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Father of Calypso / SAT 10-15-22 / Corp with red umbrella implied in its logo / Latin music duo / What classic sonnets do / Fashion trend embraced by Fendi and Versace / The first T of TOTY / Is shocked or horrified by the image of jocularly / Potentially prophetic child / Adherent to the motto Fortune favors the bold
Saturday, October 15, 2022
Constructor: John Hawksley
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3/4 Medium, 1/4 Challenging)
Word of the Day: SCAN (6D: What classic sonnets do) —
• • •
The truth is, though, that I don't remember much about this puzzle except for the NW because ugh, again, as I said, these things always break down into essentially four separate puzzles, and without real flow between the sections, once you get stuck, you get Stuck. And in the NW, hoo boy, I got stuck hard. How stuck? This stuck:
Very appropriate that one of the very few answers I had up there was IRKS (and *that* was a total guess). I teach "classic sonnets" (not a term I'd use) every single semester. All the time. From Petrarch to Donne, I really do have the sonnet form covered. And yet faced with the clue 6D: What classic sonnets do, I had no idea. I was like "Well, RHYME doesn't fit ... and I'm out." I deal with poetic meter in detail, all semester long, and yet I've never once asked myself if a poem SCANs or not. I guess SCANs just means "has a regular meter." This is obviously a case of my being (way) too close to the material. *All* poetry in the period that I teach (~1300-1700) SCANs (of course early on in the period you still have the odd alliterative poem, but ... this is probably more than you want to go into right now...). "Scanning" is common to lots and lots of lyric poetry; it's not particular to the "sonnet." So deflating to get such a general term after getting such a specific clue. Then there's the other end of the spectrum—the topic I know nothing and care nothing about: PORSCHES! (9D: Taycan and Macan) And corporate logos ("implied" umbrella?!?). Figured "Fortune favors the brave" was the motto of some org. My guess is that most actual RISKTAKERs have zero awareness of that concept. Never give it a thought. Thank god I knew HAKEEM, or I'd really have had no traction in that corner. Finally (finally!) I got *some* god to fit in the ---AS section (ATLAS!). And those three new letters, oddly, broke the whole quadrant open. First AMIRITE!? Then MARACAS. And things fell from there, but not with any great revelations. What's the last place I would ever find myself, question mark? That's right, a MAGIC SHOP (1A: Tricky spot to be in?). This is very much a case of my aversion to the physical form of the grid coupled with my highly personal, probably idiosyncratic distaste for much of the content of the grid, as well as the cluing. It was a proper Saturday workout for sure. Just didn't have enough high points for me. But again, props to that SE corner. It's a beauty.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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125 comments:
I EATEN up this puzzle.
Challenging on top, Medium down below. The only thing that saved me was that I guessed correctly at the spelling of HAKEEM. Overwrites aplenty: USN (U.S. Navy) before CIA for the Org. with overseas workers at 21A. Focusing on the silliness part of 12D, inaneLY before APISHLY. bait before CAST for the start of fishing at 20A. DUSTmop before DUSTPAN at 40D. ateIT before BITIT at 49A
Had MAGICSHOW before SHOP and spent an embarrassingly long time staring at WORSCHES...cars are nowhere near my wheelhouse either. Was extra unhappy knowing that the SHOP was duped in the cluing to POPUP.
But the SE is very nice. The NE might've been harder but guessing AMERICANO off two letters worked.
@Conrad. I had ate it for 45A, (Loved, with "up")
MIT has a sports program?
After my initial panic attack at seeing the grid, there was much to love here. Magic Shop (@Jasper C., same) and Risk Taker had me all Asimmer. Hakeem, who played in my all-time favorite NBA final, the 1986 series between the Rockets and Celtics. Back in the day when refs called traveling but might miss a subtle punch in the face. Fish McNuggets would be fun, especially if McDonald’s described them as Cod Piece(s).
Do Boomers solvers hear The Marshall Tucker Band singing Can’t You See or am I alone there? I struggled with Artsiness being clued Pretentious Display, wanting Artsy Mess.
Gotta admit I had to use the check function.
@Nancy from yesterday. I thought the emoji thing was stupid (no other word for it) when it first came out and decided to just ignore it. Of the other I mentioned, I might get out my string of insured pearls to clutch them but wouldn’t because I might just as easily use them to strangle myself. All going to hell in a handbasket.
I struggled with the SE corner, mostly because I convinced myself (for reasons that now escape me) that the first answer I tried, EPIC POEMS, couldn’t be right.
As someone far too online, I appreciated both CAN’T UNSEE and AMIRITE, though it now occurs to me that I haven’t seen AMIRITE recently. Maybe it’s gone to the Internet expression graveyard in the sky, along with “it me.”
I just started constructing crosswords (for family and friends, not for publication), so I was blown away by the technical difficulty of this puzzle. Though as a solver, I appreciate Rex’s comment the challenge may have subtracted from the elegance.
Seventh son is not biblical. It is folklore.
Forgiving seventy times seven is biblical.
The NW section stumped Rex for a bit - so I, a mere mortal, had basically no chance. I tend to plod my way through a grid and try to check the crosses as best I can. With a wide open grid like this, you have to be more of a RISK TAKER and venture a few guesses here and there - which can be dangerous for me on a Saturday as I can easily end up with a grid that looks like it was filled in by a pre-schooler practicing the alphabet. Those of you who found this easy (or even medium) have my respect - that shows some serious solving chops in my opinion. Well done.
For those of you who, like Rex, are unfamiliar with anything that happened in American culture before 1990 and who assume if you never heard of it, it must be obscure:
The Johnny Rivers version of "Seventh Son" was a major hit in the mid 60s and was one of those songs that was frequently heard on the radio in subsequent years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc0ye-LJAdE
And here's Willie Dixon, who wrote it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaDHse7LDA0
Another hand up for MAGICSHOw. Shaved three minutes off my Saturday average, yet it felt much slower, due to the poor flow. I appreciate Rex’s explanations of how grid construction affects the solver experience.
Well, hello Saturday! I think, as I look over the finished grid, that there were only two answers I’ve never heard of, but evasive cluing made all that I did know hard to come by. A classic Saturday prologue.
But then came Acts 1-3, where, yes, three times it happened – where I finally cracked a difficult answer, and suddenly a splat-fill ensued. That is, the satisfaction of breaking through a knotty riddle was followed by the exhilaration of a bam-bam-bam fill-in – an epic triumphal feel-good.
So, for me anyway, this outing was filled with the best kind of drama, sparked by lovely answers, like GESTALT, and lovely clues, like [Latin music duo], and no underbelly of unlike-able answers to sour the mood.
And thus, for me, a sweet Saturday – a standout, actually. Thank you for this, John!
Could someone explain AMIRITE? I wanted that for a long time but was convinced it couldn't be correct because I don't see why one would use RITE instead of RIGHT. Do people say (or spell, I guess) AMIRITE that way often or for a particular reason? Thanks in advance!
Thx, John; what a delightful Sat. workout! :)
Easy-med-tough & tougher. 🥵
Started well (or at least I thot so) in the NW with MARACAS, IR_S, HAKEEM, ONE STEP, CIA & SETTER. Had to come back at the end to correct the gaffes in MAGIC SHOw, AMERICANa & AM I RIrE (typo).
So, not only was ATLAS hidden, but ATHLEISURE, GESTALT, SEVENTH SON & PORSCHES were all not happening. Finally twigged on SHOP, which forced the 'O' in AMERICANO, giving me PORSCHES. Caught the typo in AM I RITE, bringing ATLAS into the picture, which, in turn, gave me SEVENTH SON & ATHLEISURE.
The NE was 'tough', the SE 'med', the SW 'easy'.
Always seem to have trouble remembering HVAC. Had to mentally run the alphy to get the 'H'. I think I may finally be able to put this one in the win column.
Unknowns: 'Taycan and Macan', CODPIECE, 'lickspittle', AMERICANO, 'Calypso', PETABYTE, LIM, ENGINEERS, GESTALT, ATHLEISURE, SEVENTH SON, 'Lil Baby', 'Gary and Ash'.
The final entry was convincing self that SCAN had to be right (as SkAN) wasn't going to work (considering the possibility of AMERIkANO). Was absolutely thrilled to get the happy music. (whew! & phew!) 😊
Learned how to SCAN a 'sonnet':
"SCANning a POEM, also known as prosody, is the process of marking the stresses in a poem. You will need to note where the sound is stressed when the poem is read aloud." (wikiHow)
All-in-all, a marvelous early morning trek. Loved every minute of this EPIC battle! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
The funniest answer in the grid (actually the only funny answer) is CODPIECE because the CODPIECE is the funniest human invention.
DUH is the same as NODUH? Is ARTSINESS a word? How about AMIRITE? This puzzle had far too much colloquial junk for my taste.
Had a strange experience with this one where several times I got down to what seemed like a final clue I hadn't closely scrutinized and thought, "Well if I don't get this, then I guess I'm a goner," and then I would get it and stay alive. Which made it nerve-wracking but ultimately fun.
Johnny Mic, AMIRITE is an Internet thing, as described here: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/amirite/
At one point MIT had more Ncaa men s teams than any college in the country except for navy. Not true today I believe
Kudos to Rex for acknowledging his reaction to this one. I kinda like puzzles like this that reward Jeopardy like insight on the longer answers. MAGIGSHOP and TOMATOBASE popped in early for me with no crosses to confirm, as did several other longer answers. I like this kind of puzzle.
Several HNIs (Had No Idea) for me today:
Never knew there was a ONESTEP dance, but I'm certain I would stink at that just as I do with all dancing.
Didn't know sonnets SCAN.
Not familiar with a PETABYTE.
And [Lickspittle]?
All-in-all, a tough (for me, YMMV) but ultimately doable puzzle.
Why is “doh” normally spelled d-o-h but spelled d-u-h here? It’s not even a real word anyway. It’s onomatopoeia. If it’s going to have alternate spellings it belongs in the category kealoa. “Amirite” - talk about lazy - “rite” saves you one whole letter over using the correct word, “right.” Where is William Safire when you need him?
Knew ATHLEISURE from previous puzzles, and MALTESE would have been a complete whiff had we not had it recently.
This was quite hard for me, but always fair. For example, I don’t know who Gary and Ash are, but once NEMESES is mostly filled from crosses, it’s easy to make sense of the clue. Same for Taycan and Macan and PORSCHES, which I really needed to complete AMERICANO (could have been an ‘a’ at the end for all I knew).
Most difficult section for me was the SW. I had a lot of the same unknowns as Rex in the NW, but SCAN and RISK TAKERS went in fairly easily, which gave me better footholds.
The GF is up and she explained that this a standard text/internet thing. I've never heard of it. I guess I learned something?
Just got back from Greece, where I had an AMERICANO every morning, and somehow RISK TAKER popped into mind immediately, so I found this puzzle challenging but fun. SEVENTH SON, SPACE CADET, CODPIECE, all sorts of great stuff.
I finallllly wrote it in after figuring the clue's "ain't" meant the answer wasn't a "real word" either.
I thought of MAGIC SHOP the moment I read the 1A clue. SHOw never crossed my mind as a SHOw isn't a spot. ONESTEP and PORSCHES dropped right in. I even spelled the latter correctly on first try. I have no idea who that basketball player is but HAKEEM was the only name I could come up with. The entire puzzle wasn't quite this easy-peasy but I found the flow to be steady with just enough challenge to feel like a late week solve
CODPIECE was the one one moment where I felt like the segmented structure of the puzzle would be a problem. Initially I really fell for the misdirect but a half right DUSTmop and a couple of easy drop ins like ACTI and SPUN quickly cleared things up.
Did anyone else even briefly consider APeSHit for 12D? APISHLY is a bizarre looking word and the NE was the one slow section for me. I have no idea why the word COPY was in all caps. LIM and SCAN we're complete mysteries but they were just speed bumps.
Per yesterday's puzzle maybe someone will come up with a CODPIECE emoji. It would describe a lot of people these days.
No comments about ASIMMER?
"Honey, is the pasta water boiling yet?"
"No, but it's ASIMMER."
Please.
Amy: The Seventh Son https://g.co/kgs/NzBKXk
Once I put POTATO for TOMATO, my upper right was sunk. As a non-seafood eater... 🤷🏻♂️
Has everyone but me heard of the wORSCHi people, with the Taycan and Macan tribes? Hey, I found myself in a MAGIC SHOw and it turned out to be the tricky spot it was described as in the clue. For the storage unit prefix, my brain was trying to come up with pico, as in a picosecond, but the grid said PiTA (yes, that seemed wrong) and thus the wORSCHiS were created.
Otherwise, this was an easy Saturday which I enjoyed. Thanks, John Hawksley!
Wow. Hard. Almost gave up in the NW corner -- unlike Rex, I didn't know HAKEEM so the whole thing was blank for me for quite a while. But somehow I finished. I don't know anything about PORCSHES either -- or ATHLEISURE for that matter (wha'...???) -- but I actually enjoyed getting them, maybe because they were so opaque to me. A struggle, but satisfying, but I don't disagree with Rex about the segmentation.
Exactly the same!
Most of it was regular Saturday for me. The NE was very challenging Saturday. Not familiar with the different PORSHE models and am never going to need to be familiar. Struggles with the Cluing for ATHLEISURE. Nothing unique about Fendi and Versace as most designers have embraced this concept. Going to make myself an AMERICANO now.
Only medium-challenging for me today (17:11, which is 1:18 slower than my Saturday average). But I also got stuck in the NW for the longest time. I had "MIDAS" for "ATLAS" for a long time, which didn't help. Thank goodness for ARTSINESS and MARACAS, which helped open that corner for me.
Hey All !
Relatively smooth and not too tough SatPuz for me. Full confession, though: Was stuck in Middle/East section, and had to Goog for the meaning of Lickspittle. Dang. Couldn't get TOp out of the ole brain, finally running a quick alphabet, and getting the DUH slap when I found TOY, which finally got me to see YESMAN, finishing up with LIM/NEMESES. Forgot Pokemons fight. Never seen the show, just remember it as a baseball card type thing, or the millions of knuckleheads who were "trying to catch them all" on the phone game.
Funny thing: TOTY was (is, although it's not really active now) my abbreviated name on the Monty Python site I frequented in the early 2000's. It stood for Twit of the Year. 😁 If you're going to be inane, go all the way! That was a message board. Remember those? None of this new fangled instant stuff. Har.
Funny how Rex was stuck in NW. Normally, I'm stuck in NW, then I see his posts with the "grids in progress" screenshots, and he has the whole thing filled in before moving on. I'm amazed how he does that. But today, the NW was first to fall for me! A small victory vis a vis Rex. I'll take it!
Funky grid, some writeovers (not many) I don't recall, finished in 22 minutes and change! Which is PORSCHE fast for me!
Had the same funny reaction as @JD 6:40 with "MIT has a sports team?" At least their name is fitting!
If you start getting mad at people not paying attention to your foolishness, are you...
APISHLY ASIMMER?
TOTY out. 😁
No F'S (MUST... NOT... IRKS...)
RooMonster
DarrinV
My NW corner looked like Rex's, except that I had no idea about HAKEEM, and (figuring that fortune favors the bold) had filled in two-STEP. (How do you do a dance with just ONE STEP? How is that step different from all other steps?)
Finally I saw MARACAS, ketting me change aiD to CIA and see AMERICANO, changing the dance, and it all fell into place, including the obvious MAGIC SHOw. I know that there are PORSHCES, but not that they have individual names, so I was willing to believe that Taycan and Macan were members of the Worsch family. I looked up Taycan to confirm, and learned the sorry truth.
Where I grew up, people said "ain't it so?" all the time, but elided it to n'so? The elision didn't fool my mother; she knew there was an 'ain't' in there, and made us extirpate the phrase from our vocabularies.
Yeah, I don't know about that "classical." The essence of sonnetness is the form; that's what makes it a sonnet rather than just a poem. So the concept of the non-classic, non-scanning sonnet puzzles me.
But that's not as bad as defining SPUN (53D) as "Woven." Penelope (the other Penelope, not the recent birthday celebrator) wove, Sleeping Beauty SPUN.
Oh daear, that last paragraph has sent me down a dark alley thinking about the famous Digger rhyming attack on heredity status:
When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who wat then the gentleman?
What one earth is going on with "span?" I guess it's an analogy with run-ran, spun-span, except that spun is past tense already. Even more to the point, why is this only just now occurring to me? I learned the poem in grad school, 55 years ago. @Loren, are you here? What's going on linguistically here?
DUH is usually used to indicated something that is blindingly obvious:
- Malik: "Rex's commentary is often negative"
Ozzie: "DUH".
D'OH is used to acknowledge or lament ones own blunder:
- "I thought I finished the puzzle correctly but I misspelled SODA. D'OH!"
After a quick glance at the clues I had HAKEEEM and LINUS and that was it. Then I saw RISKTAKER and the whole NW filled in and away I went and was done shortly thereafter. Well, "shortly" is relative, but here it means "faster than I had thought". Never went back to fix the mysterious WORSCHES, as O finished elsewhere and the only happy music I get after I finish is suppled by myself.
Just had to revise two additional verses that my singing partner had added to a piece we do, because, as I explained to him, they didn't SCAN. I found OFL's problems with this one to be surprising.
@Shirley F.- You can add Roger Miller and "Dang Me" to your song references, as he sang
I'm the seventh out of seven sons
My pappy's a pistol I'm a son of a gun
Pop culture is OK if it's old enough.
Didn't really know the MIT teams' name, but was pretty sure it wasn't the "Poets". (I know, I know, that's Whittier.)
Nice chewy Saturday, JH. Just Happened to have a lot of stuff I knew, or at least remembered, and thanks for all the fun.
And now on to the Stumper.
The final 4 squares to fall were those shared by GESTALT, ATLAS, SETTER, & ATHLEISURE. That volleyball clue provided its own brand of kealoa: SETTER, SENDER, SERVER, SPIKER, CENTER all seemed like possibilities! So, yes, that NW was a struggle.
SEVENTH SON went in easily for me, but not because the clue was helpful; very familiar with the term (from a variety of sources, including Johnny Rivers), but did not know it was linked to being "potentially prophetic."
DUH has been around much longer than DoH, which entered the mainstream of the language through one Homer J. Simpson.
I learned (and am probably already forgetting) Lickspittle and PETABYTE, which sounds like an ironic computer related injury for a stalwart defender of animal rights.
I'll show myself out.
ASSIMMER, AMIRITE, ARTSINESS, nope. Just nope. And another “A” word - APISHLY, nope there, too. I feel about constructors using “aping” the way others PC-ify other words. It insults apes, crosswordese or not.
@Anon 8:02 – DOH and DUH are two different things. DOH, usually written D'oh!", is a cry of exasperation at having done something dumb. DUH (or "No duh" or "Well duh") is akin to saying "No shit, Sherlock" or "No, really?" when someone states the obvious.
The Mose Allison version.
So I find from one of the bloggers that I'm supposed to know HAKEEM because he was in a 1986 NBA final. I heard a piece on public radio a while back about the people who check the calls in sports, who sit in a room somewhere in New Jersey and watch disputed plays at 1/100th speed. Ah, something that's even more boring than watching the NBA at full speed, I said to myself. But then they mentioned that sometimes they have MAGIC SHOws at half time, and the call-checkers can watch the magic tricks at 1/100th speed and figure out how they are done. Now that sounded a little bit interesting.
Fairly easy from the start today. NW fell into place quickly for me. Dropped in CITI, HAKEEM, and PORSCHES with no crosses, and that opened up the three long acrosses right away. This puzzle gave me that whoosh-y feeling. Nice to solve a Saturday before getting out of bed.
I got a good laugh from CODPIECE. And unlike Rex, one of my first answers was RISKTAKERS with no crosses! The rest I had to work for. I’m familiar with SEVENTHSON from fantasy literature so that was also a pleasure to see. Count me among those who fell for the MAGICSHOw trick. The last thing for me was the cleverly clued HAILING crossing BITIT. A rewarding Saturday.
Hahaha
Well, I went with the "Worsches" tribe also, and now I feel like "Doh !" Otherwise, I thought this was a true Saturday challenge. Had to take my time, run a few laps around the grid to get a possible entry and an eventual confirmation. Except for "Worsches". Geez...
You data-type people may laugh, but if you don't know PETABYTE then you don't know PETABYTE.
My "large storage unit" was PET craTE.
And so it remained until I cheated on TOY. (I already had the T and thought it was TOY but needed to be sure.)
Out went the inconvenient LA that had ended my "How an imitator or silly person acts" and in went a much more fortuitous LY.
I finished the fiendish NE with just that one cheat. But the puzzle was hard everywhere. My foothold in the almost equally hard NW was IRKS to RISK TAKER.
I enjoyed the whole GESTALT of this puzzle, which was very well clued and almost completely devoid of proper names.
There’s such a thing as a ONE STEP? That sounds like what I do when I dance without even knowing it had a name.
I had mETABYTE for a long time, but eventually saw that two STEP made sense for the dance, so I hoped there was such a thing as a PETABYTE. Of course, two STEP caused its own problems, and like many I really struggled in the NW after skating through the rest. Had to do a rare Google cheat and see what a Taycan was - it all fell quickly after that.
Unlike Rex, I loved the clue for MAGIC SHOP and I wasn’t tempted to try MAGIC SHOw. Good clue for the latter (which I’ve probably seen before): place to sit for a spell.
I did have to look up the origins of CODPIECE - I wondered whether medieval gents started out using a dead fish down there. I found a wonderful piece from the University of Cambridge on “a brief [hhaha] history of the codpiece.” Do look it up, but a couple of delectable tidbits [hahaha] include that “cod” was slang for scrotum, and that it was originally used - ironically - to preserve a man’s modesty. Lower-body garments of the time didn’t leave much to the imagination. One contemporary writer said they showed “a lot of flesh for the sodomites.” (I’m a proud sodomite, so I am allowed to laugh at that.) so the codpiece covered up a too-vivid bas relief.
I have seen some ATHLEISURE that also left little to the imagination, so some might actually wish for a return of the CODPIECE.
CAN’T UNSEE that, folks. Still, better than a poop emoji.
I crushed this. Easily a personal best for me for Saturday. 11:36. Loved it, especially MAGICSHOP AMERICANO RISKTAKER stack.
@Beezer, Thanks for your response yesterday. Just read it.
Truly.
Very hard. I knew TOY for T of TOTY because I have always wanted to invent a toy and read a book about toy invention. The main takeaway from that book: "Trying to make money inventing toys is like going to Vegas with your time." Something to look forward to in retirement!
This song was my first introduction to the concept of a SEVENTH SON, and I enjoyed being reminded of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-y4VSHp7lI
I still take any Saturday I can actually solve as a pleasure so this one worked. Definitely struggled with multiple retries, like foxtrot to twoSTEP to ONESTEP, SErvER to cEnTER to SETTER, and soup to BASE, but EATEN up in the end.
Enjoyed the SE and struggled in the NW, gratifyingly I'll admit, given the write-up. Happy to know PORSCHE models even if I'll never own one, they do make nice cars. Could do without the whole ATHLEISURE thing.
Happen to think New England chowder is the only chowder, sort of like how you can't make a Manhattan with bourbon. And CAST reminded me I've got to get out for some fall trout fishing. Happy Saturday.
I can't believe Rex didn't spend a paragraph on that dupe. I genuinely cannot believe that having the word shop in the answer to 1A and the clue to 10A made it through editing. Egregious.
#puzzlehoarder here, I'm commenting a second time to point out that the @Anonymous 9:15 comment is mine. Something seems to be A MISS with the software maybe it's because I no longer comment (or solve) regularly.
Easy-medium. Most of this went relatively quickly. Unlike @Rex I put in MARACAS and AMIRITE with no crosses. That said, I did not know the PORSCHES, ARTINESS just looked weird, the PETA prefix was WOE...all of which made me doubt ONE STEP at the cost of precious nanoseconds.
There were some delightful long downs, liked it.
...and, in case anyone’s keeping track, the Pads are up 2 games to 1 against LA.
Late to the game this morning after running an early 10 miler. I liked this - more stumper like in its grid layout and cluing. Agree with that the SE is the star here.
GESTALT and IT WASNT ME are fantastic - APISHLY and ARTSINESS not so much.
When I worked downtown I would get an AMERICANO at Gregory’s on Broadway every morning - delicious. Manhattan clam chowder on the other hand is not. WHALE POD and ATLAS’ daughter go together well. Is it LIM or LIMn?
A few weeks ago we had Billy Strayhorn’s Take the A Train - today we get his masterpiece
Enjoyable Saturday solve. Now to join @Pablo for the Stumper.
Unlike v Rex, I took one look at the grid and liked it. Love the staircase down the middle, complete with a landing at each end no less. I thought this was a terrific Saturday, well balanced with some tricky cluing but not so difficult that it was a chore to solve. Wonderful long entries, a few of which are undoubtedly debuts. Hopefully @Lewis or someone will enlighten us on that. I’d RISK my money on CANT UNSEE and TOMATO BASE. I like both clam chowders although I think Manhattan style is probably the healthier choice.
Only one point I thought was an EPIC failure and that was 49A. WOE ever watched a guy do a face plant on the ski slope and said “wow, that dude really BIT IT.” Certainly WASNT ME because I and everyone else in the world would’ve said BOUGHT IT. Sorry, NOT buying that one.
Whenever I can complete a Saturday NYT I am in heven, so I LOVED this puzzle! BTW: Rex, WEB DuBois refers to the Seventh Son in Our Spiritual Strivings, the fist chaapter of The Souls of Black Folks. And here's Mr. Willie Dixon with something to say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaDHse7LDA0
Actually, not as hard as usual, for a SatPuz at our house. M&A and the PuzEatinSpouse worked this puppy together, comin up with (mostly good) answers as fast as we could write em in. Broke open the NW corner first, then the SW, then the SE, and finally the ["Got Em Cornered!"] NE, where PESpouse nailed SPACECADET immediately, and we were in.
Nice 66-worder, with longer than snot quad stacks all over the place. Liked how it started out with a 1-A ?-marker clue, to announce it meant to put up a fight.
staff weeject pick: LIM. Luv calculus. And LIMits are math's primo form of dark matter, to most unsuspectin math students.
Oodles of debut words, led out of the chute by bandmaster PETABYTE [M&A wanted PETABODE]. Not really too much in the way of total no-knows, tho. The constructioneer kept it pretty fair. I reckon ATHLEISURE and Taycan & Macan were slightly on the mysterious side. OK, maybe also chip in CODPIECE, but PESpouse knew it.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Hawksley dude. Nice job of stickin to the themelessness theme [other than on PETABYTE & BITIT].
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
Easy-medium here. Some white space after first pass, a couple wrong guesses (ate IT for one), but easily fixed. Enjoyed this one.
Seventh son - from "The Philadelphia Story":
Macaulay Connor : This is the Bridal Suite. Would you send up a couple of caviar sandwiches and a bottle of beer?
Margaret Lord : What? Who is this?
Macaulay Connor : This is the Voice of Doom calling. Your days are numbered, to the seventh son of the seventh son.
Margaret Lord : Hello? Hello?
Tracy Lord : What's the matter?
Margaret Lord : One of the servants has been at the sherry again.
The NW was toughest for me, too. Feel good that I got it without cheating. Key was guessing RISKTAKER off of HAKEEM (one of my favorite players, ever).
Whiffed on Wordle. I had four greens on my fourth word and there were several possibles, even after eliminating some words which have been used before.
Loved seeing CODPIECE. Hadn't seen it for ages. Wikipedia has some hilarious pictures. A few years ago, I heard about guys who taped salamis inside their jeans.
LIMit may be the most basic concept in calculus. The derivative is the limit of the slopes of certain lines through a point on the graph of a function.
Isn't the seventh son of a seventh son the one said to have prophetic powers?
Loved this crossword. It was square in my wheelhouse but made me work for the answers. Plenty of satisfying 'Yeessss!' moments.
Being a Porsche enthusiast the NW was a snap.
I still remember waaaaay back in the 70's when I got a dictionary for xmas when I was still in high school, there was an illustration for codpiece that was in the upper left had page corner that you couldn't miss. Or un-see. Finally that present was a good one.
Weren’t we just talking about Janis Joplin’s last song, Mercedes Benz? Her friends all drove PORSCHES, creating a need for her to make amends. AMIRITE?
What is the dance called the One-Step?
The dawn of the 20th Century brought a new, modern dance to match the wild new rhythms of Ragtime. It had none of the complicated footwork of a Victorian ballroom. It was the One-Step and it was so called because it was just walking.
Nelsonhttp://walternelson.com › Home › Historical Dance
So, a dance that consists of “just walking” was created to match “the wild new rhythms of Ragtime”? I guess the wife and I have been doing the one step around the ‘hood with our dogs each evening for years.
I thought this was tough but fun and fair. Thanks, John Hawksley.
A SEVENTH SON as a potential good-luck child is a very common folk belief, especially in the American South. Blues artists have long invoked it (start with Willie Dixon and go on from there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llOo7OmnmYA).
@whatsername -- You'd win your bet. There were nine NYT debut answers: ARTSINESS, BITIT, CANTUNSEE, CODPIECE, ITWASNTME, MAGICSHOP, PETABYTE, TOMATOBASE, and WHALEPOD.
@mathgent -- Yes, seventh son of the seventh son. I guess that's why the clue says "potentially"?
@egsforbreakfast, yer right!
If it's chowder, it is milk-based. That stuff they serve in Manhattan is tomato clam soup. It AIN'T chowdah.
Same unknowns as you, which makes me feel better! Adding onto that list with OGDEN and HAKEEM.
doh and DUH mean entirely different things - the first being a sound someone makes when they bump their head.
@Son Volt-Found the Stumper to be harder than the NYT.
I finished it, but man was I thankful for an eraser!
Good luck.
Seventh son refers to a European superstition that the seventh son of a seventh son has prophetic powers. Here is a link to a YouTube video of great jazz musician, pianist and singer, Mose Allison, singing and playing "The Seventh Son", 1958: https://youtu.be/1g6pBsRHEls
I am a poet, I've written sonnets, and I've read many many sonnets. Sonnets scan. Not an unusual word, not a particularly arcane word.
AMIRITE! Am I right?! Hasn't been long since our previous AMIRITE. It's also a good week for the MALTESE.
MAGIC SHOW made PORSCHES impossible to see and I've never heard of those models. Learning all about privileged luxury is one of the benefits of crosswording.
LICKSPITTLE seems very judge-y. Calculus abbreviations. Yay. But in the embarrassingly tortured clues department, gonna be hard to beat the TOTY thing.
Never heard of a SEVENTH SON. Wish I'd never heard of ATHLEISURE (and really wish we spelled leisure with the i before e rule).
Uniclues:
1 "Do not use, ever, please, we're begging you."
2 Espresso machine in a tent.
3 The editorial staff at the NYTXW teaming up to hate on culture unrelated to poop emojis.
4 The guy who is forever saying, "meeyaw muryum."
5 Those commercials where they want you to believe sweat pants are a thing, and not a piece of cheesecake in a slinky outfit.
1 MAGIC SHOP STAMP
2 AMERICANO POP UP
3 "ARTSINESS" CAST
4 WHALE POD YES MAN
5 ATHLEISURE IRKS (~)
Hey you chowder snobs, both kinds are good. I spent a year in Nanaimo which is the closest I've ever come to living in a fishing village, and every little cafe had its own clam chowder; I seem to remember most of them were Manhattan but don't quote me.
I had a grid similar to Rex's first screen shot, and looking at ----CHES for "Taycan and Macan", I could think of was STITCHES. Yeah, I used a Taycan stitch on that hem.
[Spelling Bee: yd pg-1, missed this 8er somehow.]
DOH is what you say when you have been stupid. DUH is what you say when someone else has been stupid.
Every single same error as you had @Conrad! But I got HAKEEM - I was a super fan.
@Nancy-I am so glad someone besides me cops to PET craTE! And it stuck fir a long time.
Agree about the NW corner, but mostly enjoyed because I did it while taking a break from grading Beowulf essays, only to hit, first, the Beowulf clue and then, second, Rex talking about “the odd alliterative poem” and my day was complete!
Wordle 483 3/6*
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Script from https://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary: ?atch-risew
Whew! Have not had a Saturday struggle like this in quite a while! My NW was nearly as blank as OFL’s except I was a huge HAKEEM fan and that and IRKS just sat and sat and sat kind of like Jennyanydots the Gumby Cat.
Besides the devilish NW, I was utterly stumped by 10A and I am still not convinced COPY, isn’t too big a stretch. Editors could have helped here and still made it tricky. Angry gesture, perhaps?
CODPIECE was actually my first thought at 35D but I talked myself out of it until DUG and PSA fell tidily into line.
ARTSINESS and APISHLY are weak words probably only (barely) useful in crosswords. Overall, and given that this was one of those “4 puzzles in one” grids, a good Saturday workout with quite a bit of heavy lifting for me 🏋️♀️ .
I give it a STAMP of approval. An original, not a copy!
LEO DeCaprio was in the puzzle today. Do you remember how Tina Fey introduced him at an awards show once? "Like a supermodel's vagina, let's give a warm welcome to Leonardo DeCaprio!"
This was a fantastic puzzle but I confess I was a DNF in the NE and had to “reveal word” two times! Grrr, I hate when I’m dense which I was on STAMP and APISHLY. It didn’t help that I put Ctrl C for COPY and felt so smug in my knowledge I refused to get rid of it…had me looking at C- - CECADE-. I was lost I tell ya LOST!
Low in PPP but was happy to know HAKEEM and for whatever reason I have seen (or NOT seen?) the term CANTUNSEE a lot recently. I liked seeing WHALEPOD and ATHLEISURE. Since I’ve retired I have more athleisure in my wardrobe than I used to. However, if I’m gonna spend the BIG bucks…it ain’t gonna be on Fendi ATHLEISURE.
Let me now “pile on” with my hatred of TOMATOBASED Manhattan clam chowder. Unfortunately, IT was the first type I ever had and didn’t realize there was the delicious New England style until I was a young adult. Oddly (or not) the most delicious NE clam chowder I have had was at a place on the water in Seattle. YUM! In closing…Manhattan, you have SO much going for you in SO many ways, but if I were you I’d quit puttin’ your name in front “clam chowder.”
@Lewis (12:03) Nine debuts! Wow! My second choices were CODPIECE and IT WASNT ME so I guess I should’ve doubled down.
I absolutely blew through this one setting my all time record (8:58) for a Saturday. Must have simply clicked for me somehow as these things sometime do. Was genuinely surprised to see how many folks found it more challenging than average.
@mathgent - Is that all she said? Are you sure she didn't specify that the supermodel had to be under 27yo? Because that's the cutoff.
Has there ever been a better sports star name than N.B.A. legend HAKEEM "The Dream" Olajuwon?
I always thought that the COD PIECE originated as a piece of protective armor rather than for purposes of decorum.
🎵 I’m a picker,
I’m a grinner,
I’m a lover,
and I’m a sinner … “
- Joe Bleaux’s ghost
@Son Volt, @Shirley F, @Beezer -- So, other than my years away at college, I've spent my entire life in Manhattan. And yet I agree with all of you: Manhattan Clam Chowder can't hold a candle to New England Clam Chowder.
Mostly it tastes like glorified Vegetable Soup. Or Minestrone. It's not nearly "clammy" enough. All you taste is the tomato base.
When I got to 11D I already had ?OM??????E. I wanted "NO MILK-something-or-other" but NO MILK OR CREAM didn't fit.
New England Chowder always tastes clammier and richer and more unique than Manhattan. I probably like the added cream. (I can always take the healthiest food and make it sinful, btw. Ask me how, on those rare occasions that I eat strawberries, how I eat strawberries.)
Joy
Today I tried using the iPad advance button to work the grid in a systematic manner & it seemed to work better than randomly trampolining in search of something to latch onto. Clueing today was outstanding , esp for CIA, PETABYTE, DUST PAN, ETC. Scansion is still a recreational activity though modern verse often takes new prose-like postures, so that rough patch was avoided.
And thanks to Noah (6:49) for a Sunday school correction that sent me off to enjoy this
classic mentioned already by several earlier posters.
Without comment:
Wordle 483 X/6
🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟨🟨🟩⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
First things first - a big thank you to whoever of you recently mentioned a poem SCANning - was that you, @Barbara S? I couldn’t remember it right away but at least knew what I was looking for!
Hand up for twoSTEP before ONE STEP. (So glad I looked it up so I could learn about the Six Brown Brothers. The dancing is entertaining, too.) Hand up for AMERICANa before AMERICANO. Hand up for TOYing with MAGICSHOw. Hand up for the NW being the tough corner. “Ain’t it so?” put me on a wild goose chase for a southern colloquialism. So far off - AMIRITE just screams fast-talking Vegas car salesman.
It shouldn’t have taken me so long to get 17A - horn players are the RISK TAKERs of the music world. I sometimes envy pop musicians who only sing/play music that’s comfortable for them. Seems like orchestral composers go out of their way to make horn players miserable. Except Brahms. He knew how to write great but truly idiomatic music for horn.
Etymonline.com says:
Cod-piece, also codpiece, mid-15c., in male costume c. 1450-1550, a bagged appendage to the front of close-fitting breeches, "often conspicuous and ornamented" [OED], from Old English codd "a bag, pouch, husk," in Middle English, "testicles" (cognate with Old Norse koddi "pillow; scrotum") + piece (n.1).
(No results were found for petabyte.)
I was hungry while solving and I wanted a PiTABYTE. Thought Taycan and Macan might’ve been PaSCHiS or even waSCHiS, which I imagined were ancient Central America regions. “Before the pre-classic period, the Mayans roamed the paschis of Taycan, Macan and Yucatan.” (Hi, @Teedmn!) Resorted to writing out possibilities and finally saw PORSCHES - DUH! And I’m a bit of a car geek. I see Macans in town but the Taycan (pronounced “tie-con”) is new to me. Apparently it’s all electric and the turbo version can go from 0-60 in 2.4 seconds. Prices range from a mere $87k to $190,000. Wonder if they’d take my ’98 Saab in trade?
Among my likes today were WHALE POD, ATTUNED, SPACE CADET, TOMATO BASE and the clue for CAST. And GESTALT. My neighbor hosts a radio show called “The Gestalt Gardener” on the congress-created media giant, NPR.
@Son Volt, @JoeD - great music links - thanks!
Today is the birthday of American composer Samuel Adams Holyoke (1762-1820. Holyoke has a connection to Rexworld - according to hymntime.com, he was the “grandson of Oliver Peabody, minister to the Natick Indians.” Here’s a sample of his work from an album called “Colonial Capers” by Early Music New York. Great group - I’m jealous of you NYC folk who can hear them live.
Kudos, Mr. Hawksley! It was a fun brain workout for me. Hope to see your name again soon.
Hahah
Amen to all! It’s the butter and cream that makes the New England “rise to the top” of the chowder heap. DUH!!
🎵And I’m ASIMMER, dammit!
My other big issue that made me leave almost all of the NW blank until the very bitter end was my misread of the clue for 8D. Being married to a EWO/“Naviguesser” (as my husband called himself) for so long, all I saw was Tacan - no y. That’s Tactical Air Navigation System. Kept thinking there must be a word that has to do with navigation- it’s 1A after all! Didn’t read further until the DNF was staring me in the face and giving my “librarian” a big wet raspberry. My ego has been keeping me from taking advantage of technology to help me read as my vision continues to deteriorate. Guess it’s time.
I am curious what so many crossword creators have against artists? Artists are commonly depicted as pretentious and insufferable. Wouldn’t gaudiness and artlessness be a better answer for pretentious displays?
@w: Unfortunate misses on those random first letters. But this illustrates the core weakness of this game: Frequently not being able to get new, usable information from game actions . Today, beside random elimination of equally likely there was no way to improve your guesses.
FWIW, I believe the Onelook dictionary can be used to reduce this uncontrolled uncertainty. Like Wordle, it ranks words by frequency of general use. The game uses a more constrained list based on NYT word usage. Theses two word lists appear to be similar enough that their rankings by common usage are quite strongly correlated - at least that’s my anecdotal experience from several hundred games. By means of Onelook’s fairly simple scripting language you can create matching selection criteria.
You can see this in todays result: My seed word, RAISE, has just the A in place. If you look at the script, which is developed guess-by-guess, the wrong letters are excluded from my developing List (they appear after the ‘-‘ character). In turn 3 I was showing 4 indistinguishable choices, by first character. The word starting with C was at the top. Turned out to be correct. And as l have said, this appears more often than not.
So maybe this gentle hack can improve the quality of you Wordle life a bit.
GL
MIT has one of the best division 3 cross country programs in the nation.
Proving it's possible to be both smart and fast.
Warning, may be Spoilers for Wordle, read at own peril. 😁
@w
Here's a little strategy for you to avoid a DNF like you got today. After your first _XXXX, (which was your Third guess), look to see how many possibilities are left for that last letter. Example, say the word is _OOTS (*another tip* - which it wouldn't be, as plurals aren't in Wordle either), you're left with B, F, H, L, M, R, T. So pick a next word that'll get you as many letters as possible in your remaining list. Don't worry about the correct letters. Let's say you use BROTH for your Fourth guess. If no letter pops up Yellow, then you know it's either F, L, or M. If a yellow pops up, you know what the missing letter is. So put it in for the win. If nothing pops up, then on your Fifth shot, you can use the remaining letters, F,L,M for FLAME. Then something has to be Yellow (or Green for that matter), and you use your sixth as the correct answer. A 6 is better than a DNF, no?
RooMonster Strategy Guy
Hey, @Roo
Your strategy won't work in hard mode because you have to use ALL the letters you've already found.
Wait! Now Rex doesn’t like magic shops? What a shame. As a magician, I’ll tell you that some can be great fun. It took me a while to get it, but boy was I delighted when I did.
I continue to be baffled by the nyt xword’s reflexive and almost pathological hatred of artsiness.
That’s not…a thing. The answer to one equaling the clue to another have never been ruled foul play. Sorry it upset you so, but
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It had some weird clues but it was easy-easy+ at best.
Sometimes I wonder why I even come here at all when the “king of crosswords”and his minions always struggle so. The colorful contributors that used to be delightful are staring to wane (@nancy’s extended pearl clutching this week on a common emoji showed me I might be fully in the wrong company). Hope Rex gets his money’s worth by my clicks (and that from those needing the free solve). Because the quality of critique has never really been there for me, but has only been growing more embarrassing since. I mean, yeah, run your contests, big guy. Who has zero intellectual curiosity. But surely you don’t expect me to be wowed by your takes (or even your grids—I mean, should we repeat the attempt to flex on 11/17/2021? Lol. Yeah no. I’ve never forgotten that.)
I seem to solve these daily a lot more easily, usually without time to even lodge half as many gripes. Maybe I should be the queen of XW.
Nerd alert……MIT sports team is not Engineers but Beavers which of course are nature’s engineers. Same as CalTech….just sayin’
Me too, Jasper, me too! Thought perhaps Worsches hung put with Gary and Ash
Seventh Son - Willie Dixon - 1955
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaDHse7LDA0
I cringed on DESKSET and OTTOMANSETS, then saw the 113D cross of SETI and wondered if all those sets were intentional. Reason #876 why I'm not a constructor!
Always enjoy your comments, RM 😊 Or should I say TOTY?! I had a "twit" phase back in the MP days, but I used it about others, not myself! (Such a mean girl, CAK) And so sad there were no Fs today - hard to believe! 💩
G'day, mate 😉
Beverly, have you read Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son?
Beezer, hand up for Ctrl C! ✋ And totally agree about tomato clam soup! Ain't no chowder! Most Pacific NW chowder is milk-based and really yummy! Our day trips to the Oregon Coast always include a lunch of clam chowder - no tomatoes in sight!
2 down could have had a better clue to indicate the "ad-style" spelling. AM I RITE?
Needed help anyway, so challenging for me.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
DNF. HAKEEM amd PORSCHES were my downfall. This one was just hard for the sake of stumping solvers. I hope you’re happy John Hawksley. You win.
My entry for MIT's team - the ENGINERDS.
Got it done when I finally gave up on the one answer I was sure was rite. Anyone else have MUSKETEER for 'Adherent to the motto "Fortune favors the bold"?
It accommodated PORSCHES, ONE STEP, HAKEEM and IRKS, and just seemed so apt.
Couldn't unseeit for the longest time, but eventually had my own "No Duh"! moment once maracas fell into place.
I have to agree with Jasper C. about wORSCHES (I DNF'd on MAGICSHOw). But since CBS recently stopped airing the show each year, I was really glad to see 57A make his surprise appearance today. Thank you, Mr. Hawksley.
EPIC MUSTNOT
YES,MAN, that MAGICSHOP TEASE
is AMISS I CAN'TUNSEE:
that LUSH WHALE BIT a CODPIECE,
than COD that ITWASN'TME!
---LINUS GESTALT
must proofread last line: thank
DNF: What else? The NW. I knew HAKEEM too--but he didn't help. There he was, sticking up way above his teammates as usual, but nothing came. The red umbrella is, as we all know, Travelers' Insurance, but how to fit that into four squares was a mystery. CITI? I had no idea. There was just nothing to grab hold of, either across or down, in that whole section. If I'd had just a few more letters somewhere it might've made a difference, but no. The whole frozen tundra just stared back at me.
Wordle par, at least.
Looks like I finished this puz in the same manner as OFL. Took some pondering and a guess or two in the NW.
Wordle par.
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