Relative difficulty: Medium+ (on the tough side for a Tuesday)
THEME: SUPERGIRL (62A: Kara Zor-El's identity in DC Comics ... or a punny hint to the answers to the starred clues) — answers follow the pattern: [word meaning "super"] + ["girl"'s name]"
Theme answers:
GOOD FAITH (17A: *Sincere intentions)
ROCKIN' ROBIN (25A: *One who's "Hoppin' and a-boppin' and a singin' his song," in a 1958 hit)
STAR / LILY (38A: *With 39-Across, flower named for its distinctive shape)
PRETTY PENNY (51A: *Considerable amount of money, in an idiom)
Word of the Day: TERRINE (12D: French loaf baked in a rectangular mold) —
A terrine (French pronunciation: [tɛ.ʁin]), in traditional French cuisine, is a loaf of forcemeat or aspic, similar to a pâté, that is cooked in a covered pottery mold (also called a terrine) in a bain-marie. Modern terrines do not necessarily contain meat or animal fat, but still contain meat-like textures and fat substitutes, such as mushrooms and pureed fruits or vegetables high in pectin. They may also be cooked in a wide variety of non-pottery terrine moulds, such as stainless steel, aluminium, enameled cast iron, and ovenproof plastic.
Terrines are usually served cold or at room temperature. Most terrines contain a large amount of fat, although it is often not the main ingredient, and pork; many terrines are made with typical game meat, such as pheasant and hare. In the past, terrines were under the province of professional charcutiers, along with sausages, pâtés, galantines, and confit. Less commonly, a terrine may be another food cooked or served in the cooking dish called a 'terrine'. (wikipedia)
• • •
So much good energy here. YEETED! (58A: Chucked forcefully, in modern lingo). So many of y'all are gonna hate that one, I can feel it, but it's one of my favorite slang terms, partly because it seems to double as a sound effect, and also because I never really know *exactly* what it means and I've never heard anyone use it who wasn't half-making fun of themselves for using it. As soon as you say "Yeet!' you have pretty much taken the attention away from whatever it was you were talking about and put it squarely on the loopiness of the "word" you've now chosen to use. I'm never quite sure how to use it and so I never do. I'm almost entirely sure that it's not a word that people over 30 should really mess with. But it's fun to me. To my ears. The puzzle's theme also has good energy, though I think it is one answer short of working perfectly. The first three themers work pretty well, but that last one ... I truly love PRETTY PENNY as a standalone answer, but "PRETTY" doesn't come close enough to meaning "SUPER," I don't think. Maybe if you use it metaphorically to mean "really artfully done" (to describe an athletic feat, maybe), it works, but the primary meaning of PRETTY is aesthetically pleasing, which doesn't feel nearly as close to the heart of the SUPER-verse as the other first words are. Still, I think a good lawyer could exonerate PRETTY PENNY, and the theme as a whole is very imaginative, with theme answers that really sing ("ROCKIN' ROBIN, yeet! yeet! yeet!")
The bad part of this puzzle is the NE, and by "bad" I mean, "badly edited." First of all, TERRINE is a really, really hard word for a Tuesday. Despite its incredibly useful letters, the word has appeared only three other times in the Shortz era, and never before Thursday. It's a specialty word. I've actually heard it before, but (and here's where the editing comes in, for sure), I couldn't get to the word because "loaf" is such a strong evoker of bread that all I was thinking about was bread. After I finally got it from crosses, I was like "wow I thought TERRINE was a savory meaty aspicy thingie..." And it is. It is, yes, technically a "loaf," but yeesh. The word is already relatively obscure (I said "relatively!") for a Tuesday; trying to make it further inaccessible with a bread-looking clue does not feel like a sporting thing to do. Again, it is Tuesday. Which brings me to the other, far more bizarre editing call in the NE—that clue on PACER (9D: Kind of fitness test for K-12 students). What ... in the ... what? What is that? I'm ... well, old, and I've had a kid recently go through the K-12 system, and today, right now, is the first I'm hearing of whatever this is. In my experience, PACER = [Indiana hoopster] or ... maybe a bygone car of some kind (?) (aw yeah, the AMC PACER! What a looker!). Also, one who paces, presumably. From my perspective, as clued, PACER was a succession of arbitrary letters. So throw the bizarre (for me, brutal) PACER clue into a corner that's already got a toughly-clued TERRINE in it, and yeah, that's a lot more strange roughness than I ever want to see in a Tuesday corner, or any corner. I pity the solver who did not know that miso was a "PASTE" (also, not the easiest clue) (9A: Miso, for one). That corner was needlessly made much more inaccessible than it should've been. Completely out of keeping with the rest of the grid, and the general good vibes of the rest of the puzzle.
Love that there are NOODLES in my PHO this morning. Perfect. I will always eat PHO. Relatedly, I will never yeet PHO. Now that I have, actually, used "yeet" in a sentence, I feel like I've had my moment of personal growth, so I'm gonna head off to enjoy my coffee + cat time. Have a nice day.
[1A: Word said twice before "pants on fire"]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I think this is the constructor's NYTXW debut. Strong work. Congratulations to her.
Nice debut! I drove a (heavily) used AMC Pacer back in the 1980s. Traded it to an Iranian fellow for two (fairly heavily) used Persian rugs. I still have the rugs, but I bet that guy isn’t still driving the Pacer.
I lucked out on this one. I read the 12D clue about the loaf and thought, "is a soup TuRine ever rectangular and used for bread? Maybe ..." And I misspelled it to make it fit. No clue about PACER, but ROCKIN' ROBIN was a gimme, since I was around in 1957. Overall -- given my TuRine venture -- Medium for a Tuesday.
Thats hilarious that for you PACER was brutal for you. As a 21 year old who is just starting to learn how to crossword, that word was right up my alley because the phrase "Fitness Gram Pacer Test" was seared into my brain in public school.
On the other hand, Pho broke me because Ive never eaten it. Goes to show how different experiences change the difficulty of a puzzle.
Sweet little Tuesday right across the plate. (But that CLARO/LUCA cross was tough.) Happily, I cottoned to the trick before looking at the reveal; I had never heard of SUPER GIRL, but her real name fits the fam, I guess, right? Superman’s name is Kal-el, and his dad is Jor-el.
It’s hard to find others. Ultra Violet? Great Hope? Pure Joy? Nah. I like the ones Ailee went with.
1. Reuben and Rachel notwithstanding, aren’t 99% of sandwiches named for their ingredients? Actually, now that I think about it, I guess I’m wrong here. You got YER French Dip, Cuban, Croque Monsieur, Po Boy, Fluffernutter. . . Ok. Fine. Never mind. 2. Is there any other way to cower than IN FEAR? I guess you could cower in shame or embarrassment, but I dunno.
Speaking of shame and embarrassment, I read somewhere that part of the reason a dog wags its tail is to fan out the pheromones that exude from “down there.” So if he means you well, he’s trying to waft those intentions your way. And if he’s ashamed or scared, he’ll put his tail between his legs to staunch the odor flow in an effort to be less obtrusive. This could all be total garbage, but I rather like believing it. I remember having an epiphany about dog tails when I first had to wear a mask. The way we humans announce our good will is through a smile. So having to wear a mask is akin to a dog’s having its tail docked or ears cropped; it’s much harder to let everyone know you’re friendly.
“Reason for overtime” – Mr. Burch (custodian) and I were chatting yesterday about how much overtime he gets and how Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools hates paying it. The reason? Other custodians not showing up. He’ll be called to go here and there to help out, and I imagine with overtime and his 19 years with CMS, he’s making a helluvalot more than I am. He earns every PENNY, though. They don’t make’em like Mr. Burch anymore.
Sorry, didn’t enjoy this one. "Rockin’ ", yeah, that’s an acceptable synonym for "super". "Good" and "Pretty" are not. And STAR LILY? That just doesn’t make any sense as the name of a superhero. I mean, put it to the ultimate test: "Look, up in the air; it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s…STAR LILY??
I don’t speak French, so LUI, TERRINE & GATEAU were unknown to me. As was Swiss CHARD (okay, kidding about that one).
AD IN should be forever banned from crossword puzzles.
And PACER as clued? What the heck? That’s a device implanted in the heart to maintain a safe rhythm. And maybe I’ve heard it used in the equine sense. But the K-12 fitness thing? Huh. I once had kids in K-12. I’m sure they had some sort of fitness test in P.E., but it wasn’t a PACER. I am unable to find it in any of the online dictionaries I normally refer to. I only found it by Googling “Pacer fitness". It’s apparently an acronym of "Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run". That’s Tuesday NYTXW fare? I think not.
PACER and TERRINE I’ve never heard of but got by getting all the crosses. LUI/LUCA was impossible for me. Though I admit any Pixar movie should be fair game.
Another member of the older than dirt club here, so PACER and YEETED were not close to my wheelhouse. No clue on LUCA and never remember CLARO from crosswords past, so that section wasn’t much fun.
Forget TERRINE - the real felony offense here is GATEAU crossing LAURYN - I narrowly avoided it, but was staring at a Tues DNF on a French lesson crossing a rap “artist”, yuk !
I like when a Tuesday is a Tuesday. There is nothing that makes my teenage son laugh harder than when a boomer like me uses something from their vernacular and YEETED may be his favorite. Even when I use it “correctly” And as it was close to the end I finished this one LMAO.
Perhaps it's age - but until today I've never heard of the term Yeet or Yeeted. (My spell check corrects it while I tried to type it). On the other hand - food love I guess I am! - Terrine was an obvious "gimme" - standard in many French restaurants. Duck, Goose, liver, all sorts of things. A fun puzzle, so thank you!
I liked this puzzle, although I agree that PRETTYPENNY, a phrase I like a lot, is a bit weak as a themer. The CLARO/LUCA cross, and that little square section there was the hardest thing in the puzzle for me, since I do know French and have traveled in France a lot, but I don’t know cigars and am not really up on my Pixar movies. And actually, DAHLIA as the national flower of Mexico is a little obscure.
Never heard of a PACER test, so wasted a good ten minutes trying to make basal or basic or water or almost anything else fit there. Even with all the crosses, PACER seemed like it had to be a mistake. I was in most of those grades (K-12), as were most of my family, and none of them has heard of it either. I was very willing to believe PASTE was wrong (if it’s not sushi, and it’s Japanese food, I don’t know it), and even willing to give up on LEE, thinking maybe there was another martial artist named Bruce out there somewhere.
Of course, I’ve never heard of YEETED, either, but anything that says ‘in modern slang’ I a) will not know b) will hate.
Also, to me ROBIN is a name for a boy. Apparently, this is another outcome from a midlantic upbringing. In England, it is overwhelmingly masculine. But in the US, it apparently leans feminine
@Anonyomous 6:43 AM: We must have been in the same coffee shop, because I ran into CLARO and LUCA in Natick this morning too! Next time, give a wave!
Rex's discussion of YEETED ensured that I will never use a word I've never heard of: "...because I never really know *exactly* what it means and I've never heard anyone use it who wasn't half-making fun of themselves for using it...." Yeah. Real useful.
Figured the theme would have something to do with cool girls, since I'd filled all of the theme answers in by the time I got to the revealer. Good thing, because the revealer clue meant nothing to me. I am so so tired of the Marvel universe....
On the tough side for a Tuesday, but some interesting fill, along with the goop mentioned above.
Finished it in normal time, but only after changing REDREDROBIN to ROCKINROBIN, and BATEAU to GATEAU. How many other people got the robin clue wrong at first?
The star of this impressive NYT debut, IMO, is its fresh feel-good theme. It’s positivity and cleverness captured me and got me thinking, “Ain’t life grand?”
Nothing humdrum about the non-theme component either. Seemed like whenever I turned a corner, there’d be a TERRINE, GATEAU, FILTER IN, YEETED, DAHLIA, LIMN, LILY, and even slurpy NOODLES to give spark to the entire outing.
I liked HEAT crossing CHAR, and the little CHARD-to-GATEAU side-trip the puzzle tripped off in me: CHARD made me think “Swiss”, which begat “cheese”, which begat “cake”, which begat GATEAU. (Which made it a BEGATEAU, and now I’ll quit.)
Ailee, may you enjoy your debut day as much as I enjoyed your puzzle! Thank you for this!
Trouble indeed with CLARA/LUCA and PACER/PASTE, and my kids are having kids so YEETED required the downs but, LOL, I'll toss it around, even chuck it out forcefully, at Thanksgiving and see what happens. Nobody else went with RedTIDE? DeNO and dHO didn't exactly scream "error" at me. The happy chimes didnt ring after I played the LP in those two other crosses, so I had to go looking around for the problem and it was Red before RIP holding me up.
Cute enough - knew SUPER as @LMS said from the family name but needed the crosses for GIRL. Not a lot jumped out at me - liked RIPTIDE, NOODLES and ENDINGS.
Again with the Pixar sell - now that Harry Potter has been canceled animated films are the NYTs new jam.
@anon 7:36a - LIMN means to depict or draw - the N is silent. Use it in your next Scrabble game to impress - even better go with disLIMN or LIMNer.
I agree with those who nite that GOOD and PRETTY are not compelling synonyms for SUPER, so the theme did not really work for me. And this is the first time in my life I have encountered the word YEET (in any tense). Still, the puzzle was fun and well made and this is a SUPER impressive and promising debut from a high school student. Keep at it, Ailee!
October 11 is International Day of the Girl… Declared by the United Nations to support more opportunities for girls worldwide and to increase awareness of gender inequality. Appropriate theme today!
I agree it was challenging for a Tuesday but what got me excited in this puzzle was LIMN. I was hoping @LMS might do a linguistic analysis on the word – as far as I know it shares roots with the word “illuminate” as in illuminated manuscripts. In its most general sense, I think LIMN means to draw or paint anything in any medium. But it’s come to have specific connotations, such as the painted decoration on historical furniture or household items like clocks or mirror frames. And then there were the LIMNers, itinerant painters who travelled North America in the nineteenth century, setting up shop in one town after another to paint portraits of the nouveaux riches.
Here's Collins: LIMN, verb (transitive) 1. To represent in drawing or painting 2. (archaic) to describe in words 3. An obsolete word for illuminate
Interesting that LIMN can also refer to written description – I didn’t know that.
Here’s more info from Merriam-Webster: Allow us to shed some light on the history of limn, a word with lustrous origins. Limn traces to the Anglo-French verb aluminer and ultimately to the Latin illuminare, which means "to illuminate." Its use as an English verb dates from the days of Middle English; at first, limn referred to the action of illuminating (that is, decorating) medieval manuscripts with gold, silver, or brilliant colors. William Shakespeare extended the term to painting in his poem Venus and Adonis: "Look when a painter would surpass the life / In limning out a well-proportioned steed...."
Getting back to LIMNers, it just so happens that I was reading an article a month or so ago about one such painter, a Mr. John Tolman from Massachusetts. I’ll link to the article and you can read it or not depending on level of interest, but I do really encourage you to scroll through and look at his portraits. They have all the awkward characteristics of a lot of the LIMNers’ work: flatness, bright light with minimal shadow, a three-quarters view of the sitter, an oddness to the depiction of hands, strange or absent perspective. See if you agree: there’s a sameness to these faces and yet, paradoxically, a distinctiveness, too. They’re compelling -- they fix you with their steady gaze and manage to convey something of personality. I know who I’d like to sit next to on a plane and who I wouldn’t! Here’s the article: Who Was the Burpee Conant Limner?
limn /lim/ verbLITERARY depict or describe in painting or words. "Miss Read limns a gentler world in her novels" suffuse or highlight (something) with a bright color or light. "a crescent moon limned each shred with white gold"
I teach high school in Illinois, and the kids at my school definitely have to do the PACER. You can always tell when it's happening, everyone is sweaty and stinky that week.
Youngest constructor ever and a Chen POW! Great - and congrats on the debut - but too many Saturday words (and alleged expressions) for a Tuesday. And a DNF for me. For a TUESDAY!
Felt like Archie Bunker when he ranted about “It’s a downer, it’s an upper, it’s a bummer, it’s a hummer” at the modern lingo he didn’t understand..
https://youtu.be/IUjcywDl2OA Starts at 20:30
So this Tuesday morn, feel dumb for not finishing an easy day puzzle and realize I’ve become Archie Bunker. Yeesh - Nothing zhuzh about finally knowing “deets” but fanning on yeets.
Regarding YEET: It was the answer (question?) to a Jeopardy question (answer?) a few weeks ago. Completely new to me. I looked it up and the definition was about as clear as Rex's. He's probably right, though, that no one over 30 should use it. Nor should they use "on fleek."
Reminds me of when I was much, much younger than 30, advertisers and wannabe cool adults and movie makers would use the word groovy. It always sounded so very silly because you never, ever, ever, ever, ever heard anyone younger than 30 use the word in real life. EVER.
@Rex Medium? Nope, super easy, faster than yesterday.
Solved as themeless, did not get the theme at all, YEETED new but easy from crosses. Considered RedredROBIN but CHAR and KEY clarified that PRETTY quickly. Tweet, tweet.
So SUPERGIRL is a PRETTY GOOD ROCK STAR? Or what? She has a PENNY'S worth of FAITH in an albino (LILY) ROBIN?
Or worse, she's a female character identified by superficial traits? What makes her SUPER?
Anyway, fun solve. Off to farmers market for some of that GOODFAITH CHARD.
Sweet puzzle. We'll probably hear a bit of grumbling about the stuff in the puzzle from the 21st century. You know, all this new fancy lingo there kids are using these days.
I found this a joyful experience. Even the "Y" word staring at me is funny on some level. I didn't know there's a new word to describe the act of creating an arc for a crummy puzzle on its journey to @Nancy's wall.
CHAR/CHARD. Har. Who's quitting the NYTXW today over this miscarriage of editing justice?
LIMN: Ug.
And as for 🦖 and his objection to PRETTY not being SUPER, he's probably become jaded after reading too many excruciating term papers written by PRETTY coeds and can no longer see the SUPER behind those sculpted eyebrows. I am of the notion being PRETTY may be the ultimate SUPER power. Kim Kardashian (pretty) billionaire. Me (less pretty) hundredaire. See how this works?
Uniclues:
1 Harry Potter's mom. 2 Sticky note on the vision board at a genius-level DC editor's meeting to plan their latest derivative sequel. 3 "Think about it, we're twins and we're 16 years younger than our siblings. That can only mean one thing. We're accidents." 4 The current score of every sporting match of the future. 5 What every day in cyber-security must feel like.
1 STAR LILY 2 INANE SUPER GIRL 3 LOGICAL GAP KIDS 4 TIE GAME, AS OF YET (~) 5 SPAMBOT RIPTIDE
Lots of unfriendly overlaps, all previously mentioned. Had “taste” for MISO, and taster sounds as plausible as anything for that unknown FITNESS test so no happy sound. Didn’t bother running the alphabet to correct it.
Thanks to those who pointed out that the puzzle is a debut and by the youngest ever NYT constructor. Wow! and congratulations to Aimee Yoshida. Medium for me, too, both in filling the grid and in cottoning on to the theme: as Jeff Chen says in his xwordinfo.com write-up, "Further enhancing the a-ha moment, all of the names were disguised. The meanings of FAITH (belief), ROBIN (the song refers to a bird), LILY (flower), and PENNY (coin) all obfuscated the concept so well." Indeed. I pondered SUPER GIRL for many a moment ("Some kind of 'soup'?") before I saw the GIRLs' names.
Do-over: oval before HEAT. Help from previous puzzles: CLARO, YEETED (from a recent Mini). No idea: LUCA, SUPER GIRL, PACER.
Hey All ! A DNF! Because I failed to use @M&A's "when in doubt, put in a U" saying, and FWE (finished with errors) at LaCA/LaI. Dang!
Gotta check out xwordinfo, as some of y'all have talked about this constructor, but haven't given specific details.
Neat puz. Agree it would've been better as a WedsPuz. YEETED was new for me as a 53 yo. Yeesh, sure. Agree with PACER being a Huh? as clued. Never owned a PACER, but I do have a 1970 AMC Hornet.
@LMS Totally shocked you've never heard of SUPER GIRL. There's been many SUPER GIRL shows/movies over the years.
OK, looked up the puz at xwordinfo, she is the youngest female constructor to get a puz in the NYT. They don't give her age, but I think youngest all time is still David Steinberg. Wasn't he 12 or something like that when he started? (Which seems to me like just a few years ago, but now he's like 23 and an editor himself.) Dang, time, slow down!
Congratulations to the constructor - obviously a ROCK STAR at her high school - on her NYT debut! Quite a feat at any age. If I recall, I was just beginning to solve TV Guide crosswords at that point in life.
But with due respect for that lofty accomplishment, I didn’t totally enjoy this puzzle. This was primarily because I had a DNF at PASTE/PACER/TERRINE and Natick is never a good place to be on a Tuesday. Also struggled with LUCA/CLARO, DINO, PHO, and of course the notorious YEETED. You don’t say. I’m sorry, but that just sounds INANE.
Part of the struggle was on me of course for not knowing and for not grasping the theme immediately. Having to have the theme explained usually winds up with either a big aha or a disappointed meh. So I learn then that those are all the names of GIRLS and the first words are synonymous with SUPER. Got it but have to say, that’s a PRETTY GOOD stretch of the definition on a couple of those. You can probably guess which ENDING it had for me.
I wonder if I were still teaching high school if I would have run into YEET. Certainly not current among the people I hang with now, I mean, my homies, maybe.
Never did the PACER test but we did some national phys. ed. tests when I was in high school that measured speed, accuracy, strength, and so on. I did hold the school record for agility for a while. A small thing, but my own.
Having done lots of crosswords and speaking some French and being old enough to remember stuff like ROCKINROBIN, I breezed through this one. OTOH, if you gave me all the themers and all the time I wanted I'm not sure I would ever come up with SUPERGIRL without the ultra-specific clue for it. I did try too. No luck.
Nice Tuesday and nice debut. Well done you, AY, and I'll Ask You to submit many more of these. Thanks for all the fun.
I'm sure that RED, RED came before you, ROCKIN. Your behavior is disgraceful. This one totally unexpected substitution drove me absolutely crazy, because the only words for "burn slightly" are CHAR, SEAR and SINGE. There is no word for "burn slightly' that begins with a D. As in RED, RED ROBIN.
I eventually gave in and reluctantly accepted ROCKIN ROBIN (whoever the bleep he is) but that one glitch in the puzzle made this the toughest Tuesday for me that I can ever remember.
I'm a foodie so I got TERRINE easily enough once I realized it wasn't bread and that the Swiss green wasn't bread (money) either.
YEEK was new to me. I do remember the first time I ever heard the word "Groovy" though. It was 1967, my mother had just returned to Somalia from her Grandmother's funeral. She handed me a copy of "The Hobbit" and said, "Your cousins says its ... groovy." It was.
I've seen LIMN around, but have never been quite sure what it meant, so thanks for the explainer.
So PRETTY does not mean “super,” but GOOD and STAR somehow do? No, this theme is not successful. This puzzle was a good enough themeless. And by “good enough” I do not mean “super enough.”
For Trina and Nancy: Because the constructor is very young, she probably never heard "REDREDROBIN" and would be amused to learn that solvers were confused.
That NE (and north central) were tough Tuesday sections, for sure, adding time to the solve. But I finished with no errors, which may not have been SUPER, but was PRETTY GOOD.
Have to agree that GOOD falls short of SUPER--feels like grade inflation. A mid-range B is GOOD, an A+ is SUPER.
As an older millennial, 35, I'm so glad for the existence of Yeet as it finally closes the loop started by the Simpsons in the early 90's with their introduction of the word yoink. We finally have its opposite. To Yeet is to throw something away, to Yoink is to pull it towards you. It's my absolute favorite modern slang term and I hope it lives forever.
Enjoyable puzzle that seemed mostly Tuesday difficulty level with some later week entries thrown in. Why should it be rated at a Tuesday level? I would guess because all the crosses of the hard entries were quite simple to get. At least for me to get.
Since XWordInfo posts well before this blog, why doesn't Mike at least visit there briefly before posting this blog? He really could have easily learned that today's constructor was the youngest female constructor ever, as noted by some who commented above? That would have resulted in a better write-up (in my opinion). On the other hand, giving those who comment a few crumbs, letting them add some facts, is a good strategy.
Not on A.Y.s wavelength for much of this one. A bit of a FAITH solve.
Love miso soup, but didn't realize that the PASTy little chunks are what it's named for. 🤔
Had LoCA before LUCA; didn't know the French for 'him'. Had watched LUCA, and the LUI looked better than LoI, so an easy repair there.
Never can remember which side of the 'brain' is supposed to do what. lol
Unknowns: GATEAU, TERRINE, PASTE, STAR LILY, GAP KIDS, LOGICAL, LAURYN, LUI, USA, DAHLIA, PACER, DINO.
Think I've finally got YEET down pat; run into it often in indie xwords.
Cute theme; took a few moments post-solve to fully grok the concept.
GOOD adventure; liked it! :)
@jae, etal
Finished Croce's 750 in just under 2 hrs (so, med). Toughest area by far was the central East Coast. See you y'all next Mon. :) ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Medium-tough. I needed some staring time to grok the theme. Pretty clever idea, smooth grid, liked it. Xwordinfo has a very informative discussion of why this is POW. A fine debut!
Several years ago I enjoyed a novel, "The Limner", written by Paul Darcy Boles. 1975. Also, there was a fiction piece of the same name in The New Yorker by Julian Barnes. 2009.
What is this PACER thingy? Do they now claim to force elementary school kids to have Phys-ed classes now? In my day we had recess. And we chased each other around or skipped rope before school. I think there was a law that high-school kids were supposed to have phys ed, but in my vastly underfunded school district they didn't have enough facilities for everybody so if you were taking a full college preop program you never saw the inside of the gym. Which I was told was pretty grungy, not to mention smelly, I wasn't missing much. Then I went on to college as a music major at a liberal arts school, I tried to sign up for cool-sounding phys-ed courses like folk dancing but was told they were requirements for people in the college but not the conservatory, so the college people got first pick and there was nothing left for me to sign up for but golf. I opted out. So I made it through 16 years of education with no phys-ed at all. Other people complained about it, but I felt sort of gypped.
@Bob Mills, me too for Red red ROBIN. Got it off the initial R. I could see it wouldn't work with CLARO, but I left it in, hoping something would turn up. Nope.
@Nancy, your proof doesn't convince me -- no hoppin' and a-boppin' in it -- but it was worth it just for the picture of Bing Crosby jauntily holding a pipe with his teeth. Probably ROCKIN ROBIN was meant as a parody/homage, but who knows?
My father owned a small-town drugstore which combined many sources of revenue: soda fountain, camera store/film processing, ticket agency, truss-fitting, liquor sales, hot roasted and salted nuts, newspapers and magazines, and cigars/cigarettes. They cigars were kept in a glass-fronted humidor. That's how I knew CLARO, though I don't know what kind of cigar it is.
Our town was too small to rate thoroughbred racing, or even trotter racing, but one week every summer we would have PACER races. Pacing is not a natural gait for horses-- they have to train them by tying the two legs on each side to each other, so that they have to move together, which seems cruel from today's perspective. But it did make me familiar with the word, though not with the eponymous teste.
@Barabara S., thanks for the link about the LIMNers. I was curious about your attribution of their provenance to the 19th century, as I'd always thought of them as 18th C, so I looked them up. Wiki agrees with you on the 19th, but they also say that the anonymous painter of "Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary" (aka "Baby Freake"), ca. 1670, is also known as "The Freake Limner." Well, that's Wikipedia for you, but kind of interesting. I'll go look at that article you linked now.
@Loren, your avatar is better than PRETTY PENNY; too bad it's one letter too long.
@kitshef -- the women are taking over the men's names. Not just Robin, but Hillary, Allison, Sydney, many more. Soon they'll have them all, and we'll have to identify ourselves with Greek letters.
@Nancy: Rockin’ Robin goes “hoppin’ & a-boppin’”: He rocks in the tree tops all day long Hoppin' and a-boppin' and a-singing his song All the little birds on Jaybird Street Love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet Rockin' robin.tweet.tweet.tweet Rockin' robin.tweet, tweedle-lee-dee Blow rockin' robin 'Cause we're really gonna rock tonight
First Tuesday defeat in quite a spell. Done in by forgetting French pronouns & missing the Pixar release….LUÍ, LUCA and loser, oh my!
Aidee Yoshida, whose debut today is a POW, certainly is a winner. She joins the elite list of young constructors that broke into NYTXW as teens. Following in the footsteps of her Mentor Joel Fagliano , David Steinberg, Erik Agard, and Aimee Lucido is quite a feat, so we can disregard her score on the PACER test. Great hope for her future grids.
"They’re compelling -- they fix you with their steady gaze and manage to convey something of personality. I know who I’d like to sit next to on a plane and who I wouldn’t!" -- @Barbara S
I went to look at the portraits, Barbara. I was thinking that I didn't want to sit next to any of them on a plane -- what a fierce, angry-looking group of seemingly humorless and unpleasant people! -- and then at the tail end I finally got to Reuben. May I sit next to Reuben, Barbara, or have you put dibs on him yourself?
Boy in red vest looked disarmingly pleasant as well, but he's a child -- and we all know how childen tend to behave on airplanes.
I guess that alien creatures living in Gotham would be NYETS.
PACER deserves a recap.
Really nice, slightly tough Tuesday debut. Those objecting to PRETTY and GOOD as SUPER synonyms aren’t thinking about how often we say things like “You look SUPER” or “That pasta was “SUPER”. We don’t mean invincible when we say these types of things. Thanks and congrats, Ailee Yoshida.
A yeet-le challengin, for a TuesPuz. Which is fine by m&e. Bring it, Shortzmeister and AmazinAilee. Knew this puz was itchin for a fight, when I saw them 7-stacks in all 4 corners. Looks like most folks had the same no-knows in the fillins as M&A did, sooo … good, I don't have to relive em all here in nanosecond-excruciatin detail.
staff weeject pick: LUI. Best known for the French 60's hit tune "Lui, Lui", by Lauryn Luca and the Dahlias. I gateau learn more French ...
some fave stuff: ASOFYET. CHARO + CHARD. KONG. YEETED [cool to learn about]. SPAMBOT. INFEAR/FAR.
Thanx for the fun, Ms. Super Debut Girl Yoshida darlin. Rockin good job. [LULU woulda been a heckuva great, compact extra themer, tho …]
Several answers in this puzzle “had to be wrong” — PACER (as clued), everyone’s favorite VEETED, ADIN (tennis dolt here), LIMN (new word for me) — until they weren’t. Luckily remembered CLARO and ran the alphabet for the only LOGICAL letter choice for the L*U*CA / L*U*I cross (*O* was a runner up but I figured *U* was more “French-like”.)
Thought theme answers were clever with all the GIRLs names. Never got the SUPER synonym part until I came here.
83-year-olds know best. I'm with JC66. If AMAZING GRACE, which the constructor says actually spurred the idea, couldn't be worked into the grid, she should have YEETED the whole thing. Instead we get second-string GOOD FAITH and STAR LILY.
@jberg - Pacing is in fact a natural gait for Standardbreds, who naturally preferentially either trot or PACE. The tendency to pace is highly inheritable. No one* tries to force a natural trotter to pace.
*That's right, no one. I have it on good authority that not one person or any other sentient being in the history of this or any other universe has ever attempted to turn a natural trotter into a PACER.
I have never commented before, but today is my 50th birthday and my name is Robin. I can’t help but think the NYT is trying to cheer me up with this birthday message. I am cheered!
As a relatively younger solver (25 y/o) and newish to the NYT crossword (< 6 mos), I actually found this to be one of the most enjoyable and smooth Tuesday puzzles I’ve done. The PACER test was implemented as a substitute to running the mile when I was in high school, and it was such a miserable, exhausting experience. It’s so universally hated by kids that it was rumored to be banned for being “child cruelty”, and the PACER voiceover prompt has been memed to death over the past few years. That, YEETED, and the Nintendo references all made me smile during the solve, and I felt that there was enough in the crosses to get around words like LIMN and TERRINE comfortably. I had a suspicion that the constructor was someone younger, and was pleasantly surprised that she was a high school student! I hope I get to see more from her in the future. The clues and entries felt exciting and well thought-out, as well as grounded in the experiences of another (though much younger) Gen-Zer. Thank you Ailee Yoshida!
My Dad had a habit of stumbling on cool "toys" that he would buy and give to us kids but actually enjoyed more than my brother and I did. He gave me a bank that was shaped like a black cube. When you wanted to add coins, the lid would pop open and a hand would come out of the crypt for you to put the coin in. In my memory, it gave out an evil yeet (I misread 58A's clue as "chuckled forcefully") but I might be making that up.
ChARO as the mild cigar (I think I was combining CLARO and cheapo) had me wondering what movie genre hUCA was. Oh, LUCA, still know nothing about it but at least I changed the h to L before I finished.
I needed the xwordinfo explanation to get the theme, grr. Sorry Ailee, it is a great puzzle; congratulations on your debut!
@Nancy – since none of the limnees in @Barbara S's article look as if they would be interested in conversing with a random stranger, I think they'd all make ideal airplane seatmates.
Music trivia for today: ROCKIN' ROBIN is in the public domain, because its copyright was not renewed in timely fashion in 1986. Specific sound recordings of the song, however, are still protected. But you can create your own new recording and claim full copyright ownership of your version.
Good fun Tuesday theme. I have about the first 25 issues of Supergirl comic from 1972! Before she got her own title, I read her adventures in "Adventure Comics". Never watched the TV show though.
@Barbara S., thanks for those images I can't unsee. Some forms of "art" are just so icky; it's like "naive" art without the innocence.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, back on the bandwagon. Mental fog dissipating, I hope!]
Absolutely astounded to see how many here whiffed on LUCA. Granted, it's mid-range Pixar, and it was hurt by coming out when it still wasn't okay to be going to movie theaters willy-nilly, but given the necessity of being "up" on Pixar's oeuvre for NYTXW solving, it's fairly inexcusable imo.
I thought the theme was a tad weak, but the solving itself was fun, and with the constructor debuting at 16 (!!), I'll gladly handwave it.
The language has no need for YEET yet, NYET. And I never heard of a PACER test or a film named LUCA. But these 3 unknowns were easily solved by the crosses. Very easy puzzle.
Man, you people! Am I the only one to feel affection for and see any redeeming qualities in those portrait-sitters? I think Samuel Conant could be jollied into some pleasant conversation and, if nothing else, I'd engage him on the symbolism of the rose. I admit Relief Burpee looks like she could snap you in two, but I really want to ask about her name. I'd definitely comment to Horatio Gates Buttrick on his Byronic look. (He was almost exactly concurrent with Byron -- they were born 10 years apart, but would he have known who Byron was?) Yeah, OK, I'd avoid the couple on the white chairs like the plague. And, @Nancy, I'd happily chat with you and Reuben. We could take a row of three seats and put him in the middle.
@jberg 10:58 I was a little cavalier in my dating of limner activity, probably because I had Tolman too much on the brain. They certainly did get going well before the 19th century.
@Joe Dipinto 1:18 PM I always arm myself with a book on planes in case my seatmates aren't chatty and in case they are. Mind you, I've had some fascinating conversations in the air...and some I've tried to forget, like the guy who told me he'd witnessed a murder and I was the only person he'd ever told. I didn't believe him, but CREEPY!!
@okanaganer 1:48 PM Icky?! I'm going to blame your lack of empathy with the Burpees et al. on the lingering effects of COVID. (And, BTW, I hope you get better immediately!)
Maybe in some estuary South of a Tuckerton, NJ, pacing is considered a natural gait.** But everywhere else on Earth only 5 natural gaits are recognized for horses: walk, trot, gallop, canter and back.
**Probably only at 3AM. on a boat, like the Lyle Lovett song.
@Roo 9:35 am, @bocamp 10:35, @Newboy 11:23, and others – Hand up for a DNF square at my LoI/LoCA cross. And on a Tuesday!
Totally missed knitting my brows at YEETED as it filled itself in by crosses when I wasn’t looking. Like the PHO/NOODLES cross.
@Barbara S 8:39 am and @Nancy 11:27, @Joe Dipinto 1:18, @okanaganer 1:48 – Agree with Joe about those in the portraits, and okanaganer too. Reuben’s painting looks the best of them, and sure, I’d sit next to him if I had an aisle seat, but doesn’t he look rather a bit, well, smug? Could be the 3/4 angle that Barbara mentions, or maybe it’s time I cleaned my monitor!
Pretty fun, but "as of now" or "as yet." Never have I ever heard a person say, "as of yet." That just sounds horrible, although not as horrible as "yeet."
@Robin (12:42) Happy Birthday!! Glad you stopped in and please come back again. You can help keep some of us old timers up-to-date with the youngsters. 😄
The reason this happens is some people like to be adventurous with their newborn (especially) girls' names and they try a boys name, the name becomes a "sissy" name for boys and so another one lost.
@otherDavid - "As of yet" sounds completely normal to me. I say it, and I've heard others say it. There's even an award winning movie from the Tribeca Film Festival last year called "As of Yet." These sorts of colloquialisms can be highly regional or generational, so it doesn't surprise me that some haven't heard of it (though this feels way more common and less generational to me than something like "yeet," which I know well from reading a lot of social media comments and having two young children.)
Overall, I was a bit surprised by the several foreign language clues -- luckily, I took French in high school, and the Russian was a gimme, but seemed a bit much, especially for a Tuesday.
Finished in under average time. Nothing in retrospect seemed particularly hard to me, but it just a while to finish. Perhaps the iPhone solve lost me a minute or two, as I have fat fingers and constantly have to retype my fills (if I catch the errors.)
"Claro" I only know from crosswords -- I know I've seen it before, and I can never remember if it's "claro" or "charo" or something similar.
My stumbling points were LIMN (never heard of it) and LUCA (sounds vaguely familiar), but I needed the crosses to figure those out (and I still thought LIMN was somehow wrong.) Oh, and no idea what PACER is, either. Hasn't come up with my kids and I don't remember it from K-12 gym in the 80s and early 90s. All I remember is some Presidential Fitness Medal or something like that.
"Rockin Robin" was, for some reason, my favorite song as an 8th grader in 1988. I guess I just liked the oldies. Loved jamming out to it on the piano in the music room, and even got my classmates to lake it. I'd throw in some Motley Crue "Home Sweet Home" afterwards to bring the musical performance to at least the same decade (I had no idea it was released in 1981 -- it was still a big song in my grammar school.)
Anon 2:53 - Those are only the gaits common to all horses, not all gaits. Various breeds (Saddlebreds, Paso Finos, Tennessee Walking Horse, Missouri Fox Trotter, et al) have other gaits, perfectly natural to them but selectively bred for by humans/ Among these gaits are the pace, rack, running walk, Tölt, the paso fino, paso cordo, paso largo, trocha, and the fox trot. Wiki Apparently, all gaited horses derive from one singular ancestor with a specific gene.
I decided to look a detailed definition of yeet. Like many American slang words, it is of Black origin. One early usage was in basketball, a player might say it when they expected their shot at the basket, especially a 3- pointer- to go in. It became widely popular among gen zers when it was use in a rap video (not popular here!) more as an interject ion and connected to a bit of dancing that became a meme. So apparently it is bot a verb meaning to throw usually in a humorous sense, or an interjection of many meanings. I wouldn't think of using it. Fairly crossed.
I'm in the 'AS OF YET' camp, but the following makes good sense to me, so I'll have to re-think my usage:
"Many writing authorities think 'as of yet' is unnecessarily wordy. If you like clear writing, opt for 'as yet,' or, even better, 'yet.'" (grammarly blog ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
I didn’t loom it up but I thought Yeet had to do with basketball. I’ve heard round ball players and fans (and folks in other sports as well but mostly 🏀) talk about a player having “the yips” - being unable to focus and relax while shooting (especially free throws). Maybe it’s just the sound of “yip” and “yeet” but that’s where I thought it belonged. So that clue three me big time. After I filled it in though, the word “chucked” sort of made some sense. Player in a slump, scoring poorly for the last few games comes up to the line for the fourth free throw, having missed the first three clearly has a case if the yips. With sweaty palms and slightly shaky hands, he obviously lacked concentration. Rather than a smooth motion, he just YEETED the rock - and missed. Four in a row. Time for the bench.
I also didn’t recall the kids’ fitness test and having put tASTE (because “flavor” didn’t fit) rather than PASTE in for Miso, I decided maybe tACER was ok. Not so much. Looked and looked and looked when I finished and rather than suffer a chest by revealing my mistake), I just out the puzzle away and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, as I opened my takeout container of delicious PHO just a few minutes ago, I did a metaphorical head smack and actually yelled “It’s MISO you idiot!” Thus endeth my solving angst for the day. A tougher than usual Tuesday.
This one was a bit heavy on the single double triple and hidden plurals of convenience. There is a particular abundance in the far south with some fancy two-steppin' going on in the down crosses.
Also if you do not know French or some of the PPP there are some way beyond Tuesday level naticks. It took me quite awhile to recall LAURYN. She or I was or were miseducated. FAITH was already in. Nothing that I did not know or didn't mind learning.
I had no idea of PACER. Seems like a variation on a basketball or football drill. I was trying to remember if the school fitness test that JFK started had an acronym of some kind. I hear that laughing young'uns.
This puzzle was so much less INANEr than yesterday's puz. That missing R makes the puz so much more respectable it ought to get a Noble Prize.
ROCKINROBIN and PRETTYPENNY were high spots. Michael Jackson did a cover of Day's song that was better than the original when he was 14. That is if you do not deduct too many points for being a cover or for his human failings.
I’d strongly suggest looking up Lauryn Hill and her poetry before putting “artist” in quotes. She’s an incredibly insightful generational talent who speaks truth to power and has an achingly gorgeous singing voice.
This flowed really well for the most part although I had to get limn from crosses. Ended up with _ _ CA for 15 across and with a proper noun crossing a proper noun and a foreign word those letters could have been anything >:(
Sorry, but this theme doesn’t work for me. GOOD and PETTY are not synonymous with SUPER, so it’s just not LOGICAL. Never heard of YEET or YEETED before. But I guess it’s a word. Never heard of a PACER test either. ADIN is tennis lingo which I only got via the crosses. Unless you know French, and/or Disney stuff, LUI crossing LUCA could be a Natick. No more ENT or YER please. Jeff Chen gave this one the Puzzle of the Week award. Frankly, I don’t know why Will Shortz gave it the NOD. OKAY, this is a new constructor, but if you’re going to publish it at least help the constructor out and do some editing to bring it up to NYT standards. Does the NYT have standards anymore?
There are two distinct types of harness racehorses, trotters (diagonally opposite hooves hit the ground at the same time) and PACERs (same-side). As a test, PACER certainly does not belong in a Tuesday grid.
Neither does the natick at LUI/LUCA. I made a pure guess at that vowel, again just lucky. Keep your crosses fair, folks!
This was actually hard for a Tuesday. I had LET_____for the dog clue, and felt sure it would be LETMEOUT. Fortunately, I held off on that one. Again luckily, square 58 was fairly crossed, otherwise I would NEVER have come up with "YEETED."
All this to support a SOSO theme. There is some good work here, with seven-stacks in the corners. For a newbie, we encourage with a par.
I found this to be a very easy puzzle, almost, but not quite, read-write. My biggest hangups being: LUCA/LUI crossing (Pixar film sounding vaguely familiar, and u looking better for the French word); and yeeted I got completely from the crosses. That last one is a really stupid word, or do I mean stoopid. Kids these days!!
The north east was just savage. I didn’t know Miso was a paste, and I’ve never even heard of chard or terrine. And in pacer and that one just beat me down. One if my hardest Tuesdays.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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127 comments:
Nice debut!
I drove a (heavily) used AMC Pacer back in the 1980s. Traded it to an Iranian fellow for two (fairly heavily) used Persian rugs. I still have the rugs, but I bet that guy isn’t still driving the Pacer.
I lucked out on this one. I read the 12D clue about the loaf and thought, "is a soup TuRine ever rectangular and used for bread? Maybe ..." And I misspelled it to make it fit. No clue about PACER, but ROCKIN' ROBIN was a gimme, since I was around in 1957. Overall -- given my TuRine venture -- Medium for a Tuesday.
Thats hilarious that for you PACER was brutal for you. As a 21 year old who is just starting to learn how to crossword, that word was right up my alley because the phrase "Fitness Gram Pacer Test" was seared into my brain in public school.
On the other hand, Pho broke me because Ive never eaten it. Goes to show how different experiences change the difficulty of a puzzle.
Luca, Clara, et Lui were seen this morning in Natick.
Sweet little Tuesday right across the plate. (But that CLARO/LUCA cross was tough.) Happily, I cottoned to the trick before looking at the reveal; I had never heard of SUPER GIRL, but her real name fits the fam, I guess, right? Superman’s name is Kal-el, and his dad is Jor-el.
It’s hard to find others. Ultra Violet? Great Hope? Pure Joy? Nah. I like the ones Ailee went with.
“Do one’s part” – ACT. “Part one’s do” – style.
“Common shape for a toy bank” – my daughter and I seek out ugly stuff to give each other, and I may have careered with this startling bank I gave her as a housewarming gift when she moved to Boston.
A couple of questions about other clues:
1. Reuben and Rachel notwithstanding, aren’t 99% of sandwiches named for their ingredients? Actually, now that I think about it, I guess I’m wrong here. You got YER French Dip, Cuban, Croque Monsieur, Po Boy, Fluffernutter. . . Ok. Fine. Never mind.
2. Is there any other way to cower than IN FEAR? I guess you could cower in shame or embarrassment, but I dunno.
Speaking of shame and embarrassment, I read somewhere that part of the reason a dog wags its tail is to fan out the pheromones that exude from “down there.” So if he means you well, he’s trying to waft those intentions your way. And if he’s ashamed or scared, he’ll put his tail between his legs to staunch the odor flow in an effort to be less obtrusive. This could all be total garbage, but I rather like believing it. I remember having an epiphany about dog tails when I first had to wear a mask. The way we humans announce our good will is through a smile. So having to wear a mask is akin to a dog’s having its tail docked or ears cropped; it’s much harder to let everyone know you’re friendly.
“Reason for overtime” – Mr. Burch (custodian) and I were chatting yesterday about how much overtime he gets and how Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools hates paying it. The reason? Other custodians not showing up. He’ll be called to go here and there to help out, and I imagine with overtime and his 19 years with CMS, he’s making a helluvalot more than I am. He earns every PENNY, though. They don’t make’em like Mr. Burch anymore.
Sorry, didn’t enjoy this one. "Rockin’ ", yeah, that’s an acceptable synonym for "super". "Good" and "Pretty" are not. And STAR LILY? That just doesn’t make any sense as the name of a superhero. I mean, put it to the ultimate test: "Look, up in the air; it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s…STAR LILY??
I don’t speak French, so LUI, TERRINE & GATEAU were unknown to me. As was Swiss CHARD (okay, kidding about that one).
AD IN should be forever banned from crossword puzzles.
And PACER as clued? What the heck? That’s a device implanted in the heart to maintain a safe rhythm. And maybe I’ve heard it used in the equine sense. But the K-12 fitness thing? Huh. I once had kids in K-12. I’m sure they had some sort of fitness test in P.E., but it wasn’t a PACER. I am unable to find it in any of the online dictionaries I normally refer to. I only found it by Googling “Pacer fitness". It’s apparently an acronym of "Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run". That’s Tuesday NYTXW fare? I think not.
PACER and TERRINE I’ve never heard of but got by getting all the crosses. LUI/LUCA was impossible for me. Though I admit any Pixar movie should be fair game.
Another member of the older than dirt club here, so PACER and YEETED were not close to my wheelhouse. No clue on LUCA and never remember CLARO from crosswords past, so that section wasn’t much fun.
Forget TERRINE - the real felony offense here is GATEAU crossing LAURYN - I narrowly avoided it, but was staring at a Tues DNF on a French lesson crossing a rap “artist”, yuk !
I like when a Tuesday is a Tuesday. There is nothing that makes my teenage son laugh harder than when a boomer like me uses something from their vernacular and YEETED may be his favorite. Even when I use it “correctly” And as it was close to the end I finished this one LMAO.
Nevertheless, amidst the stellar gang of girls in the theme, OKAY ED persisted.
Perhaps it's age - but until today I've never heard of the term Yeet or Yeeted. (My spell check corrects it while I tried to type it). On the other hand - food love I guess I am! - Terrine was an obvious "gimme" - standard in many French restaurants. Duck, Goose, liver, all sorts of things. A fun puzzle, so thank you!
I liked this puzzle, although I agree that PRETTYPENNY, a phrase I like a lot, is a bit weak as a themer. The CLARO/LUCA cross, and that little square section there was the hardest thing in the puzzle for me, since I do know French and have traveled in France a lot, but I don’t know cigars and am not really up on my Pixar movies. And actually, DAHLIA as the national flower of Mexico is a little obscure.
Never heard of a PACER test, so wasted a good ten minutes trying to make basal or basic or water or almost anything else fit there. Even with all the crosses, PACER seemed like it had to be a mistake. I was in most of those grades (K-12), as were most of my family, and none of them has heard of it either. I was very willing to believe PASTE was wrong (if it’s not sushi, and it’s Japanese food, I don’t know it), and even willing to give up on LEE, thinking maybe there was another martial artist named Bruce out there somewhere.
Of course, I’ve never heard of YEETED, either, but anything that says ‘in modern slang’ I a) will not know b) will hate.
Also, to me ROBIN is a name for a boy. Apparently, this is another outcome from a midlantic upbringing. In England, it is overwhelmingly masculine. But in the US, it apparently leans feminine
@Phillyrad 1999: you wouldn’t happen to be a Philly-based radiologist, would you?
The guys are less super than the women today: LOGIC AL, OKAY ED, INFEAR LEE, YEET ED.
AMC produced the PACER (1975) because it turned out the Gremlin (1970) wasn't ugly enough.
Can someone explain 39 down to me? “Depict by drawing”
@Anonyomous 6:43 AM: We must have been in the same coffee shop, because I ran into CLARO and LUCA in Natick this morning too! Next time, give a wave!
Rex's discussion of YEETED ensured that I will never use a word I've never heard of: "...because I never really know *exactly* what it means and I've never heard anyone use it who wasn't half-making fun of themselves for using it...." Yeah. Real useful.
Figured the theme would have something to do with cool girls, since I'd filled all of the theme answers in by the time I got to the revealer. Good thing, because the revealer clue meant nothing to me. I am so so tired of the Marvel universe....
On the tough side for a Tuesday, but some interesting fill, along with the goop mentioned above.
Finished it in normal time, but only after changing REDREDROBIN to ROCKINROBIN, and BATEAU to GATEAU. How many other people got the robin clue wrong at first?
The star of this impressive NYT debut, IMO, is its fresh feel-good theme. It’s positivity and cleverness captured me and got me thinking, “Ain’t life grand?”
Nothing humdrum about the non-theme component either. Seemed like whenever I turned a corner, there’d be a TERRINE, GATEAU, FILTER IN, YEETED, DAHLIA, LIMN, LILY, and even slurpy NOODLES to give spark to the entire outing.
I liked HEAT crossing CHAR, and the little CHARD-to-GATEAU side-trip the puzzle tripped off in me: CHARD made me think “Swiss”, which begat “cheese”, which begat “cake”, which begat GATEAU. (Which made it a BEGATEAU, and now I’ll quit.)
Ailee, may you enjoy your debut day as much as I enjoyed your puzzle! Thank you for this!
LIMN ???? On a Tuesday! yeah yeah the crosses but yikes.
YEETED yeah nope. No clue and I’m not a boomer.
Trouble indeed with CLARA/LUCA and PACER/PASTE, and my kids are having kids so YEETED required the downs but, LOL, I'll toss it around, even chuck it out forcefully, at Thanksgiving and see what happens. Nobody else went with RedTIDE? DeNO and dHO didn't exactly scream "error" at me. The happy chimes didnt ring after I played the LP in those two other crosses, so I had to go looking around for the problem and it was Red before RIP holding me up.
Cute enough - knew SUPER as @LMS said from the family name but needed the crosses for GIRL. Not a lot jumped out at me - liked RIPTIDE, NOODLES and ENDINGS.
Again with the Pixar sell - now that Harry Potter has been canceled animated films are the NYTs new jam.
@anon 7:36a - LIMN means to depict or draw - the N is silent. Use it in your next Scrabble game to impress - even better go with disLIMN or LIMNer.
Blue DAHLIA
Enjoyable Tuesday solve.
Alternative clues:
For RIPTIDE
Dis detergent
For DAMON
Encouraging words for a beaver
For ASSENT
Obnoxious med. specialist
Yeah, I had trouble with LUI/LUCA/CLARO as well. Like three short non-English words make a … less than kind chunk of a puzzle sometimes.
Ha ha! My first car was a black Gremlin! Back then, it was kinda cool 😉 And I liked the name! We named our black kitty Gremlin after the car.
I agree with those who nite that GOOD and PRETTY are not compelling synonyms for SUPER, so the theme did not really work for me. And this is the first time in my life I have encountered the word YEET (in any tense). Still, the puzzle was fun and well made and this is a SUPER impressive and promising debut from a high school student. Keep at it, Ailee!
This is maybe the third time I've run across 'yeet' in recent weeks.I understand it means 'heave'.
Each time I saw it, I wanted to yeet all over the floor.
October 11 is International Day of the Girl… Declared by the United Nations to support more opportunities for girls worldwide and to increase awareness of gender inequality. Appropriate theme today!
I agree it was challenging for a Tuesday but what got me excited in this puzzle was LIMN. I was hoping @LMS might do a linguistic analysis on the word – as far as I know it shares roots with the word “illuminate” as in illuminated manuscripts. In its most general sense, I think LIMN means to draw or paint anything in any medium. But it’s come to have specific connotations, such as the painted decoration on historical furniture or household items like clocks or mirror frames. And then there were the LIMNers, itinerant painters who travelled North America in the nineteenth century, setting up shop in one town after another to paint portraits of the nouveaux riches.
Here's Collins:
LIMN, verb (transitive)
1. To represent in drawing or painting
2. (archaic) to describe in words
3. An obsolete word for illuminate
Interesting that LIMN can also refer to written description – I didn’t know that.
Here’s more info from Merriam-Webster:
Allow us to shed some light on the history of limn, a word with lustrous origins. Limn traces to the Anglo-French verb aluminer and ultimately to the Latin illuminare, which means "to illuminate." Its use as an English verb dates from the days of Middle English; at first, limn referred to the action of illuminating (that is, decorating) medieval manuscripts with gold, silver, or brilliant colors. William Shakespeare extended the term to painting in his poem Venus and Adonis: "Look when a painter would surpass the life / In limning out a well-proportioned steed...."
Getting back to LIMNers, it just so happens that I was reading an article a month or so ago about one such painter, a Mr. John Tolman from Massachusetts. I’ll link to the article and you can read it or not depending on level of interest, but I do really encourage you to scroll through and look at his portraits. They have all the awkward characteristics of a lot of the LIMNers’ work: flatness, bright light with minimal shadow, a three-quarters view of the sitter, an oddness to the depiction of hands, strange or absent perspective. See if you agree: there’s a sameness to these faces and yet, paradoxically, a distinctiveness, too. They’re compelling -- they fix you with their steady gaze and manage to convey something of personality. I know who I’d like to sit next to on a plane and who I wouldn’t! Here’s the article: Who Was the Burpee Conant Limner?
Lewis @7:08 - FTW!
limn
/lim/
verbLITERARY
depict or describe in painting or words.
"Miss Read limns a gentler world in her novels"
suffuse or highlight (something) with a bright color or light.
"a crescent moon limned each shred with white gold"
I teach high school in Illinois, and the kids at my school definitely have to do the PACER. You can always tell when it's happening, everyone is sweaty and stinky that week.
Youngest constructor ever and a Chen POW! Great - and congrats on the debut - but too many Saturday words (and alleged expressions) for a Tuesday. And a DNF for me. For a TUESDAY!
Felt like Archie Bunker when he ranted about “It’s a downer, it’s an upper, it’s a bummer, it’s a hummer” at the modern lingo he didn’t understand..
https://youtu.be/IUjcywDl2OA
Starts at 20:30
So this Tuesday morn, feel dumb for not finishing an easy day puzzle and realize I’ve become Archie Bunker. Yeesh - Nothing zhuzh about finally knowing “deets” but fanning on yeets.
Regarding YEET: It was the answer (question?) to a Jeopardy question (answer?) a few weeks ago. Completely new to me. I looked it up and the definition was about as clear as Rex's. He's probably right, though, that no one over 30 should use it. Nor should they use "on fleek."
Reminds me of when I was much, much younger than 30, advertisers and wannabe cool adults and movie makers would use the word groovy. It always sounded so very silly because you never, ever, ever, ever, ever heard anyone younger than 30 use the word in real life. EVER.
@Rex Medium? Nope, super easy, faster than yesterday.
Solved as themeless, did not get the theme at all, YEETED new but easy from crosses. Considered RedredROBIN but CHAR and KEY clarified that PRETTY quickly. Tweet, tweet.
So SUPERGIRL is a PRETTY GOOD ROCK STAR? Or what? She has a PENNY'S worth of FAITH in an albino (LILY) ROBIN?
Or worse, she's a female character identified by superficial traits? What makes her SUPER?
Anyway, fun solve. Off to farmers market for some of that GOODFAITH CHARD.
Sweet puzzle. We'll probably hear a bit of grumbling about the stuff in the puzzle from the 21st century. You know, all this new fancy lingo there kids are using these days.
I found this a joyful experience. Even the "Y" word staring at me is funny on some level. I didn't know there's a new word to describe the act of creating an arc for a crummy puzzle on its journey to @Nancy's wall.
CHAR/CHARD. Har. Who's quitting the NYTXW today over this miscarriage of editing justice?
LIMN: Ug.
And as for 🦖 and his objection to PRETTY not being SUPER, he's probably become jaded after reading too many excruciating term papers written by PRETTY coeds and can no longer see the SUPER behind those sculpted eyebrows. I am of the notion being PRETTY may be the ultimate SUPER power. Kim Kardashian (pretty) billionaire. Me (less pretty) hundredaire. See how this works?
Uniclues:
1 Harry Potter's mom.
2 Sticky note on the vision board at a genius-level DC editor's meeting to plan their latest derivative sequel.
3 "Think about it, we're twins and we're 16 years younger than our siblings. That can only mean one thing. We're accidents."
4 The current score of every sporting match of the future.
5 What every day in cyber-security must feel like.
1 STAR LILY
2 INANE SUPER GIRL
3 LOGICAL GAP KIDS
4 TIE GAME, AS OF YET (~)
5 SPAMBOT RIPTIDE
https://www.google.com/search?q=limn%20definition
BOB MILLS:
I also had “REDREDROBIN” for the longest time …
Lots of unfriendly overlaps, all previously mentioned. Had “taste” for MISO, and taster sounds as plausible as anything for that unknown FITNESS test so no happy sound. Didn’t bother running the alphabet to correct it.
Athlete’s foot is never pretty.
Thanks to those who pointed out that the puzzle is a debut and by the youngest ever NYT constructor. Wow! and congratulations to Aimee Yoshida. Medium for me, too, both in filling the grid and in cottoning on to the theme: as Jeff Chen says in his xwordinfo.com write-up, "Further enhancing the a-ha moment, all of the names were disguised. The meanings of FAITH (belief), ROBIN (the song refers to a bird), LILY (flower), and PENNY (coin) all obfuscated the concept so well." Indeed. I pondered SUPER GIRL for many a moment ("Some kind of 'soup'?") before I saw the GIRLs' names.
Do-over: oval before HEAT. Help from previous puzzles: CLARO, YEETED (from a recent Mini). No idea: LUCA, SUPER GIRL, PACER.
Hey All !
A DNF! Because I failed to use @M&A's "when in doubt, put in a U" saying, and FWE (finished with errors) at LaCA/LaI. Dang!
Gotta check out xwordinfo, as some of y'all have talked about this constructor, but haven't given specific details.
Neat puz. Agree it would've been better as a WedsPuz. YEETED was new for me as a 53 yo. Yeesh, sure. Agree with PACER being a Huh? as clued. Never owned a PACER, but I do have a 1970 AMC Hornet.
@LMS
Totally shocked you've never heard of SUPER GIRL. There's been many SUPER GIRL shows/movies over the years.
OK, looked up the puz at xwordinfo, she is the youngest female constructor to get a puz in the NYT. They don't give her age, but I think youngest all time is still David Steinberg. Wasn't he 12 or something like that when he started? (Which seems to me like just a few years ago, but now he's like 23 and an editor himself.) Dang, time, slow down!
Anyway, good one Ailee. POWerful start!
Three F's (SUPER, GIRL!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Limn means to depict
Congratulations to the constructor - obviously a ROCK STAR at her high school - on her NYT debut! Quite a feat at any age. If I recall, I was just beginning to solve TV Guide crosswords at that point in life.
But with due respect for that lofty accomplishment, I didn’t totally enjoy this puzzle. This was primarily because I had a DNF at PASTE/PACER/TERRINE and Natick is never a good place to be on a Tuesday. Also struggled with LUCA/CLARO, DINO, PHO, and of course the notorious YEETED. You don’t say. I’m sorry, but that just sounds INANE.
Part of the struggle was on me of course for not knowing and for not grasping the theme immediately. Having to have the theme explained usually winds up with either a big aha or a disappointed meh. So I learn then that those are all the names of GIRLS and the first words are synonymous with SUPER. Got it but have to say, that’s a PRETTY GOOD stretch of the definition on a couple of those. You can probably guess which ENDING it had for me.
I wonder if I were still teaching high school if I would have run into YEET. Certainly not current among the people I hang with now, I mean, my homies, maybe.
Never did the PACER test but we did some national phys. ed. tests when I was in high school that measured speed, accuracy, strength, and so on. I did hold the school record for agility for a while. A small thing, but my own.
Having done lots of crosswords and speaking some French and being old enough to remember stuff like ROCKINROBIN, I breezed through this one. OTOH, if you gave me all the themers and all the time I wanted I'm not sure I would ever come up with SUPERGIRL without the ultra-specific clue for it. I did try too. No luck.
Nice Tuesday and nice debut. Well done you, AY, and I'll Ask You to submit many more of these. Thanks for all the fun.
Who the bleep is ROCKIN ROBIN and why has he stolen the RED RED ROBIN's song???
I can prove the theft!!!! Oh, yes, I can!!!!
I'm sure that RED, RED came before you, ROCKIN. Your behavior is disgraceful. This one totally unexpected substitution drove me absolutely crazy, because the only words for "burn slightly" are CHAR, SEAR and SINGE. There is no word for "burn slightly' that begins with a D. As in RED, RED ROBIN.
I eventually gave in and reluctantly accepted ROCKIN ROBIN (whoever the bleep he is) but that one glitch in the puzzle made this the toughest Tuesday for me that I can ever remember.
Ailee GIRL, just SUPER!
Gotta love those Saturday-ish looking corners. Second early-week puzzle in a row with lots of white space.
I took me quite a while after finishing to understand the theme -- none of those second words registered as names while I was solving.
YEETED and PACER are new to me. I probably won't ever use either one in conversation, but that's fine.
Has anyone ever said, "Quit YER FILTERIN, smoke a CLARO"? Didn't think so.
@kitshef -- LOL at the not-so-impressive guys. Maybe in a punny world, NOOD LES is overexposed.
I'm a foodie so I got TERRINE easily enough once I realized it wasn't bread and that the Swiss green wasn't bread (money) either.
YEEK was new to me. I do remember the first time I ever heard the word "Groovy" though. It was 1967, my mother had just returned to Somalia from her Grandmother's funeral. She handed me a copy of "The Hobbit" and said, "Your cousins says its ... groovy." It was.
I've seen LIMN around, but have never been quite sure what it meant, so thanks for the explainer.
Nice puzzle.
Wordle 479 2/6*
⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Any questions?
So PRETTY does not mean “super,” but GOOD and STAR somehow do? No, this theme is not successful. This puzzle was a good enough themeless. And by “good enough” I do not mean “super enough.”
Ditto
For Trina and Nancy: Because the constructor is very young, she probably never heard "REDREDROBIN" and would be amused to learn that solvers were confused.
That NE (and north central) were tough Tuesday sections, for sure, adding time to the solve. But I finished with no errors, which may not have been SUPER, but was PRETTY GOOD.
Have to agree that GOOD falls short of SUPER--feels like grade inflation. A mid-range B is GOOD, an A+ is SUPER.
Impressive debut from a very young constructor.
As an older millennial, 35, I'm so glad for the existence of Yeet as it finally closes the loop started by the Simpsons in the early 90's with their introduction of the word yoink. We finally have its opposite. To Yeet is to throw something away, to Yoink is to pull it towards you. It's my absolute favorite modern slang term and I hope it lives forever.
Enjoyable puzzle that seemed mostly Tuesday difficulty level with some later week entries thrown in. Why should it be rated at a Tuesday level? I would guess because all the crosses of the hard entries were quite simple to get. At least for me to get.
Since XWordInfo posts well before this blog, why doesn't Mike at least visit there briefly before posting this blog? He really could have easily learned that today's constructor was the youngest female constructor ever, as noted by some who commented above? That would have resulted in a better write-up (in my opinion). On the other hand, giving those who comment a few crumbs, letting them add some facts, is a good strategy.
Pixel film crossing a cigar connects two areas of total ignorance for me.
At 16, Ms. Yoshida is the youngest female to have had a NYT puzzle published. Daniel Larson was 13.
Thx, Ailee; SUPER-duper Tues. puz! :)
Med+ (Wednes. time pour moi).
Not on A.Y.s wavelength for much of this one. A bit of a FAITH solve.
Love miso soup, but didn't realize that the PASTy little chunks are what it's named for. 🤔
Had LoCA before LUCA; didn't know the French for 'him'. Had watched LUCA, and the LUI looked better than LoI, so an easy repair there.
Never can remember which side of the 'brain' is supposed to do what. lol
Unknowns: GATEAU, TERRINE, PASTE, STAR LILY, GAP KIDS, LOGICAL, LAURYN, LUI, USA, DAHLIA, PACER, DINO.
Think I've finally got YEET down pat; run into it often in indie xwords.
Cute theme; took a few moments post-solve to fully grok the concept.
GOOD adventure; liked it! :)
@jae, etal
Finished Croce's 750 in just under 2 hrs (so, med). Toughest area by far was the central East Coast. See you y'all next Mon. :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@NYDenizen. DANG!
Wordle 479 3/6
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Also stumped by the CLARO/LOCA cross.
Went with "Let me out" at 35A which caused some confusion.
Lame theme, meh!
Medium-tough. I needed some staring time to grok the theme. Pretty clever idea, smooth grid, liked it. Xwordinfo has a very informative discussion of why this is POW. A fine debut!
Several years ago I enjoyed a novel, "The Limner", written by Paul Darcy Boles. 1975. Also, there was a fiction piece of the same name in The New Yorker by Julian Barnes. 2009.
What is this PACER thingy? Do they now claim to force elementary school kids to have Phys-ed classes now? In my day we had recess. And we chased each other around or skipped rope before school. I think there was a law that high-school kids were supposed to have phys ed, but in my vastly underfunded school district they didn't have enough facilities for everybody so if you were taking a full college preop program you never saw the inside of the gym. Which I was told was pretty grungy, not to mention smelly, I wasn't missing much. Then I went on to college as a music major at a liberal arts school, I tried to sign up for cool-sounding phys-ed courses like folk dancing but was told they were requirements for people in the college but not the conservatory, so the college people got first pick and there was nothing left for me to sign up for but golf. I opted out. So I made it through 16 years of education with no phys-ed at all. Other people complained about it, but I felt sort of gypped.
@Bob Mills, me too for Red red ROBIN. Got it off the initial R. I could see it wouldn't work with CLARO, but I left it in, hoping something would turn up. Nope.
@Nancy, your proof doesn't convince me -- no hoppin' and a-boppin' in it -- but it was worth it just for the picture of Bing Crosby jauntily holding a pipe with his teeth. Probably ROCKIN ROBIN was meant as a parody/homage, but who knows?
My father owned a small-town drugstore which combined many sources of revenue: soda fountain, camera store/film processing, ticket agency, truss-fitting, liquor sales, hot roasted and salted nuts, newspapers and magazines, and cigars/cigarettes. They cigars were kept in a glass-fronted humidor. That's how I knew CLARO, though I don't know what kind of cigar it is.
Our town was too small to rate thoroughbred racing, or even trotter racing, but one week every summer we would have PACER races. Pacing is not a natural gait for horses-- they have to train them by tying the two legs on each side to each other, so that they have to move together, which seems cruel from today's perspective. But it did make me familiar with the word, though not with the eponymous teste.
@Barabara S., thanks for the link about the LIMNers. I was curious about your attribution of their provenance to the 19th century, as I'd always thought of them as 18th C, so I looked them up. Wiki agrees with you on the 19th, but they also say that the anonymous painter of "Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary" (aka "Baby Freake"), ca. 1670, is also known as "The Freake Limner." Well, that's Wikipedia for you, but kind of interesting. I'll go look at that article you linked now.
@Loren, your avatar is better than PRETTY PENNY; too bad it's one letter too long.
@kitshef -- the women are taking over the men's names. Not just Robin, but Hillary, Allison, Sydney, many more. Soon they'll have them all, and we'll have to identify ourselves with Greek letters.
@Nancy: Rockin’ Robin goes “hoppin’ & a-boppin’”:
He rocks in the tree tops all day long
Hoppin' and a-boppin' and a-singing his song
All the little birds on Jaybird Street
Love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet
Rockin' robin.tweet.tweet.tweet
Rockin' robin.tweet, tweedle-lee-dee
Blow rockin' robin
'Cause we're really gonna rock tonight
Red Red Robin goes “bob-bob-bobbin’ along”
First Tuesday defeat in quite a spell. Done in by forgetting French pronouns & missing the Pixar release….LUÍ, LUCA and loser, oh my!
Aidee Yoshida, whose debut today is a POW, certainly is a winner. She joins the elite list of young constructors that broke into NYTXW as teens. Following in the footsteps of her Mentor Joel Fagliano , David Steinberg, Erik Agard, and Aimee Lucido is quite a feat, so we can disregard her score on the PACER test. Great hope for her future grids.
Where’s XTC’s “Supergirl”? Great song!
Recently pacer was a wordle solution. And was the hardest word of that week I believe
"They’re compelling -- they fix you with their steady gaze and manage to convey something of personality. I know who I’d like to sit next to on a plane and who I wouldn’t!" -- @Barbara S
I went to look at the portraits, Barbara. I was thinking that I didn't want to sit next to any of them on a plane -- what a fierce, angry-looking group of seemingly humorless and unpleasant people! -- and then at the tail end I finally got to Reuben. May I sit next to Reuben, Barbara, or have you put dibs on him yourself?
Boy in red vest looked disarmingly pleasant as well, but he's a child -- and we all know how childen tend to behave on airplanes.
Too many French words.
Confession of a bulimic: I YEET what I eat.
I guess that alien creatures living in Gotham would be NYETS.
PACER deserves a recap.
Really nice, slightly tough Tuesday debut. Those objecting to PRETTY and GOOD as SUPER synonyms aren’t thinking about how often we say things like “You look SUPER” or “That pasta was “SUPER”. We don’t mean invincible when we say these types of things. Thanks and congrats, Ailee Yoshida.
A yeet-le challengin, for a TuesPuz. Which is fine by m&e. Bring it, Shortzmeister and AmazinAilee.
Knew this puz was itchin for a fight, when I saw them 7-stacks in all 4 corners.
Looks like most folks had the same no-knows in the fillins as M&A did, sooo … good, I don't have to relive em all here in nanosecond-excruciatin detail.
staff weeject pick: LUI. Best known for the French 60's hit tune "Lui, Lui", by Lauryn Luca and the Dahlias. I gateau learn more French ...
some fave stuff: ASOFYET. CHARO + CHARD. KONG. YEETED [cool to learn about]. SPAMBOT. INFEAR/FAR.
Thanx for the fun, Ms. Super Debut Girl Yoshida darlin. Rockin good job. [LULU woulda been a heckuva great, compact extra themer, tho …]
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
Several answers in this puzzle “had to be wrong” — PACER (as clued), everyone’s favorite VEETED, ADIN (tennis dolt here), LIMN (new word for me) — until they weren’t. Luckily remembered CLARO and ran the alphabet for the only LOGICAL letter choice for the L*U*CA / L*U*I cross (*O* was a runner up but I figured *U* was more “French-like”.)
Thought theme answers were clever with all the GIRLs names. Never got the SUPER synonym part until I came here.
83-year-olds know best. I'm with JC66. If AMAZING GRACE, which the constructor says actually spurred the idea, couldn't be worked into the grid, she should have YEETED the whole thing. Instead we get second-string GOOD FAITH and STAR LILY.
@Nancy: I'm sure that RED, RED came before you, ROCKIN.
Correct!
"When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along)," Harry Woods (Irving Berlin, Inc.), 1926.
"Rockin' Robin", Bobby Day, 1958.
@jberg - Pacing is in fact a natural gait for Standardbreds, who naturally preferentially either trot or PACE. The tendency to pace is highly inheritable. No one* tries to force a natural trotter to pace.
*That's right, no one. I have it on good authority that not one person or any other sentient being in the history of this or any other universe has ever attempted to turn a natural trotter into a PACER.
This is the only definition of "yeet" anyone needs: https://i.imgur.com/4AUkR9Gh.jpg
Solved pre-coffee and also put in red red prior to rockin’
I have never commented before, but today is my 50th birthday and my name is Robin. I can’t help but think the NYT is trying to cheer me up with this birthday message. I am cheered!
Better for the last one: medical specialist who adds a body part at the other end to ear, nose and throat.
Hi @Robin (12:42 PM)
Cheers and Happy B.D.; welcome to the commentariat! 🎉
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
As a relatively younger solver (25 y/o) and newish to the NYT crossword (< 6 mos), I actually found this to be one of the most enjoyable and smooth Tuesday puzzles I’ve done. The PACER test was implemented as a substitute to running the mile when I was in high school, and it was such a miserable, exhausting experience. It’s so universally hated by kids that it was rumored to be banned for being “child cruelty”, and the PACER voiceover prompt has been memed to death over the past few years. That, YEETED, and the Nintendo references all made me smile during the solve, and I felt that there was enough in the crosses to get around words like LIMN and TERRINE comfortably. I had a suspicion that the constructor was someone younger, and was pleasantly surprised that she was a high school student! I hope I get to see more from her in the future. The clues and entries felt exciting and well thought-out, as well as grounded in the experiences of another (though much younger) Gen-Zer. Thank you Ailee Yoshida!
My Dad had a habit of stumbling on cool "toys" that he would buy and give to us kids but actually enjoyed more than my brother and I did. He gave me a bank that was shaped like a black cube. When you wanted to add coins, the lid would pop open and a hand would come out of the crypt for you to put the coin in. In my memory, it gave out an evil yeet (I misread 58A's clue as "chuckled forcefully") but I might be making that up.
ChARO as the mild cigar (I think I was combining CLARO and cheapo) had me wondering what movie genre hUCA was. Oh, LUCA, still know nothing about it but at least I changed the h to L before I finished.
I needed the xwordinfo explanation to get the theme, grr. Sorry Ailee, it is a great puzzle; congratulations on your debut!
@Nancy – since none of the limnees in @Barbara S's article look as if they would be interested in conversing with a random stranger, I think they'd all make ideal airplane seatmates.
Music trivia for today: ROCKIN' ROBIN is in the public domain, because its copyright was not renewed in timely fashion in 1986. Specific sound recordings of the song, however, are still protected. But you can create your own new recording and claim full copyright ownership of your version.
Good fun Tuesday theme. I have about the first 25 issues of Supergirl comic from 1972! Before she got her own title, I read her adventures in "Adventure Comics". Never watched the TV show though.
@Barbara S., thanks for those images I can't unsee. Some forms of "art" are just so icky; it's like "naive" art without the innocence.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, back on the bandwagon. Mental fog dissipating, I hope!]
Absolutely astounded to see how many here whiffed on LUCA. Granted, it's mid-range Pixar, and it was hurt by coming out when it still wasn't okay to be going to movie theaters willy-nilly, but given the necessity of being "up" on Pixar's oeuvre for NYTXW solving, it's fairly inexcusable imo.
I thought the theme was a tad weak, but the solving itself was fun, and with the constructor debuting at 16 (!!), I'll gladly handwave it.
The language has no need for YEET yet, NYET. And I never heard of a PACER test or a film named LUCA. But these 3 unknowns were easily solved by the crosses. Very easy puzzle.
Man, you people! Am I the only one to feel affection for and see any redeeming qualities in those portrait-sitters? I think Samuel Conant could be jollied into some pleasant conversation and, if nothing else, I'd engage him on the symbolism of the rose. I admit Relief Burpee looks like she could snap you in two, but I really want to ask about her name. I'd definitely comment to Horatio Gates Buttrick on his Byronic look. (He was almost exactly concurrent with Byron -- they were born 10 years apart, but would he have known who Byron was?) Yeah, OK, I'd avoid the couple on the white chairs like the plague. And, @Nancy, I'd happily chat with you and Reuben. We could take a row of three seats and put him in the middle.
@jberg 10:58
I was a little cavalier in my dating of limner activity, probably because I had Tolman too much on the brain. They certainly did get going well before the 19th century.
@Joe Dipinto 1:18 PM
I always arm myself with a book on planes in case my seatmates aren't chatty and in case they are. Mind you, I've had some fascinating conversations in the air...and some I've tried to forget, like the guy who told me he'd witnessed a murder and I was the only person he'd ever told. I didn't believe him, but CREEPY!!
@okanaganer 1:48 PM
Icky?! I'm going to blame your lack of empathy with the Burpees et al. on the lingering effects of COVID. (And, BTW, I hope you get better immediately!)
Maybe in some estuary South of a Tuckerton, NJ, pacing is considered a natural gait.** But everywhere else on Earth only 5 natural gaits are recognized for horses: walk, trot, gallop, canter and back.
**Probably only at 3AM. on a boat, like the Lyle Lovett song.
@Roo 9:35 am, @bocamp 10:35, @Newboy 11:23, and others – Hand up for a DNF square at my LoI/LoCA cross. And on a Tuesday!
Totally missed knitting my brows at YEETED as it filled itself in by crosses when I wasn’t looking. Like the PHO/NOODLES cross.
@Barbara S 8:39 am and @Nancy 11:27, @Joe Dipinto 1:18, @okanaganer 1:48 – Agree with Joe about those in the portraits, and okanaganer too. Reuben’s painting looks the best of them, and sure, I’d sit next to him if I had an aisle seat, but doesn’t he look rather a bit, well, smug? Could be the 3/4 angle that Barbara mentions, or maybe it’s time I cleaned my monitor!
Hahahahha
Pete,
Horses have only five natural gaits: walk, trot, canter, gallop, and back.
Pacing is not a natural equine gait.
My daughter was just explaining a pacer that she had to do in PE, so that was a gimme and I had the TER for terrine so got it pretty quickly.
I think this was a recent repeat
My last name is Yates and I was nicknamed “Yeeter” as a kid. Who knew?
Pretty fun, but "as of now" or "as yet." Never have I ever heard a person say, "as of yet." That just sounds horrible, although not as horrible as "yeet."
@Robin (12:42) Happy Birthday!! Glad you stopped in and please come back again. You can help keep some of us old timers up-to-date with the youngsters. 😄
Wonderful article.
The reason this happens is some people like to be adventurous with their newborn (especially) girls' names and they try a boys name, the name becomes a "sissy" name for boys and so another one lost.
@robin 12:42 it's my birthday too! You, me and Eleanor Roosevelt!
@otherDavid - "As of yet" sounds completely normal to me. I say it, and I've heard others say it. There's even an award winning movie from the Tribeca Film Festival last year called "As of Yet." These sorts of colloquialisms can be highly regional or generational, so it doesn't surprise me that some haven't heard of it (though this feels way more common and less generational to me than something like "yeet," which I know well from reading a lot of social media comments and having two young children.)
Overall, I was a bit surprised by the several foreign language clues -- luckily, I took French in high school, and the Russian was a gimme, but seemed a bit much, especially for a Tuesday.
Finished in under average time. Nothing in retrospect seemed particularly hard to me, but it just a while to finish. Perhaps the iPhone solve lost me a minute or two, as I have fat fingers and constantly have to retype my fills (if I catch the errors.)
"Claro" I only know from crosswords -- I know I've seen it before, and I can never remember if it's "claro" or "charo" or something similar.
My stumbling points were LIMN (never heard of it) and LUCA (sounds vaguely familiar), but I needed the crosses to figure those out (and I still thought LIMN was somehow wrong.) Oh, and no idea what PACER is, either. Hasn't come up with my kids and I don't remember it from K-12 gym in the 80s and early 90s. All I remember is some Presidential Fitness Medal or something like that.
"Rockin Robin" was, for some reason, my favorite song as an 8th grader in 1988. I guess I just liked the oldies. Loved jamming out to it on the piano in the music room, and even got my classmates to lake it. I'd throw in some Motley Crue "Home Sweet Home" afterwards to bring the musical performance to at least the same decade (I had no idea it was released in 1981 -- it was still a big song in my grammar school.)
Anon 2:53 - Those are only the gaits common to all horses, not all gaits. Various breeds (Saddlebreds, Paso Finos, Tennessee Walking Horse, Missouri Fox Trotter, et al) have other gaits, perfectly natural to them but selectively bred for by humans/ Among these gaits are the pace, rack, running walk, Tölt, the paso fino, paso cordo, paso largo, trocha, and the fox trot. Wiki Apparently, all gaited horses derive from one singular ancestor with a specific gene.
I decided to look a detailed definition of yeet. Like many American slang words, it is of Black origin. One early usage was in basketball, a player might say it when they expected their shot at the basket, especially a 3- pointer- to go in. It became widely popular among gen zers when it was use in a rap video (not popular here!) more as an interject ion and connected to a bit of dancing that became a meme. So apparently it is bot a verb meaning to throw usually in a humorous sense, or an interjection of many meanings.
I wouldn't think of using it. Fairly crossed.
I'm in the 'AS OF YET' camp, but the following makes good sense to me, so I'll have to re-think my usage:
"Many writing authorities think 'as of yet' is unnecessarily wordy. If you like clear writing, opt for 'as yet,' or, even better, 'yet.'" (grammarly blog
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Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@Gio: Happy birthday to you too!
Ditto
I didn’t loom it up but I thought Yeet had to do with basketball. I’ve heard round ball players and fans (and folks in other sports as well but mostly 🏀) talk about a player having “the yips” - being unable to focus and relax while shooting (especially free throws). Maybe it’s just the sound of “yip” and “yeet” but that’s where I thought it belonged. So that clue three me big time. After I filled it in though, the word “chucked” sort of made some sense. Player in a slump, scoring poorly for the last few games comes up to the line for the fourth free throw, having missed the first three clearly has a case if the yips. With sweaty palms and slightly shaky hands, he obviously lacked concentration. Rather than a smooth motion, he just YEETED the rock - and missed. Four in a row. Time for the bench.
I also didn’t recall the kids’ fitness test and having put tASTE (because “flavor” didn’t fit) rather than PASTE in for Miso, I decided maybe tACER was ok. Not so much. Looked and looked and looked when I finished and rather than suffer a chest by revealing my mistake), I just out the puzzle away and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, as I opened my takeout container of delicious PHO just a few minutes ago, I did a metaphorical head smack and actually yelled “It’s MISO you idiot!” Thus endeth my solving angst for the day. A tougher than usual Tuesday.
This one was a bit heavy on the single double triple and hidden plurals of convenience. There is a particular abundance in the far south with some fancy two-steppin' going on in the down crosses.
Also if you do not know French or some of the PPP there are some way beyond Tuesday level naticks. It took me quite awhile to recall LAURYN. She or I was or were miseducated. FAITH was already in. Nothing that I did not know or didn't mind learning.
I had no idea of PACER. Seems like a variation on a basketball or football drill. I was trying to remember if the school fitness test that JFK started had an acronym of some kind. I hear that laughing young'uns.
This puzzle was so much less INANEr than yesterday's puz. That missing R makes the puz so much more respectable it ought to get a Noble Prize.
ROCKINROBIN and PRETTYPENNY were high spots. Michael Jackson did a cover of Day's song that was better than the original when he was 14. That is if you do not deduct too many points for being a cover or for his human failings.
I’d strongly suggest looking up Lauryn Hill and her poetry before putting “artist” in quotes. She’s an incredibly insightful generational talent who speaks truth to power and has an achingly gorgeous singing voice.
Thanks for highlighting Ailee Yoshida.
Learned she’s a high school student!
Go, SuperGirl!
Awesome puzzle! We bake a terrine (in a Le Creuset loaf pan) every year so easy here. And so yummy.
Try one: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/country-terrine-233242
Same! I was absurdly happy that “yeeted” was in this puzzle.
This flowed really well for the most part although I had to get limn from crosses. Ended up with _ _ CA for 15 across and with a proper noun crossing a proper noun and a foreign word those letters could have been anything >:(
Sorry, but this theme doesn’t work for me. GOOD and PETTY are not synonymous with SUPER, so it’s just not LOGICAL. Never heard of YEET or YEETED before. But I guess it’s a word. Never heard of a PACER test either. ADIN is tennis lingo which I only got via the crosses. Unless you know French, and/or Disney stuff, LUI crossing LUCA could be a Natick. No more ENT or YER please. Jeff Chen gave this one the Puzzle of the Week award. Frankly, I don’t know why Will Shortz gave it the NOD. OKAY, this is a new constructor, but if you’re going to publish it at least help the constructor out and do some editing to bring it up to NYT standards. Does the NYT have standards anymore?
EDIT - GOOD and PRETTY (not PETTY)
There are two distinct types of harness racehorses, trotters (diagonally opposite hooves hit the ground at the same time) and PACERs (same-side). As a test, PACER certainly does not belong in a Tuesday grid.
Neither does the natick at LUI/LUCA. I made a pure guess at that vowel, again just lucky. Keep your crosses fair, folks!
This was actually hard for a Tuesday. I had LET_____for the dog clue, and felt sure it would be LETMEOUT. Fortunately, I held off on that one. Again luckily, square 58 was fairly crossed, otherwise I would NEVER have come up with "YEETED."
All this to support a SOSO theme. There is some good work here, with seven-stacks in the corners. For a newbie, we encourage with a par.
Wordle bogey.
Not a Tuesday puzzle. Fun and doable, but difficult in parts. Many parts.
I found this to be a very easy puzzle, almost, but not quite, read-write. My biggest hangups being: LUCA/LUI crossing (Pixar film sounding vaguely familiar, and u looking better for the French word); and yeeted I got completely from the crosses. That last one is a really stupid word, or do I mean stoopid.
Kids these days!!
YEETED? sheesh. And how much French belongs in one puz? OPTSIN, FILTERIN, INFEAR? INANE. Maybe INHERITed? Apt LESS in the corners.
Phew IN wordle
Not very tough. At least worth a penny for my thoughts.
Diana, LIW
EGOS ENTAIL ASSENT
PRETTYPENNY IS FAR from OKAY,
A COY SUPERGIRL IN A way,
OR LOGICAL depending
on A KEY happy ENDING
while ROCKIN' after asked, "LET'SPLAY?"
--- LUI "DINO" TERRINE-GATEAU
EGOS ENTAIL ASSENT
PRETTYPENNY IS FAR from OKAY,
A COY SUPERGIRL IN A way,
OR LOGICAL depending
on A KEY happy ENDING
while ROCKIN' after asked, "LET'SPLAY?"
--- LUI "DINO" TERRINE-GATEAU
The north east was just savage. I didn’t know Miso was a paste, and I’ve never even heard of chard or terrine. And in pacer and that one just beat me down. One if my hardest Tuesdays.
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