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Mario character with a mushroom head and pink braids / SAT 12-31-22 / Forum that provides material for many BuzzFeed articles / His initial stands for Tureaud / Rear-view feature on a Jeep / Fast-food fare in which two pancakes form a sandwich
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Constructor: Billy Bratton
Relative difficulty: Easy (extremely easy for a puzzle wherein I had little-to-no clue about at least three longish answers)
Word of the Day: ESPERANTO (34D: Language with its own "green star" flag) (why is "green star" in quotes?—there's literally a green star on the flag) —
Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ/ or /ˌɛspəˈræntoʊ/) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (la lingvo internacia). Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto: Unua Libro), which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes". [...] Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers, of which there are perhaps several thousand. Usage estimates are difficult, but two estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000. Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is used as a name for the collection of places where it is spoken. The language has also gained a noticeable presence on the internet in recent years, as it became increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, Wikipedia, Amikumu and Google Translate. Esperanto speakers are often called "Esperantists" (Esperantistoj). (wikipedia)
• • •
And then BAD HAIR DAY and MCGRIDDLES (two things I never have) take the puzzle all kinds of funky places, as does the made-up (sorry, "constructed") language of ESPERANTO, which I always thought was a Utopian (IDEALIST) goof but apparently the dream is still alive. Actually, lots of really interesting connections to spiritism. For instance: "The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists." And: "William T. Stead, a famous spiritualist and occultist in the United Kingdom, co-founded the first Esperanto club in the U.K." (wikipedia). Did you know that William Shatner starred in a 1966 horror film ("Incubus") filmed entirely in ESPERANTO!? Well, now you do:
The one objectively terrible thing about this puzzle is not one not two not three but four UPs. What the hell? Are you doing a bit? Is there a hidden UP theme? Because ... yeesh. And three of those UPs are crammed into the bottom left corner, and two of them are crossing. Just a sloppy wreck. Lots of other preposition-ending answers: SIT BY, ACT ON, FIT IN, WISE TO ... But those prepositions are all fine, largely because There Aren't Four Of Them. TERAFLOP is another one of those "extremely online" answers that alienated me a bit (37D: Large unit of computing speed), but that one's entirely on me. There are some things that you don't know that you just know you should know, you know? I, like many of you, probably, some of you, surely, went with TERABYTE and then couldn't square the (intriguing!) -YY ending on 57A: At a high interest rate? (KEENLY) and so SCRAPPED TERABYTE. Then wanted something like TERAFLOW (reasoning—reasonably, I thought—that "computer speed" might be measured in terms of "flow"). But nope. FLOP. My solving skills there, not SO DOPE. But despite being occasionally way out of my wheelhouse and tonally ... not my thing (much of the time), I did enjoy working it all out. I'm oddly impressed by "OW! OW!" (48A: "Man, that hurts!"). Feels original. I like its compactness, as well as its expressiveness. I had YEOW there at first, as, again, I'm sure, many, or at least some, of you did as well.
What else?:
- 21A: ___ Solo, son of Leia Organa (BEN)—LOL, BEN Solo, really? I am so tired of having to learn tertiary and even more minor characters in these damn IP universes I swear to god ... BEN Solo is the TOADETTE of the "Star Wars" universe. [update: unsurprisingly, "Star Wars Universe" fans are in a "well, actually ..." furor about this comment ... and to be fair, I am wrong here about one thing; the character is not tertiary. I just have never seen him / heard of him as BEN, who is better known (in puzzles, if not elsewhere) as Kylo REN (BEN is his birth name). REN has been in the NYTXW a lot ... but as BEN, never, not once]
- 20A: Jollity (MIRTH)—had the "M" and went with MERRY, as in "to make MERRY"
- 23A: Perfectly cromulent (FINE)—I believe I used "cromulent" the other day in a puzzle write-up. I love that a made-up word from a decades-old throwaway "Simpsons" joke has now become simply "a word":
- 56D: Patty and Selma's workplace on "The Simpsons," for short (DMV)—look, puzzle, if you're trying to win me over by leaning heavy into the sitcom that absolutely defined my young adulthood, then you can just ... keep going, actually. It's working great. Patty & Selma > BEN & TOADETTE
- 54A: Producer of many popular singles (KRAFT)—did someone say "64 slices of American cheese"!?
- 27A: His initial stands for Tureaud (MR. T)—this is Charles Entertainment Cheese-level inside info. SO DOPE!
OK, good enough. Happy New Year's Eve! See you tomorrow for the first puzzle of the new year!
P.S. anyone else give this answer a shot? [see below] I wrote it in as a mini-prayer: "please oh please let this be right so the Angry Villagers can burn CrossWorld to the ground and we can start anew..." But it was not to be [warning: profanity! run away!]:
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103 comments:
Ben Solo becomes Kyle Ren, the main antagonist in the three most recent Star Wars movies. You might not know him as Ben Solo, but that is absolutely a primary (not tertiary) character.
Yes, pretty easy except for the SE where I too went with TERAbyte which required some reworking. Much of this was in my wheelhouse again, ZIGGY..., ESPERANTO, and SPY VS SPY were gimmes. Solid Saturday with some fine long downs and a plethora of UPs, liked it.
Too many ups for my liking but always happy when I manage to do a Saturday.
Welcome back Rex! Agree with so much you said.
Yay for ZIGGY STARDUST. (That answer also helped me discard my original entry for 2 down "spectacles not much seen nowadays": BIFOCALS, since BIFOCALZ said no one ever.) "Much of the '90s internet feels that way"... yes, back then the internet heralded mostly good things... things have changed. Also hands up for YEOW before OWOW.
But disagree on TERAFLOPS... I have heard that term many dozens of times, even recently. Very much a real thing for anyone who reads about computer technology, well, ever.
SPY VS SPY... ah, the innocent pleasures of my childhood.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0, my last 3 words in order. @Barbara S, surely not the same as yours?... doo dee doo doo.]
I was going to suggest some improvements to this puzzle, but I find that I have nothing on my IDEALIST. I mean, I don’t even know who ADETTE is, much less why this is dedicated TOADETTE.
59A reminded me of our childhood spoof of the song Guantanamera, which we called ONETON Tomato. Try and kill that ear worm now that it’s crawled into your brain.
I’ve never understood why BUSED is preferable to bussed. Maybe I was abussed as a child. I’m sure I was a bust as a child. Later I was the victim of a bust because I stole a bust from a museum. The lady that arrested me had a bust that I still remember.
Kinda tough puzzle, but quite manageable. I made pretty much all of the mistakes Rex did, but had no big troubles undoing them. BTW, welcome back Rex. Sounds like your trip was da bomb. And thanks, Billy Bratton, for a nice Saturday.
Jeez the northwest was undoable for me. Looked almost everything up.
Three UPs in the southwest. Seems excessively unidirectional. We need some down time. I don't care really, but I know some of the people here do.
Stir up=BREED? Feathery=WISPY?
I will admit to being a huge McGriddle fan, but I rarely order them these days as I am trying to reduce how much murder is in my meals. Still, sometimes, the gravitational pull of carnivorousness along with the time honored tradition of wolfing down simple carbohydrates, well, it gets the better end of bad decision-making and there you are with a ten dollar bill and a future of disappointment.
I bought an Esperanto book back in the 80s and left in on the shelf for about 30 years. Turns out you can't learn it that way.
Uniclues:
1 The general theme of my popularity among all of my endeavors.
2 Asset of the Rex Parker anonym-oti. Just ask 'em.
3 Asset of Hal 9000.
4 A summary of my intellect circa 1979.
5 If you intend to invade Earth, you might want to dress like a goose, because...
1 SPARSE FAN BASES
2 WISE TO IDEALIST
3 READ LIPS KEENLY
4 SPY VS SPY? SO DOPE.
5 WISPY ETS FIT IN
Well, to be fair, I suppose ZIGGY STARDUST never heard of me, either.
BEN Solo is Kylo Ren's real name - he's been pretty fair game in past puzzles!
As a Very Online person, ASKREDDIT and TOADETTE were gimmes, but then again so was that long center answer.
BEN Solo is hardly tertiary, as he is in fact KYLO REN (another big crossword item), the son of Leía and Han who turned —inexplicably— to the dark side and almost destroyed the universe. A big and important character, indeed.
Otherwise, great write up and welcome back!!
For Bowies persona I confidently put in ‘thinwhiteDUke’ based on the DU alone, but quickly realized that wasn’t going to work.
I wouldn't consider TERAFLOP to be "online". People who use that term are more computer geeks than wannabe influencers. A flop is a FLoating point OPeration. Basically just a calculation using a number stored in a certain memory format.
And, given the famously fastidious nature of folks who would know that, the clue is somewhat incorrect. The actual measure of computing speed would be teraflops per second. The way this is clued is akin to saying "measurement on a speedometer" for MILES.
Flop is not so much an online only term as it is jargon. It stands for floating point operation (per second, so usually flops) and is important in the evaluation of computing speed for for example high performance scientific computers.
A themeless Wednesday got lost in the forest and didn't emerge until Saturday. Is this an omen that my streak will end tomorrow at the hands of a super-tough New Years themed Sunday?
Disappointing.
What the devil is a ONE TON pickup? That and initially putting BAD HAIRDos were the detours what was otherwise a total wheelhouse puzzle. Oh, and TOADETTE; that was new, too.
A shot which hits the rim or backboard, then barely rustles the net, is not a SWISH. Conversely, a shot that pounds the net without hitting rim or backboard is a SWISH. In other words, SWISHiness is not about the net and how hard you it it; it is about avoiding everything other than the net.
UPUPUPUP.
Sorry Billy. I’m just not down on the ups today!
Welcome home, Rex! Delighted to have you back, and especially so for things like your prayed-for answer at 58A. Which is how I felt when all that was left for me to finish was the southeast, where, for the first time in a long time, I died and DNF.
Talk about different wavelengths! Had ESPERANTO and DENTYNE (Is it still around??) and KOS and still couldn't finish, thanks to TERAFLOP, ONE TON, SO DOPE, and BREED. The last is on me, but a pickup truck description, a pretty obscure computer term, and an old bit of slang? Defeated me utterly.
Further alienation: MCGRIDDLE? Does this exist IRL? Neither REDDIT nor Buzzfeed has ever been part of my world, so seeing both here made me itchy. I did like BAD HAIR DAY and PINCE NEZ and SPY VS SPY: In the same way that "The Simpsons" defined Rex's young adulthood, Mad Magazine defined my childhood. A quick glance at a Don Martin cartoon could reduce me to helpless laughter. I especially loved the silly words he used to make sounds. Let's see "floot" or "plortch" in a crossword sometime!
Oh, I want more puzzles from you, Billy. Please don’t quit making them! This pushed my happy buttons:
• Lots of wordplay in the clues (i.e., see those for BUSED, INK PEN, KOS, STEW, EON).
• Lovely answers: SPARSE, MIRTH, SCRAPPED, GUMMED UP, SWISHED, PINCE NEZ, WISPY, TERAFLOP. Sweet!
• That moment where I ask, “Will this be the day? The day that I have a vast whiteland of empty squares that will never fill in? The day I feel like a teraflop?
• That moment where a couple of answers do fill in, and they breed a few more, and suddenly I feel like my brain is in sync with the constructor’s.
• That moment, following the previous two moments, where I realize I’m in the hands of a master cluer.
• Freshness. There are eight NYT answer debuts that give the grid buzz, including: GUMMED UP, MCGRIDDLES, TERAFLOP, TOADETTE, and ZIGGY STARDUST.
• Post-solve sparks: Remembering Spy Vs. Spy, Dentine gum, and Kraft singles from my youth; I can still taste the latter two. The lovely PuzzPair© neighbors of FRAYED / SO. Wondering if INK PEN was redundant, then Google-learning that there is actually an inkless pen.
Total satisfaction. Billy, I’ll take your OW OW, and return you an O WOW! Thank you so much for the perfect ending to a year of NYT puzzles that buoyed my life. And may I repeat, Billy, more please!
Some gimme’s here really made this feel non-Saturdayish. ZIGGY, SPY VS SPY, TOADETTE etc were long fill-ins. Overall I liked it but was expecting something with more balls.
Agree with the big guy on the odd UP phrases - I assume that was intentional? Have passed my 25th anniversary of not eating MCDonalds but knew the MCGRIDDLE roundabout from advertising. Can we agree that Mr. Limpet rocked the PINCE NEZ better than anyone?
We know you are not a SW fan but to equalize with your world - BEN Solo - Kylo Ren - is about as tertiary as Spiegelman or Crumb. Didn’t know the MR T trivia. Liked the cluing on BUSED and KRAFT.
Enjoyable solve - just maybe not Saturday level. @bocamp and pablo - that huge center cross in Lester Ruff’s Stumper brings the heat today.
Anyone caught speaking ESPERANTO is thought crazy or headed for jail
Some of you might be, even if most of you aren't, interested to know that TERAFLOP is a backformation. The singular unit is, or was, FLOPS (FLoating point Operations Per Second), and similarly a quadrillion of those is, or was, one TERAFLOPs. But everyone sees the terminal S as indicating plurality, so that S got dropped in common usage for the singular case.
Also I had to skim through an article about friggin' Mario's universe to find TOADETTE, so am feeling a bit resentful. And another hand up for YEOW.
I was pretty much toast with PINCE NEZ and ASK REDDIT. Two long stacks side by side that are both out of my wheelhouse on a Saturday creates a significant challenge since the crosses get tougher as well.
I’m definitely in the SPY VS. SPY corner - never heard SO DOPE except in CrossWorld, never heard of TOADETTE period.
Never before have I gotten from the top of a puzzle to the bottom in my first three answers: PINCENEZ to ZIGGYSTARDUST to TERAbyte. OK, that last one was wrong, but I’m sure I have lots of company there. Not the only time I’ve, ahem, GUMMEDUP. Speaking of which, @okanaganer, hand up for yeOW. And @egs, our version of “Guantanamera” began “ONETON of guano.”
Great to have you back to start the new year afresh!
I'm sure the KEALOA fans among us were happy to see a SCARCE/SPARSE conundrum right off the bat, but it was a major pothole for me. Had me going elsewhere, which I did. Chipped away and finished in the mysterious SE with TERAFLOP (?) and SODOPE (OK) and KRAFT and BREED showing up eventually. No happy music on my paper so in honor of the day I hummed Auld Lang Syne.
Things I learned today: BEN, TERAFLOP, MCGRIDDLE, TOADETTE, ASKREDDIT, and MRT's last name. Also INKPEN, which i guess is like a LEADPENCIL.
Satisfying enough solve , BB. I suppose it would have been a little easier if I were twenty years youngeer, but that's my own fault, darn it. Thanks for all the fun.
PETAFLOP would also be a correct answer to 37D. And a better answer as it is more speed and a more amusing-sounding unit than TERAFLOP. Lost opportunity for the constructor and the editor.
Fair
Got a DNF due to the SE quadrant. Never heard of ESPERANTO, MCGRIDDLES, TERAFLOP, or TOADETTE. And how is "da bomb" a valid clue for anything? Do intelligent beings say that, or is just street talk in "da neighborhood?"
This puzzle was filled with junk, some of it marginally OK. But the absolute worst fill was OWOW for "That hurts!" Nobody yells that out, not ever. "OHWOW" might work for "That's really impressive."
Wow. Lots here I didn’t know, at all, but somehow it came together. Interesting how many people here are telling me a character I never heard of becomes another character I never heard of and that’s supposed to clear things up (up! ha!) for me. But yeah, everyone has their wheelhouse. (I never even saw this Ben person in the puzzle so I was spared that dilemma. Thank you crosses!). Lots of good guesses got me through this and I had fun.
Welcome back, Rex, nice write-up (up! ha!j, get some sleep!
F*cked up would have been my first entry if BEQ was the constructor.
Amy: found the puzzle flowed along fairly smoothly, until it didn't in the SE. Had the difficulties Rex described, and BREED is also a woe. See it now, but not my first choice.
Lots to like; noticed the ups with a grin. Happy New Year all. Glad you are back Rex.
Great post, Rex, and Haha on your 59A try. I was married to SEEDY (47D) for a long time so I didn't get to your guess. Otherwise, . . .
All in all, became sorta easy when the momentum kicked in. Always glad to finish a saturday.
TERAFLOP sounds like a large unit of failure or a 300-pound guy jumping off a diving board.
We just had MR. T’s first name a few days ago so now we know his full name: Baracus TUREAUD. Wait — I just looked it up and Baracus was his character’s name in The A Team. Oh well. But I wish I had named my firstborn Baracus Tureaud.
I agree with Rex that this was a mix of delightful and awful. Delightful were ZIGGY STARDUST, BAD HAIR DAY, SPY VS SPY and PINCE NEZ. Also the clues for KEENLY (“at a high interest rate”) and KRAFT (“producer of many popular singles”). Awful were MCGRIDDLES, TOADETTE, ASK REDDIT and DENTYNE. (Product names are usually my least-favorite answers but KRAFT was redeemed by its clue.)
ESPERANTO was a nice idea doomed to be a TERAFLOP. As someone who travels a lot, I can say that English is the universal second language. Not that everyone in the world speaks it but everyone who aims to get ahead in most professional fields probably needs to. I certainly benefit from that but I feel a little icky for it.
I liked PINCE NEZ next to SWISHED. I’m thinking of Daniel Day-Lewis’ character in “A Room With a View.”
HARROW is kind of interesting. You can see how the tool led to the adjective “harrowing” — as in being raked over by one would equal a harrowing experience. At least I assume that’s how we got the adjective. I GIVE! I GIVE!
And of course named after Ben (Obi Wan) Kenobi.
Welp, that was my first DNF in a couple months. Glad to hear I wasn’t the only one - I just had so few footholds. And the footholds I did have, I often rethought one or two or three times. Just ugly, ugly, clawing my way towards solving from me, in what has been a week with a few personal best solve times. I need to remember to not try and start Saturday puzzles late at night when I’m not at my sharpest. I inevitably get nowhere close to finishing, and wind up doing a lot of writing over in the morning.
The NW was a torture chamber of my own making; I was so doggedly certain 1D was BRUSHED that I convinced myself that SPARSE and PINCE-NEZ must be wrong. I had SUBREDDIT for a very long time because I’d never heard of ASKREDDIT. In the end I, uh, had to look up SWISHED. Sigh. Not pretty.
So, all of that to say, the techy/extremely online fill wasn’t my favorite, but I suppose it’s only fair given how in my wheelhouse some of the other puzzles were this week. And yeah, OWOW was F**KED UP.
To close on a positive note: “Perfectly cromulent” was a delightful clue; I’d forgotten that word existed but did just FINE thanks to the crosses.
Happy New Year, folks!
Scarce/sparse is a nasty Kea/Loa that I got hung up on.
Thx, Billy, for an excellent Sat. puz! :)
Med.
Careless dnf at the ZIGGY STARDUST / PINCE NEZ cross. :(
Also, another near blunder, thinking of the 'pick up' of a split in ten-pin bowling, as if there was such a thing as a ONE-TeN split. Thank goodness the TERAFLOP wasn't having it. lol
Lived with a fam in the Netherlands who spoke ESPERANTO. I subsequently took a course in it at college. Very sensible and easy language to pick up.
Genesis 1:1 - 1:2:
1:1 En la komenco Dio kreis la ĉielon kaj la teron.
1:2 Kaj la tero estis senforma kaj dezerta, kaj mallumo estis super la abismo; kaj la spirito de Dio ŝvebis super la akvo.
A fun adventure. :)
On to the Sat. Stumper (hi @Son Volt, pablo, kitshef). 🤞
@Son Volt (8:10 AM)
That's a catchy tune; liked it! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Hey All !
Puz went from impossible to solved in 29 minutes. Wow. I was stuck everywhere, but managed to tweak the ole brain into figuring everything out. Still hope for cognizance!
Post-vacation Rex is always a fun read. I give him one more day, then back to cantankerism. 😁
I actually got a chuckle out of his GUMMED UP alternative answer. I'm not a prude when it comes to profanity, hell, I curse a lot myself, but not the way it was displayed here by a certain guest blogger. It needs to be in a fun way, not spewed. (I know, I know, get off this already!)
Had TERAbyte like probably 99% of people did at first (unless you got the FLOP crossers first.) Finally erased it when I convinced myself 57A(KEENLY) had to end in LY. Loved seeing SPY VS SPY. A MAD Magazine fan in my youth.
Who wanted BEarS first for BERGS? Noticed the outlandish number (har) of UPs. What A Dust UP. I was UP in arms. I gave UP looking for more. I was fed UP. (OK, enough.)
Nice SatPuz. Love it when it seems like it's gonna take me 4 hrs to complete, when having only a smattering of answers here and there, then whoosh-ish, done in 1/2 an hour. It really lifts me UP. 😜
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Well, I came ever so close to taking a huge TERAFLOP in the SE. And that's what TERAFLOP ought to mean! It's a "unit" of something, you say? What a silly term for that kind of thing. The answer, I was so sure, had to be TERABYTE, the only measuring TERA I'm familiar with.
But with TERABYTE firmly written in in very dark black ink, I couldn't get to a single answer in the SE corner. I knew it was KOS; I knew it was KENO...but then...
But then, after finishing up everywhere else, I finally saw KRAFT and corrected my error. Having never heard of SO DOPE, I guessed at the "P". But what else could it have been?
Even though I didn't know TOADETTE, ZIGGY STARDUST, ASK REDDIT, BEN, or, for that matter, MCGRIDDLES, all of the above filled in quite easily. One of the hardest clues for me was "stir up"= BREED. But I got BAD HAIR DAY off just the H. Mostly on the easy side, I'd say.
I struggled until I got to ZIGGYSTARDUST and then finished the puzzle in near record time for a Saturday.
Finding those apt Simpsons clips when jet lagged is beyond impressive - one of my favorite shows and I was unaware of any of those scenes.
This seemed a good puzzle for various age groups - I too grew up on MAD, but for those who didn’t, SPYVSSPY sounds like the ultimate WTF for a post-MAD world. TOADETTE, BEN and SODOPE caused a DNF, but they’re by and large not of m-m-my g-g-generation (for those of you who actually get this reference, the repeated wish “Hope I die before I get old” is now technically impossible. As it is for me *sigh*. Even though I feel like a kid till I get out of bed, when things cause OWOW!)
Good challenge of a puzzle, fun write up by late night Rex!
Not too hard for a Saturday, except for TERAFLOP which my inability to see really GUMMED UP the works down there in the SE. Then all became clear.
Did not know BEN Solo. All I know about that is that Adam Driver played Kylo Ren, and that is literally all I remember. Star Wars stuff bores me to tears. That's my fault, I know.
Yes, thumbs up for ZIGGY STARDUST. If the binary options of listening to XM radio are "stick" or "turn (to something else)", then David Bowie is almost invariably a stick, and The Eagles are a turn. Nothing fundamentally against The Eagles, but much like DENTYNE, after 10,000 chews all the flavor has been extracted.
Am a little surprised by Rex's slight note of approbation for MCGRIDDLES. Such a dumb corporate word. I mean, at least "Redditor" makes a passing attempt at portmanteau. What, some of you ASK REDDIT, is a MCGRIDDLES? Um, I don't know. Ask @Gary Jugert -- by the way, shout out to Gary for making me laugh pretty hard this morning: the two paragraphs before the Uniclues were gold.
(I've never asked Reddit anything, but I read it now and then. Most of the time it comes up just short of expertise, but it's a damned sight better than Quora, speaking of hive minds. You're best off with one of the Stack Exchange sites, if you want expert opinion on whatever you like.)
To me, Da Bomb is a hot sauce. A scorchingly hot sauce, with a permanent place on Hot Ones at #8, which by the way is an excellent YouTube series with one of the best interviewers to be found anywhere (Sean Evans). Food critics like Alton Brown do not find Da Bomb SO DOPE though. That they can get underneath the clouds of Venusian heat down to the flavor profiles and say exactly how they can be improved earns my undying respect.
SB: a sad -4 dbyd [I lost my tab through sheer ineptitude], but 0 yd. Not quite doo-doo-doo-doo, but my last word yd was the same as @okanaganer's. Those "is it one word? is it two?" seem to get me a lot.
Egsforbreakfast - I STILL do lame parodies of Guantanamera in my head. Almost as a helpful mnemonic for why I went to the kitchen in the first place.
“One cup of coffee, oh I need one cup of coffee.”
“One can of tuna. I’ll open one can of tuna.”
That earworm is nearly always in my subconscious, ready to be called on for the simplest task!
I laughed out loud quite a few times reading today’s post. So Dope!
I also wondered what was UP with todays puzzle.
Well done, and Happy New Year!
Undone in the SE, mostly because I felt like that language was ESPERANza, (which turns out to be a Mexican beach resort, the Spanish word for hope, and, apparently, a grocery chain in the Pacific Northwest, where I live). I knew there was a problem, but couldn't resolve it--though I shoulda figured out ONE TON as a pickUP truck descriptor.
A number of years ago I was visiting my son in Seattle and on a rainy evening was wearing a very broad-brimmed hat (which I typically wore more for protection from the sun, not the rain). One of my son's buddies said, "That's a DOPE hat, MR. T." (yes, it turns out Tom T. is MR. T). It felt so rude to me and kinda hurt my feelings until my son explained that it was, in fact, a high compliment. Apparently, my hat was da bomb.
Well, it was tough for me, and that was the good part: the kind of Saturday challenge I look forward to. But enthusiasm FRAYED at the pile-up of influencers, Internet forums, blog posts, and video games. I'm more into PINCE NEZ. But lest I seem too crotchety about popular culture, I was happy to see SPY VS SPY and BEN Solo; also enjoyed BAD HAIR DAY, SIT BY + SAT UP, HARROW, GUMMED UP, and MITTS and KRAFT as clued.
Help from previous puzzles: MR T. Do-overs: -byte, subREDDIT. No idea: TOADETTE, DMV, MCGRIDDLES.
Thanks to those who explained FLOP(s).
@egsforbreakfast and @Gary Jugert - Thanks, as on so many days, for the laughs (today's "Guantanamera" and uniclues).
"why is "green star" in quotes?—there's literally a green star on the flag"
Not sure why it seems right to have "green star" in quotes the way it's worded but it does. If the clue said "green-starred flag" instead, green-starred probably wouldn't be in quotes.
Fun ride until I got to the SE corner and suddenly ran out of gas. TERAFLOP and DENTYNE crossing an edible husk, a badly clued KRAFT, and a kind of semi? This is the stuff that crossword nightmares are made of.
However, I loved BAD HAIR DAY. It’s the insult added to the injury of having your PINCE NEZ blown off in the wind.
Welcome back, Rex, and thanks in particular for the Simpson’s “cromulent” VID.
Afterthoughts: (1) I agree, @egs, it should be "bussed", not BUSED, which is a buse of language.
(2) @TaylorSlow (nice handle, btw), the one I remember from Mad Magazine is BRAP, or perhaps a prolonged BRAAAAAP, for a belch sound.
(3) Hey Rex, if you're mocking some of the commentariat with that red letter warning, then I think maybe you've misunderstood. It's not that we're averse to profanity. It's that Christopher Adams sucks at it. Much like Twain's wife, who on one occasion repeated back to him verbatim a long profanity-laced stream of invective, Adams may have had the words, but his tune was off. By the way, you were in tune just now -- nice one.
UPs are good.
Jaws of Themelessness are apt.
Really cool fillins, like: PINCENEZ. SWISHED. BADHAIRDAY. GUMMEDUP. SPYVSSPY & SPARSE vs SCARCE. DENTYNE. TERAFLOP. ZIGGYSTARDUST.
staff weeject pick: ESE. It is official weejectese.
Fairly easy SatPuz solvequest, at our house.
Happy New Year's Eve! no-knows were nicely limited [ASKREDDIT was the feistiest bit].
Thanx, Mr. Bratton dude.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
One Ton Tomato
How is “stir up” BREED?
And “grubby little paws” = MITTS? I see “mitts” as equivalent to “paws”, not grubby paws …
S.E. Was the only difficulty. Never heard of teriflop(had Teri yet) and so dope? Is that really a thing?
I guess it was an easy Saturday because it was over too fast, but it gets a thumbs UP from me.
ASKREDDIT, MCGRIDDLES, cromulent, TOADETTE - not in my database. Nor TERAFLOP, but crosses did their magic. Re BEN, I've seen all or most of those films, and for me they work like a sedative. As soon as the laser (or whatever they are) battles start, I start losing consciousness. I mean out like a light. I've seen them before. Over and over and over…. On the other hand, I watched The Wonder last night and was on the edge of my seat. People are so strange and fascinating.
Loved seeing ESPERANTO - what other language might have its own flag? Any speakers here?( Other than you @Gary Jugert - 😀 I've tried learning many things using your bookshelf technique. Buying online classes that you do at your own pace works similarly after the initial enthusiasm.)
The time I nearly cut an inch off my fingertip with a cleaver I didn’t shout OW!OW!
I shouted “What have I done?! What have I done?!”
The clue for PINCENEZ - Mwah! Magnifique!
Thanks for the Guantanamera chuckles
Thanks Rex, for the Incubus clip! Heeheehee.
Agree with Rex!
And quick and easy except for SE corner.
However!
ZIGGYSTARTDUST and ETs made my BADHAIRDAY….SATURDAY! 🧩played like a fun themer from that point on (the beginning fill for me.)
Cheers All! Happy 🐰🐇🐰ears I mean -year of the rabbit.
❤️🦖🦖🦖🦖🦖❤️
Had PETAFLOP before TERAFLOP. In order to make the list of world's fastest supercomputers these days, you need to achieve a speed well over 1 PFlop/s.
Even PETAFLOPs are fast becoming passé in today's high performance computing (HPC) world. In my former life, twenty years ago, I was heavily involved in installing, integrating and testing HPCs, where a machine in the 30-50 TERAFLOPs range was world-class, and would land you in the top 10. Today's supercomputers are orders of magnitude faster.
The current world #1 is Frontier, installed at Oak Ridge National Lab, running at 1,102 PFlop/s, which is an ExaFlop-class machine, and currently the only one in the world in that class. It is nearly 3 times faster than the #2 machine, installed in Japan.
Top500 publishes the top 500 supercomputers twice a year: top500.org
To illustrate how fast things change, the #500 machine in November 2022 was #97 in June 2018. It's a highly competitive field worldwide, and considerable sums of money are spent on it, mostly by labs funded by the governments of wealthy nations.
Saturday Stumpfolk- I found Lester Ruff's offering to be a tale of two puzzles-left side pretty easy, right side pretty thorny. Wondering what others' experiences were.
Toadette can be filed with “Are we having fun yet?” …invented by Bill Griffith, appropriated by others.
http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=ZTP&Product_Code=badkarma&Category_Code=
An average Saturday solve. I initially skipped the NW. Mostly this was due to thinking that 1A would be SCANTY and I couldn't remember what a fricassee was.
MIRTH and ADORES got the NE going. TOADETTE was a complete unknown and a STENT is something you put into a duct and I really thought the clue was calling for a part of a duct (very poor reading on my part) so filling the NE was a little bit of work. I did waste a some time trying to make HAN work but I quickly gave that UP
South of the obvious ZIGGY STARDUST the puzzle became much easier. This was in spite of my TERABYTE/ TERAFLOP and DENTENE/DENTYNE write overs in the SE. I didn't really notice the UP repetition in the SW because it filled in so easily.
Backfilling the NW was a piece of cake as the EZ made PINCENEZ as easy as SPYVSSPY. That sounds a little like easy as pie doesn't it?
TINHORNs and greenhorns, shades of the old west.
"Guantanamera" always sounded like ONETONofmetal to me.
YD -0, DBYD -0, THU PG -1
Wishing all a fun night ahead, and a year ahead rife with happy surprises. May your crossword outings be gratifying, edifying, and filled with spark. And may the arc of the universe, as the Reverend King said, bend toward justice. Happy New Year!
Yes, @Carola, the "influencer" clue annoyed me mightily, too. As in: Who are these assorted nobodies who've never accomplished a thing in their own lives but somehow get to "influence" millions of people for what seems to be no good reason at all?
I conducted a teeny little experiment using myself as the entire test sample -- and now I want to try it out on y'all. I went to Google to find the top influencers on the internet -- making a small bet with myself that their names would be absolutely, positively and completely unknown to me...and I was right. They could have been ETs from Mars for all I knew about them. What about you guys? Has even one of you heard of even one of them?
I did notice the many UPs today and just took it as a mini-theme. They did provide some tension while solving - "Could there really be another one?" kept me from an obvious fill-in once or twice.
BEN Solo. Since I haven't seen the last two Jedi movies, I thought perhaps he was a character introduced in one of them, but it also occurred to me that, like DARTH VADER before him (originally Anakin Skywalker), BEN Solo may have changed his name to become Kylo Ren.
Yes, TERAbyte first, foiled by the abutting DENTYNE. And I also had ESPERANza first, a mistake I once left in on a Boswords competition puzzle and kicked myself for. This time, I caught it early. But I had to leave the SE and go finish the NE because I was spinning my wheels trying to come up with a word B____ = "Stir up". When I made it back to that spot, I saw KRAFT (nice clue!) and eventually KOS and that gave me BREED. BREED as in "familiarity stirs up contempt." I guess so...
Thanks, Billy Bratton, for a real Saturday solve.
And thanks to PINCE NEZ for making it clear that it was ZIGGY STARDUST, not THIN WHITE DUKE.
Saturdays are always super tough for me, in spite of the fact that I’ve been doing crossword puzzles for decades. So I always feel good when I land a bunch of answers immediately: swished, pincenez, ziggystardust, spyvsspy fan base, gummedup. However, in order to get back to bed and get some sleep (I do the NYT puzzle when I get insomnia in the middle of the night), I take a short cut by checking my answers regularly. Sorry! I know it’s called “cheating.”
Loved “bad hair day” and “read lips”. And some of the answers are just plain FUN to say: mirth, seamy, wispy. (Gotta work them into future conversations.)
Of course Esperanto speakers are more widespread in Europe and South America: it’s heavily Eurocentric and particularly Spanish based, which must make it uninteresting for most of the rest of the world.
Good to have you back, Rex. Your replacements try their best, but they’re nowhere as savvy and funny as you are.
Non-words=7 (VIDS, ETS,...)
Word phrases=16 (WISETO, USEUP...)
Names=11 (BEN, KRAFT,...)
Words=35
Words crossing=46/193 squares (24%)
@Nancy
The only one to elicit the slightest scintilla of recognition is "pewdie pie", but for what reason I couldn't even tell you. Just the name I've heard. You have to understand that what drives these media is young people.
I don't spend any time on Instagram or Tik Tok or even Twitter (well, a little Twitter, but it's pretty incidental). YouTube I spend time on; there's an awful lot of fascinating content you can find there. But the "influencers" there tend to REPEL me, and I think I'll leave it at that.
Is the constructor related to the ex-NYC & ex-LA police commissioner?
This time it's my whole family in the grid. Must be a good omen for the New Year.
ESPERANTO used to be a lot more popular, so that was no trouble (even though I didn't know about the flag.) TOADETTE, on the other hand, I got only by analogy to Smurfette. And I knew bytes measured memory, so I was able to avoid that -- I had heard of FLOPS somewhere, I guess.
With Lewis, I admired the clever cluing, which gave me many pleasant experiences.
I'm also old enough to remember when people bought pickups because they needed to carry stuff around, and it was important to know how much it would carry, hence such terms as ONE-TON pickup.
@Trini, that's gonna BREED trouble / stir up trouble.
In four hours my wife and I will take a taxi to the airport and fly to England, visiting Oxford, Leicester, and London and getting back home the evening of the 12th. I'm absolutely certain any puzzles I attempt will be cryptics in the Guardian, so farewell until Jan. 13.
Happy New Year to all!
@Nancy from yesterday. Nice information about Eloise! The exhibition I mentioned, of course, was about the illustrator, not the writer. It's at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge MA.
I'm guessing that more than a few of you may relax with the Vertex that comes with your $40 game subscription. The drawing today was appalling and ignorant in its aggrandizement of balloon releases! What in the world is this country's largest media establishment doing promoting litter that tortures and kills wildlife, plus pollutes our land and water. Please join me in protesting this lousy image of a new year; letters@nytimes.com
LULZ! Your write-up was near as amusing as Rex's.
@pabloinnh (12:19 PM)
Agreed! did find the right side somewhat tougher, but still, this had to be one of the easier Sat. Stumper solves for me; only slightly harder than today's NYT.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@Nancy 1:09 pm – I don't know a single one on the Instagram 2022 influencer list, each one with millions of followers. And am unsure exactly what an "influencer" is. But then I note ZIGGY STARDUST was new to me.
Has anyone done the December 26 New Yorker puzzle? Pretty cool theme. Awesome, even, when you check it all out after finishing. Has a theme like this appeared before?
@Bob Mills (9:05). Are we restricted to "intelligent beings" now? That would rule out all of my in-laws (not complaining).
I was surprised that OFL didn't comment on INK PEN, but I'll chalk it up to the jet lag. Seriously, INK PEN? Has anyone ever asked you if they could borrow your ink pen? I guess I should keep my vehicle in a car garage, and look up things in a word dictionary, while I park myself in a sitting chair.
Nevertheless, it's good to have you back, Rex.
This was pretty much a Snooze-Year's-Eve -Fest.
I don't think of a BAD HAIR DAY as being caused by outdoor elements. If the wind blows your hair around you can arrange it back into place. It's more that your hair looks fucked-up (run away, Rex) from the get-go, and nothing you do with it will make it approach normalcy. (Of course, I have no head-hair. But I have experienced bad beard days.)
KEENLY brought to mind British baritone Simon Keenlyside. Here he is singing in some weird-ass dvd about Robert and Clara Schumann (in recent puzz), who are portrayed by Sting and wife Trudie Styler.
Best to everyone for 2023! Now I am going to listen to all my Ian (rip) & Sylvia cds.
The December 26 NYer puzzle by Andy Kravis in the print issue, that is, "Sounds About Right."
@Nancy, @TTrimble. PEWDIEPIE is also familiar to me, and I also have no idea why. I'd have guessed from a puzzle, but it's not in the NYT database so maybe a New Yorker or a Croce? Too long for a Runt.
@JC66 1:48 pm. I asked the same question regarding one of Mr. Bratton’s earlier puzzles. No reply ASYET.
Dear Mods, I’m going to try reposting this a second time. If it still doesn’t post, would it be that I’ve erred in some way? Please let me know, thanks!
––––––
Apologies in advance if this turns out to be a duplicate, but after replying to @Nancy, I saw my earlier post had gone awry...
@Rex, what a fabulous puzzle post – entertainment, humor, cleverness...and VIDS. All after jet lag! Welcome back. Hope you had a wonderful time away in New Zealand summer. (Are you now the only person in northern New York with a tan?) PS: I had rEN before BEN for Leia and Han’s son and will now abridge my review of the puzz. PPS: I think your answer works nicely for 58A.
...Pure furrowed brow for a lot of this and am amazed I finished cleanly. Lots of guesses along the way.
First guess: Got TOAD from crosses and figured okay, mushrooms, toadstools. And the pink braids must be feminine, so...ETTE? It worked. Gotta laugh at such a silly name, every time I look back at it.
Second unknown: ZIGGYSTARDUST. Got the “stardust,” then in backwards order filled in “iggy.” Seesawed on the meaning for 2D – glasses, of course, but no, definitely something like a world’s fair, right?, so that first letter must be an S or Z. Chose S for a plural. But, hmm, maybe the Z? With that in place, saw PINCENEZ immediately, whew.
After many more guesses (TERAFLOP, MCGRIDDLES, HARROW, which was almost fARROW but then I remembered the piglets and threw out the “f”), I was done.
Not as much fun as yesterday but some lovely cluing for INKPEN, SCREW, TIRE, BUSED, KRAFT,
STEW, EON.
@Barbara S 9:34 am yesterday – Thanks for mentioning @Beezer’s night-before comment about audiobooks and @Beezer, @albatross shell, @bocamp, and @okanaganer, thanks from me for the tips. I haven’t listened to many, as it seems that reading is what I do and have always done since childhood library-card days, but I get what you all mean about the performance of the narration really making the experience. My first audiobook was read by an author, Bill Bryson, for his Walk in the Woods, which I enjoyed. Then I discovered that Jeremy Irons read Brideshead Revisited and purchased it. My introduction to Irons was his role as Charles Ryder in the 1981 British TV series of the novel and his work on the unabridged audiobook is truly a performance, amazing voice acting, a pleasure to listen to, exquisite, even, as @okanaganer says about William Hurt, which I’ll look for. I discovered that I cannot have Brideshead in the car as I get lost in the listening and could end up way on the other end of town. Oh, and I have Stephen King reading his book On Writing, also wonderful. Any other recommendations would be welcome.
Wishing everyone a happy New Year’s Eve! May the year 2023 (wow) be much better than the last.
@jberg 1:51 pm – Have a lovely time in England! Perhaps there will be champagne on the plane to celebrate the new year?
"as does the made-up (sorry, "constructed") language of ESPERANTO"
Not to be that guy, but all languages are made-up.
@kitshef - a ONE TON pickup is a "heavy duty" (HD) pickup. A "regular" full-size pickup is a half ton, designated, depending on the brand, as either 150 (Ford F-F150) or 1500 (Chevy Silverado 1500). The next size up is a three-quarter ton, designated 250 or 2500 and the largest pickups are one ton, designated 350 or 3500.
@pablo - I just found the Stumper grid not very accessible - it took me some time to settle in.
@Joe D - my son and I just watched the Festival Express movie. Fantastic telling of 1970 counter culture - the great Ian and Sylvia were front and center playing CC Rider and Dylan’s Tears of Rage. Rest in power Ian.
I was happy to have finished this correctly in the same year I began it, but I didn't like it. So dope? Kraft (singles /) Ben Solo? Ziggy Stardust? Mr T ? Ink pen?? Ask Reddit? Compliments to Mr. Bratton who made this somehow solvable for a pop-culture dunce like me...
Let me join others in a shout out to the late great Ian Tyson. I've been singing "Four Strong Winds" for more than fifty years and it never gets old.
I’m not sure I agree that not rebuilding half the puzzle (and losing ZIGGY STARDUST) counts as a “lost opportunity” just because you find one word funnier sounding than another.
One ton pickup. Maybe it is an older expression. Have had absolutely nothing to do with pickups my whole life but the answer came almost immediately from my memory bank from childhood. In the same part of the brain, 2 and a half ton truck.
I looked at 1 A first and immediately thought " sparse is too easy for a Saturday" and didn't put it in. Fortunately I didn't think of scarce. I had a lot of trouble with that isolated corner. But eventually completed it coming up from below. Ended up being average for me as the rest was easy.
Liked the puzzle.
No idea if it current, but most definitely was a thing. Never used it myself as I am way too old.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/sausage-egg-cheese-mcgriddles.html
It is a real thing, but who knows/cares. I don't like brand names in my puzzles.
The Up/Up and away's could have been a theme, but since it's not, methinks sloppy.
LOVED the clue on BADHAIRDAY.
"Breath freshener" made me think of Billy Joel (Sen-Sen in "Keeping the Faith") so that was a nice memory.
"Works in el Museo del Prado" for me GOYA - they have *the* best Goya rooms. The black paintings (https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-works?cidoc:p55_has_current_location=Sala%20067&ordenarPor=pm:relevance).Just UFF.
And F*d up? Yes better answer to the clue
I don't really come here much at all any more, but I recall someone named Z [?] who used the word "cromulent" an awful lot in his comments, so that made it easy for me.
I thought the puzzle was super fun (KRAFT was DA BOMB) and yes, it skewed a bit on the easy side.
Either I'm getting smarter or the puzzles have gotten way easier over the years. I think it's the latter.
Happy 2023 to one and all.
Well, I'm young so I guess this puzzle was in my wheelhouse. TOADETTE, ASK REDDIT, and TERAFLOP were all easy for me (though not BEN). While TERAFLOP is a bit strained, the other two felt natural to me, not forced. And I knew SPY VS SPY not from the magazine, but from an extremely bizarre Cartoon Network parody show based on the magazine (I don't really know what they were thinking. Your average eight-year-old doesn't know a thing about A-list celebrities). I agree that ZIGGY STARDUST and MCGRIDDLE were great entries, and I also like that entire bottom left corner. So all in all, fun Saturday!
Flew through the entire puzzle without a hitch and then promptly DNF'd on TERAFLOP, which I've never heard of. "SODOPE" just wouldn't compute for me either, so I thought about running the alphabet for the cross until I gave up and just revealed the letter.
"64 slices of American cheese" is possibly my favorite Simpsons bit of all time.
Following up on @JayJayRMC, the designations for trucks are based on capabilities of decades ago (i.e my era). A 'half' ton has a payload of one ton or more, a 3/4 ton of 2+ tons and a one ton of 3 1/2 to 4 tons.
Gosh, I would have thought many of us would know Selena Gomez, one of the three actors (with Steve Martin and Martin short) in the delightful series called “Only Murders in the Building “. And Justin Bieber has been in the news for decades. Same with Dwayne Johnson, better known as “The Rock”. Of course the whole idea of creating “influencers” based on social media is pretty lame
Re your P.S: now if this were a BEQ puzzle...
Me too!
When the central long across is a dead gimme--and when its starting 10-point letter ends a long down, thus giving THAT one away--that's when Saturday turns into a themeless Tuesday. Cluing tried to SOAP it UP, but GUMMEDUP the attempt. I SATUP, and didn't USEUP much time to finish this one off.
However, all is forgiven on account of the wonderful SPYVSSPY. That entry alone buys a birdie. It is just SODOPE!
Wordle par.
Even tho I got TERAFLOP (!!!!! - whatev), Mr.T messed up my perfect score. Oh well. I obviously don't know about those GRIDDLES either.
Lady Di
KEENLY READ ETS' LIPS
Their ESPERANTO doesn't FIT,
and that IDEALIST won't SITBY,
HEEL be WISETO ACTON it
ERE it ENDs UP SPYVS.SPY.
--- MR. BEN KRAFT
What @spacey said re: ZIGGYSTARDUST and SPYVSSPY; cultural hallmarks.
Wordle eagle again!! Two in a row.
DNF because I had TERAFLOw - as in “go with the FLOw” and SODOwE - as in “So do we.” I got GUMMEDUP in that SE corner because of one square. Learned something new about MRT. Q - What do you call a noisy sty? A - An oINKPEN. By the way, I do all my crosswords with an INKPEN.
I can't believe how many people on this blog didn't know one ton for the truck answer. I don't even drive and got that answer immediately.
Also, I wrote in terabyte, even though I knew byte was wrong. I couldn't dredge up flop for a long time.
Don't think I've read a MAD Magazine for 60 years but we couldn't wait to get our MITTS on it during High School. Guess SPYVSSPY won't be SCRAPPED until the White Spy RIDS himself of the Red Spy or vice versa.
Maybe too many MCGRIDDLES or DENTYNEs have FRAYED the little grey cells but IGIVE you that several ACROSSes could actually be SCREWy comments or messages -
SPARSE FANBASES
WISE TO IDEALISTs
SCREW MIRTH, BEN!
HEEL FINE, AS YET
END MR.T., SHIA!
TIRE SCRAPPED
READ LIPS KEENLY
GUMMED UP ONETON
SPY VS. SPY: SO DOPE! (that had to be intended!)
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