved it 😃
The Pied Piper of folklore/fairytale fame was so named because he wore a suit of many bright colors as he played his pipe to lead, first the rats, and then the children of Hamelin, Germany away.
DNF thanks to that OH* O*M cross (originally had aha, then oho) and that gross middle section. Knew Kidd, knew Rae, threw in TSA for 37 down. Disne von Furstenberg? Sure, why not? No clue what was going on with that trash clue for 26 across so DOTOR seemed as good as anything.
Overall author/editors tried to be too cute and ended up with garbage.
Pretty good. I liked the theme. It doesn’t bother me that a wave is used to represent the C?IRCADIANRHYTHM. There were a few problems with the three-letter glue: SLC, GYN, IFC, OHH, REN, MSU, FAA etc I had eRa before ARM. Can’t believe I’m the only one who stepped in that trap. Overall, pretty good. You don’t see ANODE to the body’s internal clock patterns every day. But with a bit more editing it could have been even better.
@anon 6:50: No, you are not wrong; this is one of several problems I have with toDAY's puzzle. It IS the superEGO that controls the id. Editor: you were in the wrong part of your SLEEPWAKECYCLE on that one.
Thankfully, that of the syndilink officer has AT LAST! come full circle. That guy sleeps on the job twice as long as Dagwood.
The theme is very clever; finally some good use is made of grid circles, and the perfectly placed DAY/NIGHT tightened it. There was a price to pay, almost certainly had to be. It got pretty rough in the middle there, and at the east end. Worth it? That's a tossup.
One more complaint: the cluing was very uneven. Let's take SARI. The Tuesday solver is not going to know what the hell a "choli" is, or even the language it comes from. I just happened to know PICOT because I used to work in a garment factory, but it's probably not Tuesday material. Then again, many clues are "moo-cow" easy, as @M&A would say.
This is a diamond in the rough. If it was DIECUT, maybe better, but as is, just a par.
My Wordle birdie putt lipped out; don't you think that's cruel? Just a par.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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89 comments:
This was relatively easy but no snooze. It was interesting and fun. I ATTACKed the circles right away and after 3 or 4 were filled I quickly GROKked CIRCADIANRHYTHM. I contined across that section and then south. Very clever puzzle with 5 theme answers (I didn't notice DAY & NIGHT until I was finished). I loved it.
Other: A TASTE of EATS consisting of TORTILLAS with MAYO, good to the last CRUMB(S) and a tenderLOIN if you're still hungry. Not a very LOWFAT meal. Wash it down with your favorite beer or AMBER ale from a KEG. Don't forget a HEATH bar for dessert. Then go home in your ALTIMA or Impala. Better yet, take a LIMO(S).
What helped me was lines from "Repo Man:"
"What's yer name, kid?"
"Otto."
"Otto Parts?"
I enjoyed this puzzle. The other themed clues helped me fill in the circles that spell out CIRCADIAN RHYTHM, which is perfectly fine as the singular. Each person has his/her/their own CIRCADIAN RHYTHM.
The fill wasn’t bad, except for OTTO (as clued; to me, not even close as a homophone for "auto"). And OHH is a no.
I have a peculiar fondness for left-right symmetry grids, although my first thought on seeing this one was “please don’t be a Golden Arches puzzle”. It wasn’t so all is well.
ONE DIME I did not like. Make it ON A DIME and DEFAT/TEN.
Opel for a car mechanic name, anyone? Fits with MAYO and ergo.
Interestingly, CIRCADIAN RYTHYM also fits perfectly into 57 across, so I very confidently popped that in as the theme answer before I had done any surrounding fill... Once I got down there, it wasn't too hard to undo, but it was a funny coincidence!
On the easy side of medium for a Tuesday. I had virtually none of OFL's issues, other than the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad OHH. I marvel at the construction, with the serpentine circled squares and very little junk. The rhyming pair of FAA and Issa RAE didn't bother me in the slightest.
" ... little glitches and incongruencies stand out (if you bother to look and don't just get on with your day like a normal person)."
It's not often that I am accused of being a "normal person", but I will wear that description as a badge of honor today.
A case of the theme driving the grid. The segmented blocks of short fill glommed this thing up. Thought the DAY - NIGHT pair was the best part of the puzzle.
Starting with a straight trivia cross at 1a/1d was a harbinger. Rex highlights most of it - the THUS, OHH, OHM block is rough.
YOU alone of all - YOU IN the sky
Harmless solve but not my thing.
Same! Thought I was headed for a PR, but I took too long to accept that I was wrong.
When seventeen years didn't fit 17a and when cicadian rhythm didn't fit the circled letters, I knew it wasn't about me.
Truly "bugged" me out.
I found it lovely to have a theme dedicated to one of those life processes that goes on behind the scenes. Most themes give an enigma to be cracked, or fête something or someone famous, but how many remind us of the hidden world underlying our everyday experience? Sometimes something makes me pause and gasp at how miraculous life is, fills me with wonder and gratitude, and today that something was this puzzle’s theme.
Oh, I appreciated the construction chops that it took to put this together, plus the never-before-used clues for LOW FAT and ONE DIME, not to mention the reminder of the DALAI Lama, as I recently finished “The Book Of Joy”, basically by him and Desmond Tutu about how to be happy and make the world a better place, a book that I found motivating and inspiring and wish everyone read.
But what sticks with me most about this puzzle is the feeling it left me with, that brief brush with the ineffable, that moment of awe. Thank you for making this, Karen!
I thought "OHH" was a nice change from aha and oho and aah.
OOH, OHH, AHH, AAH, OHO, AHA--so freaking annoying.
Even before reading Bill L's elegant note I was delighted with this puzzle. I found it easy with a nice flow. Don't understand Rex's complaint about a singular CR. Agree with him and perhaps everyone who did the puzzle that AHH is not even close to being acceptable. But I imagine that the constructor, Karen Steinberg, and Will Shortz and his team all labored mightily to fix this, but could not find a solution. This excellent puzzle will likely be remembered not for its excellence but for this one bad entry. Alas.
If you take any point on a circle, say 12 o’clock , and move the circle along a straight line, as the 12 o’clock point rotates, it will trace out a sine wave.
@kitshef. The clue for 20A is "Words on the smallest current U.S. coin". The words are ONE DIME, not ON a DIME.
@smalltowndoc: I find that the "apt name" clues often depend on a serious Midwest accent to make sense, and today's is no exception. I grew up on the east cost, where we pronounce "auto" AW-toe. I now live in Michigan (where they say AH-toe) so it was nice to see ANN Arbor and MSU. Although they definitely don't go together. GO BLUE!
This was the hardest Tuesday in a while, and I'm not sure why. I was distracted by the wavy circles, but I had TWENTYFOUR HOURS right off the bat, not from the clue--from the crosses. ARE SO, A TASTE, DO FOR--clues like this always slow me down a bit. "Thrum" for STRUM. Like Rex, I'd always heard "sleep wake cycle." None of this adds up to much difficulty, but there you have it.
A graphic at this site shows the circadian rhythm the letter writer describes (and the basis of this puzzle). You have to scroll down a bit to see it:
https://www.buckinstitute.org/blog/time-to-improve-your-health-focusing-on-circadian-rhythms/
The circled letters show two sleep wake cycleS (thanks, Bill L), which makes the puzzle more elegant IMO
I think my favorite thing about this puzzled is I learned what PIED means. I just entered it on faith and looked it up after. That's pretty cool that I have never heard of it before cuz I'm older than dirt. I guess a downside is that it is only Tuesday and I'm already dipping my toe into the "solve on faith" pool - but if we keep getting reasonably clean (as in low arcane PPP) grids this good be a very pleasant week for us solvers.
REM. Day sleeper (from Up)
This puzzle reminded me why I don’t like circles in puzzles, though I didn’t need reminding.
Fun puzzle. Tie-in with the NYT Mag cover story from two days ago?
1) the regular appearance of CORSET is starting to freak me out.
2) theme is kinda apt considering the cover article in last Sunday's NYT Mag.
Thank you Karen Steinberg for a delightful puzzle from start to finish! This morning was an oddity in my suburban neighborhood. It was absolutely quiet for a change: no mowers, no leaf blowers, no garbage trucks, no heavy equipment in operation at my neighbor’s lot. Instead there was dappled sunshine, coffee, and an enjoyable puzzle to start my day.
@Lewis Thank you for the book recommendation. I can use something uplifting to read in view of sad current news events.
Ditto!
Clever and fun.
All that constructing time and effort lavished on a puzzle that's all about the construction chops it took to create it but that will have absolutely no effect on the solver's solving experience.
I think of these creations, impressive though they might be as far as the difficulty of achieving them, as "masturbatory puzzles". You don't have to think of them that way, of course, though somehow I always do.
But when you ignore the tiny little circles as I did and just solve it as a themeless, it's not a half bad Tuesday. There were some nice clues and a lovely lack of proper names.
You obviously have real constructing talent, Karen. Next time, can you bring solvers into the enterprise and give us something we need to GROK in order to finish the puzzle? Today we were just observers of the trick and not active participants.
I loved this puzzle! It was mostly in my wheelhouse and the clever/tricky clues seemed playful rather than intentionally obscure.
@Anon 8:15 - Did you mean to post a link?
I think I read somewhere that the “standard” American accent, what you hear most on the news and radio and podcasts, is Nebraskan/Midwestern (although Nebraska is more Great Plains than midwestern IMO). Hence, no problem with OTTO sounding exactly like auto here.
Liked this one even more than yesterday’s. Having TORTILLA before running into OHH probably helped. I’m curious why that wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone. I think I’ve eaten at Chipotle’s twice in my entire life, but what else would a tex-mex like restaurant be warming?
@Anoa Bob from late last night - The hallux is different than the other toes. I do think the actual reason we have a different word for its finger counterpart is the thumb’s opposability, not the other structural differences.
I loved the theme; thanks to Bill L. for making it even more lovable. I don't agreee that 16-A is basically unclued; it's clued by the clue for 57-A. I needed some crosses to see what the latter would be, but got the former just from the last O. What else could it be?
What on earth is IFC?
I grew up in Wisconsin, so the clue for OTTO gave me no trouble; nice variation, I thought. OHH was tougher -- I started to put in aHa, then remembered that it might be OHo, and waited for crosses. Fortunately, OHM was unambiguous.
Kealoa is pretty bad in this case, because the great majority of the big astronomical telescopes are on Mauna Kea. There is a solar observatory on Mauna Loa with one major telescope, but compared to the dozen or so bigger facilities on Mauna Kea...
Hey All !
Very neat puz. I'm sure Karen has less hair now, from tearing it out trying to get any kind of clean fill. The center section, with its six 4's, two 3's, two 5's, and the "wave" in there, holy frijole, I'm surprised how good the fill Is there.
I believe the top half probably wasn't too difficult to fill, but the center-to-bottom section, wow, what a nightmare.
Anyway, turned out a quite cool puz. I'm surprised, as Jeff gave YesterPuz the POW. This one had to be in the running.
Re: Cheater Squares explained (from YesterComments and @albatross) -
Cheater Squares (or blocks, or, as I call them, Blockers) are the black squares used to make filling the grid easier, they don't change the total word count in a grid. Normally, Blockers are used to separate one word from another. Take row four in this puz as an example, it has two Blockers, making three separate words. Without them, it'd only be one word (a 15) going Across. Now look at the Blockers under SLC and OHM. If they weren't there, you'd still have only one word Down, and one word Across, ergo, the total word count didn't change. I hope I've described that well.
Three FF's
RooMonster
DarrinV
It was covered by crosses, so I didn't need to know PICOT, but I yearn for the tap-tapity-tap of well tatted needlework knowledge, and so I asked Uncle G afterward, and I've become a PICOT fan. It's pretty.
We rescued a TOM CAT from an alley years ago and he turned out to be the funniest and toughest cats ever. You couldn't play with him as he'd tear your arm from the socket, but if he crawled up on your lap he'd let you pet him forever. When he got old, he lost a fight with a stellar jay at his outside watering dish and subsequently spent most of his remaining years inside.
The boring result of selecting CIRCADIAN RHYTHM as the theme: SLEEP-WAKE CYCLES and TWENTY FOUR HOURS become marquee answers. Bouncing ball, good, the rest, blah.
Yays:
The word GROK is my new favorite.
Aren't we all a bit more pro-AMBER thanks to Jurassic Park?
RED ALERT! ALIENS! Right next to each other.
Gotta yay all TORTILLAs. Remember the scene in Napoleon Dynamite when grandma calls them tor-till-as?
Boos:
DO FOR and ARE SO and YOU IN and OK SURE. Maybe more junky than it should be? Could be? DEFER / DOFOR are a mini theme I'd DIE FER.
OHH... dagnabit! So close to OHO I almost started an OHO party, but alas I'm left weeping in a darkened alley of half-baked smelly OHHs.
Uniclues:
1 "You like anchovies? Gross," say.
2 Post-murdery feelings of Biblical brother.
3 Noted guru plans to bring peace against the will of many.
4 Tours bikini-clad city in style.
5 The same-ole same-ole emergency as always.
6 The one in the mirror looking fine in a see-thru tank top.
7 Chomp, chomp, chomp, ohh.
8 Accountants ledger entry for leftovers.
1 ATTACK A TASTE
2 CAIN ACHY
3 DALAI PLOTS
4 LIMOS MIAMI
5 DIE CUT RED ALERT
6 YOU IN A-ONE MESH
7 HEATH SLAY
8 CRUMBS, TORTILLA
@OFL - I must needs disagree with your expert. The sine wave (appr. in the grid circles) is just 24 hours, a circle, but displayed in wave form.
My rating: tough for a Tuesday + an impressive theme and construction feat. I found it slow going until I got a few circles into the RHYTHM and had my AHH moment. Getting the rest of the wave in place helped the bottom half go much more quickly and got me SLEEP-WAKE CYCLES from the initial S. I thought it was a smashing grid-spanner and found the grid's closing NIGHT very satisfying. For me, a cut-above Tuesday for sure.
Not Tuezzy, other than OHH. For once, I looked down for the revealer referenced in 16A, saw the circles and proudly filled in CIRCADIANRHYTHM at 57A. I really appreciate finding these 3 words of the same length and making a wonderful theme.
Funny how including a minority female in the form of Issa RAE is on the no-no 'ese list today rather than a cause for celebration. Speaking of Issa, "A Black Lady Sketch Show" on HBO made me laugh harder and more often than any comedy I've seen in a while. She and the other actresses are SO talented and find truly inventive subjects and characters for their sketches.
We all know what a kealoa is, but today does not count as one just because Rex doesn't know the observatory. Just googled famous observatories, and the Mauna Kea Observatory is literally the first image that pops up. On a related note, images are being released from the new gold plated Webb telescope that has opened up a million miles away (after being MARRED by some space dust). Looks almost 5 billion years into the past - just mind boggling.
Today's actual kealoa: areso/amtoo. Runner up: oksure/uhsure/imgood (I think we just saw this one). OHH has been covered by dueling 7:38am anonymice.
@Zed, you may remember that the first choice you make at Chipotle is whether to have your TORTILLA heated in that little round iron.
SPRY is a word that is meant to be a compliment, but is actually a bit ageist and sexist. What is the age entry point to be considered spry? Never heard of a man being spry. Not complaining about it in the puzzle, just musing.
Is there going to be a test on this?
Thanks, Karen, for the morning science lesson. Now all I have to do is figure out whether I’m awake or asleep.
Thx, Karen, for this crunchy, clever Tues. construction! :)
Med+
Some welcome resistance in this one. Took a while to GROK the theme.
Got DIE-CUT & ANN, but didn't know 'Marriage Story' or the 'Midsize Nissan', so the NW was slow to develop.
Moved methodically down and around finishing at EGO.
Wanted CIRCADIAN RHYTHM before SLEEP WAKE CYCLE, so a 'half-a-pop' (semi-malapop).
Learned both CIRCADIAN & PICOT from SB.
Had aHH before OHH, so TORTILLA was lukewarm.
Bottom line: a somewhat challenging adventure, but most enjoyable! :)
@jae
What a coincidence! lol; was stuck at the same cell as you. Finally, made an inspired guess which resulted in a successful solve. Took 1 1/2 hrs., so comparatively easy for a Croce. See you next Mon. :) (btw, successfully executed the 'acrobatic maneuver' in h.s. gym class)
___
yd's Duo: 34 / practice Duo: 33
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
For me, the puzzle was disappointingly easy. I filled in the wavy and long answers immediately, and zoomed through the rest in record time.
The one thing that bothered me (aside from the lack of resistance) is the human circadian rhythm is closer to 25 hours. When humans in experiments with no windows wake and sleep naturally, that's the cycle length. So at first I wrote out 25 hours as the long answer and thought that was a good trick, but the crossword answer turned out to be 24. Oh well.
Like @Nancy, I solved as a themeless and forgot to even look at the circles until I came here, despite the fact that I was able to GROK the theme quite early. A few of the proper names were a little tough but the crosses were fair with the exception of 41D/44A which was annoying with the AHA/AAH/OHO/OOH(??) thing going on there.
The best part about this was what I learned of the CIRCADIAN RHYTHM from Rex’s illustrations. Quite interesting that peak efficiency and fastest reaction both come out around the time most people are getting off work. No wonder everyone sprints to the parking lot so quickly. And I now know why I can’t stay awake past 9 o’clock. Here I thought I was just getting old but now I know it’s the melatonin kicking in. what a great system!
The OTTO clue/answer has appeared at least once recently in a nyt puzzle, I think--although I occasionally do a New Yorker puzzle, so it may have been there. Anyway, I confidently popped in that answer based on past puzzling experience (pun not intended, but noticed).
But relying on past puzzling experience can lead to trouble (hello, OHH), which happened to me briefly on 1A, where I plunked in ruck (an ALAN who appeared very recently) instead of ALDA without even paying attention to the rest of the clue. It didn't take long to see my error from the crosses.
Wondered about the circles, then finished the puzzle, turned off the computer and the bedside lamp, and gave in to my CIRCADIAN RHYTHM without noticing the wavy phrase. Doh.
@burtonkd
I'm an 82 year old man, and when I was in my early 70's my son commented "you're very spry for your age." He's in the medical field and it made me feel great. Sadly, he couldn't say the same thing today.
OHH la la. I thought this tres clever and quite enjoyable.
Anything to do with sleeping and waking up is something I've been consumed by lately.
In my youth I could get by with 4 hours. Now that I'm old and feeble I'll say the "Now I lay me down to sleep, please dear lord don't let me cheat". You see, I usually have to take a little white pill and it allows me to drift away for a good ten hours. But when I WAKE up, I'm still drowsy as hell and I have trouble putting. my shoes on.
Mr. Bill...maybe you know the answer to this? How do animals know the exact time to go out and do their job. Their timing is always perfect and daylight time changes don't seem to affect them. Is it the way the sun sets and rises? Interesting this CICADIAN thing.
@burtonkd. That little round iron thing used to heat up the TORTILLAS is called a comal. They do wonders on pancakes as well.
Circadian rhythms are very important in dealing with highway safety regulations affecting the schedules of truck drivers. So this is hardly an esoteric topic.
Circadian rhythms are integral to highway safety regulations that attempt to govern the scheduling for truck drivers.
@Judge Nancy. You must have gotten up on the wrong side of your wall today. Even Rex wasn't that harsh. HAR!
Brilliant comment by Nancy (8:57). I blame the editors. Like Jeff Chen, they admire the craftsmanship of a puzzle without worrying about whether there's any fun in it.
After entering the two grid-spanning themers and putting the required letters in the circles, the challenge for the constructor was to fill in the blanks, not to find colorful words.
All of this was pretty easy for me. Never saw “Marriage Story” but the downs up there were easy. Had to wait on the aHH/OHH. But Observatory made Mauna LOA a snap rather than the proverbial kealoa. My husband was a serious astronomy buff and read Sky and Telescope religiously and Mauna LOA was one of the ones in the US we never visited, but I had certainly heard of it and seen pictures.
Since the top third was a snap, I had TWENTY FOUR HOURS and when it was completed, the other theme answers lit up. I read the reveal and looked at the wavy line of circles and filled them in only because I have a serious sleep disorder and during the diagnosis learned a great deal about CIRCADIAN RHYTHM. Obviously not the knowledge depth of Bill L. (Thank you Bill for writing and @Rex for including Bill’s informative letter). It took me way too long to understand just how important sleep is.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Yup. Me too.
@Sheryl - more recent studies have put the human period at just over 24 hours. The 25-hour study was found to be flawed. I was going to post the same comment but thought "mabye I'd better double-check that".
Def does not Tues. Made for the "Hey, fellow constructors, look what I did ! "
Nice puzzle Karen. Anytime a grid gets a mixed review from the commentariat that should alert the constructor that they/he/she has hit the xword sweet spot. Personally, I had a good time solving after a nice night’s rest, so thumbs up here. As a 79 year old, I feel @JC66’s chagrin at the accumulation of those old circadian cycles…thank heavens that Crossworld keeps at least some mental muscles flexible. And for @JBERG here’s the opening about graph from the IFC website: “ Established in 2000 and since becoming a leader in the independent film industry, IFC Entertainment consists of two distribution labels that are devoted to bringing the best of independent and foreign films to the largest possible audience: IFC Films and IFC Midnight.” The Sundance Channel is a refreshing option for anyone who can’t bear the tripe of commercial tv programming.
Anyone else REMEMBER THIS?
@JC66
Mentally spry still counts, and I can no longer say I've not heard spry to refer to a man. This is my week to ponder 82 year olds, as I met an 82 year old cyclist at cafe that I rode with in a bike club 25 years ago. He wasn't particularly spry on the bike, but he's still out there doing it, to the joy of all of us.
@Sheryl, I remember that 25 hour circadian rhythm result every time I wake up a little groggy.
I found this one pretty easy, and experienced the entire AHA>OHO>OOH thing. I think OOH is OK for finally understanding something, and I save OH for a sarcastic response for being told something obvious.
The pronunciation of a short o has always been something my New England wife and Upstate NY me have always differed on. She thinks I make it sound more like a short a, as in "frag pand", which is ridiculous, of course, whereas she once baffled me by asking for a "clock", while in another room, and I thought she was saying "cloth". Nevertheless, we persist.
Anyone desiring a thorough understanding of PIED is invited to read PIED Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins. "Glory be to God for dappled things-" and he's just getting started with the "dappled things".
Nice concept, KS. I Knew Something was up right away and was pretty sure I knew what it was, and got that nice smug feeling when my suspicions were confirmed. Thanks for all the fun.
The long article in Sundays NYTimes Magazine on circadian rhythms in all our systems made this crossword a gimme for me!
Liked it!
Tight puzzle.
True, circadian rhythms are not exactly waves. Saw them as cycles as in sleep cycles… though agree w 🦖it isa less precise word- visual matchup. There are two waves - night-day-night-day —so maybe that fits a circadian rhythm. 🤔Could be a moot point. 🤗
Anyway, good one for a Tuesday - very fast because coincidentally my SLEEPCYCLE was messed up last night.
🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
Are you looking for a bike you can ride NGHT or DAY? Come on down to SLEEPWAKECYCLES. We’re open TWENTYFOURHOURS!
I had never noticed until today that DALAI anagrams to Adlai. Two wonderful examples of humanity personified.
I wonder if IFC offers sides of coleslaw. SARI, I’ll see myself out.
I liked this puzzle quite a bit. Nice concept with decent fill considering the waves of constraints inherent in the conceit. Thanks a bunch, Karen Steinberg.
pabloinnh,
Hopkins is always a good idea. And Pied Beauty is aces. But for visual imagery I'll take The Windhover. Maybe the first major modern poem in English.
I'm glad that Bill L. filled in, but you don't have to be a physiologist or neuropsychologist to understand the connection between circular motion and sinusoidal waves, because it's really trigonometry. @Anonymous7:47AM has roughly the right idea. If you place a blot at 12 o'clock on a wheel, apply uniform circular notion to the wheel, and then track the height of the blot as a function of time, you get a sinusoidal wave. Like this.
What @Anonymous was describing is actually a cycloid, the curve you'd see if you place a reflector at the rim of a bicycle wheel and watch the reflection in the dark as the bike moves to the right. Like this (look from 0:10 to 0:15).
There's nothing like a visualization to get math across!
Since I'm scheduled to hit 73 tomorrow (modulo a rogue bus), I offer the twin disciplines of yoga and tai chi to those past any age who'd like to become more spry. They work. But, as one doctor confirmed to me: the first part of the body to deteriorate is the ankle. Both teachings stress (in a good way) the same two aspects - balance and flexibility. You won't be able to take out Chuck Norris (wish that were so) if you've slid much past 60, but you'll be much less likely to trip, fall, and bust something.
Here's a man I once studied with, before yoga but the same time as tai chi who can: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/well/live/how-karate-helped-an-aging-expert-age-better.html
I was briefly thrown after putting in TWENTYFOURHOURS, I immediately threw in CIRCADIANRYTHM for 57A. Then wondered why none of the downs were fitting until I realized that went in the circles...
Easy. No real problems with this one, which was pretty smooth given the constraints. Interesting Tuesday and I appreciated Bill L’s note on CR. Liked it!
Agree with @burtonkd 10:04 – I've never understood the need to always qualify SPRY with "for one's age" or somesuch rot. It comes off as an insult. If you're spry you're spry, period. "Nimble" as a clue would have been fine.
Like others, I was expecting CIRCADIAN RHYTHM at 57a. I ended up not even noticing it in the circles. The net result: this puzzle made me want to take a tomcat-nap.
Here's the very first vocal recording of a song you all know. I'm not quite sure if the instrument heard is a cor anglais or an oboe— the musician is credited with playing both on the album. I think it's a cor anglais. But wind players are invited to debate.
Alrighty then. The Circles. E/W puzgrid symmetry. Learned somethin new [that CIRCADIANRHYTM ain't SLEEPWALKCYCLES]. Guardians of the Galaxy clue reference [one of M&A's fave flicks]. OHH crossin OHM [staff weeject intersection pick]. DAY & NIGHT bonus Easter eggs. TuesPuz thUmbsUp.
Also a nice selection of ohh-no-knows or near-no-knows:
* KIDD/DIANE. The KIDD dude has a faint ring to him, but M&A don't follow the NBA.
* (MC)REN. M&A also don't follow rap.
* ECCO. M&A don't follow Danish shoe trivia.
* IFC. M&A don't follow what Sundance does.
* PICOT. M&A just didn't follow this, at all.
faves: That cool isolated area in the puzgrid center parts. Different & spooky & slightly desperate. Like.
That's enough for now; gotta go pop popcorn & watch the hearings...
Thanx for the fun, Ms. Steinberg darlin. Real nice job. Evidently it's now time for M&A to wake up.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
mostly @Teedmn's fault …
**gruntz**
For a person who is awake half the night, this puzzle was an insomniac’s dream.
Alda, Ecco, Grok & Spry, an NBC drama about a firm representing Boomer insomniacs. The Plots are Taut.
I'll stop now. A lovely, easy Tuesday.
I agree with @Lewis's recommendation of "The Book of Joy." I read it every few years, along with "To the Lighthouse."
@pabloinnh. Hopkins's poem "Pied Beauty" is the first thing I think of when I see the word "pied."
Ohh is a no. Corset was awful too.
I did a little happy bounce in my chair and I think I let out an audible "yes" when I saw the TWENTYFOUR HOURS at 16 Across. I then immediately filled in CIRCADIAN RHYTHM in the cyclic circles running across the grid's equator without any help from crosses. Talk about bowling in my lanes!
The CIRCADIAN RHYTHM is a popular topic in Intro Psych and it gets a much more extensive examination in the upper level Biopsychology course. As Sheryl @10:23 and kitshef @11:07 note, the body's internal clock runs slightly longer than 24 hours and requires regular resetting by exposure to the external 24 hr. DAY NIGHT cycle. This is why it is easier to sleep later than usual than it is to get up earlier than usual. It's also why jet lag is more pronounced when traveling from west to east than from east to west.
Most of us know the importance of diet and exercise in maintaining optimum health but probably fewer of us are aware that CIRCADIAN RHYTHM regularity is the third pillar or mainstay of overall health. All physiological systems, including the immune system, benefit form CIRCADIAN regularity. I could go on and on and on but I'll stop now.
I thought the wave in circadian rhythm was just a representation of the sun rising and setting?
SPRY
So when you're young, you're "agile",
And when you're old, you're "SPRY".
Has anyone the slightest inkling why?
Perhaps the word's an insult
To those who've aged a bit?
Why, yes, I think that that's most likely it.
But give me back my youthful grace
On tennis court or bike --
And you can call me anything you like!
@Smith 8:26 AM I guess I am okay with seeing corsets on a regular basis. 😉
Do North of the Borderers have Canadian Circadian Rhythm?
RooMonster Zing! Guy
So I’m no psychologist, but my understanding has always been that the super-ego, not the ego controls the id….am I mistaken?
@Nancy – that's very clever. For someone your age.
@Joe D
Good one!
@burtonkd - It’s been well over a decade since I’ve been in a Chipotle’s, so no, I don’t recall that.
@Everyone - Personally, I’m SPRY for your age. 🤣😂🤣
Otto Engine vs Diesel engine?
Otto Engine perhaps?
Haha, Joe.
Can’t believe this. I am doing my Msc thesis on exactly this theme and have my proposal defense in two days. This felt like a cosmic sign to me, really loved it 😃
LOL, I did too. And my spouse, who doesn’t do the puzzle daily, just did it this morning.
The Pied Piper of folklore/fairytale fame was so named because he wore a suit of many bright colors as he played his pipe to lead, first the rats, and then the children of Hamelin, Germany away.
DNF thanks to that OH* O*M cross (originally had aha, then oho) and that gross middle section. Knew Kidd, knew Rae, threw in TSA for 37 down. Disne von Furstenberg? Sure, why not? No clue what was going on with that trash clue for 26 across so DOTOR seemed as good as anything.
Overall author/editors tried to be too cute and ended up with garbage.
Pretty good. I liked the theme. It doesn’t bother me that a wave is used to represent the C?IRCADIANRHYTHM. There were a few problems with the three-letter glue: SLC, GYN, IFC, OHH, REN, MSU, FAA etc I had eRa before ARM. Can’t believe I’m the only one who stepped in that trap. Overall, pretty good. You don’t see ANODE to the body’s internal clock patterns every day. But with a bit more editing it could have been even better.
@anon 6:50: No, you are not wrong; this is one of several problems I have with toDAY's puzzle. It IS the superEGO that controls the id. Editor: you were in the wrong part of your SLEEPWAKECYCLE on that one.
Thankfully, that of the syndilink officer has AT LAST! come full circle. That guy sleeps on the job twice as long as Dagwood.
The theme is very clever; finally some good use is made of grid circles, and the perfectly placed DAY/NIGHT tightened it. There was a price to pay, almost certainly had to be. It got pretty rough in the middle there, and at the east end. Worth it? That's a tossup.
One more complaint: the cluing was very uneven. Let's take SARI. The Tuesday solver is not going to know what the hell a "choli" is, or even the language it comes from. I just happened to know PICOT because I used to work in a garment factory, but it's probably not Tuesday material. Then again, many clues are "moo-cow" easy, as @M&A would say.
This is a diamond in the rough. If it was DIECUT, maybe better, but as is, just a par.
My Wordle birdie putt lipped out; don't you think that's cruel? Just a par.
To Spaceman: Gruel is a dish best served warm…
(Preferably with milk and brown sugar.)
SLEEP IN
DAY and NIGHT DIANE will love YOU,
TWENTYFOURHOURS at A time.
OK, ARE YOU SURE that YOU knew
what SHE will DOFOR just ONEDIME?
--- OTTO HEATH
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