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Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
I wish there were some—any—part of this that I enjoyed, but it was a chore from front to back. Felt more like a prank someone was pulling than an experience someone was inviting you to enjoy. The puzzle is all theme, and that theme is all architecture; that is, the puzzle does this weird MERGE LEFT / "PARES" DOWN thing for no particular reason, with no real thematic coherence at all. I'm supposed to ooh and aah at the physical manipulation of letters in space, but those letters don't spell words that have anything to do with anything. MERGE LEFT and PARES DOWN ... not from the same conceptual universe. They explain how to read answers, but aren't not meaningful otherwise. They don't relate to one another. And they don't relate to the theme answers. And the theme answers themselves—all of them, the individual unclued ones and the "merged" clued ones—also have nothing to do with each other, or with anything. And the themers themselves are kinda tedious. ALTERNATIONS? Snooze. Is it supposed to be meta-thematic? Because you have to "alternate" between answers in adjacent Downs to make sense of the theme clues? Yeah, that's not making me like it more. And do you really want me to accept LENTOS (??) as one element of your Down "pares"? What is that, a plural musical tempo? Me: "Hey, Google: define lentos." Google: "Did you mean "define lentils?" I wish I meant lentils. Those are tasty.
- COLLUDES (11D: With 12-Down, secretly plots (with)) (CLUE next to OLDS)
- ALTERNATIONS (25D: With 26-Down, repeated occurrences of things in turn) (A-TRAIN next to LENTOS)
- SCHOOLED (28D: With 29-Down, taught a lesson) (SHOE next to COLD)
- HAIRNETS (34D: With 35-Down, some common attire for cooks) (HINT next to ARES)
- COUNTESS (56D: With 57-Down, noble title) (CUTS next to ONES)
A civet (/ˈsɪvɪt/) is a small, lean, mostly nocturnal mammal native to tropical Asia and Africa, especially the tropical forests. The term civet applies to over a dozen different species, mostly from the family Viverridae. Most of the species diversity is found in southeast Asia. The best-known species is the African civet, Civettictis civetta, which historically has been the main species from which a musky scent used in perfumery, also referred to as "civet", was obtained.
• • •
Grid is a weird shape (14x16), which at least adds some visual interest to the experience today. There is a tidiness (and symmetry) to the circled-square arrangements that some might also find pleasing. I felt like I couldn't get my head around any of the answers early on, but some of that may just have been early-morning cobwebs. Like [Shiner?]—needed "R" and "Y" to have any idea there (RAY). [Shifts from neutral, in a way]? No hope there for a long time (ACIDIFIES). Wanted EASE IN for EDGE IN (4D: Enter cautiously) and DORK for DEFT (7D: Expert). Would not write in "MA'AM" for the longest time because it seemed weird that you'd call women officers something different from men (20D: Officer's title). Somehow I thought women just got the "SIR" treatment too. "MA'AM" is what a cowboy says while tipping his hat as he passes a lady on the street. Seems weird as a military thing. But ... not my purview! SWANN'S is weird as a standalone answer ("SWANN'S Way" is the first volume of "Remembrance of Things Past") (newly retranslated as "In Search of Lost Time," originally "À la récherche du temps perdu"), but I appreciated it because it was one of the few gimmes I got today. Does sexting happen as much in the real world as it does in crosswords, because it happens A Lot in crosswords. I did like the clue on SEXTS today, so there's that at least (54D: Blue notes?). Oh, and as always I liked seeing RIAN Johnson (58D: Johnson who directed "The Last Jedi"). He seems nice. Really looking forward to the expanded "Knives Out" universe. Let's end there, with me thinking happy thoughts. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. FYI [F in music class?] = LOUD because ...
I really struggled with COLLUDES and ALTERNATIONS. Having LOAF instead of LOLL definitely didn't help! And by the end, I was just typing in random letters to see if I could recognize a 4-letter Michigan college whose name ended in -MA. (By the time I got to ELMA, it clicked).
ReplyDeleteIt's ALMA, not many miles from where I grew up.
ReplyDelete*Not Z
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm the anti-@Rex today. I did "ooh and aah at the physical manipulation of letters in space." The puzzle was tough but fair for a Thursday.
I agree. I loved it.
DeleteI’ve never seen this trick before and loved it. Also knew that “Rex” would hate it.
DeleteI thought it was a great puzzle, a real sense of accomplishment when I got the happy music.
ReplyDeleteAnd as a 30 year Marine who is married to a woman who was also a Marine, ma’am is how female military officers are addressed in all branches of the service,
Not surprised that confused the blogger, I’m sure he would be up on what trans officers are called.
Yes!!
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DeleteGood for you that you enjoyed the puzzle, and thank you for the clarification on the military lingo. I read "officer" thinking of a police officer, and I thought if ma'am was the answer it would've been better to just use the clue "polite term of address" or something.
DeleteBut seriously, why bring up trans? And if you dislike this blogger, why comment at all?
Why would trans officers be called anything different? They're just people.
DeleteYeah, woof. Not sure why you need to bring trans people into this at all. But FYI for a trans man you say Sir and for a trans woman you say Ma’am.
DeleteTo paraphrase Samuel Johnson: This theme must have been extremely difficult to execute. I wish it were impossible.
ReplyDeleteHear, hear!
DeleteAnother skinny grid. The themers are shaded in the app - gives up the trickery early. Agree that this is more for the constructor than the solver. The theme restrictions definitely dampen the overall fill - there’s not much here. I knew HAWTHORNE - nice to see and SAL is always cool.
ReplyDeleteThe cluing was awkward - AUTOMATES, ACIDIFIES, TRADITION etc are decent entries but didn’t flow well as clued. Don’t understand how the NYT floods the puzzle with Pixar trivia.
The A TRAIN is the longest subway line - you can spend 3 or 4 hours riding the length from 207th to Rockaway and back.
Pasarán mas de mil años,MUCHO mas
Interesting Thursday solve - just not a lot of fun.
F in music class threw me off because forte is never notated with a capital F. It’s always lowercase. Spent a lot of time trying to make CLEF work as a result.
ReplyDelete@Jan B 7:34 - I feel capital F for musical forte is fair since the puzzle necessarily capitalizes everything. e.e. cummings himself would be capitalized, to his annoyance.
DeleteThe capital F is only there because it’s the first letter of the clue and is deliberately misleading. Thursdays aren’t fair.
DeleteHopefully people will look back at this puzzle as the harbinger of the future NYT decision to eliminate the requirement that puzzles have a theme 5 days a week. What a disaster. I’m sure it is very nice, challenging and entertaining to some of the high-octane cruciverbalists who are likely to participate in a forum like this. I feel sorry for the rest of the 99% of the solving public that may wade their way into this cesspool. What a joke.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
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DeleteNice to see a couple literary references today. In case anyone doesn't know the story, Melville and Hawthorne met at a climb up Monument Mountain for a picnic, the event organized by David Dudley Field, and included Oliver Wendell Holmes and several of the Sedgwick clan. Supposedly one of the men in the group looked around and remarked that he was the only one who hadn't published a novel. Hawthorne (who was 46) and Melville (31) had a deep discussion about literature that didn't end that day.
ReplyDeleteThe apocryphal story is that Hawthorne invited Melville to visit him for a few days at his Lenox home and Melville stayed for 13 years. Not true but Melville did in fact stay in that area for years, looking out his window at Mount Greylock as he wrote Moby Dick.
Years later Edith Wharton built The Mount in Lenox, and the Boston Symphony famously has its summer home at Tanglewood, named by the owner of the house where Hawthorne wrote Tanglewood Tales.
My favorite part of the puzzle today though is the Proust clue, because my two cats, brother and sister, are named SWANN and Odette. Fewer and fewer people get the reference, so it's heartening to see it here.
Lovely Proustian names for your cats! I have a fondness for the Berkshires, having spent a summer at Tanglewood as a Fellow at the end of last century. The Hawthorne/Melville anecdote is quite interesting! Cheers
DeleteWorst puzzle in MUCHO tiempo. Basically, this sucked a CIVET’s TEAT. I still don’t get MERGE LEFT. The theme blocks look like they could be cars merging into traffic. But whether you go bottom to top or top to bottom, they’re merging right. Or is the merging happening inside the themers? But they’re zigzagging. I don’t see how they are merging.
ReplyDeletePARES DOWN makes more sense but still falls way flat. And as Rex said, none of these answers that are merging or paring is at all interesting.
The NE was so obtuse I gave up. My “shiner” was a RAg, making those dress shoes or hubcaps gleam. It made so much sense it never occurred to me to look for another word, so I couldn’t see ALLAY. No idea about ARCO. I don’t see how LOUD is an F in music class. (Any help?) and LOLL/LOaf/Laze is like a kealoapua. (Making up Mauna Pua but it sounds good.)
Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Brilliant idea! Brilliant execution! A Thursday that one-hundred-percent Thursdayed!
ReplyDeleteSo much of the time I spent solving this I was in “what-the?” mode. Deep in trying to crack the theme riddle. Stuck on that riddle and just trying to uncover squares that might help. This is what Thursday puzzles should be like – causing state of “what-the?” and keeping you there. So, when the answer finally, finally comes, it comes with a huge POW! That, followed by a marvelously lovely denouement, where squares suddenly fill in, in a splash of glory and glee.
Meanwhile, the non-theme part of this puzzle was not chopped liver. There were some footholds, thank goodness, but thorny cluing abounded, the kind of clues that, when you finally cracked them, you realized were fair and exceedingly clever.
In addition, the grid is bereft of junky answers, and there is no gibberish despite the trick of the theme.
Whew! And whoo! Kudos to you, SS, for this triumph of a Thursday puzzle, plus the highest praise, and a huge thank you for a most memorable, scintillating, and delicious outing!
Well I enjoyed this more than Rex, and more than some others obviously.
ReplyDeleteAgreed it was tough. COLLUDES was the last to fall for me. But the theme is interesting enough, the fact that the two words in the down themers WERE words is a nice achievement. They could easily have been gibberish, lord knows we've seen THAT from some puzzles, where you have to accept nonsense in order to make a larger answer work. Golf clap and polite nod to the constructor here for not just phoning it in.
Wait a minute! The most gobsmacking thing today is that Rex thought female officers are addressed as "Sir". Is there any more masculine word than "sir"?
ReplyDeleteSide note: I have reached the age where even old guys address me as "sir". That's when you know you're old!
And I have reached the age of being addressed as "ma'am" 😟 I miss the days of being a "miss" 😉
Delete@CAK 1:51
DeleteNo, it's *worse* when you're so old people condescendingly call you "Miss". I usually flash my wedding ring and smile sweetly as I say, "It's been Mrs. for many years now."
*The worst* was when the principal, introducing the Staff to assembled parents at Back to School night, prefaced me with "Miss" and a couple I knew slightly [not from school] rushed to my room right after to say how sorry they were...
I liked the clues for TIED (“It’s no loss”) and LOUD (“F in music class”) and SEXTS (“Blue notes”). But I struggled with this one relative to a Thursday, even though I figured out the theme’s concept early. Especially the NW corner — for some reason, ICED IT, EDGES IN, OILING, and ACIDIFIES we’re not ambers that came to me intuitively with those clues.
ReplyDeleteIn order to keep it polite, all I'll say is that this was the first time in many years that I quit a NYT puzzle after completing about 3/4 of it. I just wasn't the least bit interested in sticking around to find out what the "merging" and "paring" was about.
ReplyDeleteI feel immensely better about humanity knowing that at least one other person had the same experience I did. The insufferably upbeat Pollyannas on this site and the official column can eat my Milk Duds.
DeleteThis puzzle had rather aggressive expectations I'd have nothing better to do (for over an hour!) than work on a puzzle missing a bunch of clues and then making so many of the other clues uber out there and finally being about as funny as NPR comedy, i.e. not.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually a pretty challenging puzzle, but it took a lot of staring at the ceiling.
ACED IT for ICED IT.
PARED DOWN for PARES DOWN.
EASE IN for EDGE IN
New to me: CIVET. What's that scent you're wearing? Oh thank you for noticing, it's from the glands of murdered African ferret-ish racoon-cat looking thing.
Yays:
AUTOMATES: Put it in without crosses, took it out later, put it back in saying, "See, I told ya."
Nathaniel HAWTHORNE: Brilliant writer.
CAMEOS: I watch so little super hero stuff, but I know Stan Lee used to do cameos and I love the whole idea. Put yourself in your own movie doing something extra. Cute.
Boos:
ACIDIFIES: Doesn't seem like a real thing to me. Maybe it's science. I dunno.
OILING: Doesn't actually loosen. It only increases the possibility of being able to loosen, unless you are oiling with booze or during a massage, and then who can say?
ALMA: College has 1300 people. The whole town less than 10,000. And here it's in a puzzle like it's a good idea. C'mon. Just mater-it.
HANS: Geiger's first name, yawn. In its defense, other than Hans Christian Anderson, Hans aren't killing it in the PR department. Han Solo is doing OK.
Uniclues:
1 Uses LSD while doing nothing.
2 Edge in while screaming obscenities.
3 Youthquaker Sedgwick replaces Warhol with robot.
4 Giving Romano a gin rickey.
5 Professor's nickname for her early American lit students.
6 Money.
7 You think I'm touching this one? OK, fine, goat milking. There.
8 Exposively bad ideas surreptitiously sent over 5G.
1 ACIDIFIES LOLL
2 MERGE LEFT LOUD
3 EDIE AUTOMATES
4 OILING RAY
5 HAWTHORNE POOL
6 NCAA CORE VALUE
7 TEAT TRADITION
8 EDGE IN TNT SEXTS
Great comment 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
DeleteThis was a total train wreck. Rex nailed this one. Will Shortz should do something to atone for this nasty piece of something. Side note: NYT spellchecker has never heard of Shortz.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete@Joaquin: When someone calls me "Sir," I say, "The only time I can be called 'Sir' is in 'Sir, do you know how fast you were going?'"
Re: Rex's comment about 20D, "Officer's title"):
ReplyDeleteJust watched the tense and well made Netflix series "Delhi Crime." Interestingly, the high ranking woman officer is usually addressed by her subordinates as "Madame Sir."
I like it!
DeleteCan anyone explain why the top across on each themed clue is highlighted with the second down? So for 25D both 25D and 26D were highlighted but for 26D, 25A was also highlighted (likewise 34A and 56A). That confuses me to no end.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a mistake, considering it does it for three of the five pairs, with no apparent reason why it would be intentional.
DeleteI'm giving it plus points for originality although I agree it was more about the structure and rather less about the cluing and answers themselves. I enjoyed it, although once the theme was revealed it became quite easy. I wrote countess in with no other letters in place. I'm sure some of them are cute ones, however do any of the current crop of countesses compare to The Countess of Castiglione?
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to think Thursday puzzles are just not worth the aggrivation.
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Deletewait, can someone explain the "blue notes" clue for sexts?? I don't get it!
ReplyDeleteSexts are racy texts. Texts are notes. “Working blue,” especially in comedy, means using racy material. And it’s a pun because a blue note is a purposefully off pitch tone in jazz and blues (and also the name of a famous jazz label).
DeleteI’m much more in the Team Lewis camp than in the Team Rex. I love, love, love a themed puzzle in which the theme doesn’t fall into your lap within the first 30 seconds. I had to work hard for this one and, on a Thursday, that’s just what I want to do. That being said, I think MERGE LEFT as a hint to the theme is weak. Why couldn’t it be MERGE right (except, of course, for that answer being too long)? In fact, is MERGE really the correct concept here at all? Pairing does seem to be the idea we’re looking for, so PARES DOWN as a phonetic hint is better, but the bar’s pretty low. In short, I found those two answers wobbly. The 5 pairs of down answers that one reads across in twosomes I thought were charming (OK, I agree about LENTOS). And I got a kick out of the fact that they each make two unclued down words. I had a number of happy Aha moments while working on this – so, yeah, I’m a fan.
ReplyDeleteI solved completely unsystematically bopping around all over the place, because I didn’t get the theme until HAIRNETS. I didn’t know HAWTHORNE or NERTS(!) but I had IRON and TSK and thought what in the blinking heck can I do with that 34D clue [With 35-Down, some common attire for cooks]. I was thinking “toques” (crossword stalwart) or “aprons,” and then I really focused on the letters I had in the shaded area. Reading them conventionally as two down words resulted in _I_T_R_S, which got me nowhere, but then I got unconventional and saw __IR__TS. Tada! But it wasn’t smooth sailing from there. It took me a while to see both ALTERNATIONS and COUNTESS: ALTERNATIONS because I didn’t know ALMA, HAWTHORNE or HANS and COUNTESS because I was trying hard to fit “highnESS” in there, which was dumb because (to get all fussily technical) that’s a royal rather than a noble title.
I had my usual struggle in the NW (why do the NW corners of puzzles almost always trip me up?). I was convinced 4D was EasEIN, which gave me the beginnings of the weirdest-looking word EVER for [Shifts from neutral, in a way]. At one point I had it as A__AIFI__. What!?
Thought it was a great challenge, felt good about solving it without help and I’m off to go about my Thursday with a smile.
"This is a stunt puzzle. A "watch-me-do-this-thing" puzzle..."
ReplyDeleteThat's ALL the NYT does any longer. They have little interest in vocabulary and usage. They strangle and bastardize language to fit the cutesy trick of the day. It's CRAP!
I'm with the "loaf" for LOLL and "ease" EDGE crowd, and for me you can add "highness" for COUNTESS, all of which caused slow downs but also satisfaction when I corrected them.
ReplyDeleteCaught on at SCHOOLED and thought the trick was pretty neat, although I didn't think the "hints" were in any way helpful in figuring out what was going on.
Didn't know that about HAWTHORNE, so a good day to learn something.
Re "Sir"-my first teaching job was near an Air Force base in far Upstate NY and I was barely older than some of the students. When a young man addressed me as "Sir" for the first time, I did that thing where you turn around to see who's standing behind you.
Does ALMA have an ALMA alma mater?
Pretty impressive feat of construction, SS. Sneaky Stacks, which were cool, and gives me the chance to say "stunt puzzle", which always brightens my day. Thanks for all the fun.
The 3D clue assumes that being strong and energetic is “manly” (the meaning of “virile”). A bit misogynistic!
ReplyDeleteWith the first O and the H in place, my sister wanted POOH for for 'Creator of an animal shelter' -remembering the construction of Eeyore's house.
ReplyDeleteCivet cats in Sumatra eat the fruit of coffee plants. Unable to digest the bean, they excrete them whole. The beans are then gathered, cleaned, and roasted to produce a rare and expensive ( $100 USD per pound) coffee prized by aficionados. I'll....pass
ReplyDelete'blue' can mean sexually suggestive, and SEXTS are surely that.
ReplyDeletedidn't associate, on the time scale, HAWTHORNE with Melville. thought Hawthorne much earlier. guess not. at least it isn't a rebus mess. sort of. but, yeah, a "Look Ma, no hands!!!" effort.
ReplyDeleteas to the two 'hints': some maze or snake allusion seems closer. didn't notice, or care obviously, that the gray-downs were words. or needed to be.
Thx, Simeon; what a terrific Thurs. 'shiner'! :)
ReplyDeleteVery hard (over 2 x avg. time).
The NW was the only easy section of this puz.
Thinking back to yd's discussion, I thot maybe this would be an 'actual' dnf (dnaf). lol
Couldn't grok the theme for the longest time. finally got SCHOOLED at MUCHO.
Overall, just wasn't on SS's wavelength, but this is the most rewarding kind of xword for me; having to pull out all the mental stops.
Couldn't've asked for a better way to start the day! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Stunt puzzle for sure, and an impressive one at that. But that doesn't make it good.
ReplyDeleteFirst, too many crummy entries to justify the result. Edna Mode is the best thing about "The Incredibles" and one of my favorite animated characters of the last 30 years, but THENOW is ridiculous. OILING, LENTOS, TSTORM and what seemed like lots of proper names (RIAN, URAL, LARA, SID, EDIE, ALMA, HANS, SAL) -- too much in the same grid.
Then there was the cluing. I get it, it's Thursday, so we're past the "gimme" part of the week, but many of the clues were Saturday-level obscure, especially for entries that crossed the theme answers. Maybe it was an inside joke, given that 11-Down is CLUE, but it felt like a giant "eff you" and made the whole thing a slog.
Also, some weird stuff. CUTS can mean PARES, and a SHOE comes in a pair -- both of those seemed intentional as I was solving, so that confused me.
And finally...the NE corner. You have ARCO and LOUD and clue them both in musical terms, in a puzzle that also has LENTOS? Fine, clue one or the other that way, but what's with the narrowcasting?
One the plus side...aside from appreciating the reminder of Edna, I smiled at NERTS being near MASH, because for me that term is only associated with the one and only Frank Burns. Not too many other smiles though.
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ReplyDeleteI thought ACIDIFIES, as clued, was brilliant. Until I got enough crosses to see it, I thought we had an NK rebus to make InkED IT instead of ICED IT. How is a deal like a sprained ankle?
ReplyDeleteThe way I read the theme is that the two columns are rows of cars driving upward and doing a zipper merge. If you assume that the rightmost column is the one being closed, those cars have to MERGE LEFT. But then you read the PAirS DOWN to get the answer, since these are downs after all.
@char a sext is a kind of text message, i.e. a note, that's "blue," i.e. sexually explicit, as in blue movies.
6-D: it was nice to see a mythological entity clued as such, rather than as a cartoon or video game character.
Long-time pet peeve: IMO SIR and MA'AM are not title, they are ways to address people (i.e. "styles"). For example, in Downton Abbey, the Earl's title is "Earl of [whatever]," but he is addresses as "milord."
It was also nice to learn Geiger's given name.
Why do you always complain that themes don't have a "reason" for existing? It's a puzzle. You have to figure out which letters the clues want you to put in the boxes. That is the reason.
ReplyDeleteJust once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding, 'You're making a scene‘
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this new take on how to use pattern recognition to get the theme answers. Starting out, I had ARCO and LOLL in the upper NE, and when, on the next line, MERGE LEFT went in, I "saw" COLLUDES. And then the other theme answers came quickly. I really admired how the "pared" entries were actual words. Bravo!
ReplyDeletepray for earth 7:03 - Thank you for explaining MA'AM. I resisted the second A for as long as possible, not believing it could be correct.
I had figured out four of the five shaded sections and was pleased to have done so. I was left with the NE. LOAF wasn't right and CONSPIRES didn't fit so I looked up the answer on Jeff Chen. Ah, LOLL. That's fine. I had squeezed plenty of juice out of that orange.
ReplyDeleteI accidentally figured out "counts" early on. From there it was most just a boring to do task ...."finish crossword puzzle".
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteInteresting... Liked the idea of the side by side theme, but the "Revealers" kinda fell flat and fizzled. Neat to me that each side by side were actual words. Maybe change the Revealers to something else, clue the side by sides as the words they are, but add (for 11D, e.g.) "Game with many rooms, and combined with 12D, secretly plots (with)".
Maybe one Revealer could've been COMBINE, clued something like "Farm equipment... or a hint..." Who knows. Seems to be stuff left on the cutting room floor.
I did enjoy puz as is, however. Getting a 12- letterer split into two 6ers, while maintaining actual words isn't an easy task. Two fours are easier, but by no means easy-easy, if you know what the heck I'm trying to say. Plus having two 9's Across crossing two 4 side by sides might get you to hair-tearing status.
So impressive construction, but just seemed off an IOTA or two. My two cents, and whatnot.
NE for some reason was insanely difficult. Just could not get anything up there. Dang. Finally had resort to Check Puzzle feature, and basically put one letter in at a time with what I thought might be it, and hitting Check again. Looking at it now, the ole brain is asking me why didn't you know those? NERTS! At least there's a ROO up there ..
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
When the losing football coach was asked "What did you think of the teams execution?, he said "I'm in favor of it". That's how I feel about this puzzle. A total slog all the way. Finally through in the towel top right. Rex nails this one.
ReplyDeleteTougher than most Thursdays. By about 60%. I got the theme, or at least got all I was going to get, pretty quickly. But the center left to center took me an awful long time. I didn't know HAWTHORNE. I didn't know ALMA. And it's been ages since I've last heard NERTS. (HAIRNETS was tough to see -- I kept thinking something like a hat or jacket would go in there.)
ReplyDeleteA-TRAIN plus LENTOS, what's that? The word pairs are just so random -- I wanted them to make some sort of thematic sense. Yes, HINT and ARES are two words, I grant you that. The ALTERNATIONS of the letters in those words gives you HAIRNETS, got that. But I was left wanting more.
Weirdness coming from Rex today, over this whole MA'AM thing. Was he kidding about calling women Sir? If so, not a great thing to kid about. And what's so weird about it? Rex, think about it. How do you think people would address the First Lady? Sir or ma'am? Not sure? Okay, think: how do people address the Julia Louis-Dreyfus character in Veep? It's ma'am, right? And not in the register of your hokey cowboy, either.
Agree totally with OFL and others on this one. I’m never sure (exactly) what qualifies as intellectual masturbation but, similar to pornography, they say you know it when you see it. Makes sense in this case.
ReplyDeleteI had solved the puzzle down to AUTOMATES, but CLUE/OLDS made no sense to me at all. Thrown by both the yet-unfigured-out trick and by all the PPP that followed, I decided to bail on the puzzle -- something I almost never ever do.
ReplyDeleteI came to Rex and scrolled down only as far as AUTOMATES in the grid -- to see if CLUE/OLDS were right. They were. But unlike in my paper edition, CLUE/OLDS was in tiny little circles, not in gray. That's when I saw it! COLLUDES!!! It was so much easier to see for some reason written in those circles and not in gray.
I closed my laptop and went back to the puzzle. I had the trick now and the trick should help me with all the names: ALMA and MUCHO and HANS.
I "finished". But I didn't finish in the way that I'm comfortable using that word. My experience today illustrates in a nutshell exactly what I was saying yesterday. Even though I didn't get a single letter I didn't already have from the Rexblog today, I went there intending to bail and, once there, I picked up on something I hadn't seen in the puzzle sitting in my lap.
Some of you would call this a "solve". For me it wasn't -- not really.
A real bear of a puzzle, I thought. I am proud of my almost-solve.
This held my interest because it made me mad. Why am I being boxed in a corner with no escape route? Then an itty bitty door opens when HAWTHORNE waves his HAIR NET at me. I actually breathed a sigh of relief and squeezed through. I wanted to jump for joy, but as I was trying to flee, another door would slam shut on me. Boxed in again..NERTS.
ReplyDeleteI managed to get MERGE LEFT and PARES DOWN. When you stare enough at something it tends to get me into focus. Since I now knew how to read the theme answers, it made it somewhat easier. But then....I find my battle is just beginning with words I've never heard of. I'm looking at you ACIDIFIES and your twin AUTOMATES. I want to know why a future CEO needs an ECON option. What or who uses the word T STORM. I've not met RIAN nor SID. I asked UNIX if he knows about DATAMINED. When you have to work really hard to find the escape route out of a maze of flummoxing, then it becomes exhausting.
I did finish, although I wanted to just throw in the towel many times. Because I was curious and am hard headed, I continued to the end. I, though, was one of the SLUGS in that COLD POOL who lost her SHOE.
I will now read everyone and see how many in this MENSA crowd, zipped through this flummoxing maze.
Bueller? Schmoop?
Liked the puzzle beyond EDIE Falco (18A). The ESC key above POOL let me see the trick aka theme.
ReplyDeleteBut the top part did me in. With not one but TWO music specific clues in NE (ARCO & f = forte = LOUD) plus having *laze* for “lie about” I couldn’t see that corner.
Cry foul on Hermès clue/answer: the name with a diacritic is the French luxury design house; the Greek god’s name doesn’t use a diacritic.
And forever I was trying to think what the people on the construction crew did on the highway, instead of thinking about construction while *driving* on the highway.
Wow on this puzzle! I agree with @Rex on puzzle enjoyability factor but with @Lewis for my amazement as to its brilliance. Hey, I just know it was beyond my pay grade as a puzzler and somehow I managed to get the Congratulations! without ever really figuring out what to do with the highlighted words. I call that a “cerebral DNF” on my part.
ReplyDelete@pabloinnh, you made me chuckle with your “sir…what…who me?” story. It made me think of my gradually transition from “Can I help you, miss?” to the somewhat bummer (but polite) “Can I help you ma’am?” whilst shopping during my lifetime. Sometimes the retired old men working at Lowe’s or Home Depot think it is charming to address me as “miss.” Hah! I’ll take it!
@jberg, I also started with an NK rebus square and was reluctant to change it to ICED. I’m not saying that is wrong, but I tend to think of ICED with athletic competition rather than (business) deals.
Speaking of SWANNS Way, a friend in my book club took a “sabbatical” on the book club picks in order to read In Search of Lost Time. I figured if anyone I knew could finish it, he could, because his favorite book was 100 Years of Solitude so interminably long run on sentences are his bailiwick. He confessed he could not get through it. I told him if he misses run-on, stream of consciousness lit he should try Infinite Jest and report back to me.
No flow, no fun, no more of this, I hope. This was tedious.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Lewis - this puzzle rocked!
ReplyDeleteMainly because I didn’t think I could solve it, but I did. Naturally I thought the shaded answers were vertical compound words at first. The clues were so tricky for me that it was a struggle. I didn't know HAWTHORNE was a pal of Melville, or SWANNS, NCAA, RIAN or the Pixar character quote or any number of other answers. I was especially slowed down by writing in laze instead of LOLL, or wanting poke instead of ROOT. It was SCHOOLED that finally revealed the secret. Thanks Bésame MUCHO!
Merge left absolutely describes what happens, since only the left down answer is clued and the right zipper-merges into it.
Weirdly, even though I stepped away for a bit and left the app running, I finished in my average time! So it wasn’t as big a struggle as it felt! Fun start to the day!
@jberg (10:05) I totally agree with all your comments: got the “zipper action” with those PAiRED DOWN clues, but kept in “xxxxlanes” for 16 A way too long, even tho “change” was never gonna fit. I’m always amazed at how many US drivers immediately change lanes when seeing a “lane closed” sign, thereby crowding up the open lane and leaving the disappearing lane completely free for those rude drivers who jump the queue.
ReplyDelete6D: could only think of “ scarf” for the longest time…
IMO, 20D and 64D would’ve been better clued as “Officer’s address” rather than “title” which offers an additional misdirection: APO? USNA? Isn’t the title “General” or “Captain”?
SIR as a title works for me only as a knight (and female ones are “Dame” so there’s another variation for you.
My one big mistake (had to do the “check puzzle” thingy was misspelling SCHOOL with 2 Ls instead of 2 Os. I’ve never been good with vertical spelling, and didn’t notice the PAiRs were actually words on their own til I was done!
MERGE LEFT with @Barbara and PARE DOWN with @Sir Hilary and you have my solve perfectly. Belated gratitude is extended to Howard Vincent whose seminar on Moby Dick remains a formative experience when he SCHOOLED us on Melville; Claremont Grad School of 1976 is a blur, but HAWTHORNE remains embedded in the shrinking grey matter.
ReplyDeleteI’m sorta thinking that the MERGE LEFT reveal came too early as Simeon suggests in his xwordinfo constructor note. Nonetheless, this grid is one to remember with reverence. Truly a Thursday effort for both creator & solver, 🎉.
Zipper words! Pretty darn snappy and clever Mr. Siegel. You really pulled a fast one on me. Kept trying to make the revealer say MERGE LANE which wouldn’t WORK and that DDT section there was tough for me. I didn’t know where the Hèrmes clue was going and TSTORM wasn’t coming to mind. But when I finally saw LEFT and realized we were merging columns then it all made sense - at which point it became totally awesome. But for a long time ANTE-awesome, I wasn’t loving it and did a lot of muttering - “NERTS” and worse. Very very challenging.
ReplyDeleteThe big center themer was nearly my demise and I thought I was going to have a genuine DNF today because I just couldn’t come up with anything. With the other themer at the beginning, HAWTHORNE was hard to pull out of there plus I kept trying to make 41A some form of EXAMINED and couldn’t make an X fit in any place. It wasn’t until I took a desperate plunge with ALTERNATIONS that I finally saw DATA MINED. Phew!
As for placement of the revealers, I needed the MERGE hint and for me it was good to have it early. PARES DOWN however, I could’ve done without entirely. A thorough workout but wow! Worth it.
Medium. I caught the theme at SCHOOLED but still got hung up in the middle where “Before opening?” required some staring after a couple of wrong guesses. Now I know about “zipper words”, liked it more than @Rex did.
ReplyDeleteWas lost on the highway of this puzzle for miles and miles without an understandable map. Finally saw in the distant SE a jumble of eight letters in the two-lane gray pavement, but the letters made no sense. After consulting once again the map key’s MERGE LEFT and PARES DOWN, slowly a zigzag line of construction was apparent that resulted in the town of...COUNTESS? Apropos of yesterday’s literal vs figurative discussion of a DNF, I chose literal and took the rare, for me, exit ramp. The scenery just wasn’t for me. Back on the road tomorrow for my favorite themeless! (Hi, @kitshef 7:05 am; well said: I agree.)
ReplyDeleteApparently I voted "nay," only to discover when I dnf'ed that "the 'i's' have it (UNyX/RyAN and CaVET/aCEDIT. I simply couldn't see either of those mistakes, and finally had to hit "Check puzzle."
ReplyDeleteWhen I got PARES DOWN, I had already figured out COLLUDES (with the 2 L's side by side); next I got COUNTESS (with the S's side by side). That hurt, because I decided that all the theme answers had side by side "paired" letters--for some reason I could not begin to understand.
A tough slog and the end of a modest streak.
NERTS to ALTERATIONS.
ReplyDeleteImpressive stunt, but not much fun to solve and I don’t really get the MERGE LEFT or PARES DOWN revealers. Instead of merging left, you have to zig zag down to spell the themers. And the “pairs” aren’t really pairs any more than a milk bottle and a television set are a pair.
@Joaquin, you’re not old, you’re classic.
"Through in the towel"??? Good lord. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteWhat does he do as a next step after heavy petting at Lovers Lane? AUTOMATES
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure that “Sports org. For students” really describes the NCAA these days.
A UNIX that you can LENDTO others becomes a LENTOS.
I can’t say that I enjoyed this, but I am pleased to have finished it without help.
@Nancy (10:51) I also thought of our discussion yesterday about the definition of “finish.“ And I too had the same thoughts going through my mind as I was solving, that this was a perfect example of what I was saying as well. I got to a point where I could go no further without looking up a few names which I would likely never figure out - a Star Wars director, a Michigan college, a French designer, a Spanish song title. I could stare at them for hours or just chuck it altogether and neither of those alternatives would accomplish much.
ReplyDelete@Beezer (11:04) I’ve long said if I was going to go cruising for men (I won’t be!) I would go to one of those big home improvement stores like Lowe’s and just wander around in the tool section looking lost. Even the men who don’t work there will stop and ask you if you need help. 😂
To TTrimble yesterday
ReplyDeleteThank you. But I was reading it a non U.S. and I still have no idea what it allies
Re today's puzzle. I found the theme fun, and was surprised when I finished to see that the paired downs actually were words by themselves. That kind of impressed me, tho did not make it ore entertaining
There were a couple of clues in the puzzle I found too hard to be fun, but I just"cheated" on Storm (which I've never heard of) and moved on.
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ReplyDeleteIt’s hard for me to actively dislike a puzzle these days, but I can’t say I enjoyed the MERGELEFT gymnastics in this one.
ReplyDeleteThough the novelty was not fun, I admired the trick. And once I “got” the trick, it made the vague, ambiguous clueing easier bc I had some letters/hints for the correct answers.
SO not easy with an innovative (?) trick.
😜🧩🧩🧩🧩😜
Comments here indicate some readers failed to get the theme and should pay more attention to Rex’s write-up before they expound. LENTOS and A-TRAIN crack me up.
ReplyDeleteTheme was clever and well done. I can easily imagine cars merging left, with the dominant (left) lane going first, followed by the right lane—zippering together. The answers, accordingly, follow that pattern. The clues give us LEFT and DOWN, which are perfect, although I bridle at the word PARES because traffic is not “reduced” but rather paired off. Is PARE intended to suggest its homonym?
Though I suppose necessary for the constructor, CIVNET and ARCO (returning to bowing after a pizzicato passage) seem rather obscure. NERTS and T-STORM I’ve never encountered, but that’s what crosswords are for.
Awful puzzle. Good theme... but too much crap. MAAM for officer’s title? I had MERGELane in at first, that didnt help. Why left, why not right? 58A was clunky.
ReplyDeleteJust read past the first three comments and am amazed at the hostility for this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteIt 's similar to a rebus only I caught on faster than I often do with a rebus
By the way did anyone explain 'sexts" someone asked about it.
"blue" can be used to mean tending toward pornographic or etc. And sexting is sending sexy messages in text (At least that's what I've heard in crossword. Dont text, myself.)
I had "on or" as a "Before opening?" at 30A. Like @kitshef's sister, I considered changing my NOoH to pOoH but 21A made the N a necessity. Getting ANTE helped a lot in discerning ALTERATIONS in the center 'cause ALMA was a WOE.
ReplyDeleteWhen did ICED IT come to mean "Sealed the deal"? I wanted a NK rebus for 2D. If one considers crosswords as the fount of all word usage, ICE IT as "Seal the deal" was first clued thusly in 2017 by Tracy Gray. So, not that long ago. Not yet in my lexicon.
I rather liked this puzzle. I found it on the difficult side and enjoyed the struggle. Thanks, Simeon Seigel!
@TedP
ReplyDeletere: PARES DOWN
Maybe you should take your own advice and read the clue..."or a phonetic second hint."
I gave up having not getting what any of the shaded pairs despite having about 70% of the puzzle filled in. Just started punching reveal word whenever I had an incomplete word I didn't get in 10 seconds. Then when it was done I found when I touched the screen the puzzle jumped back to a place where I had only 3 or 4 such words filled in and several words that I had filled in by myself. The timer was stopped and the blue solve star was still there when I pressed return. Filled it all in again. Went back to the blue star page and back to the puzzle and the same thing happened. WTF.
ReplyDeleteSecond Thursday in a row that has just whupped me despite having success on recent Fridays and Saturdays of late. WTF.
I am mostly with @Lewis and agree with @COIXT on thus one. Just having all the "unclued" downs be words was exceptional. Having a thematic connection is just an impossible dream. Just cut it out.
LENTOS:
len·to
/ˈlentō/
MUSIC
noun
plural noun: lentos
a passage or movement marked to be performed slowly.
Several of my favorite DVDs were lent to's became gone forever's. I have a friend who always puts those stick on address labels you get in the mail on the dvds he lends out. Every now and then I find one in my DVD shelf that somehow got in the wrong place and I return them years later. For a time I started returning his dvds with my sticker on top of his. He hasn't returned any of them yet.
An interviewer of an author asked to borrow one book he had in his bookcase full of beautiful and rare books. He said no. I never lend books out. Every one of these books someone was foolish enough to lend out. I forget who the author was. Henry Miller maybe.
Yes I did misread LENTOS as LENTTOS. But it wasn't clued.
@Char
SEXTS are smutty (blue)
@gary
Acidify:
Make or become acidic.
PH scale.. Alkaline Neutral Acidic. Or basic
Alkaline is also basic
Alkalai is base.
So be on the lookout for move off base, maybe.
ACIDIFY
Or
No longer basic.
Acidified.
Not basic
ACIDIC
Or: Less than basic.
ACIDIC
MAAM was a test of inherent sexism. As in the doctor was the mother.
Some really good clues in this one.
And my puz has returned to the incomplete form but it took the 4th return to the page while writing this. God does not let this happen when you solve as she intended.
Fair enough. I missed that.
ReplyDeleteQuite challenging, but not in a bad way. The timer says I took 89 minutes to do this; I got distracted and went off to do something else without pausing it.
ReplyDeleteI think the crosses made it more difficult. Look at the 25 and 26 down pair: they begin crossing an obscure name, end at another obscure name, and have a bafflingly clued name in the middle.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, 6 in a row. Last word was a lucky guess of a 6er.]
Not just "medium-challenging" … it was
ReplyDeleteHA AL
RD MO
ER ST
TH IM
AN PO
SN SS
OT IB
*!* LE
Flew smoothly and unsuspectinly thru the whole NW area, then rode AUTOMATES right into the smaller NE corner. Got ALLAY right away. Then the nanoseconds, the nanoseconds. Music class knowledge required, twice? *gulp*. Mysterious theme mcguffin? *gulp2*.
But M&A insisted that he solve that NE questcorner, before movin on. "Once I get that gray area figured out, it'll be smoother sailin, for all them other gray areas, And these are all short answer meat, here." I reasoned. Which was eventually true. But the nanoseconds. The precious nanoseconds.
staff weeject pick: RAY. On account of its primo {Shiner?} clue. Well done.
Thanx for the
PA
IR
SA
LA
DS,
Mr. Seigel dude. Different. And M&A likes different.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
p.s. Am real relieved, that all of @Nancy's walls survived. She musta wisely printed her puz out on tissue paper.
raised by woofs hard:
**gruntz**
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ReplyDeleteRex and I are in total accord today. I look forward to the Thursday puzzle because I like being challenged and Thursday usually leaves me with a good feeling. But today it felt almost sadistic and very unsatisfying. It was really disappointing.
ReplyDelete@Teedmn 1:12. It may be specific to sportsball, and is most common (I think) in basketball. But when someone scores late in a game and that makes it in practice impossible for the other team to win, the announcer will say they "iced the game" or "iced the win", or just "iced it".
ReplyDeleteI decided to return to comment on some of the comments about ma’am. I have to believe that many of the people who spoke out against (or expressed confusion with) the answer are younger and I think this understandable. As I thought about it, back in the day before a person could easily figure out a company’s, corporation’s, or institution’s structure through the internet, many business-formatted letters would begin “Dear Sir or Madam” I won’t get into how SIR was always before MADAM but it was seen as more personable than “To Whom it May Concern.”
ReplyDeleteAlso, if my memory serves me…when I was a kid, the tv shows like I Love Lucy would often have a store clerk approach saying “Madam, May I help you”? This “Madam” form of address seemed to have disappeared but “ma’am” lives on, at least for now.
Any way that is my ‘splanation as to why the answer MAAM was more of a gimme to those of us above a certain age.
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ReplyDeleteThere was the makings of a tight, challenging theme here, but as Rex said, too much dross to wade through to find it. Particularly annoying for me, after bashing my head against the proverbial wall to find the 'CLUE' 'OLDS', 'SHOE' 'COLD', and 'CUTS' 'ONES' pairs, I was looking for "merged" answers that included at least one double letter, in my mind justifying PARES (pairs) DOWN as a hint.
ReplyDeleteI also don’t understand why when solving on iPad several across words at the tone of the grey theme words are highlighted when ‘on” the second of the two theme words.
ReplyDeleteHAWTHORNE is highlighted when on 35 down, for example. And COREVALUES when on 57 down. And ALMA when on 26 down.
Same phenomenon does not repeat on the other two them words.
Anyone?
Thursday is typically my hardest day of the week, and today made that abundantly clear.
ReplyDeleteThe theme was simply out of my wheelhouse. I knew that the letters were connected in some different manner, but never sussed it out and so a true DNF.
Bu that's okay with me. Sometimes I breeze through a puz, and occasionally I'm just left scratching my head. But the degree of anger and and scathing criticism that i see regularly in this forum (much more over the past two years) makes me wonder why you folks even do the nyt puz any more? Unless it's just to complain.
Kopi luwak is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. It is also called civet coffee. The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet's intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected. Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteWhat a Thursday!! I thought the theme was pretty terrific after I finally saw HAIRNETS, which blissfully gave me HAWTHORNE. I say “finally” because I stumbled around this grid for nearly an hour. It wasn’t just the theme that held me up, because I thought the cluing was Saturday level at it’s best. ACIDIFIES was outstanding, RIAN, THE NOW, and ALMA torturous. Thanks for the misery. I really enjoyed myself.
ReplyDeleteI’ve learned not to expect much from a NYT Thursday, as they are always of this “type”. And even so, I was still disappointed.
ReplyDeleteInsane.
ReplyDeleteTo Gary Jugert:
ReplyDeleteIf you think civet is questionable, look up ambergris -- whale vomit used in perfumes.
@orangeblossomspecial 3:53 PM
DeleteEww!
Am I REALLY the only one who has a problem with DDT being called an “antimalarial”??? DDT is an insecticide. Does it help reduce the spread of malaria? Absolutely. By eliminating the vector of infection - by killing mosquitos. But an antimalarial is a medication given to someone who already has malaria! Like an antibiotic!
ReplyDeleteCalling DDT an antimalarial is like calling a bullet a cure for cancer.
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DeleteNope. Just... nope. Went round and round and finally hit the Reveal at 13A after having half of it filled in and still being at sea. ACIDIFIED x E?GES! Pfft. One EasEsIN. EDGES? EDGES????! And though I had the entire bottom filled in from 49A on, I just baled on this one. Guess it just wasn't on my vibe. Don't get it. Don't care. DNF. Moving on.
ReplyDelete@Trina 2:56. It is a glitch in the software. Most platforms/operating systems see the normal highlighting, but some apparently have the issue you describe.
ReplyDeleteMy 2 cents on DNF from.yesterday’s discussion:
ReplyDeleteBecause I switched from paper solving to solving on my iPad a few years ago to save both printer ink and trees, I can’t apply tournament rules to my solve. When I was paper solving I would always go back over the grid to make sure I hadn’t misread a clue or misspelled anything and to check that all my answers made sense. On the iPad when I don’t get the “happy music” from the NYT app I do the same thing. If a find a typo or a misread clue or a nonsensical answer I correct it and if I get the music I count it as a successful solve. If I nothing seems wrong to me I click on “check puzzle” and count it as a solve with errors, i.e. DNF correctly.
That said, if I’m completely stumped on a clue I allow myself to ask another human for help. I don’t count this as looking something up. However, frequently the other human is not much help.
....FWIW I always solve Croce’s puzzles on paper.
Even after reading Rex's explanation of the theme, I still don't see it. It never worked. The theme answers might've just as well been in Pig Latin for all the sense they made. Yes, I see the theme words themselves aren't misspelled, but that's the only positive thing I can say about them. They didn't merge left (or right), nor did they pare down. This was the least-fun NYT puzzle I've ever done. No more, please
ReplyDeleteOccasionally I log on here if I've finished the grid but have one bad letter somewhere; sometimes I just log on when I've thought a puzzle was particularly tough or clever and want to see how others felt. Never once have I read a positive write up by Rex or his guests. If you guys hate the puzzle so much, if it's such a chore, why do you keep bothering?
ReplyDeleteI was hating this one SO much when I started it this morning—so many of the hints were obscure and the zig-zag format of the theme “pairs” completely eluded me until the end (clue hints were no help!).
ReplyDeleteI can’t think of any Thursday puzzle in recent memory that has stumped or frustrated me this way— I picked it back up this evening and when I completed it cleanly (with no googling, puzzle check, etc.) I have to say the dopamine rush was totally worth all of the angst!
I read these Rex Parker comments almost daily and never post, but there was so much negativity about this one I had to weigh in to say I ultimately enjoyed this challenging puzzle and I’m on board with the NYT upping the Thursday game!
@Anon 7:14
ReplyDeleteHave you never read a @Lewis post?
Or read the comment directly below yours from @Buttahyellow 8:28
RooMonster I'm Positive Most Of The Time Guy
Boring and stupid
ReplyDelete@photomatte
ReplyDeleteThe shaded or circled down answers are not words that have clues.
Take
CLUE OLDS as they appear in the puzzle:
CO
LL
UD
ES
MERGE LEFT and PAIR DOWNWARD as if you were reading a book.
CO LL UD ES= COLLUDES which is the answer for the clue given for 11 and 12 down.
Another wordleagle.
Wordle 474 2/6*
🟧🟦🟧⬛⬛
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
@TedP 12:13 PM
ReplyDeleteCummings's was styled in all caps on a few book covers, and he used caps only sparingly (but he did use them!) in his poetry. (I've had the hardcover Complete Poems since I was in high school).
But Cummings used caps when he signed his name, at least on the great majority of occasions.
Encyclopedia Britannica: Cummings used capital letters only irregularly in his verse and did not object when publishers began lowercasing his name, but he himself capitalized his name in his signature and in the title pages of original editions of his books.
“It may at first seem of little import, but for a poet who paid such exacting attention to typography, it must be said once and for all that his name should be written and printed with the usual capital letters in their usual places: ‘E. E. Cummings.’”'
https://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/caps.htm
In the preface to a 1964 book about Cummings, critic Harry T. Moore even claimed that Cummings had legally changed his name to insist upon the small letters, which led to an angry letter from Cummings's widow calling this a "stupid & childish statement."
https://www.woot.com/blog/post/the-debunker-are-you-supposed-to-style-his-name-as-e-e-cummings
Struggling along i got PARESDOWN before any of the themed answers. Thought wow are there really 10 varieties of pairs I am expected to come up with? Sadly no
ReplyDeleteStymied until I finally got HAWTHORNE, then quickly got the theme. Puzzle unraveled from there, except I had ACED IT and CAVET. Nice puzzle.
ReplyDeleteA total bitch. Had to bail and barely got it after reading Rex.
ReplyDeleteThis is a stunt puzzle. A "watch-me-do-this-thing" puzzle that never answers the question "but why though?"
ReplyDeleteThis perfectly encapsulated my sense of this, but I couldn't even find my way to my own feeling about the puzzle, it was that bizarre.
And this is why I read Rex religiously (say that 8 times quickly).
Interesting but seemed difficult than usual.
ReplyDeleteI thought "F in Music" was a pretty good one -- it's a common notation (forte) and haven't seen it clued this way before.
For "Peared Down" I thought the downs were supposed to be types of pears. Spent some time googling BOSC, ANJOU, etc.
Still don't understand LENTOS. All the other downs were common words.
Agree with Rex. A painful, annoying slog.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sir, for validating my very same thoughts!
ReplyDeleteThe theme just wasn’t worth it. Better to scrap a pointless theme and put together a dynamite themeless than to make a convoluted construction that falls flat. The themers have nothing in common. The revealers are not quite spot on. “Serpentine” could have been an alternative one to describe how the double-worded answers snake from right to left and left to right. All the shaded downs are real words with the exeption of 26D. LENTOS is supposed to be the plural of LENTO which means slow on a musical score. But not with an S. LENTO yes. LENTOS no. All in all, it was an impressive feat of construction, but at the expense of an enjoyable solve.
ReplyDeleteMy source says LENTO (n): a slowly played musical composition. So, (n) meaning noun, I guess it's in.
ReplyDeleteWhat I wish was out is all these letter add-ons: Please, constructors, sell your car with a TTOP so that you don't have to close it during a TSTORM. Just take the ATRAIN instead. AAAAUGH!
This was a bit different, and despite above rant, different is mostly good here. Odd grid shape, with two really big corners, plus a novel theme. Quite a feat to make the individual downs all words on their own, in addition to what's going on themewise. Must give points for that.
Two blots: hand up for EasEIN before EDGEIN, and then there was the name crossed by a tech term. For R_AN I really wanted RYAN, but who knows anymore what a name looks like? I thought the old system was UNIX, but RIAN? Really? Who would confuse the whole world by naming their kid RIAN? What is in the heads of some of these parents nowadays? I finally tossed a coin and it came up I. Just dumb luck.
For the fill, a bogey; for the break with TRADITION, birdie. That works out to a par.
Par also on Wordle.
SCHOOLED IN ROLLS
ReplyDeleteRAY was DOWN with ONE COREVALUE,
TRADITION says he's DEFT:
DATA COUNTESS with no CLUE,
EDGEIN when ONE MERGELEFT.
--- SIR HANS HAWTHORNE
Spent a little extra time in the NE, but finally got it. Not great but better than a typical rebus.
ReplyDeleteWordle par.
I admit to cheating to get the trick. (typical Thursday stuff)
ReplyDeleteSome spots were amazingly easy. Didn't know (remember?) that Moby Dick was dedicated to HAWTHORNE!
Diana, LIW
I'm sorry no-one will read this comment, so much after even the syndi puzzle date. I was so excited to see the zipper merge illustrated here, after the discussion about it some time ago, which hardly anyone seemed to understand at the time, and I guess almost all of you are US drivers, so still don't really get it (except for a few, it was good to see). When we merge in traffic in Canada, or at least in Vancouver, we do a zipper merge, just like it's shown here. We merge at the merge point, and the rest of the traffic follows suit, in order. I looked for that right away, but it took me forever to come up with words that worked. The pun on the pared merge was terrific.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was the best puzzle ever. It was so hard, but I did it, and I was so pleased.