.png)
"Toodle-oo!" / TUES 2-28-23 / Y's in roads / Psychedelic fungus, slangily / Calc. for many an engineering major
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Hello, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday — and last day — of February! Hope that everyone had a good month and that your weather wasn’t too wonky. In DC, it was 80 degrees one day — and then snowing two days later. I’m a bit more settled in my new place now, have (mostly) gotten rid of the endless amounts of cardboard that piled up, and have become a pro at using a drill and hanging curtains. I’ve been staying pretty busy with work and watching sports and biking and climbing and hoping that the weather turns just a biiiit nicer here soon! (More 80-degree days with no humidity, please!)
Anywho, on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: GREEN EGGS AND HAM (38A: Colorful meal in a Dr. Seuss story) — Four of the theme answers are lines from the children’s book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss about where one might eat this dish, and one theme answer is the name of the protagonist in the story
Theme answers:
This was a pretty decent puzzle, especially for a debut (from Gia Bosko). I smiled when I saw the theme and had fun reminiscing about the book — while simultaneously trying to solve the puzzle. It was just cute and light. I will say the lines chosen — and in this particular order — felt a tad random, and their placement in the puzzle made me feel like I was jumping around a lot and didn’t quite flow.
- IN THE RAIN (17A: One way 38-Across is offered)
- ON A BOAT (26A: Another way 38-Across is offered)
- IN A TREE (53A: Another way 38-Across is offered)
- WITH A GOAT (66A: Another way 38-Across is offered)
- SAM I AM (48D: One who won't take no for an answer regarding 38-Across)
Prunus spinosa, called blackthorn or sloe, is a species of flowering plant in the rose family Rosaceae. The species is native to Europe, western Asia, and regionally in northwest Africa. It is locally naturalized in New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Pacific Northwest and New England regions of the United States. The fruits are used to make sloe gin in Britain and patxaran in Spain. The wood is used to make walking sticks, including the Irish shillelagh. (Wiki)
• • •
I liked a lot of the words and clues in the puzzle. Aside from the crosswordese three-letter words in the east and west of the puzzle (bookended by RBG and MLK), there wasn’t too much we see often in the way of clues/answers. That made the puzzle slightly more challenging at times but also made it more intriguing. FORSAKEN (9D: Abandoned) was a good, long down. SHROOM (5D: Psychedelic fungus, slangily) was likewise a fun word for the puzzle. SLAIN (68A: Like the dragon at the end of a hero's tale) was a cute clue/answer combo. I liked 27D: Swallows, e.g. as BIRDS once I finally figured out the clue was referring to birds and not the act of swallowing. The clue for ROGET (32D: Name that's practically synonymous with synonyms) was fun, amusing, diverting, and pleasing. And you didn’t think I’d forget to bring up KOREAN pop (12D: The "K" of K-pop), did you?! K-pop is an amazing genre, and everyone on the planet should check out (and ultimately fall in love with) BTS. [Here’s one of my favorite songs by them, just for kicks.]
I felt like I should’ve been faster at solving, but I kept having to jump around and also got tripped up on a few key sections. I actually watched some of the Popeye cartoons, but I’ve never heard the name of the creator Elzie SEGAR (48D) before. (He died in 1938.) I similarly got tripped up by MUD EEL (44A: Swamp-dwelling salamander), which I’d never heard of; I couldn’t wrap my head around that being two words and finished the puzzle thinking, “What the heck is a mudeel?” How would you even pronounce “mudeel”?
I have a bone to pick with the word KEMPT (71A: Neat and tidy). I know it’s technically a word, but I really don’t think it’s used much, and it’s a pretty ugly word. Sure, things are “unkempt,” but KEMPT? That feels very wrong. I felt the same about REPRO (19A: Not an original) and hated RONA (61D: Covid-19) as a nickname for COVID. I can’t quite explain it, but I had a visceral reaction to seeing that in the puzzle.
I didn’t mean to end on a dour note there. But, overall, I did still enjoy the puzzle!
Misc.:
Signed, Clare, a rare bear sitting over there in a chair playing solitaire, with wet hair. So there.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Misc.:
- Absolutely loved seeing Carey ELWES (64D), star of maybe my favorite movie of all time (“The Princess Bride”) and also an amazing guest star of one of my favorite shows of all time (“Psych”), among many other roles.
- Anyone else have an annoying gold banner at the top of their webpage advertising an all access sale? It kept messing with my screen and how I’d view the puzzle.
- I had a hard time getting 59D: Knucklehead as SIMP, because my most-known definition of SIMP is closer to the Urban Dictionary one, and I completely forgot that a SIMP could also be a knucklehead/foolish person.
- I was chopping an ONION (16A: Producer of tears in the kitchen) last night for dinner, and it definitely made me cry. I’ve never been good at dealing with onions, and my eyes will legitimately always tear up and feel like they’re burning. I’ve tried so many tricks for cutting them, too, but none of them work consistently for me, although my sister swears by having a wet paper towel on the cutting board near the onion.
- Fun fact of the day… As we know, TMI (67D: "Eww! I didn't need to know that!") stands for “too much information” and is often something that’s overly personal/gross. I learned from watching Korean media, though, that people in Korea seem to use TMI differently — it’s used more to just share random facts about their day rather than anything overly personal. I figured that out when someone said their TMI was what they had for breakfast, and I was very confused.
- Another fun fact for today from the GREEN EGGS AND HAM Wikipedia page: "The vocabulary of the text consists of just 50 words and was the result of a bet between Seuss and Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss's publisher, that Seuss (after completing “The Cat in the Hat” using 236 words) could not complete an entire book without exceeding that limit. The 50 words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you. "Anywhere" is the only word used that has more than one syllable."
And that's all from me. See you in March!
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Save And Share :
121 comments:
Forgetting that this would be a Claire Tuesday, I solved this and then decided to predict Rex's reaction. See below for my prediction (NOT my opinion to be clear, pretty much anything Seuss is good with me and I thought the fill was admirably clean, if not that exciting):
I am Will
Will I am
That Will-I-am!
That Will-I-am!
I do not like that Will-I-am!
Did you like this Seuss exam?
I did not like it, Will-I-am.
I did not like
this Seuss Exam.
Would you like it here or there?
I would not like it
here or there.
I would not like it anywhere.
I did not like
this Seuss exam.
I did not like it, Will-I-am.
Did you like it in your house?
Did you solve it with your mouse?
I did not like it
in my house.
I did not solve it
with my mouse.
I did not like it
here or there.
I did not like it
anywhere.
I did not like this Seuss Exam.
I did not like it, Will-I-am.
Would you solve it on a screen?
Would you solve with paint that's green?
Not on a screen.
Not with the green.
Not in my house.
Not with my mouse.
I would not like it
here or there.
I would not like it anywhere.
I did not like the Seuss exam.
I did not like it, Will-I-am.
Would you? Could you? Like the theme?
See it! See it! Seussian meme!
I would not, could not, like the theme.
You may like it. Better still. You may like the lovely fill!
I would not, could not like this fill.
RONA in grid?! It makes me ill.
I did not like it on a screen.
I did not solve with paint that's green.
I did not like it in my house.
I did not solve it with my mouse.
I did not like it here or there.
I did not like it anywhere.
I did not like the Seuss exam.
I did not like it, Will-I-am.
A blog! A blog!
A blog! A blog!
Could you praise this,
on your blog?
Not on my blog! Not for a FEE!
Not with this grid! Will! Let me be!
I will not, cannot, like this slog.
I cannot, will not, praise on blog.
I will not praise this childish theme.
The Times could use a new regime.
Also enjoyed the theme. If Rex had been blogging, he would note the Harry Potter reference (Hermione/Emma). In his absence, I'll complain about this.
Nice write-up, Clare. I also hated REPRO, especially since RETRO seemed like a reasonable answer. RITSON made no sense, of course, and it wasn't that hard to work out RIPSON, but I literally spent 10% or more of my time working it out. But I agree, overall a very nice Tuesday entry.
Hi Clare! I share your annoyance with the banner. We pay to access the puzzle but we still get ads... stupid. My solution: Crossword Scraper; download the .puz file.
Another tip re onions: 15 years ago I switched to using only sweet onions...no tears! Lately I use mainly red onions, cuz I love the color. And no tears.
Yes fun to see a Dr. Seuss theme. Whenever I hear his pen name I also can't help hearing "I do not like them, Sam I am!" Had a gift for rhythm, that man. And your last fun fact is fascinating... only 50 words in the subject book.
[Spelling Bee: Mon 0, this 6er looked weird.]
Nice Clare. OK puzz, with no snags. Right, JOP and Vivi?
Medium. Delightful and very smooth, liked it a bunch! Excellent debut!
@Clare - Also a Psych fan!
I don't make onions fequently, but when I do I put a large chunk of fresh bread in my mouth to reduce the tears. Works pretty good.
Hah! Dr. Seuss! Being a part of this community has made me a little nervous about liking things that I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to like. Like, boo TONTO, right? And Harry Potter. And the word eskimo, the phrase long time, no see. Don’t get me wrong – once I understand the offense, I feel a bit ashamed that I hadn’t been woke enough. Annnyyyyhooooo, I remember that some of Seuss’s books have been banned because of racial stereotypes. I’ve just watched a YouTube of someone reading GREEN EGGS AND HAM, and I didn’t pick up on anything that seemed too nocuous, so fingers crossed.
The aspect of Seuss’s genius I enjoy most is his mastery of meter. (Morning, @okanaganer.) My favorite is If I Ran the Circus (one that’ll no longer be published) for its dead-on iambic tetrameter. Even as I read it to my kids, I was focused on the steady, unerring rhythm of the words and missed the offensive pictures. Oops.
Having spent many an hour reading GREEN EGGS AND HAM to my kids, I enjoyed the memory today and am quite gruntled with Gia’s debut.
Clare – I feel ya re ONIONs. My eyes are incredibly pervious to whatever that damn thing wafts my way. Oh, and I liked ONION crossing RIPS ON. Whoever those guys are who write The Onion are beyond ept.
INTSTA aka IG. The Gram. I really need to get on board but it’s not user-friendly to a Luddite like me. Besides, isn’t it all about posting stunning pictures of yourself? Looking all KEPMT and heveled?
FORSAKEN is my go-to word these days. At Turning Point, we used to have this crackerjack person higher up in our school system who’d show up all the time to check on us, help right our ship. She has vanished, and our school is struggling under new leadership. I do a lot of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, for us. I tell my colleagues that I feel FORSAKEN. Where has she gone, and why has she broken up with us?
I had no idea that you could order a SKINNY latte. I’ve given the idea of a SKINNY margarita a lot of thought but only just now I googled it. Ok. So I was today years old when I learned that the SKINNY part refers to the actual make-up of the drink, same as the SKINNY latte. You just use ingredients with fewer calories. I had been thinking that it came in a SKINNY glass so that the alcohol-to-mixer ratio was stronger. Wow. Now I feel silly. If I’m doing a latte or margarita, I’m going all in, though, for the authentic, sipid quaff.
A BIG ASK is asking people to accept ASK as a noun. Love it.
SPIT – A while back, my students and I were talking about superstitions, and I learned that some cultures SPIT three times upon hearing bad news. Man. Talk about shooting the messenger. Listen. I have to tell you something, but first let me step back and put on this raincoat and ski goggles. I guess it’s a cousin to knocking on wood. I do knock on wood, but I’ll readily open my umbrella inside to dry out and step on cracks without a thought. So I’m not superstitious, just a tiny bit stitious.
This was one of those puzzles that I split over “falling-asleep-Weezie” and “waking-up-Weezie” that I now don’t have a good read on difficulty or enjoyment. (Though, “Waking Up Weezie” sounds like a good title for something or other, no?) I did find the cluing and the fill much more clever than the average Tuesday, so on that I’ll say I liked it, and my solve time conveys an easy-to-medium. The only stumper was the SE_AR/WITH A _OAT cross, and I wound up working my way through the alphabet til I got the tingly “aha! Now I remember!” feeling about the G.
As for Dr. Seuss, I just did a quick google and from what I can tell, his estate actually did the right thing itself when it stopped publishing six of the books for blatantly racist imagery and language. I appreciated you flagging it, LMS, for us to each do with as we will. It was news to me, and, now that I know more, I think even our diverse commentariat would agree that the objectionable content of those six books are not the kind of thing we want little ones exposed to.
For the record, I’m not saying a book reference by a problematic author shouldn’t be in a crossword - I don’t know, I’ve stopped having public opinions about that kind of topic because I think we’re all probably dug in on one side of that or another and I’d love it if we could all agree to disagree and not get needlessly worked up on it and hurt our own and each other’s feelings about that kind of thing. To each their own, but I won’t be commenting on that aspect.
For example, I for one will never be ready for casual COVID references, just like as someone who went to high school 2 blocks from the WTC (class of ‘01, but my brother was there), I will never be comfy with casual references to 9/11. But, your mileage may vary. And, in the words of the legendary Tina Turner, I don’t really wanna fight no more: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj3WhcGoSA4
Fun trivia: I recently learned (via listening to Marc Maron’s podcast with Rick Rubin) that Mick Jagger modeled his dance moves after Tina Turner’s. Once you know it, you can’t unsee it. Have a lovely day, folks.
Ok. That made it worth coming here. Genius! Tell me chat GPT didn't help you!
@egs yesterday and @Adam S today and @LMS every day make this blog worth the price of admission.
@Clare: How would you even pronounce "mudeel"? I'd pronounce it as if the clue were, "Sound heard at the cows' poker game?"
Didn't know either SEGAR or WITH A GOAT.
Guessed WITH A COAT and WITH A BOAT before getting it right.
Seems wrong to have an obscure person's name crossing a nonsense rhyme, especially on a Tuesday.
Thanks for this added joy!
Liked the puzzle, but it’s Claire’s Psych reference that truly made me smile - thanks for a great start to a Tuesday. Pineapples for everyone!
Interesting whack at a theme - the grid spanner at the center even looks somewhat majestic (there’s an adjective that I’ll bet is not frequently associated with Dr. Seuss books). Nice Tuesday effort.
I’m disappointed that there is no ASS today, and only one GAM and one TATA, crossing A BRA no less.
Yes, Clare, I had the same all access sale banner. Most irritatingly, if you click on it, NOWHERE does it tell you the price (you have to follow another, non-obvious link).
Puzzle not to my taste at all. The theme seems pretty weak and using both GOAT and BOAT cheapens it. There is the short, asymmetrical SAMIAM hanging out there. There are ABRA and SLOE and RONA and EMIR and HIHO and AIL/ILLS – croswordese all. And the long downs – FORSAKEN and NUTRIENT – are pretty dull. I miss the bears.
@LMS, I found your post today so very couth. And @Adam S, I hope Rex stops by today to read your hilarious pastiche.
I found this one pretty challenging because I couldn’t really remember the places and ways in which GEAH were eaten. I needed all the crosses and I hd the same problem as @Weezie on the SEGAR/GOAT crossing. Embarrassingly, I also had to run the alphabet on the “tea or coffee” clue, and it took a while to get to the W for BREW. I wasn’t seeing WE MET because I had sieges before BESETS. (I read “attacks” as a noun.)
I would have loved to see both pairings from GEAH rhyme instead of just “ON A BOAT” and “WITH A GOAT.”
SHROOMS are having a moment.
Clare, thanks for enlightening us on the GEAH backstory and the Korean use of TMI. They use the English letters? I don’t think the expression would work with characters. @LMS, do give INSTA a try. Yes, lots of people just post selfies and TMI (in the Korean sense) like what they had for breakfast, but others post really interesting photography, and you can follow the ones you like and ignore the selfies. It’s the only social medium I really like.
@lms: Belva! Today you were definitely not spired.
The theme is such a smiler that if I had any nits to whine about, I wouldn't. I don't, though. I enjoyed the dated word usage, e.g. kempt, in a few spots, though others may complain.
I’ve read this book so many times
Its bouncy feel and chimey rhymes
I saw the answer IN THE RAIN
And bam-boom-bam it hit my brain
That I was hearing SAM I AM
Those words were like a cablegram
And now I'm filled with bounce and song
I'll be iambing all day long
RONA? I get it - corona - but I've just never heard or seen it used regarding COVID. Hm, another example of slang ephemera? "Yah, I caught rona from some rando fer sher." Rona Barrett is still around, btw.
Nice puzzle. Nice write up. A little disappointed we didn’t get an RP temper tantrum over the gratuitous Harry Potter reference LOL.
I will never be a Dr. Seuss fan - so the tribute falls flat for me. At a minimum I would have thought the themers would all rhyme?
Overall fill is rough - RGB and MLK? Agree with Clare on RONA. The 5 or 6 CALC classes I took were required - the PRE is misplaced.
Not much here for me today.
Neko covering Hank
You, Clare, are a bore.
Hilarious
Well ... this took me back, way back to when my kids were young. But, alas, my youngest is almost eligible for AARP.
And while in college (early 60s) a SLOE gin fizz was da bomb (or however we described it then).
What could be more fun than revisiting our youth?
=================
PS - Adam S (12:19) FTW!
Any puzzle with TONTO in it immediately makes my blood boil. Unless you clue it as “Stupid in Spanish”. Because it’s a horrid stereotype of native Americans and as mentioned literally means Stupid. did not help that there was a ton of crossword-see and how many religious clues do we need? Honestly there was not much to enjoy about the theme either. Just the regurgitation of a children’s book. Please puzzle creators, think about what you are doing.
Brilliant!
I have great affection for Dr. Seuss and liked the puzzle (and Claire’s write-up, as I always do). I did have a little problem with REPRO and RIPSON bc I wanted REtRO first.
I want to say that I’m sick of all the opprobrium directed toward the Harry Potter books. It’s possible to condemn an author or artist’s personal views or behavior without consigning their entire body of work to the ash heap. The HP stories are some of the most imaginative and fun I’ve ever read and that hasn’t changed because I think the author has despicable opinions. I don’t agree with the opinions or conduct of lots of artists and authors but I’m still allowed to appreciate their work. I think we should be able to separate the art from the personal life of the artist.
Breezy Tuesday, and another day when I saw the (revealer) clue for GREENEGGSANDHAM and wrote it in instanter, thus filling the middle of the puzz and making everything even easier than it already was. Oh well. Also, there's my EMMA again. Heads up Roo, she's starting to pull ahead.
I like what you were doing with the missing prefixes, LMS. I remember a piece in the New Yorker a while ago that included just about all the words like that that exist.
Nice sunny write up, Clare. I was expecting OFL and something like "Why this one? Why not Hop on Pop?" And so on. Your little closing poem reminded me that George Carlin did a whole bit about his hair, same rhyme, obviously, that includes "Au contraire, mon frere!".
Congrats on the debut, GB. A Great Beginning, and thanks for all the fun.
.
An enjoyable puzzle to solve, and fairly challenging for a Tuesday. I only had trouble in the SE, because I never heard COVID-19 referred to as RONA. Am I the only one?
@Adam S (12:19) - MARVELOUS !!! SEUSSific!
Hi Clare! Thanks for the fun write up. It's more than fair to say I haven't given K-Pop much of a listen but a co-worker is a huge BTS fan, so I'll give it a try today. (And after finishing watching the 9-hours of tv that is 'Physical:100' on Netflix this weekend, I think I might be in the midst of a Korean pop culture phase.)
As for the puzzle, I enjoyed the theme and the fun of it. And except for a personal Natick (YMMV) cross of BILGE and MUDEEL, it was a quick and whoosh-whoosh-whoosh solve. (Just looked it up: BILGE meaning nonsense or rubbish is listed as being informal. Huh.)
RONA definitely made me bristle, and I agree with Weezie that a breezy reference to a disease that has killed over a million people in the U.S. in the last three years may be a little insensitive.
Amy: one of Dr. Seuss's early books is And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street. He's from Springfield, MA. I used to park on Mulberry Street and walk to work when I lived there. Have eschewed the green eggs, even on St. Patty's Day (which is big in MA), and do not put hats on my cats.
That is so inspired, @Adam S! Just plain wonderful!
I'll be dating myself by saying that the kiddie poet of my childhood was A.A Milne, not Dr. Seuss. And therefore my entire knowledge of the particular poem around which this entire puzzle has been built boils down to:
"I do not like GREEN EGGS AND HAM.
I do not like it (them?), SAMIAM."
But how and where SAMIAM doesn't like it/them I have no idea. Well, I suppose I have an idea now. I could try to reconstruct it. The BOAT line rhymes with the GOAT line, yes?
What a truly odd thing to do -- to build a puzzle around the specific details in one poem that far from everyone knows.
But it gave us @Adam S today, so it's not all bad.
I really like the rhythm of the book — it’s very catchy. Cute puzzle, but…. RONA??? Really? Please, somebody, make that word go die a horrible death somewhere.
We also just finished Physical:100 and were absolutely obsessed. It was such a welcome difference from American shows of the same general premise. The way (especially after the first few eps) the competitors rooted for each other, were excited to simply have the opportunity to compete and educate the world about their sports, and generally showed humility and integrity was such a joy to behold. We rooted for Yoshihiro Akiyama (aka Choo Sung-Hoon), who was both incredibly talented and very easy on the eyes. What a silver fox.
Hey, there are two reasons onions make you cry. One is that the onion is very old. Not too common.
The far more common explanation is that your knife isn't sharp enough, so it crushes the cells in the onion rather than cutting cleanly through them. Take your knife to a knife sharpener if you don't have an electric one. It'll fix it, I promise.
HI HO. After yesterday’s Crosswords 101 and today’s Dr. Seuss, I’m starting to wonder what tomorrow may bring. Nursery rhymes?
I was never a big fan of this line of childhood literature. Not sure why but I think the timing was just a little off. Anyway for that reason, the theme probably did not resonate with me as it may have with others. Still, it’s a solid puzzle made fun with the light hearted entries. It’s almost impossible to say SAM I AM without smiling. Just right for a Toozeday and I congratulate Gia on the debut. Very exciting.
Yes, “Jesus WEPT” at John 11:35 is known as the shortest verse in the Holy Bible. Esther 8:9 is the longest. The shortest (and also middle) chapter is Psalm 117, then Psalm 119 the longest. And there you have your perfectly useless trivia lesson for the day.
Clare, always a pleasant breath of fresh air to read your critiques. You’ll probably gets lots of ONION tips today - and here’s another one. Cut off the stem end and peel back the outer layers. Then put it cut-side-down in a bowl of water deep enough to almost cover it. Let it soak at least an hour but longer is fine. That will take the heat out of most but I agree with @okanaganer that sweet onions are always your best bet.
No chance of eating my EGGS in the RAIN today but on a BOAT is a possibility. Spring is definitely knocking on the door. If I can get some GREEN paint on my toenails first, I may even break out the sandals. TA TA!
Uniclue:
Opted to hang loose
(answer below)
Seemed like a normal Tuesday. Would have liked to have two rhymed couplets instead of one (BOAT/GOAT yay, RAIN/TREE boo).
SEGAR a genuine woe, but fairly crossed.
Uniclue answer:
FORSAKENABRA
Thank you to the constructor, to Clare, and to @Adam S for this morning's smiles. The only thing wrong with the puzzle that I could see was that it wasn't Fox in Socks.
Do-over: ON A gOAT x gIRDS until a second GOAT showed up and I checked the cross for the first one. Help from previous puzzles: SEGAR. New to me: MUD EEL. Needed an alphabet run for R?NA (maybe a sign of abhorrence).
Sam I am is NOT the "one who won't take no for an answer". He is the one who must be convinced to try Green Eggs and Ham. The character who will not take no for an answer has no name.
Wow, 42 comments by 9 AM!
I’m less familiar with Dr. Seuss’s work than many, but you’d have to live under a rock to be unaware of GREEN EGGS AND HAM. And I vaguely remembered all those “in a box”/“with a fox” rhymes, so that helped. Like most, I got the first two themers before the revealer and did wonder what was going on, but then it all fell into place. Cheery Tuesday theme.
More children’s sing-song with HI-HO. I wonder why it’s HI-HO in the Dell and “heigh-HO” for the Seven Dwarves. I’ve never noticed any difference in pronunciation. Here’s Peggy Lee to keep us in a happy mood.
And, by the way,
You're wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn't rejoice
If you're calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice (or Zoice).
Not much problem anywhere although I did finish up with the REtRO/REPRO snag and couldn’t initially fathom [Collect it all!]. We got SKINNY again. And I also liked LOITER, FORSAKEN (which has a dreamy, romantically sad feel to me) and the lowly MUD EEL. MUD EELs, some of whom are Amphiumas (great word!) and others of whom are Greater Sirens, inhabit the wetlands of Florida. They look like the T-Rexes of salamanders because they have tiny forelimbs on large bodies.
@Adam S and @Lewis -- loved your rhymes.
UNICLUES:
1. Get close so you can bask in the reflected glory of a legend.
2. Captain with bad personal hygiene who fails to enforce discipline or get the decks swabbed.
3. Make fancy coffee in the staffroom, then hang around hoping that the colleague you’re crushing on will come in to get some.
4. Calcium or iron or folic acid?
5. A murder of crows, roosting.
6. Fedora that subtly changes shape at the touch of a button.
7. Magic word that’s been abandoned by three syllables.
1. ABIDE WITH A G.O.A.T.
2. SLOB ON A BOAT
3. BREW, LOITER
4. ELLE NUTRIENT
5. MOBS IN A TREE (~)
6. INSTA-TOP-HAT
7. FORSAKEN ABRA
[SB: yd, -1. The alternating pattern of 0 and -1 continues. Missed this should’ve.]
There's a touch of elegance in this puzzle: The only answers that contain words from “Green Eggs And Ham” are theme answers. I don’t know if Gia intended this, but if she did, brava!
It’s an excellently crafted puzzle with some lovely non-theme answers, such as MUD EEL, ABIDE, TOP HAT, FORSAKEN, and even LOITER. I like the second row that contains both ONION and WEPT. And something unusual – there are more O’s than A’s in the grid!
Congratulations on your debut, Gia. This was a smash, and I am eager to see what you come up with next. Thank you!
JJK: I can totally agree with your comments on JKR, as written in a my recent posts. To quote Toscanini on Richard Strauss: to
Strauss the composer I take off my hat. To Strauss the man I put it back on.
Hey All !
@Bob Mills 8:18
Yes, you are the only one.
😜😁
Neat Seussian puz.
Fun solve, it was.
MUD EEL?
For real?
With a "what the heck"
Gia threw in a PREREQ.
ILLS and AUL are your doom, If you partake in SHROOMs.
Getting off the rails...
Liked todays puz. For the reputable "worse day" of puzs, this one elevated the day. And ASS free! First one this year? (Har, I'm sure it's not.)
SW corner came out surprisingly clean, considering you have two crossing Themers down there.
Fun fact: EDSELS were a flop when they first came out, nearly bankrupted Ford (pre-Mustang, imagine if there was never a Mustang!), but now they are collector cars worth a ton of money! Imagine that. The last year, 1961, they finally got rid of that wacky front end that looked sorta kinda vaginal.
With that SPIT inducing image, this SIMP will say TATA.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
had the REtRO/REPRO write over. Whats not to like about Dr Seuss? Loved his stuff as a kid and brings back sweet memories. The original How the Grinch Stole Christmas is required annual viewing in my house. Oh, I also had upATREE before INATREE. This is the first time in years I solved with the NYT App. it snowed here last night and, as such, the newspaper was not delivered. A measly two inches and they could not deliver the paper! Service these days.
Hi Clare!
HARRY POTTER IS #1! I know, I know, the author is a symptom of all things wrong in humanity with her belligerent stance hating a class of people, but she also happened to write a delightful series of books about a bad as all heck Hermione Granger and Emma Watson, who seems to be a wonderful human, portrayed her gracefully.
Speaking of intolerance, Dr. Seuss is on the list of authors embraced by racists for using stereotypical tropes. Like Roald Dahl, I'm betting his heirs are working to remedy the offending content, and they'll be skewered as cancelers of the culture too.
Early on, one of 45s sons said he'd gotten the RONA in this privileged bro voice like it was a joke. So looks like this puzzle reminds me of a lot of negativity.
It's all so meh.
Cute puzzle and fun to do anyway.
I found it quite fast until a few challenging crosses in the southwest. A couple lucky guesses on MUDEEL and IN A TREE and ELWES and SEGAR meant I didn't need to Go-ogle and I walk away as dumb as I arrived.
SKINNY: the sequel!
BILGE comes in at 23 on my favorite words list after ALIAS and before AVENGE.
Uniclues:
1 Hairy dude in cut-off jeans standing next to a bevy of bikini beauties as the smell of coconut tanning oil and sea air wafts about filled with the squeals of seagulls and giggles.
2 Crows. Actually, that would be murders.
3 Go to yoga.
4 Give him a wrench, apparently.
5 A carrot and a celery stick for Macpherson.
6 Construction paper and Elmer's glue.
1 SLOB ON A BOAT
2 MOBS IN A TREE (~)
3 ABIDE WITH A GOAT
4 ENABLE LENO ERR (~)
5 ELLE NUTRIENT
6 INSTA TOPHAT
Thx, Gia; a KEMPT production! :)
Hi Clare; always nice to see you! :)
Med (felt a bit tougher, tho).
Not familiar with GREEN EGGS AND HAM, other than SAM I AM, so had to count on fair crosses. SEGAR and the GOAT was the last fill.
Learned the 'E' in E. C. SEGAR stands for 'Elzie'.
Enjoyed the solve! :)
___
@Crocers: 3 hr. solve (whew!), with the NW being the toughest to suss out. Felt somewhat lucky to finish this one. :)
___
On to Natan Last's Mon. New Yorker. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@Adam S 12:19 AM
+1
@Clare
Meant to say, if you chew gum (or at least make the chewing motion sans gum) whilst commencing ONION cutting, it's said to waylay the tears. Maybe have some chewy stuff available? Like taffy?
RooMonster Cry Me A River Gy
@Loren Muse Smith 3:38 AM
Having worked in the coffee business for more than a decade, cute orders like "skinny" grew increasingly grating. Just tell us what you want like a normal human, get off your stupid phone, smile, and really, we'd love to chat but we're under siege back here so keep the "I'm divorcing my husband" stories succinct.
Funa and easy puzzle. As with @Nancy, I grew up on A.A. Milne (plus Little Golden Books), but my kids grew up on Dr. Seuss, so I'm pretty familiar with this one. Once I got to the clue for IN THE RAIN the revealer was a gimme.
Some of the books may have been banned some places, but the big fuss came when his estate decided not to republish a small number of them because of overly racist caricatures in the drawings. Unlike Roald Dahl's publishers, they realized it would be a travesty to revise them. They were slammed for censorship, but it's not censorship for an author (or the author's representatives) to withhold some of that author's work.
WE MET seems wrong; in the context as clued, one would say "WE've MET," perhaps with a certain coldness. WE MET needs a qualifier, e.g., "Yes, we met walking up to the door."
I was going to complain that SLOB was just another form of "slovenly" in the clue, but it turns out that they are completely different etymologically; slob comes from an Irish word for mud, rather than from sloven.
I'd never heard of MUD EELs either, but I love the new way of getting an eel into the grid. I wonder if there are mud oreos?
Adam S., great poem! This is the second day in a row the first comment has been a terrific satire of @Rex that must have taken some time to compose. How did you manage to get it in before any other comments?
My three favorite authors are William Faulkner, John LeCarré and Dr. Suess. Even so, this is a really flimsy theme. @Adam S's poem is brilliant, but it also encapsulates how I feel.
GOSOLO and BIGASK are pretty good, but the rest is drab. Truthfully, getting stuck for a bit with REtRO was the most interesting part of my solve.
SCOT, a good friend in college, was from OHIO.
RONA is such BS -- does anyone actually ever say that? I can only imagine it being spoken in a mock stoner/surfer voice: "Duuuude, I got the RONA last week. I like SHROOMs way better!"
Actually @egs was second yesterday, not first. But still...
going back and editing books is crazy to me, ridiculous. such sensitivity these days. what’s next? Are they going to cover up Michelangelo’s David? Generations from now they will be laughing at us
The "kempt" comments, plus LMS's post reminds me of this from Jack Handy in the NYer. How I Met My Wife:
It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to rush it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory char- acter who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.
inre Onions and Tears: I agree with Jim about getting a sharp knife so you slice rather than crush the onion. Also, buying the sweet ones seems to help.
I was glad to see it was Clare Tuesday after getting to the bottom of the puzzle with the cutesy RONA, EMMA clued as HP, plus the self cancelled Dr Seuss setting off the right wing media frenzy.
I had fun remembering the books I read as a kid, then as a parent.
I loved finding out that GREEN EGGS AND HAM was written with only 50 words. Thank you, Claire, for the fun fact and for telling us what the words were.
As for the puzzle, well, at least it wasn’t a Harry Potter book.
I have just recovered from RONA. Fortunately, it was fairly mild. Probably Covid 17 or 18.
@Adam S. I really appreciate the fact that your rhythm was true to the original. Top-notch job! And @LMS, your entry today was wonderful, but I’m sure I’ll soon forget it, as it left a delible impression on me.
I don’t have the energy to compose an ode TOPHAT right now, but GREENEGGSANDHAM are phat in my book, as well as in Dr. Seuss’s. It’s noteworthy that this puzzle sports 78 words, while GE&H utilizes only 50. But if ISLAM the puzzle, it’s only to make it better. Not that there’s a TONTO improve on here. Really original theme, well executed. Thanks and congrats on the debut, Gia Bosko.
@Anonymous (8:53) Sam-I-Am is the little guy in red hat & yellow fur, who keeps pestering the un-named character (who looks sorta like the Grinch, but isn’t green) who refuses to eat GE&H, until…..SPOILER ALERT!…he does try them and likes them!
If I knew how to embed a photo, I could’ve saved us all those words.
I love that book! As a former Latin teacher, I would ask students to complete a page or two starting “Amasne ea….” when we got to prepositional phrases. (“Would you eat…” had to be saved til later because the subjunctive mood)
Amasne ea cum servo? Amasne ea in rivo?
The great thing was, as long as you paired nouns from the same declension, they always rhymed!
Many apologies to Clare for misspelling her name in the top comment. And many thanks for all the kind comments on my Seuss parody. In response to a few specific points:
- @Anon 5.26. No ChatGPT involved. Not that I'm above using it as a helper, but it would have been a time suck here - especially as it doesn't have access to the internet and so couldn't find the crossword. I was, however, curious about what it could do with the prompt and will put the ChatGPT version at the end of this post.
- @Barbara S. Never knew the pronunciation of Seuss. That's a great rhyme!
- @jberg. The crossword publication time is great for West Coast schedules. I solved just after 10ET/7PT which left plenty of time before the blog came out to play with the poem.
Here's the ChatGPT version:
PROMPT:
Write a parody of Dr Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham that involves Rex Parker criticising a New York Times crossword with a Green Eggs and Ham theme. The NEw York Times Crossword is edited by Will Shortz, so you can replace Sam-I-am with Will-I-am.
CHATGPT RESPONSE:
Will-I-am, Will-I-am,
I do not like this crossword scam.
I do not like it, Sam-I-am.
I do not like this clue, you see,
It doesn't make sense to me.
I do not like it in a house,
I do not like it with a mouse.
I do not like this crossword game,
It's too obscure, it's quite insane.
I do not like it, Sam-I-am,
I do not like this Will-I-am.
I do not like these words so rare,
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like this theme so green,
It's the worst I've ever seen.
I do not like it in the Times,
I do not like it with these rhymes.
I do not like it, Sam-I-am,
I do not like this Will-I-am.
But Will-I-am just smiles and grins,
He thinks this crossword is a win.
He says it's clever, it's so smart,
But it just hurts my brain and heart.
So Will-I-am, Will-I-am,
I still do not like this crossword scam.
I do not like it, Sam-I-am,
I do not like this Will-I-am.
As so often with ChatGPT, this manages to be scarily impressive on one level and give me some confidence that we've still got a few decades before the machines fully overtake us on another.
@Mary M
I emailed you my Embedding Cheat Sheet. I hope it helps in the future.
Thanks for that, Adam S! ChatGPT was a fun read.
To sum up the blog for today,
Here is WILL.I.AM, the rapper, singing What I Am on Sesame Street.
No one else has mentioned it but I couldn’t help thinking of the cat in the hat poem on aging. While I’d happily give credit to the author, my googling to determine who actually wrote it was inconclusive. But it’s at least Dr. Seuss related:
“I cannot see
I cannot pee
I cannot chew
I cannot screw
Oh my God, what can I do?
My memory shrinks
My hearing stinks
No sense of smell
I look like hell
My mood is bad – can you tell?
My body’s drooping
Have trouble pooping
The golden years have come at last
The golden years can kiss my ass.”
"... it’s not user-friendly to a Luddite like me." -- LMS
A Luddite like you, Loren??? No one who changes their avatar every single day -- mostly at four in the morning of all ungodly hours to try to cope with such an undertaking -- can possibly be considered a Luddite.
No, for a real dyed-in-the-wool Luddite you must instead turn to me. To wit: For months and months I didn't have an avatar at all because I didn't have the slightest idea how to create one. I think I burbled to our @Hartley at some point that if I were able to create an avatar it would probably be an image of Central Park. Within hours I had been gifted with such an avatar -- selected by @Hartley and skillfully attached to my computer screen in NYC all the way from CT. I still have absolutely no idea how she did it.
I'm afraid, Loren, that I win the Luddite competition hands down.
@burtonkd-That's exactly the New Yorker piece I was referring to earlier this AM. Nicely done. Any chance you could come up with the whole Carlin "Hair" poem?
PS-@Roo-meant to say earlier, watch out. EMMA references are gaining on you.
Wish the mods would have disallowed this comment 🤐
Like @Barbara S. darlin and some others, M&A knows very little about Dr. Seuss stuff. As a kid, my go-to fave kit lit was Uncle $crooge comic books. Other, related Duck comics were also OK. And they were only 10 cents, which I could (just barely) afford. Would Go waddle over Solo to my nearby small-town library occasionally [mom didn't drive], and did run into some Seuss books on the library shelves. My youthful impression was that the Seuss-book artwork looked pretty day-um schlocky and intimidatin. So, never checked a Seuss book out from the library. Thought it was part of some weird cult.
Anyhoo, my lack of Seuss knowledge didn't seem to slow up the solvequest much. Hey -- I guess M&A is decent at solvin Non-Seuss-Only-clues style.
Nice sub blog, Clare Bear darlin. (Sorry U didn't get to be a themer in yesterday's puz.)
fave stuff: MUDEEL in the BILGE. SHROOM. SKINNY & SNOTTY. GOSOLO clue.
staff weeject picks: RBG & MLK. Worthy folks to be honored, albeit abbreviatedly, by the puz. Not to be confused with: Red BillyGoat with MiLK, of course.
Thanx for readin some Seuss to us, Ms. Bosko darlin. And congratz on yer primo debut.
Masked & Anonymo1U
p.s. M&A can't hardly complain about a no-know Dr. Seuss theme, after himself just havin published a "Mongolian Death Worm" runtpuz theme.
p.p.s.s. As a kid, I always thought TONTO was a cool dude, worthy of much respect. So did the Lone Ranger. Then we got the Johnny Depp version, and that sorta changed my I-guess-naive outlook.
**gruntz**
I've been watching k-dramas and listening to k-pop for 10 years - which inspired me to start learning Korean 3 years ago! (As a "senior" I can audit the class at no cost at Portland State U). I really don't like American reality TV shows so was reluctant to watch Physical 100. But the Korean competitors were so much fun - and I loved their respect for each other. The team events were incredible! And the ancient mythology challenge was so clever! I highly recommend this show as well, Weezie 👍
Easy breezy puzzle today with only TONTO and RONA being the usual subjects for flinching.
@Whatsname, I’m kind of like you. I believe I was a little past the age of a “sit on the lap of parent read aloud” book like Dr. Seuss’s but I DID see them in the waiting room of my pediatrician. And likely my children’s pediatrician. At any rate, @Nancy and @jberg, I ALSO read A.A. Milne AND Little Golden Books. In my mind the Dr. Seuss books made Little Golden Books seem difficult and A.A. Milne…no comparison! I guess Dr. Seuss books were “cute and colorful” but if you had already mastered the first few first grade primers (I think that is kindergarten level now) I’d think one read-through would be enough. Well. I DID go on about that!
TL;DR…to me Dr Seuss level books were designed to be read to a very young child while going through the pictures.
Good avatar today @LMS!
I generally buy onions a day or two before I plan to use them, so I put them in the refrigerator. The chill blunts the lachrymator effect when you chop them up. Not entirely, but it helps.
Thursday is Dr. Seuss's birthday. We didn't have much in the way of more contemporary children's books growing up – it was mostly older stuff, like collections of Grimm's fairy tales. Maybe a friend owned a few Seusses, because I was vaguely aware of them. I remember I didn't like the drawings.
Debuting on the Billboard chart this week in 1972
Sometimes the comments seem out of place.
When you comment, using your phone, you can "reply" (by pushing the blue reply prompt) to a comment and your reply is shown right below the post you are reponding to.
The listed comments ,when viewed on a desktop, unfortunately are in posted order. No "reply" prompt available.
Two examples today are: "Wish the mods would have disallowed this comment 🤐"
and "Hilarious."
Lol! Brilliant!
@AdamS
👍‼️
Since we are on a ChatGPT kick. Last night I tried to get ChatGPT to do the Spelling Bee. It could not do it. It kept using letters that weren't on the list, even after I reminded it not to use them. I told it the words had to be in the dictionary -- apparently OpenAI can't afford a dictionary for ChatGPT so its response was "I apologize for the mistake. "Larky" may not be a common word and may not be found in all dictionaries. As an AI language model, my training data includes a vast amount of text, including books, articles, and web pages, but it's possible that some of the words I generate may not be recognized by all dictionaries."
So for all the hype, this AI can't perform a relatively simple function.
Not loving SEGAR/GOAT either. Could be BOAT/COAT/MOAT as well.
Also not loving that GOAT and BOAT rhyme but none of the other theme answers do. Should be no rhyming pair or more than one rhyming pair IMO.
@AdamS 🤩 🎉 👏🏾 ❣️
Thought the top half of the puzzle was super-easy, and the bottom half much tougher. Ended up with a weird DNF: Thought calc required a Prime Q. Wrote in the I, and then discovered there was no M in the answer. Somehow I left the I in, and totally missed PREREQ. Never heard of that SEGAR character.
I am delighted that @LMS finally got her Muse back. Like to know how, but I suppose she thought telling us would be TMI.
A word in support of TONTO: Yes, he talked funny, and more like some Indian in a Cooper tale than, probably, a member of a Texas tribe. But every time, he was right, and the Lone Ranger was wrong. Probably no character in filmdom did more to convince we White folk that Indians were wise souls and usually smarter than anyone else. Indeed, TONTO's example may have convinced many of us to occasionally nauseate ourselves with peyote buttons -- hey, it was Indian, it was traditional, it must be good for us in the end. Right?
Agree with a lot of your sentiment in this!
Forsaken was a great down which I was able to grab with only a letter or two, which gave me the momentum to really move through the puzzle.
My only big grip was with Bilge.
I guess it can be a noun meaning waste..I mean, it is...but I'm more familiar with "The Bilge", which is the thing that does the bilging, as a verb, I never really thought about the scum coming out as "bilge"...
But that's why we do the puzzles I guess, gotta learn and have fun!
@Nancy, you made me laugh with your comment about @Loren and Luddite. Loren might be “selectively” a Luddite for certain things. For instance, my daughter left a position in a BIG tech company because she said “the internet is stealing my soul.” She THEN proceeded to get an all out “dumb” phone because she didn’t want to be addicted to her phone. Yes, JUST a phone (clamshell) AND she could only message through (I think it was called) TTY (just the phone pad, no keyboard pops up) plus she couldn’t receive “group texts” (sometimes I wish I couldn’t). She referred to herself as a partial Luddite. (She NOW has a “semi-smart” phone with a pop up keyboard and the ability to group message. Let’s face it, TODAY if you work, at most jobs you are forced to learn much of these things to do your job. Others learn because it is a challenge. Like @Loren, not only do I NOT see the value of INSTA (because of what Loren said) given the time I would take to master it. So, in converting a noun to a verb I Luddite it. I can technically “embed” a link in this blog but since I use an iPad for the blog, it is just too darned time-intensive for me to go through the rigamarole to create a hyper-link. So, maybe I’m a Luddite with THAT. Anyway, I think Luddite has transformed in some ways to a “state of mind” today. Wow. I’m wordy today.
This puzzle charmed me as did Theodor Geisel when I was a child. Thanks Clare for the interesting and even-handed writeup. Glad to be spared a Rex rant against books with stereotypes, JKR references, American Indian slurs, and casual references to the coronavirus (though I would agreed on the last one - RONA ugh).
@Clare - another hand up for BTS. If you haven’t seen it - or for anyone else interested in 9+ minutes of hilarity - I recommend watching JamesCordon’s (Late Late Show) “crosswalk concert” -filmed outside the studio in Los Angeles — with BTS. Cordon is the ultimate ‘straight man’ (in the comedic sense) and BTS as usual is charming, fun, and talented. Since I still haven’t figured out how to embed a link (Luddite contender here!) here is the url to c/p (so 17th century!):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A8KQhwmdZIw
Gotta add, the very best Seuss book has to be Fox in Socks. I never tired of reading it to my kids, and the only problem was, I sometimes was overwhelmed by fits of laughter. Especially when I read, "I can't blab such blibber-blubber! My tongue isn't made of rubber."
@LMS. Thanks, as always for the humor, but especially for reminding me of the list my brother and I used to keep of all the “dis-“ and “in-“ words. It caught on and occasionally Gran would, as she eyeballed is on our way out the door for school tell us that we were looking unusually heveled or kempt.
I'll start by asking if I can sit with @Adam S 12:19 and perhaps share a few GREEN EGGS with him....
Then I'll move on to my Dr. Seuss story:
I was first introduced to Seuss at about the age of 7. I had flown from to Havana to Malibu to visit my grandmother for the first time. My English was iffy at best, but I loved having anyone read to me and looking at pictures. Nana had some friends who lived down the street and they'd invite me to watch Saturday cartoons and have a go at the children's books they had strewn all around. It was then that I looked at the Dr. Seuss creations. They scared me. I didn't like any of his drawings and I couldn't understand his poetry.
Many years later, and when I returned to live in the States, my first job was telephone soliciting. I worked for a book publishing company and my job was to use my "charming" accent to persuade poor suckers to buy books. Books they tried to push on the hapless were Seuss. I still didn't understand why. I tried reading him again but he still scared me. I figured this was just a phase and I'd get over it. There were still so many strange things I never understood about my country.
Years later, I was married and reading books to my children. Like @Nancy, my go to was always Milne. I would draw a Pooh Bear or a Roo for my kids and hang it on the wall.
Well, as luck would have it, they read Seuss in school....They watched the Grinch on TV and they loved everything he wrote and drew. And so...my house was full of GREEN EGGS AND HAM.
Just today, I learned 6 books of his have been banned. I'll read about it and I suppose I will be enlightened. My only complaint about him was that his drawings scared me as a child. As an adult, not so much and I could appreciate the whimsy in his child-like poetry. I bought "Oh The Places You'll Go" for both of my children and they still have it. They read it to their children and I'm sure their children will read it to theirs...And so it goes.....
Now as far as TONTO..... Talk about a word disappointment!. Apart from the Saturday cartoons, the Lone Ranger was one of my favorite things to watch. He was a bit of my hero along with Roy Rogers and the rest of the "good" guys. I kept asking everyone why they named him "silly." He was anything but. No one had an answer. Words don't bother me but at least clue them in some sort of true way. How about "Silly guy in Oaxaca?"...Hah...!
Anyway, I thought this an enjoyable Tuesday. I learned something new and I get to read all of the interesting comments. Clare, as usual, is always enjoyable to read.
@Weezie: amen to “doing the right thing.” How about the irony of legislative “book banning” and yet having elementary teachers with pathetically funded school libraries being severely chastised for attempting to remove from the collection the very Seuss books the author’s estate has taken care to stop publication.
Hi Clare! Great post today. Your “mudeel” conundrum made me laugh. I have often had the same problem. My multi-word brain just turns off and I end ip red faced. Only recently, I did for the second time! The clue was “flat” and the answer TWOD. As in two dimensional, Two D. And it hadn’t been that long since it had appeared in a puzzle. So I am just going to add the word twod to my vocab. If we can truncate everything else like INSTA, why not say something flat is twod?
This debut was so much fun. And Clare’s comments and all the posts made it more so.
Totally agree about “Rona”. A non -word, even as slang. During the entire pandemic I never once heard that as a shorthand for Coronavirus. And a cross w/ Segar?
Another tip for chopping onions ... my sweetie wears her Burning Man goggles ... keeps them on a hook in the kitchen
No problem with the rhyme distribution in the themers: standard ABCB scheme, where 2 and 4 rhyme but 1 and 3 don't:
In the rain
/ on a boat
In a tree
/ with a goat
♪ Could it be
/ yes it could
Something's coming
/ something good ♪
Omg @GILL I…your submission today was PRICELESS! You said everything I meant to convey in my first post (from a different perspective) and MORE! ❤️
Clare, here's a hint that has nothing to do with crosswords. The next time you chop an onion, move the board 4-6 inches forward, away from your face. In short, don't look down on the onion, as the fumes go straight up. It takes a little longer and you are looking ahead at about 45 degrees instead of down on where you're chopping, but it will save you a lot of tears. Try it. It works. Good analysis of today's puzzle.
Well done! Thanks for the treat
Clare - try slicing (not pressing down and chopping) your onion with a very sharp knife. Chopping crushes the onion and releases compounds into the air, where they irritate your eyes. Slicing releases far fewer. Avoid mincing if possible.
We should eat some juevos verdes together… Wouldn’t that make Sam I Am happy? ❤️ back at you
@pablo has pointed out
EMMA is no doubt
Coming to take the lead
Of the name game, indeed!
But no need for me to fret
As my name is not yet
Going to float away soon
Like a helium balloon
So EMMA, have your time
I will start to climb
And get back to accrue
The good name of ROO.
😁
Roo
Let's see if I have this right. I will buy a sweet red onion that I will pop in the refrigerator for at least a day before I'm ready to use it. Before removing the onion from the refrigerator, I will put on a pair of tight-fitting goggles and stuff a big piece of bread into my mouth, allowing a small portion to protrude over my lip. I will submerge the onion in a deep bowl of water. I will then place the deep bowl of water on a cutting board that's on a 48 degree slant away from me so that the onion is already impossible to see and then I will also look completely in the opposite direction as I take the sharpest knife that anyone in the world has ever used and slice hard and deep and quickly -- avoiding any delicate chopping or dicing or mincing motions that might make the onion unhappy.
Thanks so much, everyone. A class action lawsuit is likely to follow soon. Wait for it.
Nancy (5:12) I don’t always come back to read comments at the end of the day but yours made it worth the time. LOL.
@Nancy
Good one!
Kempt is a beautiful word. And, few people outside the crossword universe say the truly ugly "rona." Or, for that matter, "shrooms." (Shrooms is another one in wide NYTXword rotation these days.)
Of the 62 versions of the Bible in use today, 36 use "Jesus wept." 22 use more words, from "and Jesus wept" to "Jesus broke out in tears," and 4 use a variation of "Yeshua" rather than "Jesus." But no need to be specific in cluing, any more than when crosswords reference Disney bowdlerizations of children's literature, which is about all the children't lit they do reference if it's not Harry Potter. (Seven dwarfs? What names? And OMG how they wrecked Pooh. This week I've kept wondering why they didn't just sign Dahl's books over to Disney to mess with...) Emma's patronus was either a mud eel or a goat, I don't remember which.
But: I did like this puzzle quite a bit. I especially liked the combination of 14A and 9D. Very sweet. And, as I say at the top, Kempt is a beautiful word; far too underused.
Agree!
@ Gill I - First, I too was creeped out by Seuss as a child. Second, I had a dream about you last night - you ran an insurance office. Odd, because that's about the last career I could possibly associate with you. Just that, you had an insurance office.
No to Tonto. Just no.
FYI Elzie SEGAR has been a crossword staple for quite a while. His is one of those names I committed to memory early in my solving learning curve.
Some others who show up on occasion include:
Katey SAGAL - Actress - Married With Children, Sons of Anarchy
Bob SEGER - Detroit Rocker - Silver Bullet Band
Pete SEEGER - Folk singer
George SEGAL - Actor - Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Pete SEGAL - Director - 50 First Dates
About the dead tree edition delivery. Ditto in my city. Likewise 2" or less snow turned to rain. Weather as the excuse. But I can't stand the app so I printed it out.
Nice puzzle.
@Nancy...Ay Dios mío...I'm rolling in onions with tears down my face.....
@Pete 6:21.... Second Dios mío. Can I interest you in buying some of @Nancy's onions? If you should get injured, you'll be covered by our umbrella policy.... ;-)
@Roo-Well done you, and game on! I'll want to see some pROOf though.
Oops.
Great group of uniclues/answers.
Batting a thousand today.
FWIW Dr. Seuss had a very long life. And the racist stuff was early in his career (e.g. racist anti Japanese cartoons in WWII, wars are horrible and this is a typical by product.). Later on he produced Horton Hears a Who.
Dang! Too old for the Seuss stuff. I knew immediately I had no chance. Even if the themers could be pieced together with crosses, it would mean nada to me. That plus the irritating, intrusive orange banner at the top of the puzzle that would not go away convinced me to bail on this one.
The commentariat, however, has been in fine form today so all was not lost.
I watched the Lone Ranger shows on our small black and white T.V. when I was a kid. I always had a positive opinion of TONTO (8D). I thought he possessed a special power to analyze complex situation in an intuitive rather than a verbal, logical way. So as a kid, he was as much a hero to me as was the Lone Ranger. Maybe he chose his name so as to maintain a stealthy persona. That and his minimalist speech would make others think he was TONTO when really he was smarter than than they were. Advantage TONTO!
Perfect. Thanks for that.
@Nancy. Your onion summary had me in tears. I wonder if there’s any other “problem” that would draw such a diverse array of solutions, each certified to be the seldom-revealed “can’t miss” one.
Thank you!
Bravo! 👏🏼 Thanks for making my night!
YAAS!!! Fellow ARMY!!! I love seeing kpop references in puzzles, esp BTS of course. And LTB is such a great song.
I thought Malaika's write-up was fine, but just as most things strike her as "corny and obnoxious," I guess certain things strike me as rude and obnoxious, including feeling you have to use the f-word in a crossword puzzle review. I mean, really? Can't I even have my morning coffee before having to hear a twenty-something-year-old drop the f-bomb? A little restraint is not a bad thing.
THANK YOU
Ask will never be a noun.
INATREE is an ugly outlier.
If you’re going to have ONABOAT and WITHAGOAT along with INTHERAIN then you absolutely must include on a train
Today was worth it just for the comments, especially @Adam S and @muse. I too was struck by the half-words, including SHROOM from the other day. Some of the takeoffs on those were whelming.
The Good Doctor is a worthy tributee, for sure. Today he might have become a premier rap artist. The cat's hat off to him!
The puzzle itself was easy--until hitting the SE. Wow, that PREREQ was a tough get! Surely a first time (Q with no U in either direction). I see your frown, @M&A.
We are having HAM for Easter, but no GREENEGGS. Not, I'm guessing, a very good NUTRIENT. Birdie.
Wordle eagle...but missed a HIO because I thought SCION was good enough for a starter guess. Had I rejected that, I'd have used my go-to: yeah, that.
FORSAKEN ETHOS
TONTO MET WITHAGOAT,
EMMA WEPT ONABOAT.
--- SAM_I_AM
At one point I was more familiar with Hop on Pop but GREENEGGSANDHAM surely a classic.
Wordle par.
Post a Comment