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Jaguar spot, for example / WED 7-6-22 / Worker with books, for short / Big hot dog?
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Constructor: Sam Koperwas and Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: HARD!! (37:30!!!!!!!)
Word of the Day: Sonia BRAGA —
She is known in the English-speaking world for her Golden Globe Award–nominated performances in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) and Moon over Parador (1988). She also received a BAFTA Award nomination in 1981 for Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (first released in 1976). For the 1994 television film The Burning Season, she was nominated for an Emmy Award and a third Golden Globe Award. Her other television and film credits include The Cosby Show (1986), Sex and the City (2001), American Family (2002), Alias (2005), Aquarius (2016), Bacurau (2019), and Fatima (2020). In 2020, The New York Times ranked her #24 in its list of the 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century.
• • •
THEME: Rabbits and.... hats? — There are types of rabbits (BRER, ROGER, and PETER) crossing types of hats (BEANIE, DERBY, and BOATER). I got the rabbit part, but the hat part was totally lost on me! I had to look it up to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
THIS PUZZLE WAS SO HARD!!! Wednesdays usually take me about 11mins and I "Check Puzzle" zero or one times. This one was well past half an hour and I "Check Puzzle"d nine times, and even then finished with four boxes where I had zero idea what letters went in. (This is wild to me. I mean, I'm not a fantastic solver, but I'm pretty solid!! I have solved many NYT themeless puzzles in around ten minutes without checking-- yes, even after four cocktails!)
There are lots of things that make a puzzle hard! I like to try to pinpoint them because I have found that a bad puzzle is often hard, but a hard puzzle is not necessarily bad. That makes sense, right? Like, a puzzle can be hard because the constructor is sloppy with fill, or messes up their clue grammar... or a puzzle can be hard simply because their clues are asking knowledge of me (that is; me, the solver) that I do not have. This puzzle felt like the latter, and I am very excited to read the experiences of the commenters.
Mountains of things I did not know. I do not know Sonia BRAGA, or the term KEN meaning "knowledge," or "fuddy-duddy" as a phrase, or Santa ROSA, California, or what "portage" means. Or the shampoo brand PRELL (I experimented with a rebus and "L'oreal" for a bit) or that a YEW is an evergreen or what on earth the Jaguar clue was talking about. (Please explain?? CARAD??? What?) CPA is a word that I have learned from crossword puzzles and literally never seen out-and-about* and ETAS was ambiguous with ETDS. [Kind of vote] for PROXY and [Person with talent] (with no question mark!) for [AGENT] are vague and mis-direct-y in a way that I expect for a Saturday, not a Wednesday. THE UN was incredibly hard to parse, as was ATTRACTIVE since for a while I had [A??? ACTIVE] and was expecting a two-word phrase. (Jeff looooooves to talk about how long answers should be more than one word.)
The last thing that made this hard for me was the revealer, due to both the clue and the software. The clue was worded in a non-obvious way. [Pulling a rabbit out of a hat, e.g. ...which happens three times in this puzzle] was the clue for MAGIC TRICK, and made me think that I should be searching for that specific term to come into play. Instead, I was searching for "rabbits" and "hats" which were communicated plainly via the clue itself. Is this a little odd? It seemed off for me (weirdly, it felt "too easy" which is hilarious given how much I struggled with this puzzle), in terms of how revealers usually work. Meanwhile, the software did not highlight any of the rabbits or any of the hats. This led me to believe there was a rebus situation which I had totally missed, especially with entries like BRAGA and CARAD that were foreign to me.
Bullets:
Bullets:
- [Small-arms runner of years past?] for T-REX — I begrudgingly admit that this clue is absolutely ingenious. (I am begrudging because it did not click until well after I had entered the letters-- I had ARES for a long time.)
- [Pot seeds?] for ANTES — Same as above-- very good, very hard.
- [Term of address in colonial India] for SAHIB — I am (half) Indian but don't know as much as I should. I knew this entry from the novel "A Little Princess," where a white American girl is referred to with this title by an Indian immigrant.
- Here's a superrrrr petty bullet for you! I submit puzzles to the Times, and one of my rejections said that it was a no because they don't like corners that are only "connected" to the rest of the puzzle by a single square. So now whenever I see a puzzle that has this (here it's the 50A/48D crossing) I am like "HMMM!!!"
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160 comments:
Wow I *JUST GOT* that it is "CAR AD" as in an advertisement (or spot) for, say, a Jaguar. Wow. I'm doing great over here.
xoxo Malaika
Hi Malaika! I sympathize with what your country is going through. Scary stuff.
Well, I am not a fast solver and this was only just over 8 minutes for me, so I'm guessing it skews old. I just filled in the answers bam bam bam! I noticed there were 3 rabbit answers but didn't get that it was a theme until the revealer.
I liked the clues for RAY BAN, ALPS, and T REX. I initially misread the RAY BAN clue as "it emits ultraviolet light" which made me go like "whaaaaa?" (See I used "like" there).
Nothing to do with the puzzle: I knew my nephew and his wife both have July 4 as their birthday (!!), and I just learned via Facebook that my other nephew's wife also does (all Canadians). What are the odds?
[Spelling Bee: td (Tues) -0, went quite quick; my last 2 words.]
After four cocktails I’d think any puzzle would be difficult. I only had a glass of wine while doing this and found it a very easy Wednesday and most enjoyable. I just happen to love bunnies, that might have influenced me. I also had an addiction to BEANIE BABies for a long time. Woke up one day and wondered why a woman my age had over 50 Beanie Babies, so I sent all of them to Dr Laura Schlesinger’s My Stuff program for foster children. Kept three, one of which was a bunny, the other two are quite valuable now.
Thanks for a fun puzzle Sam and Jeff.
Easy, but I may have imbibed slightly less than Malaika. Delightful, clever, and amusing. A bit better than yesterday’s, liked it a bunch!
...and I want to thank Jeff @Xwordinfo for reminding me of the Rocky and Bullwinkle “rabbit out of hat” bit.
CPA as Certified Public Accountant seems like it ought to be seen out and about... Maybe it's just me.
Malaika, you are too funny 😂!
Sonia BRAGA, great actress. But her most well-known movies were probably in the 1980s. So I didn't enter her name until after a couple crosses in case there was a more recent actress whose name I did not know.
Hi Malaika. Good job covering for Rex! I guess I’m old: PRELL and BRAGA for this child of the seventies were gimmies. Back then, Prell commercials were ubiquitous. It was kind of this green slime (but I guess all shampoo is kind of a slime) that came in a long clear plastic tube—I imagine it still does. I think it’s a P&G product. I kept wanting the hats to be more traditional crossword puzzle hats—like beret and fedora.
Good job filling in for Rex! And I enjoy reading comments from someone who isn’t a speed solver like Rex is and like I am not. I kept expecting the hats to be more crossword puzzle familiar, like beret and fedora. Oh and if you’d lived through the seventies you’d know Prelll—my father owned a discount store back then and I’m pretty sure it was our number one seller in the category. It was a P&G product (maybe still is) and they advertised it a lot.
Chefwen: the feminine preposition threw me. I’d always assumed you were a man. Guess that was pretty sexist of me so my apologies!
I enjoyed solving this but the theme was pretty weak.
Found it a lot easier than Malaika did, but then again I'm solving first thing in the morning with zero drinks. Didn't get the "hat" part of the theme until I got here. No non-typo overwrites but I did mentally confuse Sonia BRAGA with Senta Berger.
Sloppy magician: extra rabbit at 1Across.
I also struggled but im a pretty novice solver. My favorites were requires a tap to get started (APP) and key that works to exit but not enter (ESC)
No matter how hard I try, I can't get from the crossing of a rabbit name with a type of hat to the idea of the rabbit being pulled out of the hat. They just cross. I might buy it if the last letter of the rabbit name was one of the letters in the hat name.
This was easily the hardest Wednesday I've seen. I only discovered the hats well after the fact - never heard of a BOATER. BEANIE was obvious in retrospect, but barely crossed BRER. DERBY was an easy one, but I was thrown for a while by putting Rwanda in for UGANDA (Rwanda is close to, but does not border, Lake Victoria).
Agree with Malaika on the difficult cluing for the most part. I was sober while solving, but now I'm thinking maybe still asleep.
Anyone still doing these?
Wordle 382 6/6
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.....and I was happy about this!
Enjoyable and pretty easy Wednesday for me. I loved the slight airplane theme. Very appropriate as I am taking my mother to the airport to return her to Europe today. She had to take care of some finances here for which we almost employed a CPA, and certainly had to use her SSN alot. So I my heart will ACHE and I will WAIL at our TEARY good bye and say, "SEE YA next time. Don't forget to put your TRAY in the upright position before your ETA in the land of the ALPS and ITAL". (here, short for Italy). So with all that appropriate theme material for me, maybe I was more predisposed to like the puzzle (though generally I like Jeff Chen puzzles as a rule, in my experience anyway). But it does look like pretty clean fill with just the right amount of interest. Good job constructors!
Played like an easy Tuesday to me. But, I never did see the gimmick with the hats so I had no "aha moment. OTOH, all of Malaika's stumpers (PRELL. BRAGA, etc) were gimmes to me. But I'm old enough to be Malaika's grandpa so I'm sure it's a generational thing.
What’s with ANTES and POT SEEDS? I’ve germinated plants and smoked quite a bit in the past, but have no clue here. Help? cz
Found this to be one of the easiest Wednesdays ever with the added bonus of seeing the truly sad state of confusion of the GenX, Y, Z/whatever commentator.
I had the same issue with TREX, didn't realize what it was until I read your write up. Thank you for the explanation!
Average Wednesday I thought, and that was with missing 50% of the theme (saw the hats, not the rabbits).
Yes, CAR AD was mighty clever and mighty hard to see.
As a solver, I prefer long downs to be single words. Another lesson learned from puzzle rejections is that editors overwhelmingly prefer multi-word phrases to single words.
OKRA doe not pass the breakfast test.
Weird glitch with the timer this morning - started solving, looked up a five minutes later and the timer was 8 hours and 5 minutes. My solve was slower than usual for a Wednesday, but not *that* slow!
CPAs Malaika. Known in the business world as second only to actuaries for their Showboat(ing) and devil-may-care attitudes. I rely on Carad, Rayban & Theun (CRT) for all my tax needs.
Struggled mightily (or as the legendary Sloth might’ve said mehtily) on the middle east coast. Even after getting Trex on the crosses, was thinking about the fake wood decking. Epiphany was a few minutes later. Just like Car Ad, Aw Man, The UN, and Antes. It was after 10:00 last night. So much forehead slapping I’m worried about a subdural hematoma. T’hell with it. If I go to the emergency room they’d ask how it happened and I’d have to say crossword puzzle. Then they’d want to keep me overnight for observation.
I wonder if Prell is still a major shampoo? The original Dyson vac is now a Rare Gem. $500 hair dryers, don’t make me laugh.
Malaika,
Thanks for pointing out that the crosses to the rabbit clues were hats! I got the puzzle but missed that reference. I thought to myself that the revealer was a little strange but I never looked back at the puzzle to figure out the reason for it. Have a great day!
I totally agree with you, Malaika - a very hard puzzle for me too! And I didn’t enjoy it. I understood the theme right away, but the specific rabbits and hats seemed very random. I didn’t like the cluing either, super vague, and not in a puzzling challenging way, just in a “wha…” way. If the puzzle skews old, well that didn’t help me, and I’m old. Michael BUBLE? Who?? Are you kidding me? Maybe he’s famous in Canada (I had to look him up, which is how I know he’s Canadian.) CARAD was impossible to parse and stupid to boot.
So I’m sorry, but I have nothing good to say about this puzzle.
Right off the bat: The clue for T REX is one of my favorites ever. It stumped me for a while, but after I got it, I was still laughing about it an hour later. Bravo!
Malaika, after four cocktails, I wouldn't be able to see a grid, much less solve one. This puzzle wasn't really that hard, and I'm wondering whether now, in the clear light of day, you've looked at some of those words you say you didn't know and realized that you did. They just got lost in the fog. I find it unlikely that you've never heard the term CPA, for certified public accountant, IRL. Do you not have an income on which you pay taxes? YEW as an evergreen just appeared a couple of days ago in another major puzzle. Or have you never read Sylvia Plath? Maybe some of those terms will be more familiar after a few cups of strong coffee.
And BR'ER, PETER, and ROGER aren't types of rabbits--they're fictional rabbit characters.
I loved this puzzle. Except for PRELL, which used to be a big name in shampoos but hasn't been for donkey's years. It pops up occasionally with this same erroneous clue, an unfortunate product of online crossword software.
Thanks for your review Malaika! You're, like, the bomb! :)
One thing that struck me was the word "Pica" which I guess is used in typography but is *also* a common eating disorder in which people ingest non-food items -- like dirt.
Maybe this definition is more obvious to me since I'm in healthcare, but I think it could be jarring for some solvers and perhaps should be left out.
How would we feel if an answer to a clue was BULIMIA?
There's got to be better crosswordese than PICA...
Just my 2 cents.
It’s referring to the pot in poker. So the seeds of the pot are the antes
“Car ad”
That was a Rare Gem of a clue.
Enjoyed this puzzle a lot.
Didn’t complete the ‘trick’ (realizing rabbits ‘pull out of’ hats) until reading your post.
When you play poker, everyone chips in money before each hand (called an “ante”) to the pot, to get it growing (“pot seeds”)
What I loved most about this puzzle was the profusion of wordplay cluing – and not repeat clues from other puzzles, but first-timers. In recent times, this doesn’t happen often on Wednesdays, and I say, “More please!”
I also liked seeing that SLED heading down, and ALPS in the top row, rising above. In the southeast corner, I can see FORK, TRAY, and OKRA as the elements of a still-life painting. If it were by DALI, you could add NOSE.
Having hat hair is a nuisance, but having three hat hares is a joy.
Sam mentions (in his notes) how exacting and right on the money Jeff is to work with. I’ll second that, and like Sam, I find Jeff’s drive for excellence inspiring. Let me add that yes, he has strong standards, but he also very open to suggestions, and is willing to compromise, terrific attributes for a collaborator, or for Congress, for that matter.
Props to you, Sam, on your terrific prestidigitatious theme, and congratulations on your debut, and thank you, Jeff, for your ongoing virtuosity, and thank you both for a sweet solving experience!
@malaika -- I agree with you that the clue for the reveal seemed to give too much away. I would have preferred something a bit more subltle, like [Prestidigator's specialty, with a famous one occurring three times in this puzzle]. Also, I agree with you about those islands in the SW and NE, that could have used more grid connectivity.
Malaika, enjoyed your write-up today! It brought back memories of struggling with a Sunday NYT grid back in my mid-20's, challenged by numerous references that dated to long before I was in my mother's womb.
I recall last using PRELL around 1979. For a late-teen with oil oozing out of every pore, it seemed an ideal daily shampoo. However, it would have been a handy substitute should someone run out of dishwashing liquid ... it was harsh!
There was one fill in today's puzzle that I'm clueless about: Country Band = THEUN. You write, "it was hard to parse". I failed at it and had to rely on crosses. "country" in reference to the UN is a gimme, but where does "band" come in? Google surfaces a band called the "United Nations", but it's "punk", not "country". Referencing the UN as a "band of nations" falls flat on my ears.
I think an appropriate elixir for your frustration today will be to construct a grid particularly chock full with modestly obscure references from the last couple of decades and see how it goes down with us more "seasoned" solvers!
Malaika, I like the shirt very much. And thanks for the notes: I had the rabbits but not the hats. Had trouble with THEUN and ANTES.
This fell flat for me. Conceptually the theme works I guess - but functionally I just see a rabbit inserted into a hat - not pulled out of one. This played normal midweek - although I agree the overall cluing was strained. PLAN B, THE UN, ETAS, CAR AD are all among the duds.
Thought ANTES was a neat misdirect - think poker. Liked the RARE GEM - SISTINE stack. Learned SAHIB and BRAGA.
Eskimo, ARAPAHO move their body to and fro
Appreciate the theme effort here - but it missed its mark.
Your ante goes into the pot when playing poker ♣️
@malaika - - I too, am not a real speed solver. I need a good 20-25 min on a typical Wednesday, but today's came faster for some reasons. My last fill was THEUN. CARDAD took a while, and only then did I backfill canoe b/c I too had to look up portage. Rest came surprisingly easy. One last note on the popular subject of Prell shampoo. Indeed it was an iconic brand of the 60s and 70s. TV ads showed a woman's hand dropping a pearl into the bottle vs a "leading competitor", and the pearl moves much more slowly through the Prell. Why "we make our goo thicker than their goo" is a product benefit for a shampoo, remains a marketing mystery to me. Cheers.
"Anonymous Anonymous said...
What’s with ANTES and POT SEEDS? I’ve germinated plants and smoked quite a bit in the past, but have no clue here. Help? cz"
In poker, prior to dealing a hand, all players need to 'ante up' - they need to put a chip into the pot. Think of it as seed money.
Nice puzzle, but I missed the hat gimmick.
@Wordler: I'm still doing Wordle. Today's was a head-scratcher.
Wordle 382 5/6
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Malaika - first off good for you for how you spend your drink money! Will have to look for similar causes. I found this about average for a Wednesday. But. Nobody uses the word fuddy-duddy any more not even old fuddy-duddies like me. So cut yourself some slack. But if you want to see a very funny slapstickish kind of movie - Moon Over Parador it’s worth it. I used to watch it with my dad and he was not a huge comedy person but that movie always made him laugh heartily. So near and dear to me. She is in fact a fine actress. As for the theme - I guess the rabbits were kind of coming out of the hats visually. But also kind of different for each compound word. Ambitious for a Wednesday but it seemed so inconsistent that I pretty much missed the hat part of the gimmick until I read your write up. Just got them on the fills. When was the last time you ever saw any one wear a derby, a boater or a beanie? This puzzle was in many ways for Aulde Lang Syne!
Hard for a Wednesday here. Plus Snow before SLED really made the NE corner tough to suss out. Forgetting the common spot —> AD xword convention didn’t help.
I’ve mentioned before that what Chen finds interesting in puzzles and what I find interesting in puzzles is a Venn Diagram with a very tiny overlapping area. This theme is not in that area. BEANIEs are still very common. I cannot recall the last time I heard anyone call a BEANIE a BEANIE. As for BOATERs, they went out of style in, what?, the 1950’s? And then they disappeared almost completely. For men I think the only time you might reasonably see a BOATER is if you stumble upon a Barbershop Quartet. I think women who wear hats might still don a fashionable BOATER, but would never describe it as such. So the them had a “before I was born” feel to it and I ain’t exactly young. PRELL and BRAGA didn’t help much. I’m not at all surprised if anyone under 50 struggled with those two. Finally, Song of the South and British imperialism reminders added a sour taste. All in all, bleh.
@Anon6:42 - This is probably the fifth time you have been answered but Poker pots, not flower pots, and an ANTE is the seed money of that kind of pot.
@JD7:23 - 🤣🤣🤣
@kitshef - Your OKRA comment reminded me of a number sticker I recently saw: Kale: The new waterboarding
Yeah, I know, dark and maybe a bit crass, but I still chuckled.
@Wordler - Most days. I’m currently at 161-2 I think. Maybe 160-3.
Wordle 382 5/6*
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It’s a misdirection! “Pot” as in money on a card game, with antes “seeding” the pot.
I have used PRELL for years. A bottle lasts a long time because I don't have all that much hair to shampoo. It's inexpensive and simple. I just checked the bottle. It is made in the US by Neoteric Cosmeticsm Inc., Denver, CO. The WIKI tells me P & G introduced PRELL in 1947 (The same year I was introduced) and sold the brand in 1999. It has had multiple owners since then.
WATCH THIS AD
Took me a minute, too. Pot, as in a card game's money pool, which got started with antes.
I thought it was a little on the easy side. Last word was Trex. What a brutal clue.
First I thought that we just had three fictional rabbits, so the idea that that constituted a magic trick seemed like a stretch. Like Malaika, I had missed the hats at first. When I saw them, I thought, Okay, I get it, that’s cute. But mostly it strikes me as the kind of construction conceit that the constructors may have felt good about, but it had nothing to do with my solve.
Surprising that no other oldster mentioned the hook in Prell ads (PRELLADS?): A pearl falling slowly through the "green slime." I guess the thusly demonstrated viscosity was supposed to lure one into choosing Prell over competing 'poos.
The CAR AD for Jaguar was classic Jeff C at the top of his game. The clue for THE UN seemed like a bit of a stretch and felt flat to me. I got the theme easily enough but wasn't really excited about it.
I had no clue about DKNY, BRAGA, UGANDA (still no clue about this one - I thought it was a country, but apparently it is on a lake and not on a continent or out in the ocean somewhere), DYSON vacuums, and BUBLE.
I had a one square DNF cuz I misspelled SaNAI and don't know SAHIB from Sahab.
I agree this was for us oldsters. Finished in 10. All the ones that frustrated others were simple for me and I never got held up. Did take a while to get the hat part.
I thought it one of the easiest puzzles ever. That probably means it skews old.
I'm in the age-friendly crowd today, as this was very easy, with a minor slowdown trying to remember Michael BUBLE, and that made THEUN obvious, and that was it. Saw the hat thing coming after BEANIE and DERBY, and know what a BOATER is. I liked the way the rabbits came out of the hats, at least the way I looked at it. My only improvement would have been "new grandson" as a clue for JACK.
Now, about PRELL. I\ve been around as long as @OffTheGrid and I started using PRELL in high school and I STILL DO. Yes, it's green and viscous and I don't know if it repairs split ends or makes members of the opposite sex swoon. I do know it's relatively inexpensive, easily available around here, and gets your hair clean. My only warning involves a possible side effect-when I started using PRELL my hair was quite dark and now after long usage I'm noticing that it is, um, silver, so caution may be required.
Very nice Wednesday, SK and JC. Speedily Killed this one and the new Jack Child got a shout out, so thanks for all the fun.
Don’t forget the unforgettable Jessica Rabit.
Z,
Nah. You can see boaters by the hundreds at 36th and Spruce in Philadelphia every April.
Penn celebrates juniors becoming seniors on the last day of classes. It’s called Hey Day.
Everyone wears a boater.
While you’re in town, make sure you get a cheesesteak. Order it “wiz with” you’ll
sound like you know what you’re talking about.
ETA(S) and ETD(S) are often ambiguous, but they actually weren’t in this case. The word “touchdowns” in the clue makes it clear it’s referring to arrivals.
I was sure I would come on here and find that everyone agreed with me that it was an easy Wednesday. It went faster than Tuesday for me. I think it was the four cocktails, and her youth, that affected Maliaka.
I saw the rabbits right away, as who among us would not? I didn't see the hats. Truth to tell, I wasn't looking for hats. Not until I got to the revealer clue -- which I read after I had filled in MAGIC TRICK.
If I hadn't read that clue, I never would have noticed the hats at all. But now I went back searching for them with an eagle eye. Or what passes for an eagle eye in the @Nancy household.
And there they were! But in pretty odd places. There's the BEANIE w-a-a-ay off to the left. There's the BOATER w-a-a-ay up near the top. There's the DERBY -- pretty well positioned for ROGER, actually. Almost centered and down towards the bottom so that you would see ROGER as he is being pulled out. You wouldn't see much of PETER though.
(I guess they're at different stages of being pulled out.)
The bottom line: Once I noticed what I was meant to notice, I found this puzzle absolutely adorable. What a cute idea. But do understand that there was a 50-50 chance I might have missed it entirely.
As an oldster who has harrumphed (old timey term) about all the new phrases and unknown (to me) influencers, it was refreshing to get a young person’s view. Of COURSE some gimmes to me would be wha…? for those under a certain age (BRAGA, PRELL, BOATER).
Also fun to see a HARD puzzle rating, after all the EASYs from Rex. Thanks for the nice write up, Malaika!
I loved your post, and your new T-shirt. I think you have to be much older to find this crossword easier. I'm in my sixties and all the phrases and words were ones that I am familiar with. There are some advantages to age!
Hey All !
Hats off (har) to this theme, double meaning to me, as I missed the Hat part! After reading Malaika, I said to myself, "Really? You missed the entire rabbits/hats theme?" Saw said rabbits, naturally, as each clue was ___ Rabbit, but *woosh* over the head on the hats. Dang. Was wondering what kind of MAGIC TRICK I was missing. Voila, stupid brain!
Had THEeu first for THEUN, throwing a wrench into that area. But good ole BUBLE came through. Haven't any of you seen the Bubly commercials (flavored sparkling water)? It's a running gag type thing, he started by changing the names on the cans to BUBLE.
Wondering if Malaika has SOBERS up yet. Har
CAR AD, the second A was my last letter in, a guess, as I was trying to parse it as one word. After the Happy Music, (yay me!), it finally clicked as CAR AD.
I think us 50-ish (give or take) people have used PRELL at least once in their lives. Same with Aqua-Velva for men. Dial telephones. Getting up to change the TV station. Looking stuff up in an encyclopedia. Wondering how we communicated with each other back then!
Malaika, have had my fair share of puz rejections, looking back at some, I can see very amateurish offerings, but some that I thought were good were rejected for reasons that I see in other puzs that get in. So it's pick and choose. When the entire world shut down for Corona, it seems 9 million people decided to start constructing. So there's more choices for the editors, better offerings that I'm sure they weigh carefully. My 2¢.
yd -4, should'ves all! Dang!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
This was a couple of minutes longer than the average Wednesday. One reason was that I don't buy the puzzle's association between fuddy-duddy and PRUDE. It's like comparing apples and oranges. My Webster's definitions back this up but what do I know?
It seems sloppy to start a rabbit related theme with fill like JACK. Contrast this with the recent puzzle concerning covered "eyes" eschewing the letter I in the fill.
I'm out of the habit of doing early week puzzles and this did nothing to cause me to question my new habits. However I was up at night dealing with piss shit and vomit from our aging pets and I'm off my usual routine.
yd -0, dbyd -0
I enjoyed the cluing for this puzzle quite a bit. It slowed me down a few minutes, which is good. The tough spot for me was BUBLE SHOWBOATER CANOE (or kayak?) and THEUN. Once I was sure about CANOE, I supposed CARAD was obscure biological terminology! Ha! And we've seen ad/spot cluing many times before - I just didn’t see it today, until Malaika did.
I knew PRELL could work but didn’t put it in at first, assuming it was too old to be right.
Thanks for the puzzle, Sam and Jeff!
If Malaika MWednesday is MWonderful how awesome would Drunk Malaika MTuesday MNight be?
I enjoyed working on this one. The fill was ATTRACTIVE as a RARE GEM -- just like me. {Beaming.} "Why thank you. No slowdowns of note.
I found the three rabbits, but where's the hats? Not so magical.
Yays:
Country Band = THE UN. OHO. Whimsy. When did whimsy sneak back in the house? Warning: Whimsy isn't in the Anonym-oti's wheelhouse, so prepare for Judgy Judgerson.
Big hot dog = SHOWBOATER. I guess that makes the bun the SHOWBOATEE, or is it my belly? Where does the hot dog end and the rest of the universe begin?
Thank gawd I read Malaika's begrudging admiration for the TREX clue, as I had a Boo-Rant scheduled about arms runners and "these days." Now I get the joke. Grr... whimsy.
Boos:
I am the poster child for fuddy-duddy, but I am far from being a prude. I think party pooper is more fuddy-duddy-esque. You know, fuddy-duddy forward.
Uniclues:
1 How stuffed toys in the 90s searched for adult content.
2 Pet name for Beverly Hills accountant (who created the financing package to bring the ocean to Taylor Swift).
3 Pet name for a dinosaur on the track.
4 Jack Dan'l's.
5 Sawing off a facial protuberance and having it appear on an audience member. (No, not gross!)
6 Is it the T one or the C one?
7 The resurrection before last.
8 Question for all prospective elevator-music concert attendees.
9 "Go ahead. Stand up. See what happens."
1 BEANIE BABY MICE
2 CPA RAYBAN
3 DERBY HORSE T-REX
4 SOBERS' ESC
5 NOSE MAGIC TRICK
6 CHANCES ARE TSAR
7 REBIRTH ONE AGO
8 ANY BUBLE ACTS
9 CANOE TEST
@Anonymous 6:52 AM - I am lipping when I should be zipping, but I cannot resist right now. Gens X, Y, and Z span some 60 years at this point, so you are dismissing a pretty broad swath of the population. I don't know. Just seems like something maybe to think about.
@wordler Yes, still chugging along. BTW Octordle has recently done a big upgrade.
Wordle 382 4/6
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Wordle 382 4/6
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My millenial son is sitting here and we are watching the Tour de France. He never heard of PRELL either. I dont think I've used it in 40 years and he's 28. I think that stuff was cheap, which is why my mother bought it.
The reports of PRELL'S death are greatly exaggerated!
> Anonymous wrote: "While you’re in town, make sure you get a cheesesteak. Order it “wiz with” you’ll sound like you know what you’re talking about."
As a transplanted midwesterner, I lived in the Philly area for 30 years (most of which was in "Center City"). "wit' wiz" was the classic order for a cheesesteak. However, ultimately my wife goaded me to go with Provolone; I never went back. (Cheese Wiz it best suited when the meat on the sandwich is of very questionable grade and/or origin.)
After I finished the puzzle, I circled the three rabbits in red because of 59A and looked for hats. Couldn't find them. They aren't pulled out of hats. They have one letter in common with a hat. Not close enough.
I'm surprised that Jeff allowed JACK in the grid. A non-themer rabbit. I know, a different kind if rabbit, but still he's very careful about things like that.
Thx, Sam & Jeff, for the tricky 'rabbit' 'hatTRICK' performance! :)
Hi Malaika, good to see you again! :)
Med (time-wise).
Found the West easy, the Central med. & the East noticeably tougher.
Took a moment post-solve to see the 'rabbits' intersecting the 'hats'.
Lots of great clueing e.g., CAR AD, THE UN, T. REX, AGENT, SLED, ITAL, ANTES.
Always have difficulty w/DKNY. (Donna Karan)
Was able to recall RAY-BAN from a recent gaffe.
CHANCES ARE ~ Johnny Mathis
Enjoyed the MAGIC show! :)
@Wordler (6:22 AM)
Yup, still doing 4 variations every day. :)
@Nancy
Kudos for your PhrACEle yd! :)
@jae
Couldn't come up with anything that made sense, so one cell dnf. :( Did learn something about Chipotle's competitor & the 'spine-tingler', tho. :)
___
yd 0 (down to pg -1 from Sat's; need a 6er to keep the QB streak alive) / 34
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
@Anon 8:30 Damn, you are one arrogant human-being, so much so that you can't see your errors. First, berries and insects have different nutritional profiles. Berries are high in available energy, insects high in protein. There's a reason (besides availability) animals eat different things at different times: they need different types of nutrition. Animals don't need to create muscle mass when migrating, you need carbs to feed the muscles you already have. The birds feed on berries in the fall when they are prevalent and so they have, and can store, the energy to migrate. The fact that they do the same in the spring surprises you? They eat berries in SA, just before their trip north, why are you so adamant that they wouldn't pluck a few berries for a quick sugar boost half way to their northern terminus? You're so sure that you're willing to call someone an idiot for being an eye witness to that fact?
Roosting, as related to birds, has multiple meanings. One is simply to perch and sleep. Another is to have a group of birds perch and sleep. The fact that the second usage exists doesn't obviate the fact that the first one does. All birds roost in the first definition, quite a smaller set do in the second definition. Again, you don't get to decide which definition another person decided to use, or meant when she used it.
Finally, I don't thing @CDilly ever meant to say that she saw the specific Red Eyed Vireo that @Rex saw. She was used to seeing red-eyes in the spring, and commented on it. Live with it.
You fooled me, Sam and Jeff. Excellent MAGIC TRICK that produced a number of ahas, such as the discovery that:
* there are three different rabbits rising out of three different hats
* CARAD is not one word,
* THEUN is not one word, and
* the RAYBAN brand is describing an action
Not sure what that wayward JACK rabbit is doing in the corner, especially since it could have been easily eliminated by changing the J to an L or T, but hats off to you gents. I enjoyed the show.
Well after a few days shy of puzzle solving, I actually zippity doo dahed through the rabbits waiting to be pulled from a HAT. I finished and sniffed around. There has to be some sort of clever things other than some JACK rabbits. Oh, lookie here. Not only are the rabbits MAGIC, but so are the hats. Did you notice that each rabbit crosses an E to make a BEANIE BOATER DERBY..? No? I did.
PRELL....I remember my mom used to buy the stuff. I think she liked the color green. Didn't it have a little pearl floating in it? I'm pretty sure it was PRELL because I'd wait till she was done with the bottle and fish out a little plastic pearl. I may have saved them along with the Princess Di BEANIE BABY I bought for my daughter. She used to suck on it at night. That, and her thumb.
I love Michael BUBLE. He has a wonderful voice. Go listen to his "Save The Last Dance For Me." You'll want to do the fandango tango like I did.
Fun and funny write-up Malaika. You're always a joy to read. Save the last dance for me and drink four anise cocktails. That'll put some hair on the DOMES.
Well if this wasn’t the zippiest and most clever Wednesday I’ve seen in a long time, I’ll eat my DERBY hat with a knife and a FORK.
I felt badly though for poor old JACK lurking there in the corner with no hat to his name and was a little disappointed not to see the ENERGIZER bunny jumping out of a FEZ somewhere.
Anyone else notice the HORSE coming out of the SISTINE Chapel?
Got stuck briefly in the SHOWBOATER section, not knowing BUBLE and couldn’t see THE UN as a “band.” What a great clue that was, got me good. Not so though with TREX, also a VERY clever one. I was onto them there, as well as on the Jaguar spot. Immediately wrote in CAR AD, remembering the days of Mad Men when Lane Pryce landed that big automotive account with the [ahem] persuasive assistance of the beautiful Miss Holloway. I knew that would come in handy someday.
The Prell ads of the early '60s usually showed someone accidentally dropping the bottle in the shower, in order to highlight its revolutionary new "unbreakable" (i.e. plastic) bottle.
Oh boy!!! The Mods are going to have a field day!!! What Malaika can say, but we can't. By the way, she's right. If you actually read the NYT, rather than just the puzzle, there's a vewy, vewy scary report on what the Goober Court is likely to do. It will amount to a Right Wingnut Coup. It'll be fun.
the puzzle double-crossed me. I spent the entire time, almost, expecting (and looking for) three rebi 'TRICK's. even wrote 'trick' next to the 59A clue. too clever by half.
Mostly found this puzzle extremely easy. Had everything filled in except the NE corner at around 7 minutes. And then I sat and stared at the NE corner for around 20 minutes. Had the “c” off of CARAD and nothing else. Kept thinking is “civet” not just a species of cat, but more generally the name of a cats’ spots? But no. Eventually ALPS slotted in, but even after that the corner was slow-going. I have an inexplicable hatred for both the presence and clueing of WAIL. Ditto the clueing on MICE. I tried RATS, ANTS, BEES, and even OWLS (Futurama reference?) before finally my wife walked by, glanced at the grid, and immediately saw MICE.
So yeah, sheesh, very easy… except for 16 cells that were near impossible for me to see.
I’m not as nice as Malaika and am generally inclined to say that this was just a bunk puzzle -likely one that’s been sitting in the reserve pile for a day when Shortz couldn’t find anything better. Bleh.
When even a crusty old solver like me thinks “Man, this thing is covered in about four inches of dust,” you know it’s bad. I was certain the casual inclusion of BRER and SAHIB would send Rex into paroxysms of rage, so was glad he was spared having to do the write up. But I felt poor Malaika’s pain. This one would be a challenge for anyone under 30. Thanks NYT for the trip down memory lane. Let me just grab my shawl and cane.
Prestidigator's specialty Yes! Thank you @Lewis
What a great word. Prestidigator...
Oops! I read the NYT and have CNN as my homepage, so, of course, it's just one feed in my brain. here's the link: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/05/politics/independent-state-legislature-theory-what-matters/index.html
Irregardless, chilling.
The "e.g." in the revealer is the problem, as it suggests that you are looking for a variety of MAGIC TRICKs. So I actually tried to find hidden words in the themers that would somehow correspond to different tricks. No luck with that. THEN I noticed the hats (I wore a BOATER sometimes back in the 80s, and was thinking about getting one just the other day; my step-grandson plays baseball, and we're spending a lot of time sitting in bleacher seats; it would be just the thing to protect my otherwise unprotected scalp). Then I got BRER and thought, wow, three rabbits with the same clue, maybe that's a secondary theme. Only then did I notice that the rabbits and hats were connected! (I agree with @Nancy's interpretation, the rabbits are being pulled out. ROGER and BRER are almost out, PETER has just been grabbed by the ears). I loved the theme once I understood it, and loved the way the hats are all clued with non-hat meanings.
@Southside -- UGANDA is on the shores of Lake Victoria, along with a couple of other countries, the same way Ohio is on Lake Erie.
Calling THE UN is band of countries may seem flat, but that's what the clue is doing.
Thanks for the write-up, Malaika. Love the shirt!
Here's a little Johnny Mathis, in honor of 3-down.
Portage was a gimme. I Iive in Portage County, Ohio.
Also knew Prell. This was the shampoo used in my family in the 60's and 70's. My Dad still used it, when we could find it for him (he also used Vitalis. Ugh. Horrible smell for a hair tonic).
I'm with Malaika -- this was the hardest and worst Wednesday I can recall, and my (admittedly fading) memory goes back a l-o-n-g way with NYTXW. The NE, in particular, was Im.Possible. Saturday[plus]-level difficulty, zero-level enjoyment.
Nothing tricky or difficult about this. The two constructors set it up for us to pull a rabbit out a hat, revealing the theme, so that we could solve the puzzle. Strong concept, interesting theme, fine puzzle!
I was pretty proud of myself for having solved this in less than half of Rex’s time. You, like, really kicked some ass, @egs for breakfast, I told myself. Then I read on and realized that I had kicked the ass of the adorable and inebriated Malaika. Kinda, like, deflated my balloon.
Could a TREX TRIP a TSAR apart? Bet he could.
A RAYBAN is what your dermatologist issues when you start showing up with melanomas.
I’ve been dropping the wife’s pearls in our PRELL bottles for years. I’m not sure what it accomplishes, but it sure gets costly.
I loved the cluing in this puzzle. Theme was so-so. Thanks Jeff Chen. Thanks and congrats on your debut Sam Koperwas.
How about the bulimia people changing the name of their disease and leaving "pica" to to the typists ?
Something about this one really annoyed me. I think it was the sloppiness of much of the cluing trying so hard to misdirect. That and stuff like "derby horse", "the UN" and "car ad".
Not up to a Wednesday level for me either for difficulty or enjoyment.
Jack rabbit out of Chan hat.
So apparently one needs to be old to know a damn thing. Only BUBLE is an unknown to this old man, but the fill LENT TO the solution. I will promptly forget him in a few minutes
Isn't it refreshing to have a host limiting her blog to a light-hearted review of the puzzle?? No list of words or people who should be cancelled and NEVER appear in ANY crossword ever again! Funny, AND to the point! Nice job, Malaika.
According to Google, 47 years at most: 1965 to 2012.
Pulling -rabbits- out of -hats-!!
what a clever MAGIC🧩TRICK
(and don’t forget JACK (1 across) is a kind of rabbit… tho not a fictional one. 🤗)
Loved it.
Appreciate both your experience and honesty in your review Malaika. 1 drink might loosen my solving brain just enough … 3 or 4 don’t really care 😂 any more!
🤗🦖🦖🦖🦖🦖🤗
Folks, @Bad Mouse (11:16) is absolutely right! The Supremes have agreed to hear a case which has the potential of playing right into the hands of The Ketchup Thrower and his henchmen. Here’s another link to the story.
As Bad Mouse said, chilling, Recommended reading for all.
Pretty easy for me, too. Only about 7 minutes, well below my Wednesday average. The only thing that gave me pause was the idea that Michael Buble is known as the "King of Christmas?" Seriously? Just no.
I am in the minority of those who found this puzzle falling far short of usual Chen constructions, especially the non-workable theme.
Puzzle definitely reached into old with Prell, perhaps Burma Shave will be next. Seriously though I didn’t know Prell still existed and my advice to any constructor is to put it on the retirement list. Next I’ll find out somebody somewhere still makes Breck shampoo.
This played hard for a Wednesday for me also, (though not Malaika-hard). My biggest hang-up was putting in "fir" for YEW which kept that whole upper central area in disarray for a while. The tricky UN and RAYBAN clues didn't help.
I also want a keg tapped before APP nosed its way into the grid. Loved the clue for T-REX.
Sam Koperwas, congrats on your debut, and thanks to you and Jeff Chen!
I think your youth (under 60) was against you for this puzzle. Sahib was used on some tv show, I think Lone Ranger if you call Tonto Indian. Prell was popular in the 50s and 60s. We learned about portage in our Lewis and Clark lessons. The Un and Michael Buble on the other hand, I was lost.
Shout out to my home town, SANTA ROSA, which still took me a bit because it's a rare answer for a "Santa ____" clue!
@bocamp - Yes, the spine tingler is not inferable, you either know it or not. Luckily, I’ve run across it in several contexts recently. The Chipotle competitor looks like an east coast operation, it was a WOE for me.
Kinda enjoyed the solvequest, becuz of the feisty & often funny clues.
Some faves:
* {Jaguar spot, for example} = CARAD. [Aka CAR AD]
* {Country band, for short?} = THEUN.
* {Small-arms runner of years past?} = TREX.
* {Person with talent} = AGENT.
* {Gosh dang it!} = AWMAN.
* {Unlikely Christmas present in Hawaii} = SLED.
* {Pot seeds?} = ANTES.
* {Brand so named because it limits rabbits radiating from hats} = RAYBAN.
* {Hopping ___} = MAD. Seems to sorta reference the puztheme. Speakin of which …
The puztheme seemed to be executed a bit weirdly, at our house.
Some weird-ish spots:
* The revealer answer ain't a revealer. It's clue has already given the theme's trick away.
* Given that "rabbit" appears in the revealer clue, it seems sorta anti-climatic to clue up all the rabbits as { ___ Rabbit}. Or vice-versa.
* The rabbits ain't exactly comin "out" of the hats. It's more like they're bein pulled thru em. Only the BRE, ROGE, and PE rabbit parts look like they're emergin from them hats. Unless they is claimin "Explodin' Rabbits!", maybe.
* JACK. Definitely a lingerin leporine loner that didn't get to score a trick. Give that poor bunny a few cocktails.
staff weeject pick: MAD hatter hopper. Actually comin outta some folks' DOME(S), btw.
fave fillins: CHANCESARE. UGANDA. RAREGEM. PROXY. CANOE pulled thru a BOATER [or vice-versa]. PETER bein pulled out of anything.
Thanx, and tip of the beanie, for the fun, Mssrs. Koperwas & Chen. And congratz to Mr. Koperwas on his half-debut. Especially enjoyed seein that beanie bein pulled out of a rabbit. har
Masked & AnonymoUUs
p.s. Great blog write-up, @Malaika darlin.
@Thane 12:07 PM - Yes, and you are talking about the start of each generation, which is not what I was referring to. People born in 1965 are now 57 years old, hence, Gens X, Y, and Z now span nearly 60 years.
My problem with JACK is not that it's a rabbit that was left out of the theme, but rather that such an absolute gimme was 1A on a Wednesday.
Rendezvous with PRELL
Ha! Re: hair joke. :-)
p.p.s.s.
Luv the T-shirt logo in the blog write-up. Catchy. I'd claim credit for it (since M&A suggested it in a comment several days ago), but it's an obvious hunk of poetry that any old punbunny mighta come up with.
It is good not to have built the puztheme around PETERs in TREXs and such, tho. Need to get them upcomin Supreme Court new rules sorted out a bit more, first.
M&Also
**gruntz**
Three rabbits and three hats make it a hat trick
How are you getting the dark theme on your crossword?
Unknown 2:21 PM On the Android app, dark mode is a setting on the cog wheel at the top of the puzzle and says, "NEW." M is using pencil mode so her text is blue.
I think CARAD is one of those things you easily get with experience. The "?" in the clue indicates that there's wordplay. When you see the word "Jaguar," that can be (1) a big cat, (2) a car, or (3) a football team that was a punchline on The Good Place, in that order of plausibility. The animal is the obvious meaning, so with the "?" I would zero in on the car. Similarly, think of alternative meanings of "spot," after the physical sign that you see on big cats. After that, the answer pretty much jumps out at you, especially if you have a couple of crosses in place.
Many poker games have antes (small amounts put in before any cards are seen). Some games have blinds and antes and some games have blinds and a single Big Blind Ante that only one person (the big blind) puts in.
Anyway, my poker-nerdiness aside, the money on a poker table is called the pot. Putting antes in helps grow the pot 😀😀
Very easy for a Wednesday.
Thank you, Malaika, for a witty, fun and honest write-up. This was the first time ever (and will probably be the last ever) that I beat the solving time of the Moderator. I came in around 9:30. But, then, I find out it's because I'm old! Thanks so much to all you commenting killjoys! Not. Loved the puzzle. Didn't see the hat part of the theme till I came here. Loved it!
My other thrill today, not so easily ruined, was solving the entire Spelling Bee [SPOILERS AHEAD] -- yes I attained Queen Bee -- without any assistance from Mr. Shunn or anyone else. Of course, I probably have to attribute that to my ethnic upbringing (not any real cleverness), because I knew how to spell the pangram and all of the other words. Although I must admit, it took me a few tries to get that other CH- word.
So, I'm old and Jewish, and today those were blessings.
Love to all. We sure need more of it.
Have another drink lol.
Toughie….3 Fs and the vowel was a U.
Old enough here but far from easy. Kept coming back to it all day until finally cheating to get BUBLE and its crosses.
If Kale is the new waterboarding, then what is that MICE PICA SLED (had the obvious Snow waiting so long for the SLED that it melted away before the SLED got there) CARAD corner?
Thanks for the OKRA joke. Add grits to that list.
Thanks for the Mathis. Was expecting it from the time I filled it in.
Thanks for the Blockheads too. What a great song. Hadn't even thought of that in forever. My bad.
My PRELL story. My mom used Prell. It cleaned like no other shampoo. In a good way or a bad way was always difficult to determine. I quit using it for a bit when they had 2 offerings, dry or oily hair. Didn't know which to get. It was never my only or regular shampoo. When I noticed they went back to one type I went back to buying it. I developed the theory that most shampoos (or maybe conditioners too) eventually leave a build-up on your hair. After awhile your hair feels it is not getting clean. This is the time use Prell. Harsh or whatever it cleans the build up off. After a week or 2 go back to a different shampoo.
Wordle 382 5/6*
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I knew “ken” because I’m 64 yo and knew (still know!) every word to every song in “The Sound of Music.” In Sixteen Going on Seventeen Liesl is supposedly “timid and shy” of “things beyond your ken.” My poor mother also had to explain what a roue was to her then-6 yo. This was a tough puzzle!
Wordle 382 5/6
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Holy moly this was the hardest puzzle I’ve done in a long time! I started it last night and returned to it twice today before finally googling basically all the same words that Malaika mentioned. Absolutely no knowledge of those things. Even on Fri/Sat I have to google, at most, maybe one clue. What on earth!
Gee Wordler, did you hafta?
Lots of old fashioned clues that a younger person wouldn’t know. It felt like a puzzle from the 90s, or 80s. A full-on Gen X puzzle that I solved in 10 mins, unusual for me on a Wednesday:
PRELL, RAYBAN, BUBLE, OKRA (always in pre-2000 puzzles), BRAGA
After seeing the "Pulling a rabbit out of a hat..." clue for MAGIC TRICK, I went back looking for the hats. I thought if the rabbits were being pulled out of hats then the hats would be directly underneath the rabbits or maybe partially surrounding the rabbits as they were emerging. Never did see anything like that.
I was disappointed to see that the rabbits just crossed parts of non hat related words and phrases. There was no place there for the rabbits to be hidden before being pulled out. Not much MAGIC in that TRICK if you ask me.
Speaking of PRELL and its ilk, I decided about 10 years ago that I had been a tool of advertising and marketing most of my life for constantly spending money on harsh chemicals to strip away my hair's naturally protective oils and then spending more money to replace those with "conditioners". I decided to try going without using any shampoo, just warm water to wash my hair. At first my hair did seem excessively oily, probably because it had for years been over compensating for constantly stripped away oils by increasing its natural oil output. Then things began to change. My hair was less and less oily until it settled down to a very nice, natural feel to it, not overly oily at all.
I have extended that not using harsh chemicals to strip away natural oils from the skin. No body soaps or washes. Same result. Good for maintaining a healthy skin microbiome too.
@Pablo 9:10
Think you're right about the Prell side effects - my husband has noticed it, too 😉
Not hard, kinda Tuesdayish actually. Fir before YEW. Saw the rabbits *and* the hats. Definitely an over-60 puzzle. Almost didn't put PRELL since I don’t think it still qualifies as a big name...
I found the puzzle to be a slog, especially for a Wednesday, but found the puzzle commentary by Malaika to be a blast. I love Rex, but he can sometimes veer into sounding a bit too churlish. This guest commentary was just fun - the backstory of how the guest blogger spent her evening before starting the puzzle was entertaining as well as admirable, and her admission that some of the answers were beyond her, ahem, ken was quite humble. I often struggle with getting or understanding answers myself, and I get the impression that Rex labels a puzzle as hard if it takes him more than 5 minutes to solve. I still love Rex, but great guest blog Malaika.
Malika, clearly you never memorized the lyrics to "I Am 16; you are 17" from "The Sound of Music." This is how I learned ken. I was singing kin.🤣
@AnoaBob…Interesting on your shampoo, etc changes!
For context: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/17th-amendment
Before the 17th, state legislatures 'elected' the state's senators. It's coming.
"The Constitution, as it was adopted in 1788, made the Senate an assembly where the states would have equal representation. Each state legislature would elect two senators to six-year terms."
Rex - Malaika should be put in the penalty box for glorifying drinking……
No, I was talking about the beginning of Gen X (1965) and the end of Gen Z (2012), at least according to various Google sites. Hence, 47 years. Generation since 2012 is apparently A.
All this “generation” crap is crap, but they are usually understood to be between 20 and 30 years (think about how old women are when they generally are giving birth to the next generation), The ideas of gens X,Y,Z,A serve as very loose constructs to ascribe societal trends some sort of marker, but these are incredibly broad strokes. For example, my high school class are all tail end “baby boomers.” But one look at Facebook shows that people who never left my home town are distinctly different from those of us who left. Politically, socially, economically, our shared generation is basically meaningless.
Anyway, The “60 year” comment is probably more legitimate than the arbitrary designations that yield 47 years.
Hey, if anyone is curious, The Audubon Society agrees with everyone who isn’t an anon. I know everyone is shocked.
@Escalator - Well,… drinking can be pretty glorious…
@beezer - Burma Shave has been posting nuggets in Syndiland for years.
Hi there Malaika! I know I am way late and y’all have pretty much covered it but I simply must throw in my praise for this gem of clever clues sprinkled into a well crafted theme that seemed from disjointed to non-existent to me throughout the solve. I came here to see what the heck a CARAD is, and it wasn’t until Malaika’s 1:06 am comment that I got my t!! Many wonderfully clever clues, T-REX being one that made me LOL. I honestly do not remember enjoying a Wednesday puzzle this much for ages.
And the theme, seemingly incredibly weak to meh at the very best ratcheted up many notches when the reveal hit - even though when I read the reveal I instantly got the answer and the “aha.”
So much yo love. I use the word KEN in my normal conversation and realize that it’s oldish, but I find it early week crossword fair since most folks have at least a passing familiarity with “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” with the lyrics: “totally unprepared are you to face a world if men; timid and shy and scared are you of things beyond your KEN.” Or not. To each one’s own frame of reference.
This is an absolute gem
I agree with Malaika that it was more difficult than a usual Weds. (despite all the contrarians that called it easy to look smarter than the room (most of us see behind this false bravado)). Of course, I was solving with a similar handicap (ruby port was tonight's poison). The cross that stopped me was BUBLE/THEUN. I know BUBLE (from the seltzer commercials) but have no idea about the cross.
@Anoa B 5:27. You probably won't see this because its late. ..
We may have had this discussion before (about hair) but I'm with you on spending unnecessary money on hair products.
I spent a month camping on the Delaware with just some decent soap to wash my hands. I left behind the scents and shampoos and conditioners and the expensive what nots and just went camping with some toilet paper and a small tent and a sleeping bag and a trusty canoe. I bathed in the river with delight. No shampoo on my hair for a month. I never used any soap on my hair - just good, clean river water. My hair looked silky and healthy and though it smelled a bit like fish, I didn't care.
Today, I do use shampoo because there is no river water near me....BUT...I wouldn't mind taking another month off of harsh chemicals and maybe sit by a fire pit and roast a suckling pig with a side of black beans and a mojito and maybe sing "Guantanamera".....
I can dream.
GILL I. I did stop by before going over to solve the Thursday puzzle. I think your experience shows that in a month you can start to see the benefits of not stripping away natural, protective oils from our hair and skin. The improvements, I think, keep getting better the longer we refrain from using harsh chemicals. I'm betting that the water coming out of your shower head was river water at some time in the past so maybe you could do another, longer trial.
Well, now I feel old at 46 (soon to be 47), as this was a quick, zippy Wednesday clocking in at 9 minutes (average is 13:35 for me). Main issues were Snow for SLED and some stumbling in the east to come up with PETER Rabbit which is ironic, given my name. All I could think of is Brer Rabbit from yesterday's puzzle. Never heard of Sonia BRAGA, but didn't matter with the crosses.
I didn't get the theme until reading the blog. PRELL was one of those things in the recesses of my memory. Wasn't 100% sure when I put it in, but it turned out right. For some reason, the shampoo brand of my youth that I remember most vividly is Silkience, which apparently still exists. The name had always been alluring and enticing to me, and thus stuck through the years.
I'm not going to get into the weeds with the generational talk (I did a university course that centered on Strauss & Howe's generational theory), but the generation from 2012 onward is usually not referred to as A, but as Generation Alpha, so far as I've always read/heard it (I have two kids in this generation.) These names can change, though. Gen X was originally (among other names) th Baby Busters before Douglas Coupland popularized it first with an article he wronte, and then with his novel of the same name; Millennials were called Generation Y when I was in university ('93-'98) before the media picked up on a snazzier moniker; Gen Z seems to have stuck, but alternate names included the iGeneration and Homeland Generation.
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I have to say I thought this one was pretty easy. Got most of it standing in line to recycle cans. Think I had all the squares in about 11 minutes, but I had one error that took about three more minutes to find. (I had Ah Man and Hail).
I missed the bit about the hats! Just saw the rabbits.
Feel like "Prell", "Yew" and "Ken" are pretty common words. If you haven't seen "CPA" outside of crossword puzzles, you need to fix that - you're overpaying your taxes and undersaving for your retirement. And that would also explain why "Proxy" didn't jump at you for "Kind of vote". What other five-letter votes are there?
Funny to complain about a clue not being two words and then be like, "'Carad', what's that...!"
And my surpising breeze through Wednesday means that Thursday is going to kick my ass.
A few things bug me about this one. The lack of symmetry. Not a game breaker, but it’s always better to have it in a themer. One of the hats - BOATER - is kind of an outlier. Yes, it’s a real hat but the word isn’t in common usage as much as BEANIE and DERBY so it kind of stands out as a misfit. The Natick at 5A and 7D (BRAGA-ARAPAHO). I guessed O instead of the A at the crossing and that is why I have a DNF on this one. Is the crossing fair? I don’t think so. Why did the editor give it a pass? I dunno. Some of the puns were spot on, like 44A TREX. But then there was 36D ANTES which was convoluted and in the end a groaner. Similar in its convoluted groaniness was THEUN at 30A.In the cheap glue department we have CPA, SSN, ESC, ETAS, ERE etc. Anyhoo, Bravo to Sam Koperwas on his debut NYTXW in spite of the above it’s a cute theme and generally executed. As for Jeff, he’s a great constructor and he’s usually a bit better than this. But big congrats go to him on helping out a new constructor.
PS - Why the black grid for Malaika’s review? Did something tragic happen on July 5 or 6th?
PPS - 22A CARAD is yet another convoluted groaner. Stop doing this please!
U.N. BABY (MAN LAIR)
EVEN if Ms. BRAGA was a PRUDE,
CHANCESARE she's THE ONE I'd pick,
SEE, she is VERY ATTRACTIVE nude,
a RAREGEM for THE MAGICTRICK.
--- REV. ROGER BUBLE
The grid is symmetric, only BRER doesn't have a counterpart as far as the answers. And yes, all the rabbits are coming out of hats except JACK.
To the person(s) in charge of the Syndie button I'd like to say FORK YEW, but every ONE and their ANTES grandmother NOSE that's inappropriate.
Blue start led to wordle bogey.
I don't quite get the clue to the revealer: the clue IS the revealer! Nothing left to discover after that. I guess the reason for it is that doing it the right way (clue: Magic trick depicted three times in this puzzle) would necessitate finding a way to work PULLINGARABBITOUTOFAHAT into the grid. So, an awkward theme idea, though cute in its own way. Consistent also, naming RABBITs specifically, while leaving Bugs and the Energizer behind. No love for that guy who's late for the tea party, WHITE? Oh well.
Cluing was convoluted--in some cases severely--to justify a midweek position for a basically easy layout. It worked; this was the Chen brain in top gear. Small-arms runner indeed. Par for this one.
A rare double-bogey six for that Wordle word with the dreaded -ING endING.
EDIT - I stand corrected. There is symmetry in the themer and grid. My bad….
This was one of the easiest Wednesday crossword puzzles I have ever done in my life. A lot of it was read/write, read/write. A couple of misdirection clues, and that was it. Also, I didn't find it particularly old in its bent.
Okay, maybe the word bent, in the context I used, is old. So sue me!
THEUN crossing BUBLE? What the ???
Never heard of this particular "king." Oh well. The rest was fine - just fine.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
I agree with D,LIW. Buble is not the King of Xmas. Bing is King. Crosby that is…
P.S. Second @rondo's motion to throw the syndie button pusher under the bus. He's going for an all-time record!
thank you so much!! I came here because I solved this puzzle without autocheck and was happily surprised when the most ingenious clues finally clicked (...usually after I solved the word) but couldn't figure out what in the world CARAD had to do with a Jaguar spot ;-; begrudgingly decent puzzle if unexpectedly difficult for a Wednesday :p
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