Italian dance form from the Spanish for "walk in the street" / SUN 8-21-22 / J.G. Ballard dystopia about a man stranded between motorways / Dance move that resembles a front flip / Portuguese city with a historic university founded in 1290 / Bongo-playing 1950s stereotype / Indicators of status in Maori culture / Symbol of longevity in Chinese numerology
Constructor: Brooke Husic and Will Nediger
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: "Stacking Up" — I don't think there's a theme; I think the idea is there are a lot of big "stacks" (i.e. long answers running alongside one another). If I'm missing something, well, someone will tell me
Word of the Day: COIMBRA (56D: Portuguese city with a historic university founded in 1290) —
Among the many archaeological structures dating back to the Roman era, when Coimbra was the settlement of Aeminium, are its well-preserved aqueduct and cryptoporticus. Similarly, buildings from the period when Coimbra was the capital of Portugal (from 1131 to 1255) still remain. During the late Middle Ages, with its decline as the political centre of the Kingdom of Portugal, Coimbra began to evolve into a major cultural centre. This was in large part helped by the establishment of the first Portuguese university in 1290 in Lisbon and its relocation to Coimbra in 1308, making it the oldest academic institution in the Portuguese-speaking world. Apart from attracting many European and international students, the university is visited by many tourists for its monuments and history. Its historical buildings were classified as a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2013: "Coimbra offers an outstanding example of an integrated university city with a specific urban typology as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions that have been kept alive through the ages."
• • •
It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog for any length of time that this type of puzzle—the Sunday 21x21 themeless—does nothing for me, and this particular incarnation, despite being loaded with what I'd generally consider good and sometimes great fill, is no exception. I just can't get excited about setting records for the lowest number of answers in a Sunday puzzle, or about oceans of white space, or about ... really anything. When you get a canvas this big, all the stuff that would seem impressive in a more restrictive 15x15 format suddenly feels cheap. Like, yeah, you have a huge wordlist and constructing software and two top-notch constructors, you can put a lot of debut long answers in a puzzle this huge. Lots of space. No theme restrictions. You can just go to town. The themeless form just loses meaning to me when the size gets this expansive. I'm not really gonna remember anything in this grid because there's just so much. It's like when I went to Westminster Abbey and there was so much interesting old stuff but it was all just crammed in there like some kind of medieval garage sale so none of it really made an impression (besides Poet's Corner, but that's just because I studied Chaucer). Like, yeah, NEOPRONOUNS is kinda cool, and FACE TATTOOS and "DO ME A SOLID" and a few others, but most of the rest is just, you know, pretty good, and there's just so much that ... nothing feels truly marquee. I didn't love the Friday puzzle, but I remember the marquee fill even 48 hours later ("SMOOTH MOVE, EX-LAX," "I WON'T MINCE WORDS"). Why? Because those answers occurred under more restrictive grid circumstances and also were not crowded, i.e. drowned out, by so much other longer fill. Again, this is a specific, personal distaste ... actually more disinterest ... that I have regarding giant themelesses like this. I doubt many people could do this type of thing better than Brooke and Will do it here. But it's decidedly not for me.
The hardest "stack" for me was easily HEADSPRING (?) (19D: Dance move that resembles a front flip) alongside PASSACAGLIA (!!??) (16D: Italian dance form from the Spanish for "walk in the street"), though the answer that slowed me down the most was definitely COIMBRA, which somehow I am just hearing about for the first time today and which looks like a string of random letters. I am a medievalist but my Iberian knowledge has always been poor, so no huge surprise there. There were some other things in here that I didn't really know, but nothing that gave me real trouble. I found the middle of this puzzle kinda gummy. CONCRETE over CONCURRENCE, and all of the Es and Rs through there, made the whole section feel like a monochromatic slab (except GAY PRIDE PARADE, which definitely brought some color and energy). Again, everything through there is solid, and the Es and Rs etc. are not surprising given just how many long answers are running through there—the fact that they got anything to work, let alone all unimpeachably solid answers, is really something. But from a solving experience standpoint, despite its architectural impressiveness, that just wasn't my favorite part of the grid.
Notes:
39D: Useless (OTIOSE) — I never use this word, but I like this word. I always forget exactly what it means, since it looks like a bunch of other words all mashed together, like ODIOUS meets OBESE meets TORTOISE or something.
20A: "We must wait to see what happens" ("TIME WILL TELL") — seems like not such a great thing to repeat TIME in your grid (see 103A: KILLING TIME), but again, in a grid this massive, with this much white space to fill, who's really going to notice (except me)?
56A: J.G. Ballard dystopia about a man stranded between motorways ("CONCRETE ISLAND") — if nothing else, this puzzle has made me want to put this in my reading queue. I keep meaning to read Ballard and never quite get around to it. He wrote, among other things, "Crash" ("a story about a renegade group of car crash fetishists." (wikipedia)), and the 1968 short story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan." True story.
Hey, next weekend is the best of the annual crossword tournaments, Lollapuzzoola. I can't make it this year (I'm all traveled out, plus my semester will already have started so I'm gonna be beat), but I love that it's back in person, in NYC. I've never not had a great time when I've gone. Importantly, though, it's also *online*, so anyone can participate! Here's the blurb provided to me by tournament founder, my friend and fellow central New Yorker, Brian Cimmet:
Lollapuzzoola, the greatest summertime crossword tournament ever held on a Saturday in August, is taking place concurrently in New York City and online on Saturday, August 27. This year's extravaganza is hosted by Brian Cimmet, Brooke Husic, and Sid Sivakumar, and features puzzles and games from over a dozen different creators. The tournament constructors are: Ella Dershowitz, Francis Heaney, Brooke Husic, Will Nediger, Paolo Pasco, and Pao Roy; and there's bonus content from Kate Chin Park, Kelsey Dixon, Shannon Rapp, Carly Schuna, Sid Sivakumar, and Foggy Brume.Visit www.bemoresmarter.com for more information and to purchase tickets.
Anybody else go nuts trying to figure out the theme? I assumed the puzzle's title, "Stacking Up", was some sort of wordplay relating to a theme. Turns out it's just a description. Oh well ...
"Good and sometimes great fill.." Spot on, Rex. And yes, a very hazy theme. But no naticks here, possibly because of the refreshingly low PPP count, made this puzzle a very enjoyable solve, despite its lack of thematic clarity. It had a literate feel to it.
Confidential to Will Shortz: more like this, please!
Who would have guessed that the University of South Carolina was the “Only sch. to have a gold medal winner in every Summer Olympics since 1912”? Certainly not me, but then I’m FONDA FACETATTOOS, and struggle with concepts like “Scorpio is water” and CONCRETEISLAND.
I’m toying with introducing the TEETHER Tether, a system that restrains your teething infant to a movement radius of 1-10 feet, selectable by you and implanted through an appropriate use of bowline and double half hitch knots (instructions included).
I’m not really a big themeless fan, especially for Sundays, but if you gotta have one, this was a good one to have. It was so much in my House o’ Wheels that I had to stop at one point and see if I had constructed it. I filled the giant center stack so fast that I would have had writer’s cramp had I been writing. But this made for a very enjoyable solve, for which I thank you, Brooke Husic and Will Nediger.
Sundays are often really ugly looking grids, and this isn't. And some good long answers. But without a theme, it's really a long march.
Plus there is a horrible Natick at PASSACAGLIA crossing LILO. I know neither, and I tried about 15 different letters before getting the L. My first choice was V, because PASSA CAG VIA had VIA in it ("street" in Italian, at least). If I type PASSACAGLIA into Google translate, it wants to translate from Corsican (wrong country?), and it means PARADE.
And Google's take on 1 down has me baffled... English "Please" translates to German BITTE. But German BITTE translates to English "you're welcome". But English "you're welcome" translates to German "Gern geschehen". Huh??
For the man stranded between motorways, I wanted something MEDIANS, and there it is later on 101a! (malapop).
BITTE is one of those words you can use in multiple ways. Kannst Du das bitte machen? (Can you please make that?). Answer: Ja (Yes). Reply: Danke. (Thank you). But, one can also have: Person A says, "Kannst Du die Tuer oeffnen?" (Can you open the door?). (Person B then opens the door). Person A says, "Danke." (Thank you). And Person B replies, "Bitte." or "BITTE schoen.". In that case it is a kind of 'You're welcome.'
Rex – I get what you’re saying about solving a 21x themeless with such a massive expanse of white. For me, though, I welcomed the distraction yesterday ‘cause I’m on day five of having had a tooth extraction, and it’s still hurting like crazy. I was tv’d out, napped out, whined out.
Themeless, sure, but three big dance entries: HEADSPRING, PASSACAGLIA, and HULA DANCERS. And COIMBRA looks like it could be some kind of Brazilian foreplay dance.
Another mini-theme of inclusivity in GAY PRIDE PARADE and NEO PRONOUN.
My “neuter noun” for NEO PRONOUN caused the most trouble. Watching the struggle of adding pronouns to our language is fascinating on so many levels. We add new words all the time (chillax, bingeable, blog, cyberspace . . .), but neologisms are usually words in what we in the business call “open class” words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. It’s extremely rare to add stuff to the “closed class” group of pronouns, conjunctions, articles, demonstratives, prepositions, and determiners, etc. I’m pulling for youse, xe/xem/xyr, etc. I haven’t been in a situation where I need to use these, but when I am, I’ll do my level best to incorporate them as naturally and effortlessly as possible. If nonbinary people have the courage to fight for their identities, I can certainly try to be some kind of linguistic wingman. Group hug, everyone.
“C’mon, IT’LL be fun” – I’ve fallen for this twice. First, when this guy invited me to a Renaissance Faire. Talk about your forced smile. Second, when my sister invited me to my first aerobics class back in the leg-warmer Jane FONDA days. I was out of shape, we were front and center, and I coulda killed her. In both cases, my discomfiture was beyond epic.
@okanagager – agree with you on the PASSACAGLIA / LILO cross.
“CONCRETE Jungle” before CONCRETE ISLAND. Unlike Rex, I have no desire to read it; dystopian literature just doesn’t float my boat, mon.
@Danny from yesterday – your method of avoiding holding a baby is nothing short of brilliant.
@Conrad from yesterday – “diaeresipodes”. I see what you did there. Well played.
I kept going back and admiring the clue for ELEMENT. It looks like something I could have said to someone in grad school after my 12th trip to the keg . . . Them: Hey – what say we call it a night and go home? Me:Erbium terbium ytterbium.
I've always known you are a better person than me. Reading how you managed a forced smile when taken to a Renaissance Faire tells me you are a MUCH bigger person than me. I would have responded to such an invitation with something to the effect of: 'we are very different people. I hope you have a nice life '. Unfortunately, my facial expression would have made it seem like a far less gracious response than the words spoken. I am lousy at hiding my feelings.
My late younger brother had a flair for the extreme, and always tried to push my envelope. About 1993 on a Vancouver Friday night he gave me some options of what we could do; I wanted to do the tame things (see a movie! go to the Bread Garden!), but to humor him I opted for the risquest option: "crash a lingerie store's fashion party for their best customers". So we did. Never heard of the store, much less bought anything there. Just showed up, without any ticket or reservation, dunno what I expected but not this: warmly invited in, and generously offered champagne etc, front row seats, schmoozing with the cigar smoking big lingerie spenders as we watched the models parade their underwear. As great as that was, it made me sad that we were such mooching losers, and they were so gracious. Some kind of lesson there.
Easy-medium. No real problems with this one. COIMBRA and PASSACARGLI were WOEs but the crosses were fair. Nice to have something different on a Sunday, liked it.
Absolutely read J. G. Ballard! In addition to the ones Rex has mentioned, people might like "The Emprie of the Sun" - autobiographical, it became a great Spielberg film; High Rise and The Drowned World - a novel written maybe 50 years ago about climate change an its effects. Best of all, however, his "Collected Stories" are easy to find -and if you like dystopia here it is! I've admired his work for much of my life.
ps. If you are a music person Passacaglia was a "gimme."
“The” Mariners? No. Just no. We’ll have “The” before every team name! Had SuperSonics before I saw Jane Fonda and then advised by those in my life who know and care about such things that the SuperSonics were no longer in the PNW.
I grew up in NY and if you'd asked me, I would have said that Niagara Falls was on the St Lawrence River. Jeez. You can see why I'm posting anonymously!
I’m a little skeptical about PASSACAGLIA. Caminar is the Spanish verb I know for to walk. Pasar is to pass. But there may be some idiomatic use I don't know. We have some resident Spanish speakers on the blog who can help, I'm sure. But anyway, wanting that word to start with ‘camin’ slowed me down.
Tougher than the average Sunday (a bit), maybe due to lack of theme?
When I saw the grid I thought it was gorgeous and intimidating. What a great ride it turned out to be. I love a Sunday themeless and I don't get that pleasure very often. I'm going to hit "reset" and do it again.
Wow, what a puzzle. I almost always do the print version, so knew this to be a themeless. While I agree with some hiccups (THEMARINERS, some crossing PPP's, etc.), I was in awe of this puzzle. I wasn't sure I would be able to get through this, but there were just enough shorter answers with easier cluing for me to complete. Thank you, Brooke and Will!
@okanaganer: When I play around with Google Translate, it returns several options for "You're welcome!" in the sense of "No problem!": Keine Ursache!, Bitte!, Bitte sehr!, Gern geschehen!, Aber gerne!, Von mir aus gerne! Of course, this is the challenge of any translation program: There may be more than one way to say anything and there may be nuances, depending on specific circumstance.
I won't be able to make Lollapuzzoola next weekend, but will join Rex in encouraging everyone to enter. It's a lot of fun, with great puzzles, commentaries, and interviews.
So, at one point, I had filled in the perimeter about four or five deep, and I was left staring at a huge splat of white in the middle – five 11-letters-and-more words going one way, and five going the other – and after caroming around it with no reward, I wondered how I was going to break through it.
Drama like that. What more can you ask from a puzzle? Here I had to face myself. Will I take the easy way out? Or will I get calm and wait for the brain to rejigger, to pull something out? These days I prefer to opt for the latter, and sure enough, METER READER came, followed by FACE TATTOO, and like a falling house of cards, the rest quickly tumbled.
That was fun and satisfying, but this whole puzzle had my full attention from the onset. With 17 NYT answer debuts, I was on full alert and happy as heck to be working on new things, unlike many Sunday puzzles filled with shorter oft-used answers and oft-used clues, making for humdrum automatic fil-in. Things today like AFROLATINA, BOHR ATOM, COIMBRA, NEOPRONOUNS, HEADSPRING and OTIOSE, on top of stacks everywhere I looked, then that sweet drama at the end – this was a “Yes!” experience through and through.
Even little mini-dramas, like coming across [E.C. ___, creator of Popeye], which I’ve seen a fair number of times in the past but couldn’t pull out of my head. Thinking for many minutes afterward, “What IS it? What IS it?” And when METER READER gave me the A, my brain exploded with SEGAR! These are crosswords’ special moments.
Simply a sterling Sunday for which I’m so very grateful. Many thumbs up, and thank you so much B&W!
Looked at the title, looked at the grid, thought "there's some big old stacks!", and sure enough, that was it.
I liked this one because I like big old stacks. Something satisfying about filling in all those blanks.
I had heard of COIMBRA, but it took a while to surface. See also LILO. OTOH, I've been associated with music for quite a long time and PASSACAGLIA is news to me. @kitshef-There is a Spanish verb "pasear" meaning "to take a walk. Also "dar un paseo", which means, yep, to take a walk.
NONBINARIES fits very nicely for NEOPRONOUNS.
And now off to church with my trusty guitar, where I am the sole instrumentalist today. I'll see if the congregation hits double digits.
I liked your very dense Sunday, BH and WN. Brought Happiness and Wasted Next to no grid space. Thanks for all the fun.
This seems like a puzzle custom made for those who would enjoy parsing together a lot of crosses to unearth some type of popular culture item (like CONCRETE ISLAND) or maybe learn a trivial factoid (I.e. they like FACE TATTOOS in Māori). Or maybe you don’t mind just stringing letters together to learn that PASSA CAGLIA apparently means something somewhere (ditto for COIMBRA).
The highlight for me was TILT AT, which certainly was a head-scratcher since I had no clue what that one was all about. Some post-solve investigation indicates that it apparently is related to the phrase “tilt at windmills” so I still have no clue, lol. I guess you had to read the book - or maybe watch the movie?
A super low word-count Sunday. Hard not to like the effort - but I would agree with Rex that a lot of the decent entries get lost in the fluff. The center stack is impressive build wise - fill eh. Please - drop the leading THEs. Liked TILT AT and ARGOTS. No idea on PASSACAGLIA - cross it with anything Disney and it’s lost on me.
It was always BOHR Model in school. Liked the clue for HAT TREE. The second MODERNA vax made me sick for two weeks. I don’t eat them anymore - but I love the blue DORITOS.
I usually don't respond to a puzzle based on its theme. Meaning I don't care if a puzzle has no theme, so that bothered me about this puzzle not a bit. Interesting that I thought that there was too much PPP considering one of the first comments declares the puzzle to have a low count of PPP. So I was fairly happy with the puzzle, with reservations. In fact, I would rate it a bit higher than the usual Sunday, since I found it easy to ignore things I found irksome.
Interesting to me that one of Bach's most famous organ works (or perhaps a Brahms symphony movement) king of made it into the puzzle. For me, the word was a gimme. "Lilo" not so.
Yes, thank you! This was the letter I had to find. I assumed it was a trick when I saw them use agua. Unfortunately, never associated with cleverness which can more easily be explained with error.
I agree with jcal that PASSACAGLIA was a gimme for us music types. But I’m not convinced of the etymology. “Passeggiata” is the Italian noun for walk, as in “go for a walk.” (Something I learned from the musical “The Light in the Piazza.”) But the leap from that to the dance genre seems questionable.
But the clue said the source is Spanish not Italian and as Spanish speakers on the blog noted the source words would be "passear" and "calle" which works perfectly with passacaglia.
Amy: had a similar experience to Rex's in Westminister Abbey, only mine was in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Liked the puzzle a lot. Felt refreshing to just solve a solid Xword without a fussy gimmick.
Was easy-medium except that NW dance corner/side. Puzzle was fine, enjoyable to wind down Saturday night but did miss having a theme. I usually avoid the Sunday puzzle because it’s too big and takes too much time for what usually amounts to an average puzzle but you often get a theme to help carry you through the slog of a massive grid.
And why are we getting way more themed Monday/Tuesday/Friday/Saturday puzzles and then an unthemed Sunday?!??
Yes agua is masculine, but they do say el agua fria. El día bonito, el agua fria, sometimes you just have to learn all of the peculiarities of the language which don't follow the normal 'rules'. Had a Natick at Lilo and Passacaglia and I just won't try a string of letters, don't care that much. But I did drop in Coimbra as I've hung out in that beautiful University town. Entertaining puzzle
I am with Rex. It is oh so very American to think twice as big is twice as fun. Nope. This is about as good as a 21x21 themeless can get (WaPo does this once in awhile, too, and they are my least favorite puzzles there, too) and yet, meh. We get some good long entries, but then we also get THE MARINERS (Hi @anon6:16) and PREPARATIVE and Spartacus' cousin SPAREUS and the Port-a-Pottyish NOT OCCUPIED. I see some people like these big themelesses, but it's like the IPA I once had that used 23 varieties of hops. No, sometimes less really is more.
@egs - See what you did? Let's see how many more "corrections" we get. At least the first anon had the good sense to ponder that you might be joking.
Regarding PASSACAGLIA - paso de la calle or something like that would be my guess for the source.
@A.E.Taylor - Hmmm, but straits don't usually have the drop in elevation and the NIAGARA RIVER drops 325 feet. Is that "essentially" the same elevation? I'd say it's not a strait. Look at a satellite image and the NIAGARA RIVER in no way resembles places like the Straits of Gibraltar, Mackinac, or Magellan.
Oof! That NW was brutal for me! Had BLEAT and BITTE, but just couldn't remember PIERRE until way late, despite hubby and me frequently playing the 'list all the state capitals' game on most longer car trips. He always gets them. I struggle. Also tried PASSoDobles for 16D at first. Yes, I knew it wasn't spelled right, but that's the only one I know, from DWTS, of course. And didn't get AREA until way too late, then, quite liked the cute clue. I figured the Clue on 19A would be a clever misdirect as well, and I enjoyed it once I got it, but all that added up to a tough corner for me for a while. The rest was as many have already stated. THE! MARINERS?! Really?! PPP SEGAR who? But I did get LILO. Never saw it, but the ads looked cute. BOHRATOn (guess that I didn't know but tried to infer from the crosses building it) before the correct M ending, which made METERREADER hard to see. Wanted some sort of Network worker there.
Anyway, I kept working at it and got through it with the occasional hitch that resolved with crosses and inferrable stuff sooner or later. Actually got a pretty fast time in the end, which surprised me, since it felt like a longer solve. Probably due to the many longer answer stacks. Did have a few epic slowdown mistakes: In the mid-Atlantic area I had SEES and SOTO (thank you to yesterday's puzzle, where I learned that). That gave me a _EOP for 57D, so I confidently wrote in pEOPle (!) and got stuck until the dystopia novel built itself from crosses. Loved seeing 58D DETENTIONS! I never got one (I was hall monitor/office aid in high school, so quite the goody-goody nerd), but it reminded me of one of my favorite movies: The Breakfast Club. True dat! Totally my HS experience.
Also loved seeing the Marvelous MRS Maisel! Truly a genius show! Brilliant acting and writing! Don't blink! You'll miss a funny sidebar (aside mutterance) from the character in the kitchen! Can't wait to see Maisel become a crossword standard. Maybe give Sela a break.
I'll admit that I forgot about a Theme until after I finished. Also spent a few moments looking for some sort of turn where other words or phrases would turn UP, maybe? But was completely satisfied in my solving experience with the many longer word stacks. Nicely done.
Very much looking forward to Lollapuzzoola again. Will be joining virtually again. Might try it in person for the first time next year.
34A doesn't ring true to me, after working 32 years in software. Software design is just one part of the DEVELOPment process.
Are there still METERREADERs out there? All of my utilities have been switched to smart meters, no longer requiring a human to physically read them. When I lived in London, my flat's electric meter, in a brand new building, was inside the flat. They never read the meter while I lived there (9 months). It was all done by estimates until they took the final reading when I left. And the bill was paid quarterly. It took 3 months to get my refund.
Count me among those who love a Sunday themeless and really, really enjoyed this elegant puzzle. I was intimidated at first by all the stacks but found that intimidation was not the goal of the constructors, after all. Never once felt they were working hard to trip me up or stump me by including the name of some obscure 9th century scribe of central Eurasia crossing a five-letter word for a subatomic particle that no longer exists. Even when I too naticked at PASSACAGLIA and LILO--Disney's a gold mine for constructors, but a vast wasteland to me. The puzzle was comfortable but still challenging and remarkably free of junk.
More on "passacaglia" – its usage to denote a type of dance is virtually archaic now. Starting in the baroque era it came to mean something quite different:
The passacaglia was redefined in the late 1620s by Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, who transformed it into a series of continuous variations over a bass (which itself may be varied). Later composers adopted this model, and by the nineteenth century the word came to mean a series of variations over an ostinato pattern, usually of a serious character.
Also, "The Beggar's Opera", on which "Beggar's Holiday" is based, is not really an opera, it was a dramatic theater piece conceived as a satire of opera. But I'll give that clue a passacaglia. This time.
My musicology work in a former life helped me on this one and I did a whole paper on “The Beggar’s Opera.” But all the names and more modern/pop stuff drive me crazy!
I enjoys this is parts. Definitely prefer a Sunday theme though .
ARGOTS and OTIOSE fall into the category of crosswordese words that I never remember. The latter is a great Scrabble word when you have vowels or an odd-placed S!
I looked at the blank grid with those vast tracts of white space and thought, “Help!” But I thoroughly enjoyed solving this one – slow and steady won the race, but not without certain missteps along the way. I interpreted the title as meaning that the puzzle was based on the enormous number of stacks in both directions and in all areas of the grid, and looked for no other theme.
PASSACAGLIA was a complete unknown to me, too, but I had in mind somewhere the paso doble, so accepted the PASSA part of that answer quite easily without knowing where the word was going. I thought the crosses were fair (really, everywhere) and I was lucky to have recently heard an extensive interview with Tia Carrere, who voiced one of the characters in Lilo and Stitch and talked a bit about the movie (I’ve never seen it.)
I had writeovers in a number of places, but the worst error was probably CONCoRdaNCE for CONCURRENCE, smack dab in the middle and affecting a bunch of other answers. I thought DOMEASOLID was a superior DOOK: DOMEASOLID as opposed to DOMEALIGHT(AND AIRY). Not being a basketball fan, I thought at first that [Embarrassing miss] was going to be something-fALL. But what the clue actually made me think of was a maiden aunt – actually a maiden *great*-aunt – who was both a klutz and a master of inappropriate behavior. One of her classics was to say, before a meal, “Oh no, dear, I’m not hungry: don’t get anything for me – I’ll just sit here and keep you all company.” And then proceed to wangle a plate, cadge food, and eat twice as much as anyone else.
I loved this puzzle! Uniquely open space for a Sunday! It was terrific. Enjoyed learning some new terms.... like PASSACAGLIA. Took my son and I 30 minutes, so not too hard, which I like. I don't like spending an hour or more on a Sunday. My son is now deciding to read CONCRETEISLAND. Anybody out there read it? Any reviews for us? Thanks Brooke and Will, after finishing that I felt like a POWERRANGER!--Rick
I normally don't bother with a Sunday anymore because they usually hit my angst, agita, dyspepsia button. I decided to give this a whirl because I enjoy Brooke and Will's puzzles. I actually put on my fandango tango shoes and twirled on top of a table. But then I saw the dance corner and I fell on my face. PASSA CAGLIA who? I did my crazy translation. All I could think of was a Pasodoble which means double step. It will always remind me of Spain and a musical genre of instrumental music played during a bullfight. No...I must figure out the translation. I did but I'm also embarrassed to say I've never seen it. The HEADSPRING had me flummoxed as well. Agita called me out; I didn't know it. Dyspepsia time as well because I LOVE to dance and know my moves. With time on my hands, I figured them out and the angst disappeared. I actually enjoyed this. I like non themed puzzles. I always have trouble spelling. When I get it right, I hope it will stick. I also like learning things like ROOTY TOOTY, NEOPRONOUN and what on earth is BOHRATOM. HULA DANCERS join up with the dance party and then I hit the pause button. CUIMBRA took me forever to get even though I've been to Portugal many times. Favorite answer was NOT OCCUPIED POWER RANGER followed by AVE MARIA POPES. I could do this type of Sunday every Sunday. My dusty cobwebs need to be cleaned often, and this does the trick.
So after (almost) not cheating at all, despite enormous temptations everywhere in the puzzle, I found myself (finally, finally) at the last letter: the cross of the school initials and the Italian (from Spanish) dance form. I thought it would probably be a "C" since USC is a real jock school with zillions of gold-medal athletes.
But could I figure out PASSA CAGLIA? (I had already guessed on LILO, the Disney girl who surprisingly wasn't LEIA). Would my French and Latin help me out on this Italian/Spanish hybrid? Not really.
"Pas" for step in French helped me with the "walk" part. But what was the "street" part? CAGLIA rang no bells.
I also wasn't thrilled with LILO. Don't most female names end in an "A"? Somewhere I've seen the name LILO, but always assumed it was a "he".
And Spain -- you almost CREAMed me today. First that dance. And then there was also the completely unknown COIMBRA. Look, I know my Madrid and Barcelona and Toledo and Seville -- but Brooke and Will, you're really pushing it here. Isn't this puzzle already crunchy enough?
Enough things I didn't know to fill a library, but ironically, I only cheated on the one thing I did know but couldn't dredge up from my memory. I typed "Do me a s" into Google and out popped DO ME A SOLID. I've heard of it; just couldn't think of it.
A really tough Sunday that fought me every PASSA of the way. I loved it!
Well, that explains that - I finished and couldn't come up with a theme after staring at the title - Xwordinfo tells me that, indeed, it is a themeless Sunday. And I'm fine with that, it was a nice puzzle. But that brief feeling of "I hate feeling stupid when I can't figure out the theme" brought the pleasure down a tick.
Very fast solve for me, solving randomly. Of course I had my usual DNF due to typo; at 16+ minutes I can see I had PIERRE in place but when I hit Check Puzzle, it was mIERRE. I never know how that happens but it happens almost every week. Gah.
This was so easy, I don't even have any interesting write-overs. So thanks, Brooke and Will, for a smooth but engaging Sunday puzzle.
Well this one was really just KILLING TIME for me. I don’t necessarily mind a big themeless, but if you’re going to do one, the long answers had better be REALLY good. In the top, it was just a lot if PREPARATIVE LAW BOOKs DEVELOPing CONCURRENCEs. Those are the marquee answers? Yawn. Obviously there was also some nice stuff, too - like AFRO LATINA and FACE TATTOO - but not enough.
Also, it felt like the constructors set out to not have any wordplay in the cluing - only the clue for GAY PRIDE PARADE made me smile (“where many people walk out”). And “after school activities one wouldn’t list on a college app” for DETENTIONS is clever.
I was a LATE ARRIVAL to the blog yesterday because I didn’t get to the puzzle until the evening, so I didn’t post. But that was a killer. First time in ages that I had to cheat. But it was mostly a fair killer.
I liked this considerably more than @Rex. I was glad to see it wasn’t the usual chopped up Sunday grid we’ve been getting. Fun entries like TILT AT, DON’T SASS ME, NIAGARARIVER which looks cool as all one word. And the pleasing CONCURRENCE of POPES, NUNS, and AVE MARIA. The DEVIL is outnumbered at this REVIVAL.
Minor side-eye to PREPARATIVE, BIOLAB and those four diagonal S’s in the SE corner. What will @Anoa Bob say - DON’T SSSS ME?
Anyone else notice that long and weirdly specific clue for SOLO?
Unlike @Rex, I really liked all the double letters, not just the R’s and E’s and T’s in the center, but also the stacked double L’s up north. Seemed to reinforce the title.
And yet - curses, foiled again by lack of attention, and on a musical term that I know, to boot. Among my wind quintet’s go-to repertoire is a PASSACAille, a French PASSACAGLIA. Converting to the Italian form I changed the ending to -allia instead of aglia. GAH. I hang my professional musician HEAD in shame. I’D BET if it had been across instead of down I’d’ve seen it was ERRONEOUS.
In case anyone else wants to know:
argot (n.)
1860, from French argot (17c.) "the jargon of Paris rogues and thieves" (for purposes of disguise and concealment), earlier "the company of beggars," from French argot, "group of beggars," a word of unknown origin. Gamillscheg suggests a connection to Old French argoter "to cut off the stubs left in pruning," with a connecting sense of "to get a grip on." The best English equivalent is perhaps cant. The German equivalent is Rotwelsch, literally "Red Welsh," but the first element of that might be connected with Middle High German rot "beggar." (from etymonline)
Thanks, Brooke and Will, for the fun and challenging Sunday.
I love themeless puzzles and have little interest in themes so it kills me to say that today's offering is a perfect example of why a 21x21 puzzle should have a theme. That this inflated balloon of a puzzle follows yesterday's terrific experience makes this all the more stark. Making a themeless larger does nothing to enhance the solving experience on the contrary it's far more likely to dilute it. The massive center is exhibit A. COIMBRA was a complete unknown for me with no way to intuit what the next letter would be. I needed every cross to get it but when they come this easy the excitement just isn't there.
In the north I dropped in APT, FRIA and REMIT. From there the crosses just rolled out and it kept at a steady pace for the rest of the puzzle. Nothing ever felt crucial to getting the solve so it never had that sense of excitement that yesterday's solve generated throughout.
The closest this got to late week brinkmanship was PASSACAGLIA crossing USC and LILO. I'm completely unfamiliar with that school's swimming status and its mention is a debut for it's very long clue list. However there really wasn't another choice in that slot. As for LILO as often as it has appeared in ought to be thoroughly beaten into my head. As it was it just looked vaguely familiar but that was enough.
BOHR and SOTO twice in the same weekend is a bit of a CONCURRANCE.
NEOPRONOUNS can absolutely express gender — that’s the whole point of them. They’re created to express gender outside the binary. While some people who use neopronouns certainly are agender I feel that this clue misses the mark on why neopronouns exist in the first place: to acknowledge the existence of *more* genders than can be expressed through the existence of “he” and “she” alone
@Anonymous 11:26 AM - Interesting point. Underscores for me the incoherence of the entire discourse of nonbinary gender, since gender fundamentally means the distinction between male and female, or masculine and feminine. I like to say that gender is binary, but gender expression is not limited to conformist notions of gender identity. Despite my lifetime membership in the queer community, this position does not make me very popular with the nonbinarist millennials and zoomers. Que será. Chacun à son goût.
Former resident of Columbia (home of THE USC) here. Columbia isn’t the Upstate. That’s Greenville and Spartanburg. Columbia is the Midlands. (I guess to someone in Charleston, everything not on the coast is upstate!)
So far my attempts to grok the theme are somewhat UP the creek, i.e., lame. I see a few UPs, e.g., 'totaled' UP, 'not occUPied' and 'sUPer G'; also, many words that can be followed by UP, e.g., 'pass', 'heads', 'beat', 'root', 'let', 'ease', 'face', etc., etc. Ok, TIME's UP for now, but I may have some TO KILL this PM. TIME WILL TELL.
Coincidentally, watched 'MoneyBALL' yd, which features the Oakland Athletics, and includes some clips of The MARINERS. Also, yd, watched Jane FONDA in 'The China Syndrome'.
OTIOSE is always a tough word to recall the meaning of.
Learned COIMBRA (maybe). LOL
Anyhoo, another fun, challenging Sun.; liked it a lot! :)
We visited Portugal last year, and I remember visiting the University City with its Aquaduct, Botanical Garden, the lovely one woman restaurant who made traditional salt-fish and came out with all 3 desserts she makes from scratch, the steepest staircase I've ever climbed, the spot I parked to get to some wifi downtown, the look of the hotel room - but the NAME OF THE CITY? Total blank until some friendly crosses brought back the lovely COIMBRA. We visited there instead of Porto, assuming it would be filled with Harry Potter fans, merch, and promo. I'm sure it would have been lovely, too. Also made it to Navarre, home of the 100 foot wave featured in a Netflix doc.
Hands up for PASSACAGLIA as a musician's friend, although my understanding is like that of Joe Dipinto. I thought to myself, "that's a dance? Oh, maybe so...". AVEMARIA also a gimme for any classical singer.
While Rex was fair in that it just wasn't for him, this puzzle deserves a little more love.
Puzzle kind of made for me already at 1D, having just visited Austria and been reminded of BITTE meaning please and you're welcome.
Love the phrase "tilt at". Side-eye, but not outright scorn, to "The" Mariners.
@egs - and here I thought it was the Seventh Day Adventist University of the Southern Caribbean...
Hey All ! Late (for me) post. Liked the skill it took to have all those middle Longs intersecting with real words/phrases. And the four corner stacks. I realized that as I was solving, I wasn't looking for a theme. That's quite odd, because I always look for a theme. The ole brain must've sensed it was a themeless. Chalk one up for a my brain still being useful!
Had a many-letter DNF, but hey, it's a SunPuz, so it doesn't bother me as much. FRIo messed me up, ended up with FRIo/oIlBALL(?!)/OPElAS. You've heard of those new OPELAS, right? They sell them next to the scented OIL BALLs.
Just now got BOHR ATOM. I thought it was one last name! "Who is this BOHRATOM guy?" was my thought. Har.
TIME dupe. Hey, that sounds like a great movie title. HATrack first for HATREE. FACE TATTOOS are quite silly, unless of course you're Maori. DONT SASS ME sounds like a SASS itself.
Surprised haven't heard from any Flat-Earthers saying the answer is wrong. Or ERRONEOUS, if one will. I have one question for Flat-Earthers, Have you physically been to the edge?
Anyway, enjoyable time spent on a well constructed SunThemelessPuz. Off to wrack said brain in SB.
This felt a bit more challenging than most Sundays, though it took me slightly under my usual time, according to the app. When I look it over, there are answers that came easily, and others that didn't, and I was satisfied to work it out. But - when I share the highlights with my husband over lunch (he's not a puzzler) I'm afraid there's nothing that jumps out.
Wait! I did enjoy the Rick Steves video of the library in COIMBRA. We're familiar with the city from a boardgame but didn't know anything about it. Now I'd love to visit. So that's a plus.
The theme of this puzzle is crossing words. Horizontal answers are intersected by vertical answers that share common letters. There are a lot of long words and phrases and they are separated by black squares. There is also a betrayal subtheme going on with the repetition of the word TIME. It is not clear, however, who is *two-timing* whom.
This is the third themeless Sunday in recent memory, and through I agree a theme is more fun, this is by far the cleanest of the three. So at least there’s that.
Well, I enjoyed reading half of Wikipedia to do this puzzle. Now I eagerly await the early release of Monday.
Uniclues:
1 "Uh, just so you know, this town sucks." 2 Statistically everyone over 21. 3 Catholic leaders' offering indulgences. 4 Overly ambitious hippy taking clown classes. 5 Rumored dance craze of 17th century Spain. 6 Mid-sway snack. 7 The realization the story is super dumb.
1 PIERRE PREPARATIVE 2 KILLING-TIME ADULTS 3 "DO ME A SOLID" POPES 4 HEAD SPRING BEATNIK 5 PASSACAGLIA, IT IS SAID 6 HULA DANCER DORITO 7 OPERA'S LATE ARRIVAL
Just no. For me, much of the fun of a puzzle is figuring out the mystery of it so I don't enjoy themeless puzzles much. Plus this one was so full of obscure insider names it was just a slog. Sure, some of the longer fill answers were creative and fresh but in the end they weren't enough to redeem the experience.
Excited to see a J.G. Ballard novel drop in here with one of my favorite books. Would love to see a late 20th century sci-fi themed puzzle with titles from Ballard, Lem, Dick, Sheckley, Le Guinn, Butler, etc.
Glad i don’t pay attention to puzzle names - just go as far as I can based on clues and my guesses.
Almost quit early - even though Pierre seemed easy. But then i got a toehold, then a foothold and all but the NW corner fell into place.
No shame (to me at least) checking the answers on clues I don’t get. This to me is the ultimate Sunday joy - seemingly impossible challenge that ends up (mostly) solvable. Well done!
Absolutely mot East-Mesium for me. Brutal!! Not because of the white space, but all the stuff I didn’t know. Took me twice as long as usual, but I, resisted temptation to cheat (hand up here, @Nancy) and struggled mightily through it largely because I am such a fangirl of both our well known constructors today! I’m exhausted!!
I look forward to the Sunday theme, though they often aren't as interesting as I think Sunday should allow. Just bought a book of Sunday puzzles from 1982 and boy are they a lot more like the myth of the NYT Sunday puzzle--very literate and very, very hard.. perhaps it is a sad reflection on the difference between who subscribed to the Sunday paper, and who buys an online crossword subscription. I may become more literate...
I enjoyed the stack with interesting words and clues. Don't know why Rex just didn't. Perhaps knowing too much about construction spoils the fun. Poor Rex.
@Wanderlust - Porto served as an inspiration for much of the physical world of the Harry Potter series. Rowling wrote much of the series in Porto, at least the early books. There are many locations around town that one can visit on heavily promoted Harry Potter themed tours of the city. It was really as much a matter of time that we didn't visit, having to make choices - I hear it is a beautiful city.
I was just perusing (scanning) the Wikipedia passage on COIMBRA that Rex posted, and had to peruse (read thoroughly) this part several times:
The second-largest urban area in Portugal outside Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas after Braga
So, I think what that means is that Coimbra is the fourth largest urban area. That doesn't seem like much of a distinction, since, according to the map Rex posted, Portugal only has five cities in it.
33A The answer is FDA with clue "Org. that regulates pet *food* and eyelashes". Isn't the answer not supposed to be in the clue? Am I missing something or was Shortz asleep?
@okanaganer - what a lovely story. It's kinda like they Melanie Wilkesed you ala that scene where Scarlet shows up at Melanie's in that red dress after being caught with Ashley.
@Andrew Heinegg - that's what I'll do next time, for sure.
COIMBRA was a gimmer, but being Portuguese, and having visited a few times, it should be! Beautiful city. And if you think that random accumulation of letters is odd, then please also visit Conímbriga, just to the south, where you can see some beautiful Roman mosaics.
Didn't know about Rowling and Oporto... Too bad about Potter-tourism. It's very bittersweet to me that Portugal has been so gargantually "discovered". It is so overrun, and in a way that makes daily life a difficulty for so many. But we're always told how the revenue generated is wonderful. Ah well... Progress, progress. Harrumph.
I liked this puzzle... I'm pretty distracted these days, so it was a bit of a struggle in a few spots, which eventually relented. Thanks, Brooke and Will!
And speaking of Sunday puzzles in general, we’re old, and we like to print them and do them on paper, and the numbers are just too small to see in the grid. 15x15 is much easier to see and do with a pencil and paper.
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listen) or [ˈkwĩbɾɐ]) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of 319.40 square kilometres (123.3 sq mi). The second-largest urban area in Portugal outside Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas after Braga, it is the largest city of the district of Coimbra and the Centro Region. About 460,000 people live in the Região de Coimbra, comprising 19 municipalities and extending into an area of 4,336 square kilometres (1,674 sq mi).
Among the many archaeological structures dating back to the Roman era, when Coimbra was the settlement of Aeminium, are its well-preserved aqueduct and cryptoporticus. Similarly, buildings from the period when Coimbra was the capital of Portugal (from 1131 to 1255) still remain. During the late Middle Ages, with its decline as the political centre of the Kingdom of Portugal, Coimbra began to evolve into a major cultural centre. This was in large part helped by the establishment of the first Portuguese university in 1290 in Lisbon and its relocation to Coimbra in 1308, making it the oldest academic institution in the Portuguese-speaking world. Apart from attracting many European and international students, the university is visited by many tourists for its monuments and history. Its historical buildings were classified as a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2013: "Coimbra offers an outstanding example of an integrated university city with a specific urban typology as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions that have been kept alive through the ages."
Anybody else go nuts trying to figure out the theme? I assumed the puzzle's title, "Stacking Up", was some sort of wordplay relating to a theme. Turns out it's just a description. Oh well ...
ReplyDeleteThe description in the paper edition states that there is no theme. Don’t know about digital version.
DeleteThank you!
Delete"Good and sometimes great fill.." Spot on, Rex. And yes, a very hazy theme. But no naticks here, possibly because of the refreshingly low PPP count, made this puzzle a very enjoyable solve, despite its lack of thematic clarity. It had a literate feel to it.
ReplyDeleteConfidential to Will Shortz: more like this, please!
Who would have guessed that the University of South Carolina was the “Only sch. to have a gold medal winner in every Summer Olympics since 1912”? Certainly not me, but then I’m FONDA FACETATTOOS, and struggle with concepts like “Scorpio is water” and CONCRETEISLAND.
ReplyDeleteI’m toying with introducing the TEETHER Tether, a system that restrains your teething infant to a movement radius of 1-10 feet, selectable by you and implanted through an appropriate use of bowline and double half hitch knots (instructions included).
I’m not really a big themeless fan, especially for Sundays, but if you gotta have one, this was a good one to have. It was so much in my House o’ Wheels that I had to stop at one point and see if I had constructed it. I filled the giant center stack so fast that I would have had writer’s cramp had I been writing. But this made for a very enjoyable solve, for which I thank you, Brooke Husic and Will Nediger.
California though i suspect you're kidding
DeleteI believe that USC in this case means the University of Southern California
DeleteSundays are often really ugly looking grids, and this isn't. And some good long answers. But without a theme, it's really a long march.
ReplyDeletePlus there is a horrible Natick at PASSACAGLIA crossing LILO. I know neither, and I tried about 15 different letters before getting the L. My first choice was V, because PASSA CAG VIA had VIA in it ("street" in Italian, at least). If I type PASSACAGLIA into Google translate, it wants to translate from Corsican (wrong country?), and it means PARADE.
And Google's take on 1 down has me baffled... English "Please" translates to German BITTE. But German BITTE translates to English "you're welcome". But English "you're welcome" translates to German "Gern geschehen". Huh??
For the man stranded between motorways, I wanted something MEDIANS, and there it is later on 101a! (malapop).
“Danke” means “thank you”, not “please”.
DeleteBITTE is one of those words you can use in multiple ways. Kannst Du das bitte machen? (Can you please make that?). Answer: Ja (Yes). Reply: Danke. (Thank you). But, one can also have: Person A says, "Kannst Du die Tuer oeffnen?" (Can you open the door?). (Person B then opens the door). Person A says, "Danke." (Thank you). And Person B replies, "Bitte." or "BITTE schoen.". In that case it is a kind of 'You're welcome.'
DeleteStreet in Spanish is calle, so caglia sort of gets it into Italian. But still a natick for me
DeleteYes, it's a bit of a pain with Google translate, but 'bitte' is both 'please' & 'thanks'.
DeleteSomeone should tell IHoP they are spelling ROOTIE TOOTIE wrong.
ReplyDeleteAt least Extreme Wordle was fun. Heck, even Ripple Effect was more fun than this.
Rex – I get what you’re saying about solving a 21x themeless with such a massive expanse of white. For me, though, I welcomed the distraction yesterday ‘cause I’m on day five of having had a tooth extraction, and it’s still hurting like crazy. I was tv’d out, napped out, whined out.
ReplyDeleteThemeless, sure, but three big dance entries: HEADSPRING, PASSACAGLIA, and HULA DANCERS. And COIMBRA looks like it could be some kind of Brazilian foreplay dance.
Another mini-theme of inclusivity in GAY PRIDE PARADE and NEO PRONOUN.
My “neuter noun” for NEO PRONOUN caused the most trouble. Watching the struggle of adding pronouns to our language is fascinating on so many levels. We add new words all the time (chillax, bingeable, blog, cyberspace . . .), but neologisms are usually words in what we in the business call “open class” words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. It’s extremely rare to add stuff to the “closed class” group of pronouns, conjunctions, articles, demonstratives, prepositions, and determiners, etc. I’m pulling for youse, xe/xem/xyr, etc. I haven’t been in a situation where I need to use these, but when I am, I’ll do my level best to incorporate them as naturally and effortlessly as possible. If nonbinary people have the courage to fight for their identities, I can certainly try to be some kind of linguistic wingman. Group hug, everyone.
“C’mon, IT’LL be fun” – I’ve fallen for this twice. First, when this guy invited me to a Renaissance Faire. Talk about your forced smile. Second, when my sister invited me to my first aerobics class back in the leg-warmer Jane FONDA days. I was out of shape, we were front and center, and I coulda killed her. In both cases, my discomfiture was beyond epic.
@okanagager – agree with you on the PASSACAGLIA / LILO cross.
“CONCRETE Jungle” before CONCRETE ISLAND. Unlike Rex, I have no desire to read it; dystopian literature just doesn’t float my boat, mon.
@Danny from yesterday – your method of avoiding holding a baby is nothing short of brilliant.
@Conrad from yesterday – “diaeresipodes”. I see what you did there. Well played.
I kept going back and admiring the clue for ELEMENT. It looks like something I could have said to someone in grad school after my 12th trip to the keg . . .
Them: Hey – what say we call it a night and go home?
Me: Erbium terbium ytterbium.
I've always known you are a better person than me. Reading how you managed a forced smile when taken to a Renaissance Faire tells me you are a MUCH bigger person than me. I would have responded to such an invitation with something to the effect of: 'we are very different people. I hope you have a nice life '. Unfortunately, my facial expression would have made it seem like a far less gracious response than the words spoken. I am lousy at hiding my feelings.
Delete@Loren: “C’mon, IT’LL be fun”...
ReplyDeleteMy late younger brother had a flair for the extreme, and always tried to push my envelope. About 1993 on a Vancouver Friday night he gave me some options of what we could do; I wanted to do the tame things (see a movie! go to the Bread Garden!), but to humor him I opted for the risquest option: "crash a lingerie store's fashion party for their best customers". So we did. Never heard of the store, much less bought anything there. Just showed up, without any ticket or reservation, dunno what I expected but not this: warmly invited in, and generously offered champagne etc, front row seats, schmoozing with the cigar smoking big lingerie spenders as we watched the models parade their underwear. As great as that was, it made me sad that we were such mooching losers, and they were so gracious. Some kind of lesson there.
Thanks for sharing. Your brother sounds like he was a lot of fun.
DeleteEasy-medium. No real problems with this one. COIMBRA and PASSACARGLI were WOEs but the crosses were fair. Nice to have something different on a Sunday, liked it.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely read J. G. Ballard! In addition to the ones Rex has mentioned, people might like "The Emprie of the Sun" - autobiographical, it became a great Spielberg film; High Rise and The Drowned World - a novel written maybe 50 years ago about climate change an its effects. Best of all, however, his "Collected Stories" are easy to find -and if you like dystopia here it is! I've admired his work for much of my life.
ps. If you are a music person Passacaglia was a "gimme."
Thanks, Rex.
“The” Mariners? No. Just no. We’ll have “The” before every team name! Had SuperSonics before I saw Jane Fonda and then advised by those in my life who know and care about such things that the SuperSonics were no longer in the PNW.
ReplyDeleteAgree wholeheartedly. Cheap trick which is only highlighted by all the interesting entries.
DeleteAgreed "The" is awful
DeleteVery dull fill for a themeless. Another Sunday to forget…
ReplyDeleteI grew up in NY and if you'd asked me, I would have said that Niagara Falls was on the St Lawrence River. Jeez. You can see why I'm posting anonymously!
ReplyDeleteI’m a little skeptical about PASSACAGLIA. Caminar is the Spanish verb I know for to walk. Pasar is to pass. But there may be some idiomatic use I don't know. We have some resident Spanish speakers on the blog who can help, I'm sure. But anyway, wanting that word to start with ‘camin’ slowed me down.
ReplyDeleteTougher than the average Sunday (a bit), maybe due to lack of theme?
I think it comes from PASEAR (PASSA) which means to go for a walk, and CALLE, that must translate to CAGLIA.
DeleteThat’s my intuition, at least.
When I saw the grid I thought it was gorgeous and intimidating. What a great ride it turned out to be. I love a Sunday themeless and I don't get that pleasure very often. I'm going to hit "reset" and do it again.
ReplyDeleteThe call it a RIVER, but is is really a strait - connecting two large bodies of water, Lakes Ontario and Erie.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a puzzle. I almost always do the print version, so knew this to be a themeless. While I agree with some hiccups (THEMARINERS, some crossing PPP's, etc.), I was in awe of this puzzle. I wasn't sure I would be able to get through this, but there were just enough shorter answers with easier cluing for me to complete. Thank you, Brooke and Will!
ReplyDelete@okanaganer: When I play around with Google Translate, it returns several options for "You're welcome!" in the sense of "No problem!": Keine Ursache!, Bitte!, Bitte sehr!, Gern geschehen!, Aber gerne!, Von mir aus gerne! Of course, this is the challenge of any translation program: There may be more than one way to say anything and there may be nuances, depending on specific circumstance.
I won't be able to make Lollapuzzoola next weekend, but will join Rex in encouraging everyone to enter. It's a lot of fun, with great puzzles, commentaries, and interviews.
So, at one point, I had filled in the perimeter about four or five deep, and I was left staring at a huge splat of white in the middle – five 11-letters-and-more words going one way, and five going the other – and after caroming around it with no reward, I wondered how I was going to break through it.
ReplyDeleteDrama like that. What more can you ask from a puzzle? Here I had to face myself. Will I take the easy way out? Or will I get calm and wait for the brain to rejigger, to pull something out? These days I prefer to opt for the latter, and sure enough, METER READER came, followed by FACE TATTOO, and like a falling house of cards, the rest quickly tumbled.
That was fun and satisfying, but this whole puzzle had my full attention from the onset. With 17 NYT answer debuts, I was on full alert and happy as heck to be working on new things, unlike many Sunday puzzles filled with shorter oft-used answers and oft-used clues, making for humdrum automatic fil-in. Things today like AFROLATINA, BOHR ATOM, COIMBRA, NEOPRONOUNS, HEADSPRING and OTIOSE, on top of stacks everywhere I looked, then that sweet drama at the end – this was a “Yes!” experience through and through.
Even little mini-dramas, like coming across [E.C. ___, creator of Popeye], which I’ve seen a fair number of times in the past but couldn’t pull out of my head. Thinking for many minutes afterward, “What IS it? What IS it?” And when METER READER gave me the A, my brain exploded with SEGAR! These are crosswords’ special moments.
Simply a sterling Sunday for which I’m so very grateful. Many thumbs up, and thank you so much B&W!
Looked at the title, looked at the grid, thought "there's some big old stacks!", and sure enough, that was it.
ReplyDeleteI liked this one because I like big old stacks. Something satisfying about filling in all those blanks.
I had heard of COIMBRA, but it took a while to surface. See also LILO. OTOH, I've been associated with music for quite a long time and PASSACAGLIA is news to me. @kitshef-There is a Spanish verb "pasear" meaning "to take a walk. Also "dar un paseo", which means, yep, to take a walk.
NONBINARIES fits very nicely for NEOPRONOUNS.
And now off to church with my trusty guitar, where I am the sole instrumentalist today. I'll see if the congregation hits double digits.
I liked your very dense Sunday, BH and WN. Brought Happiness and Wasted Next to no grid space. Thanks for all the fun.
I think the theme is TETRIS. The black squares are shaped like Tetris blocks that you stack up.
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a puzzle custom made for those who would enjoy parsing together a lot of crosses to unearth some type of popular culture item (like CONCRETE ISLAND) or maybe learn a trivial factoid (I.e. they like FACE TATTOOS in Māori). Or maybe you don’t mind just stringing letters together to learn that PASSA CAGLIA apparently means something somewhere (ditto for COIMBRA).
ReplyDeleteThe highlight for me was TILT AT, which certainly was a head-scratcher since I had no clue what that one was all about. Some post-solve investigation indicates that it apparently is related to the phrase “tilt at windmills” so I still have no clue, lol. I guess you had to read the book - or maybe watch the movie?
Wordle 428 3/6*
ReplyDelete⬜🟧⬜🟦🟧
⬜🟧🟧🟧🟧
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
Easy Peasy again!
A super low word-count Sunday. Hard not to like the effort - but I would agree with Rex that a lot of the decent entries get lost in the fluff. The center stack is impressive build wise - fill eh. Please - drop the leading THEs. Liked TILT AT and ARGOTS. No idea on PASSACAGLIA - cross it with anything Disney and it’s lost on me.
ReplyDeleteIt was always BOHR Model in school. Liked the clue for HAT TREE. The second MODERNA vax made me sick for two weeks. I don’t eat them anymore - but I love the blue DORITOS.
For the early 80s super group lovers there’s this unlistenable classic - but I’ll go with Blue Sky and the DEVIL
Enjoyable uber Friday solve.
I usually don't respond to a puzzle based on its theme. Meaning I don't care if a puzzle has no theme, so that bothered me about this puzzle not a bit. Interesting that I thought that there was too much PPP considering one of the first comments declares the puzzle to have a low count of PPP. So I was fairly happy with the puzzle, with reservations. In fact, I would rate it a bit higher than the usual Sunday, since I found it easy to ignore things I found irksome.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to me that one of Bach's most famous organ works (or perhaps a Brahms symphony movement) king of made it into the puzzle. For me, the word was a gimme. "Lilo" not so.
I also thought it had tons of PPP and was scratching my head at 1st comment.
DeleteAgua is masculine in Spanish, so "Cold, as agua" really should be frio, not fria
ReplyDeleteYes, thank you! This was the letter I had to find. I assumed it was a trick when I saw them use agua. Unfortunately, never associated with cleverness which can more easily be explained with error.
DeleteSame problem here. Wish I didn’t know Spanish!
DeleteSame. I was like: OIRBALL?!
DeleteAGUA, even though it’s written as ‘el agua’ (to avoid trying to pronounce two A vowels together), is and always will be a feminine noun.
DeleteI agree with jcal that PASSACAGLIA was a gimme for us music types. But I’m not convinced of the etymology. “Passeggiata” is the Italian noun for walk, as in “go for a walk.” (Something I learned from the musical “The Light in the Piazza.”) But the leap from that to the dance genre seems questionable.
ReplyDeleteBut the clue said the source is Spanish not Italian and as Spanish speakers on the blog noted the source words would be "passear" and "calle" which works perfectly with passacaglia.
DeleteAmy: had a similar experience to Rex's in Westminister Abbey, only mine was in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Liked the puzzle a lot. Felt refreshing to just solve a solid Xword without a fussy gimmick.
ReplyDeleteWas easy-medium except that NW dance corner/side. Puzzle was fine, enjoyable to wind down Saturday night but did miss having a theme. I usually avoid the Sunday puzzle because it’s too big and takes too much time for what usually amounts to an average puzzle but you often get a theme to help carry you through the slog of a massive grid.
ReplyDeleteAnd why are we getting way more themed Monday/Tuesday/Friday/Saturday puzzles and then an unthemed Sunday?!??
Yes agua is masculine, but they do say el agua fria. El día bonito, el agua fria, sometimes you just have to learn all of the peculiarities of the language which don't follow the normal 'rules'. Had a Natick at Lilo and Passacaglia and I just won't try a string of letters, don't care that much. But I did drop in Coimbra as I've hung out in that beautiful University town. Entertaining puzzle
ReplyDeleteI am with Rex. It is oh so very American to think twice as big is twice as fun. Nope. This is about as good as a 21x21 themeless can get (WaPo does this once in awhile, too, and they are my least favorite puzzles there, too) and yet, meh. We get some good long entries, but then we also get THE MARINERS (Hi @anon6:16) and PREPARATIVE and Spartacus' cousin SPAREUS and the Port-a-Pottyish NOT OCCUPIED. I see some people like these big themelesses, but it's like the IPA I once had that used 23 varieties of hops. No, sometimes less really is more.
ReplyDelete@egs - See what you did? Let's see how many more "corrections" we get. At least the first anon had the good sense to ponder that you might be joking.
Regarding PASSACAGLIA - paso de la calle or something like that would be my guess for the source.
@A.E.Taylor - Hmmm, but straits don't usually have the drop in elevation and the NIAGARA RIVER drops 325 feet. Is that "essentially" the same elevation? I'd say it's not a strait. Look at a satellite image and the NIAGARA RIVER in no way resembles places like the Straits of Gibraltar, Mackinac, or Magellan.
Oof! That NW was brutal for me! Had BLEAT and BITTE, but just couldn't remember PIERRE until way late, despite hubby and me frequently playing the 'list all the state capitals' game on most longer car trips. He always gets them. I struggle. Also tried PASSoDobles for 16D at first. Yes, I knew it wasn't spelled right, but that's the only one I know, from DWTS, of course. And didn't get AREA until way too late, then, quite liked the cute clue. I figured the Clue on 19A would be a clever misdirect as well, and I enjoyed it once I got it, but all that added up to a tough corner for me for a while. The rest was as many have already stated. THE! MARINERS?! Really?! PPP SEGAR who? But I did get LILO. Never saw it, but the ads looked cute. BOHRATOn (guess that I didn't know but tried to infer from the crosses building it) before the correct M ending, which made METERREADER hard to see. Wanted some sort of Network worker there.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I kept working at it and got through it with the occasional hitch that resolved with crosses and inferrable stuff sooner or later. Actually got a pretty fast time in the end, which surprised me, since it felt like a longer solve. Probably due to the many longer answer stacks. Did have a few epic slowdown mistakes: In the mid-Atlantic area I had SEES and SOTO (thank you to yesterday's puzzle, where I learned that). That gave me a _EOP for 57D, so I confidently wrote in pEOPle (!) and got stuck until the dystopia novel built itself from crosses. Loved seeing 58D DETENTIONS! I never got one (I was hall monitor/office aid in high school, so quite the goody-goody nerd), but it reminded me of one of my favorite movies: The Breakfast Club. True dat! Totally my HS experience.
Also loved seeing the Marvelous MRS Maisel! Truly a genius show! Brilliant acting and writing! Don't blink! You'll miss a funny sidebar (aside mutterance) from the character in the kitchen! Can't wait to see Maisel become a crossword standard. Maybe give Sela a break.
I'll admit that I forgot about a Theme until after I finished. Also spent a few moments looking for some sort of turn where other words or phrases would turn UP, maybe? But was completely satisfied in my solving experience with the many longer word stacks. Nicely done.
Very much looking forward to Lollapuzzoola again. Will be joining virtually again. Might try it in person for the first time next year.
@Anonymous 8:40:
ReplyDeleteThe masculine article "el" is used for agua, but is actually a feminine noun. So el agua fria is correct.
The article el is used in Spanish because agua begins with letter a, so la agua sounds bad. It is a feminine noun
ReplyDeleteAgree with 🦖. Totally.
ReplyDeleteEasy- annoying-themeless-stacks-so-big—fun-ansews-got-lost-nw-corner-PASSACAGLIA-say-what
Always assume USC is University of Southern California.
California dreamin’ in the South here.
Sunday 🧩 sigh….
🤗🦖🦖🦖🤗
34A doesn't ring true to me, after working 32 years in software. Software design is just one part of the DEVELOPment process.
ReplyDeleteAre there still METERREADERs out there? All of my utilities have been switched to smart meters, no longer requiring a human to physically read them.
When I lived in London, my flat's electric meter, in a brand new building, was inside the flat. They never read the meter while I lived there (9 months). It was all done by estimates until they took the final reading when I left. And the bill was paid quarterly. It took 3 months to get my refund.
Count me among those who love a Sunday themeless and really, really enjoyed this elegant puzzle. I was intimidated at first by all the stacks but found that intimidation was not the goal of the constructors, after all. Never once felt they were working hard to trip me up or stump me by including the name of some obscure 9th century scribe of central Eurasia crossing a five-letter word for a subatomic particle that no longer exists. Even when I too naticked at PASSACAGLIA and LILO--Disney's a gold mine for constructors, but a vast wasteland to me. The puzzle was comfortable but still challenging and remarkably free of junk.
ReplyDeleteI'd like lots more Sundays like this.
More on "passacaglia" – its usage to denote a type of dance is virtually archaic now. Starting in the baroque era it came to mean something quite different:
ReplyDeleteThe passacaglia was redefined in the late 1620s by Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, who transformed it into a series of continuous variations over a bass (which itself may be varied). Later composers adopted this model, and by the nineteenth century the word came to mean a series of variations over an ostinato pattern, usually of a serious character.
Also, "The Beggar's Opera", on which "Beggar's Holiday" is based, is not really an opera, it was a dramatic theater piece conceived as a satire of opera. But I'll give that clue a passacaglia. This time.
My musicology work in a former life helped me on this one and I did a whole paper on “The Beggar’s Opera.” But all the names and more modern/pop stuff drive me crazy!
DeleteHad a good time with this as a themeless but DNFd at the intersection of LILO and PASSACAGLIA. I’d say more good things but gotta go.
ReplyDelete@pabloinnh I thought I was pretty, pretty cool plunking in NONBINARIES but dang…NEOPRONOUNS? Messed me up for a bit.
I enjoys this is parts. Definitely prefer a Sunday theme though .
ReplyDeleteARGOTS and OTIOSE fall into the category of crosswordese words that I never remember. The latter is a great Scrabble word when you have vowels or an odd-placed S!
@LMS -next kegger you go to….. take me along.
ReplyDelete(I can translate what you said)
I looked at the blank grid with those vast tracts of white space and thought, “Help!” But I thoroughly enjoyed solving this one – slow and steady won the race, but not without certain missteps along the way. I interpreted the title as meaning that the puzzle was based on the enormous number of stacks in both directions and in all areas of the grid, and looked for no other theme.
ReplyDeletePASSACAGLIA was a complete unknown to me, too, but I had in mind somewhere the paso doble, so accepted the PASSA part of that answer quite easily without knowing where the word was going. I thought the crosses were fair (really, everywhere) and I was lucky to have recently heard an extensive interview with Tia Carrere, who voiced one of the characters in Lilo and Stitch and talked a bit about the movie (I’ve never seen it.)
I had writeovers in a number of places, but the worst error was probably CONCoRdaNCE for CONCURRENCE, smack dab in the middle and affecting a bunch of other answers. I thought DOMEASOLID was a superior DOOK: DOMEASOLID as opposed to DOMEALIGHT(AND AIRY). Not being a basketball fan, I thought at first that [Embarrassing miss] was going to be something-fALL. But what the clue actually made me think of was a maiden aunt – actually a maiden *great*-aunt – who was both a klutz and a master of inappropriate behavior. One of her classics was to say, before a meal, “Oh no, dear, I’m not hungry: don’t get anything for me – I’ll just sit here and keep you all company.” And then proceed to wangle a plate, cadge food, and eat twice as much as anyone else.
I loved this puzzle! Uniquely open space for a Sunday! It was terrific. Enjoyed learning some new terms.... like PASSACAGLIA. Took my son and I 30 minutes, so not too hard, which I like. I don't like spending an hour or more on a Sunday. My son is now deciding to read CONCRETEISLAND. Anybody out there read it? Any reviews for us? Thanks Brooke and Will, after finishing that I felt like a POWERRANGER!--Rick
ReplyDeleteWow,got to give a nod to "Neopronouns" and GayPrideParade", and work "F__k" into the review! WooHoo !
ReplyDeleteHmm...describe their work as having "a word list and constructing software" and still get to call the constructors by their first names. Interesting.
Better than the usual Sunday,IMO.
I normally don't bother with a Sunday anymore because they usually hit my angst, agita, dyspepsia button.
ReplyDeleteI decided to give this a whirl because I enjoy Brooke and Will's puzzles.
I actually put on my fandango tango shoes and twirled on top of a table. But then I saw the dance corner and I fell on my face. PASSA CAGLIA who? I did my crazy translation. All I could think of was a Pasodoble which means double step. It will always remind me of Spain and a musical genre of instrumental music played during a bullfight. No...I must figure out the translation. I did but I'm also embarrassed to say I've never seen it. The HEADSPRING had me flummoxed as well. Agita called me out; I didn't know it. Dyspepsia time as well because I LOVE to dance and know my moves. With time on my hands, I figured them out and the angst disappeared.
I actually enjoyed this. I like non themed puzzles. I always have trouble spelling. When I get it right, I hope it will stick. I also like learning things like ROOTY TOOTY, NEOPRONOUN and what on earth is BOHRATOM.
HULA DANCERS join up with the dance party and then I hit the pause button.
CUIMBRA took me forever to get even though I've been to Portugal many times. Favorite answer was NOT OCCUPIED POWER RANGER followed by AVE MARIA POPES.
I could do this type of Sunday every Sunday. My dusty cobwebs need to be cleaned often, and this does the trick.
So after (almost) not cheating at all, despite enormous temptations everywhere in the puzzle, I found myself (finally, finally) at the last letter: the cross of the school initials and the Italian (from Spanish) dance form. I thought it would probably be a "C" since USC is a real jock school with zillions of gold-medal athletes.
ReplyDeleteBut could I figure out PASSA CAGLIA? (I had already guessed on LILO, the Disney girl who surprisingly wasn't LEIA). Would my French and Latin help me out on this Italian/Spanish hybrid? Not really.
"Pas" for step in French helped me with the "walk" part. But what was the "street" part? CAGLIA rang no bells.
I also wasn't thrilled with LILO. Don't most female names end in an "A"? Somewhere I've seen the name LILO, but always assumed it was a "he".
And Spain -- you almost CREAMed me today. First that dance. And then there was also the completely unknown COIMBRA. Look, I know my Madrid and Barcelona and Toledo and Seville -- but Brooke and Will, you're really pushing it here. Isn't this puzzle already crunchy enough?
Enough things I didn't know to fill a library, but ironically, I only cheated on the one thing I did know but couldn't dredge up from my memory. I typed "Do me a s" into Google and out popped DO ME A SOLID. I've heard of it; just couldn't think of it.
A really tough Sunday that fought me every PASSA of the way. I loved it!
Portugal and Spain are different countries
DeleteThere's just no pleasing Rex, is there?
ReplyDeleteLots of white space to fill. Hardly any dreck. All sorts of new words.
Well, that explains that - I finished and couldn't come up with a theme after staring at the title - Xwordinfo tells me that, indeed, it is a themeless Sunday. And I'm fine with that, it was a nice puzzle. But that brief feeling of "I hate feeling stupid when I can't figure out the theme" brought the pleasure down a tick.
ReplyDeleteVery fast solve for me, solving randomly. Of course I had my usual DNF due to typo; at 16+ minutes I can see I had PIERRE in place but when I hit Check Puzzle, it was mIERRE. I never know how that happens but it happens almost every week. Gah.
This was so easy, I don't even have any interesting write-overs. So thanks, Brooke and Will, for a smooth but engaging Sunday puzzle.
Well this one was really just KILLING TIME for me. I don’t necessarily mind a big themeless, but if you’re going to do one, the long answers had better be REALLY good. In the top, it was just a lot if PREPARATIVE LAW BOOKs DEVELOPing CONCURRENCEs. Those are the marquee answers? Yawn. Obviously there was also some nice stuff, too - like AFRO LATINA and FACE TATTOO - but not enough.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it felt like the constructors set out to not have any wordplay in the cluing - only the clue for GAY PRIDE PARADE made me smile (“where many people walk out”). And “after school activities one wouldn’t list on a college app” for DETENTIONS is clever.
I was a LATE ARRIVAL to the blog yesterday because I didn’t get to the puzzle until the evening, so I didn’t post. But that was a killer. First time in ages that I had to cheat. But it was mostly a fair killer.
@Beezer -- I sent you a shoutout -- late -- on yesterday's blog.
ReplyDeleteI liked this considerably more than @Rex. I was glad to see it wasn’t the usual chopped up Sunday grid we’ve been getting. Fun entries like TILT AT, DON’T SASS ME, NIAGARARIVER which looks cool as all one word. And the pleasing CONCURRENCE of POPES, NUNS, and AVE MARIA. The DEVIL is outnumbered at this REVIVAL.
ReplyDeleteMinor side-eye to PREPARATIVE, BIOLAB and those four diagonal S’s in the SE corner. What will @Anoa Bob say - DON’T SSSS ME?
Anyone else notice that long and weirdly specific clue for SOLO?
Unlike @Rex, I really liked all the double letters, not just the R’s and E’s and T’s in the center, but also the stacked double L’s up north. Seemed to reinforce the title.
And yet - curses, foiled again by lack of attention, and on a musical term that I know, to boot. Among my wind quintet’s go-to repertoire is a PASSACAille, a French PASSACAGLIA. Converting to the Italian form I changed the ending to -allia instead of aglia. GAH. I hang my professional musician HEAD in shame. I’D BET if it had been across instead of down I’d’ve seen it was ERRONEOUS.
In case anyone else wants to know:
argot (n.)
1860, from French argot (17c.) "the jargon of Paris rogues and thieves" (for purposes of disguise and concealment), earlier "the company of beggars," from French argot, "group of beggars," a word of unknown origin.
Gamillscheg suggests a connection to Old French argoter "to cut off the stubs left in pruning," with a connecting sense of "to get a grip on." The best English equivalent is perhaps cant. The German equivalent is Rotwelsch, literally "Red Welsh," but the first element of that might be connected with Middle High German rot "beggar." (from etymonline)
Thanks, Brooke and Will, for the fun and challenging Sunday.
I love themeless puzzles and have little interest in themes so it kills me to say that today's offering is a perfect example of why a 21x21 puzzle should have a theme. That this inflated balloon of a puzzle follows yesterday's terrific experience makes this all the more stark. Making a themeless larger does nothing to enhance the solving experience on the contrary it's far more likely to dilute it. The massive center is exhibit A. COIMBRA was a complete unknown for me with no way to intuit what the next letter would be. I needed every cross to get it but when they come this easy the excitement just isn't there.
ReplyDeleteIn the north I dropped in APT, FRIA and REMIT. From there the crosses just rolled out and it kept at a steady pace for the rest of the puzzle. Nothing ever felt crucial to getting the solve so it never had that sense of excitement that yesterday's solve generated throughout.
The closest this got to late week brinkmanship was PASSACAGLIA crossing USC and LILO. I'm completely unfamiliar with that school's swimming status and its mention is a debut for it's very long clue list. However there really wasn't another choice in that slot. As for LILO as often as it has appeared in ought to be thoroughly beaten into my head. As it was it just looked vaguely familiar but that was enough.
BOHR and SOTO twice in the same weekend is a bit of a CONCURRANCE.
yd -0
NEOPRONOUNS can absolutely express gender — that’s the whole point of them. They’re created to express gender outside the binary. While some people who use neopronouns certainly are agender I feel that this clue misses the mark on why neopronouns exist in the first place: to acknowledge the existence of *more* genders than can be expressed through the existence of “he” and “she” alone
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 11:26 AM - Interesting point. Underscores for me the incoherence of the entire discourse of nonbinary gender, since gender fundamentally means the distinction between male and female, or masculine and feminine. I like to say that gender is binary, but gender expression is not limited to conformist notions of gender identity. Despite my lifetime membership in the queer community, this position does not make me very popular with the nonbinarist millennials and zoomers. Que será. Chacun à son goût.
DeleteWell, I’m from Charleston (SC), so USC refers to The Upstate school. But clearly that wouldn’t have been the right answer!
ReplyDeleteFormer resident of Columbia (home of THE USC) here. Columbia isn’t the Upstate. That’s Greenville and Spartanburg. Columbia is the Midlands. (I guess to someone in Charleston, everything not on the coast is upstate!)
DeleteThx, Brooke & Will, for the UPBEAT Sun. puz! :)
ReplyDeleteMed+
So far my attempts to grok the theme are somewhat UP the creek, i.e., lame. I see a few UPs, e.g., 'totaled' UP, 'not occUPied' and 'sUPer G'; also, many words that can be followed by UP, e.g., 'pass', 'heads', 'beat', 'root', 'let', 'ease', 'face', etc., etc. Ok, TIME's UP for now, but I may have some TO KILL this PM. TIME WILL TELL.
Coincidentally, watched 'MoneyBALL' yd, which features the Oakland Athletics, and includes some clips of The MARINERS. Also, yd, watched Jane FONDA in 'The China Syndrome'.
OTIOSE is always a tough word to recall the meaning of.
Learned COIMBRA (maybe). LOL
Anyhoo, another fun, challenging Sun.; liked it a lot! :)
Btw, the NYT' 'Extreme Wordle' provides a good workout.
___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
We visited Portugal last year, and I remember visiting the University City with its Aquaduct, Botanical Garden, the lovely one woman restaurant who made traditional salt-fish and came out with all 3 desserts she makes from scratch, the steepest staircase I've ever climbed, the spot I parked to get to some wifi downtown, the look of the hotel room - but the NAME OF THE CITY? Total blank until some friendly crosses brought back the lovely COIMBRA. We visited there instead of Porto, assuming it would be filled with Harry Potter fans, merch, and promo. I'm sure it would have been lovely, too. Also made it to Navarre, home of the 100 foot wave featured in a Netflix doc.
ReplyDeleteHands up for PASSACAGLIA as a musician's friend, although my understanding is like that of Joe Dipinto. I thought to myself, "that's a dance? Oh, maybe so...". AVEMARIA also a gimme for any classical singer.
While Rex was fair in that it just wasn't for him, this puzzle deserves a little more love.
Puzzle kind of made for me already at 1D, having just visited Austria and been reminded of BITTE meaning please and you're welcome.
Love the phrase "tilt at". Side-eye, but not outright scorn, to "The" Mariners.
@egs - and here I thought it was the Seventh Day Adventist University of the Southern Caribbean...
Truly curious- why would Porto be filled with Harry Potter fans?
Deletecorrection - Nazare the beach town, in case anyone read that far:)
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteLate (for me) post. Liked the skill it took to have all those middle Longs intersecting with real words/phrases. And the four corner stacks. I realized that as I was solving, I wasn't looking for a theme. That's quite odd, because I always look for a theme. The ole brain must've sensed it was a themeless. Chalk one up for a my brain still being useful!
Had a many-letter DNF, but hey, it's a SunPuz, so it doesn't bother me as much. FRIo messed me up, ended up with FRIo/oIlBALL(?!)/OPElAS. You've heard of those new OPELAS, right? They sell them next to the scented OIL BALLs.
Just now got BOHR ATOM. I thought it was one last name! "Who is this BOHRATOM guy?" was my thought. Har.
TIME dupe. Hey, that sounds like a great movie title. HATrack first for HATREE. FACE TATTOOS are quite silly, unless of course you're Maori. DONT SASS ME sounds like a SASS itself.
Surprised haven't heard from any Flat-Earthers saying the answer is wrong. Or ERRONEOUS, if one will. I have one question for Flat-Earthers, Have you physically been to the edge?
Anyway, enjoyable time spent on a well constructed SunThemelessPuz. Off to wrack said brain in SB.
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Would someone please explain 78 across? How is “OTC” the answer to “Like Plan B, for short”?
ReplyDelete@Son Volt -- Not only a super low word count, but this puzzle holds the record for the lowest Sunday 21 x 21 NYT puzzle ever.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 11:57...Plan B is an emergency contraceptive (“morning after pill”) that doesn’t require a prescription, hence OTC (Over The Counter)
ReplyDeleteThis felt a bit more challenging than most Sundays, though it took me slightly under my usual time, according to the app. When I look it over, there are answers that came easily, and others that didn't, and I was satisfied to work it out. But - when I share the highlights with my husband over lunch (he's not a puzzler) I'm afraid there's nothing that jumps out.
ReplyDeleteWait! I did enjoy the Rick Steves video of the library in COIMBRA. We're familiar with the city from a boardgame but didn't know anything about it. Now I'd love to visit. So that's a plus.
@Roo
ReplyDeleteProof of the Earth's sphericality -- I have a t-shirt which says:
"If the Earth was flat, cats would have batted everything off it by now."
LOL!
Delete@Anon 11:57 - OTC is over the counter, Plan B is an over the counter drug.
ReplyDeleteThe theme of this puzzle is crossing words. Horizontal answers are intersected by vertical answers that share common letters. There are a lot of long words and phrases and they are separated by black squares. There is also a betrayal subtheme going on with the repetition of the word TIME. It is not clear, however, who is *two-timing* whom.
ReplyDelete“Crash” was also made into a movie with Holly Hunter and James Spader.
ReplyDeleteThis is the third themeless Sunday in recent memory, and through I agree a theme is more fun, this is by far the cleanest of the three. So at least there’s that.
ReplyDeleteWell, I enjoyed reading half of Wikipedia to do this puzzle. Now I eagerly await the early release of Monday.
ReplyDeleteUniclues:
1 "Uh, just so you know, this town sucks."
2 Statistically everyone over 21.
3 Catholic leaders' offering indulgences.
4 Overly ambitious hippy taking clown classes.
5 Rumored dance craze of 17th century Spain.
6 Mid-sway snack.
7 The realization the story is super dumb.
1 PIERRE PREPARATIVE
2 KILLING-TIME ADULTS
3 "DO ME A SOLID" POPES
4 HEAD SPRING BEATNIK
5 PASSACAGLIA, IT IS SAID
6 HULA DANCER DORITO
7 OPERA'S LATE ARRIVAL
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tmGDOTCYaIk&vidve=5727&autoplay=1
ReplyDeleteJust no. For me, much of the fun of a puzzle is figuring out the mystery of it so I don't enjoy themeless puzzles much. Plus this one was so full of obscure insider names it was just a slog. Sure, some of the longer fill answers were creative and fresh but in the end they weren't enough to redeem the experience.
ReplyDeleteI liked the long stacks. A little naticky in a couple places, but fun to solve!
ReplyDeleteAnother abysmal millenial "xword"... Wtf... And from a Female (yes i used the F word)...
ReplyDeleteExcited to see a J.G. Ballard novel drop in here with one of my favorite books. Would love to see a late 20th century sci-fi themed puzzle with titles from Ballard, Lem, Dick, Sheckley, Le Guinn, Butler, etc.
ReplyDeleteGlad i don’t pay attention to puzzle names - just go as far as I can based on clues and my guesses.
ReplyDeleteAlmost quit early - even though Pierre seemed easy. But then i got a toehold, then a foothold and all but the NW corner fell into place.
No shame (to me at least) checking the answers on clues I don’t get. This to me is the ultimate Sunday joy - seemingly impossible challenge that ends up (mostly) solvable. Well done!
Absolutely mot East-Mesium for me. Brutal!! Not because of the white space, but all the stuff I didn’t know. Took me twice as long as usual, but I, resisted temptation to cheat (hand up here, @Nancy) and struggled mightily through it largely because I am such a fangirl of both our well known constructors today! I’m exhausted!!
ReplyDeleteI look forward to the Sunday theme, though they often aren't as interesting as I think Sunday should allow. Just bought a book of Sunday puzzles from 1982 and boy are they a lot more like the myth of the NYT Sunday puzzle--very literate and very, very hard.. perhaps it is a sad reflection on the difference between who subscribed to the Sunday paper, and who buys an online crossword subscription. I may become more literate...
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the stack with interesting words and clues. Don't know why Rex just didn't. Perhaps knowing too much about construction spoils the fun. Poor Rex.
Pretty good. But I still prefer a good themer on Sunday.
ReplyDelete@Wanderlust - Porto served as an inspiration for much of the physical world of the Harry Potter series. Rowling wrote much of the series in Porto, at least the early books. There are many locations around town that one can visit on heavily promoted Harry Potter themed tours of the city. It was really as much a matter of time that we didn't visit, having to make choices - I hear it is a beautiful city.
ReplyDelete@Anon 1:11 – thanks for that link. I didn't know "April in Portugal" was in fact a Portuguese song. I've only heard instrumental versions of it.
ReplyDeleteI was just perusing (scanning) the Wikipedia passage on COIMBRA that Rex posted, and had to peruse (read thoroughly) this part several times:
ReplyDeleteThe second-largest urban area in Portugal outside Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas after Braga
So, I think what that means is that Coimbra is the fourth largest urban area. That doesn't seem like much of a distinction, since, according to the map Rex posted, Portugal only has five cities in it.
33A The answer is FDA with clue "Org. that regulates pet *food* and eyelashes". Isn't the answer not supposed to be in the clue? Am I missing something or was Shortz asleep?
ReplyDeleteI don't think I agree that the title character of a film that grossed a quarter-billion is a Natick.
ReplyDeleteIndeed!
Delete@okanaganer - what a lovely story. It's kinda like they Melanie Wilkesed you ala that scene where Scarlet shows up at Melanie's in that red dress after being caught with Ashley.
ReplyDelete@Andrew Heinegg - that's what I'll do next time, for sure.
COIMBRA was a gimmer, but being Portuguese, and having visited a few times, it should be! Beautiful city. And if you think that random accumulation of letters is odd, then please also visit Conímbriga, just to the south, where you can see some beautiful Roman mosaics.
ReplyDeleteDidn't know about Rowling and Oporto...
Too bad about Potter-tourism. It's very bittersweet to me that Portugal has been so gargantually "discovered".
It is so overrun, and in a way that makes daily life a difficulty for so many. But we're always told how the revenue generated is wonderful. Ah well... Progress, progress. Harrumph.
I liked this puzzle... I'm pretty distracted these days, so it was a bit of a struggle in a few spots, which eventually relented.
Thanks, Brooke and Will!
And speaking of Sunday puzzles in general, we’re old, and we like to print them and do them on paper, and the numbers are just too small to see in the grid. 15x15 is much easier to see and do with a pencil and paper.
ReplyDeleteI’m surprised no one is familiar with Coimbra? It is a classic old movie Latin song like Siboney, The Peanut Vendor, Malagueña, Tico Tico, etc.
ReplyDeleteADULTS KILLINGTIME
ReplyDelete"I'DBET TIMEWILLTELL
THE POWER of Viagra",
SAID MRS. ADELA
at THE RIVER NIAGARA.
--- PIERRE FONDA
OTIOSE? What's that doing in the puzzle? It's an OTIOSE word if I ever heard one. Especially in this particular Sunday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteDiana, LIW for C