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Temporarily banished from a dorm room, in a way / SAT 9-3-22 / Cartoon known for bursting out of a drum / Somers in the hall of fame for infomercials / Yas and jas / First name in gin production / Cocktail named for motorcycle attachment / Cork launcher / Sometimes-purple tuber / Lead-in to hickey
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Constructor: David Distenfeld
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: "DANNY Deever," Rudyard Kipling poem (7D) —
"Danny Deever" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad, describes the execution of a British soldier in India for murder. His execution is viewed by his regiment, paraded to watch it, and the poem is composed of the comments they exchange as they see him hanged. [...] George Orwell considered Danny Deever as an example of Kipling "at his worst, and also his most vital ... almost a shameful pleasure, like the taste for cheap sweets that some people secretly carry into middle life". He felt the work was an example of what he described as "good bad poetry"; verse which is essentially vulgar, yet undeniably seductive and "a sign of the emotional overlap between the intellectual and the ordinary man." (wikipedia)
• • •
Yesterday, VASECTOMY. Today:
That's back-to-back immediate, confident, and wrong 1-Acrosses. Quite a triumph. In both cases, my imagination was much stronger and more creative than what the puzzles ultimately had to offer in that space, and in both cases the wrong answer was so obviously wrong (once I checked the crosses) that it didn't hold me up for too long. In fact, today, nothing held me up for long. I'd say most of my stuck time was spent trying to undo ZIGZAG, which meant attacking the short stuff to start with (ADO, PASS), and then getting EXPOSE / SEXILED, and on from there. I watched "Ford v Ferrari" earlier this year, and I know one of the guides at the Petersen Automotive Museum mentioned SHELBY's name while describing one of the cars when I visited there last month, but I still needed a bunch of crosses. So the NW played like a typical Saturday—took some real work to get going, but I got there. Once I got *out* of the NW, though, things got much, much easier, and for the last 1/3 of the puzzle or so I was going at Monday speed. Ended up in the opposite corner from where I started, with the opposite amount of resistance (little v lots).
The thing is, when you come out of that NW corner, you've got the front ends of all the long central Acrosses lined up, and those first few letters are all you need for any of them. I went DIRTY-MINDED YAM STEAMED OPEN ARMED FORCES in virtually no time. UNPIN was a gimme (36A: Remove, as a corsage) and made the SW easy to get into (though POP GUN was briefly elusive—I had POPPER, i.e. the one ... who pops ... the champagne, I guess? (38D: Cork launcher). I also had to sort out which of this century's seemingly infinite "Star Wars" movies was supposed to go in the slot at 50A: 2016 prequel to the highest-grossing movie of 1977 ("ROGUE ONE"). But after that, it was easy to whoosh, right up the middle of the grid with those long Downs. No resistance. Got RANK AND FILE without ever seeing the clue (14D: Ordinary members). Never ever heard of "DANNY Deever," so that was weird, but I just sort of tiptoed around him, which was very easy to do, and after that, the east side of the puzzle fell like dominoes. I went from top to bottom of the grid writing in answers as fast as I could read the clues. Once I hit bottom, I had only tiny details to work through—like changing SNOOTY to SNOTTY (41D: Stuck-up) and remembering that AMULETs are for "wearing in health" (I think of them as just a jewelry type). Unfortunately for this puzzle, I ended on the sourest possible note: the ridiculousness that is LET DRY. *LET*??? Do you know how dumb that sounds, esp. after you've written in the far better, far more appropriate AIR DRY (57A: Put on the line, say)? Oof. LET DRY ... I guess when you AIR DRY things, you are, in fact, LETting them DRY ... but I have written "LOL bad" in the margin there because it is. Unsurprisingly, this is the NYTXW debut of LET DRY. Congrats?
Luckily, most of this puzzle was nowhere near "LOL bad." It's sturdy and (LET DRY aside) cringe-free. SEXILED into DIRTY-MINDED is either clever or trying a little too hard, depending on your perspective, but I actually think it's the strongest part of the grid. I'll take show-offy naughtiness over dullness any day. Anything left to explain? Let's see ... ELI is the [First name in gin production?] because it's the cotton gin, not the gin that goes in a SIDECAR (just kidding, there's no gin in a SIDECAR: it's lemon juice, brandy, and an orange liqueur like triple sec, which I have typed as "triple sex" three times now) (24D: Cocktail named for a motorcycle attachment). Oh, I just remembered another mistake I made. Had the -R in 47D: Junior, perhaps (HEIR) and wrote in YEAR. As with ZIGZAG, I was verrrrry confident. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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131 comments:
SEXILED. no understanding of that made up word.
All the same edits as RP. But knew Shelby, so Zigzag went out the door immediately. Snooty/snotty Popper/popgun. Ended up very close to a record Saturday time. Faster than my average Wednesday.
Seen better. Seen worse. Little sparkle but little crud. B-
This 5 made me happier than some of my 3's.
Wordle 441 5/6
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Well, it’s a gorgeous looking grid design. It’s been done before, once, in 2019, and four times with the 6-block clusters reversed (first done in 2018 by Joon Pahk). And may it continue. I love its elegance, and its six intersecting 11-letter answers. Do you know how hard it is to fill this in with practically no junk fill?
I don’t need fireworks answers to be satisfied with a puzzle. Fireworks answers are cool and add spark, and let them in whenever possible, is what I say, but my main hope in a puzzle is that it satisfies my brain’s love of cracking riddles. I want vague clues, misdirecting clues, tricky wordplay to overcome, answers I don’t know – barriers to crack and dissolve – minus naticks, and with a spare amount of footholds to get the process rolling.
Today’s puzzle had these things, and enough of them to satisfy my brain’s work ethic. Here’s one example: [Put on the line, say], for LET DRY. That clue has several possible meanings, so I had to wait for crosses. I hadn’t even thought of the clothesline possibility, so when the answer hit me, it brought a double happy-ping of surprise and solve. Moments like that – and this puzzle had a good share – make the solve so satisfying.
I also loved those triple double letters in ZOOMMEETING.
So I came into this grid adoring its beauty, and I left it happy and complete. Thank you so much, DD, for making this!
(My reaction to LET DRY vs. Rex's -- that's what makes the world go round.)
Typical holiday weekend easy. No fight in this one.
Hand up for SNOoTY before SNOTTY, but my precursor to SSHAPE was Skirun, which might have really thrown me off if I had known SHELBY, but I didn't. (Nor the symmetrical TRIXIE.)
Really feels like there is a change going on at the Times of late. This is about the third Wednesday-level puzzle that has run on a Saturday in the last two months. That used to happen a lot with Friday puzzles, but Saturday was kept fairly tough. I know there is a team of editors – maybe one of them is just a particularly poor judge of puzzle difficulty.
I did this in 20 minutes so 'easy' for sure. Held up in the NW with reveal and opeC before EXPOSE and BLOC. I say HEYDAY a lot but it looked funny spelled out - just don't think I'd seen it before, as opposed to heard it. SNObbY held up the SE and I just couldn't parse IATEIT. But those were the only NADIRS.
Long downs and acrosses used to create a feeling like 'ugh I'll never get those without crosses but do enough of these and the answers often leap right to mind. Today's helps push Saturdays from intimidating lengthy slogs to fun, for me, and I appreciate that. Especially today. Up and at 'em. Lots to do and miles to go this Labor Day weekend, can't believe fall's in the air already.
One of the easiest Saturdays ever for me *except* for the NE, which had a couple of Naticks - never heard of Zener cards, DANNY Deever, or TRIXIE Mattel. But elsewhere there were lots of gimmes and I liked the long answers, all of which were easy. I especially liked ZOOMMEETING and STEAMEDOPEN.
Maybe your college roommate was more considerate when seeking alone time with their date
I had major foot surgery and one of the nice parts of that are the prescription opiates I get. I wean myself off them during the week which gives me a nice stockpile to take recreationally on the weekend. A triple dose of Oxycodone will take you to a state of zen before you fall sound asleep.
Opiates also make you absent minded, yet I still finished this puzzle in 12 minutes 12 seconds, despite being fully wrecked. It was fun, but still not a Saturday puzzle. Either that or I didn’t take enough dope.
Has been a common college term for at least 25 years. If a roommate brings someone home before you and locks the door, then you have to go elsewhere.
Could someone please explain SEXILED?
Exiled from your dorm room so your roommate can have sex
What a complete dud this puzzle was. The potential of the grid shape makes the disappointment all the worse. When a themeless winds up being this easy I take it as a sign that the constructor took on a grid that was out of his league.
Above all else a Saturday puzzle should have Saturday resistance
. It was not to be found in any section of today's offering. The SE corner was particularly soft. I filled it in without ever reading the clues for the bottom two crosses. I only read the clue for 52A because I needed to confirm that 41 F would be SNOTTY as opposed to the more apt SNOoTY.
yd pg -1, Tu-Thu -0, Mon pg -2, Sun -4 (including a pangram!) Sat -0
I was vacillating between SNOOTY and SNOBBY, both of which actually mean "stuck-up." But "SNOTTY" means something different: bratty and insolent. I get the feeling that the editors were so excited to have the ambiguity--what Rex calls a "Kialoa"--that they didn't stop to think whether the clue actually made sense.
Jim Horne at xwordinfo just yesterday said this, "Themeless crossword constructors think hard about their 1-Across answer the same way novelists deliberate over their opening sentence — they want it to shine, to entice, to be memorable." Not so in today's NYT. SSHAPE is a really ugly lead off.
Exiled while your roomie has sex.
Easy for a Saturday. I had "PEI" for the architect for a long time, then HYPNOSIS led me to "LIN." Hard to believe there were two prominent architects whose last names had only three letters.
Reporting from beautiful downtown Denver, NC – pretty easy for a Saturday. Only hiccups were the same as others: “air dry” before LET DRY, “snooty” before SNOTTY, and “Rhadamanthine” before STERN just kidding.
@Lewis – you speaka my language. I had the same feeling for LET DRY.
SNOTTY doesn’t really feel “stuck up” to me. I mean, stuck-up people can be SNOTTY, but so can regular people. You can be driving around in a used Datsun 310 with a garbage-bagged rear passenger window and still be SNOTTY to people without being stuck-up. Happens all the time.
Know who absolutely cannot be snooty? Anyone in a SIDECAR. Riding in a SIDECAR screams I am a needless part of this enterprise, but I’ll smile and wear my sunglasses and scarf ‘cause it’s all good and I’m a good sport.
I laughed at the clue for 52A. I remember being obsessed with asking Siri ridiculous questions when I first discovered him. Siri doesn’t know the muffin man, but he does know he lives on Drury Lane. Once I told Siri to add dry erase markers to my grocery list, and when I got to the store, I saw that he had spelt (My Siri is a snooty British man) it dry erase marker’s. Warning, people, we’re just a couple decades out from accepting that an apostrophe can mark a plural. It’s a force too big to fight. Relax. No biggie, honestly.
DOOhickey is fun, but my go-to placeholder is thingamajig or simply thingy. I remember in French I learned it was machin truc and in German it’s dingsbums. I imagine such words are universal, and what’s really cool is that you can have a thought, but you can’t retrieve the word for the thought. This proves that not all thoughts are couched in actual language. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I ATE IT. Ok. So I come home from school last Tuesday, and Mom pounces, unleashing this torrent of I cleaned out the fridge the carrots were flimsy so I threw them out the Monterey Jack was starting to mold so I threw that out the celery was flimsy too so I threw that out and that ham you bought last month was slimy and smelled off but I ATE IT and kept it down. Wait. What? I got so tickled I couldn’t even speak.
SEXILED: In college dorm (or elsewhere) some sign put on the door (e.g. a sock on the doorknob) warning roommate not to enter because one is .. shall we say… getting busy inside the room
Again with those big black Tetris blocks. Liked the center stacks but the corners felt off. A little SEX sub-theme is cool. SHELBY was a gimme - so that corner fell quickly. The entire puzzle felt more Friday like.
USURPS is on my Mt Rushmore of words. ZOOM this. Are HEIFERS lactosexual? Joyce Randolph is the only TRIXIE I recognize.
A real gem from ARMED FORCES
A decent solve. Try Anna Stiga’s handsome tri-stacks in the Stumper for a little more edge.
Loved it!
It will never not annoy me when Spanish words with (assumed) ñs cross English words without them, but that is a personal pet peeve.
My other nit to pick this week is that I have never heard of Uno requiring one to amass 500 points, and neither has my roommate; it ends when a player runs out of cards...does anyone actually play this way?
Didn't think of zigzag for 1A. In fact, I didn't think of anything and attacked the downs. 3D and 4D were gimmies and although I never saw Ford vs. Ferrari, I was able to extract SHELBY from my memory banks as having been Ford-related. 15A was straightforward, as was 17A after a brief PEI detour. 21A and 25A followed quickly, and that gave me enough for the rest of the NW. And, as OFL noted, the NW was the hardest part.
My only other major overwrite was SNObbY before SNOTTY, which I believe is a better fit for the clue (Hi, @LMS)
Today is a good day, because besides knowing SHELBY, I also knew something that OFL had never heard of, viz., DANNY Deever. It was the kind of puzzle where I kept thinking, "I bet that's ____", and it was. Did the SNOOTY for SNOTTY thing, but that was it for do overs. In other words, way too easy for a Saturday.
Still an enjoyable solve with lots of fun answers and not much junk. Missed the cotton gin connection but had it filled from crosses and didn't really stop to think about it. Considered RAPNAME before RAPSTAR but the ESP thing took care of that.
Oh, and the plural of SENOR is SENORES, por favor.
Nice smooth Saturdecito, DD, but I Double Dare you to come up with something a little more challenging. Thanks for the fun.
I had never heard it, but once I figured it out, the meaning was obvious and delightful. This is clearly the word to describe the "scarf tied around thr doorknob" state.
Wordle 441 4/6*
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⬜⬜🟦⬜⬜
⬜🟧🟧🟧🟧
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
After total miss with the seed had to rely on the exclusions. Interestingly, a good seed can sometimes be quite useful even when it bombs. Obviously this wasn’t going to be another 3, but 4 was within range thanks to the 10 exclusions and the answers unusual vowel pattern.
Re today’s puz: NETYIELD is a strange way of stating an investment return as to ‘yield’ is already ‘net’. Specifically, yield = ‘net realized return’. So a correct answer to this clue might be NETRETURN.
Being an olympics and a crossword junky, I was certain that 1A had something to do with the letter S. But it took the downs to get S SHAPE started. Something about the double S rankled. Go figure. SEXILED? Never heard it. Not a fan. Just kind of over the current love affair with portmanteaus (portmanteaux?). Sure, this was easy; ties my Saturday record.
What’s important to me though, is (shoutout to @Lewis here) the cleverness and misdirection that, while not ramped up to Saturday level, was very enjoyable. Digital filing service? gave me a chuckle. Remembering the old Looney Toons intro and closing credit animation was also a treat. We were allowed one hour of Saturday morning television as kids and it was always those cartoons. Thanks PORKY!
My one nit was the literal almost dictionary-like long center answers. Neither surprising nor clever and wasy to suss out. I got STEAMED OPEN and ARMED FORCES instantly. I did het a chuckle from EXPOSE crossing SEXILED despite my lack of enthusiasm for the term. Why so we need the portmanteau when everybody who has ever lives in a dorm (well maybe not at some very strict universities) knows the meaning of “(insert random item) over the doorknob”. Why do we need a silly word for it? Makes the interlude sound DIRTY MINDED. Back in the day dorm privacy was hard to come by!
OK, that’s it for the mini-rant. In enjoyed this amusing, light and mostly clever little offering.
This is a blog about the NYT crossword puzzle, not the Wordle. So it would be great if commenters could take their comments to about the Wordle somewhere else, and if the moderators would delete them.
I'm sure many of us have exciting interests outside of crossword puzzles but somehow we manage not to post random comments about them here.
Agree with this - well put. However, too many of today’s clues were just straight definition #1 from the dictionary. See the clues for RANK AND FILE, NADIR, NET YIELD, SHADIER. Would prefer more crunch on a Saturday. Record time for me, right at my Tuesday average.
@LMS Thanks for the chuckle! I can’t tell you how many times in the first 30 years of our MARRIEDLIFE my husband, sighed, shook his head, and said “When will you ever learn?” when I felt sick from eating something. (Fortunately he hasn’t had cause to say it for quite some time.) Guess your mom has a great immune system thanks to not eating too clean! I noticed the veggies didn’t merit salvage operations.
I liked seeing PORKY, STEAMEDOPEN, MANIPEDI. HEYDAY was good too. I've never chatted with SIRI. She's always popping up when I'm in the middle of something. I also started with zigzag, but it was PASS that set me straight.
I seldom start in the Northwest. Maybe I look at 1A first, but if it isn't obvious I just scan the clues till I see something obvious. In this case, DANNY Deever. And more often than not on late week puzzles, as on this one, the Northwest is the last to fall, I suspect they tend to make them harder than the rest of the puzzle.
My biggest problem today, by the way, was thinking Actor Reynolds was BURT. No idea who that RYAN guy is.
What’s the sixth of the ARMED FORCES? Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space (!), and? Coast Guard?
Amy: 100% with Twangster. I do Wordle later, with a friend, so including your Wordle score means I just skip your comment entirely.
This was easy but also breezy; enjoyed the solve.
@Twangster - Now you’ve done it. Complaints about Wordle posts requires everyone now post their Wordle Scores. Thems the laws.
Wordle 441 5/6*
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🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Remember, Scroll On By.
Hand Up for SNObbY and SNOoTY fitting the clue but SNOTTY being something else entirely.
Hand Up for easy Saturday.
LET DRY - Hmmmm, closer to Rex than @Lewis and @Muse on this. Possibly because I, too, had air DRY first and that’s a superior answer, IMO. Pondering this I think it’s that LET DRY seems so passive. I can’t easily come up with a phrase where I would use LET DRY. OTOH, air DRY is in the language.
Wrote in pei but immediately wondered if it was LIN. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was designed by Maya LIN, so, yes, here is one name I think every American should be required to know.
Saw through the MANI PEDI clue immediately. I still like it.
That central stack looks like cover ideas for a Harlequin Romance. (Do the still publish Harlequin Romances?)
@LMS - Regarding apostrophes, unlike oral language, I think written conventions tend to persist and I suspect the apostrophe conventions will beat back the change incursion. Not because there is anything sacred about apostrophic usage, but just because it is useful for clarity of understanding.
A David Distenfeld puzzle is always worth the price of admission just for the opportunity to read his thoughts on XWord info. Hilarity.
Good name for the inhouse Mani Pedi salon at the independent living complex, Pruning Seniors. Pix gets me every time because it should be Pics. Do we need an abbreviation of an abbreviation? Have we sunk that low?
Sexiled, Expose, Dirty Minded, Steamed Open, plus the law firm of Trixie, Atilt, Heyday & Shadier LLP representing former presidents. This was full of lively language. Loved it. True love.
Wordle 441 3/6*
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⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Worried that was not it, spent a lot of time identifying 2 other possible words, based on what I had left, but they seemed more obscure.
As for today's puzzle, was very easy for me, maybe a Saturday record. Yesterday too, that was a Friday record.
Suzanne Somer got so rich pushing that contraption! It looks like Rex took that commercial down? I watched it a few hours ago. It was like soft porn, the thighmaster ad. She is a quack.
Re Wordle: Per George M. Cohan, “I don’t care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right.”
Big question. Are you SEXILED because...
*You've been caught having sex in your dorm room?
*Your roommate is planning to have sex in your dorm room and wants you out of there?
*You're the wrong sex for that particular dorm room?
Just asking for a friend.
BTW, I wonder if this puzzle was planned around SEXILED plunging into DIRTYMINDED below? Just asking for a friend.
And close by is EYE UP, which I assume means starting at someone's nether regions and working your way up to her forehead? Google was SNOTTY to me when I tried to find EYE UP as a real phrase.
I don't mind SNOTTY instead of SNOOTY as an answer, but I do mind it when what you've clued is actually SNOOTY and not SNOTTY.
I won't even mention all the names in this puzzle. No one ever listens to me when I complain about them, so what's the point? I solved with one arm coiled in hurling position, but since I managed to solve cleanly despite the names, my wall is safe for another day.
Pop guns used to shoot corks back when I was a child in the 1950's.
Surprisingly quick solve for me and only a couple of research opportunities. LIN, SHELBY, ORA and DANNY might have been grokkable, but I rarely give Friday or Saturday puzzles much of a chance before I go visit Uncle G. They're usually not worth the effort, especially when there's pizza to be had at Costco as an alternative to staring at blank squares and wishing for Monday.
I've now read Danny Deever, regarded as "the most significant of Kipling's early work," and arrived at the conclusion I don't need to hurry and read more of him. If that's as good as it gets, maybe the K man isn't for me.
ASKEW before ATILT. SNOBBY before SNOTTY.
Yays:
MANI-PEDI clue was great. Digital filing. Har. Plus SIRI is hanging out two rows down doing her own filing.
I had a crush on Suzanne Somers until she came out with the thigh exercising contraption. Then my love for her felt cheap.
STEAMED OPEN is a sweet link between mussels and letters. Unfortunately all the other long acrosses and downs seem dull. I find it amazing those long side-by-sides exist, but the six as a whole aren't very zoomie.
Boos:
EYE UP?
SEXILED and worse yet DIRTY MINDED. As with yesterday, the dog days of summer are forcing our lonely NYTXW editors to get their tee-hees (LNETHS) anyway possible. Those NYC studios without air conditioning are too hot for them to calm themselves down (apparently). Yet my pearl clutching reaction isn't a one-way street. Dirty minded is a disparaging remark invented by the good folks bringing you the equally unnecessary and patriarchal celebration of virginity from Thursday. How 'bout letting your mind and body be whatever they want to be without so much Judge-y McJudgerson and then extend the courtesy to the rest of humanity?
Uniclues:
1 One who will be forgotten tomorrow.
2 Wear flip-flops without gloves.
3 Mariachi members in their underwear waiting for the sun to solve the problem of mixing Guantanamera and tequila.
4 He finally went home.
5 Dirty minds according to the NYTXW.
1 HEYDAY RAP STAR
2 EXPOSE MANI-PEDI
3 SENORS LET DRY
4 SEXILED NO MORE
5 SHADIER NADIRS (~)
@Anonymous 8:59 AM
The sixth branch is the Space Force, which I'm not shitting you actually exists. They're on the bottom of the pecking order, beneath the Air Force and the Coast Guard.
@ Twangster, I was in the submarine service, which of course is the best of the best, bar none. We were better than astronauts, except they do their thing on live TV and we were not allowed to even talk about what we did. The Silent Service. We operated in a harsher environment, in a vastly more complex vessel (the most complex ever made), operating completely independently of even our own command agency with no ground support whatsoever, carrying Trident rockets that were launched into outer space before the warheads returned to target, while being hunted by every other navy including our own, in an ice-cold pressurized saltwater environment with a 78MW nuclear power plant with four million watts of electrical generating power, and did all this in complete silence while watching movies and eating fresh baked cinnamon rolls. We got paid the most in the whole military too, which isn't much but it tells you something. Meanwhile, the first astronauts were monkeys (okay chimps which are apes but monkey is a funnier word). Only the moon landing guys were better than us. I hope this answered your question, @Twangster. If you want to hang out and do drugs with me just come on over I have enough to share.
Hey All !
My stupid phone decided to lose internet access, thereby losing my comment. I know you all need my daily thoughts about the puz (Har), so now I'll try it on the computer.
If I found this puz easy, almost my best time, then I'm expected a lot of "This was my best time ever on a SatPuz" comments.
Agree with @Lewis on the hair-tearing of filling that center conglomeration of 11's cleanly. Ain't easy to do. Also liked the reversed @M&A's Jaws of Themlessness. Normally, the Jaws are flipped, making the answers stair-stepped. If you know what I'm saying.
I'm supposed to know who TRIXIE Mattel is? Is he/she on the RuPaul show?
EXPOSE crossing SEXILED crossing DIRTY MINDED gets me all STEAMED. I need to LET DRY.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Thx, David, 'yas', 'jas' & YESES to a fine Sat. puz! :)
East-med.
Smooth sailing with no major hitches on this one.
Solved in a Spiral SHAPE, from the NW, down and around to the Mid-west, then down the middle, ending with ZOOM MEETING.
Had MiNI PEDI, so RANK AND FILE was hard to see.
POP EYE sez, "I YAM what I YAM and that's all what I YAM", (and he's got the 'mussels' to prove it)!
The 'six branches' of the ARMED FORCES:
Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corp, Navy & Space Force (The National Guard and Reserves are included in these 'branches').
Always enjoy the occasional easy Sat. :)
Very smooth NYT' Cryptic puz this week; by far the easiest to date. Have been doing the NYT' archived cryptics starting in '97; up to '08, so far.
As PORKY would say, "That's all folks".
___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊, and a Happy Labor Day weekend; God Bless all you hard workers out there! 🙏
This was a fun puzzle for me. Also a personal best for a Saturday. I probably could have done it faster had I not done it while eating breakfast.
I enjoy reading about other people’s experiences doing the puzzle. I don’t particularly enjoy reading about other people’s experiences with the Wordle or Spelling Bee, or with prescription-drug abuse, but I’d much prefer to skip over the comments I do not enjoy vs. having an admin or a moderator decide what I’m allowed to read.
I hadn't seen SEXILED before. Kind of like it.
I've seen a million Porky Pig cartoons and never noticed him bursting out a drum. One of the joys of solving: figuring out a word from the crosses and learning something about it from the clue.
After getting a few gimmes, it fell apart. But in a pleasing way. Liked it.
Wordle 441 4/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Why does the clue for SEXILED have "in a way" added at the end? It's a perfect clue without it, especially in a Saturday puzzle.
Out of curiosity I did a clue search on IN A WAY at XWordInfo. It's been used 100 times since November 2021. Usually the clue contains a generic action or status that could have various meanings; or the clue or answer might function as different parts of speech depending on its context. Examples:
• Cover, in a way – VEIL
• Smooth, in a way – SAND
• Takes a car, in a way – UBERS
• Prioritize, in a way – RANK
• Age, in a way – GRAY
• Display one's humanity, in a way – ERR
In all of those the answer is a specific pinning down of the more general thing presented in the clue. But today we get the ultra-specific clue:
• Temporarily banished from a dorm room"
But only "in a way". What else could the clue possibly make you think of? Cockroaches, with EXTERMINATED as the answer?
Even if you've never heard the term "sexiled", I don't see how "in a way" is necessary, or helpful, here. It actually threw me off for a second.
≈≈≈
Would have preferred an 18a clue about this.
@Mathgent – Here's Porky.
John x,
Um.No. Fighter pilots were and are the best of the best.
Submariners are, as you know, chosen as much for their psychological profiles as anything else. You know, weirdos who need no genuine interpersonal skills nor change of scenery.
Sure, the subs were amazing along with their death dealing weapons. But they were hardly the top of the technological pyramid. Those boomers weren’t even as sophisticated as an F-, and that bird is more than 60 years old. Any of the latest fighters ( hell include bombers and spy planes too) are world’s more sophisticated than your tin can.
RECORD TIME for us today... but it was a great and fun puzzle. Especially loved STEAMEDOPEN, MARRIED LIFE, and ZOOMMEETING, along with NET YIELD and IATEIT esp. as clued. THANKS, David. --Rick (and Jared)
Oh, cool. A Saturday for beginners. Jeezus...
steamed open / repro was difficult. I've never heard of steaming open letters, and I still don't know what repro means.
The puzzle had to be easy because my time was 20 seconds over John X but I work it on coffee, not opioids. I usually float around a Saturday puzzle for a bit looking for a toe hold but not today. I think I might miss that usual initial feeling of stupidity on Saturday morning.
You better bet I always start my ZOOMMEETINGs with a screen test to make sure I have no embarrassing mascara smudges or whatnot. Kind of interesting because I don’t remember feeling like I had to find a mirror before “in-person” meetings before the pandemic.
Hand up for SNObbY and SNOoTY. In my mind, being “stuck up” conveys that you don’t want to even give someone the time of day whereas if you are SNOTTY you will not hesitate to give the time of day but in a nasty-ass manner.
I did enjoy the cross of “rank and FILE” with “mani pedi”.
Took me a minute to realize that you don’t open a champagne bottle with a POP GUN.
Liked the puzzle a lot, though it seemed at first too difficult and in the end too easy. Lots of great fill, from DIRTY MINDED to SEXlLED. But what do you call it when you’re temporarily banished from a ZOOM MEETING?
Took 8 minutes off of my previous best Saturday time (from just under 28 to just under 20 minutes). With both the Friday and Saturday under 20 minutes, I'm thinking the idea of easy holiday weekend puzzles may be correct?
Had MANIcure before MANIPEDI as the only write-over. Not sure why "air DRY" is more active than "LET DRY." Seems they both involve the same amount of effort.
If @Rex typed in "triple sex" three times before "triple sec," does that mean he's 29A?
I'm a Duotrigordle guy (Hi @Roo), but decided to give the daily Wordle a go today (heeding @Zed's (9:13 AM) admonition, and echoing @Gio's (9:25 AM) result).
Wordle 441 3/6*
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
___
Peace 🙏 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🕊
Just for fun, I searched Google Books for SEXILE and my initial quick search found the earliest printed reference in 1994, which sounds about right, as that's when I entered college and remember the word from back then.(My search was not exhaustive--you might find and earlier one, but I found a bunch of references clumping around the 90s). Me and my roommate's signal was the word "FARB" ("find another room buddy") written on the whiteboard for when we wanted a little alone time. The tie or sock thing was just a little too conspicuous for our tastes.
@jim - "Repro" is short for "reproduction." It is a word, valid in Scrabble, too. Steaming open letters I know mostly from TV shows where somebody wanted to surreptitiously open a letter without the other person knowing about it (espionage, snooping, etc.) I suppose one may do that with love letters, too, to preserve them? Sounds like it could have been a thing at a time, but I don't know of the reference.
49A, I DO, shares the grid with a Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW), I DO (actually that's two words). The hidden diagonal I DO oddly begins with the I in the square where MARRIED LIFE and DIRTY-MINDED intersect, and moves to the SE.
Just sayin'.
Hah – I just remembered: in 1978 NYC's WABC refused to play this major hit song, due to its supposed prurience.
So you might say that Exile got sexiled. In a way.
(WABC eventually relented and started playing it when it was falling off the charts everywhere else. Meanwhile they had played "Hot Child In The City", wherein Nick Gilder is ostensibly trying to seduce jailbait, for its entire run. Go figure.)
I don't know if it's me or the puzzle that's DIRTY MINDED, but I found plenty of innuendo in this one. Fun to solve and blessedly not too hard, as I recover, not from a night of opiates (hi, @John X) but of too much Badger volleyball excitement (unfurling of national championship banner followed by nail biter). Unlike @Beezer 10:20, I did (satisfyingly) experience that "initial feeling of stupidity on Saturday morning," as I wasn't able to write anything in until 4 rows in; but LIN, SUZANNE, and PIX then gave me what I needed for a very enjoyable ramble through the rest.
@Loren, re ROGUE apostrophes: A favorite family example from a long ago vacation is trash cans peppering a beach all neatly stenciled TRAH'S.
Am I the only one to have plopped in SNObbY before SNOTTY, or SNOoTY even?
@Anonymous 10:05 AM
Sorry young lady, you've got it mixed up.
Submariners are chosen for their good looks. Fighter pilots are chosen because they're midgets.
“Early role for Ron Howard” was a Monday level gimme for OPIE.
“Boy at Bee’s knees”, “TV role that sounds like consecutive letters”, “Taylor-made ‘60s child”. Something. ANYTHING!
.If the answer is an Xword staple, put some degree of difficulty on what’s supposed to be the toughest day of the week…
Neither my roommate nor I cared for being "sexiled". We ended up having a lot of threesomes when one of us arrived to find the other had "company".
Sooo … can an entire clientele be SEXILED from Denny's, say? My college days (back before electricity) lacked the term, but not entirely the concept. Concept is thus at least ALUM-sexual.
Hey, @RP -- if U run into a dab of GREENPAINT stuff in yer solvequest, just move on and LET it DRY.
This SatPuz did indeed feel slightly nanosecond-friendly, at our house. Like: If it's a puz about nuthin, keep things movin. Only total no-knows: SUZANNE & TRIXIE.
fave stuff: quad Jaws of Themelessness. SEXILED. DIRTYMINDED. SNOTTY. HEYDAY. ARMEDFORCES with that spacey Trump branch in it. DOO-hickeys earned in the sex aisle.
staff weeject pick: DOO. Replete with that there aptly desperate clue. Primoo stuff.
Thanx for all the cool words, Mr. Distenfeld dude. Good work. Nice, smoooth SatPuz. Doo more.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
I also started with ZIGZAG and SNOOTY, but after correcting those mistakes ended up with my second-best Saturday time ever. Thanks, David, for an enjoyable solve!
@Nancy (9:28) “I solved with one arm coiled in hurling position….” LOL! You cracked me up this morning.
I always approach Saturday with my thesaurus and cheating materials at the ready but hardly needed them today. Even the many proper names were fairly easy and fairly crossed. I liked STEAMED ARMED FORCES over OATHS and PRUNING SENORS. However I’m not sure how SUZANNE would feel about being paired with PORKY and please don’t even think about trying to EXPOSE my MANI PEDI.
I didn’t know what SEXILED meant because we didn’t do such things back in my college days … she said while clutching her pearls.
But I did know what a ROGUE HEIFER is and I have rounded up a few of those in my lifetime. When I lived in the Denver suburbs, the land behind at my subdivision was still OPEN Prairie. Today it is an established municipality known as Highlands Ranch. There were cows roaming and often herds of antelope. Being a farm girl, I loved it and so did the woman next door who was from Iowa. Occasionally when the cows decided to USURP the fence, she and I would have to go rescue them from the apoplectic neighbors and lead the gentle creatures back home.
So proud to be "just like Rex" the last two days in that I confidently entered 1A answers onto a blank grid that turned out to be wrong, wrong, wrong and then had to backtrack. Completely different answers though, as Friday I boldy put in VACATIONS for "subjects of some family planning" (hey, VANS sounded good as a Dutch show company, too!) and today it was SKI RUN. A quick solve (for me) and some good cluing, but I'm really bugged by señors instead of señores.
John x
How about we meet, man to girl and you can explain it all to me face to face, I feel perfectly safe meeting a strange man all alone. Normally I wouldn’t. But your long service sequestered w nothing but men in very close quarters tells me I have nothing to fear from you.
I promise to talk real slow so too, so you can understand. All that time under pressure has softened your brain.
Pretty much the same in the way of comments and reaction as I posted yesterday. Regardless of what they mean for the constructors (whose comments are published elsewhere), I would prefer less names.
I agree with what Z posted yesterday, but still wonder if late week names veer more off into trivia land than earlier week PPP.
Now on to my college class reunion. At least a reunion of those who are still living. I wonder how many of us still have as much hair as we used to. I shall see.
Lewis, your early comment about the design sent me back to look at it again—you’re right—it’s gorgeous! I’m gonna try it as a quilt pattern (it’s kinda swirly); maybe I should check out other grids for inspiration. Then I’ll post pictures of my quilts! Hey, if the Wordlers do it, why not me?
Easy and slightly easier than yesterday’s for me. I’m pretty sure I haven’t all of a sudden gotten exponentially better at this, so it must be a that Shortz wanted to give everyone plenty of time to party over Labor Day weekend.
air DRY before LET DRY, changing SNOoTY to SNOOTY (hi @Rex) and spelling SUZANNE with an s at first were it for erasures.
Pretty smooth and a tad racy, liked it.
Well gosh! I’m so old that SEXILED sailed past my wheelhouse window without leaving an impression. And forgetting that hay is for horses, not HaYDAY didn’t help. Loved the grid with its whimsical intersections as many have already noted; my sweet Aussie SIRI however was unable to find the missing porterhouse cuts though several reefs were visible. Fun & done.
There's something wrong when I can fill in a Saturday NYTCW in under 11 minutes. My only real hold-up was thinking of “PinKY and the Brain” instead of PORKY Pig at 23A. And not remembering if Ms. Somers' first name was SUZANNE or a variation, SUsANNE. With PinKY in the way, neither SiO nor ZiO was promising for 19D but that helped me dump PinKY, at which point I remembered PORKY and the drum-bursting.
I ATE IT brings to mind both “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar” (though I don't think anyone is accused of eating it in the game) and the fourth verse of “Found a Peanut”, https://www.lyricsondemand.com/miscellaneouslyrics/childsongslyrics/foundapeanutlyrics.html.
There was a lot to like in this puzzle, but it was just clued too easy for a Saturday. Thanks, David Distenfeld.
Easy? I didn't have an across I was confident enough to write in until I got to ORA. After that it was OK.
@whatsername, yeah, back in my time you had to leave the door open and have one foot on the floor at all times. But my step-grandson reported being subject to SEXILE last year (when asked where he went, he said "use your imagination.")
@John-X, well, technically speaking, I guess the Space Force is at the top and the Submarine Service at the bottom.
Isn't the plural of Senor SENORes? (with the tilde added). That crossing AEONS crossing ATILT was the most annoying part of this puzzle; but MANI-PEDI made up for it., especially with echo of 'filing' in the clue for SERVICE.
Oh, I have no problem with LET DRY. To me that describes what you do when you hang clothes on an old fashioned clothesline. In our house, my wife air dries some of her clothes indoors, and letting them dry outside in the sun might ruin them.
I loved SEXILED. My best drinking buddy in college was also quite the Lothario, and very often he would just walk into his double room with a girl and ask his roomie to make himself scarce for a while. The bonus for the roomie? Every once in a great while, he got to join in the fun. The tie or scarf on the door thing was in those days more of an Ivy League phenomenon.
I do think the puzzle was absurdly Easy for a Saturday. Either there aren't many good Saturday level puzzles in the queue, or the editor was very amused by some of the clues, as for HYPNOSIS and SIRI and DIRTY MINDED and IATEIT. I was.
Plus, the crosses really helped. Would never have guessed HEIFERS without crosses but as it was it went right in.
Yes.
I guess I was the only one who had a MONDAY in the prime time slot.
I always like to start with a 1A smile and it's twin 1D It tends to SHAPE my mind-set. It gets you in the mood. I've been jumping to the bottom pits lately to see if I can get a scent of an AHA/OHO. I liked USURP. at 36D. How do you pronounce it? UH SURPS or YOU SURPS. We all SURP together.
I also liked I ATE IT. Best ads ever and it made Wendy's proud to be the "Home of the Big Buns." Speaking of Buns...I like PORKY. The Brazilian buns lift gives you a PORKY look in your hiney. Do you then become SEX ILED? Or is my MIND playing DIRTY with me?
I didn't know TRIXIE but I like her/him's crossing PIX. A PIX full of TRIX.
I give this a thumbs up because I was able to figure out the names all on my own. I even knew it was RYAN thumbing a nose at Burt. Says a lot about me.
@pablito. My nose did a tweak at SENORS as well...The lack of a written accent or mistaking HABER with AVER...Haya/Alla...this list goes on. The ANO debate will go on for AEONS.....
I've had about enough Wordle bigotry today. Har!*
*It's actually kinda amusing, IN A WAY.
Space Force, yet another cockamamie "idea" from the reptilian brain stem of The Orange Sh!tgibbon (not my coinage, but I cleave).
why do the young-uns use the term SEXILED these days??? from what I read in my QAnon feed, the Radical Left has instituted only group sex amongst the college cabal. good looking instructors are welcome, of course.
@Zed (9:13) Call off the Wordle police. I’ve done my part. 😆
Wordle 441 4/6
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@Micah - the UNO rules specify playing to 500 points.
Be careful, anonymous person. I hope you run out of meds soon.
For @Z
Some days I'm smarter than today.
Wordle 441 X/6*
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩
⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩
⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩
⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩
Yeah, I thought I was super-smart filling in —-ICURE for the digital file clue, knowing I’d come back later to put in MAN or PED. So ya got me after all. Appropriate, I guess, to have RANK AND FILE crossing MANIPEDI as some of those toes probably smell pretty RANK as they are being FILEd.
Also had SNOBBY, which is a much better answer for the clue, as is others’ choice of SNOOTY. Also had SEEDIER instead of SHADIER right next door, and I like my answer better there too. Wondering why seeds and shade, both things I like perfectly well, came to mean disreputable with a Y on the end. Also, FILLIES before HEIFERS.
Hoped that SENORS and AEONS wouldn’t be right, but alas, they were. Should be SENOReS, of course, and no one in the past eight centuries has written AEON except in a crossword puzzle.
All that complaining aside, I did find it super easy and pretty fun. SEXILED is certainly clever (never heard it), but feels like it should mean you’re the one having sex, not the one not having sex.
@LMS@Nancy@Zed
Oxford:
Snotty definition
2. having or showing a superior or conceited attitude
That sounds snobby to me, and definition one is of course the literal drooling nose.
Cambridge goes with:
rude and behaving badly, especially by treating other people in a way that shows that you believe yourself to be better than them.
M-W agrees more with your point of view but does add rude and arrogant as a definition. Maybe a slight US-UK divide going on.
Wordle 441 4/6*
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟦🟧
🟧⬛🟧🟧🟧
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
But I had a 3 by intent. I decided on one of 2 words, the correct one. I typed the first letter in, got distracted when asked a question about The African Queen, and typed in a third word with a letter that had already been eliminated. Thus a 4 for the official record book.
Banged through it with a Saturday PR 4:36. Could’ve been faster if not for a momentary misfire in SW.
Mods,
Please remove @The Cleaver posts. He/she never says anything about the puzzle, just goes on a political rant everytime. If political views other than your own never get published, why do I have to listen to that buffoon?
@11:33
All that time under pressure has softened your brain.
I like the simile, but submariners don't exist at sea-depth pressure. The boats do, of course, which is why they're made from pretty exotic alloys. Even so, they have a maximum depth/pressure. OTOH, scuba divers do go to depths that affect the bloodstream; don't recall said depth (that such exists is all that matters). it's simple to go beyond the safe depth (ditto) where you can return in a straight ascent. go below that, and your return requires a pause at stepped depths. can take a dog's age to surface.
@Mary McCarty -- Go for it!
ZOOM SESSION for ZOOM MEETING, once I was sure it was SUZANNE not SUSANNE.
If some of us can complain about Wordle stuff, which is clearly tagged in color and so can be easily scrolled past, let me complain about some other posts. "This puzzle is too (hard/easy) for a (day of the week)." More to come.
@bocamp: "The 'six branches' of the ARMED FORCES: Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corp, Navy & Space Force"
Yes. Four of those branches date back to the founding of the U.S. (Coast Guard just a bit later). The Air Force was part of the Army until after WW II, and we've all heard about the brand new Space Force. From what I've seen of their civilian hiring ads, they seem most interested in cybersecurity and intelligence, which makes some sense; I expect that will evolve over time.
@12:57
SPACE FORCE is addressed in the comments on ARMED FORCES. I have every right to call it out for what it is. The MAGA FORCE can be annoyed by being called out, but that's their problem, not mine.
@LMS. I always love your comments. Your SIRI questions reminded me of the time I randomly asked Alexa where was the best food in the world. She opined that it is in first class on a flight from New York to LA. I forget which airline.
ADO DOO adds to the DIRTYMINDED pleasure of this puzzle, as long as you don’t STEPIN it,
YESES DOESN’T look right. YESSES seems better. YESES seems like how a Scandinavian might address our lord and savior.
What did the toenail filing specialist say when asked to file a guy’s fingernails? MAN I PEDI.
Why is an ethnic slur like a motorcycle attachment going backwards? They’re each a RACEDIS.
Lovely, though easy, puzzle. Thanks, David Distenfeld.
@Twangster 8:30 AM I'm sure many of us have exciting interests outside of crossword puzzles but somehow we manage not to post random comments about them here.
Um, probably half of the daily comments are random comments about people's outside interests. Whether much reading goes on around here is still the unverified hypothesis.
I thought Space Force was created by Greg Daniels and Steve Carrell
Wordle 441 6/6 (with a thanks to Twangster!)
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜🟨🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Didn't care for today's Wordle, as there were far too many possibilities for the first letter.
Loved today's puz however. Found the NW corner to be the toughest by far; otherwise a fairly easy Saturday. Not my fastest, but well below my average.
And found today's SB to be curiously challenging. Do they get tougher as the week progresses? I hadn't discerned any pattern but maybe yes?
@pmdm - My impression is that the PPP entries do not get more trivial, but the cluing for them often does. SUZANNE Somers doesn’t get clued today by Three’s Company or Step by Step, but by “hall of fame of infomercials.” No caps, so apparently just a metaphorical hall of fame, at that. I went with SUZANNE because she’s the only puzzle worthy Somers I know, but that is the most trivial trivia clue I can imagine for SUZANNE.
But then I agree with @Andrew that we got a Monday level OPIE clue.
I’m glad to see so many law abiding commentators today. 🤣😂🤣
@albatross shell - I don’t doubt the usage is valid somewhere. But to my ear it screams more petulant adolescent behavior.
Here to add my rage at SENORS instead of SENORES. Is anyone even editing? If you're going to 'cheat' by adding foreign words that are not in common usage, you might make the extra effort to insure they are spelled correctly. Sheesh.
How did Saturday become Monday? The only poser was the nice Eli. Other than that, a snooze.
Did anybody give a clear answer to @Nancy 9:28 AM?
It's (b): Your roommate is planning to have sex in your dorm room and wants you out of there.
Attractive grid -- nice and open and flowing -- and a quick solve. I did what everyone else did: put down SNOoTY before the less good SNOTTY. I guess both words have something to do with snouts. Looking up the etymology just to be sure, I learn that Old English had a verb "snite" meaning "wipe or pick one's nose". Why we would lose such a useful word beats me. "I caught him sniting, in flagrante delicto".
Also had "air DRY" before LET DRY.
There's a hall of fame for infomercials??
I doubt J.B. Rhine ever corrected for Zener card-counting. I didn't know until now that his parapsychology institute is still going strong and still maintains a journal. Their logo consists of Zener cards! Bah. Such TRIX are for kids.
Th-th-th-th-th that's all, folks!
Nope!
@Zed
I won't argue with your ear if you don't argue with the dictionary. Or if you insist people check the dictionary before disagreeing with LMS, I would insist you check the dictionary before agreeing with LMS. Nor will I deny that I didn't thinking of snooty before snotty.
@camilof
More dictionary pedantry which will change nobody's opinion:
Senor or señor:
a Spanish or Spanish-speaking man —used as a title equivalent to Mr.
plural senors or señores
What a beginning! Lots of white space in my first attempt in the NW. Then, at 16D (Couple years?), I confidently put down Anniversary! And held on to it for way, way too long! But ADO finally gave me a toe hold back in the NW and I went on rapidly, if not confidently, going on to HEYDEY (thought that might be HaYDAY for a moment, but I have horses so HaY is often on my mind; like the phrase “Make HaY while the sun shines”), and things went on from there. Thought YESES had another S in it, but I guess that was used up in 1A. And thought the clue on 36A (Remove, as a corsage) was too easy for a Saturday. I fared much better in the SW therefore. USURPS is one of my favorite words. One hardly gets enough opportunities to use it (though January of 2021 certainly gave it a work-out in my conversations).
I haven’t done a screen test for a ZOOMMEETING in ages. At best, I checked my microphone when I was told that my audio was spotty after getting a new laptop a few months ago.
Liked the clue for SIRI. Figured it would be something cutesy and just needed a few crosses to get the answer. I don’t do that I-business stuff, but I’ve seen enough sit-coms to know she has a sense of humor and that would be just the kind of thing she’d say. Alexa also has that sense of humor, but that was too long for the space.
Was hoping for something more interesting at 52A (..Where’s the beef?}, but OK. Liked the old vibe of SIDECAR and OPIE in the same puzzle as more recent SIRI and RYAN (dreamboat) Reynolds. He was absolutely break-out great in ‘Two Guys, A Girl And a Pizza Place’. No idea why that show didn’t go on to be the next Friends, or How I Met Your Mother or some such iconic show.
So, in general, a nice variety of answers, and I went through it much quicker than expected after my first pass through the NW.
@albatross shell - you might note that in neither of my comments did I say the dictionary was wrong nor did I claim the answer was wrong. Although, looking back at my first comment it is not explicit that “hand up” is short for “hey, I did the same thing for the same reasons,” with no assertion that what I did was correct. If, say, @Cleaver were to cleave to the Orange Sh!tGibbon being both SNOTTY and SNOoTY I would not believe he was being repetitive. But that’s not to say @Cleaver isn’t. And I can easily imagine a usage where SNOTTY gets closer to what I think of as SNOoTY. I just have never noticed that particular usage.
@T Trimble
I don't think @Nancy couldn't figure it out.. I bet she's watching tennis.
To have been exiled so your roommate can have sex
@Zed
I agree. I hope you notice I never said you were wrong only that SNOTTY did carry a meaning of stuck up and the clue was appropriate despite the fact it can also mean what your ear was screaming. In other words read my comments the way you read your own. I won't argue with your ear ...
I do not think anyone had pointed out the dictionary supports the clue. But many seemed to object to it. I do not believe LMS said it was wrong either. Just that she took the word differently. And I acknowledge the way you both took it is justified in American English at the very least.
@ Andrew, superior Opie clues!
@ Nancy, I’m always listening.
Puzzle was way too easy for a Saturday, but it did provide an ego boost.
Winthrop was early role for Ron Howard. Didn’t fit.
You're right, @JC66. I have been watching tennis. Although the comments -- even before TTrimble stepped in to help me out -- made clear that the answer was B: Your roommate wants you out of the room in order to have sex. I did think that was the most likely answer: the word "temporarily" was the tip-off. In my day, if it was you who was caught having sex in the dorm, your SEXILE would most likely be permanent. And @jberg (11:44), I remember that risible "door open, one foot on the floor" rule too. We must have been in college around the same time.
But @jberg, I used my imagination, and I still have no idea where your step-grandson goes during his times of SEXILE. Maybe you can let me know off-blog if you don't want to spill the tea here.
@andrew and @Zed -- I don't know how to break this to you both, but for me there's no such thing as "a Monday level OPIE clue". I mean I'm sort of joking but I'm also really not joking: there absolutely isn't any such thing. I wouldn't know OPIE if I fell over him/her/it.
I can't even remember the last time I commented here, but SENORS is awful. (I am fine with dropping the tilde for an English-language crossword, using it as both an ñ in the one direction and an n in the other, but forcing the English/Spanglish plural is something I was surprised to see.
I was fine with AEONS.
Seriously wish you’d drop in more often!
This one is an epic fail because of SEXILED.
I can make up words too. But they don’t belong in a crossword.
Here’s one: REXILED: adjective (of a person) banished from the Rex Parker crossword blog.
NOMORE made-up words please!
I wanted ZIGZAG too, but was unable to confirm either Z, so held off. My big ink mess was a careless miscount in the middle, when I was so convinced that mussels and some letters were HARDTOOOPEN that that's exactly what I wrote in. (Note the THREE O's.) Not much trouble getting that straightened out, but it looks awful.
A tad soft for a Saturday, but a pleasant solve, and not a lot of yuck, outside of LETDRY, which has already been smacked upside the head. I give it a birdie.
I blanked on my seed too, but sometimes no info is tons of info:
BBBBB
BYYBB
GGGGG
SHADIER PIX
TUT, TUT, IN her HEYDAY SUZANNE
SOON caused CERTAIN HYPNOSIS.
YES, any DIRTYMINDED man
would EYEUP what she EXPOSEs.
--- DANNY RYAN
No write-overs here, so kinda easy. 1d a gimme. SUZANNE Somers was indeed the Thigh Master. Yeah baby. Fun puz.
Wordle bogey after a decent week.
Are you kidding, @Rondo? Kinda easy? I, for one, am taking my many triumph points from this puzzle and carrying them over to some day next week when I will surely need them.
Bit by bit got it!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Sometimes feet are smelly and can be said to be RANK. RANKANDFILE crosses nicely with MANIPEDI.
A Tuesday level puzzle for the most part, partially spoiled by 2,6, and 19 downs, and 50 across.
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