THEME: CUT (CORNERS) (69A: With the circled letters, a hint to solving seven Across clues) — seven Across clues turn (Down) and at the "corner" where they turn is a square that gets "cut" out (or skip); those "cut" letters spell out CORNERS (you pick up the letters in CORNERS from the downward-headed part of the Across answer, which is clued as a regular Down). So for all seven theme answers, there's the cut-corner version (the answer that's clued), then the Down segment of each answer (clued as a regular Down), and then the *uncut* Across segment (which is its own unclued answer, e.g. ANTIC, ADO, HOMER, etc.):
Theme answers:
ANTI-(C)AGING (1A: Like some face creams and serums, supposedly)
AD(O) RATE (6A: Cost for a commercial)
HOME(R) EC (9A: Class now known as Family and Consumer Sciences, informally)
"HAVE(N) ONE" (28A: "Go ahead, try this!")
DON(E) KING (35A: Rumble in the Jungle promoter)
LIVE(R) AID (47A: 1985 benefit concert watched by nearly two billion people)
AS(S) WELL (53A: To boot)
Word of the Day: LIVE AID (47A) —
Live Aid was a benefit concert held on Saturday 13 July 1985, as well as a music-based fundraising initiative. The original event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise further funds for relief of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, a movement that started with the release of the successful charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in December 1984. Billed as the "global jukebox", Live Aid was held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, UK, attended by about 72,000 people and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, US, attended by 89,484 people.
On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative were held in other countries, such as the Soviet Union, Canada, Japan, Yugoslavia, Austria, Australia and West Germany. It was one of the largest satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time; an estimated audience of 1.9 billion, in 150 nations, watched the live broadcast, nearly 40 percent of the world population. (wikipedia)
• • •
This puzzle lost my love quickly because of the hyphen in ANTI-AGING. I got the whole missing-letter thing fast, but that first missing letter ("C") is sitting Where A Hyphen Should Be, and I assumed this was going to be some clever part of the theme—making use of hyphens, which (like all punctuation) normally don't get represented in crossword grids. Cool, let's do a hyphen-based theme, let's go! Thought for a bit about what having a "C" in the hyphen square might mean. Was excited to find out where this hyphen-replacement concept was gonna go. But then AD RATE ... doesn't have a hyphen. And neither does HOME EC. So the concept I was looking forward to never materialized *and* I was left to contemplate the jarring inconsistency of ANTI-AGING ... if you give me empty space between words, fine, it's empty, but if that space is normally filled with a hyphen I Am Going To Fill Your Empty Space With A Hyphen Or Expect The Hyphen Be Relevant Somehow. But no. This didn't slow me down at all. Just massively disappointed me. And then, with the "C" and "O" in place and without ever looking at the revealer, the "CORNERS" gimmick became immediately obvious, so much so that I could go through and write in every single theme answer, no problem ... well, one problem: I wrote in FARM AID instead of LIVE AID (didn't yet grasp that the uncut Across segment had to make a word ... LIVER is a word, whereas FARMR is not).
So the theme wasn't as cool as I thought it was going to be *and* the puzzle ended up being depressingly easy (esp. for a Thursday). All the architectural gimmickry here did nothing to create an entertaining solving challenge. Ended up being about as much fun as connect-the-dots (which I loved as a four-year-old, but ... less so as a six-year-old). If you take the whole hyphen shenanigans out of the equation, the idea that I, the solver, "cut corners" to make the themers work is indeed a cute thematic concept, and the fact that those corners *spell* corners is a nice revelation. But it all reveals itself so early and so easily that there's no struggle, no real aha at the end when you hit CUT, no ... just no Thursday fun. Or, there is Thursday fun, but it exhausts itself one meager burst right away, and all that's left to do thereafter is programatically fill in the grid, which has no more surprises or treats.
I had no problem with any part of this puzzle, but there are two name crosses that gave me slight pause. I think they're OK, but ... it's gotten so that proper noun crosses really set off warning signals in my head now, since they are the basis of so many Naticks. ADUBA / DIANA is unlikely to flummox too many people, since even if you routinely misspell ADUBA's name (for me, today, ADUBO, sigh, sorry), DIANA is really the only cross that makes much sense there, though LIANA and TIANA are, in fact, names one might have. ANGUS / UNGER also seems slightly dangerous, especially if you have no idea who the Odd Couple are (as many younger (than me) solvers won't). But again, ANGUS is a familiar Scottish name, and nothing else but the "G" makes sense there. Ooh, but if you don't know SITKA (wasn't I just talking about Alaskan crosswordese recently...) then you won't have the "A" in ANGUS either, and then things might get dicey. It's weird trying to imagine how others might go wrong. Anyway, I think this grid AVOIDs true Naticks today. This has been a test of the Emergency Natick System. This was only a test.
Could not get the HOGS part of BEDHOGS for some reason, because hogging the covers and being a BEDHOG seem like slightly different things. BEDHOGS take up excess space, while cover hogs (like my wife, or, in her opinion, me) do not, necessarily. But I like the word, certainly the most colorful thing in the grid (besides maybe DON KING). What else? SALLOW is a funny word. I'm aware of it, but never use it, which is odd, as [Opposite of ruddy] sure sounds a lot like me. Hmmm, looks like SALLOW means "having an unhealthy yellow or pale brown color"—well that's not me either. I'm just straight up pale. With freckles. If you are SALLOW and experiencing ASS SWELL, consult your doctor. That's all for today. Back here tomorrow, and then, after a travel day (Christopher Adams fills in for me on Saturday), I'll be blogging the puzzle from the blissful shores of Lake Michigan. Sad to leave the kitties, but our house sitter is lovely so they'll be fine. Bye for now.
I, in fact, got double-Naticked in exactly the ways Rex predicted. I serve on a board with a Liana, and I had managed to put DO IT for “finish off”, making ANGUS hopeless to guess. (I did get SITKA.)
First thought about 1A: “AGING” would be a long rebus in the circle. First thought on reading the 38D clue, “What you get when you put your hands together”: monkeypox?
The Tube is in London. So much of the fill here is just that At first, I was filling in the bubbles such that they doubled the down, but that clearly was not right. I too had trouble with bedhogs, although that seems to be bad cluing. A bedhog takes over the bed. That doesn't necessarily include the covers. My wife steals the covers on a regular basis, but I would never call her a bedhog. I know Uzo Aduba has appeared in puzzles before, but she still is outside of my wheelhouse. Meanwhile, I wonder how much A. A. Milne and Felix Unger are known to fans of Uzo Aduba. And Angus as a Scottish noble in MacBeth? Why not 'Young of AC/DC'? 'A cow known for its beef'? or even just 'Black ________'? I didn't really enjoy this very much.
Very, very easy for a Thursday. Will seems to think we are all idiots and any puzzle with a twist we need to be coddled. On the other hand, any puzzle with MILNE will get a smile out of me.
Full bonus points for all the themers forming real words in both directions (or almost-words, in the case of REC). Some minor demerits for the un-cut corners.
I am sorry to say I find the whole hyphen complain absolutely ridiculous. Especially so as English is the language that is extremely frivolous with its hyphenation. Period.
Struggled with the names in the North West but the downs and crosses were easy enough to work through. Other than that it was a Tuesdayish kind of puzzle.
Props to Bill for the very clever theme idea and for his NYT debut, and to Jeff for elegantly completing what must have been a beast of a construction.
Supreme praise to Jeff, who, early in this collaboration (according to Bill’s notes) suggested that the two “think through how to provide a great solving experience before diving in too deep.” Yes, THAT, rather than showing off. Let the solver come first! Thank you, Jeff.
And for me, this indeed was a great solving experience. I thought this was a rebus early on, but that wasn’t working well. When I came to my last blank square, the last letter of RELIC, I still hadn’t cracked fully what was going on, and I bore down, intent on figuring this out without looking up the solution. And when that solution hit me, the whoosh of discovery brought a huge flush of joy, oho, and wow.
A paradigm Thursday from a vet and a tyro, and much gratitude from a happy solver. Thank you, gentlemen!
@Rex. I expect you'll enjoy your time at Lake Michigan. I live about 40 minutes from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I was there a couple of days ago at a beach only accessible via a 2-track and a hike. It's one of very few non-busy areas during the summer tourist rush. It was delightful.
I had fun with this - looking for a little more trickery and nuance but this was fine. The lack of a hyphen doesn’t get me worked up. Overall fill was clean enough - some odd trivia scattered around.
I liked the RHAPSODIC x OBOE cross and agree with Rex on the strength of SALLOW. UNRIG on top of BESTIR is rough and the DOT EDU pair is lazy. Agree that ANGUS should have been clued re: AC/DC.
Speaking of DOH! I finally figured out that I was in the "Other newspapers" side of XWORDINFO where the blog is organized by syndication dates. Clicked the NYT button and all was well.
It took a while to see what was going on, but see I did, finally, and therefore a medium Aha! moment for this one. I suspect it was more fun to construct than to solve, as the done deed is fair impressive.
ENOS was a gimmie for me, but I wonder what the age cutoff point is for that one.
Uzo ADUBA you say? OK, I guess.
SALLOW always makes me think of Sherlock Holmes, for some reason. Not that it describes him, but I seem to remember a fair number of characters in the stories with that attribute.
Nice enough Thursdecito, BP and JC. Skewed easy, But Pleasant enough for a Joint Construction. Thanks for some fun, at least.
UNGER/ANGUS got the eyebrows arching. The TV series went off the air before I was in high school (although I see there was a recentish Matthew Perry reboot that I suspect just about everyone missed) and ANGUS is not one of the 15 Macbeth characters with their own Wiki page. When I see ANGUS I think beef, not Scotland.
Otherwise a fine offering, although perhaps easier to suss out than Shortz et al. thought.
@albatross shell late - Two Rex truisms that get lost a lot in the comments; Rex is often taken seriously when he’s joking so, when in doubt, read a passage as if he is joking and Rex is writing about his solving experience, we are all free to have our own experiences.
So the first thing that greeted me was the Uzo lady crossed by the WBNA lady -- and I was not a happy camper. No I wasn't!
But things got better on the PPP front and I did like the trap awaiting those who don't know their "The Odd Couple" well enough. You've got that "R" at the end and if you're not careful you'll write in OSCAR. But he's the slovenly one. What you want is the other one, the neatnik Felix UNGER.
As far as the theme is concerned, I looked at the tiny little circles and my heart sank. Tiny little circles on a Thursday! Really now! But this time they're not there to be annoying. This time they're there to make the solver do some thinking and present a challenge. I got the general idea well enough to fill in answers before I knew exactly what was going on. But I did think that it had something to do with CUT or CUTTING OUT or something of that sort.
Aha! CUT CORNERS! Nice! I tried, unsuccessfully, to use that idea (and revealer) in a completely different way and couldn't make it work. For anyone who's interested, more about that in my next post.
This puzzle is fun if you struggle awhile to find the theme, then whoosh, but only awhile, then real puzzle Some decent word play (Montana was treat as was tube rider), and decent clues all around. Not so easy for me...thought they were making up for yesterday's Monday on Wednesday. Let's have Jeff Chen every Thursday, please. At least we get our fun theme.
The hyphen thing is such a minor nit to complain about. Construction is brilliant, my only write over was I wrote in felix first thing instead of UNGER. But it was quickly apparent that was wrong. I always struggle with Uzo’s name and “UNRIG”??? Clunky. 64A wanted Seuss. And thought nBC at first for 32D. Great puzzle.
Always nice to see MILNE. Guess I'll never change my avatar. But is it just me or have Thursdays recently become much easier? Of course I was expecting a rebus, and I'm usually slow to catch the "round the corner" type things, but it had to be HOMEEC and Parks and REC, and for some reason I just saw it there. No idea on DIANA but got her from crosses. Would not have thought I would know the name of *any* promoter of any sport thing, but he also just popped into mind.
Maybe the everything bagel this morning helped...
@Rex next week I'll be waaay up on the Keewenaw for a memorial service. It takes 3 days to get there and back for a one hour service, sheesh.
Only one flight per day in/out of Houghton. So we're driving from Minneapolis instead and spending an extra day in that city. Any suggestions for an afternoon in Minneapolis?? Besides Birchbark Books and the Sculpture Garden?
Took me a little bit to figure out the trick because I was stubbornly trying to make a rebus out of those CORNERS. But I see in the comments that @Lewis had the same thought so I feel much better now. If you’re going to make a wrong assumption about a puzzle that’s about the most esteemed company one could hope to be in. And while the hyphen issue also threw me off the scent, it didn’t do so for long and certainly wasn’t a deal breaker.
I was starting to get annoyed and doing a lot of erasing before finally seeing the light. Then that lovely aha moment ALONG with a big smile and all was right in crossworld. Pretty slick debut for Mr. Pipal who hails from Chicago according to his notes. And since he has a rescue dog I’ll even forgive him for being an Illini.
Lots of eye appeal today: DART GUN, BED HOGS, CANOODLED, RHAPSODIC, BBC crossing BRIT. But the best one was the clue for NINER. Hunky Joe was always one of my favorite players especially during the time he spent as a KC Chief. He’s been known to make some pretty good ADs over the years AS WELL.
In the 4 corners of the puzzle were 4 different rebus words: a SCISSORS rebus; a KNIFE rebus; a SAW rebus and an AX rebus.
I would need two theme answers for each rebus word and some ideas I remember I had were JACKKNIFE and SCISSORS KICK and [Edward] SCISSORSHAND and KeneSAW Mountain Landis and...well you get the idea.
The positioning of the rebuses in the grid was rigid and couldn't be juggled. Where the rebus word was positioned in the themer -- differently according to which corner you were in -- was rigid and couldn't be juggled. Matching the numbers of letters in the various Across and Down theme answers was well above my pay grade.
I sent the idea to my brilliant and resourceful collaborator who can often wrestle an idea that presents thorny execution problems to the ground. He looked at it and told me what I sort of already knew: It couldn't be done.
So congrats to Bill and Jeff for coming up with a challenging and interesting CUT CORNERS idea that could be done!
Uzo Aduba was a highlight of Orange is the New Black. Highly recommend the first two seasons. It gets a little bit torture porn-y after that; they felt a need to heighten the stakes which, in prison, is pretty awful.
But anyway, count me among the Aduba/Milne/Odd Couple youths. Children still read Winnie the Pooh, especially since Disney is producing media with the characters. And this Millennial spent enough time watching Nick At Night to know Felix and Oscar, though I didn't know his last name.
Hello constructors, we might have covered this in XW101, but let's review. Taurasi isn't famous. Uzo isn't famous. Don't friggen cross them. Baseball is the least interesting sport. Rouse and strip both lead to made up compound words. Your northwest is a wreck.
Moving on, ORATE and PRATE are equally plausible for 8D and since your theme negates the cross you can't finish the puzzle.
More sadness continues with TO HEEL. To hell I'd say.
GADOT is only crossword famous. Why are you giving us a bunch of nobodies? Backspace is a key you might want to find.
ACT IV? Really? For a future puzzle, use this: End of every song ever? SILENCE.
You know EDU DOT is backward I'm sure. So why did you do it like that?
Wait, SONIA is famous. Phew, got one right.
Not all is lost here. How about re-using these wonderful words in a better puzzle? RHAPSODIC, DART GUN, CANOODLED, BED HOGS, RELIC, ANGUS, HASHTAG, ENAMEL and VALOR.
I've tried to learn from @Lewis and find the daily celebration in the NYTXW, but this is a kids birthday party kind of celebration and I am happy to be going home. The cake tasted POR.
Uniclues:
1 Sweet spot. 2 "Hey Gal, you finish your pear?" 3 Rasta hexin' a zombie voodoo doll. 4 The best solution for the next Anonym-oti typing the phrase, "WRONG!!!!" 5 Unhealthy computer expert. 6 Snogged Pooh-man. 7 Vows going on way too long retrieved from Yahoo. 8 "Back in my day, San Francisco didn't suck." 9 Putting my cats in a crate. 10 Prepares an ant apocalypse. 11 Best of show at the state fair. 12 Pound paint.
1 AGAVE HAVEN 2 BOSC DONE, GADOT? 3 CARIB DOIN' OMEN 4 DARTGUN ASS 5 TECHIE SALLOW 6 CANOODLED MILNE 7 A LONG "I DO" EMAIL 8 NINER ORAL TALE 9 CAGING BED HOGS 10 READS RAID 11 POSH ANGUS 12 HASHTAG ENAMEL
I think that Jeff made the cluing too easy so that we wouldn't miss the gimmick. That's my only carp. The gimmick was well done, there were some colorful entries, professional through and through. Liked it very much.
Hey All ! Had to be quite difficult to get phrases that worked as actual words when you CUT them. Plus actually adding a different letter to that phrase, and still getting real words, While getting the "CUTs" to spell out CORNERS. Dang, kudos you two! My brain hurts just describing it!
61A could've been - Engaged too much in some amorous behavior? - CANOODLE OT. Of course, the D doesn't fit into the CORNERS 🙂
West Center was a tough little area. Had to Goog for CARIB, never would've gotten that. ACT IV throwing me off, too.
Nice puz, 42 Blockers, but extras needed to pull off the CORNERs. Was scratching the head when I saw "Revealer" clue, and it was a three. Further head-scratching ensued when I had _UT there.
DNF at the NW mashup of ADUBA - aruba/DIANE - Riane, Leane, Ciane, etc. No idea who they are. But the pain didn’t end there.
I suppose I should have figured out ARI for sure, it probably would have led me to NINER. I thought maybe a tribal or biblical name - NINEH? And I recalled Montana was a quarterback, but that's the extent of my knowledge of him. And nicknames for teams I don’t know, I don’t know. So. Woefully un-American I guess. I wasn’t a boxing fan as a kid either, so I didn’t know Don King, though his name rings a bell.
There were entertaining clues in other areas, and I did get the turned corners, but didn’t think “Cut.” Nice.
Mr. Grumpypants, Dictionary.com agrees with you and Merriam-Webster. But hey, listen to the college lecturer from Suny Binghamton and not the lexographers.
As for Lake Michigan being the greatest inland freshwater sea, Lake Superior would like a word with anon 9:14
So Rex is critical of the puzzle because it’s not the theme he would have constructed? Hyphens be dammed. I thought this was a fun romp with a clever revealer. Congrats to fellow Chicagoan Bill Pipal on his debut and to Jeff Chen for helping Bill get his idea into print.
I want to BESTIR my RHAPSODIC grandiloquence to ORATE that I thought this was pretty good. For most of us that have been doing puzzles for a while, it would seem that it's easy. Easy in my MILNE book doesn't mean bad. I had fun because I didn't have to bash my head in trying to find the trick. Instead...I got a treat. I like POSH BRIT because I'm married to one. He BED HOGS the covers and watches BBC while I loll around being a Gal GADOT. Do you call that HOG HAVEN? The ANTI CAGING was easy to sniff out and the rat I usually smell was nowhere to be seen. I didn't even see nor notice the missing hyphen nor did I care. I knew all the names which is a rare treat for me. There were some pauses and a few grunts that I let out. I don't like TO HEEL nor ARI nor UNRIG nor ACTIV. I prefer words that I use in every day parlance. But then you give me CANOODLED and so everything ends happily ever after. This had to have been very difficult to construct, but it came together nicely in my SALLOW SWELL opinion. Good job Bill and Jeff.
@ beverly c: I hope your "... didn't know DON KING, but his name rings a bell" was pun intended. Gave me a big smile.
Took me longer than Rex (not surprising) to figure out the gimmick, so the puzzle played easy-medium for me. The various well documented unfamiliar names were also a factor.
I was right on top of the Montana misdirection, except I wanted NflER. When that obviously didn't work, I traipsed back into Big Sky country for a while, adding even more pause to that odd NW.
Speaking of Shakespeare and royalty and the end of dramatic works, I believe it is not ACT IV, but Act V, when Claudius becomes a DONE KING.
Cute, but yes, very easy, and, as with @Rex, the hyphen issue bothered me, too, perhaps due to my decades of commenting on student essays ("Non-parallel construction"). Bright spots for me were RHAPSODIC, BESTIR, BEDHOGS. Re: the symptoms @Rex mentioned at the end of his post - if SALLOW, perhaps try LIVER AID?
On second look, all of the cut corners answers could be clued without cutting the corner:
Like poultry advocates: ANTICAGING Worship: ADORATE Game night in the den: HOME REC Without resources: HAVE NONE Claudius in ACT V: DONE KING Carter's "little" pills: LIVER AID Equally neato, to the Beav: AS SWELL
@Gary. You are curmudgeonly today. HAR! I must defend baseball when it's called the least interesting sport. My list would be long before I reached baseball. I'd start with golf, soccer, ice hockey as my 3 biggest bores. Ain't diversity grand?
I think I've been doing these puzzles for about 20 years, and I still haven't learned to look at the circled letters to see if they spell anything, so I missed that part of the theme.
@Nancy, you describe me exactly. I know they're Felix and Oscar, and I had the R, so in went the latter. I did watch it once or twice, but not enough to remember that.
My list of Scottish nobles in Macbeth runs to McDuff, Duncan, and .... anyone? But with a few letters from crosses I figured out ANGUS, which gave me UNGER (how did I even know that?) @Zed, the cattle come from Scotland, so there's that. In fact, as I just learned from Wikipedia, their official name is Aberdeen ANGUS.
My other problem was ACT IV. In my experience, Shakespeare and other old plays have 5 acts, first half of the 20th Century plays have three acts, and full-length plays today have two acts. But it had to be LIVE AID, so that fixed that.
I'll be on the western shore of Lake Michigan in late August. Apparently the powers that be are now saying that Michigan and Huron are only one lake, not two, I guess because they flow together. Makes me sad.
@Smith - the Walker Art Center, of course, but you probably knew that already. I enjoyed the American Swedish Institute, as well.
I was onto the gimmick before I left the NW, ahem...CORNER. That is, I knew to ignore the last letter and go down to get the answer. Of course, I didn't see the whole picture until I was done, or close to it.
It’s SWELL that the NYTXW brought it’s arse back to the States.
Is Lil Wayne’s music R[H]APSODIC?
Rex needs to get to the NEAREST hyphen HAVEN.
¿POR que, pig? (Question to a Looney Toons BEDHOG)
Great concept. As easy to solve as it was, apparently, difficult to construct. I enjoyed it a ton. Congrats on a fine debut Bill Pipal and thanks Jeff Chen.
Easy. This went pretty quickly after I decided not to go with a rebus at 1a. However, I had no idea what was going on until I went back over the finished grid. Smooth and very clever, liked it.
In my quest to hopefully remember Aduba, I notice that if you write it AdUbA, it is a visual palindrome. Now off to find out who she is...checking...Crazy Eyes on Orange is the New Black, heard lots about it, never saw.
I had BEDbuGS taking the covers and finished my coffee scratching thinking about it. Enjoyed HOGS - agree with Rex that bed-hogging is more about mattress real estate, but fine.
Woke up a little groggy bc us of my unLIVER AID activities last night, but puzzle still played pretty easy today.
@Gary Jugert - really enjoyed your post today, I usually skip the meta clues, but now enjoy looking at the list of meta-answers, thinking quickly, then seeing your clever clues. Gal GADOT played Wonder Woman in 2 feature films and others in the series. Comics movies may not be your thing, but can't call her un-famous.
I always remember the SITKA spruce as the wood used for musical instruments, notably piano soundboards. Sounds better than quaking aspens.
Huron and Michigan are one lake the way the oceans are all one ocean.
The Michigan coast of Lake Michigan has great beaches. You will find some as good in other places, but never one better. And if you know a local you can find a small beach during the week that isn’t crammed with tourists and even some secluded locales if you feel the need to work on your complete tan.
American football, 11 minutes of action interrupting three+ hours of commercials, has no peer in the “boring sports” department.
@Anonymous 10:59 AM I was definitely on the phone with my inner curmudgeon this morning and he just couldn't stand DIANA Taurasi (who?) crossing ADUBA Uzo (who?) sitting on top of UNRIG and BESTIR (neither are NW worthy), so when I hit the baseball abbreviation, I took out my angst on the entire sport. In Denver, baseball is an opportunity to eat hot dogs and nachos that you can get in any 7-Eleven (hyphen for @Rex) at a third of the price. It's not exciting. Once, I was invited to sit directly behind home plate three rows up and it was way better there. Again, the richy-rich win. (Hyphen #2, for, you guessed it, the Anonym-oti saying hyphen rants are ridiculous. Yer face is ridiculous. ) Not really, you are beautiful. Golf sucks since Tiger imploded. I've never watched an entire hockey game, but I hear the team here won a championship -- (dash) good for them. I think you're right about those. But years ago we were traveling in Austria during the soccer world cup of something or other and every night in every pub there was soccer mania and it was pretty exciting. I have watched zero minutes of soccer since.
Appreciate 🦖s valid hyphen nits, and really enjoyed this one.! 👍🏽 Yes, it was easy, fast, but cutting the corners was fun. Went straight to them, which may be why it was speedy. 🤸🏽♀️ Some clever clueing too. Yay creative constructors! 🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
NW corner start-up was an *oof* of no-knows, what with ARUBA/DIANA crossers, and 1-Across makin no day-um sense (pre-theme mcguffin grok). Plus, gotta tack on a har, for UNRIG & BESTIR. Then kick in them mysterious clues about Montana and some NL West team abbreve. *Oof*, I say.
First solvequest entry: Almost POR, but couldn't get anything good to connect to it, so M&A chickened out. Finally, splatzed in POSH. Then NEAREST. Then AGAVE. Then READS, whose ?-marker clue was easier than that there un-?-marked NINER clue [snort]. Then AVOID. Then DON(KING) -- and I figured we'd be havin us a rebus theme with card names or royalty titles or somesuch. Wrong again, M&A puzbreath.
staff weeject pick: CUT. Lil word let gets in on the theme reveal. Weespect. Like. And REC got in on the theme, too boot. Really like. honrable mention to that deal they were doin, with EDU & DOT.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Chenmeister and Pipal dudes. And congratz on the half-debut -- and I ain't talkin about Chen, on that part.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
those that thought today's NYTPuz was too easy can get seriously roughed up here: **gruntz**
@Dean Dave 11:11 – That's an interesting piece of trivia you unearthed.
According to Wiki it was Ungar in the play and the movie, and Unger in the TV show. Why deliberately change it? Maybe Unger was a typo in the TV pilot that they never bothered to correct. But it looks like print editions of the play may show it as Unger now too.
p.s. typos from earlier msg attempt: Should be "ADUBA/DIANA crossers". Should be "BEDHOGS clue".
Sheesh. Where is Otto Korrect when U really need him?
M&Also
p.s. M&A will be on a looong road trip, soon -- not to be outdone by @RP. Plannin to leave a few extra ration runtpuzs at the http://runtpuz.blogspot.com site. Just sayin.
Too bad Rex's early hyphen expectations let him down and left him with a negative-leaning feeling about this puzzle. I didn't catch on to the trick as quickly (twigging at HAVE ONE and going back to HOME EC to confirm) so I had full enjoyment of filling in the circles, later discovering the theme at CUT and, finally, noticing the CORNERS in the circles, which tied it all up in a nice bow.
Like @Nancy, I was unsure about ADUBA/DIANA. I considered ArUBA but somewhere knew that I hadn't run into an actress named for the island and went with ADUBA instead.
Bill Pipal, congratulations on your NYT debut and thanks to you and Jeff Chen for a delightful, if easy, Thursday puzzle.
And Rex, your monitoring of the Emergency Natick System is appreciated. Have fun on Lake Michigan.
Some of you are absolute whizzes at finding topics covered in previous pages. So, will one of you please dig around for the Unger/Ungar debate. I'm certain we've flogged this horse dead at least once before.
Googled for Taurasi's first name and ADUBA too. Otherwise I got the trick, though since I never deal with circles, I did not know why they were there. Pretty clever, actually.
RHAPSODIC I got, but somehow I don't think of it as extremely emotional.
I do like DO IN. Makes me think of Tom Lehrer:
And maybe we'll DO IN a *squirrel* or two While we're poisoning pigeons in the Park.
What I don't get is why I went off in search of a song by Hayes Carll, which shares a title (but little else) with a Tom Waits song. Both in their way about drinking, but NONE did not set me off in that direction. Maybe some comment here? It's a mystery. But it did lead me ultimately to another Tom Waits song, "I Don't Wanna Grow Up", and it is well worth looking for, as performed by many artists including Waits.
Waits of course made his name writing songs about drinking. He stopped with the aid of his current wife, who co-wrote IDWTGU. Probably the reason Tom is alive today. But as so often happens when alcohol is your muse, it made it harder to keep writing great material. It's the Irish Dilemma, maybe.
While I don't like proper names in my puzzles, and I don't think they should ever be crossed, I think DIANA Taurasi is more crossworthy than many of the names I see in puzzles. She is after all considered by most followers of the sport to be the greatest women's basketball player of all time. While I wouldn't consider the greatest kayaker or table tennis player on the same level, I think her sport has gained enough popularity for her to qualify. She is world famous.
@Anonymous 1:08 PM Searching the blog, all previous UNGAR related discussions are focused on a poker player named Stu, except one reference to a H(UNGAR)IAN.
Ouch that NW corner! 3 sports clues, and all of them maddeningly obscure. Since I wanted DERIG crossing NFLER (I know, they don't work together) there was no hope for me. Uzo crossing Taurasi and a deeply dreaded 3 letter baseball team abbrev? Awful.
I had TAKE ONE before HAVE ONE. And more names all over: GADOT crossing EDAM, SITKA crossing ANGUS, MILNE crossing SONIA.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0. 4 of my last 5 words were 4ers.]
Z, You are almost alone in that opinion. You do know that for the 5 years between 2017 and 2021 ( The last year w complete data) NFL games accounted for 48 of the 50 most watched programs. 88 of the top 100. I don't give a fig for your personal opinion of the game, but reason and decency demand that people know just how far from mainstream your opinion lies.
@Smith, you can't go wrong by going to Minnehaha Park. See the iconic Minnehaha falls, take the walk to the scenic Mississippi parkway, have a beer and lunch at the Sea Salt eatery; the weather is great right now, 75-80 degrees and sunny, though it may get hot next week. Luckily the park is fully shaded.
Regarding z's onion that football is boring. America disagrees. In a big way. Of the 50 most watched shows in the last 5 years NFL games occupy 48 spots. Of the top 100 most watched television shows, The NFL claims 88 spots. The results are in. America adores football. especially the NFL.
Found this fun . Little easier than usual for Thursday. got the trick early on ,but still had some trouble with it. 39 A was a big DOH for me. I am so used to the term "tube" that I could not think of it as anything but a generic subway. The Brit came through crosses, then the lightbulb
@SonVolt7:42 and a poster before, Why AC/Dc That means less than nothing to me re "Angus" Do think Aduba and Diana were obscure PPP to start the puzzle with. Also thought Sitka was obscure as clued. Got it from a couple of crosses because I am very familiar with Sitka (wonderful music festival based there ) but I do not think of it as a port. It definitely has a port, It's on an island, but there are many, many ports in Alaska, we have more coastline than the whole rest of the US, but I dont' think anything ever lands at Sitka that is not used right there in Sitka - except tourists.
@Gary Jugert 9:20 AM - RE: "Taurasi isn't famous. Uzo isn't famous." I don't know by which I am more shocked: (1) that you said this in the first place, or that (2) nobody has commented on it yet. As a person who lives by 12-Step principles, I want to say what I mean, mean what I say, and not say it mean. So instead of flinging epithets, let me note simply that both of these well-known celebrities are Black women.
I'd wager that most of the obese, beer swigging, fat, white boys laid out in their La-Z-Boys in front of the tube aren't actually watching those NFL/CFL/XFL/USFL contests; they're snoring away in a stupor.
albatross shell, Not at all. Just pointing out that Z's taste in recreation-- believing frisbee is a sport and disliking the country's most popular sport- are both well outside norms. As I say, I don't give a fig what he likes or doesn't. But disparaging football raises my hackles. And Z pissses on football all the time. I'm tired of hearing it.
@Joe Dipinto Your post wasn't up when I started mine. I also found some movie sites that list it as UNGER in movie. TV culture dominates the world? Just confusion? Did Simon change it? Glad someone else was checking.
I found this puzzle quite difficult. People I didn't know. CARIB? ANGUS? Knew SITKA mostly from John Straley mysteries but did not know it was correct. Reading his newest now. I had king instead of DONE, of course. Almost all the areas that did not have circled letters filled in first. So I was quite slow getting the trick. Had to google some of the PPP.
Felt like I had been reading Poe by the time I got SALLOW.
But once I saw the trick things sure speeded up.
Ones always taking cover? is a good clue for BEDHOGS. See the question mark? Know what a clue is? Know what a precise synonym is? Hint: It's not the only type of clue. And if the covers do not move it is also accurate. And yes I did think of the same thing while I filled it in: Maybe not technically accurate.
I did think I would see a pile of complaints about MODE. Sometimes I am happy being wrong.
Anon 1:49 Nope. Nielsen corrects for the demographic you so smugly sneer at. As for the CFL, XFL, USFL, well, gosh not one of their games makes the top 100. And of course I didn't include them in my stats. You'll also note, that not a single game from MLB, The NBA or the NHAL manages to crack the top 100. Not one from any of the other 3 "major" sports. The NFL had 88. 88. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the NFL isn't so much popular as a religion.
Well, we already know how 'sports' has pre-saged the end of Western Civilization. We've had Pro Rasslin for a few decades, any number of 'reality' competitions, and now LIV golf laundering Saudi blood money. Anything for TV ratings.
I guess I missed where he said football wasn't popular. Ultimate is the modest name they give their sport. And it is a sport. Not a big-time sport. But it certainly is a sport. Exciting to play. Strategy skill etc. All the hallmarks of a sport. Fun to watch if you have an interest in it. Simple rule, minimal equipment. Both virtues in my mind.
I am a football fan. But I think football deserves pissing on in a bunch of ways. Injuries short-term and long. Colleges as minor leagues kinda sucks. The expanding schedule does too. Short weeks too. Money changes everything and often not for the better. Games with a lot of penalties are the most boring of any sport. But I do enjoy the game.
Hate to say it, but pretty much anytime I see Jeff on a byline I know it's likely to be at best a B minus puzzle. There's just never any sparkle and for someone so deep in the xword world you'd think he might hold himself to a higher standard for quality.
@Mike in Bed-stuy. First of all. Taurasi is a child of an Italian and Argentinian. She is not black. Just because someone doesn’t know who she is doesn’t mean they are racist. Stop looking for racism where it doesn’t exist.
Shell, Why the snark? No one believes Z spoke of fort all’s popularity. I introduced that element specifically to point out that while z finds football boring — a perfectly reasonable thing to say— the country does not. And that’s reasonable too. In my defense, Z’s is only an opinion. My assertion is based on fact. And the fact is the NFL is staggeringly, almost in comprehensively, and certainly in television terms, uniquely popular. As for your explanation as to why ultimate frisbee is a sport, all the elements you cite are applicable and true. But you left out the sine qua non of sport, physicality. As it happens ultimate frisbee does indeed require immense physical effort so it is a sport. But your dense of it was lacking. By your reckoning, poker is a sport after all it checks all the boxes you mentioned: Exciting to play, strategy skillets. Fun to,watch,minimal,equipment, simple rule (sic).
I cringe when I see ANTI-AGING products like the one pictured in OFL's blog. Really? People actually pay money for this quackery? You can SLATHER on that crapola 'til the cows come home and if it does anything, it will probably accelerate the AGING process. Only one thing is ANTI-AGING. One thing only.
Nice to see 51A DART GUN get some respect as "One way to administer a tranquilizer" rather than being clued as a Nerf product as it was in last Thursday's NYTXW.
This theme was one layer too thick for me. It's the unclued ANTIC, ADO, HOMER, HAVEN, DONE, LIVER and ASS layer that's kind of hanging out there slowly twisting in the wind looking for a reason to exist. And it seems like we have been getting a lot of ASS lately, right?
@4:21 Taurasi is a child of an Italian and Argentinian.
Well... may be, or may be not. There was, some years ago, a Right Wingnut politician who's quoted, more or less, as asserting: 'If all this miscegenation goes on, we'll all look Brazilian!'. As if eliminating skin color in discrimination were a Bad Thing. One might substitute 'Argentine'. Fact is, a lot of South Americans have some amount of Negro blood in their veins.
"Mexicans descend from the Aztecs, Peruvians from the Incas – but Argentinians descend from the ships,” goes an old saying that encapsulates Argentina’s perception of itself as a nation of transplanted white Europeans." and "In 1778, Africans and Afro-descendants made up 37% of the population of what is now Argentina, according to a census by its Spanish colonialist rulers. In some major provinces the proportion was more than 50%." and “In the US, a drop of black blood makes you black, but in Argentina a drop of white blood makes you white,” said Gomes. “In a society where Afro-descendants were marginalized, many Afro-descendant families emphasized their whiteness to save themselves. They ripped up old photos and denied the existence of a black relative.”
Found it pretty easy, despite the PPP crossings. In regards to those, my problem is that back in my day, there were three channels of television. Three. So, that limited the amount of 'stars', personalities, or whatever quite a bit. Last I checked, my cable guide scrolls through 700 channels, and lets not even go into amazon prime TV, Peacock, hulu, roku, whoknew, and whatever. It's probably great that every niche as well as mainstream audience is getting program content of interest to them, but my problem is that I feel it unfair to be expected to know the thousands and thousands of actors floating out there in the streaming/TV universe these days. I simply cannot give them all the recognition that the 3 prime time programs of my youth used to generate. Maybe crosswords need to take that into consideration, that 'stars' are much more Natick these days. Period. Other than that, I loved the concept of this puzzle. I found it elegant! I didn't get it at the first one. Then when I got to ADRATE, I thought AD rebus FEE for sure, so that confused me for the 8D. FEE aging? Free Ranging? (more rebusing?) No, that's the opposite. Hmm. So on I went still tingling with anticipation. Really loved it when I figured it out. Got the revealer before finishing the entire grid, so that helped me fill in the last couple of letters in the circles. Just a joy, even if I was grumpy about some of the name crossings. Got UNGER as UNsER for a second. My bad, since that was a show I really liked. I also very much liked the spoof episode on How I Met Your Mother, where Klaus talks about the German version where there is 'this one guy that is a real neat freak, and the other...that is even neater!" (paraphrased). Really tickled my German heritage and own enjoyment of neatness and order. Thanks, constructors. But next time, NYTxw, less of those name crosses, please. And, finally, just sad to see how often comments are ripped into here by others. That's not spirited discourse. : (
@B Right There-You struck a couple of chords with me. I grew up with "three" channels, but two of them were pretty sketchy. The question now is always not "What's on?", but "What else is on?". Plenty. Too much, really.
Also, I was walking with a German friend one time and we passed a lady walking a dog, and he had to point out to her, "That is not the proper way to walk a dog.". Neatness and order indeed.
If you just said the popularity of football shows Zed's opinion is not mainstream , I would not have replied.
It was you who said Zed believes Ultimate is a sport as if you disagreed. If you had not said that I would have not replied to you.
You did not dispute his reason about the low amount of action per hour. A justifiable reason for some to feel that way.
Do more than 50% of Americans find football exciting? If not who is in the minority? World-wide popularity: soccer and basketball might win. Maybe even baseball too. But football is what is most watched in the USA but not the most played. Not sure where car racing comes in.
And you should thank the abilities of CGI and the like to make it possible for all those non-Big-Three [or Four, if your count Fox/Dumont] to produce content at some level of profit. If there is any, really. If one looks closely, it's become pretty obvious that in a few years we'll be back to a handful (may haps 3 or 4) 'networks' controlling 99.44% of content channels. Where's the FCC/FTC when consumers need them???? eh?
Thank you @Lewis for your eloquent comments about this elegant collaboration. Yes, it was easy. Yes, the two possible Natick spots were possibly killers but what fun to have the creative verve and high energy of our debut constructor with the steady hand and experience of the “old timer.” Well done to both Bill Pipal and Jeff Chen. I enjoyed it.
Shell, Oof. No, I never said that ultimate was not a sport. In fact I went out of my way to aver that it was. Your definition of sport precluded it. Take the loss.
@anon812 You said "Just pointing out that Z's taste in recreation-- believing frisbee is a sport and disliking the country's most popular sport- are both well outside norms."
I said that implied you did not think Ultimate qualified as a sport because why else would you bother mentioning most people do not believe it.
You notice the etc after my mentioning attributes needed for ultimate. Yes sports are played by people with athletic ability. Doh.
"Take the loss" you said What are you in 3rd grade?
@Anonymous 4:21 PM - No, I was wrong about her race, but as the child of Argentinian parents, she is Latina, and in our culture, that makes her a person of color. But in any case, I am not looking for racism where it does not exist. I am SEEING behavior that DOES EXIST. Saying these two women of color are "not famous" when they both clearly are VERY FAMOUS, to me, smacks of racism.
@Gary Jugert 5:26 PM - I am suggesting a connection between the race/ethnicity and gender of these two women, and the perception of their level of fame, or lack thereof. I have noticed that, on this blog, when commenters complain about people being obscure PPP, those people are often people of color, and often people who are QUITE celebrated, but in the eyes of millennials or zoomers rather than boomers (the latter of which I am one, as I assume you already know). I did not say anyone was "racist." I pointed out that there are racial and gender implications of the assessment that these two very famous women of color are, in fact, "not famous."
Every puzzle I have trouble with Rex tags as easy, and the ones he struggles with I solve easily. Maybe because he is good at PPP and I am good at math and science clues (WILEYPOST was a gimme for me the other day).
Today the NE corner stopped me. No one knows any WNBA players, its just PC to try to include one here or there to make them seem relevant. The number of appearances in the NYTCW should equal the number of fans in the stands. And never heard of, and after Googling, seen anything Uzo has been part of (admittedly, I am behind pop culture, hence my struggles with PPP). Add that to archaic UNRIG (when was the last time you UNRIGged your sloop?) and BESTIR, there was no hope for me unless I dusted off the Wayback machine.
More people watch baseball in any given week in the US than watch football on any given weekend. The “88 of the top 100” thing is deceptive in two ways. First, viewing habits are different. Go back before Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/Apple TV and you’ll find the Super Bowl and the occasional MNF broadcast in the top 100. If viewers still only had four or five major networks and some cable stations then football wouldn’t seem so popular. As a percentage of total screen time football isn’t particularly popular. Second, the NFL has a high percentage of its games as “national” games. The other sports offer most of their games on a regional basis only. As a result, baseball has more viewers in most team’s regional market than football does, but football games will have higher national ratings. Football viewership numbers as presented are really just well-spun marketing aimed at advertisers.
As for Ultimate, The World Club Championships are down to the semifinals Friday and Finals on Saturday. Looking at a potential all US Men’s Final and potentially a No US Mixed Final. But the Women’s!?!?! Fury, basically the NY Yankees of Women’s Ultimate, versus the team from North Carolina (NC has been winning everything from youth to GM lately) on one side of the bracket against the storied powerhouse from Columbia playing the upstart powerhouse from Australia in the other semi. If you can watch either of those games I recommend you do it.
I was at Live Aid and it was amazing. Watching the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin suddenly show up on stage, at sunset, was simply electric. It was the first time they'd been together since Bonham had died. Very happy they chose Philly over London to make their impromptu reunion!
@Mike in Bed-Stuy 9:51 PM It's already tomorrow and nobody will ever read this, yet I persist.
I don't know if commenters here are more likely to dismiss the celebrity of people of color. Perhaps they are, but there are lots of "famous" people of color, and your clunky assertion here that I dismissed these two particular people's celebrity due to their ethnic heritage is indefensible.
Your definition of fame might be different than mine. Actors and athletes, like YouTube stars, are known among those who watch them, but being "famous" means you're recognized by society at large. You believe they are "very famous" and obviously I didn't know either. We can debate when "fame" begins, but doing so in your lens of racism would require me to know in advance their ethnic heritage.
I believe Taurasi isn't famous because she plays for a league few watch. If you are a fan, you can say she's famous, but outside of the fans, she's unknown. I'd imagine the only WNBA player most people know is the one under arrest in Russia and only because she's on network news. The average non-basketball-watcher probably can't name a single famous current NBA player and legions more people follow that league. There are lots of famous athletes of color, but Taurasi is only "famous" among basketball fans.
You can make a stronger case Uzo is "famous" as she's garnered some acting awards and played a leading role (I'm told) in a cable TV show some years ago. Unfortunately, her Netflix show doesn't rank on any current most-watched list I checked. And awards in acting don't magically make you famous. Again, there are lots of famous actors and actresses of color, but Uzo isn't one yet. I'll note in passing I almost never know any of the actors no matter what color they are.
I grumbled about the crosses on these two people as I needed to look them up to complete the puzzle. Had they been generally famous I wouldn't have needed to Google them. Only AFTER would I have learned of their ethnic origins. It's already been pointed out, Taurasi isn't black as you asserted (a mistake), but Argentinian. It would have been weird to claim (as you did) I dismissed their fame on a racial basis, when I obviously didn't know who they were at all.
Great puzzle until I hit the ADUBA-DIANA crossing. I had to guess and almost went with between ArUBA-rIANA but crossed my fingers and put down the D instead. The theme was clever, fun to solve and well-executed. It was SWELL except for that EVIL Natick. Consequently it isn’t a TEN or even a NINER but it’s still cut ABOVE at eight.
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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124 comments:
It pains me to admit that I agree with Rex on this one.
Very boring Thursday.
As a Wednesday offering it would have been fine.
Suggested clues for the seven unclued grid entries:
1 Caper*
6 Kerfuffle
9 Round tripper
28 New_____
35 "...and____!"
47 _____spots
53 Dumb_____
*This originally was shenanigan but @Rex used the term.
I enjoyed this Thursday solve. I can't say that about Thursdays very often. Yes, it was easy but that's not a complaint.
I, in fact, got double-Naticked in exactly the ways Rex predicted. I serve on a board with a Liana, and I had managed to put DO IT for “finish off”, making ANGUS hopeless to guess. (I did get SITKA.)
Did not like.
The hyphen (non) problem didn't occur to me. I think because the "cut" provided that little break that a hyphen offers. ANTIAGING would not be great.
I'm still waiting for XWORDINFO to get the correct puzzle. The puzzle there, also by JC, was in the NYT in June. Apparently it's in syndication today.
First thought about 1A: “AGING” would be a long rebus in the circle. First thought on reading the 38D clue, “What you get when you put your hands together”: monkeypox?
Rex liked this one a bit more than I did. Very Natick-y NW. Otherwise easy, yet a slog.
The Tube is in London. So much of the fill here is just that At first, I was filling in the bubbles such that they doubled the down, but that clearly was not right. I too had trouble with bedhogs, although that seems to be bad cluing. A bedhog takes over the bed. That doesn't necessarily include the covers. My wife steals the covers on a regular basis, but I would never call her a bedhog. I know Uzo Aduba has appeared in puzzles before, but she still is outside of my wheelhouse. Meanwhile, I wonder how much A. A. Milne and Felix Unger are known to fans of Uzo Aduba. And Angus as a Scottish noble in MacBeth? Why not 'Young of AC/DC'? 'A cow known for its beef'? or even just 'Black ________'? I didn't really enjoy this very much.
Very, very easy for a Thursday. Will seems to think we are all idiots and any puzzle with a twist we need to be coddled. On the other hand, any puzzle with MILNE will get a smile out of me.
Full bonus points for all the themers forming real words in both directions (or almost-words, in the case of REC). Some minor demerits for the un-cut corners.
I am sorry to say I find the whole hyphen complain absolutely ridiculous. Especially so as English is the language that is extremely frivolous with its hyphenation. Period.
Struggled with the names in the North West but the downs and crosses were easy enough to work through. Other than that it was a Tuesdayish kind of puzzle.
Props to Bill for the very clever theme idea and for his NYT debut, and to Jeff for elegantly completing what must have been a beast of a construction.
Supreme praise to Jeff, who, early in this collaboration (according to Bill’s notes) suggested that the two “think through how to provide a great solving experience before diving in too deep.” Yes, THAT, rather than showing off. Let the solver come first! Thank you, Jeff.
And for me, this indeed was a great solving experience. I thought this was a rebus early on, but that wasn’t working well. When I came to my last blank square, the last letter of RELIC, I still hadn’t cracked fully what was going on, and I bore down, intent on figuring this out without looking up the solution. And when that solution hit me, the whoosh of discovery brought a huge flush of joy, oho, and wow.
A paradigm Thursday from a vet and a tyro, and much gratitude from a happy solver. Thank you, gentlemen!
@Rex. I expect you'll enjoy your time at Lake Michigan. I live about 40 minutes from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I was there a couple of days ago at a beach only accessible via a 2-track and a hike. It's one of very few non-busy areas during the summer tourist rush. It was delightful.
I had fun with this - looking for a little more trickery and nuance but this was fine. The lack of a hyphen doesn’t get me worked up. Overall fill was clean enough - some odd trivia scattered around.
I liked the RHAPSODIC x OBOE cross and agree with Rex on the strength of SALLOW. UNRIG on top of BESTIR is rough and the DOT EDU pair is lazy. Agree that ANGUS should have been clued re: AC/DC.
Hayes Carll covering Tom Waits
Enjoyable Thursday solve.
Speaking of DOH! I finally figured out that I was in the "Other newspapers" side of XWORDINFO where the blog is organized by syndication dates. Clicked the NYT button and all was well.
It took a while to see what was going on, but see I did, finally, and therefore a medium Aha! moment for this one. I suspect it was more fun to construct than to solve, as the done deed is fair impressive.
ENOS was a gimmie for me, but I wonder what the age cutoff point is for that one.
Uzo ADUBA you say? OK, I guess.
SALLOW always makes me think of Sherlock Holmes, for some reason. Not that it describes him, but I seem to remember a fair number of characters in the stories with that attribute.
Nice enough Thursdecito, BP and JC. Skewed easy, But Pleasant enough for a Joint Construction. Thanks for some fun, at least.
UNGER/ANGUS got the eyebrows arching. The TV series went off the air before I was in high school (although I see there was a recentish Matthew Perry reboot that I suspect just about everyone missed) and ANGUS is not one of the 15 Macbeth characters with their own Wiki page. When I see ANGUS I think beef, not Scotland.
Otherwise a fine offering, although perhaps easier to suss out than Shortz et al. thought.
@albatross shell late - Two Rex truisms that get lost a lot in the comments; Rex is often taken seriously when he’s joking so, when in doubt, read a passage as if he is joking and Rex is writing about his solving experience, we are all free to have our own experiences.
I got the gimmick early and found the puzzle both easy and enjoyable…. Except for ADUBA, DIANA, SITKA, and ANGUS. I mean jeez….
So the first thing that greeted me was the Uzo lady crossed by the WBNA lady -- and I was not a happy camper. No I wasn't!
But things got better on the PPP front and I did like the trap awaiting those who don't know their "The Odd Couple" well enough. You've got that "R" at the end and if you're not careful you'll write in OSCAR. But he's the slovenly one. What you want is the other one, the neatnik Felix UNGER.
As far as the theme is concerned, I looked at the tiny little circles and my heart sank. Tiny little circles on a Thursday! Really now! But this time they're not there to be annoying. This time they're there to make the solver do some thinking and present a challenge. I got the general idea well enough to fill in answers before I knew exactly what was going on. But I did think that it had something to do with CUT or CUTTING OUT or something of that sort.
Aha! CUT CORNERS! Nice! I tried, unsuccessfully, to use that idea (and revealer) in a completely different way and couldn't make it work. For anyone who's interested, more about that in my next post.
Amy: Cheerful little puzzle with several interesting words. Like the cornering angle.
This puzzle is fun if you struggle awhile to find the theme, then whoosh, but only awhile, then real puzzle Some decent word play (Montana was treat as was tube rider), and decent clues all around. Not so easy for me...thought they were making up for yesterday's Monday on Wednesday. Let's have Jeff Chen every Thursday, please. At least we get our fun theme.
The hyphen thing is such a minor nit to complain about. Construction is brilliant, my only write over was I wrote in felix first thing instead of UNGER. But it was quickly apparent that was wrong. I always struggle with Uzo’s name and “UNRIG”??? Clunky. 64A wanted Seuss. And thought nBC at first for 32D. Great puzzle.
ANGUS should only be clued with Angus Podgorny, the first Scotsman to win Wimbledon.
Always nice to see MILNE. Guess I'll never change my avatar. But is it just me or have Thursdays recently become much easier? Of course I was expecting a rebus, and I'm usually slow to catch the "round the corner" type things, but it had to be HOMEEC and Parks and REC, and for some reason I just saw it there. No idea on DIANA but got her from crosses. Would not have thought I would know the name of *any* promoter of any sport thing, but he also just popped into mind.
Maybe the everything bagel this morning helped...
@Rex next week I'll be waaay up on the Keewenaw for a memorial service. It takes 3 days to get there and back for a one hour service, sheesh.
Only one flight per day in/out of Houghton. So we're driving from Minneapolis instead and spending an extra day in that city. Any suggestions for an afternoon in Minneapolis?? Besides Birchbark Books and the Sculpture Garden?
Took me a little bit to figure out the trick because I was stubbornly trying to make a rebus out of those CORNERS. But I see in the comments that @Lewis had the same thought so I feel much better now. If you’re going to make a wrong assumption about a puzzle that’s about the most esteemed company one could hope to be in. And while the hyphen issue also threw me off the scent, it didn’t do so for long and certainly wasn’t a deal breaker.
I was starting to get annoyed and doing a lot of erasing before finally seeing the light. Then that lovely aha moment ALONG with a big smile and all was right in crossworld. Pretty slick debut for Mr. Pipal who hails from Chicago according to his notes. And since he has a rescue dog I’ll even forgive him for being an Illini.
Lots of eye appeal today: DART GUN, BED HOGS, CANOODLED, RHAPSODIC, BBC crossing BRIT. But the best one was the clue for NINER. Hunky Joe was always one of my favorite players especially during the time he spent as a KC Chief. He’s been known to make some pretty good ADs over the years AS WELL.
Okay -- my unsuccessful CUT CORNERS puzzle idea:
In the 4 corners of the puzzle were 4 different rebus words: a SCISSORS rebus; a KNIFE rebus; a SAW rebus and an AX rebus.
I would need two theme answers for each rebus word and some ideas I remember I had were JACKKNIFE and SCISSORS KICK and [Edward] SCISSORSHAND and KeneSAW Mountain Landis and...well you get the idea.
The positioning of the rebuses in the grid was rigid and couldn't be juggled. Where the rebus word was positioned in the themer -- differently according to which corner you were in -- was rigid and couldn't be juggled. Matching the numbers of letters in the various
Across and Down theme answers was well above my pay grade.
I sent the idea to my brilliant and resourceful collaborator who can often wrestle an idea that presents thorny execution problems to the ground. He looked at it and told me what I sort of already knew: It couldn't be done.
So congrats to Bill and Jeff for coming up with a challenging and interesting CUT CORNERS idea that could be done!
ANTIAGING is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary without a hyphen, so today's tantrum seems excessive.
Uzo Aduba was a highlight of Orange is the New Black. Highly recommend the first two seasons. It gets a little bit torture porn-y after that; they felt a need to heighten the stakes which, in prison, is pretty awful.
But anyway, count me among the Aduba/Milne/Odd Couple youths. Children still read Winnie the Pooh, especially since Disney is producing media with the characters. And this Millennial spent enough time watching Nick At Night to know Felix and Oscar, though I didn't know his last name.
Have fun on Lake Michigan — the greatest of the inland freshwater seas. I’m there now — won’t say where, as it’s already popular enough…
Hello constructors, we might have covered this in XW101, but let's review. Taurasi isn't famous. Uzo isn't famous. Don't friggen cross them. Baseball is the least interesting sport. Rouse and strip both lead to made up compound words. Your northwest is a wreck.
Moving on, ORATE and PRATE are equally plausible for 8D and since your theme negates the cross you can't finish the puzzle.
More sadness continues with TO HEEL. To hell I'd say.
GADOT is only crossword famous. Why are you giving us a bunch of nobodies? Backspace is a key you might want to find.
CARIB, ug. TARSI, ugg. ENOS, uggg. INIT, ugggg. OBOE, uggggg.
No-goodnik = CAD? Your clue is no-good-bill-jeff.
ACT IV? Really? For a future puzzle, use this: End of every song ever? SILENCE.
You know EDU DOT is backward I'm sure. So why did you do it like that?
Wait, SONIA is famous. Phew, got one right.
Not all is lost here. How about re-using these wonderful words in a better puzzle? RHAPSODIC, DART GUN, CANOODLED, BED HOGS, RELIC, ANGUS, HASHTAG, ENAMEL and VALOR.
I've tried to learn from @Lewis and find the daily celebration in the NYTXW, but this is a kids birthday party kind of celebration and I am happy to be going home. The cake tasted POR.
Uniclues:
1 Sweet spot.
2 "Hey Gal, you finish your pear?"
3 Rasta hexin' a zombie voodoo doll.
4 The best solution for the next Anonym-oti typing the phrase, "WRONG!!!!"
5 Unhealthy computer expert.
6 Snogged Pooh-man.
7 Vows going on way too long retrieved from Yahoo.
8 "Back in my day, San Francisco didn't suck."
9 Putting my cats in a crate.
10 Prepares an ant apocalypse.
11 Best of show at the state fair.
12 Pound paint.
1 AGAVE HAVEN
2 BOSC DONE, GADOT?
3 CARIB DOIN' OMEN
4 DARTGUN ASS
5 TECHIE SALLOW
6 CANOODLED MILNE
7 A LONG "I DO" EMAIL
8 NINER ORAL TALE
9 CAGING BED HOGS
10 READS RAID
11 POSH ANGUS
12 HASHTAG ENAMEL
I think that Jeff made the cluing too easy so that we wouldn't miss the gimmick. That's my only carp. The gimmick was well done, there were some colorful entries, professional through and through. Liked it very much.
Thx, Bill & Jeff; you CUT the mustard on this one! :)
Med.
Faster than avg time, but seemed a bit tougher.
Got the 'E' in DON E KING thx to putting the CORNER together before filling in the final cell.
Fun Thurs. adventure! :)
___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Hey All !
Had to be quite difficult to get phrases that worked as actual words when you CUT them. Plus actually adding a different letter to that phrase, and still getting real words, While getting the "CUTs" to spell out CORNERS. Dang, kudos you two! My brain hurts just describing it!
61A could've been - Engaged too much in some amorous behavior? - CANOODLE OT. Of course, the D doesn't fit into the CORNERS 🙂
West Center was a tough little area. Had to Goog for CARIB, never would've gotten that. ACT IV throwing me off, too.
Nice puz, 42 Blockers, but extras needed to pull off the CORNERs. Was scratching the head when I saw "Revealer" clue, and it was a three. Further head-scratching ensued when I had _UT there.
Inner 10 year old snickering at ASS SWELL. Har.
yd -3, should'ves 1
No F's (puz HAVE NONE)
RooMonster
DarrinV
DNF at the NW mashup of ADUBA - aruba/DIANE - Riane, Leane, Ciane, etc. No idea who they are. But the pain didn’t end there.
I suppose I should have figured out ARI for sure, it probably would have led me to NINER. I thought maybe a tribal or biblical name - NINEH? And I recalled Montana was a quarterback, but that's the extent of my knowledge of him. And nicknames for teams I don’t know, I don’t know. So. Woefully un-American I guess. I wasn’t a boxing fan as a kid either, so I didn’t know Don King, though his name rings a bell.
There were entertaining clues in other areas, and I did get the turned corners, but didn’t think “Cut.” Nice.
Mr. Grumpypants,
Dictionary.com agrees with you and Merriam-Webster. But hey, listen to the college lecturer from Suny Binghamton and not the lexographers.
As for Lake Michigan being the greatest inland freshwater sea, Lake Superior would like a word with anon 9:14
Fantastic puzzle Bill and Jeff
So Rex is critical of the puzzle because it’s not the theme he would have constructed? Hyphens be dammed. I thought this was a fun romp with a clever revealer. Congrats to fellow Chicagoan Bill Pipal on his debut and to Jeff Chen for helping Bill get his idea into print.
Favorite answer: CANOODLED.
how many of us refer to the Odd Couple (movie or teeVee for that matter) by their last names? I ask you?
@10:04
where did the Edmund Fitzgerald go under? Lake Superior, of course.
@ Smith. The Minneapolis museum is really nice for an afternoon. There is also an interesting Russian museum.
I found the theme super easy to grok.
ADUBA Uzo, not so much.
I want to BESTIR my RHAPSODIC grandiloquence to ORATE that I thought this was pretty good.
For most of us that have been doing puzzles for a while, it would seem that it's easy. Easy in my MILNE book doesn't mean bad. I had fun because I didn't have to bash my head in trying to find the trick. Instead...I got a treat.
I like POSH BRIT because I'm married to one. He BED HOGS the covers and watches BBC while I loll around being a Gal GADOT. Do you call that HOG HAVEN?
The ANTI CAGING was easy to sniff out and the rat I usually smell was nowhere to be seen. I didn't even see nor notice the missing hyphen nor did I care.
I knew all the names which is a rare treat for me. There were some pauses and a few grunts that I let out. I don't like TO HEEL nor ARI nor UNRIG nor ACTIV. I prefer words that I use in every day parlance.
But then you give me CANOODLED and so everything ends happily ever after.
This had to have been very difficult to construct, but it came together nicely in my SALLOW SWELL opinion. Good job Bill and Jeff.
@ beverly c: I hope your "... didn't know DON KING, but his name rings a bell" was pun intended. Gave me a big smile.
Took me longer than Rex (not surprising) to figure out the gimmick, so the puzzle played easy-medium for me. The various well documented unfamiliar names were also a factor.
I was right on top of the Montana misdirection, except I wanted NflER. When that obviously didn't work, I traipsed back into Big Sky country for a while, adding even more pause to that odd NW.
Speaking of Shakespeare and royalty and the end of dramatic works, I believe it is not ACT IV, but Act V, when Claudius becomes a DONE KING.
I got stuck on UNGER/ANGUS as well. I had DOIt instead of DOIN, and I have never even heard of The Odd Couple as it aired well before I was born.
Couldn't think of a Macbeth character fitting At?US
Yes! the blancmange thing, brilliant!
@Nancy (9:03) It couldn’t be done? Well if anyone could, it would be you and Will.
My favorite MILNE quote: “Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.“
Cute, but yes, very easy, and, as with @Rex, the hyphen issue bothered me, too, perhaps due to my decades of commenting on student essays ("Non-parallel construction"). Bright spots for me were RHAPSODIC, BESTIR, BEDHOGS. Re: the symptoms @Rex mentioned at the end of his post - if SALLOW, perhaps try LIVER AID?
Definitely too easy — according to the app I broke my personal Thursday record by 20 seconds.
On second look, all of the cut corners answers could be clued without cutting the corner:
Like poultry advocates: ANTICAGING
Worship: ADORATE
Game night in the den: HOME REC
Without resources: HAVE NONE
Claudius in ACT V: DONE KING
Carter's "little" pills: LIVER AID
Equally neato, to the Beav: AS SWELL
Bye now.
@Gary. You are curmudgeonly today. HAR! I must defend baseball when it's called the least interesting sport. My list would be long before I reached baseball. I'd start with golf, soccer, ice hockey as my 3 biggest bores. Ain't diversity grand?
I think I've been doing these puzzles for about 20 years, and I still haven't learned to look at the circled letters to see if they spell anything, so I missed that part of the theme.
@Nancy, you describe me exactly. I know they're Felix and Oscar, and I had the R, so in went the latter. I did watch it once or twice, but not enough to remember that.
My list of Scottish nobles in Macbeth runs to McDuff, Duncan, and .... anyone? But with a few letters from crosses I figured out ANGUS, which gave me UNGER (how did I even know that?) @Zed, the cattle come from Scotland, so there's that. In fact, as I just learned from Wikipedia, their official name is Aberdeen ANGUS.
My other problem was ACT IV. In my experience, Shakespeare and other old plays have 5 acts, first half of the 20th Century plays have three acts, and full-length plays today have two acts. But it had to be LIVE AID, so that fixed that.
I'll be on the western shore of Lake Michigan in late August. Apparently the powers that be are now saying that Michigan and Huron are only one lake, not two, I guess because they flow together. Makes me sad.
@Smith - the Walker Art Center, of course, but you probably knew that already. I enjoyed the American Swedish Institute, as well.
I was onto the gimmick before I left the NW, ahem...CORNER. That is, I knew to ignore the last letter and go down to get the answer. Of course, I didn't see the whole picture until I was done, or close to it.
@Smith. How about a Twins game if they're at home.
Felix Ungar's name is misspelled in this puzzle, as it often is.
It’s SWELL that the NYTXW brought it’s arse back to the States.
Is Lil Wayne’s music R[H]APSODIC?
Rex needs to get to the NEAREST hyphen HAVEN.
¿POR que, pig? (Question to a Looney Toons BEDHOG)
Great concept. As easy to solve as it was, apparently, difficult to construct. I enjoyed it a ton. Congrats on a fine debut Bill Pipal and thanks Jeff Chen.
Easy. This went pretty quickly after I decided not to go with a rebus at 1a. However, I had no idea what was going on until I went back over the finished grid. Smooth and very clever, liked it.
Alaska cruise gimme - SITKA.
@kitschef - nice one!
In my quest to hopefully remember Aduba, I notice that if you write it AdUbA, it is a visual palindrome. Now off to find out who she is...checking...Crazy Eyes on Orange is the New Black, heard lots about it, never saw.
I had BEDbuGS taking the covers and finished my coffee scratching thinking about it. Enjoyed HOGS - agree with Rex that bed-hogging is more about mattress real estate, but fine.
Woke up a little groggy bc us of my unLIVER AID activities last night, but puzzle still played pretty easy today.
@Gary Jugert - really enjoyed your post today, I usually skip the meta clues, but now enjoy looking at the list of meta-answers, thinking quickly, then seeing your clever clues. Gal GADOT played Wonder Woman in 2 feature films and others in the series. Comics movies may not be your thing, but can't call her un-famous.
I always remember the SITKA spruce as the wood used for musical instruments, notably piano soundboards. Sounds better than quaking aspens.
Huron and Michigan are one lake the way the oceans are all one ocean.
The Michigan coast of Lake Michigan has great beaches. You will find some as good in other places, but never one better. And if you know a local you can find a small beach during the week that isn’t crammed with tourists and even some secluded locales if you feel the need to work on your complete tan.
American football, 11 minutes of action interrupting three+ hours of commercials, has no peer in the “boring sports” department.
@Anonymous 10:59 AM I was definitely on the phone with my inner curmudgeon this morning and he just couldn't stand DIANA Taurasi (who?) crossing ADUBA Uzo (who?) sitting on top of UNRIG and BESTIR (neither are NW worthy), so when I hit the baseball abbreviation, I took out my angst on the entire sport. In Denver, baseball is an opportunity to eat hot dogs and nachos that you can get in any 7-Eleven (hyphen for @Rex) at a third of the price. It's not exciting. Once, I was invited to sit directly behind home plate three rows up and it was way better there. Again, the richy-rich win. (Hyphen #2, for, you guessed it, the Anonym-oti saying hyphen rants are ridiculous. Yer face is ridiculous. ) Not really, you are beautiful. Golf sucks since Tiger imploded. I've never watched an entire hockey game, but I hear the team here won a championship -- (dash) good for them. I think you're right about those. But years ago we were traveling in Austria during the soccer world cup of something or other and every night in every pub there was soccer mania and it was pretty exciting. I have watched zero minutes of soccer since.
@Dean Dave (11:11) - Good catch on the UNGaR misspelling. Who knew? Well, apparently you but certainly not me!
Appreciate 🦖s valid hyphen nits,
and really enjoyed this one.! 👍🏽
Yes, it was easy, fast, but cutting the corners was fun. Went straight to them, which may be why it was speedy. 🤸🏽♀️
Some clever clueing too.
Yay creative constructors!
🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
NW corner start-up was an *oof* of no-knows, what with ARUBA/DIANA crossers, and 1-Across makin no day-um sense (pre-theme mcguffin grok). Plus, gotta tack on a har, for UNRIG & BESTIR. Then kick in them mysterious clues about Montana and some NL West team abbreve. *Oof*, I say.
First solvequest entry: Almost POR, but couldn't get anything good to connect to it, so M&A chickened out. Finally, splatzed in POSH. Then NEAREST. Then AGAVE. Then READS, whose ?-marker clue was easier than that there un-?-marked NINER clue [snort]. Then AVOID. Then DON(KING) -- and I figured we'd be havin us a rebus theme with card names or royalty titles or somesuch. Wrong again, M&A puzbreath.
fave puz trappins: RHAPSODIC. CANOODLED. DARTGUN. BEHOGS clue.
staff weeject pick: CUT. Lil word let gets in on the theme reveal. Weespect. Like. And REC got in on the theme, too boot. Really like.
honrable mention to that deal they were doin, with EDU & DOT.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Chenmeister and Pipal dudes. And congratz on the half-debut -- and I ain't talkin about Chen, on that part.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
those that thought today's NYTPuz was too easy can get seriously roughed up here:
**gruntz**
@Dean Dave 11:11 – That's an interesting piece of trivia you unearthed.
According to Wiki it was Ungar in the play and the movie, and Unger in the TV show. Why deliberately change it? Maybe Unger was a typo in the TV pilot that they never bothered to correct. But it looks like print editions of the play may show it as Unger now too.
@Dean Dave In the play, it is spelled Ungar, but in the TV series it's Unger. See the opening scene's name on the door here:
Odd Couple TV
What threw me, as a once upon sailor, Is that you Derig a boat, you don’t Unrig it. Never used that term ever.
p.s.
typos from earlier msg attempt:
Should be "ADUBA/DIANA crossers".
Should be "BEDHOGS clue".
Sheesh. Where is Otto Korrect when U really need him?
M&Also
p.s. M&A will be on a looong road trip, soon -- not to be outdone by @RP. Plannin to leave a few extra ration runtpuzs at the http://runtpuz.blogspot.com site. Just sayin.
I am confused.
It is UNGaR in the play and the movie. UNGER in the TV series.
ACTIV is about The Crucible. When did the ACTIV thing about Macbeth come up? Yes Macbeth did finish off Duncan the DONE KING.
HOMER could have been clued as Port in Alaska, not as the puz was structured of course. Just an observation.
@John B. Donovan:
thumbs up!!
Too bad Rex's early hyphen expectations let him down and left him with a negative-leaning feeling about this puzzle. I didn't catch on to the trick as quickly (twigging at HAVE ONE and going back to HOME EC to confirm) so I had full enjoyment of filling in the circles, later discovering the theme at CUT and, finally, noticing the CORNERS in the circles, which tied it all up in a nice bow.
Like @Nancy, I was unsure about ADUBA/DIANA. I considered ArUBA but somewhere knew that I hadn't run into an actress named for the island and went with ADUBA instead.
Bill Pipal, congratulations on your NYT debut and thanks to you and Jeff Chen for a delightful, if easy, Thursday puzzle.
And Rex, your monitoring of the Emergency Natick System is appreciated. Have fun on Lake Michigan.
Some of you are absolute whizzes at finding topics covered in previous pages. So, will one of you please dig around for the Unger/Ungar debate. I'm certain we've flogged this horse dead at least once before.
Googled for Taurasi's first name and ADUBA too. Otherwise I got the trick, though since I never deal with circles, I did not know why they were there. Pretty clever, actually.
RHAPSODIC I got, but somehow I don't think of it as extremely emotional.
I do like DO IN. Makes me think of Tom Lehrer:
And maybe we'll DO
IN a *squirrel* or two
While we're poisoning pigeons in the Park.
What I don't get is why I went off in search of a song by Hayes Carll, which shares a title (but little else) with a Tom Waits song. Both in their way about drinking, but NONE did not set me off in that direction. Maybe some comment here? It's a mystery. But it did lead me ultimately to another Tom Waits song, "I Don't Wanna Grow Up", and it is well worth looking for, as performed by many artists including Waits.
Waits of course made his name writing songs about drinking. He stopped with the aid of his current wife, who co-wrote IDWTGU. Probably the reason Tom is alive today. But as so often happens when alcohol is your muse, it made it harder to keep writing great material. It's the Irish Dilemma, maybe.
While I don't like proper names in my puzzles, and I don't think they should ever be crossed, I think DIANA Taurasi is more crossworthy than many of the names I see in puzzles. She is after all considered by most followers of the sport to be the greatest women's basketball player of all time. While I wouldn't consider the greatest kayaker or table tennis player on the same level, I think her sport has gained enough popularity for her to qualify. She is world famous.
@Anonymous 1:08 PM Searching the blog, all previous UNGAR related discussions are focused on a poker player named Stu, except one reference to a H(UNGAR)IAN.
Ouch that NW corner! 3 sports clues, and all of them maddeningly obscure. Since I wanted DERIG crossing NFLER (I know, they don't work together) there was no hope for me. Uzo crossing Taurasi and a deeply dreaded 3 letter baseball team abbrev? Awful.
I had TAKE ONE before HAVE ONE. And more names all over: GADOT crossing EDAM, SITKA crossing ANGUS, MILNE crossing SONIA.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0. 4 of my last 5 words were 4ers.]
Z,
You are almost alone in that opinion. You do know that for the 5 years between 2017 and 2021 ( The last year w complete data) NFL games accounted for 48 of the 50 most watched programs. 88 of the top 100.
I don't give a fig for your personal opinion of the game, but reason and decency demand that people know just how far from mainstream your opinion lies.
Gary,
No way. We've had this discussion before. Can someone else check please.
@Smith, you can't go wrong by going to Minnehaha Park. See the iconic Minnehaha falls, take the walk to the scenic Mississippi parkway, have a beer and lunch at the Sea Salt eatery; the weather is great right now, 75-80 degrees and sunny, though it may get hot next week. Luckily the park is fully shaded.
Regarding z's onion that football is boring.
America disagrees. In a big way. Of the 50 most watched shows in the last 5 years NFL games occupy 48 spots. Of the top 100 most watched television shows, The NFL claims 88 spots. The results are in. America adores football. especially the NFL.
Found this fun . Little easier than usual for Thursday. got the trick early on ,but still had some trouble with it.
39 A was a big DOH for me. I am so used to the term "tube" that I could not think of it as anything but a generic subway. The Brit came through crosses, then the lightbulb
@SonVolt7:42 and a poster before, Why AC/Dc That means less than nothing to me re "Angus"
Do think Aduba and Diana were obscure PPP to start the puzzle with.
Also thought Sitka was obscure as clued. Got it from a couple of crosses because I am very familiar with Sitka (wonderful music festival based there ) but I do not think of it as a port. It definitely has a port, It's on an island, but there are many, many ports in Alaska, we have more coastline than the whole rest of the US, but I dont' think anything ever lands at Sitka that is not used right there in Sitka - except tourists.
???Of the Grid??what unclued grid entries. You must be looking at a dif puzzle
@Gary Jugert 9:20 AM - RE: "Taurasi isn't famous. Uzo isn't famous." I don't know by which I am more shocked: (1) that you said this in the first place, or that (2) nobody has commented on it yet. As a person who lives by 12-Step principles, I want to say what I mean, mean what I say, and not say it mean. So instead of flinging epithets, let me note simply that both of these well-known celebrities are Black women.
@Master Melvin 1:25 PM - Thank you.
@anon 149pm
And that should change anyone's opinion?
@1:49
I'd wager that most of the obese, beer swigging, fat, white boys laid out in their La-Z-Boys in front of the tube aren't actually watching those NFL/CFL/XFL/USFL contests; they're snoring away in a stupor.
albatross shell,
Not at all. Just pointing out that Z's taste in recreation-- believing frisbee is a sport and disliking the country's most popular sport- are both well outside norms. As I say, I don't give a fig what he likes or doesn't. But disparaging football raises my hackles. And Z pissses on football all the time. I'm tired of hearing it.
@Joe Dipinto
Your post wasn't up when I started mine. I also found some movie sites that list it as UNGER in movie. TV culture dominates the world? Just confusion? Did Simon change it? Glad someone else was checking.
I found this puzzle quite difficult. People I didn't know. CARIB? ANGUS? Knew SITKA mostly from John Straley mysteries but did not know it was correct. Reading his newest now. I had king instead of DONE, of course. Almost all the areas that did not have circled letters filled in first. So I was quite slow getting the trick. Had to google some of the PPP.
Felt like I had been reading Poe by the time I got SALLOW.
But once I saw the trick things sure speeded up.
Ones always taking cover? is a good clue for BEDHOGS. See the question mark? Know what a clue is? Know what a precise synonym is? Hint: It's not the only type of clue. And if the covers do not move it is also accurate. And yes I did think of the same thing while I filled it in: Maybe not technically accurate.
I did think I would see a pile of complaints about MODE. Sometimes I am happy being wrong.
Anon 1:49
Nope. Nielsen corrects for the demographic you so smugly sneer at.
As for the CFL, XFL, USFL, well, gosh not one of their games makes the top 100. And of course I didn't include them in my stats. You'll also note, that not a single game from MLB, The NBA or the NHAL manages to crack the top 100. Not one from any of the other 3 "major" sports. The NFL had 88. 88. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the NFL isn't so much popular as a religion.
@ SharonAK
ANTIC HOMER etc. are grid answeres but are not answes to any clue.
Minneapolis museum of art
Well, we already know how 'sports' has pre-saged the end of Western Civilization. We've had Pro Rasslin for a few decades, any number of 'reality' competitions, and now LIV golf laundering Saudi blood money. Anything for TV ratings.
I guess I missed where he said football wasn't popular. Ultimate is the modest name they give their sport. And it is a sport. Not a big-time sport. But it certainly is a sport. Exciting to play. Strategy skill etc. All the hallmarks of a sport. Fun to watch if you have an interest in it. Simple rule, minimal equipment. Both virtues in my mind.
I am a football fan. But I think football deserves pissing on in a bunch of ways. Injuries short-term and long. Colleges as minor leagues kinda sucks. The expanding schedule does too. Short weeks too. Money changes everything and often not for the better. Games with a lot of penalties are the most boring of any sport. But I do enjoy the game.
Hate to say it, but pretty much anytime I see Jeff on a byline I know it's likely to be at best a B minus puzzle. There's just never any sparkle and for someone so deep in the xword world you'd think he might hold himself to a higher standard for quality.
@Mike in Bed-stuy. First of all. Taurasi is a child of an Italian and Argentinian. She is not black. Just because someone doesn’t know who she is doesn’t mean they are racist. Stop looking for racism where it doesn’t exist.
Shell,
Why the snark? No one believes Z spoke of fort all’s popularity. I introduced that element specifically to point out that while z finds football boring — a perfectly reasonable thing to say— the country does not. And that’s reasonable too. In my defense, Z’s is only an opinion. My assertion is based on fact. And the fact is the NFL is staggeringly, almost in comprehensively, and certainly in television terms, uniquely popular.
As for your explanation as to why ultimate frisbee is a sport, all the elements you cite are applicable and true. But you left out the sine qua non of sport, physicality. As it happens ultimate frisbee does indeed require immense physical effort so it is a sport. But your dense of it was lacking. By your reckoning, poker is a sport after all it checks all the boxes you mentioned:
Exciting to play, strategy skillets. Fun to,watch,minimal,equipment, simple rule (sic).
@Anonymous. If I quoted your 4:25 post I'd have to use (sic) several times.
Another anon,
Touché.
Now, do my argument and not my typing.
@Mike in Bed-Stuy 2:08 PM Really weird you brought up race. What does their ethnic heritage have to do with anything?
I cringe when I see ANTI-AGING products like the one pictured in OFL's blog. Really? People actually pay money for this quackery? You can SLATHER on that crapola 'til the cows come home and if it does anything, it will probably accelerate the AGING process. Only one thing is ANTI-AGING. One thing only.
Nice to see 51A DART GUN get some respect as "One way to administer a tranquilizer" rather than being clued as a Nerf product as it was in last Thursday's NYTXW.
This theme was one layer too thick for me. It's the unclued ANTIC, ADO, HOMER, HAVEN, DONE, LIVER and ASS layer that's kind of hanging out there slowly twisting in the wind looking for a reason to exist. And it seems like we have been getting a lot of ASS lately, right?
Last time I checked, Diana Taurisi is not black !
Yes! My first entry was Oscar .
@4:21
Taurasi is a child of an Italian and Argentinian.
Well... may be, or may be not. There was, some years ago, a Right Wingnut politician who's quoted, more or less, as asserting: 'If all this miscegenation goes on, we'll all look Brazilian!'. As if eliminating skin color in discrimination were a Bad Thing. One might substitute 'Argentine'. Fact is, a lot of South Americans have some amount of Negro blood in their veins.
"Mexicans descend from the Aztecs, Peruvians from the Incas – but Argentinians descend from the ships,” goes an old saying that encapsulates Argentina’s perception of itself as a nation of transplanted white Europeans."
and
"In 1778, Africans and Afro-descendants made up 37% of the population of what is now Argentina, according to a census by its Spanish colonialist rulers. In some major provinces the proportion was more than 50%."
and
“In the US, a drop of black blood makes you black, but in Argentina a drop of white blood makes you white,” said Gomes. “In a society where Afro-descendants were marginalized, many Afro-descendant families emphasized their whiteness to save themselves. They ripped up old photos and denied the existence of a black relative.”
OUCH!! here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/argentina-white-european-racism-history
Found it pretty easy, despite the PPP crossings. In regards to those, my problem is that back in my day, there were three channels of television. Three. So, that limited the amount of 'stars', personalities, or whatever quite a bit. Last I checked, my cable guide scrolls through 700 channels, and lets not even go into amazon prime TV, Peacock, hulu, roku, whoknew, and whatever. It's probably great that every niche as well as mainstream audience is getting program content of interest to them, but my problem is that I feel it unfair to be expected to know the thousands and thousands of actors floating out there in the streaming/TV universe these days. I simply cannot give them all the recognition that the 3 prime time programs of my youth used to generate. Maybe crosswords need to take that into consideration, that 'stars' are much more Natick these days. Period. Other than that, I loved the concept of this puzzle. I found it elegant! I didn't get it at the first one. Then when I got to ADRATE, I thought AD rebus FEE for sure, so that confused me for the 8D. FEE aging? Free Ranging? (more rebusing?) No, that's the opposite. Hmm. So on I went still tingling with anticipation. Really loved it when I figured it out. Got the revealer before finishing the entire grid, so that helped me fill in the last couple of letters in the circles. Just a joy, even if I was grumpy about some of the name crossings. Got UNGER as UNsER for a second. My bad, since that was a show I really liked. I also very much liked the spoof episode on How I Met Your Mother, where Klaus talks about the German version where there is 'this one guy that is a real neat freak, and the other...that is even neater!" (paraphrased). Really tickled my German heritage and own enjoyment of neatness and order. Thanks, constructors. But next time, NYTxw, less of those name crosses, please. And, finally, just sad to see how often comments are ripped into here by others. That's not spirited discourse. : (
@B Right There-You struck a couple of chords with me. I grew up with "three" channels, but two of them were pretty sketchy. The question now is always not "What's on?", but "What else is on?". Plenty. Too much, really.
Also, I was walking with a German friend one time and we passed a lady walking a dog, and he had to point out to her, "That is not the proper way to walk a dog.". Neatness and order indeed.
If you just said the popularity of football shows Zed's opinion is not mainstream , I would not have replied.
It was you who said Zed believes Ultimate is a sport as if you disagreed. If you had not said that I would have not replied to you.
You did not dispute his reason about the low amount of action per hour. A justifiable reason for some to feel that way.
Do more than 50% of Americans find football exciting? If not who is in the minority? World-wide popularity: soccer and basketball might win. Maybe even baseball too. But football is what is most watched in the USA but not the most played. Not sure where car racing comes in.
@B Right There:
And you should thank the abilities of CGI and the like to make it possible for all those non-Big-Three [or Four, if your count Fox/Dumont] to produce content at some level of profit. If there is any, really. If one looks closely, it's become pretty obvious that in a few years we'll be back to a handful (may haps 3 or 4) 'networks' controlling 99.44% of content channels. Where's the FCC/FTC when consumers need them???? eh?
@Anoa Bob… tell us the one thing only! Well. Obviously being YOUNG, but…
Thank you @Lewis for your eloquent comments about this elegant collaboration. Yes, it was easy. Yes, the two possible Natick spots were possibly killers but what fun to have the creative verve and high energy of our debut constructor with the steady hand and experience of the “old timer.” Well done to both Bill Pipal and Jeff Chen. I enjoyed it.
Shell,
Oof. No, I never said that ultimate was not a sport. In fact I went out of my way to aver that it was.
Your definition of sport precluded it.
Take the loss.
Beezer @7:21, the Grim Reaper is the only thing that's ANTI-AGING. He stops the AGING process dead in its tracks!
@anon812
You said
"Just pointing out that Z's taste in recreation-- believing frisbee is a sport and disliking the country's most popular sport- are both well outside norms."
I said that implied you did not think Ultimate qualified as a sport because why else would you bother mentioning most people do not believe it.
You notice the etc after my mentioning attributes needed for ultimate. Yes sports are played by people with athletic ability. Doh.
"Take the loss" you said
What are you in 3rd grade?
@Anoa
I thought that was what you meant.
@anon 8:12 - albatross shell accurately characterized what you said at 2:47. You lose.
@Anonymous 4:21 PM - No, I was wrong about her race, but as the child of Argentinian parents, she is Latina, and in our culture, that makes her a person of color. But in any case, I am not looking for racism where it does not exist. I am SEEING behavior that DOES EXIST. Saying these two women of color are "not famous" when they both clearly are VERY FAMOUS, to me, smacks of racism.
@Gary Jugert 5:26 PM - I am suggesting a connection between the race/ethnicity and gender of these two women, and the perception of their level of fame, or lack thereof. I have noticed that, on this blog, when commenters complain about people being obscure PPP, those people are often people of color, and often people who are QUITE celebrated, but in the eyes of millennials or zoomers rather than boomers (the latter of which I am one, as I assume you already know). I did not say anyone was "racist." I pointed out that there are racial and gender implications of the assessment that these two very famous women of color are, in fact, "not famous."
Every puzzle I have trouble with Rex tags as easy, and the ones he struggles with I solve easily. Maybe because he is good at PPP and I am good at math and science clues (WILEYPOST was a gimme for me the other day).
Today the NE corner stopped me. No one knows any WNBA players, its just PC to try to include one here or there to make them seem relevant. The number of appearances in the NYTCW should equal the number of fans in the stands. And never heard of, and after Googling, seen anything Uzo has been part of (admittedly, I am behind pop culture, hence my struggles with PPP). Add that to archaic UNRIG (when was the last time you UNRIGged your sloop?) and BESTIR, there was no hope for me unless I dusted off the Wayback machine.
More people watch baseball in any given week in the US than watch football on any given weekend. The “88 of the top 100” thing is deceptive in two ways. First, viewing habits are different. Go back before Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/Apple TV and you’ll find the Super Bowl and the occasional MNF broadcast in the top 100. If viewers still only had four or five major networks and some cable stations then football wouldn’t seem so popular. As a percentage of total screen time football isn’t particularly popular. Second, the NFL has a high percentage of its games as “national” games. The other sports offer most of their games on a regional basis only. As a result, baseball has more viewers in most team’s regional market than football does, but football games will have higher national ratings. Football viewership numbers as presented are really just well-spun marketing aimed at advertisers.
As for Ultimate, The World Club Championships are down to the semifinals Friday and Finals on Saturday. Looking at a potential all US Men’s Final and potentially a No US Mixed Final. But the Women’s!?!?! Fury, basically the NY Yankees of Women’s Ultimate, versus the team from North Carolina (NC has been winning everything from youth to GM lately) on one side of the bracket against the storied powerhouse from Columbia playing the upstart powerhouse from Australia in the other semi. If you can watch either of those games I recommend you do it.
I was at Live Aid and it was amazing. Watching the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin suddenly show up on stage, at sunset, was simply electric. It was the first time they'd been together since Bonham had died. Very happy they chose Philly over London to make their impromptu reunion!
@Mike in Bed-Stuy 9:51 PM It's already tomorrow and nobody will ever read this, yet I persist.
I don't know if commenters here are more likely to dismiss the celebrity of people of color. Perhaps they are, but there are lots of "famous" people of color, and your clunky assertion here that I dismissed these two particular people's celebrity due to their ethnic heritage is indefensible.
Your definition of fame might be different than mine. Actors and athletes, like YouTube stars, are known among those who watch them, but being "famous" means you're recognized by society at large. You believe they are "very famous" and obviously I didn't know either. We can debate when "fame" begins, but doing so in your lens of racism would require me to know in advance their ethnic heritage.
I believe Taurasi isn't famous because she plays for a league few watch. If you are a fan, you can say she's famous, but outside of the fans, she's unknown. I'd imagine the only WNBA player most people know is the one under arrest in Russia and only because she's on network news. The average non-basketball-watcher probably can't name a single famous current NBA player and legions more people follow that league. There are lots of famous athletes of color, but Taurasi is only "famous" among basketball fans.
You can make a stronger case Uzo is "famous" as she's garnered some acting awards and played a leading role (I'm told) in a cable TV show some years ago. Unfortunately, her Netflix show doesn't rank on any current most-watched list I checked. And awards in acting don't magically make you famous. Again, there are lots of famous actors and actresses of color, but Uzo isn't one yet. I'll note in passing I almost never know any of the actors no matter what color they are.
I grumbled about the crosses on these two people as I needed to look them up to complete the puzzle. Had they been generally famous I wouldn't have needed to Google them. Only AFTER would I have learned of their ethnic origins. It's already been pointed out, Taurasi isn't black as you asserted (a mistake), but Argentinian. It would have been weird to claim (as you did) I dismissed their fame on a racial basis, when I obviously didn't know who they were at all.
This was fun, Rex! Lighten up!
Great puzzle until I hit the ADUBA-DIANA crossing. I had to guess and almost went with between ArUBA-rIANA but crossed my fingers and put down the D instead. The theme was clever, fun to solve and well-executed. It was SWELL except for that EVIL Natick. Consequently it isn’t a TEN or even a NINER but it’s still cut ABOVE at eight.
TALE, IDO ALLAY
DIANA was a BEDHOG,
DOIN' IT so SWELL,
CANOODLE DONE as a dog,
HASHTAG, go TOHEEL.
--- ANGUS UNGER
A shout out to @DIANA over in the appropriate NW.
Certainly better than a rebus.
Wordle par.
EDIT: …I had to guess and almost went with an R between ArUBA-rIAN
I believe it was an old Warren Zevon album where he said on the cover, "My use of words is just some antics."
Hey @Rondo - I knew you'd notice!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Went with Aruba - Riana sigh. Two names I neither know nor likely will ever care to remember.
I know this is months old but I just finished this today and had to laugh at the fact that Uzo Adubs grew up 6 miles from Natick.
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