Word of the Day: AMEDEO Modigliani (40A: Painter Modigliani) —
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (US: /ˌmoʊdiːlˈjɑːni/, Italian: [ameˈdɛːo modiʎˈʎaːni]; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italianpainter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and figures that were not received well during his lifetime, but later became much sought-after. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. In 1906, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. By 1912, Modigliani was exhibiting highly stylized sculptures with Cubists of the Section d'Or group at the Salon d'Automne.
Modigliani's oeuvre includes paintings and drawings. From 1909 to 1914, he devoted himself mainly to sculpture. His main subject was portraits and full figures, both in the images and in the sculptures. Modigliani had little success while alive, but after his death achieved great popularity. He died of tubercular meningitis, at the age of 35, in Paris.
• • •
Lots to do today—including participate in an online round-table discussion at the opening of the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (enrollment still open)—so I'm going to *try* to keep this fairly brief. This puzzle felt like the antithesis of yesterday's puzzle in many ways, by which I don't mean that it was bad, just that it played very traditional and very old (to be clear, I count myself among the olds now—lots of this grid was right in my wheelhouse). It was reliant on names of yore maybe once too often. I love COUNT BASIE and AMEDEO Modigliani, so no problem there, but it would be great if you balanced them by moving the needle a little forward in time, but that is decidedly not where the needle goes (p.s. don't ask me re: needle, I don't know what the metaphor is exactly, but it feels right, just go with it). I don't think we ever make it out of the '70s (god bless the late great James CAAN) (25D: James of 1974's "The Gambler"). I had to deal with Matthew ARNOLD at the beginning (not exactly what the kids, or anyone, is reading these days), and then I went headlong into Gordon MACRAE, whoever that is (24A: Gordon ___, co-star of 1955's "Oklahoma!"). And later, just as I was thinking the puzzle was feeling pretty dated, who decides to show up and prove me right? The LENNON Sisters. On the "Lawrence Welk Show" no less. The grid is very sturdy and professionally made, so basic craft is not really at issue. But this puzzle feels much narrower in its socio-cultural bent than yesterday's did. It's one for the old-schoolers, of which I am one. But I could feel how limited this puzzle's imagined audience seemed to be. For me, with a crossword's cultural center of gravity, it's not a matter of old v. new. It's a matter of genuine variety.
It was a properly tough Saturday, though, I'll give it that. And I did enjoy solving it. Got started by working the short answers in the NW. Was very lucky that even though I only picked up a couple on my first pass, that was enough to get me going:
That nail polish brand is *everywhere* these days, so if you haven't memorized it by now, what are you waiting for?! It's not going anywhere soon, I promise you. And it was a real help today, for sure. I blanked on who wrote "Dover Beach"—even with the "A" in place. Couldn't get my brain off AUDEN, who wouldn't fit. I threw STORM CENTER down into the middle of the grid, to no effect. Then I threw PIÑATA down into the middle of the grid. This also had no effect, initially, but was right *enough* that it actually helped me pick up some of those central Acrosses later on. But at first, I was stuck, and had to go down to SAND and AMEDEO and build back up from the SW:
As you can see, PIÑATA (wrong) helped me get COUNT BASIE (right). It also helped me get SERATONIN, which is for real how I thought you spelled it (32A: Neurotransmitter targeted by Prozac) (SEROTONIN). Only later was I forced to change the cocktail from PIÑATA to PANAMA ... and then, a bit later, PALOMA. By far the hardest thing in the grid for me (and I love cocktails!). Oh, STATE MOTTO was also brutally hard for me (33A: There is one each in French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hawaiian and Chinook). I don't want to tell you how much of that answer I had in place before I actually saw the answer, but it was a lot (and PIÑATA *definitely* hurt me there). It's so weird how much of a gimme, how completely Monday the SCOTIA is, given the otherwise tough quality of this center (29D: Nova ___). Very out of place. But I suppose it was supposed to be a kind of life preserver thrown to the desperate and floundering, which is thoughtful. Overall, it's a very drunk puzzle (a PALOMA and TITO'S and BACARDI!?), and a very sturdy, clean puzzle. There weren't many thrills, but it gave me an enjoyable workout nonetheless. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. for your "Don't Believe Everything You Read Online" files, I offer you this gem, an apparently bot-written bio of me that gets several things wrong. Among other things, it briefly but jarringly confuses me with Will Shortz.
PALOMA (23D) was a WOE. I need to get out more. My 32A Prozac target was mElaTONIN before SEROTONIN. I took out PETTED (31D) and SCOTIA (29D) because I was so damned sure that the 38A jazz pianist was eubie BlakE.
Enjoyed the crossword parts of it - which can be a real struggle on a Saturday like today when the trivia is way out of my wheelhouse - ARNOLD, MACRAE, BARRIO, TITOS, AMEDEO, PALOMA, LENNONS were all pretty much crosses-only (and uncle google) for me today. Fair enough, the big-league trivia and B-list actors from the 1950’s are certainly welcomed by the NYT on a Saturday, so no harm there. Enjoyed the rest of it - some pretty good clues which Rex mentioned as well.
Cluing in general was much too straightforward. Finished in half the time of yesterday’s puzzle, albeit with one error (PALaMA crossing SERaTONIN). Enjoyed it more than yesterday's too.
Easiest Saturday for me in memory, just blasted through it, no sticking points, but now I’m depressed because after reading Rex’s commentary — it was easy because I’m old…(Macrae, Lennon, Count Basie, etc). So thanks for that, Rex…
I only knew Gordon MacRae, because he's mentioned in the beautiful Kinks song Oklahoma U.S.A.:
All life we work but work is bore, If life's for livin' what's livin' for, She lives in a house that's near decay, Built for the industrial revolution, But in her dreams she is far away, In Oklahoma U.S.A. With Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_iVrXyQ4M
Ray Davies recently rerecorded this gem on his Americana II album.
First thought for 37D “Acted nervously” was “snuck.” Confirmed that K with READS A book. Oops. Then I was trying to remember if I’m not supposed to say snuck. Seems the pedants here insist it’s sneaked? I like snuck and will continue to use it. Judge away, grammar meanies.
Clues like 12D please me. I first read “Final Par TI cipant” and got nowhere. Change the stress to “FI nal participant” and bam. TESTEE. Funny-looking word. I doubt any college administering the SAT or some such would have the balls to write TESTEEs on their little directional posters taped to the door.
Mom and Dad rarely READ ALOUD to us before bed. I mean, they did read us books, but bedtime was always us choosing one of the stack of records we had with stories like Hansel and Gretel or 101 Dalmatians. We’d lie there, listening and then shout either It’s STUUuuck! or Turn it over! My absolute favorite was The Prince and the Pauper.
What with What’s IN A NAME and the reference to In the Heights, FATE’s star-crossed lovers, POLICE RAID/BARRIOS, I kept thinking about West Side Story, where ignorant armies clash by night.
Enjoyed working for it today. And don’t mind that it was loaded with all of the references that my wife and kids tease me as being “Old Timey”. Was a big Deputy Dawg fan growing up in the 60s. Grandparents always had the Lawrence Welk show on the tube on Saturday evenings. Didn’t know what a Paloma was but feel compelled to try one this evening.
And we are here as on a darkling plain. Agree that this slanted musty - but I had a good time with it. Liked that wide open center. Hand up for putting in melatonin first - loved the cluing for STATE MOTTO and booziness of the TITOS - PALOMA stack. I would never waste tequila mixing it with grapefruit juice - my wife is keen on them but I’ll stick to this.
LENNON sisters were not my jam and fought the good fight against those 50s musicals my parents liked. The degree word clue was obtuse and PETTED seemed off.
The great Book of Love song Rex linked was featured in Planes, Trains and Automobiles with DEL Griffith.
"...Matthew ARNOLD at the beginning (not exactly what the kids, or anyone, is reading these days)." More's the pity.
Otherwise, agree pretty much with the passionate, skilled, and intelligent 70-year-old man with the interesting life. I found it a pleasant contrast to yesterday's, which I also enjoyed. Today's like a favorite pair of fuzzy slippers; yesterday's like your newest and coolest kicks. Variety is the spice...and all that.
The only PALOMA I know is Picasso. Never heard of the cocktail that Dr. Google tells me everyone in the world is sipping. Sounds good too! Stared at 36D for a minute after I'd filled it in, wondering what an AMINUS was. Anything like "animus?" Great clue!
A proper Saturday, at least for those of us of a certain age. Thank goodness for Mr. MACRAE and the LENNONS and COUNTBASIE and even Deputy DAWG or I'd have been stuck permanently. The SEROTONIN (sp?) crossing TITOS (WTF) next to PALOMA (why is a cocktail called a "dove"?) made the middle a chore, as I had the same problem as OFL parsing STATEMOTTO. Dope slapped myself when I finally filled in BARRIO after getting the last O of MOTTO. Where did my Spanish run off to?
Couldn't spell AMEDEO and read "spirits company" as "sports company", probably because of the "bat" part of the logo, so BACARDI made no sense, even though it had to be right. Need to check that reading glasses prescription.
Nice crunchy Saturday, MAS. As Much A Struggle as I like, and thanks for all the fun.
Ha ha! So some of us do still read Matthew Arnold. It might be safe to add: but only that one poem.... (Actually, I memorized it in 10th grade and it stayed with me as the quadratic equation did not.)
I am among those who have so far resisted committing OPI to memory, and the P was my last square, THREE SEAT, THREE HEAT didn't work, so just had to run the alphabet. Hopefully this is the time the nail polish brand sticks.
Rex, if you were born in 1952 then the Lennon Sisters and Oklahoma references should be easy for you.. I was born in 1953 and know none of the rappers or movies or TV junk from the past 10 years. Those college kids must keep you current. Wonderful Wunnerful.. /s/ Lawrence Welk.. someone's grand nephew...and I'm pretty sure many of your readers our age watched Lawrence Welk with their folks or grandfolks
Of all things, I didn't get the TENNIS clue (13D) until I had most of the crosses. Me. But that's because it was a rather tortured and inaccurate clue. First of all, you play tennis, but you are not "in" tennis, so the "in it" part of the clue is unfortunate. Second: if you have a weak serve, you may elect to receive if you win the coin toss.
I am reminded of the French player, Francoise Durr, who had the slowest serve of all time in professional tennis. "I could run alongside it," my good friend and tennis partner Dick once sniffed.
I also had a Senior Moment with TITO'S. What's that 5-letter vodka brand beginning with "T" that's sitting in my liquor cabinet right now as we speak? I resisted the urge to go look -- and had to wait until it came in. Really, Nancy!
An enjoyable puzzle that provided a bit of a workout -- but still was quite a bit easier than yesterday's.
It’s puzzles like these that make me wonder if the NYT needs to just do 2 separate puzzles each day. This isn’t fun or accessible to a huge portion of the population (myself included) and this puzzle convinced me pop culture had reached too great a divide between generations that the NYT doesn’t seem able or willing to cross. Any decent editor should have rejected this puzzle until it found its way into the 21st century.
Tough puzzle! I also had SERaTONIN and STATE MOTTO and PALOMA nearly did me in — among other things. But there was much to like here.
Rex counts himself among “the olds” and says he’s “old school,” but Gordon MACRAE gets a “whoever he is”? He was a gimme tor me (snark, snark), as his wife Sheila would have been. So there’s old for you!
Flew through this - first time for a Saturday. At first I was very surprised that Rex dismissed Gordon MACRAE, until I realized I was mistaking him for Joel McCrae - a screen sweetheart I especially enjoy in The Palm Beach Story.
For me the best part of the puzzle was amazement that my answers worked, and getting to think about Joel McCrea.
I don't know ARNOLD but maybe I'd recognize a poem or two if he is/was well known… Interesting factoid about ARSENIC.
@ r.alph 8:02 Thanks for posting the mottos - nice to see who shares them too.
First of all, "Amen" to the people who said it's a pity that no one (according to Rex) reads Matthew ARNOLD anymore. "Dover Beach" is one gorgeous poem, filled with music and expressing sentiments that would be valuable to heed right now in our angry, violent, strife-torn world.
And for those who didn't know Gordon MACRAE, here he is in his most famous and iconic scene. The long wait for him to enter that meadow is a little...much, but bear with the video, because enter he will -- and not a moment too soon, say I:)
@Loren Muse Smith I was at college in Hartford, CT in 1976. I was watching a local television newscast with some friends one evening. They were airing a story on the Hartford Fire Department and it's newest firemen. They reported, "This year was different in that there were four women among the testees."
We all roared with laughter. I wonder if it was intentional.
Couldn't come close to finishing yesterday--finished today in near record time, so we know what that means! (I did have to find the incorrect A in SERaTONIN and run the vowels to get PALOMA (unknown to me)--and the Happy Music.
Here's how old I am: my senior year in college, I saw Gordon McRae at the War Memorial Auditorium on tour in Carousel, and he was painfully too old to still be doing Billy Bigelow. He was clearly wearing a truss (or maybe a girdle). Creepy to witness.
Love Dover Beach, and frustrated (speaking of person of a certain age) that I needed too many crosses to come up with Matthew ARNOLD.
I knew Gordon MACRAE from having seen Oklahoma! once, and somehow discovering he was married to Sheila MACRAE (she played Alice to Jackie Gleason’s Ralph: to the moon, Alice!) and was the father of Meredith MACRAE, from Petticoat Junction and My Three Sons. I watched way too much TV as a kid.
I thought the NW was the hardest because I didn’t know ARNOLD and couldn’t figure out what went before "….ED INTO". After I entered ARNOLD as a WAG (Wild Ass Guess), the corner fell into place.
The rest was pretty easy. Like Rex said, SCOTIA was a gimme and the whole puzzle was kinda dated.
In yesterday’s puzzle there was a lot of talk about FAE and neopronouns in general. I found a website that lists currently recognized neopronouns, for those interested in the topic. I "learned" that there quite a few of these that can substitute for traditional pronouns, including (using the possessive forms as an example): aer, eir, faer, xyr, hir, zir as well as the less common (?): cos, es, hus, nir, per, hir, thons, vis, zher.
I appreciate the frustration due to English lacking gender-neutral pronouns (I always hate having to use "he/she" or a singular "they"), but, I mean, c’mon. Can’t we have some sort of meeting of the minds among grammarians and lexicographers from English-speaking countries and other interested parties and pare this list down to one or two options satisfying to all?
Pre Coffee Sat AM Pete: How can @Rex not know Gordon MACCREA!? He's Bonnie Raitt's father FFS! Post Coffee Sat AM Pete: Perhaps you conflated Gordon MACCREA with John Raitt. Just because they were both in some version of Oklahoma! doesn't mean they're the same person.
As someone who's been on SSRIs for decades, is currently on a SSRI, it's comforting to know that the British have done an exhaustive study on SSRIs and not found any evidence that they do anything(outside of enriching big Pharma).
I am shocked, shocked I say, that Modigliani wasn't popular in his day.
We haven't seen MAS in quite a while, but this puzzle was what I think of his puzzles as being: sturdy.
Enjoyed the puzzle but pretty much thought what @Rex thought during the puzzle with the very old PPP references. My biggest logjam was the NW area due to the fact that I had starEDINTO at 15A and was reluctant to give it up. Bottom line is that the puzzle was not only in my “old peep” PPP wheelhouse but I also some gimmes with SEROTONIN and good initial guesses such as CASTOFFS.
@Joaquin, I don’t know if you were pulling @Rex’s leg but I’m 67 and I THINK I only knew Gordon MACRAE because my mother told me that Meredith MACRAE (in Petticoat Junction) was the “famous” actor Gordon’s daughter. Yeah, that might be similar to only knowing who Frank Sinatra is due to Nancy Sinatra singing These Boots are Made for Walkin’ but whatever.
Like @pabloinh I thought why did they name a drink for a dove. I am TERRIBLE at the names of mixed drinks so I just waited for the crosses to reveal that. That reminds me I briefly thought that the Texas vodka might be named for a Roman, TITuS.
I’ll be interested to see if younger folks weigh in on the “agey-ness” of the puzzle but make no mistake…I enjoyed it!
Typical toughie for me today. Tried my darndest to not Goog, but antsy-ness took over, and broke down weeping as I typed in "Google" in my browser. Looked up AMEDEO, because who? (unsophistication strikes again). That opened up everything I was stuck on in the SW. One more Goog for ARNOLD, as the NE was last to fill, and at the 50 minute mark, I was beyond antsy. Almost to annoyed, but not quite. Unsure what goes twixt antsy and annoyed. Apprehensive, maybe?
Anyway, managed to finish puz, only to get the Almost There! message. Jumping jiminy. Had cERaTONIN spelt thusly. Gave myself a good head slap once I erased the C, to have _AND for 32D. Doh! SAND, of course. A PALOMA or a PALaMA? Who cares, as long as I start to feel good if I drink one.
50A started READS A STORY, but ran out of room. Then READ A STORY, which fit, but didn't work with the Downs. Always like seeing SPELUNK(S). I SPELUNKed a time or two.
Crazy looking center of long words Across and Down. Nice grid filling job, MAS. Thought you were going to sneak your initials in at BAS. Did have MAS in there first.
What’s IN A NAME asks OFL! Plenty in today’s grid which I have to agree pointedly panders to the geriatric generation. NW & SE corners filled on a first pass (except for the D in DIED that was the final filled square), but that ocean of white diagonal middle was a bear worthy of any Saturday. Drugs, ART and children’s entertainments finally provided enough leverage to extricate myself from those FENS, but wow did I struggle with ALDO & AMEDEO! Thanks Martin for the workout.
@Nancy…me too on TENNIS! Plus I had infernal starEDINTO which didn’t help matters… Hah! @smalltowndoc…I forgot about Meredith being Mike Douglas’s girlfriend!
I'm geriatric and Gordon McCrae popped into my brain. Most likely it was a name I heard in childhood from my mother being a fan. Or else he was in the Lucy Show. I think I'm mixing him up with Gale Gordan. Very Reeking of Yore.
There's iambic beauty in the FEELOK/SPELUNKS crossing.
@Beverly C (9:42) re Joel M_CRAE -- I too confused him with Gordon MACRAE. Joel voiced Ranger Jace Pearson in the '50s radio program "Tales of the Texas Rangers," which I listen to on satellite radio. Sometimes they're in cars, sometimes on horseback; sometimes gunfighting, sometimes waiting on lab results from the boys in ballistics.
And @Rex, I too spelled SERaTONIN thus, got the "Almost there" banner, then hunted around for a long time before thinking "Maybe it's an O." And the music ensued.
I quailed at seeing the constructor's name at the top (memories of impenetrable grid-spanning stacks), but this one turned out to be quite tame. From the NE's IN A NAME, I was able to slide down to SEROTONIN, where SCOREBOARD took over to give me the crosses I needed to get into the other corners. Sticky center, though: like others, I found STATE MOTTO a mystery until I had almost all of the crosses. That clue gave me the kind of Saturday fake-out I look forward to.
Do-over: AMaDEO. Help from being old: MACRAE, COUNT BASIE, DAWG, LENNONS. Help from the younger generation who took me to see In the Heights: BARRIO. Help from reading Ian McEwan's Saturday: ARNOLD. No idea: TED, PALOMA, TITO'S.
@Loren 7:45- Thank you for connecting IN A NAME with FATE (which, in Romeo and Juliet's case, we see later is DIED).
@C Dilly from last night: Thoroughly enjoyed your Gran story, it brought tears to my eyes. How blessed you are with such sweet, sweet memories. Your daughter calls your stories the Crossword Chronicles? I would call your grandmother the Crossword Crusader. 😊
I know he's mostly remembered for his role in "Oklahoma", but I can still see him on our old tv doing a PSA and belting out " Your Reddddd Cross...". Operatic.
@Nancy 9:49 AM - Grateful for the YouTube link. Thank you. Very healing for me to watch that 3 minutes this morning. I do wish we could end this debate at which generation the NYT crossword should appeal to. To me, both experiences are rewarding: the one where it's all boomer gimmes; and the one where it's all zoomer head scratchers. Different kind of reward, but rewarding nonetheless.
I also got stuck with the misspelling of SERaTONIN, and not being familiar with a PALOMA, thought PALaMA was just fine. That cost me almost two full minutes of searching the grid after the app told me something was off. Otherwise I would have finished in a very short time for me, about 7 minutes.
@Beezer 10:03 AM - Wow, the whole Gordon MACRAE thing.... I mean, some of it is generational, and yes, I am a boomer (61yo). But on the other hand—I'm also into musical theater. As are lots of other people (many of whom, like me, are gay men, and often lesbians, too, like my rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum). If you are into musical theater, you have a good chance of knowing Gordon MACRAE, whether you are boomer, millennial, zoomer, or Martian.
Oakland certainly won three straight World Series in the early 70s, but I don’t think anybody called that a threepeat at the time. My memory is that term derives from Pat Riley and his (unfulfilled) quest to lead the Lakers to three straight NBA titles.
Thx, Martin; just right for a fine Sat. challenge! :)
Med. time-wise, altho seemed tougher, esp due to the unknown PALOMA, MOTTO, SEROTONIN crosses. Finally figured it out, tho. :)
Was determined to get the NW sussed out before embarking on the rest of the puz. Popped in LAUDE & ESS right off. Changed ANgry to ANNOY, and Bob was my uncle.
Got the SE quickly and moved down with little resistance, except for the aforementioned central section.
Oof. An experience exactly opposite from @kitshef's. Philistine that I am, I found these tough: ARNOLD, MACRAE, crosses needed for AMEDEO (I sort of recalled it began with an A and ended with O, whence, ArturO?). And by golly, I thought it was the *Lemon* sisters on Lawrence Welk -- I'll chalk it up to bad kerning on someone else's part -- and LENNONS went in purely on the assumption that I'd been reading it wrong all this while.
Oh, and guess what I put in at first instead of ESS. Tau! Yes, I counted back from "omega" which is number 24. We math types know our Greek alphabets like you wouldn't believe. Man, did that tie me up for a while. And my smidgen of Greek didn't help me one iota with STATE MOTTO.
Hand up for not knowing PALOMA (it sounds really yummy) and also for the common misspelling of SEROTONIN.
I am eternally mystified that Rex can always put in 1A seemingly without a moment's hesitation. Me, anywhere I can find a toehold pretty quickly is where I start. (Typically, the NW is where I end, not begin.) But he's wrong that we never move out of the 70's: "In the Heights", the movie anyway, is from 2021.
@SB: I make it to QB a lot, but I did not feel good about my last word yesterday, a purely lucky guess. New to me. (Begins with B, 5 letters.)
Count me among fans of this puzzle who agree it skewed old but who love all the dusty but undiminished references. I was once the proud owner of Lennon Sisters paper dolls! Dianne, Peggy, Kathy and Janet. My favorite was Kathy, for reasons lost to history. I just marvel at Rex’s ability to almost unerringly fill in 1A. I’m always attempting but abandoning the NW corner and getting back to it much later. Today I made my start in the NE. I got the Shakespeare, then swiftly filled in the rest (despite a brief pause at TESTEE -- hey, if you were a scientist studying sleeping sickness you might have some TSE TSE TESTEES!) I’m another person who didn’t know how to spell SEROTONIN; in fact, every vowel I tried after the R looked wrong.
STATE MOTTO was one of those answers that was hard to get but almost obvious in retrospect. I spent far too long searching for commonalities in the names of all those languages – so, excellent misdirection. I learned something with LEANED INTO, having thought that expression suggested willingness but also some hesitancy (LEANED rather than leapt). Sometimes I forget to think “Sports” as in [Big fixtures at parks] – I was wrestling with rollercoasters and water slides. And sometimes I think “Sports” when I shouldn’t [Bull fan] – I was sure this was the Chicago Bulls, or some other sporty toros. And I really must look into Aldo shoes – they’re always coming up as a Canadian company and I’m at a loss every time. But, in happier news, OPI nail polish is now locked into permanent, accessible memory storage. All in all, I found this puzzle provided challenge and, with persistence, allowed for a comfortable, Google-free solve.
READS ALOUD, CAT, DAWG, PETTED; GALE, Nova SCOTIA, STORM CENTER, FEEL OK(?)
These answers didn’t just hit close to home -- they piled into a John Deere Dozer and flattened the house. I’m on the trip of a lifetime after having been unable to travel for 10 years. What freedom it is to re-enter the world after so long. I’ve been having a wonderful visit with my husband’s son and his wife and I’ve finally met my pseudo-granddaughter, Quinn, who is eighteen months old – beautiful, bright, mischievous, mercurial, a booklover from the cradle and a devotee of cats, dogs and the otherwise furry. I tell you, she’s going to bat her baby-blues at the world and it’s going to fall at her feet. The positives of this trip are legion and my cup runneth over. But, in some sort of cosmic rebalancing, my husband and I both got COVID, seemingly on Day 1, and yesterday we had to flee from a hurricane! We were staying with the family just outside Halifax, Nova SCOTIA as the storm warnings became increasingly dire. My husband’s son decided to stay and man the barricades, but the rest of us headed south to the Yarmouth area where his wife’s parents live and where there’s an absolutely stunning beach house that my husband and I are currently occupying. As I write, the whitecaps are surging, the bushes are dancing, the wind is whooshing around the building and the rain is pelting against the NW windows, although less fiercely than before. You might think a beach house is not the first choice in a serious storm, but Nova SCOTIA’s far west missed the brunt of the blow and here on the shores of Lobster Bay, one is protected from big waves by the myriad islands stretching for miles in all directions. So, the power’s on, I’m still in heaven and all’s right with the world!
Easy-medium. Bodega before BARRIO ate up nanoseconds. I knew TITOS (a very fine vodka) but like a lot of you I had to get PALOMA from the crosses. TED and ARNOLD (as clued) were also WOEs. Slightly tougher than yesterday’s but not quite as interesting, liked it.
Spanish in a clue (33A) and SPAIN as an answer (42D) is flirting with cancel-my-subscription territory, Mr. Shortz!
SEROTONIN got me thinking about melatonin, which then led to the devoutly Catholic Mad Max star feeling remorse for his sins.
The previously straight-A student felt animus toward his AMINUS.
My eighth grade math teacher, Mr. Rawlins, would frequently spring surprise quizzes on us by saying “So now, boys and girls, we’re going to have a little quizee.” After experiencing several of these difficult quizees, Byron Vanderpool, the class nerd, volunteered that “If these are your little quizees, I’d hate to see your little testees.”
Mr. Cage: I like that girl’s derrière. British Host: Here in England we say ARSENIC.
As Sasha Obama says of her sister, “It’s SOMALIA”
@Nancy. I have to disagree with both of your TENNIS criticisms. In general, one would prefer to kick off in football, just as one would prefer to serve in tennis. Also, the clue isn’t wrong just because a very very small fraction of players might choose to not serve.
I think it’s kinda inspired to offer a hipster puzzle on Friday followed by an oldster puzzle on Saturday. I took to both like a pig to a PALOMA …..or something. Thanks, MAS.
Didn't know the cocktail, misspelled serAtonin & went with state lotto. "palala" is feasible I guess. Had to cheat on dover beach poet to finish the NW otherwise not too bad
@tb 9:49: you win the “best story comment of the day award!” I always held my breath when “testis” (=witness) came up(!) in Latin 3 classes, but brave soul that I am, would always ask for English derivatives, which led to a blush-inducing discussion of suffixes like -fy,= to make witness -cle= diminutive = little witness (NOT ACCEPTED as a there is no proof of this mythical etymology.) @Nancy: I also thank you for the “O, What a Beautiful Morning” clip- -did anyone else notice the absence of “an” in: “the corn is as high as a elephant’s eye” and “a old weeping willow is laughing at me”? Any thoughts about the use of “a/an”? Could it be a singer’s convention? In my last year of teaching I would often start my commute to work with that song to psyche myself up for the day…especially if “witness” was about to appear in a vocab list.
@Carola 10:38, @jae 11:30 - Father TED is probably one of my dozen favorite TV shows ever, right up there along with the likes of Columbo, Buffy and LOST. Oh! and it is from the late '90s, so well past Rex's '70s limit.
Anyway, see if you can get or stream the Flight into Terror episode. Or The Passion of Saint Tibulus. Or Tentacles of Doom.
Finally got a few minutes to spare to come and read @Rex and y’all. Sure have missed this. But what’s this about @Z leaving? It won’t be Rexlandia without him. Sure hope it’s a brief absence.
Tough but no write overs or lookups. Very well put together grid and I really admired that middle stack. I see what OFL means about the oldness, but he’s wrong when he SAYS “we never make it out of the 70s.” We have SPAIN’s 2010 World Cup clue; TENNIS goats Roger and Serena retiring this year; ALDO, which may have been founded in 1972 but is now a worldwide corporation, with nearly 3,000 stores across 100 countries; FEMA is constantly in the news thanks to climate change; most super TUESDAYs have been in the 21st century; and in 2019 in the US more than 27 million prescriptions were written for Prozac, the SEROTONIN reuptake inhibitor. (Ok, the ALDO thing may a stretch, but I didn’t even get to POLICE RAID or SOMALIA.)
Anyway, lots of timeless stuff, which I approve of. Shakespeare was my way into this DAWG.
Thanks, @Nancy, for the Gordon MACRAE video. My mom and brother and I were in a little theater production of Carousel when I was a kid, so I went from your video to ‘Billy’s Soliloquy,” in which he has just found out he’s going to be a father. As he’s imagining what his son’s life will be like, he’s suddenly struck by the thought “Can it be? What if ‘he’ is a girl?” Fresh on the heels of yesterday’s FAE and GENDER EUPHORIA, a whole new meaning occurred to me. I BET a lot of those old songs are worth reviewing just to see how the lines are transformed by culture change.
@egs, you crack me up! Since I commented on @Nancy’s TENNIS comment, I didn’t take her comment initially as a criticism so much as how her brain processed the clue but 🤣 I just looked back and see she DID criticize the clue! Anyhoo, @Egs you are absolutely right that the BEST players prefer to be serving. However, I am NOT a top player NOR do I have a particularly strong serve but I’m pretty dang good at a fearsome cross court bullet of a groundstroke when receiving so so I HAVE elected to receive serve first to show THAT talent and psychologically crush them…(jk…as to psychologically crushing). So there ya have it @Nancy…I disagree the clue was inaccurate BUT I totally get your thought process!
Amy: @JohnC think it means state mottos written in other languages. A guess. I'm older than Rex and definitely found this old-skewing...so it was a lovely breeze of a Saturday puzzle. Even remembered studying "Dover Beach" in HS. Clue for A- (low 90s) is clever. Enjoyed it all. BTW, "I Don't Need My Life to be Remarkable" in today's NYT by Sarah Wildman is a moving and insightful read. Well worth the few minutes, and may stay with you well beyond.
More no-knows here than in yesterday's puz, but overall difficulty seemed about the same, FriPuz vs. SatPuz, at our house. no-knows: AMEDEO. ALDO. ARNOLD. TED. PALOMA. TITOS. Not much of a booze-drinker, outside of BareFoot [NOT pronounced "barf it"] wine, and Blue Moon beer. And a real occasional tequila/lemonade concoction, I'd grant [when PuzEatinSpouse fixes her primo enchiladas].
staff weeject pick: ORS. Hey! They just plumb stole the runtpuzs's go-to clue for OR = {Choice word}. honrable mention to OPI -- got all three letters of OPI right today, and it was the first thing we entered into the puzgrid, too boot. Think we've got it permanently nailed, now; bring it, @Shortzmeister.
TESTEE. har
STATEMOTTO clue was pretty impressive. Musta taken some research, on the part of the constructioneer and also @r.alph [see his most excellent comment at 8:02am].
Its been a while since we've been graced with a MAS. He was published quite often back in the days of MACRAE. I'm glad to see him back displaying his long words in a stacks puzzle. Doable now but haunting back in the Stone Age. I looked at the names...I began the uh oh dance. Will I remember them? Will I know how to spell them? Resisted calling my snoopy neighbor and forged ahead. BACARDI has a bat as its logo because the company's founder, Facundo, was scared of bats..maybe in his belfry.. His wife's last name was BACARDI.. He named "el Ron del murcielago" after a bat he loathed and his wife. I'll have to ponder that one... I was feeling quite proud of myself for getting as much as I did. My break came at 32A. I think everyone I knew was on or had tried Prozac. I was too busy sipping TITOS BACARDI. I had the TONIN and danced with MELA. Oh, PALOMA stepped in and whispered "there's an O floating down there...try to keep up the beat and add SERO to your fandango tango." I did. Happy feet. I actually finished a MAS Saturday all on my own. Its a treat...AND: @Barbara S is back to grace us with herself. You are always missed...Glad you are safe.
@Mike in Bed-Stuy…I THINK you may have misunderstood the point I was making which I THINK was similar to @LMS responding to @Joaquin’s comment to @Rex about @Rex saying “whoever that is.” There are MANY reasons for people to know who Gordon MACRAE was but -like with any PPP clue- many reasons NOT to know the answer. I just thought @Joaquin’s comment seemed uncharacteristically “testy” for him so for once…unusual for me…I guess I kind of defended @Rex’s ignorance. You are SO right about many people knowing celebrities from the past for many different reasons regardless of their “generation.”
p.s. @RP: har. Nice pseudo-bio. Have seen some neat speculation over the years, re: M&A bio info. My all-time fave was that M&A was Patrick Berry. Liked. That would mean that every entry in the runtpuzs gets auto-magic Patrick Berry Usage Immunity. Also, it was once alleged here that M&A was a hippie and a hillbilly, all in one bod.
Wow a nice challenging Saturday; welcome back Martin Ashwood Smith! (Note: xwordinfo says he has been making NYT crosswords for over 31 years.)
I too got that vowel wrong in SEROTONIN, but for me it had to be an I, because surely the drink with LIME in it is spelled PALIMA.
Interesting to learn Washington's state motto is from Chinook; thanks @r.alph. (BTW Chinook is a pidgin language, used years ago in communications with indigenous people.)
And @Barbara S, really great to finally hear from you and what a vivid description (and what timing!)
[Spelling Bee: yd 0; my last word was a 6er I'm not sure I've actually ever heard. My QB streak is now at 10 days (11 is my record. @TTrimble, your last word yd was probably this oddball, but I remember it from a previous day.]
To all of you who criticized my criticism of the TENNIS clue: Inch for inch and pound for pound -- and considering that I was only a strong 3.5-4.0 player -- I personally always> chose to serve when I had the option. My first serve was my strongest shot; my close friend who was a 4.5 and had once been ranked #2 in the juniors in W Va often told me that my serve was much better than hers. (It was, but she beat me 100% of the time anyway.)
I made the comment because not all players like to serve first. I believe that Chris Evert often chose to receive when she won the toss, trusting her return game more than her serve. It's not all that unusual a strategy -- often because players feel that the most likely time to get a service break is before your opponent is thoroughly warmed up.
But I certainly agree that in today's power game -- and especially with most male players -- electing to serve is far and away more common.
Technical DNF because I had SERiTONIN and didn't go back to fix it. In my defense, I only have two cocktails: Gin martini and rye (or bourbon) Manhattan. But PALOMA would have been obvious, had I checked it.
I immediately thought of Firesign Theatre when I filled in LENNON (sisters). On one of their albums, they are the Lemon Sisters.
Minor keyboard coincidence: The dates don't work(though the birth dates are pretty close) but in an empty grid both EUBIE BLAKE and FATS WALLER answer "American Jazz Pianist..."
Kinda moldy so that helped. Kinda boozy so that didn't help. Could not grok the northwest, but looking at it now, it seems like it shoulda been easier than it was.
Overall a rather fun one for a themeless. I'm not shy about looking up people so MACRAE, CAAN, and AMEDEO arrived via the depths of G.
Bizzy day IRL today.
Uniclues:
1 What people say about my style. 2 The truth, obviously. 3 Pompous caver describing his avocation. 4 Tries the new taco place. 5 Nickname for alphabetical weatherman. 6 Still a pretty good gem.
1 "CAST OFFS, I BET" 2 LIAR DELETIONS 3 SAYS, "SPELUNKS." 4 CHANCES TUESDAY 5 STORM CENTER STU 6 A MINUS EMERALD (~)
I know clues are just clues, but SAND as ocean liner is pushing it -- most of the seabed is some kind of ooze, where it's not rock.
I guess Matthew Arnold doesn't need any help from me, but there do seem to be ignorant armies clashing by night all around us, I must say. And I don't mean Ukraine.
The clue came together better for me after I’d solved it with crosses— with the “it” being TENNIS, it would read: “In the game of TENNIS, you prefer to have service.”
@okanaganer Yep. Your 6-er had also elicited a groan. (When I just typed it into Uncle Google, he responded, "Did you mean rarbg?" Um, no I didn't. But it's nice to know that that's considered a more plausible "word". (-: )
After reading all the excellent comments, I still don't understand why STATEMOTTO is the answer for "There is one each in French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hawaiian and Chinook". Help?
@Mike: Agreed. Maybe it’s bc I’m a younger GenX and grew up around old people, but also extremely online, so I can cross those borders. But I can always suss out the clues that are either too old or too young for me. Plenty of these answers are simply in the collective (un)consciousness—some I knew as vague recollections, others from references on TV shows even (lol, thanks, Frasier), and others are just history. (Remember: Neil Simon was a young people’s clue once. And I don’t see anyone insisting we remove references to Picasso or Eden…)
I think it’s just a cop-out to call it a generation gap issue. It seems to be more of an issue of ppl being frustrated with their personal lack of breadth knowledge. Perhaps if folks glean all their info from the mono-culture of TikTok, where history truncates about every 30 days, I can see the issue. But I had no problem with either yesterday’s puzzle nor today’s. Appreciate this comment.
@Nancy…hah! I kinda figured you had a good serve because you once said you could smash overheads. We played in the same rating category but might have been the opposite in some of our skills, i.e. my serves and overheads were probably 3.4 level (but VERY reliably “in”) but my strong suit was groundstroke bullets(more like a bit over 4.), running like a rabbit, and being a bit of a “backboard” which would wear down the patience of opponents (plus, a few of my teaching pros said I was a “smart” player…bet you were too). Sounds like we would’ve made a good dubs team cuz I’d be covering any lobs that you couldn’t put away with an overhead! Plus, after winning the coin toss (we do a “racket spin” in Midwest…weird) I would happily opt to serve first if YOU were my partner! 🤣
@Anonymous 2:46PM Did you see the comment by r.alph at 8:02AM? He gives the state where the motto is from, followed by the language, followed by the motto itself.
@Sun Volt and @pabloinnh - Thank you for reminding me about the Stumper. For me the hardest chunk was on the left side in the three rows just below the equator; lots of erasing and rethinking. It felt good to finish this one, as Stella's latest Tough as Nails puzzle really does have me stumped.
@Anonymous 2:53, you make a great point! I agree this shouldn’t be a generational issue. As a “mid-Boomer” I LOVE to learn things in current culture and have no problem being stumped by it because I’ll Google the hell on it and learn about it. I dunno. I have a weird notion it helps keep me “young.” When I was young I was also a bit of an “old soul” and soaked up adult conversation so knew a fair amount of peeps and stuff before my time (@MiB-S, I missed Gordon until Petticoat Junction, I know). Anyway, it is somewhat amusing how passionate people can be on whether the puzzle skews “old” or “young.” For the record…I may “wonder” in my comments about how folks will react but when it gets down to it I’m cool with either/or a combination of both because I find there will be SOMETHING in the puzzle that I learn that I didn’t know before the puzzle. Now that I think about it…I might be disappointed if I knew everything! (Lol…as long as there are “fair” crosses) But. If xword is a competition and “taken seriously” there will always be these types of comments!
I feel sorta guilty . Must confess that I’ve never judged a puzzle based on its “socio- cultural bent.” Well, actually I really don’t know what that means, so maybe I have, unknowingly.
First answer I knew was MACRAE. I liked the puzzle very much and agree with Offthegrid, much better than yesterday’s imo.
@pablo - same issue with the SE corner - that’s where I put it down earlier today. I just poured a local Octoberfest and will get back to business filling it in.
My mother-in-law frequently walked to school (Nottingham High in Syracuse) with classmate Gordon MACRAE. Believe me, I heard this constantly for 30 years. Finally paid off with a gimme.
@Nancy - Thanks for posting the "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" video. Every time I see that I just feel a little more joyful about life.
@Nancy(2) - Tough serve? I would have bet you were a Connors type - no big serve, but getting absolutely everything back and flat out refusing to lose.
Agreed to all! I think the answer is being “well read,” no matter what your age. I often scratch my head at puzzlers here who think a name or reference is obscure, when it’s appeared in the NYT on multiple occasions (whatever the section). It’s the New York Times puzzle, after all.
@Beezer -- Oh, how I'd love to let that stand uncorrected: Just me and Serena with those fearsome Big Babe overheads:)
But even though my brother and SIL are in town and I'm running out to have dinner with them, I cannot leave the blog with such an erroneous impression. No, Beezer, I had NO overhead at all. I couldn't time it; I never knew exactly where the ball was; I was always late on my swing. So after a bit of trying, say a month or two, I never tried to hit any at all. But it sort of didn't matter since I was never at the net. I was also a bad and extremely timid net player. But since I mostly played singles, it also didn't matter all that much.
Serving was different. I could place the ball exactly where I wanted it and I had a very good and dependable toss. I could groove it. It was my favorite shot for the same reason that I (parallel) parked a car better than I drove the damn car when I was taking Driver's Ed. You always turned the wheel in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.
(Obviously, I like things that can be grooved.)
My tennis strengths were my serve, my "inside-out" forehand, my lethal backhand dropshot, and my topspin lob off both sides. Like you, I had a very good service return. I was something of a shotmaker and I had variety. The best woman player at Central Park back in the day -- someone who I would have only beaten if I'd tied her legs together and poured vodka down her throat -- told me that I was "tricky" to play. I regarded it as a huge compliment.
My weaknesses were speed -- especially the ability to change directions on a clay court, and my net play.
My 4.5 friend told me that if I moved better I'd be a 4.0, that my strokes were really quite good. I regarded that as a huge compliment too.
I wonder how we would have fared if we'd played doubles together, @Beezer? If you're looking for a net player to complement your backcourt game, you could surely find a better one in the White Pages, blindfolded.
What fun to have a Saturday in my (aged?) wheelhouse. Played old, I’m old and I enjoyed the feeling of having a challenging but workable Saturday for which my labors were being rewarded much more quickly than say yesterday (even though most of my nearly disastrous yesterday experience was my own damned fault).
We READ ALOUD just about any time but bedtime. Our daughter loved her cassette tape books and could put those on herself, but her favorite bedtime entertainment were her LP records, played on our stereo component system that took up at least half of the living room if our snug but tiny rent house. Ours had gorgeous but enormous teakwood speakers that Larry acquired in Thailand. I have no first hand knowledge, but they (and lots of other “souvenirs” might have made their way to our continent in the empty bays of B-52s during Viet Nam.
For a long time, her very favorite LP was Sesame Street Sing-aLong. She would just about drift off with the sweet Sesame rendition of the old Seekers song “Morningtown Ride” but then, the chu-chht, chu-chht, chu-chht of the needle at the end of the side would bring her back just enough to call out in a very loud but sleepy way, “Time to turn it over!” @LMS, Your comment made me remember not only that ritual but the song that I must have sung to her (the Seekers’ lyrics) hundreds of times before the CTW folks put the Sesame Street characters into the libretto. I had to learn “the right words” after that. Those were such sweet times. I love the smell of babies and small children warm from their blankets and slightly damp from the bath.
Summing up, I misspelled SERaTONIN and I take it! Sheesh. I just purchased a very cool, colorful, hip, kid-friendly and entertaining CATS CRADLE kit for my granddaughter’s upcoming 10th birthday. COUNT BASIE has been a favorite of mine and a gimme. And Lawrence Welk was a fixture on Sunday nights at my house. The kids got Disney and after that, the parents and Gran had dibs on old Lawrence. How corny can you get?! My mom adored and I made relentless fun of “the lovely LENNON sisters.”
Getting that whole swath in the middle made connecting the top to the bottom fairly easy. Glad it did because after yesterday’s hubris driven disaster, I was reluctant to put in answers in the NW without verification. And I got some easily enough with the downs TED, OPI, FENS and FATE. As for OPI, that has moved squarely into junk fill land lately. Oh well, I can opt for OPI any time.
Best clue was Bull fan? Getting DELETIONS was a bit of a challenge and I can never spell SPELUNKS (or any form thereof) correctly the first try. My German heritage and study makes me want SPiE . . . probably thinking root of spiel which almost makes sense. Sort of. Ok, maybe not. Bad excuse.
Just really good fun today. Right amount of crunch for Saturday and some very nice clues, tricks and humor. Kudos to Martin Ashwood-Smith. A very solid Saturday.
@Anonymous 2:53/Beezer: Agree! There is such a thing as being well read and culturally conscious beyond your own age group. Maybe it's the phone thing: If it isn't on current social media, it never existed. I think we were lucky, growing up, because TV was full of fabulous old movies, from the 1930s and 1940s, when I was a kid. A steady diet of great films that were not current.
So I have to chuckle at the clearly younger commenters moaning about how this puzzle skewed old and how that's just not fair and such puzzles should never be published! But it's OK for puzzles to skew, like, yesterday--rappers, the names of sneakers, TV shows that began airing two weeks ago, current slang? Funny!
I feel pretty good about my knowledge of current culture, but I don't complain when there are the names of obscure rappers ("He had a No. 1 hit in 2006") or phone apps that are totally unfamiliar; I just go for the crosses and pray. People of all ages do these puzzles, so naturally, some of us will be more comfortable with older clues and others with current.
@Nancy…lol! Methinks you are underrating yourself but I’d still be willing to cover any lobs over you. Well…at this point in my life, but I can’t speak to next year…🤣🤣
I think a 50’s theme and oldies are fine. To put a finer point on the nit: my wish would be to use COOL😎/hip 50’s peeps, How about the Beat poets? Count Basie qualifies. (The LENNON sisters - just NO!! and Gordon MCCRAE - no - do not.)
But hey it’s just a crossword puzz, just one opinion, and can’t we all live with and smile at the memory of the likes of Lawrence Welk….?. 🤗
I’ve just talked myself into doing so. Who knew? The power of the 🦖 crossword blog?
@JC66 5:51 – I did the Acrostic, yeah it's pretty easy. Surprised they didn't go with a musical clue for answer C.
@David Cantor 1:25 – also Earl 'FATHA' HINES (1903-1983). He was my first guess.
Smartphone nightmare weekend: i dropped my phone and it broke. Doesn't work at all. I just got it in May and I have insurance. Took it to the Verizon store where I bought it but they won't help; I have to file a claim online. So fine, I go to the insurance site but first they have to send a security code to my phone to verify it's really me. Well hello, I can't get your security code because MY PHONE IS BROKEN. Oy veh, what a way to start the new year.
@Pete at 10:00 (yesterday)—Actually, Bonnie Raitt’s dad was John Raitt. Understandable mistake, though. Both MACRAE and Raitt played Billy Bigelow in R&H’s Carousel. Just saw Bonnie perform last weekend. The high point of the evening came before Bonnie. Mavis Staples was the warm-up act. Extraordinary!!
@Geezer: From Wikipedia: Between 1966 and 1970, MacRae played Alice Kramden on 52 episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show, taking over the role from Audrey Meadows.
Some of the cluing was a bit too obtuse even for a Saturday but overall it was pretty good. I was still scratching my head after solving STATEMOTTO. Then I looked up state mottos. The state motto of Minnesotta is in French. The state motto of California is in Greek. The state motto of Mayland is in Italian. The state motto of Hawaii is in Hawaiian (naturally). The state motto of Washington (not Alaska) is in Chinook. And the state motto of Montana is in Spanish. American Samoa is the only territory to have a motto in Samoan but it’s a territory not a state.
For sure old school: and here I am! That helped a lot and turned medium-challenging into easy-medium. CATSCRADLE led to SCOREBOARDS led to COUNTBASIE--and I was half done. Deputy DAWG was my way in.
Last to fall was the NE, where it was tough to come up with THREEPEAT, though it shouldn't have been. They of the twirling mustaches were hard to forget. Once I LEANEDINTO it, that was all she wrote. Birdie.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
.png)
120 comments:
PALOMA (23D) was a WOE. I need to get out more. My 32A Prozac target was mElaTONIN before SEROTONIN. I took out PETTED (31D) and SCOTIA (29D) because I was so damned sure that the 38A jazz pianist was eubie BlakE.
skills?? intelligence?!? what?!!
plwase annotate more completely
@Rex - If you're going to give Gordon MACRAE a "whoever that is" I'd say that you've earned any incorrect info published about you.
For me this was far superior to yesterday's. Delightful themeless.
Enjoyed the crossword parts of it - which can be a real struggle on a Saturday like today when the trivia is way out of my wheelhouse - ARNOLD, MACRAE, BARRIO, TITOS, AMEDEO, PALOMA, LENNONS were all pretty much crosses-only (and uncle google) for me today. Fair enough, the big-league trivia and B-list actors from the 1950’s are certainly welcomed by the NYT on a Saturday, so no harm there. Enjoyed the rest of it - some pretty good clues which Rex mentioned as well.
Cluing in general was much too straightforward. Finished in half the time of yesterday’s puzzle, albeit with one error (PALaMA crossing SERaTONIN). Enjoyed it more than yesterday's too.
Easiest Saturday for me in memory, just blasted through it, no sticking points, but now I’m depressed because after reading Rex’s commentary — it was easy because I’m old…(Macrae, Lennon, Count Basie, etc). So thanks for that, Rex…
I only knew Gordon MacRae, because he's mentioned in the beautiful Kinks song Oklahoma U.S.A.:
All life we work but work is bore,
If life's for livin' what's livin' for,
She lives in a house that's near decay,
Built for the industrial revolution,
But in her dreams she is far away,
In Oklahoma U.S.A.
With Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_iVrXyQ4M
Ray Davies recently rerecorded this gem on his Americana II album.
@Joaquin – I didn’t know Gordon MACRAE, either.
Cute to have FENS crossing PEAT.
First thought for 37D “Acted nervously” was “snuck.” Confirmed that K with READS A book. Oops. Then I was trying to remember if I’m not supposed to say snuck. Seems the pedants here insist it’s sneaked? I like snuck and will continue to use it. Judge away, grammar meanies.
Clues like 12D please me. I first read “Final Par TI cipant” and got nowhere. Change the stress to “FI nal participant” and bam. TESTEE. Funny-looking word. I doubt any college administering the SAT or some such would have the balls to write TESTEEs on their little directional posters taped to the door.
Mom and Dad rarely READ ALOUD to us before bed. I mean, they did read us books, but bedtime was always us choosing one of the stack of records we had with stories like Hansel and Gretel or 101 Dalmatians. We’d lie there, listening and then shout either It’s STUUuuck! or Turn it over! My absolute favorite was The Prince and the Pauper.
What with What’s IN A NAME and the reference to In the Heights, FATE’s star-crossed lovers, POLICE RAID/BARRIOS, I kept thinking about West Side Story, where ignorant armies clash by night.
FYI
Minnesota/French/L'etoile du Nord Quae sursum volo videre/"The star of the North"
Montana/Spanish/Oro y plata/"Gold and silver"
Maryland/Italian/Fatti maschi, parole femmine/"Strong deeds, gentle words"
California/Greek/Eureka/"I have found it"
Hawaii/Hawaiian/Ua Mau ke Ea o ka Aina i ka Pono/"The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness"
Washington/Chinook/Al-ki/"By and by"
Enjoyed working for it today. And don’t mind that it was loaded with all of the references that my wife and kids tease me as being “Old Timey”. Was a big Deputy Dawg fan growing up in the 60s. Grandparents always had the Lawrence Welk show on the tube on Saturday evenings. Didn’t know what a Paloma was but feel compelled to try one this evening.
And we are here as on a darkling plain. Agree that this slanted musty - but I had a good time with it. Liked that wide open center. Hand up for putting in melatonin first - loved the cluing for STATE MOTTO and booziness of the TITOS - PALOMA stack. I would never waste tequila mixing it with grapefruit juice - my wife is keen on them but I’ll stick to this.
LENNON sisters were not my jam and fought the good fight against those 50s musicals my parents liked. The degree word clue was obtuse and PETTED seemed off.
The great Book of Love song Rex linked was featured in Planes, Trains and Automobiles with DEL Griffith.
Dover Beach
Enjoyable Saturday solve. I’m sure @pablo will opine further but for a real tester go for the tri stacks in Stella’s Stumper today.
"...Matthew ARNOLD at the beginning (not exactly what the kids, or anyone, is reading these days)." More's the pity.
Otherwise, agree pretty much with the passionate, skilled, and intelligent 70-year-old man with the interesting life. I found it a pleasant contrast to yesterday's, which I also enjoyed. Today's like a favorite pair of fuzzy slippers; yesterday's like your newest and coolest kicks. Variety is the spice...and all that.
The only PALOMA I know is Picasso. Never heard of the cocktail that Dr. Google tells me everyone in the world is sipping. Sounds good too! Stared at 36D for a minute after I'd filled it in, wondering what an AMINUS was. Anything like "animus?" Great clue!
@Twangster: Thanks for the Kinks link! Wonderful!
NOVA SCOTIA is the STORMCENTER of a huge GALE today. Wish them luck
A proper Saturday, at least for those of us of a certain age. Thank goodness for Mr. MACRAE and the LENNONS and COUNTBASIE and even Deputy DAWG or I'd have been stuck permanently. The SEROTONIN (sp?) crossing TITOS (WTF) next to PALOMA (why is a cocktail called a "dove"?) made the middle a chore, as I had the same problem as OFL parsing STATEMOTTO. Dope slapped myself when I finally filled in BARRIO after getting the last O of MOTTO. Where did my Spanish run off to?
Couldn't spell AMEDEO and read "spirits company" as "sports company", probably because of the "bat" part of the logo, so BACARDI made no sense, even though it had to be right. Need to check that reading glasses prescription.
Nice crunchy Saturday, MAS. As Much A Struggle as I like, and thanks for all the fun.
Now to see about the Stumper.
Ha ha! So some of us do still read Matthew Arnold. It might be safe to add: but only that one poem.... (Actually, I memorized it in 10th grade and it stayed with me as the quadratic equation did not.)
I did not know many of the references but managed to figure them out from the crosses. Quite a slog though, but made it out with zero help!
I am among those who have so far resisted committing OPI to memory, and the P was my last square, THREE SEAT, THREE HEAT didn't work, so just had to run the alphabet. Hopefully this is the time the nail polish brand sticks.
Rex, if you were born in 1952 then the Lennon Sisters and Oklahoma references should be easy for you.. I was born in 1953 and know none of the rappers or movies or TV junk from the past 10 years. Those college kids must keep you current.
Wonderful Wunnerful.. /s/ Lawrence Welk.. someone's grand nephew...and I'm pretty sure many of your readers our age watched Lawrence Welk with their folks or grandfolks
Of all things, I didn't get the TENNIS clue (13D) until I had most of the crosses. Me. But that's because it was a rather tortured and inaccurate clue. First of all, you play tennis, but you are not "in" tennis, so the "in it" part of the clue is unfortunate. Second: if you have a weak serve, you may elect to receive if you win the coin toss.
I am reminded of the French player, Francoise Durr, who had the slowest serve of all time in professional tennis. "I could run alongside it," my good friend and tennis partner Dick once sniffed.
I also had a Senior Moment with TITO'S. What's that 5-letter vodka brand beginning with "T" that's sitting in my liquor cabinet right now as we speak? I resisted the urge to go look -- and had to wait until it came in. Really, Nancy!
An enjoyable puzzle that provided a bit of a workout -- but still was quite a bit easier than yesterday's.
It’s puzzles like these that make me wonder if the NYT needs to just do 2 separate puzzles each day. This isn’t fun or accessible to a huge portion of the population (myself included) and this puzzle convinced me pop culture had reached too great a divide between generations that the NYT doesn’t seem able or willing to cross. Any decent editor should have rejected this puzzle until it found its way into the 21st century.
Tough puzzle! I also had SERaTONIN and STATE MOTTO and PALOMA nearly did me in — among other things. But there was much to like here.
Rex counts himself among “the olds” and says he’s “old school,” but Gordon MACRAE gets a “whoever he is”? He was a gimme tor me (snark, snark), as his wife Sheila would have been. So there’s old for you!
Flew through this - first time for a Saturday.
At first I was very surprised that Rex dismissed Gordon MACRAE, until I realized I was mistaking him for Joel McCrae - a screen sweetheart I especially enjoy in The Palm Beach Story.
For me the best part of the puzzle was amazement that my answers worked, and getting to think about Joel McCrea.
I don't know ARNOLD but maybe I'd recognize a poem or two if he is/was well known…
Interesting factoid about ARSENIC.
@ r.alph 8:02 Thanks for posting the mottos - nice to see who shares them too.
Yo La Tengo does an outstanding cover of this song, and is how I managed to get it.
First of all, "Amen" to the people who said it's a pity that no one (according to Rex) reads Matthew ARNOLD anymore. "Dover Beach" is one gorgeous poem, filled with music and expressing sentiments that would be valuable to heed right now in our angry, violent, strife-torn world.
And for those who didn't know Gordon MACRAE, here he is in his most famous and iconic scene. The long wait for him to enter that meadow is a little...much, but bear with the video, because enter he will -- and not a moment too soon, say I:)
@Loren Muse Smith
I was at college in Hartford, CT in 1976. I was watching a local television newscast with some friends one evening. They were airing a story on the Hartford Fire Department and it's newest firemen. They reported, "This year was different in that there were four women among the testees."
We all roared with laughter. I wonder if it was intentional.
Couldn't come close to finishing yesterday--finished today in near record time, so we know what that means! (I did have to find the incorrect A in SERaTONIN and run the vowels to get PALOMA (unknown to me)--and the Happy Music.
Here's how old I am: my senior year in college, I saw Gordon McRae at the War Memorial Auditorium on tour in Carousel, and he was painfully too old to still be doing Billy Bigelow. He was clearly wearing a truss (or maybe a girdle). Creepy to witness.
Love Dover Beach, and frustrated (speaking of person of a certain age) that I needed too many crosses to come up with Matthew ARNOLD.
I knew Gordon MACRAE from having seen Oklahoma! once, and somehow discovering he was married to Sheila MACRAE (she played Alice to Jackie Gleason’s Ralph: to the moon, Alice!) and was the father of Meredith MACRAE, from Petticoat Junction and My Three Sons. I watched way too much TV as a kid.
I thought the NW was the hardest because I didn’t know ARNOLD and couldn’t figure out what went before "….ED INTO". After I entered ARNOLD as a WAG (Wild Ass Guess), the corner fell into place.
The rest was pretty easy. Like Rex said, SCOTIA was a gimme and the whole puzzle was kinda dated.
In yesterday’s puzzle there was a lot of talk about FAE and neopronouns in general. I found a website that lists currently recognized neopronouns, for those interested in the topic. I "learned" that there quite a few of these that can substitute for traditional pronouns, including (using the possessive forms as an example): aer, eir, faer, xyr, hir, zir as well as the less common (?): cos, es, hus, nir, per, hir, thons, vis, zher.
I appreciate the frustration due to English lacking gender-neutral pronouns (I always hate having to use "he/she" or a singular "they"), but, I mean, c’mon. Can’t we have some sort of meeting of the minds among grammarians and lexicographers from English-speaking countries and other interested parties and pare this list down to one or two options satisfying to all?
Pre Coffee Sat AM Pete: How can @Rex not know Gordon MACCREA!? He's Bonnie Raitt's father FFS!
Post Coffee Sat AM Pete: Perhaps you conflated Gordon MACCREA with John Raitt. Just because they were both in some version of Oklahoma! doesn't mean they're the same person.
As someone who's been on SSRIs for decades, is currently on a SSRI, it's comforting to know that the British have done an exhaustive study on SSRIs and not found any evidence that they do anything(outside of enriching big Pharma).
I am shocked, shocked I say, that Modigliani wasn't popular in his day.
We haven't seen MAS in quite a while, but this puzzle was what I think of his puzzles as being: sturdy.
Enjoyed the puzzle but pretty much thought what @Rex thought during the puzzle with the very old PPP references. My biggest logjam was the NW area due to the fact that I had starEDINTO at 15A and was reluctant to give it up. Bottom line is that the puzzle was not only in my “old peep” PPP wheelhouse but I also some gimmes with SEROTONIN and good initial guesses such as CASTOFFS.
@Joaquin, I don’t know if you were pulling @Rex’s leg but I’m 67 and I THINK I only knew Gordon MACRAE because my mother told me that Meredith MACRAE (in Petticoat Junction) was the “famous” actor Gordon’s daughter. Yeah, that might be similar to only knowing who Frank Sinatra is due to Nancy Sinatra singing These Boots are Made for Walkin’ but whatever.
Like @pabloinh I thought why did they name a drink for a dove. I am TERRIBLE at the names of mixed drinks so I just waited for the crosses to reveal that. That reminds me I briefly thought that the Texas vodka might be named for a Roman, TITuS.
I’ll be interested to see if younger folks weigh in on the “agey-ness” of the puzzle but make no mistake…I enjoyed it!
Hey All !
At least it's a good pic, Rex! 😁
Typical toughie for me today. Tried my darndest to not Goog, but antsy-ness took over, and broke down weeping as I typed in "Google" in my browser. Looked up AMEDEO, because who? (unsophistication strikes again). That opened up everything I was stuck on in the SW. One more Goog for ARNOLD, as the NE was last to fill, and at the 50 minute mark, I was beyond antsy. Almost to annoyed, but not quite. Unsure what goes twixt antsy and annoyed. Apprehensive, maybe?
Anyway, managed to finish puz, only to get the Almost There! message. Jumping jiminy. Had cERaTONIN spelt thusly. Gave myself a good head slap once I erased the C, to have _AND for 32D. Doh! SAND, of course. A PALOMA or a PALaMA? Who cares, as long as I start to feel good if I drink one.
50A started READS A STORY, but ran out of room. Then READ A STORY, which fit, but didn't work with the Downs. Always like seeing SPELUNK(S). I SPELUNKed a time or two.
Crazy looking center of long words Across and Down. Nice grid filling job, MAS. Thought you were going to sneak your initials in at BAS. Did have MAS in there first.
I FEEL OK after doing this puz, Goog be damned! 😁
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
What’s IN A NAME asks OFL! Plenty in today’s grid which I have to agree pointedly panders to the geriatric generation. NW & SE corners filled on a first pass (except for the D in DIED that was the final filled square), but that ocean of white diagonal middle was a bear worthy of any Saturday. Drugs, ART and children’s entertainments finally provided enough leverage to extricate myself from those FENS, but wow did I struggle with ALDO & AMEDEO! Thanks Martin for the workout.
@Nancy…me too on TENNIS! Plus I had infernal starEDINTO which didn’t help matters…
Hah! @smalltowndoc…I forgot about Meredith being Mike Douglas’s girlfriend!
I'm geriatric and Gordon McCrae popped into my brain. Most likely it was a name I heard in childhood from my mother being a fan. Or else he was in the Lucy Show. I think I'm mixing him up with Gale Gordan. Very Reeking of Yore.
There's iambic beauty in the FEELOK/SPELUNKS crossing.
@Beverly C (9:42) re Joel M_CRAE -- I too confused him with Gordon MACRAE. Joel voiced Ranger Jace Pearson in the '50s radio program "Tales of the Texas Rangers," which I listen to on satellite radio. Sometimes they're in cars, sometimes on horseback; sometimes gunfighting, sometimes waiting on lab results from the boys in ballistics.
And @Rex, I too spelled SERaTONIN thus, got the "Almost there" banner, then hunted around for a long time before thinking "Maybe it's an O." And the music ensued.
I quailed at seeing the constructor's name at the top (memories of impenetrable grid-spanning stacks), but this one turned out to be quite tame. From the NE's IN A NAME, I was able to slide down to SEROTONIN, where SCOREBOARD took over to give me the crosses I needed to get into the other corners. Sticky center, though: like others, I found STATE MOTTO a mystery until I had almost all of the crosses. That clue gave me the kind of Saturday fake-out I look forward to.
Do-over: AMaDEO. Help from being old: MACRAE, COUNT BASIE, DAWG, LENNONS. Help from the younger generation who took me to see In the Heights: BARRIO. Help from reading Ian McEwan's Saturday: ARNOLD. No idea: TED, PALOMA, TITO'S.
@Loren 7:45- Thank you for connecting IN A NAME with FATE (which, in Romeo and Juliet's case, we see later is DIED).
@tb 9:49 - Great story!
@Joaquin 6:28 AM - ikr?!
@C Dilly from last night: Thoroughly enjoyed your Gran story, it brought tears to my eyes. How blessed you are with such sweet, sweet memories. Your daughter calls your stories the Crossword Chronicles? I would call your grandmother the Crossword Crusader. 😊
@Anonymous 9:38 AM - 🤷🏻♂️
re Gordon MACRAE-
I know he's mostly remembered for his role in "Oklahoma", but I can still see him on our old tv doing a PSA and belting out " Your Reddddd Cross...". Operatic.
@Nancy 9:49 AM - Grateful for the YouTube link. Thank you. Very healing for me to watch that 3 minutes this morning. I do wish we could end this debate at which generation the NYT crossword should appeal to. To me, both experiences are rewarding: the one where it's all boomer gimmes; and the one where it's all zoomer head scratchers. Different kind of reward, but rewarding nonetheless.
@smalltowndoc 9:57 AM - Haha! I think you watched *just the right amount* of TV when you were a kid.
I also got stuck with the misspelling of SERaTONIN, and not being familiar with a PALOMA, thought PALaMA was just fine. That cost me almost two full minutes of searching the grid after the app told me something was off. Otherwise I would have finished in a very short time for me, about 7 minutes.
@Beezer 10:03 AM - Wow, the whole Gordon MACRAE thing.... I mean, some of it is generational, and yes, I am a boomer (61yo). But on the other hand—I'm also into musical theater. As are lots of other people (many of whom, like me, are gay men, and often lesbians, too, like my rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum). If you are into musical theater, you have a good chance of knowing Gordon MACRAE, whether you are boomer, millennial, zoomer, or Martian.
@smalltowndoc. Audrey Meadows played Alice Kramden. Her older sister, Jayne, was also an actress and was married to Steve Allen.
Oakland certainly won three straight World Series in the early 70s, but I don’t think anybody called that a threepeat at the time. My memory is that term derives from Pat Riley and his (unfulfilled) quest to lead the Lakers to three straight NBA titles.
Thx, Martin; just right for a fine Sat. challenge! :)
Med. time-wise, altho seemed tougher, esp due to the unknown PALOMA, MOTTO, SEROTONIN crosses. Finally figured it out, tho. :)
Was determined to get the NW sussed out before embarking on the rest of the puz. Popped in LAUDE & ESS right off. Changed ANgry to ANNOY, and Bob was my uncle.
Got the SE quickly and moved down with little resistance, except for the aforementioned central section.
Had MACRAy before MACRAE
AMEDEO was new for me.
COUNT BASIE (full album: Legend Songs)
Son had the good fortune to travel from BC to Nova SCOTIA with his h.s. band back in the '80s.
My Pinterest handle is diggerDAWwwG.
Enjoyed the effort; really LEANED INTO it. :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Oh my god, I DIED reading @tb (9:49AM).
Oof. An experience exactly opposite from @kitshef's. Philistine that I am, I found these tough: ARNOLD, MACRAE, crosses needed for AMEDEO (I sort of recalled it began with an A and ended with O, whence, ArturO?). And by golly, I thought it was the *Lemon* sisters on Lawrence Welk -- I'll chalk it up to bad kerning on someone else's part -- and LENNONS went in purely on the assumption that I'd been reading it wrong all this while.
Oh, and guess what I put in at first instead of ESS. Tau! Yes, I counted back from "omega" which is number 24. We math types know our Greek alphabets like you wouldn't believe. Man, did that tie me up for a while. And my smidgen of Greek didn't help me one iota with STATE MOTTO.
Hand up for not knowing PALOMA (it sounds really yummy) and also for the common misspelling of SEROTONIN.
I am eternally mystified that Rex can always put in 1A seemingly without a moment's hesitation. Me, anywhere I can find a toehold pretty quickly is where I start. (Typically, the NW is where I end, not begin.) But he's wrong that we never move out of the 70's: "In the Heights", the movie anyway, is from 2021.
@SB: I make it to QB a lot, but I did not feel good about my last word yesterday, a purely lucky guess. New to me. (Begins with B, 5 letters.)
Count me among fans of this puzzle who agree it skewed old but who love all the dusty but undiminished references. I was once the proud owner of Lennon Sisters paper dolls! Dianne, Peggy, Kathy and Janet. My favorite was Kathy, for reasons lost to history. I just marvel at Rex’s ability to almost unerringly fill in 1A. I’m always attempting but abandoning the NW corner and getting back to it much later. Today I made my start in the NE. I got the Shakespeare, then swiftly filled in the rest (despite a brief pause at TESTEE -- hey, if you were a scientist studying sleeping sickness you might have some TSE TSE TESTEES!) I’m another person who didn’t know how to spell SEROTONIN; in fact, every vowel I tried after the R looked wrong.
STATE MOTTO was one of those answers that was hard to get but almost obvious in retrospect. I spent far too long searching for commonalities in the names of all those languages – so, excellent misdirection. I learned something with LEANED INTO, having thought that expression suggested willingness but also some hesitancy (LEANED rather than leapt). Sometimes I forget to think “Sports” as in [Big fixtures at parks] – I was wrestling with rollercoasters and water slides. And sometimes I think “Sports” when I shouldn’t [Bull fan] – I was sure this was the Chicago Bulls, or some other sporty toros. And I really must look into Aldo shoes – they’re always coming up as a Canadian company and I’m at a loss every time. But, in happier news, OPI nail polish is now locked into permanent, accessible memory storage. All in all, I found this puzzle provided challenge and, with persistence, allowed for a comfortable, Google-free solve.
READS ALOUD, CAT, DAWG, PETTED; GALE, Nova SCOTIA, STORM CENTER, FEEL OK(?)
These answers didn’t just hit close to home -- they piled into a John Deere Dozer and flattened the house. I’m on the trip of a lifetime after having been unable to travel for 10 years. What freedom it is to re-enter the world after so long. I’ve been having a wonderful visit with my husband’s son and his wife and I’ve finally met my pseudo-granddaughter, Quinn, who is eighteen months old – beautiful, bright, mischievous, mercurial, a booklover from the cradle and a devotee of cats, dogs and the otherwise furry. I tell you, she’s going to bat her baby-blues at the world and it’s going to fall at her feet. The positives of this trip are legion and my cup runneth over. But, in some sort of cosmic rebalancing, my husband and I both got COVID, seemingly on Day 1, and yesterday we had to flee from a hurricane! We were staying with the family just outside Halifax, Nova SCOTIA as the storm warnings became increasingly dire. My husband’s son decided to stay and man the barricades, but the rest of us headed south to the Yarmouth area where his wife’s parents live and where there’s an absolutely stunning beach house that my husband and I are currently occupying. As I write, the whitecaps are surging, the bushes are dancing, the wind is whooshing around the building and the rain is pelting against the NW windows, although less fiercely than before. You might think a beach house is not the first choice in a serious storm, but Nova SCOTIA’s far west missed the brunt of the blow and here on the shores of Lobster Bay, one is protected from big waves by the myriad islands stretching for miles in all directions. So, the power’s on, I’m still in heaven and all’s right with the world!
Easy-medium. Bodega before BARRIO ate up nanoseconds. I knew TITOS (a very fine vodka) but like a lot of you I had to get PALOMA from the crosses. TED and ARNOLD (as clued) were also WOEs. Slightly tougher than yesterday’s but not quite as interesting, liked it.
Spanish in a clue (33A) and SPAIN as an answer (42D) is flirting with cancel-my-subscription territory, Mr. Shortz!
SEROTONIN got me thinking about melatonin, which then led to the devoutly Catholic Mad Max star feeling remorse for his sins.
The previously straight-A student felt animus toward his AMINUS.
My eighth grade math teacher, Mr. Rawlins, would frequently spring surprise quizzes on us by saying “So now, boys and girls, we’re going to have a little quizee.” After experiencing several of these difficult quizees, Byron Vanderpool, the class nerd, volunteered that “If these are your little quizees, I’d hate to see your little testees.”
Mr. Cage: I like that girl’s derrière.
British Host: Here in England we say ARSENIC.
As Sasha Obama says of her sister, “It’s SOMALIA”
@Nancy. I have to disagree with both of your TENNIS criticisms. In general, one would prefer to kick off in football, just as one would prefer to serve in tennis. Also, the clue isn’t wrong just because a very very small fraction of players might choose to not serve.
I think it’s kinda inspired to offer a hipster puzzle on Friday followed by an oldster puzzle on Saturday. I took to both like a pig to a PALOMA …..or something. Thanks, MAS.
I loved Gordon MacRae in "Carousel" and "Oklahoma!" 24A was a gimme and made me smile.
Didn't know the cocktail, misspelled serAtonin & went with state lotto. "palala" is feasible I guess.
Had to cheat on dover beach poet to finish the NW otherwise not too bad
@tb 9:49: you win the “best story comment of the day award!” I always held my breath when “testis” (=witness) came up(!) in Latin 3 classes, but brave soul that I am, would always ask for English derivatives, which led to a blush-inducing discussion of suffixes like
-fy,= to make witness
-cle= diminutive = little witness (NOT ACCEPTED as a there is no proof of this mythical etymology.)
@Nancy: I also thank you for the “O, What a Beautiful Morning” clip- -did anyone else notice the absence of “an” in: “the corn is as high as a elephant’s eye” and “a old weeping willow is laughing at me”? Any thoughts about the use of “a/an”? Could it be a singer’s convention?
In my last year of teaching I would often start my commute to work with that song to psyche myself up for the day…especially if “witness” was about to appear in a vocab list.
Sorry to be dumb- and late- but I don’t get the State Motto clue/answer?
@Carola 10:38, @jae 11:30 - Father TED is probably one of my dozen favorite TV shows ever, right up there along with the likes of Columbo, Buffy and LOST. Oh! and it is from the late '90s, so well past Rex's '70s limit.
Anyway, see if you can get or stream the Flight into Terror episode. Or The Passion of Saint Tibulus. Or Tentacles of Doom.
@Barbara S - how dramatic! - and kudos to your son-in-law.
If you have read Ian McEwan' s "Saturday " you won't forget Arnold.
For me, a great short but gripping story well told. Otts.
A gamey workout:
Baseball-Oakland A's
TENNIS
Golf-ACES
Track-LAP & PACED
SCOREBOARDS
Soccer-SPAIN(2010 world cup)
Gambling-IBET & CHANCES
Rowing-ORS
Football-see Soccer
Finished the puzzle, then spent a ridiculously long time trying to figure out what the hell "aminus" meant
Finally got a few minutes to spare to come and read @Rex and y’all. Sure have missed this. But what’s this about @Z leaving? It won’t be Rexlandia without him. Sure hope it’s a brief absence.
Tough but no write overs or lookups. Very well put together grid and I really admired that middle stack. I see what OFL means about the oldness, but he’s wrong when he SAYS “we never make it out of the 70s.” We have SPAIN’s 2010 World Cup clue; TENNIS goats Roger and Serena retiring this year; ALDO, which may have been founded in 1972 but is now a worldwide corporation, with nearly 3,000 stores across 100 countries; FEMA is constantly in the news thanks to climate change; most super TUESDAYs have been in the 21st century; and in 2019 in the US more than 27 million prescriptions were written for Prozac, the SEROTONIN reuptake inhibitor. (Ok, the ALDO thing may a stretch, but I didn’t even get to POLICE RAID or SOMALIA.)
Anyway, lots of timeless stuff, which I approve of. Shakespeare was my way into this DAWG.
Thanks, @Nancy, for the Gordon MACRAE video. My mom and brother and I were in a little theater production of Carousel when I was a kid, so I went from your video to ‘Billy’s Soliloquy,” in which he has just found out he’s going to be a father. As he’s imagining what his son’s life will be like, he’s suddenly struck by the thought “Can it be? What if ‘he’ is a girl?” Fresh on the heels of yesterday’s FAE and GENDER EUPHORIA, a whole new meaning occurred to me. I BET a lot of those old songs are worth reviewing just to see how the lines are transformed by culture change.
Yeah, about the TESTEES jokes. LOW HANGING fruit.
@egs, you crack me up! Since I commented on @Nancy’s TENNIS comment, I didn’t take her comment initially as a criticism so much as how her brain processed the clue but 🤣 I just looked back and see she DID criticize the clue! Anyhoo, @Egs you are absolutely right that the BEST players prefer to be serving. However, I am NOT a top player NOR do I have a particularly strong serve but I’m pretty dang good at a fearsome cross court bullet of a groundstroke when receiving so so I HAVE elected to receive serve first to show THAT talent and psychologically crush them…(jk…as to psychologically crushing). So there ya have it @Nancy…I disagree the clue was inaccurate BUT I totally get your thought process!
Amy: @JohnC think it means state mottos written in other languages. A guess.
I'm older than Rex and definitely found this old-skewing...so it was a lovely breeze of a Saturday puzzle. Even remembered studying "Dover Beach" in HS. Clue for A- (low 90s) is clever. Enjoyed it all.
BTW, "I Don't Need My Life to be Remarkable" in today's NYT by Sarah Wildman is a moving and insightful read. Well worth the few minutes, and may stay with you well beyond.
More no-knows here than in yesterday's puz, but overall difficulty seemed about the same, FriPuz vs. SatPuz, at our house.
no-knows: AMEDEO. ALDO. ARNOLD. TED. PALOMA. TITOS. Not much of a booze-drinker, outside of BareFoot [NOT pronounced "barf it"] wine, and Blue Moon beer. And a real occasional tequila/lemonade concoction, I'd grant [when PuzEatinSpouse fixes her primo enchiladas].
staff weeject pick: ORS. Hey! They just plumb stole the runtpuzs's go-to clue for OR = {Choice word}.
honrable mention to OPI -- got all three letters of OPI right today, and it was the first thing we entered into the puzgrid, too boot. Think we've got it permanently nailed, now; bring it, @Shortzmeister.
TESTEE. har
STATEMOTTO clue was pretty impressive. Musta taken some research, on the part of the constructioneer and also @r.alph [see his most excellent comment at 8:02am].
fave stuff: THREEPEAT. STORMCENTER. STATEMOTTO. COUNTBASIE. SPELUNKS.
Thanx for the no-themer, MAS dude. AMINUS [modest points off, for UNCLASP & TESTEE].
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
Its been a while since we've been graced with a MAS. He was published quite often back in the days of MACRAE. I'm glad to see him back displaying his long words in a stacks puzzle. Doable now but haunting back in the Stone Age.
I looked at the names...I began the uh oh dance. Will I remember them? Will I know how to spell them? Resisted calling my snoopy neighbor and forged ahead. BACARDI has a bat as its logo because the company's founder, Facundo, was scared of bats..maybe in his belfry.. His wife's last name was BACARDI.. He named "el Ron del murcielago" after a bat he loathed and his wife. I'll have to ponder that one...
I was feeling quite proud of myself for getting as much as I did. My break came at 32A. I think everyone I knew was on or had tried Prozac. I was too busy sipping TITOS BACARDI. I had the TONIN and danced with MELA. Oh, PALOMA stepped in and whispered "there's an O floating down there...try to keep up the beat and add SERO to your fandango tango." I did. Happy feet.
I actually finished a MAS Saturday all on my own. Its a treat...AND:
@Barbara S is back to grace us with herself. You are always missed...Glad you are safe.
@Mike in Bed-Stuy…I THINK you may have misunderstood the point I was making which I THINK was similar to @LMS responding to @Joaquin’s comment to @Rex about @Rex saying “whoever that is.” There are MANY reasons for people to know who Gordon MACRAE was but -like with any PPP clue- many reasons NOT to know the answer. I just thought @Joaquin’s comment seemed uncharacteristically “testy” for him so for once…unusual for me…I guess I kind of defended @Rex’s ignorance. You are SO right about many people knowing celebrities from the past for many different reasons regardless of their “generation.”
p.s.
@RP: har. Nice pseudo-bio.
Have seen some neat speculation over the years, re: M&A bio info.
My all-time fave was that M&A was Patrick Berry. Liked. That would mean that every entry in the runtpuzs gets auto-magic Patrick Berry Usage Immunity.
Also, it was once alleged here that M&A was a hippie and a hillbilly, all in one bod.
M&Also
Wow a nice challenging Saturday; welcome back Martin Ashwood Smith! (Note: xwordinfo says he has been making NYT crosswords for over 31 years.)
I too got that vowel wrong in SEROTONIN, but for me it had to be an I, because surely the drink with LIME in it is spelled PALIMA.
Interesting to learn Washington's state motto is from Chinook; thanks @r.alph. (BTW Chinook is a pidgin language, used years ago in communications with indigenous people.)
And @Barbara S, really great to finally hear from you and what a vivid description (and what timing!)
[Spelling Bee: yd 0; my last word was a 6er I'm not sure I've actually ever heard. My QB streak is now at 10 days (11 is my record.
@TTrimble, your last word yd was probably this oddball, but I remember it from a previous day.]
To all of you who criticized my criticism of the TENNIS clue: Inch for inch and pound for pound -- and considering that I was only a strong 3.5-4.0 player -- I personally always> chose to serve when I had the option. My first serve was my strongest shot; my close friend who was a 4.5 and had once been ranked #2 in the juniors in W Va often told me that my serve was much better than hers. (It was, but she beat me 100% of the time anyway.)
I made the comment because not all players like to serve first. I believe that Chris Evert often chose to receive when she won the toss, trusting her return game more than her serve. It's not all that unusual a strategy -- often because players feel that the most likely time to get a service break is before your opponent is thoroughly warmed up.
But I certainly agree that in today's power game -- and especially with most male players -- electing to serve is far and away more common.
Technical DNF because I had SERiTONIN and didn't go back to fix it. In my defense, I only have two cocktails: Gin martini and rye (or bourbon) Manhattan. But PALOMA would have been obvious, had I checked it.
I immediately thought of Firesign Theatre when I filled in LENNON (sisters). On one of their albums, they are the Lemon Sisters.
Minor keyboard coincidence: The dates don't work(though the birth dates are pretty close) but in an empty grid both EUBIE BLAKE and FATS WALLER answer "American Jazz Pianist..."
That’s the part where the bio mixed Rex up with Will Shortz. Will was born in Indiana in 1952. Rex is
considerably younger.
lost in all the comments re: (commissioner) GORDON is the link to book of love’s “modigliani”!
rex did not disappoint!!!
Kinda moldy so that helped. Kinda boozy so that didn't help. Could not grok the northwest, but looking at it now, it seems like it shoulda been easier than it was.
Overall a rather fun one for a themeless. I'm not shy about looking up people so MACRAE, CAAN, and AMEDEO arrived via the depths of G.
Bizzy day IRL today.
Uniclues:
1 What people say about my style.
2 The truth, obviously.
3 Pompous caver describing his avocation.
4 Tries the new taco place.
5 Nickname for alphabetical weatherman.
6 Still a pretty good gem.
1 "CAST OFFS, I BET"
2 LIAR DELETIONS
3 SAYS, "SPELUNKS."
4 CHANCES TUESDAY
5 STORM CENTER STU
6 A MINUS EMERALD (~)
I know clues are just clues, but SAND as ocean liner is pushing it -- most of the seabed is some kind of ooze, where it's not rock.
I guess Matthew Arnold doesn't need any help from me, but there do seem to be ignorant armies clashing by night all around us, I must say. And I don't mean Ukraine.
The clue came together better for me after I’d solved it with crosses— with the “it” being TENNIS, it would read: “In the game of TENNIS, you prefer to have service.”
Why?
SW of the puzzle was a challenge. ALDO and SOMALIA and AMEDEO proved a little tricky. The rest of the puzzle was typical Saturday difficulty.
@The Joker
That was killer, and I DIED again. :-D
@okanaganer
Yep. Your 6-er had also elicited a groan. (When I just typed it into Uncle Google, he responded, "Did you mean rarbg?" Um, no I didn't. But it's nice to know that that's considered a more plausible "word". (-: )
After reading all the excellent comments, I still don't understand why STATEMOTTO is the answer for
"There is one each in French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hawaiian and Chinook". Help?
@Son Volt-
Finally finished the Stella Stumper. The stacks weren't too bad but the SE almost did me in.
@Mike: Agreed. Maybe it’s bc I’m a younger GenX and grew up around old people, but also extremely online, so I can cross those borders. But I can always suss out the clues that are either too old or too young for me. Plenty of these answers are simply in the collective (un)consciousness—some I knew as vague recollections, others from references on TV shows even (lol, thanks, Frasier), and others are just history. (Remember: Neil Simon was a young people’s clue once. And I don’t see anyone insisting we remove references to Picasso or Eden…)
I think it’s just a cop-out to call it a generation gap issue. It seems to be more of an issue of ppl being frustrated with their personal lack of breadth knowledge. Perhaps if folks glean all their info from the mono-culture of TikTok, where history truncates about every 30 days, I can see the issue. But I had no problem with either yesterday’s puzzle nor today’s. Appreciate this comment.
@Nancy…hah! I kinda figured you had a good serve because you once said you could smash overheads. We played in the same rating category but might have been the opposite in some of our skills, i.e. my serves and overheads were probably 3.4 level (but VERY reliably “in”) but my strong suit was groundstroke bullets(more like a bit over 4.), running like a rabbit, and being a bit of a “backboard” which would wear down the patience of opponents (plus, a few of my teaching pros said I was a “smart” player…bet you were too). Sounds like we would’ve made a good dubs team cuz I’d be covering any lobs that you couldn’t put away with an overhead! Plus, after winning the coin toss (we do a “racket spin” in Midwest…weird) I would happily opt to serve first if YOU were my partner! 🤣
@Anonymous 2:46PM
Did you see the comment by r.alph at 8:02AM? He gives the state where the motto is from, followed by the language, followed by the motto itself.
@Sun Volt and @pabloinnh - Thank you for reminding me about the Stumper. For me the hardest chunk was on the left side in the three rows just below the equator; lots of erasing and rethinking. It felt good to finish this one, as Stella's latest Tough as Nails puzzle really does have me stumped.
@Anonymous 2:53, you make a great point! I agree this shouldn’t be a generational issue. As a “mid-Boomer” I LOVE to learn things in current culture and have no problem being stumped by it because I’ll Google the hell on it and learn about it. I dunno. I have a weird notion it helps keep me “young.” When I was young I was also a bit of an “old soul” and soaked up adult conversation so knew a fair amount of peeps and stuff before my time (@MiB-S, I missed Gordon until Petticoat Junction, I know). Anyway, it is somewhat amusing how passionate people can be on whether the puzzle skews “old” or “young.” For the record…I may “wonder” in my comments about how folks will react but when it gets down to it I’m cool with either/or a combination of both because I find there will be SOMETHING in the puzzle that I learn that I didn’t know before the puzzle. Now that I think about it…I might be disappointed if I knew everything! (Lol…as long as there are “fair” crosses)
But. If xword is a competition and “taken seriously” there will always be these types of comments!
I got my all-time best Saturday time on this one! Going to make myself a Paloma now…..
I feel sorta guilty . Must confess that I’ve never judged a puzzle based on its “socio- cultural bent.” Well, actually I really don’t know what that means, so maybe I have, unknowingly.
First answer I knew was MACRAE. I liked the puzzle very much and agree with Offthegrid, much better than yesterday’s imo.
Preach!! Talk about not getting out much!
@pablo - same issue with the SE corner - that’s where I put it down earlier today. I just poured a local Octoberfest and will get back to business filling it in.
🌟
My mother-in-law frequently walked to school (Nottingham High in Syracuse) with classmate Gordon MACRAE. Believe me, I heard this constantly for 30 years. Finally paid off with a gimme.
@Nancy - Thanks for posting the "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" video. Every time I see that I just feel a little more joyful about life.
@Nancy(2) - Tough serve? I would have bet you were a Connors type - no big serve, but getting absolutely everything back and flat out refusing to lose.
Agreed to all! I think the answer is being “well read,” no matter what your age. I often scratch my head at puzzlers here who think a name or reference is obscure, when it’s appeared in the NYT on multiple occasions (whatever the section). It’s the New York Times puzzle, after all.
@Son Volt (8:04 AM) / @pabloinnh (8:28 AM)
Embarrassing dnf on a tough Sat. Stumper by Stella Zawistowski today. No excuses; it was doable. Didn't exercise the brain enuf. :(
On to the Acrostic; hoping for a better showing! 🤞
Good to hear from you today @Barbara S.; stay safe. :)
🙏s for Nova SCOTIA and the Maritime Provinces!
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@Beezer -- Oh, how I'd love to let that stand uncorrected: Just me and Serena with those fearsome Big Babe overheads:)
But even though my brother and SIL are in town and I'm running out to have dinner with them, I cannot leave the blog with such an erroneous impression. No, Beezer, I had NO overhead at all. I couldn't time it; I never knew exactly where the ball was; I was always late on my swing. So after a bit of trying, say a month or two, I never tried to hit any at all. But it sort of didn't matter since I was never at the net. I was also a bad and extremely timid net player. But since I mostly played singles, it also didn't matter all that much.
Serving was different. I could place the ball exactly where I wanted it and I had a very good and dependable toss. I could groove it. It was my favorite shot for the same reason that I (parallel) parked a car better than I drove the damn car when I was taking Driver's Ed. You always turned the wheel in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.
(Obviously, I like things that can be grooved.)
My tennis strengths were my serve, my "inside-out" forehand, my lethal backhand dropshot, and my topspin lob off both sides. Like you, I had a very good service return. I was something of a shotmaker and I had variety. The best woman player at Central Park back in the day -- someone who I would have only beaten if I'd tied her legs together and poured vodka down her throat -- told me that I was "tricky" to play. I regarded it as a huge compliment.
My weaknesses were speed -- especially the ability to change directions on a clay court, and my net play.
My 4.5 friend told me that if I moved better I'd be a 4.0, that my strokes were really quite good. I regarded that as a huge compliment too.
I wonder how we would have fared if we'd played doubles together, @Beezer? If you're looking for a net player to complement your backcourt game, you could surely find a better one in the White Pages, blindfolded.
32A with 23D and 28D were Naticks for me. I knew a lot of the upper left and lower right out the gate including Arnold immediately…but I’m 72.
Wordle 462 3/6*
🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩
🟨🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@Joe D
I think tomorrow's Acrostic is right up[ your alley.
Haha 😂 who wrote that 🦖 blurb? Probably not someone who “designs” xword 🧩s!
Thinking exactly the same thing as what 🦖 wrote about this one. Come on! The LENNON sisters? Gordon MCCRAE? etc.
REALLY?
Oldies annoying but oh well, it was kinda fun anyway.
👨🏽🦳👨🏽🦳🧩🧩🧩🧩👨🏽🦳👨🏽🦳
What fun to have a Saturday in my (aged?) wheelhouse. Played old, I’m old and I enjoyed the feeling of having a challenging but workable Saturday for which my labors were being rewarded much more quickly than say yesterday (even though most of my nearly disastrous yesterday experience was my own damned fault).
We READ ALOUD just about any time but bedtime. Our daughter loved her cassette tape books and could put those on herself, but her favorite bedtime entertainment were her LP records, played on our stereo component system that took up at least half of the living room if our snug but tiny rent house. Ours had gorgeous but enormous teakwood speakers that Larry acquired in Thailand. I have no first hand knowledge, but they (and lots of other “souvenirs” might have made their way to our continent in the empty bays of B-52s during Viet Nam.
For a long time, her very favorite LP was Sesame Street Sing-aLong. She would just about drift off with the sweet Sesame rendition of the old Seekers song “Morningtown Ride” but then, the chu-chht, chu-chht, chu-chht of the needle at the end of the side would bring her back just enough to call out in a very loud but sleepy way, “Time to turn it over!” @LMS, Your comment made me remember not only that ritual but the song that I must have sung to her (the Seekers’ lyrics) hundreds of times before the CTW folks put the Sesame Street characters into the libretto. I had to learn “the right words” after that. Those were such sweet times. I love the smell of babies and small children warm from their blankets and slightly damp from the bath.
Summing up, I misspelled SERaTONIN and I take it! Sheesh. I just purchased a very cool, colorful, hip, kid-friendly and entertaining CATS CRADLE kit for my granddaughter’s upcoming 10th birthday. COUNT BASIE has been a favorite of mine and a gimme. And Lawrence Welk was a fixture on Sunday nights at my house. The kids got Disney and after that, the parents and Gran had dibs on old Lawrence. How corny can you get?! My mom adored and I made relentless fun of “the lovely LENNON sisters.”
Getting that whole swath in the middle made connecting the top to the bottom fairly easy. Glad it did because after yesterday’s hubris driven disaster, I was reluctant to put in answers in the NW without verification. And I got some easily enough with the downs TED, OPI, FENS and FATE. As for OPI, that has moved squarely into junk fill land lately. Oh well, I can opt for OPI any time.
Best clue was Bull fan? Getting DELETIONS was a bit of a challenge and I can never spell SPELUNKS (or any form thereof) correctly the first try. My German heritage and study makes me want SPiE . . . probably thinking root of spiel which almost makes sense. Sort of. Ok, maybe not. Bad excuse.
Just really good fun today. Right amount of crunch for Saturday and some very nice clues, tricks and humor. Kudos to Martin Ashwood-Smith. A very solid Saturday.
@Anonymous 2:53/Beezer: Agree! There is such a thing as being well read and culturally conscious beyond your own age group. Maybe it's the phone thing: If it isn't on current social media, it never existed. I think we were lucky, growing up, because TV was full of fabulous old movies, from the 1930s and 1940s, when I was a kid. A steady diet of great films that were not current.
So I have to chuckle at the clearly younger commenters moaning about how this puzzle skewed old and how that's just not fair and such puzzles should never be published! But it's OK for puzzles to skew, like, yesterday--rappers, the names of sneakers, TV shows that began airing two weeks ago, current slang? Funny!
I feel pretty good about my knowledge of current culture, but I don't complain when there are the names of obscure rappers ("He had a No. 1 hit in 2006") or phone apps that are totally unfamiliar; I just go for the crosses and pray. People of all ages do these puzzles, so naturally, some of us will be more comfortable with older clues and others with current.
What does THREEPEAT mean?’ I didn’t know Opi and there was no way I ever heard of threepeat? Did they win something thrice?
@Nancy…lol! Methinks you are underrating yourself but I’d still be willing to cover any lobs over you. Well…at this point in my life, but I can’t speak to next year…🤣🤣
Alas, the denizens of the Back Bay FENS are stinking up the joint this year.
OTOH, The Cs had an EightPeat.
I think a 50’s theme and oldies are fine.
To put a finer point on the nit: my wish would be to use COOL😎/hip 50’s peeps, How about the Beat poets? Count Basie qualifies. (The LENNON sisters - just NO!! and Gordon MCCRAE - no - do not.)
But hey it’s just a crossword puzz, just one opinion, and can’t we all live with and smile at the memory of the likes of Lawrence Welk….?. 🤗
I’ve just talked myself into doing so. Who knew? The power of the 🦖 crossword blog?
Exactly.
There is a US State motto in each of the languages listed. Someone listed them.
Yes. The World Series. The word is a Mashup of three & repeat.
Audrey Meadows was Alice Kramden.
@JC66 5:51 – I did the Acrostic, yeah it's pretty easy. Surprised they didn't go with a musical clue for answer C.
@David Cantor 1:25 – also Earl 'FATHA' HINES (1903-1983). He was my first guess.
Smartphone nightmare weekend: i dropped my phone and it broke. Doesn't work at all. I just got it in May and I have insurance. Took it to the Verizon store where I bought it but they won't help; I have to file a claim online. So fine, I go to the insurance site but first they have to send a security code to my phone to verify it's really me. Well hello, I can't get your security code because MY PHONE IS BROKEN. Oy veh, what a way to start the new year.
I think several of the US state mottoes must be in Latin, but I can believe only one is in Chinook!
@Pete at 10:00 (yesterday)—Actually, Bonnie Raitt’s dad was John Raitt. Understandable mistake, though. Both MACRAE and Raitt played Billy Bigelow in R&H’s Carousel. Just saw Bonnie perform last weekend. The high point of the evening came before Bonnie. Mavis Staples was the warm-up act. Extraordinary!!
@Geezer: From Wikipedia: Between 1966 and 1970, MacRae played Alice Kramden on 52 episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show, taking over the role from Audrey Meadows.
Some of the cluing was a bit too obtuse even for a Saturday but overall it was pretty good. I was still scratching my head after solving STATEMOTTO. Then I looked up state mottos. The state motto of Minnesotta is in French. The state motto of California is in Greek. The state motto of Mayland is in Italian. The state motto of Hawaii is in Hawaiian (naturally). The state motto of Washington (not Alaska) is in Chinook. And the state motto of Montana is in Spanish. American Samoa is the only territory to have a motto in Samoan but it’s a territory not a state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_and_territory_mottos
For sure old school: and here I am! That helped a lot and turned medium-challenging into easy-medium. CATSCRADLE led to SCOREBOARDS led to COUNTBASIE--and I was half done. Deputy DAWG was my way in.
Last to fall was the NE, where it was tough to come up with THREEPEAT, though it shouldn't have been. They of the twirling mustaches were hard to forget. Once I LEANEDINTO it, that was all she wrote. Birdie.
Wordle par.
BAS CABALS
I don't FEELOK after the POLICERAID,
DAWG, what did the STATE cops sieze?
SEE, I LEANEDINTO those CATS and made
them UNCLASP my TESTEEs.
--- ARNOLD MACRAE
Post a Comment