Relative difficulty: ??? Medium ??? (I did it Downs-only, and it definitely put up a fight)
THEME: "DON'T BLOW IT!" (51A: Advice to a musician with a 23-, 26- or 43-Across) — theme answers end with a word (or word part) that is also a woodwind (or brass) instrument (the theme answers themselves, though, are not instruments, which is why, presumably, you shouldn't blow them):
Theme answers:
TAPE RECORDER (23A: Device with Rewind and Fast Forward functions)
SHOEHORN (26A: Aid for squeezing into a tight piece of footwear)
CHAMPAGNE FLUTE (43A: Glass frequently used for toasting the New Year)
Word of the Day: PITUITARY (32D: So-called "master gland" of the endocrine system) —
The fact that this grid had so many longer Down answers made it more challenging than usual from a Downs-only perspective (and Downs-only is how I appear to be solving Monday puzzles now, for better or worse). The grid shape is actually one of the most appealing features of the puzzle. I really like the mirror symmetry, and the audaciously-stacked theme answers at the upper-middle of the grid. It's a narrow grid (just 14 today), so your time might well have been faster than usual, but I don't think the puzzle is any easier than an average Monday, and it's certainly got more ... grit? charm? funkiness? Something. It's got more something than your typical Monday. The revealer is lively as a standalone answer, and it gives the theme a great second-level dimension—not just a puzzle where theme answers end with instruments you blow into, but one that adds a layer of semi-hilarious preposterousness (conjuring the image of someone, presumably someone who has drunk too much champagne, trying to make music by blowing into a CHAMPAGNE FLUTE or TAPE RECORDER or (funniest of all, for some reason) SHOEHORN. What's more, the fill is way more lively and interesting than a Monday puzzle's fill has any right to be. I noticed this quite a bit since my attention was focused exclusively on the Downs, which is where all of the non-theme showiness was located. There are eight (8!) answers of 7 or more letters, all of them are solid, and a few of them ("OH GOD NO!," LOCAL DIVE, and "I'M FOR IT!") are outright winners—answers that would liven up any puzzle. Plus there's virtually no dreck to trip or groan over. A really nifty Monday puzzle, I have to say.
The Downs-only route was ... an adventure. The main effect of the grid's having so many longer answers was that they added considerably to my first-time-through whiff count. On my first pass through the grid, I think I managed to put together LOCAL DIVE (29D: Neighborhood spot for cheap booze) and ALGIERS (42D: Capital of Africa's largest country) and that's about it. Not sure why I blanked on PITUITARY, but I did. And as for Every Single Longer Answer up top: nothing. Just blanks. But here's the funny thing about Downs-only solving—the seemingly impossible becomes possible as inferrable Across answers provide more info for as-yet-ungotten Down answers, and eventually all of your "No Ideas" turn into pretty easy gets. Missed on ECLIPSE the first time, but EAV- was obviously EAVE which gave me the initial "E" in ECLIPSE, which was mostly all I needed. I was able to put the first two themers together from crosses, which made the previously invisible MONGOOSE suddenly visible (8D: African mammal that's resistant to snake venom). Same thing happened with CAMEROON and "OH GOD NO!" (I had the "OH-" but no idea until the first two themers helped me out). If Monday puzzles just feel "too easy" most of the time, I really recommend the Downs-only approach. It toughens the puzzle up and makes your brain work in another dimension—forcing you to put together Acrosses from nothing but a smattering of letters you pick up from the Downs. Somehow, on Mondays at least, it all ends up working. You do, typically, have to go back when you're done and seek out the theme, but that often happens when solving the standard way, so who cares? Give it a shot.
The tide turned for me today when I changed ATA (at 36D: Sports org. for Nadal and Djokovic) to ATP. The American Tennis Association is real. In fact, it is (I just learned) the "oldest African-American sports organization in the U.S." (!?!). The ATP is the "Association of Tennis Professions," the governing body of the men's professional tennis. Changing that final "A" to a "P" made CHAMPAGNE FLUTE suddenly gettable, and finally more Downs and Acrosses started to fall. Lots of absolute misses before CHAMPAGNE FLUTE fell into place, but after that, I picked up momentum quickly. Nothing really to complain about today, except for the semi-absurd *plural* OLES two days in a row now. It's funny that OLES follows POLE because now I want to pronounce it "po-LAY!" Anyway, I was just happy that I was able to finish this one Downs-only with no CHEATS, especially given my rather inauspicious start up top. However you solved, I hope you enjoyed it. See you tomorrow.
Medium. Very smooth and delightfully whimsical (or what @Rex said). Liked it a bunch and Jeff gave it POW.
@Croce solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #778 was pretty easy for a Croce or about 4X this week’s Sat. NYT. The NW and SE corners were toughest for me. Good luck!
Congratulations Rex for solving this downs only without cheating, as I could not. Just so many tough clues! Looking back, I'm sure doing across only would have been easier. I finally gave up and looked up a couple of across clues and that did the trick, but yes what a struggle. Not a typical "easy" Monday! The revealer was a good fun twist, DON'T BLOW IT indeed.
3 African down clues, and not easy ones. I like to think I know a bit (but not a lot) about African geog, but never realized Algeria is its largest country! And Cameroon is between Nigeria and Guinea?... if you say so. Tough clues!
Gorgeous Sunday in the south Okanagan, sunny and mild. Took a walk on the Kettle Valley Rail Trail and sat looking over the city. Nov and Dec were pretty brutal; so far Jan is pretty decent.
[Spelling Bee: Sun currently -1, missing an 8er. Not looking good.]
CHEATS and CHEN were best friends who lived in a HELL hole in a town called MEH. The LOCAL DIVE bar was an OLD AUTO TAC shop held up by HALF a POLE. To make matters more of a HELL, the EAVE let in the RAIN which made the locals become MEAN OLD NITS.
CHEATS had a PITUITARY flare up every time he entered the LOCAL DIVE. After drinking OLD TAP, his EYES would WHUP OPEN and BLOW his SHOE HORN into the CHAMPAGNE. CHEM would yell DON'T BLOW IT....We need to EAT IN here today!
MEH may be HELL, but the cook from the DIVE could WHUP up an OMAHA GOOSE that everyone could CHEW. MON dieu and HURRAH yelled the OLD CROC sitting with his ENOCH GUIDE...IM FOR IT! The LOCAL POLE from CAMEROON would ECHO the same.
A FLUTE NONET would be playing ON TIME under the VOLTA GEODES....You had to SEE it. A TAPE RECORDER captured a PITCH that would ECLIPSE the OPEN HUE GIST. It was ARTSY...to say the least. The ALGIERS eating EELS could be heard shouting OLES and HURRAH. CHEATS would PITCH in. When CHEM began to PSYCH out, he would yell OH GOD NO....turn off the TAPE RECORDER...we don't want the devil with any DEETS to RAIN down on us.... I SEE said CHEATS...IMO, the ANSWER would be to BLOW the HORN and the FLUTE at HALF PITCH and climb in our AUTO and leave MEH. No, DON'T BLOW IT again, said CHEM, we'll take the HUEY and fly to ALGIERS. We'll eat EELS and SHOUT OLES and have a bodacious GAB FEST...We will EAT LOCAL GOOSE and hope my PITUITARY gland flare up doesn't make my SHOE HORN OPEN the CHAMPAGNE again....
They pulled the LEVER on the HUEY and off they went...leaving MEH.
Thanks for your write-up, Rex, which I look forward to reading as I solve the crossword every morning that I can manage to do so. I hope a minor correction from an amateur musician wouldn't be unwelcome: the theme answers are all 'wind' instruments – horns not woodwinds. (NB the English horn is not actually a horn.) Thanks for the blog!
FWIW, I was drinking at my LOCALDIVE when I solved this. Which, okay, I do that every night because the #NYTXW needs a handicap these days because it has gotten too easy.
Rex – I agree that the OH GOD NO bad idea of BLOWing into a TAPE RECORDER or SHOEHORN is terrifically preposterous. What a clever theme idea.
That Adrian chose themers where the instrument-ness is completely removed from its counterpart in the phrase – cool. So something like “ear horn” wouldn’t be so great.
@Gil I. – hah! I’m gonna look for a recipe for OMAHA GOOSE forthwith!
The clue for OH GOD NO is so perfect. And it crosses RECORDER – my exact reaction when Little Gardiner brought his home in 4th grade. I had a new-found respect for Mr. Kreismer, his music teacher, for his bravery year after year at arming 25 kids in an enclosed space with recorders. I thought of other bad ideas that would elicit this phrase. A call from my sister a few years ago comes to mind – We have a situation. Mom has started using a jet-black eyebrow pencil, and it’s not good. OH GOD NO. Additional contenders for an OH GOD NO:
*I have two tickets to the John Cage concert. Wanna go? *Any interest in coming with us for a Black Friday excursion? *I’m hosting an Amway party… *Shall we wait 30 minutes so we can eat outside on this 95-degree August day?
Haven’t CHAMPAGNE FLUTEs and tulips pretty much ECLIPSEd the coupe? I mean, unless you’re making one of those tower dealies, do you ever really see a coupe anymore? Patricia Altshul had these chambongs last season on Southern Charm, and I was obsessed.
In Lilburn, Ga., a family moved in down the street with 6 boys, three of whom were Larry Rakestraw’s sons living with their mom. Larry Rakestraw had played with the Bears and was good friends with Gayle Sayer and Bryan Piccolo, had in fact had Thanksgiving dinner with them once. So I adopted this claim to fame as my own and felt like a bit of a Big Deal, being friends with the sons of a guy who once ate turkey and stuff with Sayer and Piccolo.
SHOEHORN -- Mom gave me an extra one she had – one for old people that is almost a yard long. You know, so you don’t have to bend over. I just thanked her and shoved it in the back of my closet, quietly relieved that I wasn’t There yet, didn’t need something so obviously for old people. Fast forward a year and a half – now I use it from time to time for this one pair of tight shoes and darn if it’s not a swell invention. I also join mom in some daily MiraLAX and find myself using her 10X magnifying mirror when I’m in the mood to be horrified by a real close-up of my face skin. I went to church with her yesterday – we have to get there 30 minutes early for the 8:15 service – and this woman came over and joked that she saw me and thought I was my 87-year-old mom. I tell you what. This will flat bring you down a peg or two. When I catch myself scowling through a slit in the closed blinds at a truck I don’t recognize parked on the street, I just sit down and wonder where my life has gone.
My five favorite clues from last week (in order of appearance):
1. Scroll through a few books? (5) 2. "I'm ___ of you" (Valentines message for a plant lover?) (5) 3. It may have a down side (9) 4. Not a big Mac? (6) 5. I'm toast! (5)
@Rex has convinced me to try downs only solving. This puzzle was IMO extremely easy to the point of "Why am I even doing this?". e.g. wet forecast/RAIN. The puzzle itself was fine, just not enough resistance, even for Monday. leer before OGLE was my only hiccup. I didn't know PITUITARY was in the grid until @Rex mentioned it. Even that would have been an instant fill-in had I needed to read that clue. I must add, though, that the long answers certainly shone.
Cute puzzle, with a theme that mildly amused - which is good enough in my book. The only outliers for me were OSIRIS and ENOCH. We seem to be getting a lot of EELS lately - maybe just holding down the fort until OREO gets back from a brief vacation ?
Finished it OK, but I still don't understand the revealer. How does someone blow a TAPERECORDER or a SHOEHORN? Are we asked to believe a shoe horn is a musical instrument?
Maybe it's just that I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
I did the puzzle my usual way - lots of across until I felt stymied, then downs. But today I did the crosses right to the end, and there was little left to do. So, I now get it why folks like the down approach. Nice Monday, but too easy.
Ridiculously hard. I mean, “Heaven’s opposite” gives you HELL? What on earth does that mean? “Not delayed” = ON TIME??? “Wet forecast” = RAIN??????? How on earth are we supposed to solve this thing?
@jae et al - I found Croce 778 easy (for a Croce) - 2.5xthis Saturday. Of course, I had my traditional one-letter DNF at the proper-name cross of 55A and 46D. I knew the name for 46D but not the spelling, and never heard of the show in 55A.
I am also in the Monday downs-only club, and I agree with Rex that it was challenging but doable. Downs-only is the only way I can feel a sense of accomplishment on a Monday.
I figured out the theme after getting CHAMPAGNE FLUTE and SHOEHORN (again, without seeing their clues). That helped me get TAPE RECORDER and DON’T BLOW IT, which I’m not sure I would have seen if I hadn’t figured out the theme.
@LMS - I will never live down in my family a drunken event involving FLUTEs and coupes. It was my 50th surprise birthday party, and I was enjoying myself a bit too much. I asked my sister-in-law, a champagne connoisseur, why there are two completely opposite vessels for champagne, one tall and deep and the other wide and shallow. I decided that coupes were better bubble-wise. I decided that all flutes must be destroyed, grabbed one, opened the back door, and hurled it to the pavement. She and I had cathartic few minutes of destroying cheap flutes before we were herded away. Cleanup the next morning was not pleasant.
Africa knowledge was indeed helpful for the downs-only solve. I knew CAMEROON right away and ALGIERS off a couple of letters. But I resisted on MONGOOSE because I thought they were Asian, not African. I mainly know them because of Riki-Tiki-Tavi (The Jungle Book, definitely Asia) and because they were disastrously imported to Hawaii to control vermin (from Asia, I was pretty sure). Turns out there are African and Asian varieties. Very cool that they are immune to snake venom.
More fun facts - the PITUITARY is the size of a chickpea? And it does all that? I don’t like to brag but my PITUITARY is the size of a Kalamata olive.
Loved the clue for ECLIPSE (“high-level cover-up?”). Hope to see it on @Lewis’ list next week.
Wonderful puzzle - such an elegant looking grid - how often do we see early week mirror symmetry? The themers are fine - apt revealer and clean fill. This played nearly record time for me - thanks Rex for highlighting the skinny layout.
I just love the image of someone playing a shoehorn, holding it up to their mouth like a piccolo or like a clarinet. I can picture this person in a renaissance costume, or even in something sloppy in a LOCAL DIVE.
So, along with your heartwarming words in your notes, Adrian -- and everyone here should read these notes, trust me on this, either at XwordInfo or Wordplay -- you brought me LEVITY. Thus, my HURRAH for your puzzle, which, in addition, brought the lovely TACIT, MONGOOSE, PITUITARY, WHUP, not to mention [High-level cover-up] for ECLIPSE, seems not near equal to what you gave me in return. Maybe the true reveal of your puzzle should be 18A – GIVE. Thank you many times over!
Could you recommend a source for checking "when did NYTXWD last feature a given word"? I've had a sudden craving to know how long since they name-checked Elihu Root. (WIth apologies if the answer is readily findable on your site, or elsewhere. I did try google, as well as looking at your FAQ, and have not yet found the right thing.)
What a great Monday-lots of easy stuff for beginners and just enough crunch to make it interesting. The revealer didn't quite make it all the way to the bottom, but since it's Monday I'm giving that a pass.
Plus it reminded me of the old joke that a SHOEHORN is in fact a musical instrument, but it can only play footnotes.
Sorry.
Well done indeed, AJ. A Joy to solve. You can make my Monday puzzle any time, and thanks for all the fun.
Now on to Croce and the challenging Monday New Yorker, just right for a snowy Monday here in NH.
Who's not blowing on their shoe horn? When you play one sole music comes out.
The return of the [pretentious] ARTSY. I'm artsy, and I pretend to be pretentious, but it's kinda tough when your primary instrument is an ukulele.
Uniclues:
1 Caveman explains tithing. 2 Well, as God of the underworld and fertility, wha'd'ya expect? 3 Who says that? I guess if you use a droll English accent, or if crosswords are to be believed, you could say olé. 4 "This one's a mess on top of messes." 5 The 1% deciding which celestial events they'll allow the commoners to enjoy. 6 The 1% deciding which world capital to visit. 7 Acne.
1 HELL MEAN GIVE 2 OSIRIS CHEATS 3 HURRAH LEVITY (~) 4 PSYCH DEETS 5 ECLIPSE? I'M FOR IT. 6 ALGIERS? OH GOD NO. (~) 7 PITUITARY GUIDE
This was a hoot – or maybe, a toot. The themers and revealer are a dandy set and, like Rex, I’m charmed by the way the symmetrical grid shows them off to good advantage.
I was intrigued by the clue for LEVITY. It had never occurred to me that LEVITY is [Lack of seriousness in a serious situation]. But of course it is. You wouldn't be likely to use LEVITY in the context of a stand-up comedian -- humor and laughter would be expected. I looked up LEVITY in various places and found this in Wiktionary:
Etymology: Coined in 1564, from Latin levitas ("lightness, frivolity"), from levis ("lightness (in weight)"). Cognate to lever [which, coincidentally, is also in the puzzle], and more distantly, light.
And given the word's origin in "lightness of weight," Merriam-Webster goes on to say:
LEVITY was once a scientific term Levity originally was thought to be a physical force exactly like gravity but pulling in the opposite direction, like the helium in a balloon. As recently as the 19th century, scientists were still arguing about its existence. Today levity refers only to lightness in manner. To stern believers of some religious faiths, levity is often regarded as almost sinful. But the word, like its synonym frivolity, now has an old-fashioned ring to it and is usually used only half-seriously.
I much prefer the expression “gift of the GAB” to “gift of GAB.” To my ear, “the” is needed to give the phrase the right rising-then-falling rhythm. It seems “the” is mostly associated with Brit-speech and without "the" is American. Also, there was once a rapper named Gift of GAB, so the clue may be referring to him.
I’ve really buried the lede here because today, for the first time, I solved the puzzle downs-only. I’m so pleased that Rex found this a particularly hard puzzle to solve that way, because I did it with no CHEATS. And, yes, I do feel triumphant, like Sir George beholding the corpse of the dragon. At first, I thought I was going to fail – I wasn’t getting any of the long downs, and my filled-in squares were sparse indeed. But I treated it like a Saturday puzzle that you just have to keep chipping away at until you get somewhere. The first long down I got was PITUITARY and that helped immensely, and the first long across I was able to intuit was CHAMPAGNE FLUTE, a grid-spanner that was also of great assistance because it contained so many letters and was a themer. In order to solve using this method, your word instincts have to be honed to the finest of points – the more easily you can see answers from their mere skeletons, the more success you’ll have. I’m the opposite of a speed solver but, when I’m solving in the conventional way, Monday is the one puzzle of the week that I push myself a little to solve quickly. Today, with downs only, it took me 4 times as long as usual! But I’m a very happy camper and will definitely try this method again next week.
[SB: yd, -4. AARGH! I guess you can’t be good at everything all at once, so I’ll just keep thinking about the crossword puzzle.]
Also doing Mondays as downs only, and it is definitely more challenging, especially in a Monday puz with so many unusually long downs. Still, I came in well under my Monday average. Loved the theme and OH GOD NO and LOCAL DIVE and NONET, just because I love that word and wish life gave me more opportunities to use it.
I don’t think I’d ever be able to do a crossword with downs or acrosses only. It’d be like driving and not looking right. I do hard copy on pen so I like to be sure before I enter it as there are no erasers. Once in awhile there is a messy overwrite. Not today, not most days. No real resistance today - usual Monday. And thats OK with me. The clue for ECLIPSE was cute . I thought ANSWER had a lame clue - could have been crossword related “What you are now entering” or something like that. OSIRIS was not coming to me, but the crosses were easy.
@ Wanderlust 👋 for Rikki-Tikki-Tavi! That plus Huck Finn from yesterday and I feel like I'm back in elementary school. I seriously doubt that kids today read Kipling, or Twain.
I fail to see why to CHEW gum necessarily means to enjoy it. Perhaps there's no reason anyone would chew modern commercial gum if they didn't enjoy it. But in native American culture chewing tree resins was supposed to be medicinal, and also clean the teeth. It passes the time on a long hike, I suppose; I've grabbed bits of spruce resin on my way up Mt. Monadnock. Not particularly with the thought 'Oh, I'm going to enjoy this!'. It's blah. Or, as they say nowadays, MEH.
Amy: brilliant! A Monday puzzle that is easy (solved in under 10 minutes) yet entertaining. Very fine construction. 🏆 Had one of those long shoehorned LMS described for use right after hip replacements (promptly gifted it to a friend having the same as soon as I didn't need it). It worked fine, but the real problem was getting on my socks. 🙄 My brother had a rare disorder; his pituitary gland malfunctioned. He had to have an injection of pitrissin tannate every few days. He'd know he needed a shot as he would be continually thirsty.
Hey All ! The ole brain is refusing to grok the Revealer properly. I'm going with Rex's explanation of not blowing the full Themers, ala, if a musician had a SHOE HORN, not just a HORN. Corny, but works. Someone said Chen gave this his POW, so prepare yourself for a rough week.
14 wide today. With L/R (mirror) symmetry. Themer counts are 15, 13, 11, 9, so no way to make into regular symmetry. Too bad ANSWER couldn't have been worked in somehow.
Good fill, light on dreck.
For us older types, Rex won't like it, Rex hates everything. He likes it! Hey Rexy! 😁 (@LMS, right there with you. It boggles the mind that the 90's were thirty years ago.)
I firmly believe that you could play a SHOEHORN like a kazoo, making a buzzy sound with your lips and letting the shoehorn resonate to it. No, I'm not going to try it. In Japan, btw/, you have to take your shoes off before entering a house, a traditional restaurant, a Japanese-style inn, and many other places; so there is likely to be one of those long-handled shoehorns hanging there to help you get them back on (if you tie them loosely, you can just pull them off and pry them back in.) They're great; I have one hanging in my front hall now. It's not so much because of age but because of fatness.
@wanderlust, me too for hesitating because of Kipling's story, which I loved. I also balked at ALGIERS, only because I was thinking of population, in which it ranks 9th, I think.
For some reason I really liked the DEETS/NITS crossing, I think for its LEVITY.
Finally, a sad story about my late Uncle John. He was a star lineman on his high school football team until a bad tackle injured his PITUITARY gland. He started to grow uncontrollably until a chiropractor managed to stop it, but he was left very broad, and also sterile (but he and his wife adopted 5 children and had a happy family life). It happened long before I was born, but I was told all about it, leaving the word PITUITARY an absolute gimme for me.
A lawyer is standing outside the courthouse addressing a phalanx of microphones: "The proof was in the pudding, but the judge ruled the pudding inadmissible."
LOCAL DIVE: a "dive", according to Merriam-Webster, is "a shabby and disreputable establishment (such as a bar or nightclub)". And yet there's this show put on by Guy Fieri, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, where I think he wants to put a different spin on the notion of DIVES, as these sometimes cheap little eateries that serve up good grub. One "dive" featured on his show is this place is near where I live, The Sycamore, which has a kind of 50's vibe with "carhop service" (I've never seen that, actually) and Happy Days decor and (I'm told) Dagwood sandwiches, and those music-playing devices that you activate from your booth by punching in A6 or whatever, forget what those are called. Well, I have to say, having tried it twice: they have THE WORST HAMBURGERS I've ever had in my life. Half-dollar size patties way overcooked, served on way oversized buns, completely slathered in mustard. How it made it onto Fieri's show is eternally mystifying to me (I had to try it twice because I thought maybe the first time was a fluke). Disreputable, indeed. And no alcoholic drinks.
PITUITARY: can't see that without thinking about my cousin, who has a rare form of the already rare histiocytosis X, that he contracted as an adult, and which in his case attacks the function of the pituitary gland. He told me that he has to take pills to pee (seems strange, but that's what he said). Very expensive to treat in this country. Guess how he feels about the fairness of our health care system.
@LMS: my mother-in-law, in reaction to thinning eyebrows, had tattoos put in some decades ago so that she could have at least facsimiles of permanent eyebrows. They must have looked normal at first, but over time the ink's color morphed, and now she has these bluish-green eyebrows. So if any of you are thinking of tattooing in eyebrows, OH GOD NO, please: just don't.
SB: -1 yd. So annoying to miss that longest word. At least today's was relatively easy.
@Barbara S. "I’m the opposite of a speed solver but, when I’m solving in the conventional way, Monday is the one puzzle of the week that I push myself a little to solve quickly."
Thank you for saying that. That would be a me too. If we ever entered a XW tournament on the same occasion, I'd want to sit next to you.
I've heard that some of the super-elite crossword solvers will gain speed by doing all acrosses or all downs, but I'd be nowhere near ready to join those leagues.
I assume The revealer applies only to that part of the answer which describes a musical instrument. While it is true that one does not blow into woodwinds a horn is not a woodwind and one certainly blows one’s horn.
I did this last night and was totally flummoxed by the theme and reveal. I thought I was missing something and that maybe sleeping on it would resolve my consternation. Nope. Then I hoped that some of you all out there in Commentaristan would show me how this could possibly work. Nope.
Am I supposed to believe that there could be a any musician anywhere who would ever need "Don't blow it!" advice for their SHOE HORN or TAPE RECORDER or CHAMPAGNE FLUTE? Have we held hands with Alice and stepped through the looking glass? Should there have been a NYTXW note telling us to completely abandon all rational thought for this one and to not only not overthink it but to not think about it at all?
Are am I still asleep and this is all part of a surrealistic dream? Nah. Even Salvador Dali would think that the dream image of a musician trying to blow a TAPE RECORDER would be too absurd for one of his paintings.
(I do see why OFL may have pulled his punches on this on. The constructor's picture at xwordinfo.com shows him holding an adorable fluffy feline up to the camera.)
@Bocamp I just remembered that as I was falling asleep last night I figured out 10A in the panda. It's an equation, you just transfer it. Having to use a more elementary form for =
Well, first of all, the theme is adorable. Add to that the fact that you have grown-up ANSWERS like TACIT and GEODES; no names at all; some clever clues like ECLIPSE, some clues that teach you stuff (MONGOOSE; PITUITARY) and you have a puzzle that's way above Monday expectations.
As usual I hadn't noticed or thought about the theme. When I got to the "advice to a magician" clue and saw there was a DON'T in the answer, I immediately assumed that the antecedent would be something related to "tin ear".
W Then I looked at the themers and saw what was going on. I chuckled. Very nice, very amusing. And if you feel this Monday puzzle is a bit too sophisticated to give to a novice solver -- well, that's just fine. You get to keep it for yourself.
Solving downs only is fine enough on one's own, I guess, though it isn't my cup of tea. But I would argue that Rex specifically should not be doing it, because it causes the stated difficulty to reflect a nonstandard solving experience. At the very least, it should be accompanied by the full-solve difficulty. The fun of crosswords should be in the totality of the experience, and anything that purports to review them accurately should capture that as well. Imagine reviewing a novel and reading only the odd-numbered pages. Don't mistake this for me telling someone how they should run their site, but if I'm looking up Magic: The Gathering and I want to know strategies for a card in the Commander format, I don't want to read about how it plays in Modern.
Cool puzzle. Better than average fill for a Monday.
Oddly enough this was my fastest solve ever for a Monday so I was a bit surprised when you classified it as a Medium! It just flowed really well for me and I only stumbled once with HURRAH (I originally had put in HOORAH). Woohoo, or should I say, HURRAH! Perhaps it was the new Colombian roasted coffee I had with it while solving.
Nice funny MonPuz theme. thUmbsUp. Don't blow on a MONGOOSE either, btw.
staff weeject picks: IMO & IDO. Symmetrically placed, and IDO could also have been IMO, with EMITS instead of EDITS. That would probably be takin E/W puzgrid symmetry a smidge too far tho, I'd grant.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {True or false, on a true/false test} = ANSWER. I guess CHOICE could also fit that there clue and answer length, but whoever heard of a MONGOOSC. Downs-only moo-cow clue might be the one for OMAHA, IM&AO.
p.s. @RP: Impressive Downs-only solvequest, at your house. Next time, try out the ultra-stable geniuses-only approach, of Diagonals-only. Can take years.
This puzzle won me over when they clued ECLIPSE as "High-level cover-up". A pleasant puzzle - maybe I need to try downs-only to draw out the enjoyment a bit longer.
I got tempted by the idea of down clues only and tried it on today's LAT puzzle. It was interesting. I was stumped by a 6 letter answer clued "Nyong'o of "Black Panther". Some of the crosses had multiple options so no way to intuit the name. Otherwise I did pretty well I thought. Even grokked the theme after the grid was filled.
@kitshef, Thanks very much for the link, and for the search result. I will bookmark the link! (And will note: huh, I am surprised it was so recent, I kinda figured it had been retired after the 90s.)
This was a very well done Monday puzzle as @Rex said. Just enough crunch and fairly dreck free.
Okay. I admire folks that do the downs only. I’m not sure my brain could actually do that, that is, I think I’m so used to looking at down/across combos as I’m solving I think I’d cheat somehow! So do y’all just force yourself NOT to look at across clues? Is it okay to check and see if your across answer actually reveals a real word?
@LMS you are in rare form today! I snorted at your mom’s black eyebrow pencil! Yeah, eyebrows become a concern in mid to late sixties. These days the ONLY thing I do daily before going out in public is “define” my brows. There is a fine line on having too much/too little or too dark! @TTrimble, I do NOT do this but my SIL does the “tattoo” thing. Nowadays it is temporary…that is, it fades away after about a month. IMHO her sweet spot for not too dark/too light is the middle two weeks. I’ll just stick with pencil or powder, thanks.
@pabloinnh and @Gary Jugert…🤣 on foot notes and sole music!
I have a question about down clues only solving. Do you fill an across answer if you're pretty sure what it is? If so, do you do that as you go along or just first get all the downs that you can? I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.
The interesting grid, the funny punchline, the collection of non-blowable "instruments," the many winning Downs - lots of reasons for smiles in this puzzle. This is the first Monday I was able to solve Acrosses only; I don't think I found it as easy as @chefwen and @GAC, as the SE had me stymied for a while. While it was gratifying, in a way, to get the Downs solely through pattern recognition, it meant that I missed the pleasure of clues like the one for ECLIPSE. Turns out I like reading all the clues more than the challenge of solving only half of them.
I got LEVITY from Ollie telling Stan, "This is no time for LEVITY!" If you like Laurel and Hardy and have two minutes,here's the scene. It's amazing what Stan Laurel could do with his eyebrows.
Basically it's a standard "What do you say to a..." joke. I'd have changed the revealer clue to: "Warning to a wind player who's buying a 23-, 26- or 43-across?"
Good for a Monday chuckle. The over-all grid is very nice.
"A HELL hole in a town called MEH." I think we have the setting for our next ARTSY indie film -- which will perhaps be a contender for next year's Best Picture and Best Cinematography Awards.
@Beezer (12:12 PM) and @OffTheGrid (12:14 PM) I'm a total neophyte at this downs-only solving business, but the way I did it was to never look at the across clues, but I felt free to look at the across answers and, through pattern recognition (per @Carola, 12:27 PM), I filled in those whenever I could. It's hard to remember now, but for CHAMPAGNE FLUTE, which was the first long across answer I got, I had something like _H___AGN_F_UTE and the solution to what that had to be came leaping off the screen. Interestingly, the very first across answer I cracked with this intuitive method was...ANSWER.
Dear Lauren, Please please please NEVER give up your stint on Rex’s blog. Love him, of course, but sometimes it seems like a shell operation design to feature you and so many others.
I thought it was a dude with a big nose and a soul patch. But yeah, that fits jazz musician. Anyway a nice, OPEN, well-connected grid.
Have we seen this name before? Because if it's a debut, it's a corker. Funny, repurpose-filled theme with a great stand-alone revealer. Fill that dances around the grid like a MONGOOSE around a cobra. I don't think he could SHOEHORN one more winner in. IMFORIT! Eagle.
Wordle birdie; would've been an eagle but I picked the wrong horse.
Here's the DEETS. When I lived in Philly, I was around the corner from a great LOCALDIVE, Dirty Frank's. Met my Bamberger-working friend after work for a drink most days. Oh the good times.
Fun and simple, as a Monday should be. A bit of thought followed by a bit of the obvious.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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73 comments:
Medium. Very smooth and delightfully whimsical (or what @Rex said). Liked it a bunch and Jeff gave it POW.
@Croce solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #778 was pretty easy for a Croce or about 4X this week’s Sat. NYT. The NW and SE corners were toughest for me. Good luck!
Congratulations Rex for solving this downs only without cheating, as I could not. Just so many tough clues! Looking back, I'm sure doing across only would have been easier. I finally gave up and looked up a couple of across clues and that did the trick, but yes what a struggle. Not a typical "easy" Monday! The revealer was a good fun twist, DON'T BLOW IT indeed.
3 African down clues, and not easy ones. I like to think I know a bit (but not a lot) about African geog, but never realized Algeria is its largest country! And Cameroon is between Nigeria and Guinea?... if you say so. Tough clues!
Gorgeous Sunday in the south Okanagan, sunny and mild. Took a walk on the Kettle Valley Rail Trail and sat looking over the city. Nov and Dec were pretty brutal; so far Jan is pretty decent.
[Spelling Bee: Sun currently -1, missing an 8er. Not looking good.]
CHEATS and CHEN were best friends who lived in a HELL hole in a town called MEH. The LOCAL DIVE bar was an OLD AUTO TAC shop held up by HALF a POLE. To make matters more of a HELL, the EAVE let in the RAIN which made the locals become MEAN OLD NITS.
CHEATS had a PITUITARY flare up every time he entered the LOCAL DIVE. After drinking OLD TAP, his EYES would WHUP OPEN and BLOW his SHOE HORN into the CHAMPAGNE. CHEM would yell DON'T BLOW IT....We need to EAT IN here today!
MEH may be HELL, but the cook from the DIVE could WHUP up an OMAHA GOOSE that everyone could CHEW. MON dieu and HURRAH yelled the OLD CROC sitting with his ENOCH GUIDE...IM FOR IT! The LOCAL POLE from CAMEROON would ECHO the same.
A FLUTE NONET would be playing ON TIME under the VOLTA GEODES....You had to SEE it. A TAPE RECORDER captured a PITCH that would ECLIPSE the OPEN HUE GIST. It was ARTSY...to say the least. The ALGIERS eating EELS could be heard shouting OLES and HURRAH. CHEATS would PITCH in. When CHEM began to PSYCH out, he would yell OH GOD NO....turn off the TAPE RECORDER...we don't want the devil with any DEETS to RAIN down on us.... I SEE said CHEATS...IMO, the ANSWER would be to BLOW the HORN and the FLUTE at HALF PITCH and climb in our AUTO and leave MEH. No, DON'T BLOW IT again, said CHEM, we'll take the HUEY and fly to ALGIERS. We'll eat EELS and SHOUT OLES and have a bodacious GAB FEST...We will EAT LOCAL GOOSE and hope my PITUITARY gland flare up doesn't make my SHOE HORN OPEN the CHAMPAGNE again....
They pulled the LEVER on the HUEY and off they went...leaving MEH.
And that's the truth.....
My LOCAL DIVE is sponsoring an event wherein you plunge headfirst into a pool after drinking only Coors Lite. They call it the LO CAL DIVE.
Did you EVER LEVER REVEL LEVELS? If so, call 911.
I did this AA (All Acrosses), and it seemed pretty easy. My time looks to be only 15% or so above my typical Monday.
I did crosses only with no problems, next week I’ll try the downs and see if there is any difference.
Fun Monday. HURRAH!
Thanks for your write-up, Rex, which I look forward to reading as I solve the crossword every morning that I can manage to do so. I hope a minor correction from an amateur musician wouldn't be unwelcome: the theme answers are all 'wind' instruments – horns not woodwinds. (NB the English horn is not actually a horn.) Thanks for the blog!
FWIW, I was drinking at my LOCALDIVE when I solved this. Which, okay, I do that every night because the #NYTXW needs a handicap these days because it has gotten too easy.
Rex – I agree that the OH GOD NO bad idea of BLOWing into a TAPE RECORDER or SHOEHORN is terrifically preposterous. What a clever theme idea.
That Adrian chose themers where the instrument-ness is completely removed from its counterpart in the phrase – cool. So something like “ear horn” wouldn’t be so great.
@Gil I. – hah! I’m gonna look for a recipe for OMAHA GOOSE forthwith!
The clue for OH GOD NO is so perfect. And it crosses RECORDER – my exact reaction when Little Gardiner brought his home in 4th grade. I had a new-found respect for Mr. Kreismer, his music teacher, for his bravery year after year at arming 25 kids in an enclosed space with recorders. I thought of other bad ideas that would elicit this phrase. A call from my sister a few years ago comes to mind – We have a situation. Mom has started using a jet-black eyebrow pencil, and it’s not good. OH GOD NO. Additional contenders for an OH GOD NO:
*I have two tickets to the John Cage concert. Wanna go?
*Any interest in coming with us for a Black Friday excursion?
*I’m hosting an Amway party…
*Shall we wait 30 minutes so we can eat outside on this 95-degree August day?
Haven’t CHAMPAGNE FLUTEs and tulips pretty much ECLIPSEd the coupe? I mean, unless you’re making one of those tower dealies, do you ever really see a coupe anymore? Patricia Altshul had these chambongs last season on Southern Charm, and I was obsessed.
In Lilburn, Ga., a family moved in down the street with 6 boys, three of whom were Larry Rakestraw’s sons living with their mom. Larry Rakestraw had played with the Bears and was good friends with Gayle Sayer and Bryan Piccolo, had in fact had Thanksgiving dinner with them once. So I adopted this claim to fame as my own and felt like a bit of a Big Deal, being friends with the sons of a guy who once ate turkey and stuff with Sayer and Piccolo.
SHOEHORN -- Mom gave me an extra one she had – one for old people that is almost a yard long. You know, so you don’t have to bend over. I just thanked her and shoved it in the back of my closet, quietly relieved that I wasn’t There yet, didn’t need something so obviously for old people. Fast forward a year and a half – now I use it from time to time for this one pair of tight shoes and darn if it’s not a swell invention. I also join mom in some daily MiraLAX and find myself using her 10X magnifying mirror when I’m in the mood to be horrified by a real close-up of my face skin. I went to church with her yesterday – we have to get there 30 minutes early for the 8:15 service – and this woman came over and joked that she saw me and thought I was my 87-year-old mom. I tell you what. This will flat bring you down a peg or two. When I catch myself scowling through a slit in the closed blinds at a truck I don’t recognize parked on the street, I just sit down and wonder where my life has gone.
My five favorite clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Scroll through a few books? (5)
2. "I'm ___ of you" (Valentines message for a plant lover?) (5)
3. It may have a down side (9)
4. Not a big Mac? (6)
5. I'm toast! (5)
TORAH
FROND
ESCALATOR
LAPTOP
BREAD
@Rex has convinced me to try downs only solving. This puzzle was IMO extremely easy to the point of "Why am I even doing this?". e.g. wet forecast/RAIN. The puzzle itself was fine, just not enough resistance, even for Monday. leer before OGLE was my only hiccup. I didn't know PITUITARY was in the grid until @Rex mentioned it. Even that would have been an instant fill-in had I needed to read that clue. I must add, though, that the long answers certainly shone.
Cute puzzle, with a theme that mildly amused - which is good enough in my book. The only outliers for me were OSIRIS and ENOCH. We seem to be getting a lot of EELS lately - maybe just holding down the fort until OREO gets back from a brief vacation ?
Finished it OK, but I still don't understand the revealer. How does someone blow a TAPERECORDER or a SHOEHORN? Are we asked to believe a shoe horn is a musical instrument?
Maybe it's just that I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
I did the puzzle my usual way - lots of across until I felt stymied, then downs. But today I did the crosses right to the end, and there was little left to do. So, I now get it why folks like the down approach. Nice Monday, but too easy.
@wilfrid. Good catch on @Rex's woodwind error.
The theme was off. caNTBLOWIT would have worked better with a clue of 'Must be correct' or a hint to 23-, 26- and 43-Across'
Dupes-HUE/HUEY and TAC/TACIT (just kidding)
Wordle 2 today. HURRAH
emordnilaps of DEETS, NONET, & LEVER give us # other xword standards, STEED,TENON & REVEL. There's also ETA/ATE, IDO/ODI, GAB/BAG, TAC/CAT, MEH/HEM
Ridiculously hard. I mean, “Heaven’s opposite” gives you HELL? What on earth does that mean? “Not delayed” = ON TIME??? “Wet forecast” = RAIN??????? How on earth are we supposed to solve this thing?
@jae et al - I found Croce 778 easy (for a Croce) - 2.5xthis Saturday. Of course, I had my traditional one-letter DNF at the proper-name cross of 55A and 46D. I knew the name for 46D but not the spelling, and never heard of the show in 55A.
I am also in the Monday downs-only club, and I agree with Rex that it was challenging but doable. Downs-only is the only way I can feel a sense of accomplishment on a Monday.
I figured out the theme after getting CHAMPAGNE FLUTE and SHOEHORN (again, without seeing their clues). That helped me get TAPE RECORDER and DON’T BLOW IT, which I’m not sure I would have seen if I hadn’t figured out the theme.
@LMS - I will never live down in my family a drunken event involving FLUTEs and coupes. It was my 50th surprise birthday party, and I was enjoying myself a bit too much. I asked my sister-in-law, a champagne connoisseur, why there are two completely opposite vessels for champagne, one tall and deep and the other wide and shallow. I decided that coupes were better bubble-wise. I decided that all
flutes must be destroyed, grabbed one, opened the back door, and hurled it to the pavement. She and I had cathartic few minutes of destroying cheap flutes before we were herded away. Cleanup the next morning was not pleasant.
Africa knowledge was indeed helpful for the downs-only solve. I knew CAMEROON right away and ALGIERS off a couple of letters. But I resisted on MONGOOSE because I thought they were Asian, not African. I mainly know them because of Riki-Tiki-Tavi (The Jungle Book, definitely Asia) and because they were disastrously imported to Hawaii to control vermin (from Asia, I was pretty sure). Turns out there are African and Asian varieties. Very cool that they are immune to snake venom.
More fun facts - the PITUITARY is the size of a chickpea? And it does all that? I don’t like to brag but my PITUITARY is the size of a Kalamata olive.
Loved the clue for ECLIPSE (“high-level cover-up?”). Hope to see it on @Lewis’ list next week.
Rex, I was awaiting your good "four legged" news. Tomorrow?
Wonderful puzzle - such an elegant looking grid - how often do we see early week mirror symmetry? The themers are fine - apt revealer and clean fill. This played nearly record time for me - thanks Rex for highlighting the skinny layout.
Will Oldham covering the Everlys
Rikki Tikki Tavi got me MONGOOSE cold. I always thought the product was CROCs? Like the WHUP x HURRAH cross. I think ARTSY is a little bit of a leap.
Enjoyable Monday solve.
ECHO
I just love the image of someone playing a shoehorn, holding it up to their mouth like a piccolo or like a clarinet. I can picture this person in a renaissance costume, or even in something sloppy in a LOCAL DIVE.
So, along with your heartwarming words in your notes, Adrian -- and everyone here should read these notes, trust me on this, either at XwordInfo or Wordplay -- you brought me LEVITY. Thus, my HURRAH for your puzzle, which, in addition, brought the lovely TACIT, MONGOOSE, PITUITARY, WHUP, not to mention [High-level cover-up] for ECLIPSE, seems not near equal to what you gave me in return. Maybe the true reveal of your puzzle should be 18A – GIVE. Thank you many times over!
Brilliant!
Hi Rex,
Could you recommend a source for checking "when did NYTXWD last feature a given word"? I've had a sudden craving to know how long since they name-checked Elihu Root. (WIth apologies if the answer is readily findable on your site, or elsewhere. I did try google, as well as looking at your FAQ, and have not yet found the right thing.)
Best wishes!
What a great Monday-lots of easy stuff for beginners and just enough crunch to make it interesting. The revealer didn't quite make it all the way to the bottom, but since it's Monday I'm giving that a pass.
Plus it reminded me of the old joke that a SHOEHORN is in fact a musical instrument, but it can only play footnotes.
Sorry.
Well done indeed, AJ. A Joy to solve. You can make my Monday puzzle any time, and thanks for all the fun.
Now on to Croce and the challenging Monday New Yorker, just right for a snowy Monday here in NH.
Who's not blowing on their shoe horn? When you play one sole music comes out.
The return of the [pretentious] ARTSY. I'm artsy, and I pretend to be pretentious, but it's kinda tough when your primary instrument is an ukulele.
Uniclues:
1 Caveman explains tithing.
2 Well, as God of the underworld and fertility, wha'd'ya expect?
3 Who says that? I guess if you use a droll English accent, or if crosswords are to be believed, you could say olé.
4 "This one's a mess on top of messes."
5 The 1% deciding which celestial events they'll allow the commoners to enjoy.
6 The 1% deciding which world capital to visit.
7 Acne.
1 HELL MEAN GIVE
2 OSIRIS CHEATS
3 HURRAH LEVITY (~)
4 PSYCH DEETS
5 ECLIPSE? I'M FOR IT.
6 ALGIERS? OH GOD NO. (~)
7 PITUITARY GUIDE
This was a hoot – or maybe, a toot. The themers and revealer are a dandy set and, like Rex, I’m charmed by the way the symmetrical grid shows them off to good advantage.
I was intrigued by the clue for LEVITY. It had never occurred to me that LEVITY is [Lack of seriousness in a serious situation]. But of course it is. You wouldn't be likely to use LEVITY in the context of a stand-up comedian -- humor and laughter would be expected. I looked up LEVITY in various places and found this in Wiktionary:
Etymology: Coined in 1564, from Latin levitas ("lightness, frivolity"), from levis ("lightness (in weight)"). Cognate to lever [which, coincidentally, is also in the puzzle], and more distantly, light.
And given the word's origin in "lightness of weight," Merriam-Webster goes on to say:
LEVITY was once a scientific term
Levity originally was thought to be a physical force exactly like gravity but pulling in the opposite direction, like the helium in a balloon. As recently as the 19th century, scientists were still arguing about its existence. Today levity refers only to lightness in manner. To stern believers of some religious faiths, levity is often regarded as almost sinful. But the word, like its synonym frivolity, now has an old-fashioned ring to it and is usually used only half-seriously.
I much prefer the expression “gift of the GAB” to “gift of GAB.” To my ear, “the” is needed to give the phrase the right rising-then-falling rhythm. It seems “the” is mostly associated with Brit-speech and without "the" is American. Also, there was once a rapper named Gift of GAB, so the clue may be referring to him.
I’ve really buried the lede here because today, for the first time, I solved the puzzle downs-only. I’m so pleased that Rex found this a particularly hard puzzle to solve that way, because I did it with no CHEATS. And, yes, I do feel triumphant, like Sir George beholding the corpse of the dragon. At first, I thought I was going to fail – I wasn’t getting any of the long downs, and my filled-in squares were sparse indeed. But I treated it like a Saturday puzzle that you just have to keep chipping away at until you get somewhere. The first long down I got was PITUITARY and that helped immensely, and the first long across I was able to intuit was CHAMPAGNE FLUTE, a grid-spanner that was also of great assistance because it contained so many letters and was a themer. In order to solve using this method, your word instincts have to be honed to the finest of points – the more easily you can see answers from their mere skeletons, the more success you’ll have. I’m the opposite of a speed solver but, when I’m solving in the conventional way, Monday is the one puzzle of the week that I push myself a little to solve quickly. Today, with downs only, it took me 4 times as long as usual! But I’m a very happy camper and will definitely try this method again next week.
[SB: yd, -4. AARGH! I guess you can’t be good at everything all at once, so I’ll just keep thinking about the crossword puzzle.]
@Mike Molloy 8:25 - July 23, 2020. Clue was "Peace Nobelist Root".
The site is https://www.xwordinfo.com/Finder
I never consider the shape of the grid until Rex brings it up. Why is that important?
I understand the symmetry rules but don’t see their importance
Thx, Adrian; HURRAH, no NITS here! :)
Med+ (Tues. dif).
Another top half easy, bottom tougher puz.
CROCs were my only footwear until recently, when I broke down and bought some winter suitable SHOEs.
I'm an AUTO setting camera guy.
Fond memories of singing into my uncle's reel-to-reel TAPE RECORDER back in the mid-50s.
Thus concludes my not so 'juicy' DEETS for today.
Good start to the solving week! :)
___
Thx @jae; on it! :)
Will be joining @pablo for Natan Last's Mon. New Yorker (maybe later today; more likely tomorrow).
Still working on Mark Diehl's tough Puns & Anagrams from the NYT' Sunday 'Games' section.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Also doing Mondays as downs only, and it is definitely more challenging, especially in a Monday puz with so many unusually long downs. Still, I came in well under my Monday average. Loved the theme and OH GOD NO and LOCAL DIVE and NONET, just because I love that word and wish life gave me more opportunities to use it.
I don’t think I’d ever be able to do a crossword with downs or acrosses only. It’d be like driving and not looking right. I do hard copy on pen so I like to be sure before I enter it as there are no erasers. Once in awhile there is a messy overwrite. Not today, not most days. No real resistance today - usual Monday. And thats OK with me. The clue for ECLIPSE was cute . I thought ANSWER had a lame clue - could have been crossword related “What you are now entering” or something like that. OSIRIS was not coming to me, but the crosses were easy.
@ Wanderlust 👋 for Rikki-Tikki-Tavi! That plus Huck Finn from yesterday and I feel like I'm back in elementary school. I seriously doubt that kids today read Kipling, or Twain.
I fail to see why to CHEW gum necessarily means to enjoy it. Perhaps there's no reason anyone would chew modern commercial gum if they didn't enjoy it. But in native American culture chewing tree resins was supposed to be medicinal, and also clean the teeth. It passes the time on a long hike, I suppose; I've grabbed bits of spruce resin on my way up Mt. Monadnock. Not particularly with the thought 'Oh, I'm going to enjoy this!'. It's blah. Or, as they say nowadays, MEH.
Amy: brilliant! A Monday puzzle that is easy (solved in under 10 minutes) yet entertaining. Very fine construction. 🏆
Had one of those long shoehorned LMS described for use right after hip replacements (promptly gifted it to a friend having the same as soon as I didn't need it). It worked fine, but the real problem was getting on my socks. 🙄
My brother had a rare disorder; his pituitary gland malfunctioned. He had to have an injection of pitrissin tannate every few days. He'd know he needed a shot as he would be continually thirsty.
@Bocamp
Have all but NE done in the PANDA!
I should have added, I pick the blueberries and wineberries while going up a mountain because I enjoy them. The spruce resin, not so much.
Hey All !
The ole brain is refusing to grok the Revealer properly. I'm going with Rex's explanation of not blowing the full Themers, ala, if a musician had a SHOE HORN, not just a HORN. Corny, but works. Someone said Chen gave this his POW, so prepare yourself for a rough week.
14 wide today. With L/R (mirror) symmetry. Themer counts are 15, 13, 11, 9, so no way to make into regular symmetry. Too bad ANSWER couldn't have been worked in somehow.
Good fill, light on dreck.
For us older types,
Rex won't like it, Rex hates everything.
He likes it! Hey Rexy!
😁
(@LMS, right there with you. It boggles the mind that the 90's were thirty years ago.)
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
@Smith (9:20 AM)
I haven't been able to get a foothold yet in the NE. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
I firmly believe that you could play a SHOEHORN like a kazoo, making a buzzy sound with your lips and letting the shoehorn resonate to it. No, I'm not going to try it. In Japan, btw/, you have to take your shoes off before entering a house, a traditional restaurant, a Japanese-style inn, and many other places; so there is likely to be one of those long-handled shoehorns hanging there to help you get them back on (if you tie them loosely, you can just pull them off and pry them back in.) They're great; I have one hanging in my front hall now. It's not so much because of age but because of fatness.
@wanderlust, me too for hesitating because of Kipling's story, which I loved. I also balked at ALGIERS, only because I was thinking of population, in which it ranks 9th, I think.
For some reason I really liked the DEETS/NITS crossing, I think for its LEVITY.
Finally, a sad story about my late Uncle John. He was a star lineman on his high school football team until a bad tackle injured his PITUITARY gland. He started to grow uncontrollably until a chiropractor managed to stop it, but he was left very broad, and also sterile (but he and his wife adopted 5 children and had a happy family life). It happened long before I was born, but I was told all about it, leaving the word PITUITARY an absolute gimme for me.
From yesterday's PROOFS. A New Yorker cartoon:
A lawyer is standing outside the courthouse addressing a phalanx of microphones: "The proof was in the pudding, but the judge ruled the pudding inadmissible."
A Monday that was pleasantly diverting enough.
LOCAL DIVE: a "dive", according to Merriam-Webster, is "a shabby and disreputable establishment (such as a bar or nightclub)". And yet there's this show put on by Guy Fieri, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, where I think he wants to put a different spin on the notion of DIVES, as these sometimes cheap little eateries that serve up good grub. One "dive" featured on his show is this place is near where I live, The Sycamore, which has a kind of 50's vibe with "carhop service" (I've never seen that, actually) and Happy Days decor and (I'm told) Dagwood sandwiches, and those music-playing devices that you activate from your booth by punching in A6 or whatever, forget what those are called. Well, I have to say, having tried it twice: they have THE WORST HAMBURGERS I've ever had in my life. Half-dollar size patties way overcooked, served on way oversized buns, completely slathered in mustard. How it made it onto Fieri's show is eternally mystifying to me (I had to try it twice because I thought maybe the first time was a fluke). Disreputable, indeed. And no alcoholic drinks.
PITUITARY: can't see that without thinking about my cousin, who has a rare form of the already rare histiocytosis X, that he contracted as an adult, and which in his case attacks the function of the pituitary gland. He told me that he has to take pills to pee (seems strange, but that's what he said). Very expensive to treat in this country. Guess how he feels about the fairness of our health care system.
@LMS: my mother-in-law, in reaction to thinning eyebrows, had tattoos put in some decades ago so that she could have at least facsimiles of permanent eyebrows. They must have looked normal at first, but over time the ink's color morphed, and now she has these bluish-green eyebrows. So if any of you are thinking of tattooing in eyebrows, OH GOD NO, please: just don't.
SB: -1 yd. So annoying to miss that longest word. At least today's was relatively easy.
@Barbara S.
"I’m the opposite of a speed solver but, when I’m solving in the conventional way, Monday is the one puzzle of the week that I push myself a little to solve quickly."
Thank you for saying that. That would be a me too. If we ever entered a XW tournament on the same occasion, I'd want to sit next to you.
I've heard that some of the super-elite crossword solvers will gain speed by doing all acrosses or all downs, but I'd be nowhere near ready to join those leagues.
@ Mike Molloy. I think you would like XWORDINFO There's lots of ..well, crossword information.
I assume The revealer applies only to that part of the answer which describes a musical instrument. While it is true that one does not blow into woodwinds a horn is not a woodwind and one certainly blows one’s horn.
I did this last night and was totally flummoxed by the theme and reveal. I thought I was missing something and that maybe sleeping on it would resolve my consternation. Nope. Then I hoped that some of you all out there in Commentaristan would show me how this could possibly work. Nope.
Am I supposed to believe that there could be a any musician anywhere who would ever need "Don't blow it!" advice for their SHOE HORN or TAPE RECORDER or CHAMPAGNE FLUTE? Have we held hands with Alice and stepped through the looking glass? Should there have been a NYTXW note telling us to completely abandon all rational thought for this one and to not only not overthink it but to not think about it at all?
Are am I still asleep and this is all part of a surrealistic dream? Nah. Even Salvador Dali would think that the dream image of a musician trying to blow a TAPE RECORDER would be too absurd for one of his paintings.
(I do see why OFL may have pulled his punches on this on. The constructor's picture at xwordinfo.com shows him holding an adorable fluffy feline up to the camera.)
@Bocamp
I just remembered that as I was falling asleep last night I figured out 10A in the panda. It's an equation, you just transfer it. Having to use a more elementary form for =
Good luck!
Well, first of all, the theme is adorable. Add to that the fact that you have grown-up ANSWERS like TACIT and GEODES; no names at all; some clever clues like ECLIPSE, some clues that teach you stuff (MONGOOSE; PITUITARY) and you have a puzzle that's way above Monday expectations.
As usual I hadn't noticed or thought about the theme. When I got to the "advice to a magician" clue and saw there was a DON'T in the answer, I immediately assumed that the antecedent would be something related to "tin ear".
W
Then I looked at the themers and saw what was going on. I chuckled. Very nice, very amusing. And if you feel this Monday puzzle is a bit too sophisticated to give to a novice solver -- well, that's just fine. You get to keep it for yourself.
Solving downs only is fine enough on one's own, I guess, though it isn't my cup of tea. But I would argue that Rex specifically should not be doing it, because it causes the stated difficulty to reflect a nonstandard solving experience. At the very least, it should be accompanied by the full-solve difficulty. The fun of crosswords should be in the totality of the experience, and anything that purports to review them accurately should capture that as well. Imagine reviewing a novel and reading only the odd-numbered pages. Don't mistake this for me telling someone how they should run their site, but if I'm looking up Magic: The Gathering and I want to know strategies for a card in the Commander format, I don't want to read about how it plays in Modern.
Cool puzzle. Better than average fill for a Monday.
Oddly enough this was my fastest solve ever for a Monday so I was a bit surprised when you classified it as a Medium! It just flowed really well for me and I only stumbled once with HURRAH (I originally had put in HOORAH). Woohoo, or should I say, HURRAH! Perhaps it was the new Colombian roasted coffee I had with it while solving.
Cheers,
Ryan
@Bocamp again
...and, done! I think 13D is the cleverest!!
After reading the comments, I discovered that I liked the puzzle.
Nice funny MonPuz theme. thUmbsUp.
Don't blow on a MONGOOSE either, btw.
staff weeject picks: IMO & IDO. Symmetrically placed, and IDO could also have been IMO, with EMITS instead of EDITS. That would probably be takin E/W puzgrid symmetry a smidge too far tho, I'd grant.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {True or false, on a true/false test} = ANSWER. I guess CHOICE could also fit that there clue and answer length, but whoever heard of a MONGOOSC.
Downs-only moo-cow clue might be the one for OMAHA, IM&AO.
some fave stuff samples: ECLIPSE [and clue]. MONGOOSE. PITUITARY. HUEY. E/W puzgrid symmetry.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Johnson dude. Clever job.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
p.s. @RP: Impressive Downs-only solvequest, at your house. Next time, try out the ultra-stable geniuses-only approach, of Diagonals-only. Can take years.
**gruntz**
This puzzle won me over when they clued ECLIPSE as "High-level cover-up". A pleasant puzzle - maybe I need to try downs-only to draw out the enjoyment a bit longer.
I got tempted by the idea of down clues only and tried it on today's LAT puzzle. It was interesting. I was stumped by a 6 letter answer clued "Nyong'o of "Black Panther". Some of the crosses had multiple options so no way to intuit the name. Otherwise I did pretty well I thought. Even grokked the theme after the grid was filled.
As you know, I'm terrible with gadgets. So when I had ?UT? for "Camera setting for novice photographers", I wanted to write in FUTZ.
@Anoa Bob
You can't see it, but the cat is covering up the cheek where his tongue is firmly planted.
I would have preferred "Just blow it", more positive statement.
@kitshef, Thanks very much for the link, and for the search result. I will bookmark the link! (And will note: huh, I am surprised it was so recent, I kinda figured it had been retired after the 90s.)
This was a very well done Monday puzzle as @Rex said. Just enough crunch and fairly dreck free.
Okay. I admire folks that do the downs only. I’m not sure my brain could actually do that, that is, I think I’m so used to looking at down/across combos as I’m solving I think I’d cheat somehow! So do y’all just force yourself NOT to look at across clues? Is it okay to check and see if your across answer actually reveals a real word?
@LMS you are in rare form today! I snorted at your mom’s black eyebrow pencil! Yeah, eyebrows become a concern in mid to late sixties. These days the ONLY thing I do daily before going out in public is “define” my brows. There is a fine line on having too much/too little or too dark! @TTrimble, I do NOT do this but my SIL does the “tattoo” thing. Nowadays it is temporary…that is, it fades away after about a month. IMHO her sweet spot for not too dark/too light is the middle two weeks. I’ll just stick with pencil or powder, thanks.
@pabloinnh and @Gary Jugert…🤣 on foot notes and sole music!
Good story today @GILLI!
I have a question about down clues only solving. Do you fill an across answer if you're pretty sure what it is? If so, do you do that as you go along or just first get all the downs that you can? I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.
The interesting grid, the funny punchline, the collection of non-blowable "instruments," the many winning Downs - lots of reasons for smiles in this puzzle. This is the first Monday I was able to solve Acrosses only; I don't think I found it as easy as @chefwen and @GAC, as the SE had me stymied for a while. While it was gratifying, in a way, to get the Downs solely through pattern recognition, it meant that I missed the pleasure of clues like the one for ECLIPSE. Turns out I like reading all the clues more than the challenge of solving only half of them.
I got LEVITY from Ollie telling Stan, "This is no time for LEVITY!" If you like Laurel and Hardy and have two minutes,here's the scene. It's amazing what Stan Laurel could do with his eyebrows.
Basically it's a standard "What do you say to a..." joke. I'd have changed the revealer clue to: "Warning to a wind player who's buying a 23-, 26- or 43-across?"
Good for a Monday chuckle. The over-all grid is very nice.
@Smith
Yay, got it! Thx for the encouragement! 😊
Agree re: 13D.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
"A HELL hole in a town called MEH." I think we have the setting for our next ARTSY indie film -- which will perhaps be a contender for next year's Best Picture and Best Cinematography Awards.
You are too much, @GILL!!!
@Beezer (12:12 PM) and @OffTheGrid (12:14 PM)
I'm a total neophyte at this downs-only solving business, but the way I did it was to never look at the across clues, but I felt free to look at the across answers and, through pattern recognition (per @Carola, 12:27 PM), I filled in those whenever I could. It's hard to remember now, but for CHAMPAGNE FLUTE, which was the first long across answer I got, I had something like _H___AGN_F_UTE and the solution to what that had to be came leaping off the screen. Interestingly, the very first across answer I cracked with this intuitive method was...ANSWER.
Thanks @Barbara S on the “downs only” advice! think I can manage to do that!
I did this normally (across and down clues) and was done in record time for me. Never stopped writing in answers. Loved it!
Dear Lauren, Please please please NEVER give up your stint on Rex’s blog. Love him, of course, but sometimes it seems like a shell operation design to feature you and so many others.
@Bocamp 1:24 good job!
Wasn’t the grid supposed to be in the shape of a jazz player’s face, with a goatee?
I thought it was a dude with a big nose and a soul patch. But yeah, that fits jazz musician. Anyway a nice, OPEN, well-connected grid.
Have we seen this name before? Because if it's a debut, it's a corker. Funny, repurpose-filled theme with a great stand-alone revealer. Fill that dances around the grid like a MONGOOSE around a cobra. I don't think he could SHOEHORN one more winner in. IMFORIT! Eagle.
Wordle birdie; would've been an eagle but I picked the wrong horse.
Here's the DEETS. When I lived in Philly, I was around the corner from a great LOCALDIVE, Dirty Frank's. Met my Bamberger-working friend after work for a drink most days. Oh the good times.
Fun and simple, as a Monday should be. A bit of thought followed by a bit of the obvious.
Diana, Lady
SHH, NO EDITS
Well, RECORDER ON TAPE
if she'll BLOW ON the FLUTE,
HELL, I'MFORIT, DON'T wait,
if the ANSWER's, "IDO IT."
--- ENOCH VOLTA
A nice Mon-puz. With that revealer it's probably a good thing there wasn't a vitalorgan as an ANSWER.
Wordle par.
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