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Like old-fashioned railroad crossing signs / MON 12-26-22 / Landslide of wet sediment / Princess who says into the garbage chute flyboy / 97.5% of a penny / Bitter part of an orange /
Monday, December 26, 2022
Constructor: Kurt Weller
Relative difficulty: No Idea (did it Downs-Only to escape potential boredom)
Theme answers:
- MAKE A FACE (20A: Stick your tongue out, say)
- SWITCH GEARS (34A: Move onto a new topic of conversation, metaphorically)
- CHANGE HANDS (43A: Pass to a different owner, as a business)
The Wall is the eleventh studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 30 November 1979 by Harvest/EMI and Columbia/CBS Records. It is a rock opera that explores Pink, a jaded rock star whose eventual self-imposed isolation from society forms a figurative wall. The album was a commercial success, topping the US charts for 15 weeks and reaching number three in the UK. It initially received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom found it overblown and pretentious, but later received accolades as one of the greatest albums of all time and one of the band's finest works. [...] The Wall is one of the best-known concept albums. With over 30 million copies sold, it is the second best-selling album in the band's catalogue (behind The Dark Side of the Moon), the best selling double-album of all time, and one of the best-selling albums of all time overall. Some of the outtakes from the recording sessions were used on the group's next album, The Final Cut (1983). In 2000, it was voted number 30 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, 2012, and 2020, it was included in Rolling Stone's lists of the greatest albums of all time. From 2010 to 2013, Waters staged a new Wall live tour that became the highest-grossing tour by a solo musician. (wikipedia)
• • •
The other main Downs-only issue I had was ANTITOXIN (36D: Venom neutralizer, e.g.). My brain was like "ANTIVENOM!" and I was like "look, brain, 'venom' is in the clue, it can't be ANTIVENOM" and then brain was like "ah well, can't help you, gonna think about Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' now" and I said "oh come on, brain" but it plugged its ears and started shout-singing: "We Don't Need No / ANTIVENOM!" So childish, sometimes, brain is. Probably the funniest part of Downs-only solving was getting PENI- (!) over EREC- (!!) there in the SW corner and thinking "well, I've gotta have an error there ... I hope I have an error there ... because ... OK, what is happening!?" I couldn't think of anything that could complete PENI- and also be allowable in mainstream crosswords. Crosses were leading me to PENIN but all I could think was "well, that's not a word." Then I thought "oof, it could be an awful partial." And then I thought, oh, it's just a verb phrase ... OK, then." Remarkably hard, from a Downs-only standpoint, was 30D: Bitter part of an orange (PITH). You think, "how many four-letter answers can there be?" Well three, at least, I can tell you from experience. I had PEEL at first (back when I wanted CHANGE HANDS to be CHANGE LANES). Then I thought, "well, if it's not that, then maybe ... RIND?" Maybe, but also maybe not. Sigh. Your brain really has to work in weird ways to suss out these Down-only dilemmas (or trilemmas).
I've never really heard anyone say "CLOCKWORK" unless they said "like" first, or happened to be discussing a very famous Kubrick film. But that's alright. It's a word, you can't dispute that. Overall, the experience was entertaining, though I think most of the entertainment came from the self-imposed Downs-only restriction, rather than from anything inherent in the theme or fill. Putting together those long Across themers with absolutely no clues was an adventure: MAKE A DATE! CHANGE LANES! CLONE WARS! (before CLOCKWORK, LOL). SWITCH GEARS was the only themer that really wanted to stay put.
I'm leaving Dunedin tomorrow and will be in transit for a few days, so after your regular monthly Clare Tuesday tomorrow, you'll have Mali one of the days and I think Eli the other two. Then I'm back for good on Saturday. I'll fill you in a bit on my NZ adventures then. Here's a picture of me today at the beach, where it was sunny and 75 degrees and ice cream trucks had long lines and a seal kept trying to play with all the surfers who were out there floating, waiting for waves. Then the seal tried to play with people just walking on the beach and that was a little less fun, a little more frightening. But everyone gave Mr. Frolic Seal a lot of room and he headed back to sea. Good times.
Oh and then a seagull got on my car and said 'hey'; slightly menacing, but mostly just ... close.
Oh, and since [A rainbow may be seen as a good one] is in the puzzle today (OMEN!), here's an incredible full rainbow I saw walking home from Christmas lunch at my mother-in-law's yesterday:
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84 comments:
Let me start by speaking for the majority of the commentariat about my disappointment in not getting to solve a Boxing Day themed puzzle. Typical NYT disdain for their readership.
The NE corner contains a perfect descriptor for how I’m sure most of us felt after that third serving of cow stomach at Christmas dinner: TRIPE SATED. And to further encapsulate the cheerful feelings, the same corner contains RUM ELEVATES. YMMV.
Meanwhile the SW is just one teenie weenie letter from breaking into a whole new level of NYTXW obscenity with PENIN ERECT.
Having 11D STRAP (Wristwatch component) is a bonus entry, I suppose. But maybe it’s just an oversight. I’m thinking the former.
Simple theme and so-so fill. Thanks for a good effort, Kurt Weller.
Medium. Pretty smooth with a couple of decent long downs (someday I will spell MNEMONIC right on the first try). Liked it.
@Rex - Delightful write up!
@bocamp, pabloinnh, et.al? - Croce’s Freestyle #772 was again on the easy side for a Croce for me. I always start a Croce on my morning 45ish minute walk and keep coming back to it until it’s done. If I finish before noon I deem it “easy for a Croce.” I found top half tougher than the bottom. Good luck!
Shouldn’t it be ANTIVENIN?
What's with this "downs only" nonsense. Sounds like not really doing a crossword puzzle but a list of questions. But he talks about the accrosses, too. I was disappointed to see that @Rex did this. Is it a way to make yourself feel smart? I just don't get it. Sounds more like Trivial Pursuit. I did like the puzzle. Good Monday.
Nice Monday puzzle. Question: Is ODOR really a skunk's defense? Or is the spray that happens to smell bad?
STRAP is up there in the NE is shouting, “hey, I’m part of a watch, why can’t I be a themer?” I can’t think of any “verb strap(s)” phrases.
I always mean to solve Mondays down-only, and I almost always ruin it by jumping right in the first couple of acrosses before I remember my intention.
Starting with BERG and ending with SNOW probably feels appropriate for much of the US today. Here in DC, we got the cold but not the snow.
Home today, enjoyed this puzzle, relaxing with daughter who's visiting for a couple of days.
Are seagulls an omen, too? (https://worldbirds.com/gull-symbolism/)
LOL, egsforbreakfast (12:09 AM).
Happy Boxing Day, all!
@rex -- I loved your review today from top to bottom, that is, from "this theme isn't simply last-word-clock-parts" to that gorgeous rainbow. Wishing you a terrific rest of your vacation.
There was some nuance here as the big guy detailed - nothing splashy but fine early week. I try to solve Mondays down only - this turned out to be a chore with MUD FLOW and ANTITOXIN - and a few short oddballs. BOOM BOOM Mancini.
Like Rex I won’t lie - my 6th grade eye was caught by the PENIN - ERECT stack. Add ORAL and the SEX x X cross and we’re cooking with gas. Of course AC DC and TNT go together.
Not a lot of trivia which was nice. MNEMONIC and SCRUM were cool. AWOLS is an unacceptable plural.
Enjoyable Monday solve.
Joe ELY
I like that the theme isn’t simply that the last words of the theme answers are clock parts. Rather, as @Rex says, the reveal CLOCK WORK means “work that clock makers/repairers do on clocks and watches”. They may have to switch out gears or replace hands, say, or even create a clock face if they’re creating a one-of-a-kind, or a new model. Thus, the entire theme answers, not just the last words, belong to the theme.
The theme got me to thinking about what to call one who makes and/or repairs clocks. A quick search got me to “clocksmith” – finally, a word to rhyme with “locksmith”! – and, to me, even better, “horologist”. That is a prime word, one I will remember. Actually, I think I once knew it but it died from lack of use. So, welcome back, horologist, and I will try once again to remember you.
STRAP indeed echoes the theme, but it actually does double duty, being that backwards it becomes PARTS!
Because there were more-than-usual-on-Monday answers I couldn’t immediately slap down from the clue, and more-than-usual-on-Monday answers that weren’t everyday words, like ANTITOXIN, MNEMONIC, and MUDFLOW, I was fully engaged through the whole outing. Please, NYT staff, more Mondays like this, simply crossing the more difficult answers fairly for new and newer solvers.
And thank you Kurt, for a bonzer experience, a most lovely ride!
Yep, great review (though disappointed by the lack of Mr. Frolic Seal pics) - glad you’re taking some more time off, @Rex!
Not much to say about this puzzle - it was solid but not once did I crack a smile about a clever clue or a novel piece of info, which is probably right for a Monday?
But after the ANTITOXIN clue I’ve got, “If you eat it and you die, it’s poison; if it bites you and you die, it’s venom,” bouncing around in my head, so I guess there’s that at least?
Happy Boxing Day one and all! 😘
@Rex - what, no picture of the seal?
@grouch - apt name
I thought this was a good, solid Monday as I solved it. And I liked Rex’s take on the additional thematic layer: that the theme answers don’t just contain parts of a clock as their second words, but that each whole answer was something you might do while WORKing on a CLOCK. CLOCKWORK. Cool.
I have a funny story to tell you about 1A. I got it wrong – but that’s not the funny part. Full of confidence, I popped in “floe” and then none of the downs worked. At 4D I knew GREER Garson for a fact, so that was an immediate tipoff that “floe” was wrong and BERG had to be right. Floe/BERG – maybe it’s another kealoa. Anyway, I carried on solving but thought at the end that I wanted to consult my husband on the relationship between the 1A clue and the two possible answers, BERG and floe. He’s a glaciologist, so an ice-man.
ME: What do you think? Which is a better answer for the clue [Floating ice chunk]? BERG or floe?
MY H: “Chunk” implies something smaller than a BERG which, famously, are colossal and mostly invisible. I’d tend to prefer floe. But another possibility, although it’s too long, is “bergy bit.”
ME: “Bergy bit”? What?? Did you just make that up?
MY H: No. It’s a term you see in the literature.
ME: Literature? What literature? A children’s book on the Arctic?
MY H: No, the scholarly literature.
ME: Do you mean to tell me that if I were to read a scientific paper on the northern oceans in the journal Nature, I’d encounter the term “bergy bit”?
MY H: Undoubtedly.
ME: Where on earth did that goofy term come from?
MY H: I’m not sure. Possibly scientists who are geeks and live in their heads too much. Or maybe from seamen in wooden sailing ships who were trying to navigate the north Atlantic through to the northwest passage. They needed to know by sight which ocean-based iceforms tended to be the most dangerous, and they may have made up these terms. Another one is “growler.”
ME: “Growler”? For an iceform? Are you sure you aren’t about to invoke the big bad wolf?
After this conversation I did some research, and found this on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website:
“To be classified as an iceberg, the height of the ice must be greater than 16 feet above sea level and the thickness must be 98-164 feet and the ice must cover an area of at least 5,382 square feet.
“There are smaller pieces of ice known as “bergy bits” and “growlers.” Bergy bits and growlers can originate from glaciers or shelf ice, and may also be the result of a large iceberg that has broken up. A bergy bit is a medium to large fragment of ice. Its height is generally greater than three feet but less than 16 feet above sea level and its area is normally about 1,076-3,229 square feet. Growlers are smaller fragments of ice and are roughly the size of a truck or grand piano. They extend less than three feet above the sea surface and occupy an area of about 215 square feet.”
OK then. That settles it. One should never question one’s knowledgeable life-partner when he's speaking about his field, no matter how flaky he may sound. (Hmm, is there such a thing as an iceflake?)
Good Monday puzzle, very enjoyable Rex write-up.
Mediumish for a Monday, mostly caused by floe where BERG belonged the MUDFall where FLOW belonged.
So it didn't really. Flow, that is. But got it sorted.
Thought the theme was pretty neat for a Monday puzz.
Same weather here in San Diego this week! I think it was 82 yesterday! Love the pics.
Safe travels.
I typically work Mondays downs-only. I think it makes Monday into perhaps the most interesting puzzle of the week for me.
Two write-overs on a Monday. Yeesh. Entered both MODEL and HUMAN where it was ultimately ULTRA. (I get it, there’s a hyphen and it’s not a fill-in-the-blank.)
This is amazing. Maybe my favorite comment ever on this blog. Thanks.
See *this* is the kind of trivia I was missing today. Thanks Barbara and husband!
@jae - Freestyle 772 overall medium for me, but NE corner was a bear (in large part due to reasonable but incorrect answers at 8D and 12D that worked with 80% of the crosses). Also, Naticked at the 46 square. Correct answer there was my FOURTH guess for that square.
Mondays should have the cleanest themes and best revealers. They can’t really add fun through tricky clues or novel words in the fill, so the theme is really all they have.
I see NYTXW gone back to the incorrect AAHS/AHHS usage today. If I ever do cancel my subscription, that will be the reason.
We often have ice chunks in ,our river the Hillsborough
I could tell while solving that we were dealing with a clock, but I needed the revealer to understand how we were dealing with it, so that was a nice moment. And I'm glad I was not the only one to sit up and take notice at PENI_ next to ERECT, culminating explosively with TNT.
Plus there was my name, right at the start! Like many, I thought it would be FLOE, but I held off just on the chance, and my identity was confirmed by the ROCK OPERA. @Barbara S., thanks to you and your husband for the research. Kids called me Bergy in elementary school, and now I know what they meant.
So the puzzle had some nice things, but then there was DINS. Just try to use that in a sentence. I mean, one can, but it sounds horrible.
The hardest part, really was deciding between AhHS and AAHS, and SsH and SHH. Those are a special category of kealoa.
Finally, I know I'm sometimes behind the times--my son had to explain practically every word of what his 12-year old, my grandson, wanted for Christmas--but are X-SHAPED railroad crossing signs really old-fashioned? I just did a quick search, and they were half of the 12 images that popped up. But I think my brain doesn't really process the specific image, just that it's a crossing.
Safe travels, Rex!
Hey All !
I still wear a watch. Even though you can glance at the phone and see the time. Old habits die hard.
Puz was good. Nice for a Monday. Not too much else to say about it.
Feeling better today, thanks. Just in time to go back to work.
Hope y'all got the gifts you wanted!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Rex,
There are no such things as seagulls. It's just gulls.
Yours looks like a red-billed (gull). They're all over New Zealand. The real question is whether the red-billed gull is its own species or a sub species of the silver gull.
Interesting Monday, trying to make up for not giving us a Christmas puzzle? Not sure boxing day has enough thematic material ( not being a Brit..). But we did have that puzzle about wrapping parents not long ago. Might have been a Monday...
Any way, I had fun...what more can I ask.
As a geologist I can say that MUDFLOWs are incredibly common, but more often then not they take place underwater where the sediment can become super-saturated and flow like a river for miles and miles. On land mud tends to go a short distance down a steep gradient- that’s a slide. It’s a Monday answer for a geoscientist, but maybe a Thursday answer for “normies”…
Saw the CLOCK connection after a couple of themers but wouldn't have guessed the revealer, so a nice aha there. Agree with OFL on MUDFLOW (MUDFLOW???) and that a plural for DIN is highly suspect, but otherwise no delays, unless you count wondering if it should be GRAMMIES. Uh, no.
Credit to @jae for being able to write while walking, I just can't, and @Roo for being able to tell the time by glancing at his phone. The dial on mine prevents that.
Nice solid Monday, KW. Knew What was going on sooner rather than later, but still good fun, for which thanks.
Now on to the Croce and the Monday NYorker. Monday, Monday. An embarrassment of riches.
This blog having let me down on 40 down (which I got easily but had never seen this example of before), I just googled and found "But memorizing pi doesn't have to be done through numbers—it can also be done through words. This sentence "How I wish I could calculate pi" gives you pi to seven places. Just count the number of letters in each word—3, 1, 4, 1, 5…—and you get 3.141592.Mar 14, 2015"
[Cue Twilight Zone music]
@Rex, there's *nothing else* in that picture. No ice cream trucks, no surfers, no people walking on the beach, no seal trying to play with them. Someone is gaslighting you.
Thx, Kurt, for this GEM; no GRIPEs! :)
Med+
A bit on the crunchy side for a Mon.; felt more like a Tues. to me.
Top to bottom solve, from BERG to TNT.
Haven't yet read 'Exodus'; got it on my wait list.
Always good to see one of my faves: MNEMONIC.
My daily/weekly/monthly/yearly schedule is pretty much like CLOCKWORK.
This puz had lots of MERIT; liked it a lot! :)
Thx @jae; on it! 🤞
Very smooth, easy NYT Cryptic puz yd! :)
On to Croce's 772, with Will Nediger's New Yorker Mon. on tap for tm.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Can someone explain the clue for MNEMONIC?
@NYDenizen - The length of each of the words in "How I wish I could calculate pi" is 3141592, which is the value of pi to 6 decimal places, should you know where the decimal point goes.
Thank you for sharing this! Now it’s time for me to get into glaciology!
@BarbaraS thank you for sharing! That was better than the puzzle.
Thank you for the Bellamy Brothers! I needed that message this morning.
A CLOCKWORK theme should provide a good time and this one did that.
Solved the puzzle with no idea of what the theme could be, especially since I thought that X-SHAPED was somehow involved. Had a few satisfied AAHS when I got to the revealer. Learned how to spell MNEMONIC along the way.
Only in the crossword world does AWOL and DIN come in plural form. “Several DINS could be heard from the scrum of AWOLS battling the MUDFLOW,” said no one ever.
Can someone tell me the difference between an ICE BERG and an ICE FLOE?
@RP: Neat NZ pics. Have never been there, and would like to see more of it. Have a smooth trip home. Acrosses only, no downs, sorta.
@NYDenizen: HOW=3 (in length), I=1 (in length), WISH=4 (in length), etc. "How I wish" =3.14 is about as far as M&A usually gets, without mnemonic hints.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {"___ upon a time…"} = ONCE.
staff weeject pick: SHH. Cousin of AAHS. Is there a Wizard of Aahs somewhere, officially makin this stuff up?
fave stuff definitely included: MUDFLOW. MNEMONIC and clue. ANTITOXIN. ROCKOPERA. XSHAPED. ZINC. STRAP on a watch puztheme-cousin-clue.
Nice, basic MonPuz theme. Quick solvequest, if U do both Acrosses and Downs. M&A is a witness.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Weller dude. Good job.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
yer chance to have no hope of solvin a crossword in under one minute:
**gruntz**
As someone who lives in the shadow of Mt. Rainier (though not in a valley where I would literally be buried when an eruption occurs), mudflow is a very common word around here. Lahar is used just as often—but that is Wednesday difficulty—not Monday.
Wow, I'm really late getting here. Guess my morning didn't go like CLOCKWORK. But I liked this puzzle a lot and I knew in advance that the revealer would be something about a clock.
There seem to be a lot of HANDS involved with this CLOCK. The original clockmaker MAKEs A FACE. The clock repairer, I presume, is the one to SWITCH GEARS. And then yours truly, the clock owner, gets to CHANGE HANDS for Daylight Saving Time. Yes?
More than the usual thinking needed on a Monday was required as even 1A posed a choice between BERG and FLOE. I've heard of a MUDSLIDE but not a MUD FLOW and wondered for a bit if there was such a thing as a MUDFALL. DINS is surely one of the worst plurals of convenience in a while, but other than that, a very nice Monday.
@Anonymous (11:18)
ICE FLOE results when the ocean in the polar regions freezes, sometimes as a singular, solid mass of ice, but often broken up into smaller chunks which float and jostle with each other on the surface. Some ICE FLOES are crammed together, hemmed in by each other, and some float freely with a lot of open water in between. It depends on the temperature. So ICE FLOE = salt water.
ICEBERG is formed on land as part of a glacier, which slowly travels to the seashore and "calves" off great chunks of itself when the ice meets the water. So ICEBERG = fresh water.
@Barbara S - Thanks for the glaciology lesson!
@Kitshef - I probably did the same thing you did at 8d.
@Anon 11:18 - As above, an Ice BERG is a huge block of ice, protruding at least 16' above sea level, quite often the result of glacial calving. An Floe is a flat sheet of ice floating on the water, most often just the result of the ocean freezing.
Thanks Barbara S!
Joe D.,
Maybe. But having read Rex for many years, I think it's Rex who's gaslighting the world.
@pete said
Thanks for the response, which perfectly explains why l could not ‘get it’ myself. Unfortunately, this clue is also perfectly wrong! The reason l got hung up is that the clue is just plain wrong! gasp! A NYTXWord puzzle error! gasp! as would have been the the case for a mnemonic of the first 15 digits of pi: How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics, and would similarly be the case for other arbitrarily long strings of digits.
Since these mnemonics, based on the first few digits of pi, associate those digits with words or phrases that are easy to remember. However, these mnemonics are not meant to be used to actually calculate the value of pi, which is an irrational number that cannot be represented exactly as a finite decimal.
The underlying problem here is that NO ACTUAL CALCULATING is required to solve (besides counting in integers from 0 to 6). Compounding this issue is that pi is an irrational number. As such, it cannot be represented as a finite decimal. Any clue that uses the word ‘calculate’ must necessarily provide something that can be calculated!! Done in this case by simplifying the fraction 22/7 .
From this blog’s (excellent) FAQ I know @rex is reluctant to support claims of egregious errors by the NYT editorial staff. If this is not an error of the most egregious kind, l, and l suspect, other curious people, would like to know why.
Barbara S.,
Well, the ice floes in the Hudson Strait-- which is brackish for about half its length--might like to have a word with you regarding ice floe as peculiar to salt water.
MNEMONIC is a word nerd's delight but I can think of more useful ones than for pi. Besides, it is incomplete because pi never ends, right? For a useful, finite MNEMONIC, how about HOMES for the Great Lakes?
One of my favorites is OCEAN, for the five basic human personality traits: O for Openness to new experience (curious vs cautious), C for conscientiousness (organized vs careless*), E for extraversion (outgoing vs solitary), A for agreeableness (friendly vs critical) and N for neuroticism (nervous vs confident).
In days of olde, it was thought that dozens if not scores of different traits were necessary to completely describe personality. That number has continued to be pared down over the years until only five remain. Doubt that will undergo any further winnowing so the OCEAN MNEMONIC should last as long as the HOMES one.
*If we go way back to the dark ages of personality theory, the C for conscientiousness was what Freudian mythology called anal retentive (organized) vs anal expulsive (careless).
@Anonymous (1:42 PM)
My simplified definitions admit brackish into the realm of salt water: brackish is salty without reaching the levels of the open ocean (which is, on average, about 35 parts per thousand). Do you know the salinity of Hudson Strait at various points along its course? Hudson Bay is brackish, too -- maybe closer to 20 ppt? -- although I know salinity varies with depth and time of year. In any case, Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay form a small area in relation to the whole of the polar ocean -- the north Atlantic, the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. But, yeah, for the purposes of my quickie explanations, I'm including brackish in with the salt.
@lewis - 5 favorite clues?
Hell yeah, WFMU!
Barbara S,
I do not know the salinity of Hudson strait at any point. I can barely spell brackish.
I defer to your expertise.
Best,
Some guy on something that looks like an ice floe but isn't.
My 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
Please forgive the lateness of the favorite clues -- I totally forgot to post it earlier!
@NYDenizen. Let’s see. The clue for 40D works perfectly and is 100% correct. “How I wish I could calculate pi” is, for sure, a memory device which is available to those who wish to have a way of remembering the first seven digits of pi. I believe that it is widely understood that there are quite a few additional digits. A select few, such as you, are even in on the recently revealed (in geologic time) scoop that there are an INFINITE number of digits. But, unfortunately for your incomprehensible objection, the word “calculate” in the mnemonic is not a command, or even a suggestion, that one utilize the mnemonic to calculate anything. Put another way, would you object to using this mnemonic: “My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas” to remember the order of the planets in our solar system? After all, your mother may not be very educated, and has certainly never sent you nine pizzas. (And just to quell any sniping. I’m aware of Pluto’s downgrade to planetoid).
I suggest you read the clue slowly to yourself several times. If it still isn’t clicking, try substituting “conceive” for “calculate”.
When I was about 10, my father taught me "Now I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after all night studying obnoxious quantum mechanics."
Villager
Thanks 🦖
So little alphabet soup like the last few days. What are all these real words doing in my puzzle. Enjoyed this one.
Don't know what COE is. AAHS, SHH, but no OHO.
Uniclues:
1 Good enough to be a one hit wonder.
2 Amphitheater neighbor's call to the authorities at 10:01 pm.
3 After dragging way too many friends to way too many horrendous ones, what I will be attending and with whom.
1 MERIT DINS ONCE (~)
2 AC/DC BOOM GRIPE (~)
3 ROCK OPERA. ALONE.
'We don't need no ANTIVENOM' was LOL funny. No problem with MUDFLOW if you've lived in certain parts of the US.
Thanks, Son Volt, for the Joe ELY reference. Would like to see his name as the clue.
@egs-
Well played, sir.
I tried to solve with all downs but failed. Resorted to crosses.
M-W defines floe:
1.floating ice formed in a large sheet on the surface of a body of water
2. Ice floe
Ice floe is defined as:
a usually large flat free mass of floating sea ice.
I am unsure if sea ice means ocean ice and salt water only but probably does. The first definition does not. I live near a river that freezes over and can break up with an earth-shaking noise and starts flowing. The ice is broken up into large chunks that start flowing. It is mass of ice flowing. It is not a sheet. Watching this sometimes violent and sometimes peaceful flow, is mesmerizing and beautiful whether observed from a bridge or from a breakfast table window sipping coffee or bourbon. On such days it is unfortunate if you have anything to do that takes you away from the view. I always called these ice floe days. I guess I might have to call them ice flow days now. Dazed and dazzled no matter how you spell it.
I have an X-shaped rail road sign on my house even though it's about a half a mile from the railroad track. Come around the back.
@Lewis
Forgive you for being late and most anything else except maybe omitting #1 from your list.
Some of these purported MNEMONICS seem like they would be harder to remember than the things being MNEMONItized. The long sentences have an awkward, weird sounding structure that would seem to make them more difficult rather than easier to remember. And I wonder why anyone would want to remember pi beyond, say, 3.14, anyway. Beyond that, it becomes more of a parlor game or bar bet kind of thing, right?
Something like My Dog Has Fleas" as a MNEMONIC device to help ukulele players remember how to tune their instruments, now that's a proper MNEMONIC right there people. Short, snappy, completely in the language and super easy to remember.
3 1/7, something about how to measure universe ..
@Anoa Bob
"And I wonder why anyone would want to remember pi beyond, say, 3.14, anyway. Beyond that, it becomes more of a parlor game or bar bet kind of thing, right?"
You're mostly right. Also handy for contests between math nerds on pi day.
And why have mathematicians devised methods that compute digits of pi that now reach into the trillions? You have to understand that one of the driving forces for mathematicians is a kind of getting off on the sheer sensation of intellectual power, that we know how to do such things efficiently. Why did Edmund Hillary climb Everest? Because it was there?
The importance of this drive, tackling hard problems that are contrived or of seemingly limited importance, just because they're there, must not be underestimated. Someone ought to write an essay, "On the Importance of Useless Problems". Actually, I was reading just such an essay last night, under a different title, here. I think it's readable for the general public (David Mumford is an extremely accomplished mathematician who also writes well for non-mathematicians).
The fact is, such useless problems have spawned major techniques, theories, and advances, which in turn create the pre-conditions for solving "more important" problems. A dramatic example is that virtually all internet-based financial transactions depend vitally on encryption techniques whose infrastructure depends on number theory, which historically has been largely driven by investigations into entirely "useless" problems, a vast playground in which mathematicians simply love to play.
So the thing is, useless problems and puzzles (like crosswords!) are fun, and addictive, and on some occasions actually turn out to be of momentous importance.
I sometimes think there's too much hand-wringing in mathematics education, that we have to motivate mathematics through its real-world applications. That's important, of course, and it can be highly motivating for certain types of people. But the main reason we actually do it, if we are honest, is that it's addictive fun to get super-good at tackling problems, and to develop the insight to deal with undreamt-of problems. That might be a more efficient way to get students hooked on the subject.
@ttrimble
Your Jeremiad about mathematicians is the sad ranting of either a failed mathematician or an ignorant amateur. Either way, it shows your your lack of understanding of, well, many things. While it is not necessary to know the value of pi to millions/trillions(?) of digits in everyday life or in most practical applications. For most purposes, it is sufficient to approximate pi as 3.14 or to use a value of pi with just a few decimal places.
In the practical world, however, there are some important situations where it is necessary to know the value of pi to much high degrees of precision. Let me give some illustrative examples that even you should have little trouble comprehending: In your personal life, this constant is likely in things like the size of your car’s tires. As we ratchet up into scientific and engineering calculations of the very large - in aerospace engineering and celestial mechanics, for example - and the very small - atomic, and now quantum physics, for example - it is essential to use much higher precisions of pi in order to obtain results to significant accuracy to make possible understanding which may hitherto have seemed beyond mankind’s reach.
In addition, you are not wrong to point out that the study of the properties of pi and the pursuit of increasingly accurate approximations of its value have been a longstanding* focus of mathematical research. You are, however, quite wrong about the ignorant and parochial motives you ascribe to these researchers. The facts are that, for probably the whole range of reasons that humans embark on pure research, the pursuit of ever more precise values of pi has led to the development of new mathematical techniques and the discovery of new mathematical relationships, which have had numerous practical and theoretical applications.
So, while from our limited vantage points and for the overwhelming number of practical situations it is not necessary to know the value of pi beyond the number of digits found on a $10 hand calculator, the study of pi and the pursuit of increasingly precise approximations of its value have played a significant role in the development of mathematics and have had numerous practical applications.
*Historical records show pi was known by our forbears from some 4,000 years ago. That some of humankind’s most brilliant people have seen fit to pursue this apparently simple constant suggests, at least to me, that there most probably is some there there.
Signed: Wolfgang. Ph.D. Applied physics, 2002.
@albatross shell (7:28 PM)
Can I get anything I want at your house?
@eggsforbreakfast:
Appreciate the contrary view. I don’t have much to add except that the rules of our little game generally don’t permit someone, even as important as Will Shortz, from tweaking them to make exceptions of something technically incorrect, but which is nevertheless technically incorrect.
(Just ask any puzzle constructor about those wonderful clues we have all submitted, but have been left on the cutting-room floor, just because we used the word ‘calculate’ when we really meant ‘conceive’.
LOL I’m definitely gonna read this comment some day
@anonymous 10:43 it's only a 90 second read and it was really informative. I learned something. Your snarky comment is dumb. Buona Domenica.
@NYDenizen
I hardly know where to begin, because you seem to be reiterating the very points I was trying to make.
If I may express myself with (no more than, almost certainly much less than) the same level of aggression evinced in your post: maybe your lack of facility or nuance with the English language has caused you to miss that "useless" in my post was being used very ironically. Perhaps if I had consistently said "so-called useless", you would not have missed what I was so blatantly and obviously driving at.
Try reading again, and get back to me tomorrow if you want.
@NYDenizen
On behalf of him/her, it's @egsforbreakfast. 🈂️
Now this comment, I read
“The Wall” is not a Rock Opera but instead is a concept album. “Tommy” by The Who and “Jesus Christ Superstar” were two of the first ROs in popular music.
There’s a big difference between the two.
“ It is a rock opera that explores Pink, a jaded rock star whose eventual self-imposed isolation from society forms a figurative wall.” (Wikipedia) “a true rock opera that tells a tale of self-imposed alienation.” (Classic Album Sundays). Etc.
Hail to Kenny Pickett! Hail to Pitt!!
Not a difficult puzzle but all the antediluvian references made it tricky for a Monday. You couldn't find a more Monday Greer reference than the star of a 1939 film? Or rework that upper middle section to avoid "mudflow" and "uris" (clued with a 1958 novel)? Between those and the strange railroad crossing clue and the AC/DC reference I'd really like to hear from the constructor. Mostly about what it was like knowing Methuselah.
This puzzle was so bad it was actually hard to do; medium-challenging to kick off the week. I mean come on now: X-SHAPED? How desperate can you get?
Theme was OK, nothing special...except I did notice one thing. With CLOCKWORK in the revealer, we just had to have an ORANGE somewhere: 30 down, "Bitter part of an orange." Which, BTW, I wrongly answered with Peel. Double-bogey.
Same score on Wordle; too many possibilities for _AR_E. *Phew!*
Still: we are Super Bowl bound! Fly EAGLES fly!!
A decent beginner-friendly puzzle. IWONT GRIPE about that
ULTRA MERIT
GRAMMY'S one to MAKEAFACE
to SWITCHGEARS but she WON'T quarrel,
like CLOCKWORK she WON'T LOSE her place
to CHANGEHANDS or go to ORAL.
--- EDNA BERG
Monday EZ so not much of a GRIPE here. The actual name for the XSHAPED RR Xing sign is 'crossbuck' FWIW; at my previous job I had to do an inventory of all the RR Xings in that county, locating and counting crossbucks, pavement markings, signals, and flashing crossing arms. A reminder that civil engineering covers lots of territory.
Wordle bogey for a similar reason as @spacey mentioned above. Three cracks at GGGBG.
I used to teach memory techniques, so seeing my old friend MNEMONIC was a joy for a Monday brain-teaser.
There's an old Big-D Deaf joke (for those who learn ASL) about train crossings that ends, "train gone, sorry." Which basically means "you missed the boat!"
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
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