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Anime and manga genre involving robots / SAT 10-1-22 / Hindu embodiment of virtue / Ability to detect misinformation slangily / Strategy to prevent a runner from stealing a base / Who wrote in the morning there is meaning in the evening there is feeling / Sch. that's home to the Keydets / Battle of Isengard fighter / The tongue of the soul per Cervantes
Saturday, October 1, 2022
Constructor: Natan Last
Relative difficulty: Easy (for me ... not sure how the names are gonna play for the gen pop)
Word of the Day: OCEAN VUONG (27D: "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" novelist, 2019) —
Ocean Vuong (born Vương Quốc Vinh, Vietnamese: [vɨəŋ˧ kuək˧˥ viɲ˧]; October 14, 1988) is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. Vuong is a recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant the same year. (wikipedia)
• • •
Anyway, the literature angle was pleasing to me, but of course that is not what makes the puzzle great. The real joy came from how chock full o' original answers this one, as well as how smoothly it flowed. I kept being happily surprised every time I turned a corner. There was no part that felt thrown away or neglected. From CROWDSURFS to SHOOED AWAY, I found this one charming. I might have found it easier than most because I solve the New Yorker crossword every day, and Natan is a regular constructor there. Their puzzles definitely run more literary than the NYTXW (Natan's most recent puzzle for them had ALLEN GINSBURG crossing NIKKI GIOVANNI!). So I've been secretly training for this, you might say. I recommend this same training to you. (YES, YOU!)
After that, the hits just kept coming. From CROWDSURFS to "BLUE'S CLUES" to POSE NUDE to SLUMPED to SUPEREGO, there's really nowhere to get bored. I think the NE corner was probably the weakest section, but it's not actually weak, it just looks a little STALE only by comparison to everything else, so ... we're good. I love the energy of B.S. METER (14D: Ability to detect misinformation, slangily) though I've only ever heard it referred to as a "bullshit detector." If someone said "B.S. METER" I'd probably ask them to repeat themselves. But it feeeeels like something someone would say, and I had no problem getting it, so OK. The only real grimace-face I made today was at DELINT (17D: Use a roller on, in a way), which I don't like as a word despite the fact that with two cats in the house I DELINT (i.e. DECATHAIR) quite a bit. As for MECHA, I recommend (mecha-mend?) that you store that one away, as I have seen it a bunch in other puzzles lately (most recently, I think, the LAT) (1D: Anime and manga genre involving robots). Constructors seem to have gotten wind that it is a thing, and they are beginning to put it into heavy rotation. Had a little trouble in the RAMA / MEMO area, for some reason (mainly just couldn't get MEMO (53A: Format of some N.S.A. leaks)), and then wrote in GAME ROOM and later GAME AREA before finally alighting on GALLERIA at 31D: Indoor arcade. Otherwise, this one was truly right on my wavelength, in the most delightful of ways. Hope your day was brightened by the solving experience, as mine was. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
I had my first "oh, dang, that's good" moment early on, when I stared at 19A: Final four? and then stared at HORS- and thought "what the hell do horses ... have to do ... with ... finality ... Ohhhhhhhhhhh! Dang, that's good."
 |
| [... of the Apocalypse] |
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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115 comments:
Thoroughbreds all have a Jan. 1 birthday, but only if they're in the northern hemisphere? I love it when the crossword teaches me some new and bizarre fact. I wonder if the four horsemen get together and celebrate their steeds every New Year's Day.
Sweet, smooth Saturday from an ace constructor. Lots of stuff I didn't know but could guess at. "If the 'Hindu embodiment of virtue' isn't RAMA (47D), I'm in trouble." Had enough letters of GERTRUDE STEIN from crosses to get it even though I didn't recognize the quote. Misspelling TONE LOk and no clue about the keydets meant I needed Sergey and Larry for OCEAN VUONG.
Here's how you suck the joy out of my Saturday:
- mecha
- Ocean Vuong
- Yelena
- Egalite
Ocean Vuong + Kelly Chico = Ocean Vuoco?
Mostly agreed with Rex. Only quibble was getting Naticked at 41A, having never heard of OCEAN VUONG or the Keydets, and guessing that the last name was the (I think) more common Luong. Oh well, excellent puzzle otherwise.
Seems like the Times is finally responding to our desire for interesting puzzles since there has been a few of these lately that remind me of the currency of the best of BEQ. Got a little naricked at the cross of Ent and Veyana. But otherwise a nice way to start my Saturday Crowd surfing ..
Amen.
Good Saturday challenge with many bright spots. I wonder if I'll ever learn to just not start in the NW. I don't seem to get a grip on anything until I move elsewhere. Some tough names for me but perhaps if I had lived a different life I would have known them. That's how this works I think. MY first thought after reading "What Rose decides to do for Jack in Titanic" was "How should I know?" They didn't show what actually happened in the car.
Natick at MECCHA
Nice puzzle - but not as enamored as the big guy. Filling with so many long, full names is a waste of real estate to me. Didn’t really know MECHA or RAMA but the crosses were fair. I guess MLB elicits the last name and not an abbreviation? Wanted sewn before IRON. Ebony and IVORY.
My BS METER registered with ÉGALITÉ, GALLERIA, PORK and DELINT. Liked YES YOU and the misdirects on JEWEL and HORSEMEN. First and only time I CROWD SURFed was at a Husker Du show at Gildersleeves - it didn’t end well.
Don’t you feel like desperados under the EAVEs
Too many names - but an overall pleasant solve.
I know, coming into a Natan Last offering, that there will be answers such as YELENA, TONELOC, MECHA and BLUESCLUES, that is, pop culture out of my ken, not to mention a host of thorny clues. I know it will require hard work to overcome this deficit, but with that work, combined with what I’ve learned over many years of solving, I’ll probably succeed.
This is why I adore the Saturday puzzle. It excites my brain and leaves me feeling buzzed, satisfied, and enriched.
Enriched? Today we have entries from the world of sports, psychology, the arts, geography, food, history, and more. Plus, we have slang, clue riddles to crack, bits to drag out of the memory, things to learn, “Heh!” moments, “Hah!” moments, and “Aha!” moments. A little word unto its own, through which to vacation, dwell, and be an integral part of.
Thank you, Natan, for your Saturday-level skill, and for providing this feast today. It is indeed a JEWEL!
I must add a high recommendation for the OCEAN VUONG book, which I recently read. He is an award-winning poet, and this novel feels poetic from beginning to end. He writes from the heart, and paints characters beautifully. His novel is unlike any I’ve ever read, in a very good way, earthy yet soaring.
Easy? Really? I never time myself but if I did I am certain this puzzle would qualify as my "PW" - Personal Worst.
Look, I don't mind having to work to suss out some unknown-to-me trivia answers from crosses. There's stuff I don't know, and sometimes I learn something useful. But too many of the trivia answers in this puzzle are utterly uninferable. The clue on GERTRUDESTEIN was of zero value to me, but the name was certainly familiar enough to get from a few crosses -- and, GERTRUDE and STEIN look like actual people's names, so even if you didn't know her you could probably work it out. But MECHA, YELENA, VMI, TONELOC, and especial OCEANVUONG all might as well be clued as "Random letter string." For each of these you could have all but one letter in place from crosses and still have no idea about the last. Unfair, frustrating, and no fun.
A second to @Lewis on reading "On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous" -- a fabulous book. I read it a few years ago, but it took a number of crosses for me to remember the name.
I always enjoy a Saturday when I can solve it. Only needed help from hubby on "pitch out", a term unfamiliar to me. I've heard of "throw out," (e.g. he got thrown out at first) but qu'est-ce que c'est "pitch out"? Hubby also got egalite before I did -- showoff.
Natan was the co-instructor (with Brooke Husic) on the Atlas Obscura crossword construction course I attended last May. He was amazing, as was this puzzle. He is thoroughly infused with the idea of writing for the delight of the solver, not the satisfaction of the constructor, and it shows. Bravo, Natan!
Amy: what Rex wrote about the puzzle and what @Lewis wrote about Ocean Vuong. Read it (On Earth...) a while ago and it has stayed vivid in my mind.
I too do Mr. Last's puzzles in the New Yorker where I think they usually run on Mondays ("A challenging puzzle") and I had the same problems with this one that I do with his other ones, viz., pop culture references. MECHA, TONELOC, BLUESCLUES, YELENA. Eek.
GERTRUNDESTEIN showed up in Acrostic fashion, as did CROWDSURFS and SHOOEDAWAY.
Have at least seen the name OCEANVUONG somewhere and promptly forgot it, so this was in the "need every cross" category.
Finally remembered PETE Postlewaite from the movie "Brassed Off", which I liked very much.
Major roadblocks included Aix-AUX-Bains and INASEC.
Really liked this one as I finished with no cheats but it felt like a Saturday Stumper Jr. and in no way "easy", but totally satisfying. Impressive stuff, NL, and you Nearly Laid me low, but not quite. Thanks for all the fun.
The entry that brought me joy was BLUES CLUES, which is peculiar, because I’m so old that my kids were too old for it. Still, I take my joy where I can, and OCEAN VUONG, for which I needed an embarrassing number of crosses, has gone onto the to be read list. a solid, interesting puzzle. Apparently I need to start looking at the New Yorker puzzle.
One third of Natan’s motto is surely OBSCURITE.
I, too, got Naticked at OCEANVUONG crossing VMI. I even tried running the alphabet in that squared, but that didn’t help because I had SHOwEDAWAY instead of SHOOEDAWAY. Once I looked up the Keydets, I was able to find the other error.
Long time reader, spurred to make a first time comment by my frustration at the OCEANVUONG x VMI cross which, having never heard of either, was a textbook Natick and puzzle killer.
There was absolutely no way to guess that the V should not be a D, L, or any other consonant that plausibly begins a _UONG surname
My pace was PLODding, as the clues confronted me with one name or term after another that I didn't know. So: challenging for me, happy to be able to finish.
Rewards - the pleasure at decoding CROWD SURFS, HORSEMEN, SHOOED AWAY. Do-overs: tritE before STALE, iN a SEC, daw before JAY, MEMe, and BodY FAT, with the thought, "The happy few!" No idea: MECHA, BLUES CLUES, PITCH OUT, TONELOC, YELENA. Help from being old: the guess at AARON. Help from being in a book club: OCEAN VUONG.
AARON is first in career total bases at 6,856. Second place is Albert Pujols, at 6,195. At 90 feet per base, Aaron is 11.3 miles ahead of anyone else.
OCEAN VUONG is a fine example of "name I had never heard of but am pleased to learn about". I just wish it had not crossed TONE LOC (though that was a gimme for me) and VMI (which I know, but would not get from that clue so this was a guess).
Check out xwordinfo.com from 3/12/22 (the last time Natan appeared in the NYTimes). I don't think it's a big secret that Chen and Last are not big buddies...
If you’re going to put all those names in there then the crosses have to be fair. They were. No idea what mecha is. Maybe you have a better clue for eave then. Old man yelling at the sky here. Good puzzle otherwise
My bit of shelter was a cAVE, producing the totally "Huh?" McCHA. Makes as much sense as MECHA. And it was all downhill from there.
TONELOC crossing OCEANVUONG crossing VMI, as clued???!!! Give me a break.
My indoor arcade was a GAme room not a GALLERIA. My "what most people lose with age" was BAlance, not BABY FAT.* For the "genre prefix" you might just as well have said: "Pick any three letters."
Hated this puzzle. A lot.
*My BALANCE mistake was depressing. I wrote it in, based on the "B", without a second thought. I'm dealing with this issue right now as we speak; I find the steep bumpy ramps, installed during the last 4-5 years at every curb/crosswalk in NYC, to be nightmarish to try to negotiate; I'm in constant fear of falling and, to make matters worse, I took a quite nasty fall in the hallway outside my apartment about three weeks ago for no bloody good reason that I can identify. And so it was comforting, sort of, to learn that "most people" have the same balance problem when they age. Misery loves company and all that. But "most people" only seem to be losing their BABY FAT which can hardly be considered a problem at all.
Upper left corner kicked my ass. Never heard of mecha and had cave for eave. Screwed.
Well, I finished it. That's about all I have to say. Didn't enjoy dealing with a Vietnamese poet crossing a rapper and a Gertrude Stein obscurity. Not a Saturday I will remember.
Hey All !
ARGH! Hit a wrong button, and lost my post!!!
I wanted for 37A - Not scoot over on the door.
Nice puz. Had a two letter DNF. YaLENA/aNT, and the Natick of OCEAN_UONG/_MI. Wanted a B, then L, even looking for a Q.
Took me not as long as YesterPuz, but I was distracted doing Fridays. Yeah, that's it! 😁
@Gill
Entries are screaming out for a story!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I liked the unabashed but ultimately gettable Naticks, like it was way back in the old days: the "C" and to a lesser extent "V" in the OCEAN VUONG/TONE LOC & VMI crossings. And the thorny northwest, with MECHA aside AARON, and hiding behind the multi-shelter coVE --> cAVE --> EAVE. I really liked the McCHA/cAVE crossing, but of course that would be leprechaun manga.
Re: @Rex's "Tender Buttons and Wild Things" -- When my friend Bill was working on his PhD in English, he and some colleagues were at a bar late one night. They started outdoing each other with improbable names for academic papers. My friend's "Mircea Eliade, Country Music and Sacred Space," which entered the world in the form of a beery joke, was later accepted at a major conference, and one of the better things he wrote.
Thx, Nathan; what a JEWEL of a Sat. puz! :)
Hard (2 x avg).
The CLUEing was almost Croce-like; way out of my comfort zone.
The only idea I had in the NW was maybe AARON or CaRew, but left it blank and moved east, dropping in YES YOU, which made for one of the only easy sections in the grid, along with the SE.
Wanted SLIM, but left it blank, as I could't get any traction in the NE, other than ONE SEC.
Got PITCHOUT & HODGE, but that was it for the central section.
Wasn't sure of T-BOND, T-Bill or T-nOte; SOON or anON; SUPEREGO or altEREGO, so that whole section was tough.
The SW was a bear. Had 'pure' before FREE, 'hEaTS' before MEETS and diSKS before BASKS.
Finally got everything to my liking except the NW, which took forever, with the final task being to suss out the meaning of 'lead'. Had AIN, and at last, the 'M' came, e.g., MAIN or 'lead'ing idea or story.
Unknowns: MECHA, YELENA, BLUES CLUES and OCEAN VUONG. TONE LOC and PETE were hazy.
Fortunately, got the 'V' of VMI, thinking along the lines of 'military' for the CLUE 'keydets' (cadets); knew of Virginia Military Academy.
"The source and/or meaning of the nickname "Keydets" is not as easy to find. The problem lies in the fact that there is no definite meaning that has been found for the word. There have been plenty of explanations offered, but none have been convincingly substantiated. The United States Military Academy claims that it was a word used to denote the gray of the standard uniform of a cadet. One less factual definition is that due to the Southern drawl of some of the members of the VMI Corps, the common term cadet was transformed into 'Keydet'." (VMIKeydets)
A well fought battle; loved every minute of it! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Wait wait wait... before I cry a river of salt water disappointment, let me celebrate "Is propelled by fans" = CROWD SURFS. I am booking a plane to @Lewis's house so I can sit next to him on Monday when he picks the clues of the week. I will say, "Pick the CROWD SURFS one," and he'll do it because he's nice and because he's kinda afraid of the unshaven dude in his den needing a haircut. Then, I'll say, "Put an asterisk after it," and when he does I will grab the keyboard out of his hands and type: *Clue of the century.
NEWS hounds is pretty swell as well.
Tee-Hees:
Yesterday @egsforbreakfast reported on the surreptitious lengths our Lonely NYTXW Editors will go to sneak in a healthy eggplant into our daily solve, but today they're propping POSE NUDE up against our screen doors like one of those big checks Publisher's Clearinghouse brings to you. When I was 10, I was a big library dude and I liked the non-fiction section most, so imagine my joy the day I realized you could check out photography books with an occasional topless photo in them. To this day I have a Mamiya C330 medium format box camera in my neglected "art drawer" as an homage to those giddy hardback books promising a glimpse into the bravery of women destined for the fires of Mount Doom. I later discovered Cosmo magazine was reliable for a similar artistic feat. Today, just slightly off center, the Times brings me back to those giddy informative tween years. Sure, they make it as unappealing as possible with a reference to one of the more gawd-awful blockbusters of our age, but there's only so many naked people in films, so they probably needed the advanced team to work on this one. This puzzle has all the joy of the distant day I found a Playboy on top of the neighbor's trash can.
Also it was so loaded with PPP I finally learned how to use Google. And BS METER rounded out the juvenalia of today's delight.
Uniclues:
1 Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed. (I know, sometimes a joke requires Wikipedia, and then, like explaining comedy to the Anonym-oti, you might as well just move along.)
2 The key of C or A minor.
3 Reads with a furrowed brow, "It's murder."
4 Deep clean the kennel or @Lewis's first job on returning to the puzzle after his get-away.
5 Every poet ever.
6 Colorado Rockies reporters explaining the season to clueless team owners, managers, and coaches every damn year.
7 Brought the scissors.
1 YEMENI SUPER EGO
2 IVORY TESTAMENT
3 MEETS PORK NEWS (~)
4 DELINT PEN
5 BS METER ODIST
6 "YES, YOU SLUMPED"
7 MENACED YOYOS
Average Saturday difficulty though I had a fMI/OCEAN fUONG DNF today. Why "f"? Because I thought the VMI team name of Keydets was a clue pointing to the Florida Keys.
I had B.S. radaR and then B.S. sonaR both written in but finally decided the French Aix-___-Bains could be neither LaS nor LoS, both Spanish rather than French. Saved by the French? Weird. PITCH OUT made much more sense than PInCH OUT!
And the French came in handy when my entry to the grid, HODGE, led straight to EGALITE and then down the SE. I just wish I was more up on schools (not really, yawn) and that I had looked a bit harder at fUONG. Oh well...
Natan Last, nice Saturday, thanks!
@Carolita: A PITCH OUT is when the pitcher intentionally throws a pitch that the batter can't hit. When catcher gets the ball he immediately throws to a base, hoping to catch the runner.
YELENA is a character in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya". She was played by Julie Christie in a 1973 production I saw at the Circle In The Square Theater.
Clumsily written, unnecessarily long, or just plain stupid, clues:
• ___ Postlethwaite, whom Spielberg once called "the best actor in the world"
• Who wrote "In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling"
• Cry that might be said while snapping the fingers
• Old Nickelodeon kids' show featuring a puppy leaving paw print hints to be solved
• Jan. 1, for all racing thoroughbreds in the Northern Hemisphere
• Word before "Nobody" or "No Sunshine" in R&B titles
• What Rose decides to do for Jack in "Titanic"
I had one of my best ever wrong answers that seems better than the right one at37A What Rose decides to do for Jack in “Titanic”. When I got to this clue, I had _OSE_UD_. Without hesitating I filled in lOSEdudS. Guess I’m not ARTY enough.
Counterintuitive statistics puzzle: if you have a gathering of 100 Northern Hemishere thoroughbred racehorses, how many will have the same birthday?
YOYO may be a verb meaning oscillate wildly to the NYTXW, but it’s still not a word to the NYTSB.
For 4D it’s broken by hounds, I wasn’t sure whether to put in NEWS or SPEL. This reference is getting old enough that I promise to drop t hereafter.
This puzzle seemed to play hardish, but was over quickly . Lotta fun. Thanks, Nathan Last.
Tough. trite before STALE, dAw before JAY, EGALITE was a spelling challenge, Bill before BOND, and even though I’ve heard of the book (probably read a newspaper review) I had no idea on OCEAN.... The middle and the NW were the last to fall. Liked it, nice to have to work a little bit after yesterday’s.
Hands up for Aix-aux-Bains, also cAVE, hi Nancy:) We don't have EAVES in NYC so much, but walking close to a building during a rainstorm without an umbrella is a fine art form requiring negotiation with other umbrella-less people coming the other way. A quick duck under a canopy or storefront is a nice dance step.
This was close enough to my interests (or New Yorker reading), that it played in half the time of tougher Saturdays. Spent a few minutes on those last few letters in areas mentioned by others - looking at you, MECHA. No idea about OCEANVUONG, but Keydets suggests "cadets", and with _MI, the most familiar Military Institute I know is in Virginia, so might have lucked out there.
Hands up for also regularly doing and recommending the NYer Xwords. I hear Rex ranting about this or that while solving, but don't get to confirm, having only my unwildly-oscillating opinion to go on. Doing other xword venues informs me of the constraints the NYTimes deals with, probably somewhat self-inflicted.
I thought the meat in tonkatsu couldn't possibly be plain old PORK. At least PORc with a lingering French influence, like other areas of this puzzle. BASK cleared that up.
Final Four? Could it possibly be HORSEMEN? Yes!!!! All time great clue.
So many terrific clues all around: Read genre prefix as "gender" ALT is kind of the opposite of what is going on with gender prefixes and pronouns, but somehow filled itself in.
I wish CROWDSURFing would catch on for classical pianists. Average audience age probably rules that one out...Riding on the great blue sea (of hair dye).
Baseball hitting stat 3 letters is OTT. 5 letters is cARew? No, it's the other one today -AARON.
I like that "liberte" and "egalite" are both 7 letters. What are kea and loa in French?
Not knowing YELENA, TONELOC , and OCEAN left me pretty washed up.
At least I was able to get BLUESCLUES with crosses.
Early baseball mistakes - changed Pickoff to Pinchhit - with that wrong 8D was YESmOi - I didn’t like it, but….
Thinking BSsensor made me remove GERTRUDE for a minute.
With unknown names I just didn’t see the correct answers I should have been able to suss out. Que sera.
Quibble over 37A. Rose did that for herself. What she did for Jack was “Live Life”
Best clue/answer was for HORSEMEN, but it was fun to figure out CROWDSURFS too.
Yay me! I knew MECHA!
How old do I have to get to lose my adult fat?
This was a very disappointing double dnf on a top notch puzzle. That I've never heard of OCEANVUONG does not surprise me. The worse short coming, as a fairly regular solver, was not knowing VMI. I usually skip early week puzzles and this last showed up in a Monday. It's one of your more obscure initialisms.
My other mistake was having SONY instead of SONG. I knew the Y was very iffy but at the same time I knew if it were any other letter the cross of VMI and VUONG would still be a consonant crap shoot.
The rest of the puzzle was difficult but gettable. I especially enjoyed recognizing CROWDSURFS and realizing that 13A was EAVE instead of CAVE.
Mods. Please tell me why you nixed my Wordle post early today. It was about yesterday's and I didn't even mention the answer. Correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't think previous puzzles were available to be spoiled anyway. Thank you.
Saturday slumper?
Wordle 469 3/6*
⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟨🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Maybe not!
@Roo. I save my silly whimsies for Monday. I can usually whip through them and then my mind wanders. Today my brain exploded. I suppose YELENA, TONELOC and OCEAN VUONG could POSE NUDE for the GALERIA MECHE. The EGALITE crowd is sure to BASK in brain glory.
I don't even know where to begin. Well, first of all, I only have time for the NYT crosswords. Maybe if I did the New Yorker, I could tackle this impossible Sat. I actually was happy I could finish - albeit with a ton of cheats whispered in my ear.
MECHA? In Spanish it means fuse or wick. Well, it blew a fuse for me. BABY FAT?...I lose a lot more than that when I age. The only name that saved my PORK was GERTRUDE STEIN.
Like @pablito, I had AIX instead of LES for 22A. Do you wanna know how that one wrong answer can screw up my mental acuity?
At least I can say I finished. It didn't thrill me. I want to dance on Saturday. Instead, I'm still scratching my head.
Started my Crossword this morning and ended up feeling like I was at a trivia contest. I know it’s Saturday but good grief. France’s motto? In French? Totally out of my league today. This one is crumpled at the bottom of Nancy’s wall.
@Nancy: Sorry to hear about your fall but I’m glad you’re okay. I believe we are in the same decade and I have also had difficulties with those confounding ramps. A couple of days ago I nearly fell on one at a restaurant. My doctor recommended yoga classes to help improve BALANCE. I had checked into one and had good intentions but then Covid hit and that was as far as I ever got.
kitshef,
Do you think Pujols was ( and is agin now) on the needle? His power surge at a *purported age of 42 is amazing.
Obviously Aaron, though praised a lot, is criminally under appreciated.
I think Musial is third in TB and he too is waaaaaay too often mentioned when the immortals are discussed. I can’t recall all the NL records Musial held at the time of his retirement, but save HRs I think it was every meaningful NL batting mark.
Except batting titles, Aaron broke them all. In my mind, it’s Musial Aaron’s not Mays and Aaron that are the the NL titans of the 50s
* An awful lot of folks believe Pujols is older than he says he is. A fib commonly told by ball players from the Carribean.
OCEANVUONG / VMI was a big ol’ NATICK for me.
This puzzle seemed Monday-easy until I got to 27 Down (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous novelist). Wow 😯. I read 85-100 books a year and I've never heard of Ocean Vuong, nor her 2019 novel). Never heard of the Keydets, either (part of the 41 Across clue), so I had to Google the novelist. Crossing VMI with OCEANVUONG was a killer
D’oh!
Musial waaaay too often NOT mentioned. Sorry Stan.
Like others, never heard of !D MECHA "...genre involving Robotics" but will remember it because MECHAnical.
A wonderful Saturday puz, marred (for me) by the VOUNG/VMI crossing.
BASK for SUN was brilliant.
According to rex, MECHA is in "heavy rotation," but this was the first I've seen of it, and needed every cross to guess at it.
And while I like to think I know my rap artists, I guess I really don't.
Love Ocean Vuong’s novel, think @The Joker’s comment was worth slogging thru many of these comments for, and sorta enjoyed some of this latest Last. But I definitely prefer other regulars at the New Yorker, esp Berry, Weintraub and Gorski.
Many porters are, in fact, ales, i.e. warm-fermented beers, making 56A muddy cluing at best.
liked a lot of the puzzle but had a double natick at toneloc/oceanvuong and oceanvuong/vmi.
@ Nancy 9:46 and @ Whatsername 11:26. Re losing Balance with age - I've found yoga classes in our area are often extreme workouts. Think static boot camp! TAI CHI is more gentle and balance focused. Works for me. Plus it's in the puzzle ALOT.
Thank you. Excactly the same experience.
@beverly (11:59) Thanks for the tip. I never would’ve thought of that and I certainly don’t need Boot Camp - in any form. 😳
I found today's Saturday Stumper to be slightly easier than today's NYT. which for me is unusual.
What number is the Croce Freestyle du jour, for those who celebrate?
Yes—same here!
@pabloinnh (9:02 AM)
Speaking of the 'Stumper', found it much easier than today's NYT. Go figure! lol
@VVOV (9:22 AM)
Welcome to the commentariat! :)
@JC66 (11:42 AM)
Thx for the good tip: MECHAnical for MECHA. :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@Nancy (9:46) -- Nice to see you're in the McCHA/cAVE camp too.
But very sorry about your fall. Tis the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, the poet says. Let that be the thought, back on our feet and 'mong the colors of autumn.
@Gary Jugert (10:02) -- Fine writing today.
Agreed. Exactly my thought. I don’t want anew Yorker literati pop culture puzzle on Saturday nyt…which should draw on solvers creativity rather than fairly skewed trivia base
I was a huge Brooklyn Dodger fan. If Stan the Man played for the Dodgers he would have batted 750. That’s how much he tore up Ebbets Field when the Cards visited.
OCEANVUONG/VMI naticked me too, solved by plugging in random letters at the V until it took. However, the rest was one of the most enjoyable puzzles I think I’ve ever solved.
No time to read the comments, I’ll come back later. DNF for me on the MECHANIC/MAIN/EAVE crossing. I had coVE, then cAVE, never thought of MAIN.
You know what else is propelled by fans? hovercraft! Confirmed by ARF. I fixed that one, though.
Gotta go watch my grandson play soccer.
@jberg
I was a HUGE Brooklyn Dodger fan wen I was a boy.
If Stan the Man played for the Dodgers he would have batted 750!
That’s how much he tore up Ebbets Field when the Cards came to town.
@egs. I have tried yoyo multiple times on SB And it’s not accepted. I figured out it’s because it’s yo-yo with a hyphen the middle. For the same reason SB doesn’t accept contractions with an apostrophe.
The puz's Jaws of Themelessness swept over m&e like the Last Ocean of Vuong … lost mega precious nanoseconds on Oceans of no-knows. Tough solvequest overall, at our house.
staff weeject pick: LES. M&A always prefers les aix and bains. And les BABYFAT. And les aixy & bainful French lingo clues.
DELINT. har
fave stuff: YESYOU. BSMETER. GERTRUDESTEIN. SHOOEDAWAY. BABYFAT/FREE. HORSEMEN clue. Somehow survivin that NW corner.
Thanx, Mr. Last dude.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
illustrated, so use of Down Home option is highly recommended:
**gruntz**
Absolutely freaking hated it. Too many vague/obscure crosses.
IMO, that cross is part of what should challenge you. RELAX!!
Impossible crossing to suss out. Frustrating. Could be so many letters. Hate playing the alphabet game to finish up.
OCEAN VUONG / VMI was so bad that I'm not going to comment on anything else in the puzzle. It is the worst Natick in history for me. An author I've never heard of, with a really weird name (had not the slightest clue the surname was Vietnamese... looked like a variant of YOUNG to me). Completely ungettable without crosses to help, especially on the V. And crossing... a 3 letter college/university abbrev, the worst of the worst unknown crosses. Horrible.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, fairly easy. Last word was a 6er. QB streak reset at 1!]
All racing thoroughbreds, regardless of origin, have Jan 1 as a birthday since most races are organized by age. It’s to your benefit to have your horse born as close to Jan 1 as possible, for the biggest possible advantage. :)
Didn't see the movie so my first thought of "What Rose decides to do for Jack in 'Titanic'" was a bit racier than POSE NUDE.
I don't know who Adam Phillips is so that paragraph of a clue for 46 Across had me thinking along the lines of some Communist propagandists. Phillips must have lived long ago in the previous century because SUPEREGO has not been "Part of the mind..." in mainstream psychology or psychiatry since then. The NYTXW seems to be one of the last bastions of classic Freudian theory.
A few years ago I started noticing that my balance was not what it once was so I can empathize with others facing that issue. I started doing a simple exercise that has helped a lot. I get in a doorway (so I can reach out for support if need be) and just stand on one foot for a while and then shift to the other. I started out with a few seconds on each foot and worked my way up to a minute or more. It strengthens a lot of smaller leg and hip muscles and tendons that help maintain balance. Super simple, no equipment required and can be done practically anywhere, alone or with others. I guarantee it will improve your balance or double your money back!
Thought for sure we would see a Smiths video in today's write up: https://youtu.be/hfADf-PvhKY
Nancy I also have balance issues after breaking my ankle. I have just found that carrying a cane is a great help. I touch down when I feel insecure and usually can pick it up immediately. I think carrying it is retraining my balance.
Anon 11:28. I do not think Pujols is using today. Whether he ever has ... impossible to know.
Musial is one of my favorites - though based on reputation only as I never saw him play. I came to baseball too late to see him, and just a little too late to see Mays or Aaron or Clemente in their primes, either.
Somehowo I'd heard of OCEAN VUONG, but didn't remember it until I had OCEAN from crosses; then it bubbled up into my consciousness (if not my SUPEREGO). But I'm surprised so many found VMI obscure. I think it's the only well-known _MI school in the US, though apparently not well enough.
Somehow, when I read the clue for 37A, which mentions Jack and ends with a word with a terminal c, I read it as referring to "On the Road." Since I don't remember many details from the movie, and certainly not the names of any of the characters, that didn't bother me; I got POSE NUDE from a few crosses.
@Nancy and others, the NYT ran a feature on balance issues, with a compilation of useful exercises, on August 12. Here's the link.
Ridiculous nitpicking: do the ENTs actually fight at Isengard? I guess they do tear down sections of the wall, and maybe trample on a few orcs -- but mostly they just herd the huorns ahead of them, and let them take care of everything.
Finally, I need education. I realized just now that I don't actually know what "total bases" means. The number of bases hit for? Or the number of bases actually reached, one way or another? E.g., if you hit a triple and then get batted in, is that three bases or four? And what about stealing a base, does that count? I'm sure that's a stupid question (though not as much so as my comment above about ENTs), but someone please enlighten me.
I also highly recommend Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. His beautiful prose and subject matter are unforgettable. It's written as a letter to his illiterate mother and mirrors Vuong's life.
Natan Last’s New Yorker puzzles routinely do me in, but this one played much easier for me, thankfully. There is always at least one proper name that’s totally unfamiliar to me — so unfamiliar I can’t even infer the name from crosses. But today only had one of those (OCEAN VUONG), and as it turns out I could get every letter from crosses and didn’t need to infer a thing.
P.S. MECHA, I’m not ashamed to admit, I only heard of via an old South Park episode about Barbra Streisand.
@jberg, did Napoleon fight at Waterloo?
Thanks for that @Greg! I have struggled with Natan’s work but it’s always an enjoyable struggle because he always seems to give the solver a break or at least let up on the gas a bit in the toughest spots to give the solver a fighting chance. He is one of my favorites and this one is a gem! This confirms my suspicion that he has the solver in mind when constructing.
And thanks to my lovely daughter for BLUES CLUES. It was one of her favorite shows as a child and I remembered the foot print.
Total Bases = singles×1 + doubles×2 + triples×3 + homers×4.
It rewards power and fast baserunning but not picky hitters nor base stealing.
At 5 letters I was thinking Bonds or Aaron but Bonds walked too much. It's actually
Aaron
Puljos
Musial
May's
Bonds
Cobb
Arod
Ruth
Rose
Yaz
Murray
If you add TBs and BBs I think it would be Bonds by a country mile.
I’m annoyed whenever I have to enter ratatat in the spelling bee, knowing that yoyo, tomtom, and the like are not accepted.
@burtonkd: More than once I've seen the French motto written as liberté, égalité...Beyoncé. Also 7 letters.
@Nancy, if balance were all I was losing as I age, I would dance a jig (and fall on my face), but alas, . . . well . . . I forgot what I was going to say! Thanks for the snail mail help, by the way! It’s posted on my office bulletin board. Old sschool.
@Gary J: you sure you didn’t mean to reference the Cubs in No.6?????
@eggs: I also thought that Rose wanted to LOSE something but the applicable fruit or “state of purity” just wouldn’t fit. DARN!
@pabloinnh (12:17 PM)
I see we're on pretty much the same wavelength re: today's 'Stumper'. As for the next Croce, I follow @jae's lead, which he posts every Mon. morn.
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Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
I started practicing one-leg balancing a few months ago. Some things that I discovered that I am unsure were true when I was younger:
It is harder to balance on one leg when you have your eyes closed.
If you are balancing with your eyes open closing your eyes immediately throws you off balance.
If you are balancing with your eyes closed opening your eyes immediately throws you off balance.
That lifting your knee higher while bending your knee makes balancing easier even though it increases the height of your center of gravity.
And most things improve with practice whether old or young.
I did quite a bit of yoga in high school and occasionally in my 30s and 40s. Some of my favorite poses were inverted positions. My eye doc unfortunately tells me I should not indulge in exercise that keeps my head below my heart because of my glaucoma.
It really matters, North vs. South: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjBn7-Y-b_6AhWXkIkEHUesBWcQFnoECAMQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thoroughbreddailynews.com%2Funiversal-birthdate-no-joke-shared-archive%2F&usg=AOvVaw1wPCni6Zz_0Aql7nJoA7xW
I don't know anything about race horses, but I'm willing to bet that the difference is due to the reverse seasons: you want all horses to 'age' going into the racing season, which typically starts in the Spring. (OK, so I know a little.)
@Whatsername:
I'm half-way through the 7th decade, and I've done/do both. Yoga is tougher to gain better balance; it's an On/Off kind of thing. Hot Yoga is/has been au courant; not so much for the 7th decade. Tai chi, on the other hand, is designed to gain balance over experience. 'Proper' tai chi is 'single weighted' and requires both innate balance and a modicum of strength in the foot/ankle. One of my doctors did confirm a legend I've run across, that the ankle is the first part to deteriorate due to ageing.
My main tai chi teacher learned from William C.C. Chen and introduced us to T.T. Liang when he was in Cambridge. Liang was said to begin his study around 60. He made it to 102. My karate teacher's teacher made it to 104, at least (I lost contact with George, so never heard how long his teacher lasted), but he lived in the mountains of India/Himalaya.
The East has some things to teach us.
Ocean Vuong crossing Tone Loc? Boooooooooo!
Overrated book; author not well enough known to be in a puzzle.
The only thing that really bothered me was ALES as Porter alternatives. Any beer that is made with an ale yeast, such as a porter, is an ale. IPAS would be porter alternatives, so would ryes, but a porter is an ale.
For me, even never having heard of Keydets, VMI was an intuitive answer for a three letter initialism of an obviously military sch. Not bragging as I couldn’t finish the upper left quadrant without cheating. No complaints. Great puz.
I inexplicably got through this in a (for me) good Saturday time*, except that I naticked (Natanicked?) at the crossing of YELENA and ENT. ENT, ont, orc, roc, I can never keep this three-letter mythological stuff straight, I just enter in BS and let the crosses carry the day. Not this time, pal-o.
They certainly carried the day for MECHA and OCEAN VUONG (cool name!).
Interesting quote-clues for GERTRUDE STEIN, PETE, PEN. Joe Dipinto (whose criticisms I sometimes find intimidating, wondering what I'm missing) seems not to agree. I might agree with him about POSE NUDE, except that I'm not sure I could clue it much better; it's certainly a recognizable reference.
For the most part I liked the misdirection CLUES, but I groaned a little bit at the one for NEWS.
*Came at a good time, perhaps, because last night I was scaring myself over amyloid plaques in the brain and such -- it seems Alzheimer's has had a bit of a run in my family, on both sides. More specifically, it seems that a major strand of published research, starting in the early aughts, is fraudulent, with consequential great loss of time and money. The fact** remains that there has not been a single successful clinical trial for treatments, despite a huge investment of effort.
**Relying on articles like this and this. Today I was fantasizing about digging into this material myself, a la Nick Nolte's character in Lorenzo's Oil.
Ocean Vuong (fabulous name) and his very well-received novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (what a beautiful title!) have gotten a lot of very good press the past couple of years. He’s been in the New Yorker, Guardian, The Atlantic, NPR, etc. His poetry is award-winning. He won a MacArthur Genius Grant. The guy is hardly obscure.
@bocamp-Yes on the Stumper take, I posted before I had read yours.
Thanks for the Croce info I'll try to remember.
Agree. Saw the pun on cadets and thought VMI
I like NL's puzzles. But this one did throw me for a loop. I thought there were some great bits. Loved CROWDSURFS and HORSEMEN, LIVESALIE and EGALITE. Thought that VMI x OCEANwho? was a total Natick (and that was my DNF). But generally pretty much what I expect from a Saturday NYT xw.
OCEAN VUONG crossing VMI is certainly a choice. Not opposed to either, but midlist college athletics and recent hot stuff literary novelists, and I’ve no idea how you’d guess a V of all things if you didn’t know one of them outright. One of the worst Naticks I’ve seen in recent memory there.
@Boston Blackie (5:27) Thank you for the further enlightenment regarding Tai Chi -an option I had never considered but now am intrigued by.
Thanks also to @Anoa Bob and others who made recommendations. I am the world’s worst at exercise but I know this is something I truly need to be pursuing. Your advice and encouragement really helps motivate.
A stellar and highly enjoyable puzzle—two days in a row that I have solved with considerable joy. So while the few blemishes tend towards the serious, I’m inclined to be quite forgiving…
…but not to pass them by without mention.
Ocean Vuong is probably too much to ask of solvers in general…this is an author just obscure and new enough that it would require a more inferable surname to be fully suitable here. (Lucky for me I knew VMI cold.)
In my experience it has been always and everywhere, 100% of the time a BS detector, not a BS meter. (Interesting choice of words, now that I think about it. The former implies that BS-ness is a binary state, either something is BS or it isn’t; whereas if we used the latter the implication would be that it’s more a matter of degree.) I suppose this crime against idiom, together with its neighbor DELINT (which is lame, but barely a misdemeanor) is the price we pay for the brilliant CROWDSURFS/HORSEMEN pair.
As noted by the others, the ALE clue is unfortunately just a bit off factually…and I’d further like to propose a moratorium on “____ alternative” clues in general. They’re not “____, on scoreboards” level of grating, mind…but I do find them super-tiresome and clunky pretty much every time.
But again…overall, a lovely puzzle that glimmered and also taught me an interesting nugget or two; the above gripes notwithstanding, I liked it a lot.
Same. Either on its own would have been obscure but fair; crossing the two on an unguessable letter is ridiculous.
From Wikipedia:
VMI's alumni include a secretary of state, secretary of defense, secretary of the Army, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, 7 Medal of Honor recipients, 13 Rhodes Scholars, Pulitzer Prize winners, an Academy Award winner, an Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner, a martyr recognized by the Episcopal Church, senators and representatives, governors, lieutenant governors, a Supreme Court justice, numerous college and university presidents, many business leaders (presidents and CEOs) and over 290 general and flag officers across all US service branches and several other countries.
I loved this. Admittedly I didn’t know a few- had cAVE for EAVE (what’s MECHA?) and sMI for VMI (not familiar with the author in the cross) - and to me that’s enough to ding the puzzle in a big way, except that the rest of the fill was so wonderful; I love the literary references.
How is "any" a "flexible request"?
Amen
Here at the Space station, NW and SE reMAINed really stubborn, but then I saw SHOOEDAWAY and finished the SE all but that pesky 41 square. Next I got HORSEMEN off the -MEN, getting the NW including MECHA on 100% crosses. That left 41. The down was some name I would never guess, so I tried to think of any schools that might end in -MI. I rejected UMI because if that name was UUONG I would give up this hobby for good. The only one I could think of was Virginia Military Institute, VMI. But VUONG? Really?? Still with a shrug I wrote V. Just lucky.
Had to change iNaSEC to ONESEC, otherwise the rest of it was medium for a Saturday. I still don't know how I came up with TONELOC; sometimes the brain surprises one. TBONDs may "appreciate," but I don't appreciate such letter add-ons. Still, it's a thing, so just annoying rather than unfair. The scene depicted in 37a forces me to name Kate Winslet DOD. Overall: par.
Par also in Wordle, despite zero greens till the final answer.
YBBBY
BYYBB
YYYYB
GGGGG
The V in VMI and OCEANVUONG was totally unfair. I hope you’re happy Natan Last. You win.
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