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Hello, everyone! It’s Clare, back for the last Tuesday of December, which feels wild to say. How is it almost 2023?! It’s been quite the year — starting my first law-related job, learning I have to be gluten-free, getting into rock climbing, watching all the sports possible, and, of course, continuing to blog about crosswords here with you all. Hope that each and every one of you had a great and fulfilling 2022 and that 2023 continues in the same vein (or is even better).
As you might expect, I’ve been spending this final month of the year watching World Cup soccer and cheering on the GOAT (Messi, of course; who’d you think?) and, like the rest of this country, falling a little in love with USMNT captain Tyler Adams. The Premier League is finally back, and I gasped in relief at seeing Mo Salah,Virgil van Dijk, and Jordan Henderson all back on the same pitch. This year’s iteration of the Steelers is, to put it kindly, a work in progress, but I was rooting for them hardcore on Christmas Eve against the Raiders in the 50th anniversary game of the Immaculate Reception, especially because the absolutely wonderful Franco Harris died just a few days before.
I’ve been sequestered from the bad weather while I’m out in California with my family; I hope all of you have been able to stay safe and cozy. I’m sending warm wishes your way.
Anywho, on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- STAND AT EASE / SPARKLE (17A: Command for a soldier to relax / 6D: Glisten)
- BEAGLE / MAGENTA (34A: Snoopy’s breed / 25D: Reddish purple)
- BILLY / BEANSTALK (Melville’s “____ Budd” / 11D: Means to a goose laying golden eggs, in a fairy tale)
- CHINA / DIPLOMACY (39A: Tableware for special guests / 33D: Negotiator’s skill)
A river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is in its basin as it includes the Sauer and the Our. Moselle wines are mainly white and are made in some of the coldest climates used for commercial winemaking. (Wikipedia)
• • •
I was so hoping for a puzzle I could rave about to close out 2022. And this… isn’t that. I mean, it’s fine. It’s inoffensive. It’s sort of interesting. It moves smoothly enough. But it didn’t give me any of the “aha!” moments I craved. My main issue with the puzzle centered on the theme. I wanted some pizazz, but this theme just fell flat. The positioning of the themers was odd — they’re just kind of thrown in at random spots with abandon, which means giant sections of the puzzle (aka the bottom third of the puzzle) have no theme answers. Also, thinking about the breadth of options that could have gone alongside “double” and then looking at what we got was a bit disappointing. Sure, DOUBLE DATE and DOUBLE EAGLE, etc… work, but why choose them among a whole host of other options, such as: double entendre, double trouble, double whammy, double check, double shot, double scoop, etc? Then, the theme didn’t help with the solve, because, even though I got DOUBLE CROSS (64A) easily, I wasn’t using it to go back and figure out what the shaded sections could possibly correspond to.
I hit a snag at 26A: Pretends with LETS ON. The colloquial expression LETS ON to me means something much different from “pretends.” I Googled it, and “pretend” does show up as the second definition for “let on,” but I maintain that the phrase means something much different… As my ninth grade English teacher might remind me, connotation and denotation are different things. I also had such a hard time getting LETS ON partially because I didn’t know MOSELLE (9D), which strikes me as a slightly hard word for a Tuesday (or maybe I’m just salty because I like white wine, yet this style was not in my vocabulary). It also took me a bit to get the “e” for STEREO (10D: Sound upgrade from mono) but that just might be on me.
The rest of the puzzle was decent. Words such as DIPLOMACY, BEANSTALK, DERANGE, RENEGE, CORRAL, LAMENTS, and GRAVEST worked nicely and are ones that don’t often populate an early-week crossword, even though, as Lynn Lempel showed here, they easily could.
I noticed a mini-theme in the puzzle with animals. There was BAA (11A: Sheepish utterance?) with EMU (16A: Relative of an ostrich) right below it. Then, there was a BEE (42D: Helpful pollinator) in the crossword, CORRAL (50D) was clued with horses, Snoopy a BEAGLE (34A) was almost smack dab in the middle of the puzzle, and LARVA (52D) was clued as a caterpillar or tadpole.
There was some of the usual three-letter fill such as ALA/LOL/BAA/EMU/FCC/AHA/IRA/SAY that irked me a bit. Some other three-letter fill, SYD/PLY/FAD/AID/PVC, worked a little better. ATARI (22D) and OREO (67A) were other crosswordese. I didn’t know KYD (46A: "The Spanish Tragedy" dramatist Thomas) or NEA (23A), so those threw me for a few seconds.
Misc.:
- W.H. AUDEN’s (13D) poem “Funeral Blues” is probably my favorite poem ever. It’s absolutely stunning. I’ll put just this stanza below, but I encourage you to check the full poem out here.
- "He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."
- My family has a Snoopy ornament we all fight over to hang on the Christmas tree, and I got to be the person to hang him on the tree this year. Then, a day after we decorated the tree, it decided to go timberrrrr… While we had several ornament casualties, Snoopy luckily came out unscathed.
- SYD (38D) and KYD (46A) crossing each other was fun for a Pittsburgh fan like me. Although I assume the cross wasn’t intended as a reference to “Sid the Kid” Crosby, I thought of the Penguin player who, at 35, might not be such a “kid” (or KYD) any more but who is still worthy of loads of notice.
- I quite liked the clue/answer for 28D: Org. that oversees court battles as NBA. I was wracking my brain trying to think of a law-based answer for this (getting so far as putting “ABA” in as the answer) before I realized what the clue was getting at.
Easy, however it took several nanoseconds of post solve staring to appreciate the theme. Cute and clever, liked it quite a bit more than Clare did, but she is right about the plethora of double possibilities.
ReplyDeletedouble spark?
ReplyDeleteDouble park, not spark
Delete@Whoosey - I'm probably not the first, but just in case, it's double park. The S isn't shaded in the app.
DeleteDouble park, not spark
ReplyDelete@Whoosey Whatsis: I did the same thing for a moment . . . "double park"
ReplyDeleteI recently-ish looked up the word CABAL and learned that it has an anti-Semitic etymology (it's from the word "Kabbalah," so the shady, scheming connotation of the word is problematic). It should probably be erased from wordlists going forward.
Agree
DeleteSemi-Naticked on a Tuesday with an error at AENEuS/NEu. In retrospect, should have known it could not be National Educators Union as 'union' was in the clue.
ReplyDeleteGood thing Rex is on vacation as he would have savaged this: “A tired theme type … are we really still doing this … “ etc.
There’s a nice parallel between frogs and dragonflies: Eggs laid in water. Hatch to a LARVA which is purely aquatic and breathes through gills. No pupal stage. Larvae metamorphose to a land-living adult which breathes through lungs and preys on insects.
Hi, Clare. Always enjoy your sports-heavy writeups. I think one complexity of the theme you might have missed is that all the double words are either parts of longer words (such as AGENT inside MAGENTA) or in one case span a phrase (DATE inside STAND AT EASE). And none of the double words has the same meaning in the longer word or phrase it’s hidden inside. (PARK inside PARKING LOT wouldn’t have worked.) So most of the examples you give, such as entendre, trouble, whammy, etc., couldn’t be made to work. Shot could, inside IT’S HOT, say. But I liked the theme a little better because of that. Of course, I didn’t use it to help me in the solve either, just went back at the end to see what the DOUBLE CROSS was.
ReplyDeleteI liked TMI crossing KIM. Any information about Kim and her clan is too much information for me.
I’m sure I won’t be the last to note the appearance of FLOE after yesterday’s BERG and the wonderful science lesson from @Barbara S. And nice that it crosses AFLOAT today.
BILLY atop KYD can’t have been a coincidence.
Also as to what Clare said, the fact that the shaded areas crossed was deliberate. The one in the center is a Christian cross.
DeleteI liked the puzzle. It didn't bother me that there were no themer.
Thought it was very easy. It would have been harder if I had tried to figure out the theme, but I ignored it. I thought the cluing was very straightforward.
ReplyDeleteThe crosses are restrictive so we get some glue - but overall cute theme and well filled. Lynn Lempel’s early week puzzles are always smooth - no different here. DIPLOMACY, BEANSTALK etc are all solid. Agree that maybe MOSELLE is a Tuesday stretch. ECHO and the Bunnymen.
ReplyDeleteThe GRAVEST superlative felt awkward. The ALA - REC - OAF triangle was rough but I kind of liked the SYD x KYD cross. Mama CASS. MAGENTA crossing RENEGE is cool and I picked up on Clare’s animal subtheme also.
Enjoyable Tuesday solve.
ASLEEP at the Wheel
@Whoosey Whatsis: DOUBLE PARK
ReplyDeleteRegarding 17A: is the command "STAND AT EASE" or just "AT EASE"?
Happy 2023 Clare. So nice to have an upbeat Clare Tuesday review.
ReplyDeleteI tried and I tried to figure out the theme before uncovering the reveal – without success. I always try, because it's something I’m not very good at, and I want to get better at it. But I don’t feel too bad, because I’m in good company, with crossword bloggers Rachel Fabi and Jeff Chen being stumped as well.
ReplyDeleteI love seeing in Lynn’s notes that she tried out umpteen grids before settling on this one. I love that she’s bent on excellence, even in her 99th NYT puzzle. That she doesn't rest on her laurels.
After solving, my brain went on a treasure hunt and was well rewarded. Echoing the theme is the answer PLY, which can come after “double”, and OREO made me think “Double Stuf”. There’s the magnificently abutting BILLY and KYD. There’s the gorgeous-to-me RENEGE and three palindromes (ALA, AHA, and LOL).
But the kicker was the clue for REC because of its phrase “play space”, two words that can be preceded by DOUBLE.
Lynn, I was stumped, and now pumped, over your 99th. Thank you so much for this!
Thanks, @Lewis, for pointing out those extra niceties. “Play space” — brilliant!
ReplyDeletewhoosey Whatsis: Does it make you feel any better to know that at first glance my reaction to that answer was DOUBLE SPARKLE?? To smalltowndoc I say that the shorter phrase is more common but adding STAND is widely used - at least in my military experience. Liked the puzzle a lot and thank Lynn Lempel and Will Shortz for providing it. Clare did a good job discussing the puzzle but I am always confused at complaints about the FILL. There will always be FILL and we just need to accept it. But I think I'm in a small minority on this one.
ReplyDeleteMOSELLE? This must be some odd French spelling. It’s German. The river, its valley, and the wines made there (from Riesling) are spelled Mosel.
ReplyDeleteMoselle is a relatively obscure French wine region close to the Swiss border
DeleteThe French might disagree with you. As the Wikipedia entry states, the river starts in the Vosges Mountains in FRANCE and the French call it Moselle. They don't care what the Germans call it once it crosses the border. This happens to many rivers in Europe. The answer is valid.
DeleteFunny whenever “court” is mentioned I go to Tennis first. So NBA took me awhile not because I was thinking of a legal court but because I was thinking of a Tennis court.
ReplyDeleteI did this last night and flew through it in what felt like 2 or 3 minutes, max. (It was probably more, but that’s what it felt like.). No resistance whatsoever. Until… when I was finished, I Could Not Grok the theme. No idea what the DOUBLE CROSS revealer had to do with those letters in the circles. I could make absolutely no sense out of it, and was reduced to going to (*GASP!*) WordPlay to have the theme explained to me.
ReplyDeleteOh, I get it. Kind of a let down.
The puzzle had the usual Lynn Lempel smoothness, but without the sharpness or bite she often achieves.
And I always like it better when the revealer actually helps me get the themers, not when I have no idea what the revealer has to do with what I just solved.
(Because I posted this late yesterday, through my own forgetfulness, I'm reposting it early today, for those interested.)
ReplyDeleteMy five favorite clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. "Fudge", "fie", and "fiddlesticks" are some of the printable ones (1)(5)
2. Game that often ends in tears (7)(7)
3. Letters used in the absence of a letter (3)
4. One might have three parts, with or without its last letter (5)
5. Cut with a letter opener? (1)(4)(5)
F-WORDS
STARING CONTEST
NMI
SUITE
T-BONE STEAK
Agree, T bone steak was brilliant!
DeleteAmy: very solid, smooth Tuesday. Hi Clare, congrats on the job. We had a funny, shabby little ornament: a Santa face made out of a walnut shell, crafted by my older brother in elementary school. Our tradition was that I had to find it on the tree before I could open presents. Only many years later did I realize it was a custom born out of the adult need for coffee on early Christmas mornings!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh what a stinker. Pretty much the entire section north of the equator is a wasteland - CASS, ASTIN, AENEAS, LEDA, Companero, AUDEN. BILLY, ATARI, KYD . . . KIM Kardashian ! Well if you signed up for a trivia test you hit the jackpot today.
ReplyDeleteThanks Clare for revealing the theme! I got the puzzle without difficulty but all I could come up with was that the “double” meant words within words such as eagle in beagle crossing other such words. Anyway I’m glad you’re safely ensconced in better climes. In my part of the world we’ve had power outages, no heat, water main breaks, etc. Thankfully the workers from the power company saved us by removing the tree that caused our power shutdown before Christmas Eve dinner and we had minimal snow. The temperatures are rising a bit outside and my daughter has water service again. Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell as a Steelers fan, football has been cancelled the last three years due to COVID.
ReplyDeleteHi Clare and thanks for the cheery write up! I don't know anything about pro sports but always get a kick out of your enthusiasm. Did you see BTS the other day?
ReplyDeleteToday for the first time solved downs only. Interesting experience. Made me realize how truly easy early week puzzles are. When KYD filled in I had no clue what the clue could be but it turned out to be correct. Got DOUBLECROSS easily enough, but still *no clue* about the theme! Tried, e.g., "parkpark", hmm, no, but "chinchin" sorta works (if you're into old fashioned toasts). Had to come here to grok it. So technical dnf I guess.
But fun, thx, Lynn Lempel!
Weather related: last night a fire suppression pipe in our 4 year old condo building burst, flooding out a young family with 2 little kids on the first floor. One day after I said to my husband how lucky we were to be out of the house and free from winter weather worries, sigh. It took the firefighters over an hour to secure the rest of the system. The young people have family nearby, thank goodness, and the restoration company has already arrived.
Looking forward to moderating temps this week!
Cabal? Does anyone seriously think that it’s ever used with antisemitic intention? We don’t need the PC police to “clean up” the language; people understand the context in which a word is used. And that goes for many of the words already weeded out by well-meaning word cops.
ReplyDeleteEasy solve, no snags, but what was the theme going to be? (Hi @ Lewis) I try to figure that out too and got nowhere with this one, as the crossing words just seemed unrelated. I liked the revealer and it was in the right place, so good.
ReplyDeleteAlso liked the baseball clue for SIDEARM, even if had a little TMI. I can imagine another clue for this that would have raised OFL's hackles.
Nice solid Tuesday, LL. Low Level stress in solving, and thanks for all the fun.
What, not TheNBA?
ReplyDeleteAnd give me a break on perpetually being offended - by something that was only triggered by looking up the word ‘CABAL”!
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteAdmit to not getting why these words were crossing. Didn't see the DOUBLE go-with. Oh well.
SPARKLE doing double-theme duty, as the E is part of another cross-set. Decent fill for the amount of white, plus the constraints the theme puts on the grid. Only 32 Blockers.
Got a chuckle out of FLOE, now knowing more about ice thanks to @Barbara S and others YesterComments. Crossing AFLOAT. Neat.
BEANS TALK? Who knew?
B EAGLE - second person to get 2 under par.
CHiN A - Upper part of a double chin.
BiLL Y - Follows Bills A through X.
OK, I'm no @Gary Jugert. 😁
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
@RooMonster 9:41 AM
DeleteI'd say you're kicking Gary Jugert's ARSE, but then I'd need to accuse the NYTXW editors of infantilism.
I associate Lynn Lempel with Monday puzzles, so I was interested to see what she had in store for us on a Tuesday. I'm solidly in the fan club for this one, with its original (formatting) take on a tried-and-true theme type and plenty of other fine entries.
ReplyDeleteLike @Lewis and @pabloinnh, I try to figure out themes pre-reveal; today all I could come up with was the possibility of going on a DATE in a PARK and ending up with DIP on your CHIN. But the pondering did allow me write in the reveal with no CROSSes and a smile of appreciation at the cleverness - the combination of "word that can go with..." and a visual illustration. Thank you to @Wanderlust 7:14 for pointing out the added complexity of the "DOUBLE" words being embedded, not stand-alones.
And, so much other SPARKLE for a Tuesday: BEANSTALK, DIPLOMACY, SIDEARM, RENEGE and, for me, OVERDUE as clued: now that 48 years have passed as of yesterday, I can laugh about it.
When it became immediately apparent that there would be nothing in the clues to either challenge or amuse me, I jumped down to the revealer clue to see if guessing the answer -- without even looking at the number of letters -- would tell me what was going on in the shaded squares. "Aha -- DOUBLECROSS," I said after seeing "Betray". But to tell the truth, I was looking for two things that could be "crossed" rather than two things that could be "doubled". Oh, well, close enough.
ReplyDeleteA theme that gives the solver nothing in particular to do other than admire the constructor's grid handiwork. And the grid's not half bad. But I do wish Lynn would collaborate with an inventive and imaginative clue-writer at least once in a while. The guy in 7D is both "honest" and also "on a five"? Good grief, give me a break!
So in the first cross I had DATE crossing PA_ _ and thought we were dealing with trees. I held off on filling in the LM, though, and was quickly corrected by SIDEARM. This experience set me firmly on the path of looking for relationships between the two crossing words; even when I got the revealer, it took me a few moments to grasp the DOUBLE part of the cross.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me as overspecific to clue LEDA as a Yeats poem. I mean, it's a pretty iconic story, subject of many works of art. I think the second time I visited London I walked into the Courtauld Gallery and saw a painting of Leda, clutching the swan to her abdomen, with the most rapturous look on her face you could imagine. In the Renaissance aristocrats would buy that sort of thing to hang in their bedrooms, I've been told.
Less problematic, but still odd -- a union, such as the NEA, isn't "based" in its headquarters building, but in the workplaces of its members.
Back in the 1970s German rieslings were a lot more popular, and the one in the puzzle was indeed marketed as MOSELLE, which is English as well as French, although the label would be in German. It's too sweet for modern US tastes. I think it became Mosel about the same time that port became Oporto.
The word "Cabal," as I learned in my first course in English Constitution History (way back when) was an acronym derived from the initials of the titles of the members of the King's Privy Council who advised Charles II following the removal of Edward Hyde (the 1st Duke of Clarendon). The Five men were Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale. Any other attempt to backdate the origin of the word seems to me both unnecessary and silly.
ReplyDeleteOver time thousands of words have been popularly assigned an acronym origin which is ALMOST always wrong. This case is one of the rare ones which is more complicated. The previous writer is correct that the origin of the word is much older than the 1600's, but the events referred to in England in the 1600's and association between the word and those five men changed the meaning of the word and simplified the spelling. But it was done with the original word in mind. You are referring to history and you are right as far as it goes, but history is not etymology. And the previous writer was talking about the latter.
DeleteThx, Lynn, for an excellent DOUBLE-CROSSing Tues. puz! :)
ReplyDeleteHi Clare; good to see you again, and thx for your fine write-up! :)
Med.
Clockwise solve, from CABALS around to CHINA.
Thx to excellent posts yd, now fairly clear re: FLOEs vs bergs. Liked how FLOE crossed AFLOAT.
Unknowns/hazies/learnings: LEDA; KYD; MOSELLE; OREO; BEANSTALK.
Nothing more embarrassing than RENEGing at the bridge table, i.e., not following suit.
As a pitcher, had a wicked SIDEARM curve (not recommended for arm health, tho).
@Crocers: had a rare 1 hr. solve yd! See y'all next Mon. :)
On to Will Nediger's Mon. New Yorker. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
My first puzzling in several days but you could SAY it went quite smoothly. However, my LAMENT was I didn’t get the theme, even after finishing and studying it. So maybe I was a bit rusty after all as I appreciated the explanation from Clare. Glad I did not need it to finish because I was ASLEEP at the switch and completely missed the AHA moment.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone see 45’s Christmas tweet? It was hard to miss the DERANGEd tone. NTA before NBA (👋 @Dr A) thinking tennis before basketball. A moment of excitement when I filled in 9D with MOSCATO, my choice of adult beverage for the holidays. Or any day for that matter. Not familiar with MOSELLE but definitely gonna try it as I am a big fan of Riesling and most white European varieties.
A Tuesday with some nice SPARKLE Lynn. Thanks and congrats on number 99.
Haven’t crosswords taught us that 3 under par on a hole is an albatross, not a DOUBLE EAGLE? There IS an old gold coin valued at $20 by that name, but suspect the golf score makes more sense and probably is used more by golfers than a metaphor for something bad.
ReplyDeleteOne of the Rex nits I actually agree with is irritation at the “name found in these words” kiddie restaurant mat level clue. Would rather break out an old “Highlights for Children” and look for the 10 hidden illustrations than easily find the hidden name in these Trivial Pursuits! (Also, while on HFC, Goofus always seemed cooler than Gallant: he just had attitude, as well as, inevitably, the biggest piece of cake and last cookie).
My professional knitter daughter tells me that yarn thickness is actually WEIGHT not PLY. Multi-ply yarn may still be very light if the individual strands are thin. If anyone cares!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what I'd hafta do to get my own CABALS going. I assume we'd hafta be against something. I don't like squash, eggplant, or Thai food, but outside of that I accept most things.
ReplyDeleteAlways seems when they tell 'em to STAND AT EASE they don't look very at ease.
If a cow moved into an apartment in the city xi would be DERANGED.
I didn't know CAPO was a mafia boss, probably because boss is a way better word, and CAPOS go on guitars.
As of today I plan to use OAF in place of the far more inflammatory descriptors my potty mouth generally dreams up for those I find of inferior genetic stock.
I've never met anyone from TOLEDO. Do they never leave?
It's OHO, not AHA.
There's MAGENTA. Remember a few weeks back when we got ourselves in a wad over K=Black? Let's set a timer for CYAN.
I hope the ghosts in a cemetery compete for best digs, you know, who is the GRAVEST.
I'm gonna go read your comments now on why those crosses mean something.
Uniclues:
1 My elbow and the rubber cushion thing at any tavern.
2 TikTok trend of remixing ARF ARF ARF into BOOM WOKKA WOKKA ARF ARF.
3 The sagas librarians listen to daily.
4 Title for a prison movie.
5 Re-bling an old drag queen.
6 Game room.
7 Activity for a passionate gardener.
1 STAND AT EASE AID
2 BEAGLE RAPS FAD (~)
3 OVERDUE LAMENTS
4 BLADE DIPLOMACY
5 RESTORE SPARKLE (~)
6 ATARI CORRAL
7 ADORE BEANSTALK (~)
With Netflix having added the “Double Rave” review, the cross of GRAVEST and OVERDUE presents the DOUBLECROSS of RAVE/OVER. Pretty weak, I know.
ReplyDeleteI spent many billions of nanoseconds trying to figure out how DOUBLECROSS applied to the shaded answers. I deeply explored various etymological, positional, religious and grammatical possibilities before saying AHA AHA, you OAF. The religious part came in when I got to thinking about how the crosses are all up above, resembling somewhat the arrangement on the Hill of Calvary. Probably an early nod to Easter, I figured, but what to make of the 4th cross? Could Lynn Lempel be alluding to her status as the savior of Monday crosswords who is now being forced to die on the Tuesday cross? Clearly a bit advanced for some Tuesday solvers, but certain things need to be taken purely on faith in these realms. I finally, and reluctantly, abandoned this reading, but if Lynn were to rise up and reappear as the constructor on Friday, I’ll prostrate myself (or at my age, I’d more likely prostate myself).
I liked the puzzle. Thanks, Lynn Lempel.
I had heard a line or two of Funeral Blues before but just found the complete poem on the internet. Very moving. Thank you, Clare.
ReplyDeleteI liked the four double-crosses but Ms. Lempel needed 25 Terrible Threes to do it. Too high a price.ii
Ahar! DoubleCrossWord!
ReplyDeleteDidn't catch onto the theme mcguffin until I got to the reveal. Then I managed to figure it all out, PDQ. M&A must think like them. Cool theme idea. Definite great TuesPuz-level fun.
Staff weeject pick: DIP. Yer one runt-sized gray-squared themer. honrable mention to SYD/KYD, of course.
Primo weeject stacks in the NE & SW, btw.
faves stuff included: BEANSTALK. DIPLOMACY. OVERDUE. DE-RANGE. Beginner-level ?-marker clue for BAA.
Now lookin forward to someone comin up with a "triple cross" theme mcguffin. If they don't, the runts will get it and chew unmercifully upon it.
Thanx for the heavy cross fire, Ms. Lempel darlin. Always glad to see yah. One more puz to go, and U are in the NYTPuz century club. Just sayin.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
p.s. Thanx for a year of outstandin blog-subbin, Ms. Claire Carroll darlin. [Do y'all get a lotta "Christmas Carrolls" wisecracks, around the holidays? Just wonderin.]
**gruntz**
LETSON is acceptable for PRETENDS - having been hearing-challenged for decades, I often "let on" during conversations (basically by smiling and nodding) when I missed hearing part of a conversation. People hate repeating themselves so instead you play along, pretend you heard it and hope the part you missed wasn't about you.
ReplyDeleteI like Lynn's refreshing take on "words that can go with a word" puzzle along with its apt revealer. I was one of the many who had to stare awhile after solving to figure out the theme. Nice.
ReplyDeleteI was never a huge OREO fan but ever since I've gone to Lollapuzzoola where they always have OREO snack packs (in honor of the crosswordese, I believe), I've become rather fond of them. I would never break them apart to eat them - neither the creme filling nor the outer cookies are all that great on their own, in my opinion, but together they make a nice combo. I still wouldn't buy a package of them to bring home, but when put in front of me, I will partake.
I got a chuckle when I finally got enough of 11D to see what it was leading up to; I have forgotten the part of the story where Jack actually climbs the beanstalk to find...ah, the golden goose. The phrasing of the clue was cute.
Thanks, Lynn Lempel, nice Tuesday!
Clare, watch FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL and hear that Auden quote. Makes me cry every time.
ReplyDeleteLike others mentioned, I finished filling the grid cleanly but didn’t get the theme. Like @Nancy 10:25 am, after reflecting on the revealer, I thought DOUBLE CROSS meant there were two pairs of words crossing at the middle letter.
ReplyDeleteAnd I found them!
Well, at least for the peripheral crosses:
PARK / DATE (and with a little twist: PATE / DARK)
TALK / BILL (TALL / BILK)
DIP / CHIN (DIN / CHIP)
This seemingly oh-so-brilliant idea fell apart at the center, with the second crosses being “agle” and “eagent.”
Ah well, a reminder to myself to not overthink when unnecessary. But how can you tell?... See?? Overthinking!
Thanks for the review, Clare – nice to see you again! The expression LETS ON means something other than “pretend” to me too, so the letter crossing the white wine MOSELLE was the last square filled, and a lucky guess.
@andrew 10:55 –
ReplyDeleteGoofus always does the crossword in oversized magic marker and doesn't care if his letters exceed the edges of the boxes, rendering it illegible. If he can't finish it or doesn't like the theme, he rips it to shreds and throws the pieces on the floor.
Gallant does the crossword in fine-point pencil so that he can neatly correct errors, not that he ever makes any, and takes care that all his letters are exactly the same size and fully within the boundaries. When he is finished, he erases his entire solution and offers it to a homeless person on the subway.
Oops, that was for @Andrew 11:04. Gallant wouldn't have made that mistake. (And why hasn't there been a "Goofus and Gallant" movie?)
DeleteI watched The Thin Man again. I'd watched it about 6 years ago, way before I was doing these xword puzzles. One of the first xwordese words I learned was ASTA, the dog in the Thin Man. It comes up every now and then.
ReplyDeleteNow ASTA is well-ingrained in my brain! It's such a great movie too. ASTA's real name was Skippy. I had a dog named Skippy too!
Merry Christmas puzzler peeps!
Thanks Claire,
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see a forward line of Nunez, Doak and Gakpo, with Bellingham and Bajcetic behind them. This team is getting younger before our very eyes. (Claire will understand this, even if nobody else does).
Happy new year
Mark
@wanderlust 7:14 AGREE RE TMI CROSSING KIM
ReplyDelete@ Natasha 6:44 glad a few other commenter have already pointed out how ludicrous your striking "caba" from the word list idea was.
Thank you Lewis for all the extras you pointed out
Gary Jugert, Loved your take on "deranged" and "gravest" thanks for the chuckle
What a joy to have a visit from Clare as we close out 2022! Clare, you and I are so sympatico in so many ways! I adore Pittsburg, the city, its ballet, the great “Tower of Learning”, the Steelers and the Pirates (i have 2 favorite MLB teams-Pirates and Cubs), all things sports and fútbol! And we are both lawyers. Congrats on your successful first year in practice.
ReplyDeleteThe World Cup was the best I have seen in my 70 years. Doesn’t hurt that if the US couldn’t quite make the cut this year (but we did get Tyler!), they made a decent showing and I think the future looks hopeful for the USMNT. But that’s me as usual being hopeful (I am a Cubs fan after all. Pirates and Cubbies)
I agree with your analysis today. The idea had lots of promise as a “traditional” Tuesday style theme puzzle, it just felt like it didn’t cross the finish line as strongly as it might have. When the reveal hit, and the theme didn’t fully “double down” on the gimmick, I felt a bit let down.
On the other hand, as Clare points out, the longer fill was fun. If you climb the BEANSTALK, be careful. You might find a giant who may DOUBLE CROSS all your plans and he might have a wicked friend who will DERANGE you. So just be careful.
Thanks Clare!! Good job.
From Merriam-Webster.com:
ReplyDelete"Cabal has been associated with a group of five ministers in the government of England's King Charles II. The initial letters of the names or titles of those men (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale) spelled cabal, and they have been collectively dubbed as the "Cabal Cabinet" or "Cabal Ministry." But these five names are not the source of the word cabal, which was in use decades before Charles II ascended the throne. The term traces back to cabbala, the Medieval Latin name for the Kabbalah, a traditional system of esoteric Jewish mysticism. Latin borrowed Cabbala from the Hebrew qabbālāh, meaning 'received or traditional lore.'"
The word dates back over 400 years, when Kabbalists likely were viewed as mysterious and secretive. Perhaps it was anti-Semitic, but I've never heard of anyone being offended by the word in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I'll give this a pass. No pass for "nazi" or "Ye", or a puzzle that looks like a swastika.
My first hot take on the theme of "Double Cross" was that it was somehow the symmetry of the grid, but not being able to see it I just scratched my head and came here to have it spelled out for me. (I play on my phone and am trying out "night mode" which makes identifying the shaded squares a bit of a challenge for me.)
ReplyDeleteI have seen both MOSEL and MOSELLE as the descriptor for the both wine and the river for my entire life.
ReplyDeleteVillager
I like Magenta Beagle as the name of an honor to be bestowed upon a person (or dog) for a distinguished deed. What should one have done to merit a Magenta Beagle? Suggestions welcomed.
ReplyDeleteI thought ECHO was a wink at the "DOUBLE" part of the theme. Hmm. Maybe echoes cross themselves too or at least their own paths. They doube back also.
ReplyDeleteI tried to figure out the theme before reading the revealer. I had 3 and 1/2 crosses done and nothing. Instantly saw double could be put before each word and the pairs of words made crosses after reading the clue.
Never considered CABAL anti-Jewish and am not so sure it is. I'm willing to keep and eye on it.
@Barbara S from yesterday
Anything might be stretching it a bit but you're welcome to try. I am close to 1/2 a mile away. Never connected it to the song before so added the closing line. Thanks for noticing.
I also thought the M-W definitions of floe did not mesh very well with the given scientific definitions given yesterday. I also was somewhat confused if an ice break-up on a river could be properly be called an ice floe or only an ice flow.
I am currently reading Robert Galbraith's newest and she quotes poets at the beginning of each chapter. She quotes one of Emily Dickinson's 2 rat poems that I believe I have talked about on this blog before. Great examples of how she (Emily) turns common place events into poems.
That Auden poem in 4 Weddings and a Funeral-wow
ReplyDeleteA bit disappointing to see supposedly progressive people swooning over a sporting event held in Qatar.
ReplyDeleteThis is Lynn Lempel’s 99th NYT puzzle. She’s been doing them since 1979. Only one more to go for the big 100 milestone which very few people ever achieve. I always enjoy her puzzle and this one is no different. Terrific theme. My only nit is there’s a tad too many three-letter non-words: NEU, FCC, PVC, NBA, SNL, REO, TMI etc. But enoough of my petty LAMENTS. Looking forward to #100 and sending congratulations in advance.
ReplyDeletePS - Most prolific author: Manny Nosowsky is the crossword constructor who has been published most frequently in the Times under Shortz, with 241 puzzles (254 including pre-Shortz-era puzzles, published before 1993) Source: Wikipedia
AGENT LAMENTS
ReplyDeleteThere’s a DOUBLECROSS at the CORRAL,
don’t STANDATEASE or give AID to SYD,
he’ll RENEGE when he’s OVERDUE, pal,
toting a SIDEARM like BILLY the KYD.
--- ABE ASTIN
Another Lempel gem. Notice how none of the shaded words (well, except for BILLy, kinda) STANDs alone within the longer entry. Elegant. As I plowed through the top half, I kept trying to unearth the common thread among those dark words. For a while it looked like the theme could have something to do with making turns: DARK PATE, TALL BILK, CHIP DIN. But then the center cross put the kibosh on that idea.
ReplyDeleteI carefully left the SE for last and did it all downs, to preserve the revealer till the last minute. And then: 32 down! 32 down's clue!! Then I wondered why I didn't see it sooner.
The clue on SIDEARM deftly skirts the weapon issue. I'd have liked a tad fewer threes, but overall a solid birdie. Special posthumous DOD to Mama CASS Elliot. We miss you, Mama.
Wordle par.
Double BEAGLE. Who knew? Not I.
ReplyDeleteNot that this stopped me from the solve - just from the "trick" solution.
Diana, LIW
DOUBLE your pleasure DOUBLE your fun.
ReplyDeleteWordle birdie.