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Relative difficulty: Easyish
Theme answers:
- GO TO A RESTAURANT (22A: Dine out) (goat)
- DUCT TAPE (35A: Aid in some makeshift repairs) (duck)
- PORE CLEANSER (38A: Blackhead remover) (pork)
- BEFORE PICTURE (62A: Part of many a weight-loss ad) (beef)
- BAKE IN THE SUN (85A: Lie out on a scorching day) (bacon)
- LAMP POST (89A: Landmark at the entrance to Narnia) (lamb)
Colorado State University (Colorado State or CSU) is a public land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University System. Colorado State University is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". It was founded in 1870 as Colorado Agricultural College and in 1935 was renamed the Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. In 1957, the Colorado General Assembly approved its current name, Colorado State University. [...] The Colorado State Rams compete in the NCAA Division I Mountain West conference. Swimmer and six-time Olympic gold medalist Amy Van Dyken is one of CSU's most notable athletes. The school renamed West Drive, which stretches along the west side of the Administration Building at the south end of CSU's Oval, Amy Van Dyken Way. (wikipedia)
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GO TO A RESTAURANT omg sorry I'm still laughing / dying inside over this answer. LOL, HOW DARE YOU indeed. I think I blacked out after that, somehow completing the puzzle without retaining much memory of any of it. The long Downs on the sides are kind of interesting. That's a nice little feature. Or ... it's the nicest feature of the puzzle, that's for sure. PANCAKE (as clued) and SLAMMER have some good energy. But the grid as a whole is rather bland, and the structure of the grid, woof, it's so horribly segmented. So many black squares, and those NE and SW corners are *ridiculously* cut off from the areas just beneath them. If you are in the NE corner, you cannot move down the grid without going All The Way Over, past the puzzle median, to AIRDROP at 41D: Apple wireless file transfer. Obviously the same holds true in reverse for the SE corner (gotta go allllll the way over to DECADES to move up). It feels really clunkily put together. I'm sorry I don't have more to say, or at least more to say that's positive. I just think this one missed the mark on every level—at the level of concept, execution, and overall fill. As for difficulty, there wasn't much. I think the hardest part for me was the DOUR DYED LOAF EUROS part. Lots of clues there I didn't understand. Had IDLE for LOAF (43D: Do nothing) and SOUR for DOUR (51A: Ill-humored) and had no idea what to make of the clue on EUROS (44D: Paris bar tender?) ("tender" here is "money"—so, the money you'd use at a Paris bar = EUROS). So that was a tough patch, but that's the only one, I think. I truly hope you found more to admire than I did.
Anything need explaining? A COT is [Where you might go down in the ranks?] because "go down" = "sleep" and "ranks" = "other soldiers." That's all for me on this one. See you next time.
I was about 1/3 through this puzzle when it hit me what the gimmick was. I thought to myself, “I hope someone covers the ears of any children at Rex’s house. He’ll despise this puzzle and be in XXX mode.”
ReplyDeleteMy favorite - had the constructor chosen to include it - would have been:
Teasing toy line-up - BARBIE QUEUE RIBS
Easy. No WOEs, no erasures, and no typos. I had no idea what was going on until I carefully read the revealer. I didn’t not like it quite as much as @Rex did, although I pretty much agree with his take on this one.
ReplyDeleteWhat does WOE stand for please? I’m new.
DeleteWOE = What On Earth? It’s when people here proudly proclaim their ignorance
DeleteEasiest Sunday I’ve ever seen. I prefer more of a fight. Didn’t even look at the theme until I was almost done, and when I finally did it was a big “ meh, is that all?”
ReplyDeleteThis is one time I fully agree with Rex. I usually make excuses for puzzles that I don't like in that I assume they are playing to the majority of solvers who struggle with every Sunday. But this one: if
ReplyDeletea puzzle could be considered objectively awful, this was it. For all the reasons Rex laid out. But it's just a puzzle. Have any of you been playing Phrazle, an offshoot of Wordle, where you have to guess a phrase? Half Wordle, half crossword. Great fun.
Yes, to Phrazle. Love it! On a 213 game winning streak. Maybe that's why!
DeleteActually, I must disagree with Rex, it substitutes phonically correct misspellings for the correct spellings, not a bad angle for the theme.
Delete55D I had pRE before ERE, other than that absolutely no resistance. I just kind of filled the whole thing in. I do not time myself but this has got to be my fastest Sunday ever. I am not complaining at all, these kind of puzzles even out those that kick my butt.
ReplyDeleteRex – you said, “I truly hope you found more to admire than I did.” No surprise that I did; I got a kick out of whispering each themer and hearing the MEAT SUBSTITUTE sounded out. That John found these phrases with the meat part at the beginning and was able to symmetricize them is laudable. I couldn’t come up with any that’d be grid worthy. Friar John? Nah. Velar consonants? Ok – this one works for me, but it’s obscure. (I will add that I’m executing velar fricatives all the time right now ‘cause of the pollen.)
ReplyDelete“aged” – “bled” – DYED. Sheesh.
I misread the number for Aurora's clue as being 38A, that PORE CLEANSER and briefly thought the Greeks could give the Pueblo a run for their money on the mythology front.
I love clues like 111A : “They may be long and shocking.” Hmm. Errant eyebrows (hi, Mom), false eyelashes, toenails, rogue chin whisker, ingrown hairs (thanks, TikTok).
I rarely hear BRO pronounced to rhyme with snow; it always rhymes the pho, as in the soup. Just an observation.
CSU, DIM SUM connection – I’m visiting my CSU vet school grad daughter in May in Boston, and I’ve requested that we GO TO A RESTAURANT (Rex – I hear you on its green paintness, but it is a phrase I say a ton.) that does the DIM SUM dealie. I’m so excited, and I’ma definitely eat a chicken foot. When in Rome and all that.
On the subject of does, does a DOE ever chase a buck? I thought pretty much it was the bucks chasing all the does who play hard to get. Except for that flirty little hart-chasing tart, Doe-Ralee, who got knocked up before she was two.
On the IDIOM vs adage discussion from yesterday. Here’s how I see it, and I think this is not my original thought. Maybe some linguistics professor in grad school? I FORGET.
1) An IDIOM is A + B + C = X. Spill the beans (A+B+C) = blab the secret (X). There’s no possibility that any part of the phrase is literal.
2) While I get that “never say never” may not qualify as an adage (more of a motto or credo), those words can take on a literal sense; you absolutely might never say “Never.” So with this one, A + B + C = A + B + C. I’ll pause while you write this down.
NUKE. Man oh man do I love thinking about how we say nuclear. I wrote earlier about a professor of anthropology I was listening to on an Audible Great Lectures series. He used both pronunciations: /NOO kyoo lar/ for weapons and /NOO klee ar/ for families. I was delighted. I think some believe that the former pronunciation is a kind of echo of the word molecular. NEATO.
@LMSmith can you explain your Greeks v.s. Pueblo comment? I don't get it.
DeleteLMSmith: I rarely hear BRO pronounced to rhyme with snow; it always rhymes the pho, as in the soup. Just an observation.
DeleteMe, who has a 20-year-old son: Bruh.
Pretty much concur with Rex on this one, however, despite the very high PPP quotient, I was able to cleanly finish this one, and haven't been able to say that in a while, so I'm just not going to bellyache.
ReplyDeleteI waded through the puzzle, with only sideways glances at the circled squares (isn't that an oxymoron?). At the end: oh yeah... what was the theme?...oh no. But as I went through them, I kinda get it. Neat how you would never pronounce those letters that way, until you see them in those phrases. As Loren points out, they're all at the start of the phrase, that's something.
ReplyDeleteASTEROIDS make a huge impact... well they, I mean it, certainly did, at least the video game. In university I got very addicted, but also got very good. A few years later on my lunch break working at the mall I found an old Asteroids machine, put a quarter in, and played until my lunch break was over. I had a million points and still about 10 spare ships left, and there was a young boy watching, so I said "hey kid, I have to go back to work, want to take over?" "Oh, yeah, thanks mister!" I felt pretty good.
[Spelling Bee: Sat 0, but another tough one. My last word was this nasty 9 letter monster pangram! I still can't quite believe I got that. QB streak now 7 days; 22 of last 23 days.]
And here I was thinking it was TIMEZONE which apparently isn’t a word anymore!
Delete
ReplyDeleteI stopped at the butcher on my way to vacation and decided to buy some pig. “Do you like your POREC LEAN SER?” he asked. “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll go to the Walgreens for PORECLEANSER, but not mifepristone, and just call it a [stayc]ation.”
Wow! That paragraph was packed with a lot of nonsense. Wish I had an ERASER!
Any puzzle that features ASS and ANATOMY will likely be banned in Florida.
I’m sure glad that they threw 21 Savage in with Drake for the 11D clue or I never would have guessed it. I assume that by now they are known as 23 Savage.
Not sure it’s good to have 98A [COW]ERED in a puzzle with 6 meat themers. And BTW, how come they all started with meats but none end with meats? I guess that these days it’s tough to make ends meat.
It’s cool that MEATSUBSTITUTES sits directly atop my favorite one: The PANCAKE SLAMMER.
As I sat and contemplated the completed puzzle it grew on me. I was ready to be slightly disappointed, but ended up with a solid like. Thanks, John-Clark Levin.
I've been doing NYT xwords for... four months now? Something like that. This was my fastest Sunday solve. I did it immediately after finishing the brutal Saturday puzzle. Maybe that was it. Like being dropped five weight classes after nearly flooring the heavyweight champ. I paid no attention to the theme. Inscrutable. But I had fun! Unlike poor Rex.
ReplyDeleteNot the easiest Sunday I have ever encountered, but only because I screwed up a couple squares and spent like 1:15 tracking those suckers down.
ReplyDeleteBut the theme was extraordinarily weak. Like, the theme might have been acceptable for a Tuesday. But this was the Sunday by god #NYTXW, supposedly the premier crossword in the land. And it was so amazingly terrible.
My reaction at the end of this was, "why does Will Shortz have a job?"
I looked at POREC for way too long before realizing it was “pork”. Yeah… GOTOARESTAURANT was rough. ARETHA and MARIAN next to each other was pretty good.
ReplyDeleteJust curious about how many solvers flew through this one (EAT A SANDWICHs, and all) without ever thinking or caring about the “theme.”
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteRight off the bat, monthly before BUSPASS at 1A and then bee before UFO for the possible drone at 2D. I started thinking, "Could Tom Hanks have made more than one three-letter piano movie?"
idLe before LOll before LOAF at 43D
Confidently put in ilsA at 43A, but rick didn't fit at 110A. I didn't remember Rick's last name (Blaine), but I knew it wasn't three letters. So I abandoned the Midwest and solved in the SE until HAN SOLO gave me LEIA.
hell before ETNA at 99D
@LMS: if you're ever in Wilton Manors Florida and in the mood for Vietnamese, you can GO TO A RESTAURANT named What the Pho.
Light a candle for the now gone but not forgotten other Wilton Manors shop: the florist “Oh What A Basket.” You might have to be gay, and have a sophomoric sense of humor, to find it as amusing as I do however.
Delete@Conrad 5:29am:
DeleteThe Vietnamese restaurant in my town is named: OMG Pho
Agree about the puzzle. Agree about GETSANA and GOTOARESTAURANT. Agree about the opinionating of Bret Stephens, at least I think that's what you're objecting too. But unless you know something I don't know, I can't see how you get from his politics to his virtues. Is he really one of the worst human beings ever? Is there room in the world for decent people to disagree with you?
ReplyDeleteWhole-heartedly second your point about Bret Stephens. I‘m a proud LIB, and I don’t agree with much of what Mr. Stephens writes, but he strikes me as sincere and thoughtful. Calling him one of “the very worst human beings” is disgraceful. Rex, you owe Mr. Stephens an apology.
DeleteI completely agree about what Glen Laker & Anonymous said concerning Bret Stevens. He and the much more liberal Gail Collins have a joint column in the Times once a week and they like each other although they disagree about many issues. Also he hates Trump with a passion.
DeleteI bet Rex never read his columns. To conflate a man who may have defrauded people and obtained huge sums of money to a Mitt Romney type of Republican columnist is absurd. Sorry to say that comments like that help subtle fascists like DeSantis.
I know Rex's rhetorical style is shoot first and ask questions later
but sometimes he just goes too far.
This one was a slog. The one clue that REALLY annoyed me was "Tom Hanks movie featuring a giant piano." It was a giant keyboard. Not a piano. I am being pedantic I guess, but I HATED that one.
ReplyDeleteAny time I’m sub 15min on a Sunday I call it easy….sub 12? Yikes easy.
ReplyDeleteAgree with rest on the GO TO A RESTAURANT….I laughed out loud cause I though “Rex is going to have a field day with this” and he did not disappoint. Didn’t mind the theme so much but everything in the puzzle was so bland, not much enjoyment with just an “okay” theme
On the other hand, I disgustedly put PIMPLEPOPPER in 38 across and was oh so relieved I was wrong. Grateful for little things.
ReplyDeleteI thought Rex would raise an additional objection to the theme. Five of the theme answers are kinds of meat that come from a specific animal. Bacon (BAKEIN) is a very specific kind of meat from one of those animals. Isn’t bacon really just a form of pork (POREC)? It is also the reason I don’t think I can ever become a vegetarian even though I do believe our descendants will one day look back with horror on the way we treat animals.
ReplyDeleteLike others, I tried to come up with some other options. @egsforbreakfast, “staycation” totally works and is a good standalone answer too. Mine are rancid meats. “Roe stopped” for what the Supreme Court did last year. “Goo sandwich” for a PBJ.
Loved loved loved “star close to Venus” for SERENA.
As with yesterday’s “shows nerve” vs, “show nerves” I liked how moving or adding one letter can make an expression do a 180, with today’s HOW DARE YOU, compared to what I see when I look at the answer — HOW ARE YOU. Ask the latter to your friend and the former to your enemy.
LOAF/Laze/Loll is a classic kealoaulu, and since LEIA was a gimme (after looking at its partner clue), I had to wait a while to see which of the three it would be. And that doesn’t even count idle, which could make the whole thing a kealoauluiki since idle does share one letter with loll. (Ulu and iki are the third and fourth maunas listed in Wikipedia).
My fastest Sunday ever but also probably the most boring. Not a fan of Bret, Sam or nuke. Also sick of neato, which real people didn’t say even in the fifties, just as in the sixties real hippies didn’t wear love beads.
ReplyDelete77-Across. Thought "barf," then decided "burp" was much more likely. Admired myself for discovering this mildly gross kealoa. Both disappointed and relieved that it was only a MESS (which might, admittedly, be exacerbated by a bit of barf).
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with Rex, with the added annoyance that "vegetarian options" are not "meat substitutes", but just a different type of food. (I say that as an aspiring, but not fully converted vegetarian!) Over all, a rather dull puzzle, but I did it listening to the dawn chorus in Costa Rica, so not complaining!
ReplyDeleteSerendipity. As I was working on this meat-substitute puzzle, my wife Susan was making a lentil loaf for dinner. From scratch, by the way, and it’s divine.
ReplyDeleteThe theme is simple, yet tight, as @Loren concurs. Even John-Clark’s MAS (TERKEY), in his notes, doesn’t sound right when said aloud, because the accent should be on the TER, rather than the KEY. I thought of, for "goose", GUSTAV HOLST (or MAHLER), but it's a name, and none of the theme answers are names, so it feels like an outlier.
So, one tight theme, and kudos for that to the constructor.
Also, credit for some terrific original clues, and trust me, after all these decades of crosswords, good ones are hard to come up with. Some of today’s clever clues have been used before, but others are first-timers: [One vs. 52?] for SOLITAIRE, [They can be passed but not failed] for LAWS, [Ear piece] for KERNEL, and the most lovely [Paris bar tender?] for EUROS. Bravo!
With its elegant theme and its bounty of footholds to spring off of, the puzzle had an airy “Whee!” feel, the perfect appetizer before settling down to that glorious lentil loaf. Thank you so much for this, John-Clark!
Yes, so many original, slightly wonderful clues!
DeleteLewis, share the recipe?
DeleteI always thought you were a bit hard on Will Short. Now I'm thinking not hard enough. In addition to the daily NYT crosswords for decades I have looked forward every two weeks to a new Acrostic. Just found out today that these have been discontinued in favor of newer, hip puzzles. Probably "easier" ones to bring in younger folk. Oh, I can still get the Acrostic if I start getting the 4 lb. print edition delivered every Sunday. How green is that! First they take Chris Thile off NPR and now this. I guess I really am a dinosaur who has outlived its time.
ReplyDeleteThe fastest Sunday in a while. Agree with Rex reagrading the theme - I don't have much to add because I'm still trying to get over yesterday's "CARTITLE" which is not a traveler's document yada yada yada...
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, duct tape is always welcome as are General Leia and Han Solo.
I didn’t *truly* dislike this puzzle until I, like I think many of us, got to the end without ever looking at the theme. And then, oy, wow, awful. POREC and GOT are just spectacularly bad.
ReplyDeleteAfter a week with some really fun, interesting, challenging puzzles, to wrap with this one is a bummer. I too had my fastest Sunday solve ever but it’s so clearly a wheelhouse + overly easy puzzle thing that I won’t be counting it as an indicator of anything other than that, le sigh.
While I largely agree with Rex and others about the puzzle, I will also agree with @LMS and the admirably and indefatigably positive @Lewis that there were some good clues, even if most of the fill wasn’t to my taste. I especially liked learning what an ERG was and then appreciating the cluing once I did.
I will agree with @Ann about the “vegetarian options” nit - even if the clue might still might hold, it bugs. (No preaching coming, I promise.) I’ve been vegetarian for 23 years, and lived in vegan households for the last thirteen years. I’m ~95% vegan and I can promise you, we are not trying to substitute for meat when we cook. Sure, Beyond sausages are in the rotation (and one of the only foods we’ve found to be cheaper in the mountains than in NYC). But the majority of our meals are veggie, legume, and grain forward, and we let them speak for themselves. I think “meat substitutes” are something for folks trying to reduce meat consumption or having newly made the shift, basically, not something I would use to describe vegetarian meals in general.
Oh, and @Nancy, I’m so sorry for your computer travails of yesterday and grateful for Franklin’s assistance. Tech inaccessibility is a major issue. I work at a foundation, and when I was on the grant making side, we had to use an application portal that could be really overwhelming for applicants. A lot of the organizations we fund are scrappy; some folks might not have computers; other folks aren’t fluent in English. So we allow folks to make grant applications over the phone or Zoom, in an email, or even by selfie video, if the portal isn’t accessible to them. Unsurprisingly, it means we get to fund a lot of cool work that wouldn’t otherwise be supported. Basically, we miss out when we don’t make things accessible for people of all ages, backgrounds, and life experiences, and I’m sorry you had that experience.
Did anyone else make of writing HATS for 89 Down. They, too, are passed - as in a church,
ReplyDeletewhen asking for a donation?
I really liked the correct answer (LAWS), but the wrong answer really prevented me from the fastest
solve in a while.
Oh, and writing rUST instead of DUST did not help my cause either.
tc
This was, quite possibly, the least fun puzzle I’ve ever solved in my 53 years. (Ok, maybe only 33 of puzzle solving). Just painful. Oh well, maybe next week will be better. I really miss the Sunday puzzles where the theme was something you actually had to think about and figure out.
ReplyDeleteTravel guide to Italy from the 1970s?
ReplyDeleteVENICE ON FIVE DOLLARS A DAY.
Someone asked about solving this without paying attention to the theme, which I did. At the end when I looked back, I found the theme only functional. Unlike Rex, I think it does work, it just doesn’t excite. These letter strings are meat substitutes: GOT is substituting for “goat,” DUC for “duck,” etc. But, unlike a beautifully cooked Sunday roast, it didn’t really hit the spot.
I noticed a bunch of pairings – the obvious two [‘Fore] clues resulting in TIL and ERE, and those famously sparring lovers, LEIA and HAN SOLO. And also VENTS/RANT, SOT/SOBER, and TUREEN/URNS. And I’d just like to say, on behalf of the less-than-perfect-housekeepers of the world – whoever they may be (I have no personal knowledge of such people, ahem) – that DUST is not necessarily a sign of neglect. It may be a sign of busyness, or distraction, or having more interesting things to do than chase down every tiny speck that’s not doing anybody any harm anyway.
I liked the wit of several of the clues. The ones for SERENA, EUROS, COT, EELS, ASTEROIDS and DOE have already been mentioned. Add to the list [Gray matter?] for ANATOMY and [They often don’t mature until they turn 30] for MORTGAGES.
I loved the flamboyantly literary clues for two of our most frequently seen words: “I am madness maddened” for AHAB and “cloud of pitch-black whirling smoke” for ETNA. Now that’s the way to elevate crosswordese! And speaking of the literary, I’ve always thought it curious how quick the musketeers always are to go for their swords over their eponymous muskets. Granted a deftly wielded sword is much more entertaining than a pedestrian firearm but sometimes, depending on how bad the bad guy is, you might just want to opt for efficiency. The Narnia LAMPPOST brought back pleasant memories. I’ve always liked this C.S. Lewis quotation: “We're in a world where everything, even a LAMP-POST, comes to life and grows.”
[SB: Friday -1, yd 0. So, back to alternating wins and losses. My Friday miss is too embarrassing to mention -- sigh. My last word yesterday was this, something I was hard-pressed to think of and which I pulled out of the air at the last minute. I didn’t have any trouble with your 9er, @okanaganer, thanks to my academic background. And, yay! yay! for your second streak. I hope you can run with it all month!]
Rex, I love reading you, and I’m okay with your angry judgy-ness, but your rip on Bret Stephen is so off. Yeah, he’s conservative but he’s thoughtful and his ideas are worth considering if one wants a fully informed opinion on things. Why the animus? Do you read him regularly? Or, are you slapping him around simply because he’s not a member of your ideological tribe (which happens to be my tribe, BTW)?
ReplyDeleteSince you asked in good faith I will answer in good faith and say that it is not politics but good faith, or complete lack thereof, that has shaped my feelings about the writer in question. There is an intellectual dishonesty there, a dehumanizing, supercilious, ultimately power-serving POV dressed up as if it were the product of erudition and reason. The NYT’s opinion page is a wasteland because they just want “engagement,” which means making liberals mad, which is like shooting fish in a barrel. (Liberals: please stop sharing stupid takes from famously stupid people—you aren’t fighting the system, only making the system stronger). Meanwhile, Black people poor people queer people all people outside a comfy white media elite are treated w/ dehumanizing disdain, w/ zero genuine concern or even curiosity. Marginal groups become mere thought experiments for people who have mistaken expensive formal education for wisdom. Dude is a cog in a shitty clickbait system, and I’m unwilling to give “conservatives” any credit for simply being Not Trump. Not good enough. That’s the kind of weak mindedness that gets us the Florida governor as our next president. See, I’ve thought through this shit a lot, actually. I think BS’s position of power confers great responsibility on him and he repeatedly abuses it, In Bad Faith, for clicks. I know and love (and am related to) conservatives of one kind or another. Hell, in some quarters, in some contexts, I *am* the conservative. And I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, or being merely wrong. But bad faith … that’s 8th ring stuff—9th if you’ve been entrusted w/ a position of public prominence. I hope I have answered your question. Thank you for asking w/o the snide, derisive tone I’m used to from defenders of Rowling, Stephens, et al. If you enjoy reading in order to stay well informed, particularly on the issue of open-mindedness, I suggest this https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/06/the-maddening-dishonesty-of-the-new-york-times-op-ed-editor
DeleteWOW
DeleteThat’s even more off-base than the original post. I wonder what Frank Bruni and Charles Blow would have to say? At least be honest with yourself: Your animosity toward Will Shortz colors your entire experience with the Grey Lady.
Why Johnny can't spell. This is neither cute...nor funny...nor clever. How it saw the light of day I can't even imagine.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was: "Is this how the purveyors of MEAT SUBSTITUTES spell them?! How frightful." But it's not even that. It's merely how the constructor spells them.
Maybe if the phrases that the misspellings led to were funny puns on, say, duck breasts or beef tenderloins or pork chops -- but, no, they're bland, boring, completely unrelated phrases. There's no wit here and no imagination either.
Normally I don't post comments this negative over on Wordplay since they mostly hate you a lot when you're at all negative. But today I think I will: WS should know how I feel about this proudly illiterate puzzle.
Agreed! They’re always so defensive. The reason I fled to Rex’s world.
DeleteShooting fish in a barrel? I guess you feel that way because you sound like you have been shot
DeleteNot sure you could make an easier Sunday puzzle if you tried.
ReplyDeleteNice clue for EUROS.
That is all.
No uniclues today in favor of alternate shenanigans. I’m a sometimes-writer of nonsense verse, or at least, poetry of a non-serious, non-literary nature. For some time, I’ve had a project to write about all the animals I’ve met in the crossword. I think I posted my narwhal poem a while ago. And today, in honor of 111A: EELS [They may be long and shocking], I give you this:
ReplyDeleteODE TO THE EEL
by Barbara S.
You may think you know everything that there is
To know about eels and all of their biz:
They live in the crossword with asps, emus, owls,
Their habitat safe within grids’ squared-off bowels.
But you would be wrong – there’s a whole world out there,
And eels know it backward: as swimmers they dare
To leave both the crossword and rivers back home
To spawn in warm water beneath the salt foam
Of such a romantic blue locality:
The wide and the welcoming Sargasso Sea.
Yes, eels come from everywhere: from France and from Spain,
From Ireland and Denmark, from Georgia and Maine,
From St. John’s and Halifax, Quebec, P.E.I.,
They come in their millions with a glint in their eye:
The calling of nature is the call of the wild,
And eels answer lustily, not milquetoast or mild;
They writhe and they wriggle, they squirm and they slide,
And eggs by the zillion float free on the tide.
The young eels are larvae, then metamorphose
Into “glass eels,” at which time they’re back at the coast,
At the mouths of the rivers up which they will swim
To the lakes and the crosswords they dwell snug within.
The freshwater eels are much valued as food.
They’re grilled and they’re sauced and they’re smoked and they’re stewed.
But beside the unagi in nigiri meals,
We know another prime use for said eels:
As a source for those letters without which our grids
Would lack Es and Ls, would be on the skids!
Thank heaven for morays and congers, yes thanks,
For elvers, electrics – the entire eel ranks:
The 800 species of this helpful fish;
Without them our puzzles are impoverish’d.
Can you imagine a glummer affair
Than puzzles sad, eelless, defective and bare?
So, here’s to that slithery crosswordly beast
Whose value to gridders will never decrease!
@Barbara S. 8:41 AM
DeleteI eely liked this.
And shout out to your Clown Makeup, Esq. story from Friday. Sensational. (I'm way behind reading comments.)
Awesome, Barbara. There’s a very strange and not particularly good documentary called “The Mystery of Eels” that has much more to do with the filmmaker’s mental health and navel-gazing than eels themselves. It was the rare “nature” documentary that my partner and I didn’t finish, and we watched all of the first and (deservedly) only season of “Life in a Tide Pool,” so the bar for non-completion is really high.
DeleteOn the other hand, your poem was about three times as informative as and loads more fun than that doc. Lovely job!
"Buck chaser" bugged me because does do not chase bucks--bucks chase does. Buck chasee?
ReplyDeleteIf you're a vegetarian, you don't eat meat, period. So why are these {phonetic) meats (that include poultry) part of a vegetarian's diet as substitutes for something? I agree with Rex that it's very confusing.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise I thought the puzzle was quite easy. My only nit is STIES for teenagers' rooms. I guess that's plural for (pig) sty, but I don't think any parent has ever used that phrase, verbally.
So, Will finally spills the beans on what goes on and night during basic training. I guess he forgot the "don't tell" part of the edict. Also, a proper gentleman asks first, so maybe just drop that particular edict.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if BRET Stephens is a moron or just vile, but how he is given a voice to spread his nonsense is beyond me. He neither knows how masks work, nor how a proper epidemiological study is conducted, but he is allowed to announce to the world that "Masks don't work".
Hey OFL, perhaps you could elaborate just a tad as to how and why you consider the Pulitzer-winner BRET Stephens to be one of “ the very worst human beings” ? That puts him in pretty rarefied air, nasty-wise. It strikes me as extremely unfair to just trash his reputation like that without elaborating.
ReplyDeleteThe theme seemed forced to me. There was no real “aha”, or “there” in getting the answers to the theme clues - yes, I recognized that GOT was a play on goat - who cares.
I doubt the editors care about my opinion, but in a trivial stack that includes ACELA, MAYAN, UTE and SARA - did you absolutely have to clue LAMP POST with what appears to be a Walt Disney movie? No other good clues came to mind ? Coming up with good clue suggestions is one of the functions of an editor, btw.
It was nice to see one of the only two tools you really need make an appearance. If something is supposed to stick and it doesn’t, you use DUCT TAPE (if it is not supposed to stick and it does, use WD-40).
While solving this thing I assumed the shaded sections were somehow all actual commercial names for MEATSUBSTITUTES that are sold in stores. Sounds stupid in retrospect but it was that or the actual theme which is even worse. Maybe there's an underlying meta theme here because this was all a lame SUBSTITUTE for a real Sunday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteyd -0, td -0
new record 19:32
ReplyDeleteOK theme but the revealer really saved it for us
Alternate clue for 109A: What the disappointed food critic did in his bakery review. (PAN CAKE)
ReplyDeleteI loved Nancy's story about her battle with the form yesterday. Here's a battle I waged about ten years ago. My daughter fell off of my insurance when she turned 26, so we signed her up with her own coverage but it came through with an incorrect date of birth on it -- May 7 instead of May 17. There was an email address on the papers, so (pretending I was Caity) I wrote a note thanking them for their excellent service but asking them to correct my date of birth to May 17th. They emailed back that they "checked their records and there was no error."
I had to read their note several times to believe what I was seeing. They were telling me that I didn't know my own birthday. Apparently, I had been using the wrong birth date since birth -- actually since ten days before birth!
I wrote back and said: I am holding in my left hand my birth certificate issued by Essex County, NJ, my driver's license issued by the State of NJ, and my passport issued by the U.S. State Department, all of which have May 17th as my date of birth. What records did you check?
It took around six months for us to get the correction made and when it came through we went out to celebrate at a nice restaurant. God Bless America!
How many times has ETAILER appeared in the NYT outside of the crossword? My guess would be 0.
ReplyDeleteMy fastest Sunday solve ever. Nice breezy puzzle. Enjoyed it!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous8.27:
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. While Rex has left enough of a (largely unobjectionable) breadcrumb trail to know he’s a proud progressive, today’s diatribe against one of today’s most well-balanced commentators shows a distressingly new level of rage. I hope that just needed to get this out of his system and continues to do what he otherwise does so well.
Lol, people. So sorry so many wasted so much time doing this one. No. Wait. It took most of you no time. But still, the horrible unwitty nature of this not-a-puzzle-in-the-least should offend us all. Lol. It's Sunday. Its a puzzle. It's fun. SERENA was brilliant. @egsforbreakfast I'm still laughing - "tough to make ends meat" will stick in my head a long time. And thanks @LMS for seeing just a little bit of fun here. My family made it into the puzzle today, that makes it fun (us swamp/bog people are delighted).
ReplyDeleteAll of the complaints on this puzzle are valid, except for the EUROS clue. I’ll take you all on defending that one as anything but brilliant. :)
ReplyDeleteLike many others, I solved this as a themeless, and at the end I went looking for the theme. When I finally got it — which many have taken me longer than solving the actual puzzle — all I could think was “how unappetizing”.
ReplyDelete@pete.
ReplyDeleteWhile l agree completely with you on Stephens’ recent pretty stupid op ed on masks, this was a rare misstep in a body of work that does a good job of trying to show progressives how a sensible conservative sees things.
Yes, agreed.
DeleteMeh puzzle. Best time I had was putting in pimple popper for blackhead remover...it was wrong of course...but would have made for a great answer. Did get my best Sunday time ever so that's something I guess....
ReplyDeleteMy best Sunday time. Reading through Rex’s write-up and the comments, there were references to unfamiliar clues and answers, and I realized I did large chunks of the puzzle without looking at the Across clues. That doesn’t happen for me even on Monday or Tuesday, let alone on Sunday.
ReplyDeleteI could see the beginning of the themers were all soundalikes for food, but missed that they were all meats, which partially explains my one brief sticking point: I had BAskINTHESUN at 85A, but couldn’t figure out what the shaded squares had to do with food (Baskin-Robbins* obviously, but that was a spelling match in addition to the phonetic match so no). When I got the revealer and knew I was looking for a meat, BAKE fell in pretty easily.
Great clue for SERENA. Otherwise, not much memorable about this one.
In mild defense of the first themer, GO TO A RESTAURANT feels like language we would have used in my family when I was a kid (goat pun a happy accident) because eating out was a rare treat. I can hear it especially on family road trips: “looks like the egg salad in our cooler has turned, guess we’ll go to a restaurant.”
*I’m afraid the window is probably closing or closed for this year, but if you haven’t tried B-R’s seasonal Valentine flavor Live Potion #31, file it away for next year. Chocolate and raspberry, a winning combination. A friend brought an ice cream pizza with that flavor to a gathering this week and it was a delight.
Nope - completely disjoint and disconnected from solving pleasure. The only thing that hit home - and I think must have been part of the plan are the great ARCHERS of LOAF
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteNeat little (well, big) puz. Went quickly, as for a SunPuz, anyway. I like how the NYT puz site has pleasing light green squares instead of circles (green paint?)
Keep wanting to say POREC as one word (ala pore-ec, not pork).I did think BAKEIN was inspired.
Got a kick out of HOW DARE YOU and SCAREDY CAT.
@pablo
No EMMAs or ROOs today!
Agree with Rex that grid is quite segmented. I solved kinda sorta in a pinwheel-ish fashion. Twirling around the outside ERE going to the center.
Wanted for 80A- They often don't mature until they turn 30 - to be MALES, or MEN, something like that! 😁
Old joke, but for some who may not be privy to it:
How come ASTEROIDS are in the Hemisphere, but hemorrhoids are in your ASS?
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Not my favorite Sunday ever, but I did fill it in without help so it's kicking the pants off of yesterday.
ReplyDeleteLast time this came up, I believe we discovered DUCK tape preceeded DUCT tape and neither is used for ducts. My life of haughty derision has been a lie.
SCAREDY CAT is great! Donkey is less than great.
In keeping with crossword tradition I believe the editors erred in failing to clue CSU as [University down the street from Freddy's Frozen Custard.]
Uniclues:
1 Why I'm unpopular in pagodas.
2 Red neck astringent.
3 Results of the future Mrs. Lincoln's overly attractive pricing at her home clearance events.
4 How you afford McMansions in the Chichen Itza school district.
5 Thinking, but not actually following through, on the idea of ordering a salad.
6 Street known for spaceship repair shops.
1 I FORGET ROSE TEA SUGAR
2 DUCT TAPE PORE CLEANSER
3 TODD YARDSALES BRAWLS
4 MAYAN MORTGAGES (~)
5 INNER MEAT SUBSTITUTES
6 UFO OUT-OF-ORDER AVENUE
Complaint time!
ReplyDeleteMy Wordle streak is at 108 or so, but now when I click on it, it doesn't say anything except the generic Get 6 chances thingie, so if I open it to play, I'll lose my streak. It's not life changing, mind you, but it's the principle. Maybe I'll try exiting the site and coming back in.
RooMonster ARGHing Guy
Meat Loaf made it all worthwhile. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAmy: in the mood for an easy, breezy puzzle. Beautiful day here; off for a walk and then an art lesson this afternoon.
ReplyDeleteReally dumb puzzle but at least it was easy.
ReplyDeleteUniclues:
ReplyDelete1) Yankee-hater renames (if boringly) a street near the ballpark
2) Jeff Bezos has stayed on the wagon, like, forever!
3) She replaced it with a much better one on DeerDating.com
1) MANTLE AT LONG LAST ELM
2) ETAILER DECADES SOBER
3) WRY "BEFORE PICTURE" DOE
Fastest Sunday in a long time. Not much fun but it brought to mind a favorite TShirt I once saw:
ReplyDelete“I’ll become a vegetarian as soon as I find some bacon seeds”
Say what you want about the alleged crypto-crook (remembering, of course, that he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet), but BRET Stephens is a thoughtful, conservative commentator, not deserving of the “worst people” slap. Disagree, but don’t disparage.
ReplyDeleteSeveral people have already expressed the sentiment, but I think it's worth repeating- I appreciate Rex's hilarious biting snark--it's mostly why I read the blog. I am also a dyed in the wool progressive. Calling Bret Stephens one of the vilest human beings around is just weird. Stephens is a good faith milquetoast conservative. Disagree with him all you want, but there's nothing vile about his takes.
ReplyDeleteSinging:
ReplyDeleteMonday Sunday, not great for me
Monday Sunday, you were less than I hoped you would be...
So I resisted going down to the revealer to see what was going on (it was in the proper place, yay) and even filled in the downs trying to delay the inevitable, and finally read the clue and the completed revealer and uttered a mighty, oh. Mostly just too easy, some highlight clues which others have mentioned but not enough to save this one.
I think my only do over was writing in BEFOREANDAFTER without checking for length. Agree with the NEATO complaint, and am convinced that all crossword suits are made of SERGE.
@Roo-I noticed that too. Come on you constructors, you can do better.
Not my cuppa, JCL. Just Couldn't Lean into this one. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
Rex,
ReplyDeleteI understand your not agreeing with Bret Stephens’s politics, but calling him one of the very worst humans isn’t just petty, it’s libelous.
Big dnf — like, a whopping 2/3 dnf. I started at the bottom, got BAKE IN followed by MEAT SUBSTITUTE and then LAM, and thought, I can't sit through the the rest of this. So, I looked at the solution to see what the others were. POREC– of course! I should have had that one.
ReplyDelete♪ Although she may be cute
She's just a substitute ♪
The Bret Stephens jab is bizarre. It's emblematic of why are politics is broken. Stephens is a neocon polemicist. I happen to think a lot of his takes are wrong, but he's not a conspiracy addled Alex Jones type (truly vile) or even on the level of a bloviating bro like Joe Rogan (asinine,) or anywhere near as bad as a 100 other bad faith chuckleheads on the right from the sycophantic Lindsey Graham to to the addled Matt Gaetz.
ReplyDeleteThx, John-Clark; well done! :)
ReplyDeleteEasy-med.
This one flowed beautifully, top to bottom. No hitches along the way. It's been a long time since I was so on a constructor's wavelength.
Also, my only unknown/hazy was BRET Stephens. Very unusual to not have a much larger list, esp on a Sunday.
After RESTAURANT, SUGAR & PORE CLEANSER, I was thinking along the lines of PORcelain tableware as part of the theme. lol
Currently reading 'Year of no SUGAR' by Eve O. Schaub, and watching 'SUGAR: The Bitter Truth' by Robert Lustig on YouTube
Have weaned almost completely off SUGAR-added products, and been MEATless going on 3 yrs.
Big PBS fan here.
Yay DUCT TAPE; you're my go-to glue.
There's my UTE friend again.
One of my fave bedtime hymns: 'EVEN SO Lord Jesus Come' by Heritage Singers.
Wonderful adventure this AM; loved it! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Where's the beef? And I don't mean BEF!
ReplyDeleteI solved as a themeless. I avert my eyes when I see those shaded squares or the silly little circles that this editor is so fond of.
If this dumb theme is even going to try to work, then it needed to have some kind of wacky CHICKIN pun, not BAKEIN alongside POREC.
ReplyDeleteAnd of the infinite ways to clue SAM, the constructor goes with the crypto thief. How did that get past editors?
Does don’t chase bucks!
ReplyDeleteLOREN MUSE SMITH and LEWIS both live in North Carolina.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading their comments today, I wondered if it was the air?
My best time ever for a Sunday, but as many have lamented here, not a pleasure. Few Sundays are, no? Rex is really right to be grumpy about this one.
I agree with Anonymous @9:20 that BRET and the NYT are desperately seeking eyeballs. The headlines for his columns ALONE are clear indications of their strategy to pump up the clicks. His take on MASKS and the pandemic was a disgrace and a public disservice. Is he among the vilest people around? That bar is very high.
Did you read about the Cochrane study on mask mandates? Looks like the skeptics were right all along.
DeleteI'm already in a DOUR mood, since our delivery person is delinquent on... well, the deliveries. We did not get half our Sunday paper today, including the NYT Mag. So, I did this online for once, and got the fastest time ever for me. And then it took me a few seconds to figure out that GOT, DUC, POREC, etc., were not the MEATSUBSTITUTES but rather how they sounded within the answer... For once, I was not very positive about a Sunday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteOn a positive note, I finally finished construction of a puzzle with a ham radio theme - designed so that most of the answers relate to radio, engineering, and computers - and hope to submit this to one of our magazines.
Had "violins" before "archers" and "wardrobe" before "lamppost." I liked this puzzle a lot better than most people did. I agree with the comments about Bret Stephens; the mask comment was pretty bad, but I certainly wouldn't call him one of the worst human beings.
ReplyDeleteI think people are too hard on the "meat substitutes." "bakein" is sort of a substitute for "bacon."
Hideous. The entire solving time I was looking forward to Rex’s takedown. He did foget to mention another heinous right-winger in the form of Chuck Todd, as worthless a talking head as any.
ReplyDeleteAgree with your general opinion of this pathetic puzzle, but, Dude, you really owe Bret Stephens an apology! Not worthy of you.
ReplyDelete(TOEFU)LS of fun. Seems to have had somethin to please and displease most everyone.
ReplyDeletePleasers:
* 12 U's. Way above average.
* SERENA clue.
* SCAREDYCAT. ATLONGLAST.
* OUTOFORDER clue.
* BAKEIN & POREC subs. har-worthy stuff.
* EUROS clue.
Displeasers:
* Mountain of 36 weejects. staff pick: COT. Mostly cuz of its weird clue.
* Themers that occasionally seemed to get kinda desperate, like GOTOARESTAURANT. [Has a slight PAINTITGREEN feel.]
* Hardly any no-know entries. Us slow solvequestidors need somethin more to complain about, when the precious nanosecond lapses pile up.
Thanx for the meat cute xword fun, Mr. Levin dude. Nice job, overall. Not quite a SunPuz GOT, tho.
Masked & Anonymo12Us
**gruntz**
This puzzle besides being ridiculously easy (record Sunday time) and having one of the worst them answers ever (PORECLEANSER) has a major structural error. What people incorrectly (but what is now endemic because of copycat ripoffs) call 'duct tape' is actually 'Duck Tape', its original brand name. The mistake occurs because of the near homonym and because people thought that was its primary usage. Of course, having 'Duck' as a homonym for 'duck' wouldn't work.
ReplyDeleteThe Cochrane study is full of holes. Read the hundreds of comments following BRET’s shameful screed.
ReplyDeleteReporting from the outlying fringes: I found the puzzle pleasantly challenging, with a quirky, fun-to-puzzle-out theme, and enjoyed solving it. I didn't do myself any favors by getting the pronunciation wrong on the first three grayed-out portions: mentally rhyming GOT with "hot," dividing POR-EC into two syllables, and seeing a French DUC, rather than pronouncing them as part of their phrases. Finally saw the light with BEF(ORE). After that, LAM was easy to get, but then there was my "rays"IN THE SUN - that BAKEIN was really well disguised! So yeah, the theme phrases weren't so dazzling, but the MEAT SUBSTITUTES gave me a workout, more than the usual Sunday. In short: liked it.
ReplyDelete@Lewis, I have high hopes for a new lentil soup recipe I'm trying out tonight, with sweet potatoes, chard, and lemon-pickled chard stems.
@Barbara S - Brava!
@Anonymous (5:52 AM) -- " Is there room in the world for decent people to disagree with you?" Of course not. I'm morally superior because I'm right and you're wrong. End of discussion. Welcome to 21st Century "Civilized Discourse" in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteRE: Masks -- there is plenty of disagreement among reputable scientists and researchers of good faith over whether mask mandates had any real effect on mitigating COVID, although comparisons between cities, states, regions, and countries that did and did not enforce mandates of varying duration and strictness seem to indicate minimal overall effectiveness. Unfortunately, though, there's no way of even discussing an issue like this without "isms" and ad hominem attacks getting thrown in everyone's face, so there's probably no use in pursuing it further.
@Carola - I love lentil soup but can you make mine without the sweet potatoes?
ReplyDeleteI am rather late today. Normally on a Sunday I'm quite early. Anyway, I have remarked that Sharp is no fan of puns. Perhaps I should use today's write up as proof.
ReplyDeleteI like "bad" puns, so I did like the puzzle today. More fun than doing research on entries (I refer to yesterday's puzzle that Chen though deserved a POW. I did not.)
One thing about computer forms. (Listening, Nancy?) They seem to be constructed by the same English-deprived people who author assembly instructions. (Worse still talking to support staff on the telephone. Sometimes (often?) they really do not understand what you are saying or what your problem is at all.) The result? An experience such as Nancy described. For my money, a good reason to patronize a local brewery that makes great beer. Or maybe the Bronx Alehouse. If only the pandemic were truly over.
I'd say more, but don't want to bore you. But thanks to all those who post such entertaining and interesting (and useful) comments here. Even to those who post anonymously.
One last thing. I look forward to the back and forth between Gail and Bret the NYT publishes weekly. Like many of the conservative essayists the NYT hires for opinion essays, he is quite good at analyzing what is going on, but his conclusions are too often for me built (in my opinion) on unsupported facts (which some might call lies). I think reading opinions conflicting with your world view is very important: the challenge forces you to clarify your thoughts and consider if verifiable facts actually support what you believe in. I welcome (and am friends with) many whose political view do not parallel mine. If one believes many of these people are the "worst human beings" alive, all I can say is as long as they do not embrace a false reality, they are free to be true to themselves. The absence of government is anarchy. One can desire less government interference than I might, and consequently be comfortable with a level of anarchy than one does, but that hardly turns them into a vile human being. I support Sharp's ability to state his views as they really are (otherwise ...) but that doesn't mean I agree with them think they are nice and justified. And by publishing comments like these, I would conclude he does at least practice what he preaches.
REX - Comparing Brett Stephens with Sam Bankman Fried? Calling him a worst man on the planet?
ReplyDeleteBrett is a somewhat conservative columnist who uses WORDS to express his OPINIONS.
You may not agree with his opinions but you REX have just gone WAY DOWN in MINE. Shame on you.
I've played classical piano since I was five. No musician would ever describe "allegro" as RAPID. Lively, quick, yes; but not rapid. Think turbulent river water. But still -- the easiest, fastest (around 20 minutes) and most boring Sunday puzzle I can remember solving in some time.
ReplyDelete@Son Volt 3:34 - Yes! I have two recipes I'd be happy to send you. I see that, like me, you haven't posted your email address, but if you can suggest a way to get them to you, I will do so.
ReplyDeleteI was looking forward to two things this weekend--Chris Rock's live show and the NY Times puzzle.
ReplyDeleteChris was hilarious. This puzzle was not.
@Unknown 4:33 - I tend to think of allegro as fast, or rapid.
ReplyDeleteA famous Allegro movement
Surely at this point we are past giving out gold stars for being "not as bad" as other conservatives. How far below the earth's crust is that bar, anyway? If we're willing to hand out brownie points to people who still aren't getting it after nearly 50 years on this planet, we deserve the fascism we get. At some point, some babies are going to have to get thrown out with some bathwater, and you may as well start with "journalists" who are using their platforms irresponsibly. Even if "the worst" is somewhat hyperbolic, it's closer to the correct approach than the kid gloves he's being treated with by this commentariat.
ReplyDeleteYou may be using metaphoric language, but history has shown that the aparatchiks in the old Soviet Union did a lot of very horrible things while using such phrases like " you have to break eggs to make an omelet " to justify their atrocities.
DeleteTalking about throwing an oped writer, albeit conservative, out with the bath water makes me very nervous especially in light of the history of the 20th Century.
Bret Stephens is not a vile human being period. Trump is. To equate them is wrong. Fascism on the left is no defense against Fascism on the right.
@Joe D.- With apologies to @egs, I thought "allegro" was what I was looking at when I'm watching the Rockettes.
ReplyDeleteJW, you have obviously been anointed with the one “truth”. How proud you must be of yourself! It must be so nice to go through life without having to ponder alternative points of view, or even nuances.
ReplyDeleteI take it you would not rather teach a man (oops!) to fish?
@Cochrane report lovers, @Mask Deniers - Ok, so masks and handwashing and sanitizing were of no use. Fine, believe that. Since you believe that, next time you or one of your kids or your spouse or one of your parents or anyone you love is about to have surgery, please be sure to tell the doctors and nurses to not bother to sanitize the OR, nor bother to scrub up, and to leave the masks and gloves in the cabinets. Just have them all walk in in your civies, hair flying in the breeze, and start cutting. What could go wrong?
ReplyDeleteMasks aren't so much to protect you from others, they're to protect others from you in the case you're contagious. That's the big thing that was wrong with the Cochrane report (among others), and why no one with any sense would pay any attention to it.
Even if you don’t like something or someone why do you care if they’re a crossword answer ? Marx and Engels cased misery for billions but that’s no reason to exclude them from a crossword puzzle. SBF was a bad guy, a thief and by all accounts a horrible person but he’s also current and exactly the type of person who should be included. As for Bret Stephens, meh, don’t read his column, but I suspect he’s not a horrible person but even if he is…
ReplyDelete"One thing about computer forms. (Listening, Nancy?) They seem to be constructed by the same English-deprived people who author assembly instructions. (Worse still talking to support staff on the telephone. Sometimes (often?) they really do not understand what you are saying or what your problem is at all.)" --@pmdm
ReplyDeleteIf you could see me now, @pmdm, I'm on my feet applauding you. The truest words that perhaps anyone has ever spoken. My feeling is that no IT person should ever be allowed to finalize any computer form/questionnaire/instructions or anything else until it's been vetted, thoroughly understood, and approved by no fewer than 10 non-techie-trained English Majors.
I like your open-mindedness, too, about engaging with people of varying views. I was trained that way from a young age by my father who would bring up a controversial issue, encourage me to voice my opinion on the subject and then himself argue -- always convincingly and persuasively -- the other side. He called it "playing Devil's Advocate". He taught me how to think deeply about issues and not just have a knee-jerk response to them. He taught me that most issues have more than one "right answer" and he taught me respect for other people's viewpoints.
Like you, @pmdm, I find engaging with people who don't share all my opinions to often be much more stimulating than being in an echo chamber of people where you know what they're going to say before they open their mouths. I think you're someone I'd probably enjoy having lunch with, @pmdm.
I think a phrase such as “never say never” can be taken literally or idiomatically—There is always the possibility for an outcome that you might exclude as possible=one non- literal interpretation. . Can also be considered an adage or aphorism or paradox.
ReplyDeleteI confess that I had never heard of Bret Stephens but after all these comments I’m going to read his publications and hope to hear him on MSNBC. I read his Wikipedia entry and noted he has a graduate degree from the LSE as I do .Apparently the liberalism of that institution didn’t phase him.
@Anon 9:09
ReplyDeleteWhat On Earth?
@pablo 6:12 – That's just terrible. I think @egs would approve.
ReplyDeleteBtw – @Matthew B, who posted all the way back at 12:25 this AM: I meant to respond that I play Phrazle and so does @Nancy. We both prefer it to Wordle.
ReplyDeleteIf you're geography-minded, there's also Globle and Worldle.
@JoeDipinto the first movement of Eine kleine Nachtmusik isn't rapid, it's brisk and cheerful which is the literal meaning of allegro. It's worth remembering that rapid shares its etymology with rapacious and another word I won't type here as I'd hope we'd never see it in a crossword puzzle. This is rapid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laGT9IB2bFo
ReplyDeleteWhy is ATE the answer for made a fast stop? Like fast food? Seems like a stretch unless I'm missing something.
ReplyDeleteWhen you eat you stop fasting
ReplyDeleteMy puzzle had shaded areas, not circles. Either is a distraction, but if the shaded areas get too dark they look like black squares and I think the entry is shorter (sometimes WAY shorter) than it really is. A pox on shaded areas!
ReplyDeleteMoreover, the reason for it today is really not worth the distraction. So we have meat sound-likes. BIG deal. I'd rather GOTOARESTAURANT and EATASANDWICH.
OUTOFORDER brings back a memory. Our eldest son, a terrible speller but wise beyond his (then) years, got up early one morning and put signs on our ashtrays: "OUT FO RODER." We have since both quit smoking, but that day brought us a hearty laugh.
Easy to solve, but without the punch needed to justify all the shading. Perennial DOD SELA Ward saves this to a par.
Wordle eagle!
PICTURE HER ANATOMY
ReplyDeleteSOLITAIRE always GETS THE MEN,
but BEFORE James Bond, GUYs got no ASS.
Now THE AGENT’S IN HER BED again,
she said, “I DAREYOU come ATLONGLAST?”
--- MARIAN MAE MANTLE
Not very difficult but I don't think it GETSANA. Because of things like that.
ReplyDeleteARETHA is ETHEREAL; say that three times fast. Whenever I see LEIA I think steel bikini.
OUTOF nowhere, a wordle eagle!
ERASER was my first answer. Of course.
ReplyDeleteI still have the Pink Pearl @Rondo gave me at the Minney X-Word Tourney!
Paper - pencil - eraser - cat. That's what you need. (Altho my t-shirt from the Minn Tourney says "do it in pencil."
Hey @Rondo - at least you don't thinka thteel bikini when you thee her! Not tho thwell.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Pho King
ReplyDeleteI apologize if someone else already said what I say below... it's a looooong list of comments ☹
ReplyDeleteThere is a subtlety to most of the answers:
DUCT TAPE is the correct phrase, and is often mispronounced as DUCK TAPE -- hence DUC = DUCK can be justified.
For LAMP POST, the corresponding thing is true; people would say LAM POST -- hence LAM = LAMB can be justified.
PORE CLEANSER would usually be pronounced PORK LENSER -- hence, POREC = PORK is justified.
BAKE IN would usually be pronounced like BACON -- hence, justified.
The only weakness in my point is that GO TO A RESTAURANT would really usually be pronounced GOE TOO A RESTAURANT (i.e., as actually spelled), not GOAT OOH A RESTAURANT, so you couldn't really justify GOAT OOH = GO TO.
So I think the theme is better executed than many say here today ☺, but I also happen to agree with many of the criticisms. ☹