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Video game franchise featuring Sub-Zero and Sonya Blade / WED 8-17-22 / Hairy cryptids / Aurora's Greek counterpart / Star Wars cantina patrons for short / Buffalo soldier dreadlock Bob Marley / Largish jazz combos
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Constructor: Michael Paleos
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- FROOT LOOPS (17A: Breakfast cereal with a toucan mascot [69-Across])
- BOSTON RED SOX (23A: Team that broke the "Curse of the Bambino" in 2004 [69-Across])
- AMERICAN PHAROAH (39A: Triple Crown winner of 2015 [69-Across])
- MORTAL KOMBAT (48A: Video game franchise featuring Sub-Zero and Sonya Blade [69-Across])
- DEF LEPPARD (61A: "Pour Some Sugar on Me" rockers [69-Across])
Raymond Allen Liotta (Italian: [liˈɔtta]; December 18, 1954 – May 26, 2022) was an American actor and film producer. He was known for his roles as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989) and Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990). He was a Primetime Emmy Award winning actor and received nominations for a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.Liotta first gained attention for his role as Ray Sinclair in the Jonathan Demme film Something Wild (1986), for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture nomination. He continued to star in films such as Unlawful Entry (1992), No Escape (1994), Cop Land (1997) Hannibal(2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Kill the Messenger (2014), Marriage Story (2019), and the Sopranos prequel theatrical film The Many Saints of Newark (2021).
He was also known for his television work in ER for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2004. He starred as Frank Sinatra in the television film The Rat Pack (1998) and Lorca and Tom Mitchell in Texas Rising (2015) for which he earned Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. He starred in the drama series Shades of Blue (2016–2018) with Jennifer Lopez and had a prominent voice acting role as Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002). (wikipedia)
• • •
["One lump or two!"]
Speaking of misspellings, I was happy to see WHOA spelled correctly, but then I realized that the encroaching WOAH spelling (shudder) is not for this particular meaning of WHOA (3D: "Easy there!"), but for the exclamation you might make if you are surprised or left speechless by something. Today's WHOA is horse WHOA, not omg/wow WHOA. I think the move from WHOA to WOAH for the "omg/wow" exclamation is generational, but I don't know. Surely someone has written on this (... googling ...) yeah, looks like exceedingly-online folks are more apt to use WOAH (a misspelling that started as a message board phenomenon in the '80s, per this article). To me, WOAH is always gonna look like a chemical formula, and my brain is always gonna pronounce it like NOAH, e.g. "Noah's Ark contained a pair of every animal on earth, whereas WOAH's Ark contained only AMERICAN PHAROAH and hasn't been seen or heard from since 2015."
Some more notes:
- 13D: Big name in shapewear (SPANX) — there's a SPANX store in the relatively small Delta terminal at LAX. Crummy restaurants, a couple of those candy / snack / sad-small-rack-of-books-and-magazines stores, and ... a SPANX store. It seemed odd. But I guess shapewear emergencies might arise anywhere.
- 41D: Supermodel Wek (ALEK) — correct on the first guess! This is the first time I've landed ALEK's name with no problem! I am supermodelly challenged, but I'm working on it! I took this picture in one of those aforementioned candy / snack / sad-small-rack-of-books-and-magazines stores at the Delta terminal, just so that I could remember a name I feel sure is coming to a grid near me very soon:
 |
| [YUMI NU] |
- 7D: "Not true what you say about me!" ("I DO SO!") — wrote in "I DON'T!" and did Not want to remove it.
- 14A: "Nasty!" ("UGH!") — wrote in "ICK!" which says "nasty!" to me far more than "UGH!" does. "UGH!" indicates a kind of resigned / exasperated revulsion, whereas "ICK!" feels more truly grossed out. (This may only apply in writing about crosswords, I don't know.)
- 59D: Like many of Horace's works (ODIC) — I didn't go on about the weak short fill today because sometimes I just get weary of saying the same thing day after day, but I wanted to say something about ODIC because it is an entirely self-inflicted wound. ODIC is pretty pure crosswordese. Not gonna find a lot of defenders for that never-seen-outside-crosswords, use-only-in-case-of-emergency fill. But today, the constructor has made it so that there aren't really any other options there. When you lock yourself into -D-C with your themers ... well, maybe consider a different solution. Swap FROOT LOOPS and DEF LEPPARD, move SIC ... something. -D-C leaves you with nowhere to go but ODIC. Why build crosswordese into your grid like this if you don't have to?
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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108 comments:
Easy but Natick at Alek/Kombat cross.
What an awful puzzle. BOSTONREDSOX is not a misspelling. But the clue refers to SIC, so one ha to assume that somewhere within BOSTONREDSOX there's an error. Except there isn't.
Does the clue writer want us to believe that BOSTONREDSOCKS is correct? Try telling that to Red Sox Nation.
I loved @Rex today. He points out issues that I would not see and probably not care about but I feel like his insights add to my knowledge of the art of Xword construction. My perspective is limited to that of a solver. Actual construction would be way over my head.
I did notice the mess in the SE corner with a German word, and a who cares designer and architect. Absolutely no reason to know any of these except from previous puzzles and not inferable.
Just because horse racing isn’t your thing, and likely your age, doesn’t mean American Pharoah isn’t one of the biggest sports stories of the 21st century. Horse racing isn’t my thing either, but he is amazing and extremely famous. My guess is you’re too young and too city.
ALEc and ALEx for the model at 41D, corrected by the video game. At 59D, epIC before ODIC made DEF LEPPARD look like DEFLEPPARe, which was DEFficut to parse since I'm not familiar with the groups oeuvre.
Yes, easy. Liked it, but agree with OFL that ODIC is UGH. Have no issue with SOX getting a hypothetical SIC. Along the baseball mini-theme, I had no idea what that field was at 46D (EBBETS), but crosses filled it. And then we get LIOTTA, who, I just found out here, died recently! Sadly, I don't remember him being on any episodes of ER, and I watched that religiously! But oddly, I just watched Field of Dreams the other day. I remember thinking to myself that he did a great job as Shoeless Joe. Brought depth to the character. Wise, guiding guy (instead of his more usual wise guy roles). Great character to help flesh out Costner's role.
My only Natick was at ALEc x cOMBAT. I know nothing about the MK series except that it sounds like the point is to kill, or die. I find enough tragedy and death in this world that I really don't need to have any more presented as entertainment, thank you very much. Still, I looked at MORTALcOMBAT and knew that I needed to 'unfix' something. Considered MORTeL or cOMmAT, but, no. The crosses that created looked ridiculous. So, I finally hit on ALEc, and...happy pencil! Since this had played easy like a Tuesday, I didn't mind that little (unfair) crossing, so a thumbs up from me.
Yup....aleK(c) and K(c)ombat were the last. and big UGH agreement to ODIC. I mean...c'mon.
Figured out the theme before uncovering the reveal – something I often have trouble doing – though I didn’t figure out the actual reveal. Little steps.
Saw some lovelies during the post-solve scan, however.
• SIC’s cousin STET is also its neighbor, backward at the end of OCTETS.
• Seeing DEF LEPPARD-ish band misspellings tripped off Beatles, Byrds, and Led Zeppelin.
• There’s that backward LATE crossing LAST CALL.
• TUFT and WOODSY are lovely words.
• WOODSY itself reminded me of Woodsy Owl (“Give a hoot, don’t pollute”) who we see ON AIR in two ways.
SIC is one terrific reveal, IMO. Usually SIC implies that the misspellings are to be reluctantly kept, to be true to the quotes they’re in, but here it applauds the misspellings – May they live on forever! – giving SIC a wonderful sense I don’t usually ascribe to it. I lit up inside when I saw this reveal.
Xtra beautifully put together grid, considering its 62 theme squares (a lot!), and a bright and fun theme. I loved this journey. Thank you, Michael!
Totally disagree with Rex on the merit of the SIC theme. I found it downright thrilling. What's more, once I got it, after having "completed" the puzzle, I was able to go back and change cOMBAT to KOMBAT and LEoPARD to LEPPARD. Earlier, I had changed FRuiT to FROOT based on the crosses with WHOA and ORB. So, in effect, I downright *needed* the revealer in order to correct some of my erroneous entries for words or appellations that I knew the sound of, but not the spelling.
Rex declined to repeat his daily gripe about the weak fill, so I will. I just got to thinking yesterday that I should cancel my NYT Xword subscription because I'm just sick of and tired of dutifully filling in the same old answers, to the same old clues, every day; it's mindless and boring. Today's puzzle just reinforced the feeling. It seems like constructors these days just fit the themers into a grid, hit auto-fill, and mail it in. I still enjoy most Fridays and Saturdays, but I'm not sure two puzzles a week is worth the price of admission -- especially when there are so many (much) better indie puzzles out there.
I think the big guy was reaching a little today. Cute enough theme - I like how SIC is part of the trick. Any difference between ARTOO and SOX? Leap of faith with the K cross.
This seemed more early week depth. Side eye to TUFT and TAFT and IDLEST. ERMA still having tough in the crossword world.
LAST CALL for drinks I’ll have another stout
Straightforward but enjoyable Wednesday solve.
@Bagelboy 6:31 AM - Me, too, until I was saved by SIC. That is, since what I had entered as MORTALcOMBAT was a themer, that meant "c" had to be "K" — Hence, MORTALKOMBAT. That's part of why I found the theme so satisfying, contra Rex: It actually helped me correct a number of initially incorrect entries that I knew by sound, but not by spelling.
That this puzzle was not for me is purely on me. Some will be, some won’t be. But with few exceptions, I hate a cacography*. What’s the difference between The Beatles and Def Leppard? One is clever and one is just, “Look at me mom, I’m running with scissors! I’m misspelling leopard! And I’m wearing a leottard!” On the other hand, I’ll accept any subtle misspelling of Pharaoh because I don’t know how to spell it anyway.
I also hate Froot Loops, which should be on the controlled substances list and banned from grocery store shelves. They make me Sic.
*Lest I sound smarter than I really am, I just found that word by Googling the Froot Loops wiki, where I found that Froot Loop’s history is even more sordid than I could’ve imagined.
@Robert Lockwood Mills - 6:35 AM - There's a lot of confusion in Rex's writeup, as well as in the comments, about this issue of what "sic" actually means. It does not mean something is misspelled. It means that the way something appears in a text (or a transcript, for that matter), albeit it may seem irregular, is in fact how it was written or spoken by the original writer or speaker. Thus, you might see, "That's one small step for man [sic]; one giant leap for mankind," because Neil Armstrong flubbed his prepare line, which was supposed to be "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." SEE?
I am pretty easygoing but this puzzle was such a snoozer! Not one interesting or tricky clue/answer combo. Snore. the only thing I even remotely enjoyed was “time for parting shots” /LASTCALL. Not even great but better than most of the clueing here.
@Geezer - 6:42 AM - A "who cares" designer an architect? Are you serious? I suppose Horace was a "who cares" Roman poet, and Carl Lewis is a "who cares" Olympic track and field athlete?
@Sane guy 6:58 AM - Thank you! The solipsism of this blog is shocking, though, as I like to say, not surprising.
I have been a Red Sox fan since I was 12 (1946). The 2004 World Series win that removed "the curse of the Bambino" was great, but the big event that year was the ALCS. The Sox, down 3 games to none, losing in the bottom of the ninth, facing closer Mariano Rivera, won that game, and then the next three. Unprecedented comeback from a post-season 0 - 3 crisis. Nice puzzle.
Another quasi theme that many won't (or don't care to ponder about enough) to discern. Saw the revealer and wondered why the Bosox are even in the grid. I bumbled through it until I got to the tiny corner with Gucci's first name, a foreign language thing and the name of a (yuk) rapper - where I said no thanks and bid adieu. Too bad - Monday and Tuesday were very good this week. Seems like we are reverting to the mean today.
I’ve never been shy about my opinions on spelling, but if you’re going to do a spelling based theme this is the way to do it. When I figured out the theme I laughed.
I think I was 8 or 9, so before Rex was born, when it dawned on me why the paper had the habit of calling the White SOX “the pale hose.”
@RLM - Well, sure. But “Red Sox Nation” is hardly known for its intellectual might, now is it?
I know ALEK Wek from xwords and MORTAL KOMBAT from having been alive for the past 30 years. Besides the games, Wikipedia’s ”Other Media” section on the title is extensive. I’d say MORTAL KOMBAT approaches Star Wars and LOTR in cultural saturation for anyone born after 1980 or so.
@Geezer - Uh, I.M. PEI is to architecture what MORTAL KOMBAT is to gaming.
@Sane guy - About the only thing that kept horse racing afloat was the gambling. Now, with so many other ways to legally gamble, the interest in horse racing is diminishing fast. Secretariat was still being written about decades later in non-horse racing specific media and was on lots of Greatest of the Century lists at the end of the 20th Century. AMERICn PHAROAH? Haven’t heard a peep about him since the summer he won.
What @GAC said, and I was at the horror of Game 3.
This puzzle had some strange/weird/interesting clues.
I didn’t mind ODIC. Sometimes you just gotta.
I will be in Natick around 4pm today. Just sayin’.
When I see a reference to another clue, especially one with a high and repeated number, I don't look at that answer until I get there. Today's answer was clearly the last thing in the puzzle and I was racing through the puzzle and thinking, this had better be good, and eventually it actually was, although, I thought, pretty disappointing for a Thursday. Where's my trick? And then of course I remembered it's Wednesday, which made it a lot better, although awfully easy even for a Wednesday.
@GAC--Yeah, we'll always have 2004 and The Idiots. Unforgettable.
@JD-Same thought with 39A. I knew it was AMERICANPHAROAH which I never spell right either. Turns out you're not supposed to. Helpful.
Nice little Wednedecito, MP. Mighty Pleased to eventually realize what day of the week it is, and thanks for some fun.
Also Naticked at the MORTAL KOMBAT/ALEK cross. Wouldn't have known it if I hadn't come to the blog. Also wouldn't have known that this is a puzzle about "famous" misspellings. BOSTON RED SOX, I bet, doesn't seem misspelled to anyone. Never heard of DEF LEPPARD. The FROOT LOOPS company seemingly prides itself on its illiteracy and thinks that calling fruit FROOT is not a misspelling but a badge of honor. And I wouldn't play something called MORTAL KOMBAT even if it were spelled with a "C".
Stale, familiar crosswordese in some places combined with Naticky pop culture names crossing one another in others. All I have to say is UGH.
Are gyms upscale hotel amenities? I've been to plenty motels that have them? How many of you started with spas? Such misdirection isn't clever, it's just a.waste of time. The puzzle was really easy but I gave up half way through, annoyed and bored.
ODIC is uglic [sic].
I suppose everyone has their list of Most Annoying XWordese, but ODIC is near the top for me. Just edged out by "IRED" as a verb meaning "angered." Purportedly. "I'm so ired" said no human ever. I suspect more humans have said, "Whoa, (or woah), that's just so odic!" but only by a couple. Maybe a couple more, all of them lit. academics, have used the term EPOS, but only in writing and even then their colleagues all cringed.
"Seriously, Jenkins? 'Epos'? You're saying this is an epos? Know what you get when you Google that? A million references to Electronic Point Of Sale" systems."
What is the estimated life expectancy of kiddy slang like "totes adorbs"?
As the kids of today would say, "That puzzle was SICk!" And even though I'm an old guy, I thought it was a super (and novel) theme. Enjoyed it immensely.
I would've preferred a STET revealer. It looks wrong if you don't know it but then someone comes along and tells you no, it's correct.
Puzzle was fun, but the detractors make good points about subpar fill and SIC only sorta working.
The whole thing could have been themed based on '80s hard rock ("hair") bands: DEFLEPPARD, Motley Crue, Ratt, Stryper, Kix, etc.
Should have included "TORI" MISSSPELLING.
What on this green earth is this doing on a Wednesday? Easier than any Wednesday I can recall, and much, much easier than yesterday’s puzzle. Four of five themers entered with no crosses. Needed the first ‘O’ to get MORTAL KOMBAT.
Once again, a nice theme idea partially wasted in a too-too-easy presentation.
No time to write today due to an unfolding situation so those hoping to rest their thumbs for pulling out plumbs may cheer with aplomb.
My ALL TIME FAVORITE puzzle ever. It's got IDLEST, ODIC and ASS all neatly packaged together. It's got a model I've not heard of crossing a spelling "error." And all of our little beauties clued with Monday level sensibility. Just a delight.
Oh and late last night one of the Anonym-oti mansplained mansplaining to me. Thanks! I need that kind of comedy heading into today.
Uniclues:
1 Jamaican in a bar at 4 am.
2 Visitor's exclamation in a museum exhibit on the Confederacy's rebellion.
3 Boxes full of snow globes.
4 Medical board action after eye doctor began accepting F as the answer.
1 LAST CALL RASTA
2 "WHOA, LEE'S RIFLE."
3 ORB ART TOTES
4 SAT OPTICIAN
Hey All !
I'm thinking that PHAROAH wasn't an intentional misspelling like the others. Why would you? It's just no one knew how to spell it, and by the time they discovered it, it was too late. My theory...
Filled all the Themers in (except PHAROAH) just from the clues. My PPP wheelhouse, apparently.
An easy puz here. Usually the Themers are what slow you down initially, but as said, I smoked 'em today!
Gonna leave with my Ego SMILED. 😁
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
AMERICAN PHAROAH'S fame was not short-lived. When he won the Triple Crown in 2015, he was the first to win it in 37 years. He is probably the only horse besides Secretariat that most American non-fans have heard of.
The funniest "SIC" is the Georgia Institute of Technology students refer to the University of Georgia as "university (sic) of Georgia" or "U(sic) of GA"
The dictionary shows sox as a variant spelling of socks, which means sox is not deserving of a sic, since it is a legitimate spelling of the word.
I really wanted to quit at "idlest", and I wish I had. What an annoying waste of time. How's this for a corner :Def Leppard, Aldo, Pei" ? I'm with @Lobster11 re. the declining quality of these puzzles. Some, like this one, are an embarrassment.
"Sox" was the first word I got wrong on a first grade spelling test and I still remember it. For a Chicago Southside kid, it was definitely unfair.
Possibly the only redeeming quality of this one was reminding me of how great Ray Liotta was, and what a great movie "Something Wild" was.
I’m sure it’s an advertising given - misspell a product and people will remember it. But will they then buy it?
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?
I'm 37, and I only learned this year that I had been misspelling "whoa" incorrectly for my entire life. I legitimately thought it was "woah".
Yes, I grew up on IRC and message boards in the 90s.
Thx, Michael; well done! :)
Med.
Dnfed at MORTAL cOMBAT. Will try to remember ALEK & 'Wek' both end with a 'K'.
Fun puz, nevertheless! :)
___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
At least it only took five minutes.
Back when I religiously followed baseball, reading all the box scores in the paper, tracking the standings, and watching the 2 games a week we got on TV (Monday night on ABC and Saturday afternoon on NBC), I always thought SOX was just an archaic spelling of socks. Never occurred to me that it was considered incorrect.
I fell for the "spas" misdirection at 10A. This puzzle was so Monday-easy, that the 10A error was the only thing I had to correct.
The puzzle may have been a bit easy but I go with what@Joaquin said!
@Zed…🤣to the “being alive for the last 30 years” comment. YES! I figure my brain must just be equipped with a sponge that soaks up pop culture and CONSTANTLY REPEATED “furrin” words. It’s a cross I have to bear, and I’m sure it results in less space in my file cabinet that could be taken up by loftier information.
I just realized I’m going to look up RIFLE and riffle. Seems like I tend to use “RIFLE through” but not “riffle through.”
@Mike in Bed-Stuy…totes agree on many of your comments today PLUS I reminded myself about the meaning of solipsism! Plus, @JD I’ll look up cacography while I’m comparing RIFLE and riffle.
@Lobster11 (7:50). Great comment. I do the puzzle every day (except most Sundays) mostly to be with y'all. Like today with @Mike in Bed-Stuy (7:56), @GAC (8:09), @Zed (8:14).
More evidence to support Lobster's criticism: 23 Terrible Threes.
Masked & Anonymous hasn't been around for a while. I wasn't a fan, but I wonder another if another one of us has bitten the dust.
I’m voting to aksept (SIC) our very first kommentor (SIC)into the Natick Diskovery (SIC) Club for starting the day in a n OH! K? Way. Nuff said; Rex is right.
Oh Goody! A puzzle that features the crossing of misspelled names.
I was cool to it at first because I couldn’t see what the themers had in common but then when I saw the trick it all made sense. I doubt anyone would ever actually annotate any of these entries with a SIC but it’s still a really clever idea for a puzzle and well put together. Nice going Michael!
I have no trouble spelling pharaoh but WHOA nearly always gives me pause. And I’d like to add TOTES (and adorbs) to the list of words forever banned from crosswords . . . or language in general for that matter. UGH!
A lot of these tend to go to waste
ores??? I don't get it.
TOTES adorbs kinda makes me SIC. I smiled, though. I always thought SIC was an acronym for "spelled In Context." I guess it's just being illiterate. I'm illiterate because I can't spell anyway, so all of these looked just fine.
Lots I didn't know but it didn't make me sit back and wonder if it was all about Alfie. The SIC was easy to get because I SIC all the time. I didn't know EBBETS, never heard ALEK whatshername (I had ALEX which gave me MORTAL XOMBAT. WHOA, Nellie...that looks whaky. I need to be woke so I can finish this. I was woke and I finished.
I smell fresh pine and I think toilet bowl cleaner. WOODSY to me is cow manure. Will I ever remember how to spell NEAP?. My bestie EOS to the rescue.
And so I skipped through the tulips with DEF and a PHAROAH and had some fun.
Congratulations @Gary jug (from last night)....You have been officially baptized by the snark squad. Don't let it bother because most of us have been snarked. You should've seen it here before the moderators took charge!
I’m a terrible speller; doing crosswords does help somewhat even at my advanced age. Audible gave away a book called, “American Pharoah” which I never finished. At the time, I remember thinking, “yet another English word I have trouble spelling,” had no idea it was misspelled. I could spell “fruit” at an early age but was it “tigar” or “tiger”? oh,no, golf again. French spelling is much easier.
Talk about a pithy reveal! I got a kick out of the joke - that, say, FROOT was a unintentional error rather than a marketing ploy + avoidance of implying that real fruit might be involved. I couldn't have gotten the last two theme answers without quite a few crosses, both being unknown to me from the clues but just familiar enough from seeing them in print. Clever and fun to solve.
I only saw Ray LIOTTA in one film, The Place Beyond the Pines, and he was unforgettably terrifying.
Do-over: spaS before GYMS. Help from previous puzzles: ALEK, TOTES as clued.
Ditto Bagelboy.
Easy. spas before GYMS was it for erasures. I’m a tad spelling challenged so a couple of the theme answers seemed fine to me. Cute idea, liked it.
@Lewis - I do the Saturday LAT puzzle mid week so I just got around to yours today. It was nice to have a tough LAT Saturday for a change. I really enjoyed the clever/tricky cluing. A fine job!
Great theme concept, with the highlight being AMERICAN PHAROAH. Since I never came remember how to spell “Pharaoh,” I almost missed what was going on, but had a good aha when it all finally became clear. The low point was BOSTON RED SOX which does not at all seem like a typo.
From Dan Quayle’s potatoe to the Former Guy’s covfefe, misspellings are an unfortunate fact of life. One of the most memorable occurred Down Under when the Reserve Bank of Australia printed millions of A$50 bank notes with the word “responsibility” spelled without the final “i.” Those notes are still in circulation today.
@Roo you are correct! I found this on a CNN website:
We've been through this before but let's do it again: The bad spelling came from a mistake in the horse's registration paperwork. The Courier-Journal of Louisville reported that a fan submitted the name of the horse during an online contest, and spelled “pharaoh” wrong.
So THAT is the outlier of this puzzle, not that it bothers me.
Also rest assured I NOW know RIFLE and riffle are NOT interchangeable. The question is, will I remember?
Day of the week appropriateness means nearly nothing to me. Ok, maybe there were a couple of clunkers but lots of puzzles have at least one. The theme was clever. I liked it.
@Anonymous 8:46: Completely in agreement with you. I wrote in "spas" at first because upscale hotels do not call their fitness/health centers "gyms"!
Fastest Wednesday ever.
The "K" in ALEK was my only goof.
Unlike rex, I thought the SIC revealer was quite wonderful. Methinks his vacation glow has worn off and we're back to the old curmudgeon.
Am I the only one who already misses rex's guest bloggers, who I thought were really wonderful?
My only nits would be WHOA and GOSH in the same puz, and perhaps the profusion of 3 letter words. But I'm sure the constructor felt some real constraints, and the theme more than made up for those tiny flaws.
It used to be that ASS was new and thrilling in the NYTXW. Now it’s gotten so old that today it needed SPANX. But once it had them on, it SATTIGHT.
ADIDAS should have been clued as “Footwear company that makes the gigantic New Balance look small”.
It apparently hasn’t occurred to some commenters that the misspelling of FROOTLOOPS actually is a clever product-related device. You see, each piece of the cereal is a “O”. So there are four pieces of the cereal represented in the name.
I loved this theme (and hence this puzzle). If you insist on a correct usage of all theme and revealer words you didn’t love it. Nor do you probably ever love a puzzle. I say thank you, Michael Paleos, for a lovely Wednesday.
@Zed Took me half an hour to grok FEITCTAJ, but then OHO! Adding that to my tombstone.
@M&A Yeah, where are you? Huge admirer. Staff weeject at our house: SIC
@Mike in Bed [The] "solipsism of this blog is shocking..." Is it?? Nice use of vocab.
TJS, Totally agree with your Liotta comment, a fine actor who mostly played in one niche. (He was sensational in Wild Things.)
But I winced at your lumping I.M. Pei with Leppard and Aldo. Pei is one of the true giants in architectural history.
I started out spelling FRuit correctly, and thinking maybe SPANX needed a cks rebus. What a doof! I like baseball! Once I got that straight, I didn’t notice the misspelling of PHAROAH. No clue on ALEK but I knew KOMBAT used a K. My real disaster was thinking I needed to misspell FleetwoodMac. Defleetdo? I might recognize a few DEFLEPPARD songs if I heard them, maybe? Ultimately I had to look up the Gangnam rapper to get a P. The penny dropped.
I liked the theme, ODIC and IDLEST don’t bother me, I learned how to spell pharaoh correctly. Also, I liked seeing SILICA in there - we all know it and no one talks about it.
@Gary Jugert - Especially great uniclues today!
Umm… World Trade Center, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, New Louvre… as well as the National Gallery? A somewhat important architect.
I recall a puzzle, several years ago, where the theme answers were “corrected” rock-artist names, such as Deaf Leopard, Lead Zeppelin, the Beetles, Motley Crew, Ludicrous, Lincoln Park.
Me too…and still shaking my head at I DO SO—c’mon, man.
They are absolutely not -- you're right.
@Robert Mills:
Does the clue writer want us to believe that BOSTONREDSOCKS is correct?
Close to:
"The "Red Sox" name was chosen by the team owner, John I. Taylor, circa 1908, following the lead of previous teams that had been known as the "Boston Red Stockings" "
-- the wiki
I.M. Pei was (lived to 102, btw) among the handful of most respected architects post-WWII.
I once saw a quote that went something like, “There’s no better insult than a well-placed ‘sic.’”
I once saw a quote that went something like, “There’s no better insult than a well-placed ‘sic.’”
@Joseph Michael:
the Former Guy’s covfefe, misspellings
Never heard/saw/read that there is a real English word underneath that. Since there's no brain under the Orange Julius headtopper (sic), no one should be surprised.
M&A said he’d be gone for a few weeks.
@10:30
because most of what's in a volume of ore is 90%+ rock and other crap, which ends up as waste. just ask anyone from Appalachia: coal mines have polluted most of it with their waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailings#Disasters
I was wondering about @M&A too, so I did some checking. No need for concern: in the July 30th puzzle comments, he said he would be back toward the end of August.
@American Pharoah IS SO Famous people
Google "American Pharoah" 500K results
Google "Mike Trout" 25MM results (50 times more).
And Mike Trout is probably totally unknown to most of the US population.
@jae -- Thank you for those kind words. I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
BOSTON RED SOCKS (SIC)
AMERICAN PHARAOH (SIC)
DEAF (SIC) LEOPARD (SIC)
MORTAL COMBAT (SIC)
would be correct if you were quoting someone who spelled the name of the the team, the horse, the band, or the game that way. So "misspellings" could be used in a puzzle with the same revealer. Maybe more accurately? It works either way I'd say, but I have low standards.
Prior to being the Red Sox the team was the Boston Americans, but never the Red Stockings or Red Socks. Chicago and Cincinnati were White Stockings and Red Stockings respectively. Cincinnati became the Reds and then the Redlegs during the Red Scare and then the Reds again post-McCarthy.
There was a Boston Red Stockings but they became the Boston Braves.
Deaf Leopard was a band before DEF LEPPARD with one or more of the same members.
Second day in a row that the discussion here has made me appreciate the puzzle more than I did when I finished it. Y'all are going to ruin this blogs reputation.
ODIC provides a crucial D and C
It is not nearly bad cenough to change anythi.g.
“Google” was originally meant to be “Googol” (an actual word meaning a very large number: 1 followed by 100 zeros). But when the company’s co-founder Larry Page had someone look “googol” up to see if was already being used as a domain name, that person misspelled it as “Google”. Page liked that spelling much better and went with it. That is how a misspelled sic-worthy term became the ubiquitous word it is today.
@JD (7:52) Your post made my day. I’m gonna go look up the history of FROOT LOOPS now. 😄
@Joe D (11:59) Thanks for the update on M&A.
DNF at the ALEK/KOMBAT cross. I was sure I had finally remembered Ms. Wek's correct spelling, ALEx. Changed it to MORTAL cOMBAT after reading the 48A clue. But when I understood the theme, I changed it back to MORTAL xOMBAT, which fulfilled the need for a misspelling. Pronounced MORTAL zOMBAT, it might be a portmanteau-ish zombie video game.
I liked this puzzle, thanks Michael Paleos!
@Mr Benson 11:26 – Jeff Chen has a link to that puzzle in his notes today at XWord Info. That concept works better than this one, imo.
Another Pharoah [sic].
To this non-grammarian it seems like names inherently cannot be misspelled. I can name myself, band , team, horse, .. whatever I want and spell it however I want. I could be Chris or Kris or Khriss or ,,,
@numerous people, I am NOT trying to CAUSE controversy here PLEASE believe me but I found this on SIC:
The definition of “sic,” when referring to quoted text, is “intentionally so written.” When used after the quoted material, “sic” indicates that the words preceding it are an exact transcription from the original source, including any spelling mistakes, non-standard spelling, or grammatical errors.
So. Even though clue refers to typo, SIC can refer to “non-standard spelling.” Please let me know if I incorrectly used my quotation marks. Maybe it is *non-standard spelling,* OR single ‘non-standard spelling.’
And yes. The use of SIC can be seen as a sneer at the original quote. Sometimes I think folks would probably appreciate a correction to their written quote rather than a SIC.
I didn’t see that there were “sic” misspellings other than Pharoah. Got kILLED at MORTALkOMBAT/ALEk cross.
This theme need not be be taken so literally. Liten up, everybody.
Throw in five long themers, including a grid spanner, a reveal and 38 black squares and there is not much room left for interesting fill, not much of redeeming value left in the puzzle if you don't cotton to the theme. I didn't because all the themers looked like that's the way they are actually spelled so the SIC reveal was a head scratcher for me.
I have always heard and said the word for 3D "Easy there!" as one syllable so the WHOA spelling is the only place in the grid where I would insert a [SIC]. WHOA looks like it would be two syllables and would rhyme with the three syllable Anoa. The command to "stop" or "hold on a sec" would more accurately be spelled WOH or even just WO, if you ask me.
Nice to see Ray LIOTTA here along with Bob Marley (RASTA), CARL Lewis, and the hometown ballpark of my very early childhood, EBBETS Field. Had to look up ODIC, a term I've never heard.
Help! What on earth is "totes adorbs"???
Never a good omen when the puzzle resorts to Erma.
Liked the etal backwards (late) with last call. Also eel with lees. Midwest box.
I read somewhere that PHAROAH was in fact an unintentional misspelling.
Villager
Saxophonist Pharoah [sic] Sanders spells his name that way, so I'm not entirely sure it's unheard-of.
I’m sure it’s already been pointed out, but “sic” is merely Latin for “thus,” i.e., that’s the way it appears in the text. Only that.
Are NYTXWs losing their spark? The NYTWX from last August 17 contained both IRE and EEL, but not much else -ese. Praised by one and all, it prompted this from @mathgent, “Delightful theme, flawlessly done. And it had some sparkle, too. Excellent puzzle!” @Zed was subtler, “Hey! Wait a minute. Tuesday puzzles are supposed to tuezz, something is amiss.”
I think the constructor just got GREEDY with DEF LEPPARD. Should’ve SAT TIGHT at MORTAL KOMBAT. Four themers are plenty. Plus all the other themers have only one “misspelling.” Untidy finish to a neatly packaged grid.
My UGH moment came in the midwest. WHOA - that’s a tiny AREA to cram in ERMA EEL, ETAL.
I did get a kick out of the MORTAL ONION stack.
SPANX can take a hike. Wait, are there manspanx? What happens when you put them on backward? Is X NAPS a rap star or another sleep disorder?
I looked up the 8/17/21 puzzle to see if I’d shared any music by Henri Tomasi. Yep. Horn concerto. So today is music from Flemish composer Peter Benoit. I hadn’t heard of him before but this piano fantasy is enchanting.
Fantasie No. 3, Op. 18
@anon 3:18
Totes adorbs = totally adorable!
This is important.
Woah instead of Whoa? I’d never heard that before. I recoil in horror at the very thought.
The Skill! The Suspense! Wordle!
Wordle 424 3/6*
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@Joe Dipinto - Obviously that’s how he’d spell it.
Loved it. It’s not often that a theme makes me literally laugh out loud, but this one had me chuckling.
The Wikipedia page on American Pharoah has this quote from the horse's owner's son Justin Zayat, who submitted the name to The Jockey Club: "I didn't happen to realize at the time that it was misspelled wrong [sic]".
Quite a lot of three-letter glue holding this together but overall it was an enjoyable solve.
Hmm...I'm with OFF here. It doesn't quite land. Solving right out of the TLCB (Tight Little Corner Box) that is far too typical of M-W grids, I get FROO... coming out of 17a. Well. Unless I've already made a mistake, this is gonna have to be FROOTLOOPS the cereal, since there is no other known word or phrase beginning with those four letters. (Hadn't seen the clue yet.) So then the clue: bingo, but with the strange addition of "{69-Across}". I look--of course another TLCB--and it's three letters. Well there goes all of it, theme plus revealer, such as it is. Is that IT? I wondered. A bunch of deliberately misspelled products?
No. Next comes BOSTONREDSOX. Huh? You gonna put a SIC on that?? C'mon. man, SOX has been short for socks since the year one. Not the same. And right there, coming down to meet that very X, is SPANX. How about a SIC for THAT one? It just doesn't hang.
There are fill problems too. Chief objection: IDLEST. Man, you is either idle or you ain't. How can one do different degrees of nothing? Bogey.
Wordle par.
MAN,GO REST
You SEE, at LASTCALL ERMA SATTIGHT,
she SMILED, took her CAP OFFTO say thanks,
“IDOSO hope as a TREAT CARL might
TAP my ASS with the IDLEST of SPANX.”
--- ALDO LIOTTA
The K in cOMBAT, crossing a NAME, did me in. Good 'nuff for me!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
And a nod to CARL, you know who you are. Finished it off without even reading that last SIC clue.
BTW, first ever wordle YYYYY before GGGGG
34. Whoa there! Woah that's crazy. I thought 'whoa' slowed a horse down and 'woah' expressed surprise, never questioned it before.
59A. Rap group Ru_ ___
N D M C
It's not great, but it's better than ODIC.
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