.png)
C. Evans journalist who co-founded All-Negro Comics 1947 / SAT 10-29-22 / Retailer whose logo is written in script / Bubbly bianco / English queen who lent her name to a city of 1.3+ million in the British Commonwealth / Attire one might grapple with / What the instruments erkencho and shofar are made of / Certain gender identity informally
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Constructor: Daniel Okulitch
Relative difficulty: Medium (started Hard, got Easy)
Word of the Day: Queen ADELAIDE (5D: English queen who lent her name to a city of 1.3+ million in the British Commonwealth) —
Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen (Adelaide Amelia Louise Theresa Caroline; 13 August 1792 – 2 December 1849) was Queen of the United Kingdom and Hanover from 26 June 1830 to 20 June 1837 as the wife of King William IV. Adelaide was the daughter of Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and Luise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, is named after her. (wikipedia)
• • •
And so I got started, but the NE continued to be impenetrable because getting the back ends of the long Acrosses didn't help me get the fronts. I forgot the name of the environmental MOVEMENT. I thought the [Silence notifications?] might be LIGHTS. And [Bourgeoisie and proletariat] sounded so specifically Marxist that I figured something much more particular than SOCIAL preceded CLASS at 1A. Then I tried to dip into the middle of the grid with an entirely made-up bread product called CROSETES! (7D: "Little toasts," in Italian). Very wrong, and yet ... somehow I managed to get into the middle of the grid anyway, and finally ended up with some fill I could enjoy: a SEX SCENE (30D: When you might see a star's moon?):
Things got way easier from here on out, as, unlike up top, I was able to get those middle answers from their back ends. I was especially able to see the horrid wrongness that was CROSETES and change it to a word I actually know reasonably well, it turns out: CROSTINI. After that, whooshed back west across the middle, then whooshed down around the SW corner into the south (where all the long answers went in very, very easily). But before that I must've taken a detour back into the pesky NW via ADELAIDE, a queen I've never heard of but a city I know of, and a song I know very well.
SAKS SOX SINTAX, all the things I failed to see at first fell into place. Then it was down to the Monday-easy bottom to finish things off. Ended with SINGLET, which I didn't understand at first (45A: Attire one might grapple with). I've never worn a SINGLET. Are they so hard to put on that you have to "grapple" with them, I wondered. But sometime during this write-up, it struck me that wrestlers wear SINGLETs, and that's probably what the "grapple" business is all about. In the end, this felt like three puzzles, difficulty-wise: the NW (hard), the middle and NE (easyish), and the bottom (extremely easy). Outside of the NW (and CROSETES!), I had no errors to speak of, except TAMPA before TEMPE (42D: Home of one of the country's largest state universities), and (much less explicably) RINGLET before SINGLET. A pretty average Saturday overall, but bonus points for the creepy, rotten pumpkin-like, ghost-like, sad-telephone-esque grid.
Save And Share :
103 comments:
Gotta disagree. Well above average Saturday. The long ones (11s, 13s, and 15s) we’re all good or great. The clue for THREEWISHES was a wonderful head fake. This has a lot of good stuff!
I thought the shape might be the Liberty Bell. Go Phillies!
I almost lost my streak (no big loss) on two short answers: sEE for "I never knew!" at 26A crossing STENOs (neither even slightly defensible) and sHAh for the royal title at 19A. SASS at 14D made me realize the royal title error, because of SASSY at 21D. I didn't get GEE until the lack of happy music. Overall, a little on the easy side of medium.
Fail to see how
STENOG + GEE > STENOS + SEE
C’mon liberty bell! Awwww… fruit thing.
Somehow I felt lucky to make it out of this one alive, and even with my head held high, not my tail between my legs. In the end, I really enjoyed it, but I definitely had to work for it. I won't be the only one.
I tried to channel Rex and whoosh away, with "middle CLASS" at 1A. Not totally wrong, but after coming to a dead stop, decided to take it off.
My toeholds were first in the SE (SEX SCENE was amusing). MIST made me think of perfume-armed ladies spraying their wares as you're trying to make your way through SAKS 5th Avenue. So I had Down numbers 21, 25, 28, 30, 33, 39, but the CENTRE (I mean the region, not the answer) still had to wait a bit. Next to fall was the south. I guessed what the grappling attire was driving at, but thought "unitard" before SINGLET. Came down and around and then had the lower half, but only a drib here, a drab there, up top, with only LIV entered confidently. The next toeholds came with CONDENSES and (phew!) THREE WISHES.
(Before then, it was inevitable that I would try Victoria before hitting on ADELAIDE. Both in Australia, but Victoria is a state, not a city. Never heard of Queen ADELAIDE, but after those toeholds, it couldn't be anything else.)
Somehow SHMOO and STENOG bubbled up from somewhere. Soon I had ...ARIGHTS and then MIRANDA RIGHTS: another phew. All those long answers with their tricky clues: this was a proper Saturday, all right.
Last to fall was the NW. I really liked it, but it took persistence. I was thinking "oak" before SOX.
It's SIN TAX, but I can't look at SINTAX and not think "syntax".
I can't think of much to complain about, except maybe STENOG which seems kind of creaky. Rex's complaints about the shape seem kind of lame and made up to me. Who even cares, the shape is so not the point. Oh, I see: he's connecting it up with Halloween. GEE, I dunno. Seems a bit like pareidolia (hey, spellcheck: that's a word).
I had a fast start when I plunked in SOCIALCLASS right away and got enough downs from it that I felt confident it was right. Slowed down a bit after that. I was loyal to presENT for the ending of LIVEINTHEMOMENT I thought there must be some phrase other than LIVEINTHE because presENT obviously too long. I hate when I get in my own way like that. Very pleasant Saturday solve for me. I'm looking forward to a sunny weekend in the 60's here in northern Michigan. May you all have a good day.
Oh, I had that moment where I was convinced I was permanently stuck, somewhere in the bottom half of the grid after the top was filled in. After multiple scans, nothing was coming, it seemed, and nothing was going to come. I decided to take one more sweep, and that’s when, with immense relief, an answer came, which begat a splat-fill of the rest.
That moment of high drama eclipsed by a feel-good high – one of crossword’s sweet gifts.
There’s also beauty. Look at this gorgeous grid design, a NYT grid design debut, by the way. It reminds me of an old desk telephone. Yes, there’s that sad face, but more than that, I see wide avenues for words to cascade down toward the SW and SE, anchored by a firm and solid base.
When I was new at crosswords and for well after that, my main aim was to complete the grid. If I did that, the puzzle was over. But now, as a veteran, the main joys are the little gifts. Thinking about, actually visualizing a CROSTINI, say, for the first time in seemingly forever. Running across lovely words, like FEINT. Smiling at the moment I see OOPS for [Error message?]. Noticing that OOPS backward is SPOO and that it crosses SHMOO. Seeing connections between answers, like the lovely PuzzPair© of GEE and RIGHTY.
Feeling love when a puzzle comes across as vibrant, as I do today, for the above reasons and more. Thank you so much for making this, Danial!
SPIDEY SENSE ?
@Anonymous 6:19AM
The main reason is that STENOS is plural, while "court figure" is singular. But also, GEE fits better its clue than "see".
This was a very satisfying puzzle, just hard enough to be a nice challenge for a Saturday morning, but eminently do-able.
For some reason I got SOCIALCLASS right off the bat. Then no luck at all (and I thought this would all be a big DNF for me) until I got to the bottom half of the grid. Then things started to fall into place and I worked my way through, delightful.
My only real objection is STENOG with a G. Steno is the word, and I don’t mind it. With a g it’s just dumb and ugly.
This is a first. I completed the puzzle correctly, but the computer said I was only "CLOSE." In truth, I had to cheat, because some of the clues were brutal. What do MIRANDALIGHTS have to do with demanding silence? And is SINGLET a reference to the spelling of "attire"? In other words, some people would spell it ATIRE?
Pretty east Saturday imo. Needed three or four passes total before the grid was mostly filled in. 19ish mins.
Enjoyed this one. NW was last holdout because I had MACRO for MUCHO. Mucho should have alluded to slang in the clue? And ORRIN. Who knew?
MIDDLECLASS wouldn't work, because I wanted VICTORIA for the city, which fit nicely, but was no help, so I kept CLASS and went elsewhere. Wound up at the bottom and got a big toehold from DESS leading to DESSERTSPOONS, of all things, and the rest was fairly whooshful. Nothing like whooshful thinking when you're doing a Saturday.
SPIDERSENSE was a slowdown as I couldn't think of a word that ended in TR.
Boo to STENOG. Yuck.
SEA before SOX, which is inexcusable here in Red SOX Nation, and the KHAN SAKS cross was the last to fall. Not big into retailers.
All in all a very fun Saturday, DS, that looked like it was going nowhere and then did, which was a Delightful Surprise. Thanks for all the fun.
qb yd in the sb. my streak is now at 1.
Total opposite start to Rex - like a couple others here, I guessed SOCIAL CLASS right away and confirmed it with SIN TAX (loved that), INS, LIV and AGES. An auspicious start and I never slowed down after that.
So many great clues, just like yesterday. I liked those for MIRANDA RIGHTS and SINGLET and loved those for THREE WISHES and SEX SCENE. Those two are so convolutedly brilliant, I wondered how the constructor came up with them.
LIVE IN THE MOMENT and SPIDEY SENSE were really nice answers across the bottom.
A new kealoaulu (I am really pushing for that term’s adoption, almost surely in vain) with Tsar, Shah and KHAN. And maybe Czar too.
Anyone else have TExas before TEMPE? Learned a new word with mulcted, which I will quickly forget. I kept squinting to see if it was mulched.
Those wrestling SINGLETs are pretty darn revealing. Some matches look one step away from a SEX SCENE.
A depressed Shih Tzu? Darth Vader? I have to disagree with @Lewis today, this grid isn’t gorgeous. But the flow, the cluing, the language, woo. Social Class, Miranda Rights, Three Wishes, Live in the Moment, sophisticated and as smooth as a good creme brulee.
Almost no traction til I got to Cru, Righty & Unless (LLP, representing winos*, pitchers, and the indecisive). Then Si Si, Fined, Centre, the long stack and upward).
This was something fresh and different in the NYT and Daniel Okulitch is batting a thousand. Stenog was just one strike. It doesn’t exist in the wild.
*Which I count myself among.
It’s Spider-Man’s sense when he notices something off.
Very pleased to see that Rex is also a Paul Kelly fan. Back in the late 1990s we loved to play "Adelaide" loudly in the car while driving long distances in Oz. Also agree that the NW corner was by far the toughest part of the puzzle.
I think the issue is that it’s usually just STENO. So STENOG seemed
Like a strange way to put it
Same
“Average Saturday” seems like high praise from Rex. I thought this was one of the best Saturdays in a long time.
@Bob Mills 7:20. In the NYT online version of the puzzle the clue for MIRANDARIGHTS is "Silence notifications?". Where did you get "demanding"?
FWIW:
Grand CRU is a term that is used to define a wine of superior quality, with or without a legal mention linked to it. The Grand CRU appellation, probably the best known for wines, was established in Bordeaux in 1855. It is used to classify wines in order of status, from First Growths to Fifth Growths.
SOURCE-Wine Enthusiast Magazine
Had YIkES for Holy Moly. Sepia fixed that. YIPES. Another kealoa.
I just saw a glum frown staring at me when I opened this one - it was a harbinger of things to come. There was some good fill here - especially in the bottom half and I was able to work it pretty quickly for a Saturday - but all the shortish stuff resulting from the grid layout dragged this down.
AGES of you is cool and so is Wendell GEE but the way they’re clued here is brutal. In fact that entire NE corner should have been more cleanly edited. The socio-political bent up top should have shone - but with the trio of INS + LBS + LIV dead center the content suffered.
If you ever watched high school wrestling you’ll understand that SINGLET and SAKS are an apt pair. Both my wife and I are not RIGHTY.
Like Rex I needed crosses for ORRIN - similarly with Mulct which just doesn’t look right.
SATIN sheets to lie on
Not a bad Saturday solve - just too many low points forced by the grid. Paolo Pasco’s blocky Stumper brings the heat.
Minor point from a lawyer: STENOGraphers still exist, and still take down live testimony in court and at depositions, although they now use a keyboard instead of pen and paper. Their days are not (yet) behind us. And they are never ever called STENOGs.
Amy: this played easier than many Saturdays for me. As a former Public Defender, love seeing Miranda Rights across the top. Admittedly took me way too long to get Sox as a Red Sox fan. Lovely ending, just living in the moment, eating a sweetie tidbit with a special little dessert spoon and wondering what upcoming adventure might be signaled by my spidey sense.
Star’s Moon - great clue!
Challenging yet doable Saturday - the best kind…
There’s a great jazz pianist named Orrin Evans. Don’t know if he’s related to the comic book guy.
Looks like a Stormtrooper
Oops on the constructor's initials.
Asking for a Do Over.
I came to see if Rex was complaining how easy this was. I finished in 9 minutes, 11 minutes faster than my average Saturday! Funny how we all have different wheelhouses!
It’s a good way to start the day when you read one across and enter SOCIAL CLASS immediately. Nice solve from there on. Medium overall for me.
@Lljones 7:07 AM @Anonymous 8:00 AM - And lest anyone complain that this is zoomer PPP, I can attest, as a 61 year old man who read Marvel comics as a kid, and watched the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons, that "My spidey-sense is tingling" has been a thing for more than 50 years.
I expected to see this get a very easy rating from OFL, but apparently this puzzle and I just vibed. Must be a record for me and I was a little buzzed when I started. I didn't find any area of the puzzle particularly tough, had lots of handholds throughout the grid and steadily chipped away at the gaps. I enjoyed the ride but agree that there were a few spots of rough fill amongst some great stuff. But again, I really enjoyed this one but thought it was way too easy for a Saturday (which I regularly DNF)
@JJK 7:18 AM - I was thrilled to see STENOG with a "G" in this puzzle. I've been doing the NYT crossword daily for about 18 months now, and two of my biggest surprises have been (1) how frequently STENO appears in the puzzle, and (2) that everyone but me seemed to think that STENO referred to the person, while I always thought that STENO applied to the practice (stenography per se, as in STENO notebook). I've always thought the abbreviation for the person who does STENO was STENOG. I acknowledge that it's not easy or pretty to say; but I think, historically, it mostly appears in writing, where it's just fine.
Fun but too easy…@18:13, second fastest Saturday on record. What’ll I do for the next 25 minutes?
@Anonymous 7:33 AM @Anonymous8:02 AM - It's not slang; it's Spanish. So maybe the clue should've read something like [It means a lot in Madrid].
I think it's probably a jack o'lantern face. Halloween is Monday, you know.
Hey All !
A two-cheater today. 41D, Mulcted, cause had absolutely not one iota of what that meant. If someone said, "I got pulled over by the police, he Mulcted me ", it would have a friend saying "you need to report that."
Second one, which I attribute to antsy-ness, was ORRIN. Don't know the name, but after that Goog, I finally saw MIRANDA RIGHTS, which if I kept at it, probably would've got eventually. Ah, me
Same Sea before SOX as a bunch of y'all. huh-GEE, MoNET-MANET (of course), and others I'm sure, by can't recall.
So a brain stretcher for me today. I blame my restless sleep last night. Yeah, that's it.😁
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Interesting, many of you found this easy. Okay, my solving time suggests that it maybe was less hard than it felt mid-solve, and maybe rates a medium, but it was certainly no snap. Perhaps it was a vibe thing. Still, Rex's assertion of Monday-easy in the bottom half is absurd in my opinion.
@Bob Mills:
"You have the right to remain silent": that's the notification. I guess you've heard by now that SINGLET is the costume that wrestler's wear. It has other meanings as well.
@Son Volt
That pairing: good one! The fragrance in the boys' high school locker room could be: Sack, by Calvin Klein.
Kealoa between MANET and MoNET?
I like a lot of the longer answers in this but it was just not enough of a challenge for Saturday imo. I was faintly bugged by the MIRANDA RIGHTS/RIGHTY dupe. Yeah, it's two different kinds of right but it sticks out to me. Also, the Miranda clue seems off. The notification is generally called a Miranda warning; the rights are what the notification advises you of.
Here's today's constructor to baritone his way into your heart. (Not a sex scene, but his shirt is unbuttoned.)
Too easy for a Saturday. I started with NEHIS and went clockwise from there. Except for not knowing who Rick or Morty are (were?), or ORRIN and throwing in placID before STOLID, there wasn’t much to hold me up.
Ironic that I didn’t know ORRIN because he helped me out of a small jam. I had guessed sHAh for 19A because the clue for 14D was of no help. I guess it should have been obvious that they wouldn’t put SAsS in the grid when we already had SASSY but it was the unlikely prospect of someone being named ORRIh that spurred me to rethink sHAh. Thanks, ORRIN.
And thanks, Daniel Okulitch, for the interesting grid layout.
I found this considerably easier than yesterday's. While I didn't know MIRANDA RIGHTS from the clue, nor SUNRISE MOVEMENT at all, I saw SOCIAL CLASS from the get-go -- confirmed by SIN TAX, INS, ADELAIDE, LAMBSTEW and AGES. I felt as though I was on the same wave length as the constructor.
Cleverest clue: THREE WISHES. Next cleverest: MIRANDA RIGHTS.
I thought it was nice to have THE HAVES in the same puzzle as SOCIAL CLASS.
The syntax of the clue for RIGHTY seems a little awkward to me. After getting RIGHTY, I re-read the clue three times, but it still seemed a bit off. I was not helped by SPIDEY SENSE either. I get plenty of feelings of vague unease, but I don't call them that.
But that's my only complaint. The clues were quite fair and most of them were pretty straightforward. A nice puzzle that required thinking but didn't TAX my little gray cells. Which is sometthing of a relief after the last two days.
YESTERDAY, FRIDAY OCTOBER 28
Wordle 496 3/6*
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬜R⬜A⬜I⬜S⬜E
🟩F🟨O🟨U⬜N⬜D
🟩F🟩L🟩O🟩U🟩T
If I manage to do a Saturday in under 10 minutes, it's way too easy. It's normally closer to 20. This one felt more like a Wednesday, a scroll down the grid filling in long acrosses as one went. I did end up checking for the error the at the end and had to correct stenos/see. Should have realized it wasn't "s" since the clue suggests a singular. How many stenogs do y'all know? Why use a forced ugly abbreviation when it's totally unnecessary? It makes the puzzle feel sophomoric. "See, I tricked you". How about making the cluing more obscure instead?
GEE, LAMB STEW. I want to take some lamb out of the freezer and devote the afternoon to preparing it for dinner. Maybe listen to some good music. If only it were 20 degrees or so colder outside, gray brooding skies and a biting east wind, it would pair perfectly.
But it's such bright temperate fall weather, the leaves up, windows washed and screens back down to their basement storage. The willow tree holds its thin yellow leaves longer than the others, box elders basically done, maples hanging on to their few last gasps of red. The recalcitrant rust-brown oaks don't really count, they have their own calendar.
So hold the LAMB STEW for now, get out there and do some work in the woods today. Then grill those Italian sausages on the back deck while ye may.
Terrific Saturday, lots of fun.
Thx, Daniel, for the CLASSy Sat. puz! :)
Easy-med.
SIN TAX & MUCHO prompted sHAh before KHAN.
Otherwise, pretty MUCH breezed thru this one
Esp liked LIVE IN THE MOMENT.
Always good to see SPIDEY-SENSE.
Didn't know 'mulcted', so had to rely on a FEINT for the 'F'.
Fun stroll thru the park today; liked this one a lot! :)
On to Paolo Pascal's Sat. Stumper. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Challenging but ultimately gettable, fun to solve. The grid art was a bonus: I loved the sad face with its diagonal trails of tears, and just hoped, in my moments of being stuck, that mine wouldn't be mirroring it with a DNF. Hardest for me: getting the crucial "stem" of ADELAIDE and LAMB STEW (I was expecting something like"colcannon") that would get me into the middle of the grid. Speaking of middles, my original "Middle of France" was vENTRE ("belly"), which I thought was awfully arcane, even for a Saturday. Overall, I thought the cluing was very clever, maybe even better than the answers themselves.
Help from previous puzzles: SPIDEY SENSE. No idea: ORRIN, SUNRISE MOVEMENT, SCHMOO. Do-overs: "sec" before "vcu" before CRU, brasS before HORNS. Tiny moment of triumph: guessing KHAN.
Much easier than yesterday for moi.
A workout with plenty of amusing, fresh results.
Particularly liked CROSTINI (what a musical word), ADELAIDE (read Richard Flanagan’s works), SEXSCENE (loved the ones in Hulu’s Normal People, a masterpiece), and others.
Bravo to the puzzle maker!
@Joe D
I think !TTrimble 10:06 explains it:
"You have the right to remain silent": that's the notification.
Loved it! (Admit to googling 14A, it’s Sat morning, after all!). Three wishes and spidey sense were terrific!
And, FWIW, I took one look at the grid and immediately saw a Stormtrooper!!
Should not have Friday's been switched with Saturday? I sang through this one. I'm still licking my Brûlée dessert spoons off of the floor from yesterdays catastrophe ....
Rarely can I finish a Saturday without a sneak....Today my spidey sense tingled with joy for finishing with a flair.
I had some spelling issues which I always do. Instead of getting out my frayed dictionary, I waited for the gods of crossword ingenuity to do its magic. It worked.
Perhaps I'm so giddy because SOCIAL CLASS entered in a fell swoop. The yummy L gave me LAMB STEW and the W gave me my THREE WISHES: Finish a Saturday all by myself...Knowing that a HAITIAN can sing "La Dessalinienne"...and LIVING IN THE MOMENT...
I had some pauses, of course...I wanted Davis to be the home of the largest university. I waited with a Feint breath and TEMPE came to view. Then I paused....I had all of the long answers in the basement area and had to look at 50D. Why is ways of doing things MOS? I don't understand that one. Mode of shipment? Man of steel? Should I know this? I have a LEFTY brain.
@JC66 – Yes, the statement that @TTrimble quoted is the notification. The right is the subject of the notification:
Question: What is the difference between Miranda Rights and Miranda Warning?
Answer: We hear these used interchangeably, but Miranda rights are the rights that you, as an individual citizen of the United States, have. The Miranda warning would be when the officer or law enforcement personnel inform you of what those rights are.
For starters, I thought the grid was such a thing of beauty that it seemed a shame to fill it. I took a few moments of silence just to admire it before diving in. Not sure where to begin with my praise of this fine Saturday. Tough for me as Day Sevens always are but an enjoyable effort from start to finish. I loved the long stacks top and bottom, complemented by the sweet THREE WISHES in the middle. Thank you so much Mr. Okulitch and if you happen to read this, I liked your LIVE IN THE MOMENT clue MUCHO better.
I looked up CROSTINI out of curiosity and it sounds like something that would pair well with LAMB STEW, preferably with a nice glass of ASTI and for DESSERT a crusty Brûlée. SI?
I’ve recently re-joined the ranks of toy shoppers with the arrival of a beloved great nephew so AGES went right in for me. But YIPES I’m appalled at the prices! I’ve seen people pushing cart loads out the door during the Christmas shopping season and I doubt they’re THE HAVES either. Thankful I only have a SINGLE to buy for.
Easyish. I had several erasures including some of the same ones that @Rex had, but the wrong answers never lasted very long so this went pretty quickly....i.e. I put in middleCLASS with no crosses and took it out immediately when INS had to be the 4d answer. Same pattern with elenA and SNIPE which gave me SONIA.
SUNRISE MOVEMENT and ORRIN (as clued) were WOEs.
Solid with the bottom half a tad more interesting than the top, liked it.
If you stubbornly stick with TSAR (thinking only that maybe it should be CZAR), well, you ain't gonna win...
The grid is The Panda of Disapproval. It’s watching you, and it does not like what it sees.
Had to build this one from the bottom up, so agree with @Rex that the south was the easiest section. ITEMS, DOHS, IDOLS, LIVEINTHEMOMENT was my first whoosh. Wanted SINTAX from the start, but foolishly, as a huge baseball fan, failing to think of a word with Red or White (SOX!) made me doubt it.
Victoria fit perfectly as and 8 letter answer to 5D--making all 8 letters wrong! GEE!
Last square filled in was the Y in RIGHTY/SPIDEY.
Finished 15 minutes ahead of the Friday puzzle; two weeks in a row of Saturday easier than Friday for me.
Hoping for a 7 game Series!
Farmer: Son, we’re gonna eat all these critters eventually.
Son: The cows?
Farmer: Yep. Ground beef.
Son: The pigs?
Farmer: The pigs as well. Bacon.
Son: The lambs?
Farmer: The LAMBSTEW.
I was one of THEHAVES until the court MULCT me dry.
SEXSCENE crossing YIPES seems appropriate in a pearl clutching way.
Our son was nicknamed SHMOO for the first six or so years. It truly brought joy to me to see it in the puzzle today.
STENOG is preferable to STENOs because you won’t be MULCTED by @Anoa’s POC POC (Plural of Convenience Police of Crosswords).
I was CODWALLOPPED when I opened this puzzle and saw the outré grid. Perhaps a reference to this being the 75th anniversary of the invention of the very sad telephone? It put me in a real solving mood, and I sped through it without many do overs and loved it. Thank you, Daniel Okulitch.
P.S. No full-on ASS or AEs (Ass Equivalents). Four HAs (Hidden Asses): SOCIALCLASS, SASSY, star’s moon and ASTI, which sounds like a beverage best avoided.
The bottom half filled quickly for me, starting with THREEWISHES with no crosses. The same thing happened with DESSERTSPOONS. I was more than a little surprised. The last answer I saw in the south was SINGLET.
The top half was a different story altogether. I wrote in MUCHO, SINTAX, shah, and fox, came to a stop. I was thinking celebratory “toasts” and thought it might be Spumanti - Haha! And there was ASTI below! I considered Victoria B.C. but it didn’t work. SHMOO means nothing to me, except I know it's from a comic strip ridiculing “hillbillies,” which I found unreadable and mirthless as a kid. The SAKS/ORRIN/KHAN corner was last to fall.
To sum up, it was sort of exciting to solve a Saturday quickly, but the only clue that tickled me was 29A Grant in folklore studies. And I enjoyed seeing SPIDEYSENSE.
Lotsa vague, misleading clues. But hey, it’s Saturday so goes with the territory. And some pleasant sunrise fill.
Didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it.
Maybe the format/grid made it stodgy.
Yes, stodgy — that’s the shoe that fits here.
It was a brogan
and a LAMBSTEW.
😏🦖🦖🦖😏
I wanted SOCIAL CLASS from the get-go, which gave me SIN TAX, and I was off to the races. I still have no idea why SOX is an error message. Maybe the Chicago and Boston teams are especially error-prone?
I thought it was a brilliant puzzle with lots of laughs, especially when I wrote in THREE WISHES. The bottom was a little tough, as I thought the wine type could be "dry" or "sec". Oh, UNLESS is perfectly clued, but it just did not come to mind. So is DESSERT SPOONS, which brings back memories of my long gone favorite little restaurant, whose creme brulee was to die for.
STENOG is a term that very old lawyers might remember Plain old STENO was sometimes used for a secretary who took dictation using shorthand, and always used for the pad she wrote notes on, but STENOG, I think, was reserved for court reporters, who in the old days took down every word of testimony in shorthand. For decades now, court reporters have used, and been trained in, machines that simplify their task. Indeed the machine is one of the most expensive items a modern court reporter can't do without.
$&!*#. GEE
Count me among the folks that thought this was a great puzzle and I’m sure some of that has to do with completing the puzzle without any cheats. I ALMOST cheated before my erroneous SATeen needed to be SATINS which allowed me to see CIS and SEXSCENE instead of SEXShows. I obviously had difficulty with my plurals today. At the top I was lucky enough to get SOCIALCLASS right away but also had tsar and sHah before I sussed out KHAN.
Speaking of plurals, I guess my one minor nit is the plural MIRANDARIGHTS. The right to remain silent is but ONE of the panoply of MIRANDARIGHTS within the MIRANDA warning. Anyway, I doubt whether the phrasing could be done in a way that is totally accurate so I will deem it okay.
As usual, I am always amazed at how unobservant I am with respect to “grid art” or the look of the grid in general. I pretty much open the puzzle and go straight to the first question.
I agree with Mike in Bed-Stuy about SPIDEYSENSE and can add some years (67) to his 61 and say that term is NOT new. Of course I read a fair amount of comic books when I was a kid and Spider-Man was one of my faves. Hey, if I could save up 12 cents (a quarter for a “giant”) that moolah was going to go toward a comic book!
@old timer
You're confusing SOX (23A) with OOPS (22A).
I had never heard of Queen Adelaide until a very recent episode of Jeopardy! :)
The only song titled "Adelaide" I know is by John Cale; it's on his first album, Vintage Violence.
1. To get 2D one has to know something really obscure. There was only one issue of the comics published.
2. 32A is YIPES, but in my world we always say YIKES. Is that a regional thing?
Uber easy Saturday solve. The neck and the base of the phone were Wednesday level. Only the handle provided a little late week resistance. This was partly due to my SHAH/KAHN write over. Recognizing MIRANDA RIGHTS was my key to clearing up the confusion in the NW.
Not being a fast solver this came on at 23 minutes flat which for myself puts this well into the easy range for a Saturday. This week Friday and Saturday should have been switched.
yd -0, dbyd -0, We'd pg-1
Just making sure you know about the current exhibit at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College which features American alternative comics, especially those of Art Spiegelman. Lots of lectures and related events too.
"Adelaide" by Beethoven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qurafBb09JI
@Brett (6:12) Go Phillies indeed! And go Eagles too. It’s great time to be a sports fan in the City of Brotherly Love.
@Joe Dipinto 10:10) Thank you for the link of our constructor* demonstrating his considerable vocal talents. Amazing!
@old timer (11:45) I like your explanation of the distinction between a STENO using shorthand and a STENOG with the recording device. I wouldn’t have thought of it that way otherwise but I think you have a good point. Probably not too many of the former these days. I learned it in school and still use it but I don’t think they even teach it anymore.
*Daniel Okulitch: Wow! I’m in awe of someone who can do that and construct a first-rate crossword puzzle too. Very impressive!
I should clarify: The song "Adelaide" is by Beethoven but the words are by Friedrich von Matthisson.
Lonely strolls your friend in the vernal garden,
Softly flooded by lovely light of magic,
That flits through swaying boughs in bloom,
Adelaide!
In the stream's reflection, the snows of the Alps,
In the gold-billowing clouds of eventide,
In the sphere of the stars, there shines your image,
Adelaide!
Eve’s gentle breeze rustles in tender leaves,
Lilies of the valley whisper in the grass,
Waves murmur, and nightingales sing and trill:
Adelaide!
Once, oh miracle! there springs from my grave
A flower from the ashes of my heart;
Clearly glistens on each purple little leaf:
Adelaide!
(Translation by Thomas K. Geydan. December 8, 2017)
Hands up for immediately thinking of Victoria (BC), but it has less than a million people. Then I considered Regina (SK) which is too short, and now that I think about it, also is less than a million. (Both are provincial capitals named after you know who.) Soon I hope we will see a clue like "English king with 2 US states named for him".
Another fine puzzle... 3 in a row.
Typeovers: STOIC or STONY (too short) then STONEY before STOLID. Resisted STENO as being too short. Wanted LIVE IN THE PRESENT (too long) and, of course, TAMPA.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0; QB streak 4 days. Back in fighting form, I hope!]
Miranda rights are read to a person who was just arrested, so they don't incriminate themselves further without a lawyer present. Hence the silence. Singlet could be interpreted as "onesie", attire used to grapple in, read Rex's comments.
@JT (1:38) -- Hard not to like those lyrics -- thanks.
Have to come and brag a bit. Rex likes to get the 1a or 1d for a good session. So kinda proud i got SINTAX right off. Excellent get… gave me SOX MUCHO KHAN (shaw not a royal i think)CAIN and so on. Rare for things to fall like that. Makes it fun to grok it smoothly.
Nice puzzle I think. Enjoyed it.
OOPS!
City of Brotherly Love, 1985
The 1985 MOVE bombing was the destruction by the Philadelphia Police Department of 61 residential homes in the West Philadelphia Osage Neighborhood during a standoff and firefight between the MOVE organization and the police. Two explosive devices were dropped by a police helicopter on a bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house that was occupied by MOVE, causing a fire which the Philadelphia Fire Department subsequently let burn out of control, destroying 61 previously evacuated neighboring houses over two city blocks, and leaving 250 people homeless.[1] Six adults and five children in the MOVE compound died in the incident, with one adult and one child surviving. A lawsuit in federal court found that the city used excessive force and violated constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
@RP- yep, ok. M&A is willin to concede that this cool E/W symmetric(al) w/Jaws of Themelessness puzgrid art coulda been meant to be slightly spooky-lookin. Snarlin haunted telephone theory has some cred. Also, could be a be-headed Ginger Deadman, or some such. Still … M&A thinks the Shortzmeister is still needin a big Halloween-fest of a SunPuz, tomorrow. Plus maybe also a spooky MonPuz follow-up. At least one of the two. But better two.
Got INS pretty fast. Then wanted HELL before CAIN, next-doors. Then MUCHO/SOX. Since M&A don't shop at SAKS a whole lot, its lo-go was a no-know, at our house. So, M&A fled to the NE, to get OOPS/TASE/GEE, AGES, then SONIA. Sure had trouble gettin all the longball answers, tho. Was a toughie puz -- about what a SatPuz always is for m&e.
staff weeject pick: ESP. Slightly spooky, I reckon. Kinda cute clue, too boot.
some sparklers: SPIDEYSENSE. SEXSCENE astronomy clue. THREEWISHES clue. LIVEINTHEMOMENT.
Thanx for the challenge to all of M&A's spidey stenogs, Mr. Okulitch dude. Happy Halloween eve eve. ORRIN/KHAN was kinda scary, so well done, there.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
Doesn’t happen often, but my solve pretty much mirrored @Rex today. Go figure. At Illinois, back in the very early 70s, I took a “poetry” seminar called “modern Black Poets.” The prof, an avid comics fan, and brilliant scholar and teacher, included comics by ORRIN Evans, and he brilliantly tied this work i to the artistry of greats like Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. This one semester in my early undergraduate career opened the mi d I considered open beyond my wildest (I was the only white person in the room) expectations and to this day remains one of, if not THE best class of my very long educational lifetime. Alas today, I remembered Evans but thought ORvil, which looked wrong and indeed was. My subconscious kept working on it and nagged “pizza” at me until I recalled ORRIN because when I moved to Oklahoma as a newlywed, “the” pizza place was called Orin’s (one “r”). Very average pizza (Don’t come here looking for exceptional pie, not here), but Orin was a hilarious guy and a very capable businessperson.
I finally got my zoom zoom whoosh whoosh (Hi, @Rex) going with the right half going from too to bottom, starting with AGES, SCHMOO, STENOG, SNIPE, TASE. To be fair, STENOG (with the G) is in my 40+ year near daily experience with executive legal secretaries and court reporters - stenographers all) I have heard steno, reporter and court reporter but never STENOG. Whatever, GEE, when all’s said and done, I got the squares filled.
Really lined seeing my old friend MIRANDA RIGHTS. Twice a year or more depending on requests, I taught aspiring law enforcement officers in their academies. My course was “avoiding the constitutional abyss of civil litigation or understanding hard rules, discretion and how to use each i intelligently.” Very tongue in cheek, but I must have been a favorite because I was requested often and when. Anyway, we spent some real quality time with MIRANDA.
Overall, I found this easy once I got a toehold and enjoyed it.
Spider sense made this one worth the price of admission! I loved that.
Thanks Joe. Your links are always interesting and for me often educational. I had read but forgot that this constructor was also an opera singer. Crazy!
@AModerator
Am I in spam? (Prolly where I belong.) Or, was I nuked? (Also prolly a great choice.) 🤔 Just wondering.
@Gary Jugert
Your posts haven't been disapproved (yet 😂). If one's missing, blogger.com probably ate it.
The bottom half filled quickly for me, starting with THREEWISHES with no crosses. The same thing happened with DESSERTSPOONS. I was more than a little surprised. The last answer I saw in the south was SINGLET.
The top half was a different story altogether. I wrote in MUCHO, SINTAX, shah, and fox, came to a stop. I was thinking celebratory “toasts” and thought it might be Spumanti - Haha! And there was ASTI below! I considered Victoria B.C. but it didn’t work. SHMOO means nothing to me, except I know it's from a comic strip ridiculing “hillbillies,” which I found unreadable and mirthless as a kid. The SAKS/ORRIN/KHAN corner was last to fall.
To sum up, it was sort of exciting to solve a Saturday quickly, but the only clue that tickled me was 29A Grant in folklore studies. And I enjoyed seeing SPIDEYSENSE.
@Gill 11:02 if no one has responded, it's for Modus Operandus
I meant to add that I’ve looked up mulct at least once in the past and still blanked on it (i.e. needed crosses) today. The good news is that a recent study found that doing crosswords slows mild cognitive impairment.
Grumpy panda here, I hope the three wishes weren't made yet, and I don't owe too much and go back of the line.
@Smith 4:38. Thank you! At least one person read me!!!!!!
I had the same reaction. Steno/ secretary. stenographer/court reporter.
Aw, man, I hate to be that guy, since Smith helpfully replied, but it's modus operandi.
Sorry I missed your query, Gill.
Grid as Rorschach test! Like several others, I thought phone, a frowny phone (Hi, @Rex, your grumpy phone, @Lewis your desk phone, @egs, & @puzzlehoarder).
Only managed ACT IN, CAIN, INS, and LIV in the top half before switching to the bottom half, which filled in easily.
Returning to the handset of the phone, I was stuck and Googled SUNRISE MOVEMENT, the HAITIAN anthem, ORRIN, and ADELAIDE. Solidly in a DNF.
When I finished the puzzle and looked around the grid, I wondered if for 30D’s SEX SCENE some other, non-ass punny clue to end the week* might work. Say, something in keeping with, as others have mentioned, the sociopolitical vibe at the top? Maybe something like “Advisers oversee this bare set?” with its nod to the increasing inclusion of movie-set intimacy advisers/coordinators during these scenes?
Favorites: THREE WISHES, SPIDEY SENSE, MIRANDA RIGHTS, CROSTINI.
*Also wondering if the NYTXW week officially ends on Saturdays or Sundays? Am just a wonderer today, and very late about it too!
Easy, except for the nw, which played hard. Really liked this, though agree on ugh of stenog. Thought the grid was pretty.
I agree! Just like "photog" for photographer. You never see it as "photo" meaning the person 😉
Hand up for YIKES! ✋
Tough to get started, then finished in a rush.
@Gill, @Smith, @TTrimble - in this case, as it is a plural, it is modi operandi
The grid looks like a huge, sad dog’s face. Maybe a poodle? Tough but fair. It took me forever to solve the NW corner. SUNRISEMOVEMENT and KHAN were the stumbling blocks. Well crafted. I liked it very much.
PS - Had MaCrO before MUCHO which made KHAN hard to get and no, I don’t shop at SAKS (I’m just not of that SOCIALCLASS). ORRIN was a WOE to me. So yes, the NW corner was a beast.
I too had MACRO and I kept it there. You never heard of the great KRAN? Well, now you know. (At least, the people in the SANRISE MOVEMENT know what I mean.)
Oh well. Now...on to shopping at SAKS. (right)
Diana, LIW
To D, LIW: LOL!
How many SATINS can there be? Inquiring minds want to know.
As usual, the NW was last. I was disappointed to see that 1a was just simply SOCIALCLASS; I thought with the given examples it would be some kind of lower CLASS. Finally hitting on SINTAX polished it off for me.
A nice, E-W symmetrical puzzle with plenty of lively stuff going on: loved SPIDEYSENSE, for example. Yeah, the overall portrait looks dour, but having no bar across the upper staircases seems to let all the sadness out into the open air.
Nice photo-album corners. Birdie.
Wordle par.
Post a Comment