THEME: MARCH MADNESS (51A: Annual college basketball tourney, rounds of which can be found in the circled squares at their appropriate numbers) — an NCAA Basketball Tournament theme with various "rounds" of the tourney (FINAL Four, ELITE Eight, SWEET Sixteen) appearing in circles (i.e. "rounds"!) at their appropriate number (i.e. FINAL at Four-Down, ELITE at Eight-Down, SWEET at Sixteen-Across):
Additional theme answers:
20A: Process of picking winners in 51-Across (BRACKETOLOGY)
38A: What lower-seeded 51-Across participants hope to become (CINDERELLA TEAMS)
Word of the Day: NIA DaCosta (37A: "Candyman" director DaCosta) —
Nia DaCosta (born November 8, 1989) is an American film director and screenwriter. She wrote and directed the crime thriller film Little Woods (2018), winning the Nora Ephron Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival. She also directed the horror film Candyman (2021). In August 2020, DaCosta was hired to direct The Marvels, becoming the youngest filmmaker to direct a Marvel film, beating the record set by Ryan Coogler. [...] DaCosta was the first African American woman to have a #1 film at the American box office. (wikipedia)
• • •
My feelings about this one ... you could say they bounced around. Speaking of basketball references, why in the world is AREA clued in reference to a tennis court!?!? (28D: 2,808 square feet, for a tennis court). If ever there were an opportunity for a little theme bonus answer—one that would not have felt forced at all—that was it. And we get tennis? Strange. (Note: the AREA of a standard NBA / NCAA basketball court is 4,700 square feet). Anyway, I started out thinking "ew, those teeny throwaway corners, wasted space, aesthetically displeasing" but they are just nine squares of AREA so they didn't exactly concern me. Then I descended into the meat of the puzzle via TOP BANANAS and finally, whoosh—or swish, I guess, maybe—that center answer broke the grid (and the theme) wide open:
OK, so STORY was wrong, that's not really important. The important thing was I remembered "oh, right, it's Tourney Week," so I knew where this was going. Or I thought I did. At this point, I wasn't paying those circled squares much mind. I could see that the upper longer answer was probably gonna be BRACKET, something, probably BRACKETOLOGY (a word I know well, from decades of paying attention to this tourney earlier in my life, when I followed sports more closely). But weirdly I never looked at the BRACKETOLOGY clue. I wasn't solving Downs-only, but sometimes, especially if I'm not speed-solving, my habits of only looking at Downs *and* only looking at short stuff first really take over. I think I just wanted to see if I was right about BRACKETOLOGY without actually looking at the clue directly. So I managed to get the FINAL from 4D: ___ 4 but still wasn't really thinking about why it might be circled. Then I hit ELITE, noticed what was up, and went over and wrote in SWEET in the 16 slot. This was absolutely the peak moment of the solve. Got a legitimate "oh ... nice" out of me. That's an architectural feat that has some oomph and purpose to it. Built the whole damn grid so that the 4, 8, and 16 answers would come out five letters long, so that each one could fit the clue on two levels (a basketball and a grid level), and then put those answers in circles, which look like basketballs but more importantly are "round" (like the "rounds" of the tourney they represent). Yes, at this SWEET point, I was impressed.
But like an arcing three-pointer at the buzzer, or any other ball thrown into the air, this one came down. I think the shot was good (if we want to continue this metaphor), but it clanked around a bit before going in. OLD DAYS definitely took some energy out of the puzzle. Doesn't stand alone terrible well. Also, heralded a major influx of OLD DAYS-speak, like GASSER and IN A PIG'S EYE. Between those answers and TOP BANANAS, the puzzle felt like it was doing a bit, some kind of olde-timey thing that didn't seem to fit with the very very timely puzzle theme (the Men's Tournament starts today). But despite that odd clump of dated slang, the fill overall seemed reasonably smooth and largely unremarkable. "AWGOON" looks funny in the grid, but I like it a lot as an abashed (or mock-abashed) expression of humility, even if the clue Once Again goes the corny mid-century route with the slang (10D: "Oh, yer joshin' me") ("AW, GO ON!").
As for difficulty, there wasn't much (unless you know nothing about the tourney, then there was maybe a lot). All the difficulty for me came with names, which is absolutely par for the course with Peter puzzles. No constructor is more obsessed with celebrity names than Peter, and while this means you learn a lot when you solve his puzzles, it also means (for me) a greater-than-average number of "who, what!?" moments. Mostly he manages to keep these "who, what!?" moments from crossing :) Anyway, I have definitely seen IGA, NIA and ALEX's names before, but alas I remembered none of them today. But the crosses were fair so no harm no ... foul! Did it! Stuck the landing with a basketball reference! Nothing but net! Ah. Feels good. OK, gonna go bask in the glory of that one. Have a nice (snow) day. Stay off the roads, Northeasterners!
@Rex, you have a minor typo at the start of the writeup: FINAL is at Four-Down, and ELITE is at Eight-Down.
I found the puzzle quite easy even though I'm only peripherally interested in the Tournament (my Michigan Wolverines didn't even make the cut). I didn't solve downs-only, but I avoided reading the clues for the long answers and the circled answers and I still finished in what seemed like normal Tuesday time.
Easy for readers of the Times' sports page, medium to hard for anyone else. I finished it in about 20 minutes, with only one problem to solve. I had ASSURE instead of ENSURE, but the crosses made the change routine.
Who's doing the puzzle? The answer shouldn't be YOU, it should be IAM. I'd be interested in comments from others about this.
The short fill was wanting in places. But, all in all, I really enjoyed this puzzle. The themed clues covered pretty much all of the jargon used during MARCH MADNESS and it’s certainly timely. And BRACKETOLOGY… how good is that?! Very nice puzzle.
Now to cheer on my alma mater: Go Penn. Oh, that’s right, the Quakers are staying home once again. I’m learning to hate Princeton (which, apropos of nothing, is the only Ivy League university with no Medical School. )
Don't see Conrad's error. Agree with Bob on who's doing the puzzle. Easy puzzle for me, and enjoyable since I still like March Madness. Years ago I had an annual bet with one guy - we would alternate in picking teams. We would bid on who got the first pick, an auction that usually cost $50. Then the stakes would increase for each round, starting at $1 and ending at $100 for the final game. In 1992 I would have had all four teams in the Final Four if Kentucky had beaten Duke. But Duke won and then won the tourney. That's when I decided to hate Christian Laettner. You can read about his shot here: http://bit.ly/42o5IAn
A fun puzzle, even for someone like me who doesn’t follow sportball of any kind. A chewy Tuesday for a downs-only solve.
Interesting point, @Bob Mills. I guess I’m answering “YOU” the voice of the puzzle, not my own voice. Feeling a bit like Paul Winchell. (Cultural reference from the OLD DAYS, which were only so-so in my opinion, though that Jerry Mahoney could pull off a GASSER now and then.)
PSALMIST looks and sounds really weird, but if you need a word for the people that wrote them that’s as good a choice as any (I wonder if “lyricist” looked weird at one time as well. It’s probably a lot easier to make a living as a lyricist though. Correct me if I’m wrong - are new psalms still being written, set to music and published (I’m familiar with the term from the Bible, but have never heard it refer to something contemporary).
Once again Rex gives LENIN and the rap “artist” a pass (at least he didn’t invent something to feign outrage about, so I should probably just let that sleeping dog lie (lay?)). I also held off on the YOU vs. I AM until the crosses made it clear. I noticed we toggled back from PEE to ASS again.
Peter Gordon has remarkable range. He makes blisteringly hard puzzles filled with arcane facts and wit (you can get your fill of these if you subscribe to his site Fireball). And, as today’s puzzle shows, he can spin out a breezy fill-‘er-up. One thing all his puzzles have is construction mastery. That is evident today in how he got the circled answers in proper 4-8-16 rising order – and having those numbers match their clue numbers! – not to mention two of them crossing BRACKETOLOGY, for heaven’s sake.
The puzzle had sparks for me as well. The abutting synonyms RILE and ANGER. The riddle clue for EGG: [Something that has to be broken before it can be used]. The echoing ELM and ELMO. The internal rhymes of PLEAT, SWEET, ELITE, and NEAT(LY).
Plus, the puzzle brought me a lovely little post-solve rabbit hole. “Ken Burns” in a clue made me think of George Burns, and two answers in the grid suddenly started flashing. One was PSALMIST, because of George’s movie “Oh,God!”, and, even better, speaking of George, was GRACIE.
Thank you, sir, for this fun outing, and please, keep ‘em coming!
This one put up a bit of a fuss. Quite fun to stick with it and finish with a lay-up. I struggled on top, so went to the basement, found the revealer, and then * poof * those circles made sense and the rest dropped. I'm sure lots of us wrote Cinderella STORY before TEAMS.
BRACKETOLOGY is a great concept. It's a fun tradition to fill out the bracket with zero interest in college basketball by picking the teams from the coolest sounding towns and then forget to check the results.
The IGA/GRACIE cross was kinda mean. UPROSE is kinda not a word.
My plan is to go to Germany and get a springerle cookie someday and say, "I prefer a thin mint," and then say, "IN A PIG'S EYE" real quick to avoid deportation.
The answer to [Who's solving this puzzle] is ME, not YOU, right?
Uniclues:
1 Ordered McDonald's from Uber-Eats. 2 The New York Times crossword department creedo. 3 Why the company is under performing. 4 Truck stop is huge. 5 Mocking comment over the news my little brother got a job. 6 Pig's cup of Alka-Seltzer.
1 RANG SAD DINING 2 ENSURE ASS RILE 3 TOP BANANA'S ACID 4 MACK AREA AMPLE 5 "AW, GOON EARNS" 6 STY GASSER MUG
ALEX, NIA and GRACIE seemed way outside the normal Tuesday fare, but of those only GRACIE seems likely to cause trouble, if you didn't know IGA, or thought iNSURE instead of ENSURE.
IN A PIG'S EYE/TOP BANANAS were the highlights. The low point - possibly of the year - was IRAIL.
Harmless MARCH MADNESS puzzle - and finally the NYTXW does it temporally relevant. Could have done without the circles. Like other things in life - don’t have much patience for minutiae as I get older - but although I don’t keep up on all the teams I still enjoy watching the college games.
Agree with the big guy that the overall fill is strained - GEOG, EENY, STY etc. UPROSE? I liked PSALMIST and IN A PIGS EYE. Filled it in in real time - no pushback.
I don’t indulge in basketball but I I know all the lingo somehow and finished this pretty easily—and thought it was quite clever and well executed. I liked the old-timers, esp INAPIGSEYE, and look forward to LMS’s take on that expression! For me MARCHMADNESS feels rather quaint compared to the Trump/Pence games.
Perfect! A March Madness puzzle. Hit the first themer, dropped down to the reveal, and had enough already to grab FINAL, SWEET, and ELITE.
The others went in without missing a beat. Very much looking forward to the Tournament. We should try a commentariat pool some time. Lots of other fun fill. Learned to drive trucks in a MACK.
Don't know my rappers but Nicki was easy from the downs and at least got an "oh yeah, Nicki". Only do-over was ELM for oak, and then I was done.
I spent a huge chunk of my career representing NBA players as well as a number of NHL, MLB players. Learned to detest pro sports. With that said , can anyone help? Anything I can read to learn more about grid construction. I can finish the puzzles but seems as if I am missing a whole dimension of puzzling. Thanks
Why do you assume that EVERY rap star is a monster who proves that Rex is inconsistent in his outrage? Nicki Minaj is a woman, a feminist, a gay icon. What do you find objectionable about her?
This one was kind of a stinker. Not hard at all, it just felt forced. Almost like the editor wanted a themed puzzle and this was the least-bad option they had.
When I entered college my school was national champions in basketball. This year we went 3-29 overall and 2-18 in the conference. On the plus side, they were and still are on the top of their game academically, which used to be a more important way to rate a university.
Yep, this puzzle was not for me. The juxtaposition of the old timey speak with the sportsballing made it doubly not up my alley. Agree about I AM vs YOU - though it reveals the constructor’s bent towards showing what he could do vs the experience of the solver imo.
Something nice about the puzzle - I liked SCREECH, and I liked the cluing for ANISE.
I also liked being able to dredge up the basketball terms from growing up with my brother (sans BRACKETOLOGY, which I’ve never encountered before and hope to never encounter again). My brother is 6’5”, and was on a lot of basketball teams all through his childhood, and I appreciate some of the nice memories this puzzle brought up.
My father, despite being 6’7”, never played. When people used to ask him if he played basketball, he would say, “No, do you play miniature golf?” He’s the best.
Fairly tricky for me as a Brit - I had no idea re BRACKETOLOGY or CINDERELLA TEAMS never having heard of those before, but at least they were gettable from the crosses.
Pleased to see IGA Swiatek in the puzzle - the world's number one female tennis player and ahead of the rest at the moment, so probably a good one to learn for future reference.
The S from PSALMIST gave away the game. and it was a fast break from there. Liked seeing BRACKETOLOGY, a great word. Back in my teaching days a lot of us did brackets, and one year I chose my teams by flipping a coin. I did about as well as I always did.
Someday I will learn NIA and ALEX and IGA as clued, although IGA for me is, or was, a chain of grocery stores. And does anyone really say GASSER.? Anyone at all?
I'm not sure ELM is usde that often in cabinetry. I do know it is almost useless as firewood, as it burns with little heat and is virtually impossible to split by hand.
Nice timely Tuesday, PG. May your Picks Go far, and thanks for all the fun.
Well, let's see. First of all, I had the ?RACK, so when I saw "Process of picking winners", I immediately thought of horse racing and wrote in tRACK. So I now had tRACK??OLOLY. Whassat?
Oh, yes, I forgot to add that my "Park ranger's subj" was GEOL, not GEOG. I know some very well-educated park rangers.
This is a very niche puzzle -- especially for a Tuesday. I was all prepared to write:
Niche Is a bitch
But then I saw that niche is pronounced neesh and not nitch. Oh, well.
The one thing that made me feel better about almost not finishing this in the BRACKETOLOGY section? I knew that @Hartley would be struggling even more :)
Been there, suffered that. My senior year of college, my school won the 1-AA national football championship. Which upon, they fell off a cliff and sucked hard for the next 17-18 years. They finally made it back to the title game this past January... and got their butts kicked.
Amy: since I lived in Western Massachusetts for years and listened to WAMC out of Albany, GRACIE was a gimme. @BobMills, not only did YOU instead of I AM draw a side eye, UPROSE caused an upraised eyebrow. I'd say "they revolted," not they uprose.
Hey All ! The ole MARCH MADNESS. Have to admit not being a fan of college b-ball. I know, shocking. Hang me up by my toenails and throw EGGs at me.
Neat how the corresponding places are in the actual places, ala the FINAL four at 4, etc. Also neat how BRACKETOLOGY nicely fits with the FINAL and ELITE. Plus, that Upper-Mid section comes out amazingly clean. Way to construct PG.
The GRACIE/MALIGN/IGA section was tough. No idea what the G was supposed to be (in retrospect, should've seen MALIGN), so threw in an R for IRA, making non-word MALIRN. Oh well, you live and MALIRN.
As a person who is not at all a sports person, and especially not a shool sports person, this puzzle was not my favorite. POW worthy? I think not. Some of the terminology I got from osmosis, some I did not. I expect puzzles not suited to me, even on a Tuesday, but that doesn't mean I can't complain about them.
The more crossword blogs you read, the more you learn about construction. If you want to get more involved with construction, speak with Jeff Chen over at XWordInfo.com. He enthusiastically responds to emails. And this blog will contain advice now and then about how to construct better puzzles (or at least puzzles preferred by those who come here).
This reminds me of a classic bit on The Simpsons. Bart interacts with a talking statue of Smokey the Bear, which has a sign in front of it reading “Only WHO can prevent forest fires?” and two buttons, one labeled “You” and the other labeled “Me”. Bart pushes the “You” button.
“Wrong!” says the bear. “You chose “You”, as in me. The correct answer is “Me”, as in… YOU”.
It’s really special that “poop” is part of the clue for ASS.
YOU FAT SAD RAT ASS. Gotta love today’s 3’s.
What does it mean that we have ERIC, MACK and MIKE scrunched between the FINAL 4 and the Elite 8? One thing for sure is that they put the ICK in NICKI.
I’d rather hear an owl SCREECH CREEDS than reach screeds.
Pretty prescient to slip this year’s TOPBANANAS (TIDES) into this puzzle (for those who don’t follow this stuff, the Alabama Crimson Tide are the top seeded team in this year’s tourney). Of course it would have been even more incredible to insert the eventual winners (Zags). Remember you read it here first.
Pretty easy and predictable puzzle. No surprises after the super early FINAL 4. I still enjoyed it a bunch. Thanks, Peter Gordon.
Always a frustration for me when I hurry through a clue and make an obvious error. Today it was dropping in eMAIL instead of GMAIL and bustling along my way. So as I'm wrapping it up, I have no clue who IGA is, and I am slightly ambivalent between ENSURE and iNSURE. That leaves me eRAC?? for the mayor's house. I know GRACIE Mansion. Period. But it took me so long to open my eyes. I'll blame it on COVID, which has finally visited me and my wife.
Would have liked one more theme related answer at 61A (ANISE) to add one more touch of symmetry to the grid. But it would take a complete overhaul of the SW, and may not even be possible since 4 of the downs cross the MARC of MARCH MADNESS.
Seems to me you can do something with a egg without breaking it. It is a real object in the real world, after all. Just sayin'
I think the bracketology clue is wrong. That word normally refers to predicting who gets in the bracket and the seeding, not the results of the tournament. If you goggle bracketology, you will get results for projecting who is in the tournament, not predicting the tournament winners.
One who rudely holds the ball at the apex of it's bounce PALMIST Old-timey backboards ELM Leaders of the 1917 ball WSUCOUGARS Arching route to the paint BANANACUT More than enough ROUTE Tick off SHOTCLOCK Sounds from the Texas Women's University mascot SCREECHES Bama and Tulane, for 2 TIDES How a well-arched ball ends up NETLY Who is solving this puzzle at the U of U UTE Stephen Curry and 2008 Davidson College, for one CINDARELLASTORY Candyman of LA LAMARODOM Giant insurance in the key, say BIGMAN Air Bud's frat brand ALPHABETA Your mother's mother at the buzzer GRANNYSHOT From where your mother shoots free throws MALIGN Nada AIRBALL 180 square feet THEPAINT
Very timely Tuesday puzzle! I guess I’ll keep an eye out for IGA on the tennis court.
@pablo, I put in oak as the cabinetry material and had to side-eye when I saw it was ELM. Maybe it is a Northeast cabinetry wood but I don’t believe I’ve seen ELM furniture or ELM cabinets. Mahogany, Cherry, Oak, and even Pine but not ELM.
Also, I have never called the NCAA basketball tournament the MARCHMADNESS tournament. I think of it as causing said “madness” among college basketball fans and even for non-fans who decide to use their BRACKETOLOGY skills to win their office pot o money. However, this did NOT cause me to be MAD at the puzzle!
I guess I don’t think of INAPIGSEYE as any more “old-timey” than “when Hell freezes over” but I think I’ll Google it now because both EYE and PIG seem pretty random.
Loved the theme. Making the clues a 4, 8, and 16 was clever. Also stumbled on CINDERELLASTORY before CINDERELLATEAMS. I think "Story" is the right one here. I don't think people talk about "Cinderalla teams". I agree with Daniel that Bracketology is predicting the bracket itself before Selection Sunday (which would have been another fun theme word to squeeze in).
I'm also on team IAM for the puzzle solver. I'm the one answering the clue, so it's in my voice, not the puzzle author's. I would have appreciated the fourth-wall-breaking a bit more with the first person answer.
Also, @SouthsideJohnny, when you put rap artist in scare quotes like that, you're telling on yourself, as the kids say. Nicki Minaj is excellent.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure I've never heard the expression "in a pig's eye". Maybe it's a regional thing? I'm nearly 40 and lived most of my life in the US midwest.
Suffering from sports MADNESS as I do, this puzzle was nothing but net. (Oh, that would’ve been a SWEET grid entry.) But the whole time I was thinking that folks who don’t follow basketball (hi @Nancy) would probably not like it so much. Oh well, we can’t all be ELITE solvers every day. Of course it makes all the difference in the world too, that the construction is obviously the work of a real pro.
Just yesterday, I checked the BRACKET to see if game times had been set yet. (Yes they have.) Mizzou plays Utah State on Thursday and CBS sports predicts it will be one of the best first round games to watch. With a #7 seed, they may not be one of those CINDERELLA TEAMS who make the FINAL but it would be nice if they could avoid the AGONY of an early defeat. We’ll see.
Happy Pi Day! 3/14, like the first digits of the decimal representation of pi, 3.14159... Pi is the most famous of the irrational numbers and there are an infinite number of them.
Mediumish for me. IGA and NIA (as clued) were WOEs and me too for story before TEAMS. NCAA plus a couple of fine long downs, liked it. Jeff gave it POW based partially on the circle clues.
Not my cuppa, but seems ok for basketball fans who are also into trivia.
Alternative clues:
* Introductory course in the art of shelving * Exasperated response to a foolish person who has disappointed you * Fortune teller who sings your future
Ay, Dios mío...I know nothing about anything college tourney's. If it's not soccer, I go sit in my corner and suck my thumb. Speaking of which: @Weezie 8:30. It seems like ALL the men in my family got the grow tall gene. My nephew, nicknamed "Bear," is 6'5 . He is always asked if he plays basketball..he responds: "No, I kick balls for a living." He's a soccer guy. The only MARCH MADNESS that overcomes me is St. Patrick's DAY. While we don't dump green goo into the Sacramento River, it seems that everyone drinks green beer, A Jamison ginger and lime cocktail and DINING on corned beef and cabbage....And then get drunk. So, speaking of the puzzle. It felt kinda old timey to me. The Leaves at the library clue is one I thought might've been shelved long ago. OLD DAYS are "Good" times? GASSER might've been said during my granpappy's life and I don't think they make NAIR anymore. Just a few little thoughts that jumped up and out to me. I know "When Pigs Fly" as an oldish saying but I don't think I've heard anyone say IN A PIGS EYE. I don't know how that works. Never heard the term BRACKETOLOGY nor CINDERELLA TEAMS. I know what a BRACKET is and I know who CINDERELLA is but why on earth are they used for any team.....[sigh] I did finish, though... @Wanderlust 7:43. NICKI Minaj needs to have her adenoids removed.
Yuck. Very surprised at this since the constructor is usually great. May we never see AWGOON again. I suspect this puzzle was slapped together very quickly.
I am glad to know that you also struggled with CINDERELLATEAMS. I am no college basketball expert, but I have heard a lot of Cinderella stories and I have never heard them referred to as Cinderella teams.
If you’re a college basketball fan and have never seen the movie Glory Road, now would be a great time to do so. Based on the true story of 1966 Texas Western (now UTEP) coach Don Haskins, who led the first all-black starting lineup for a college basketball team to the NCAA national championship. I guarantee it’ll get you in the mood for some MARCH MADNESS but fair warning: keep a box of Kleenex close, you’ll need them for the FINAL scenes.
NEATLY done! I thought the long theme answers were colorful; didn't notice the crucial 4, 8, and 16 numbering until after I was finished - 3 cherries on the top!
@Weezie, LOVED your father’s retort “Do you play miniature golf”! I have NEVER asked a man or woman a question that relates to their height OR lack thereof, and it just seems rude. My nephew’s fianceé is 6’ and SHE apparently gets asked constantly if she played basketball and volleyball. She DID play volleyball but beside the point.
Any puz that has both MADNESS & BANANAS in it is A-OK by m&e. Luved the FINAL/ELITE/SWEET bonus trick, up-top.
staff weeject pick: IGA. Had trouble rememberin her name, even tho I saw that US Open final. Crossin GRACIE didn't help, for a many a nanosecond. Primo weeject stacks in the NW & SE, btw.
some faves: TOPBANANAS & MARCHMADNESS. INAPIGSEYE. SCREECH. PSALMIST. BRACKETOLOGY [Only puz debut-word]. UPROSE. har
Thanx for the Nice Crossword + Also Amusin time, Mr. Gordon dude. And congratz on yer POW award.
Another agraeemanet wit ?Bob re 63A who is doing the puzzle. Answer should be I am. Think I've been that in another puzzle recently and it bothered methane as now.
The revealer caught my eye... MARCHMADNESS, bam. And then FINAL ELITE SWEET right away. But that's as far as my March Madness knowledge goes, I needed a lot of crosses for CINDERELLATEAMS and I stumbled around AWGOON and the -OLOGY part of BRACKETOLOGY, never heard of that. Even then, my time was slightly faster than yesterday. The GRACIE/IGA/ALAI area, meh. But TOPBANANAS and INAPIGSEYE, great stuff.
I was expecting... more, for a POW pick, but maybe it's just my lack of interest in sports that didn't make me like the theme. Here's hoping for something good for tomorrow - HOLY GUACAMOLE, no way it's going to be as bad as last Wednesday's.
This got POW? AW GO ON! I find watching basketball the most ho-hum activity imaginable and so couldn't muster much enthusiasm for this puzzle.
Is ELM actually used in cabinetry? I wouldn't think there were enough elms left alive to use for wood, and so many kitchens have oak cabinets that oak was my first answer, but I was pretty sure most people wouldn't hold their hot cocoa in a keg.
Peter Gordon, I hope you're enjoying the MARCH MADNESS.
FINAL, ELITE and SWEET strike me as partials in the context of MARCH MADNESS. (They are all five letters so I don't see any basketball connection there.) That's pretty thin soup when it comes to overall amount of theme material so it looks like a CINDERELLA TEAM was conscripted in an attempt to beef things up. It's a bit of an outlier though. One may or may not appear in any given NCAA tournament. And it's very rare for one to win it all and become the TOP BANANA. SAD to say but both CINDERELLA TEAM and TOP BANANA come up short and clang off the front of the rim.
The "Who is solving this puzzle" type clue for 63A YOU has appeared numerous times during the Shortz era, including this past January 6. Hey NYTXW, it's ME. I am the one solving, not YOU.
I UPROSE and cheered to see some good OLD DAYS stuff like ELO, ALAI and IGA, the latter formerly clued as a grocery store chain.
I really struggled with this one, but I think it's because I'm not from the US, and know nothing about basketball. Also, I'd never heard of "in a pigs eye". What a delightful phrase!
I went ahead and set up a March Madness Pool for those of us here that would like to fill one out for the NYTXWD Commentariat Bracket.
Our motto is OKO ORR ENO and the password to join the pool is Natick. Hope some of you will think that's fun and join. Entries have to be finalized by the start of the first game (Maryland vs west Virginia) at noon on Thursday (play-ins today and tomorrow don't count).
Shouldn't someone (i.e. Rex) complain that BRACKETOLOGY and MARCH MADNESS require cheater squares? Or do cheater squares not count as cheater squares when used with theme answers?
OLD DAYS stands alone just fine in the Windy City.
Gil I. - Haven't you heard the phrase "goold old days"? Anoa Bob - The terms Final Four, Elite Eight, and Sweet Sixteen have been used for yeras and years to describe the rounds of the NCAA championship tourney.
Another sport besides basketball is being played these days. The Israeli National Baseball team, fresh off of its amazing victory over Nicaragua on Sunday, took the day off Monday. Unfortunately, they were playing Puerto Rico at the time and lost 10-0 without getting any runner to first base. Ouch! (I.e., it was a perfect game for PR.)
It might have been a mistake for Israel to leave its mascot (The Mensch on the Bench) behind this time. It's the only team mascot that wears a tallis.
@JT 2:07, I'm familiar with FINAL four, ELITE Eight and SWEET Sixteen as NCAA Tournament phrases and it would have been nice if those had appeared in the grid along with MARCH MADNESS. But the letter counts---9, 10 & 12---preclude that so we just get the first parts of those phrases. These are called "partials" in xword lingo. Partials are incomplete and are usually seen as less than desirable fill, similar to things like abbreviations, random Roman numerals, random Roman numeral Popes, crosswordese, etc. So I thought those partial theme entries were demerits rather than assets to the puzzle's quality.
Liveprof, I dunno about amazing. Beating Nicaragua may not be the achievement you're suggesting. They are woeful 0-4 in the tournament. And having a perfect game pitched against you is, well, almost unimaginably bad. And I suspect there'll be more of the same for the Israelis. They've yet to face the class of the group-Venezuela who are undefeated and the Dominican republic. If i were a betting man, I'd feel mighty be confident that Israel will finish 1 and 4.
For anyone who follows tennis, IGA Swiatek is perfectly acceptable as an answer. And for anyone who has ever lived in the NYC area, GRACIE Mansion seems perfectly fair.
As a Saturday/Sunday print subscriber, I would say the Times’ sports page these days might not be much help on something as mainstream as March Madness. Their sports coverage (usually only 2-4 pages on weekends) skews pretty esoteric. You’re more likely to see in-depth coverage of European soccer and yet another think piece about Pickleball than NCAA bracket coverage.
I am not a frequent commenter, but I really just didn't like this one. Particularly hard/bad/difficult: *Mike *Ali crossing Elo *Its 100% Cinderella Story not teams *Ricoh?? *Uprose *IGA (as I was blanking on Gracie) *Irail *In a Pig's Eye? (43 years on this planet, living on the east coast and midwest, and have never heard that) *Park Ranger's subject - GEOG?? yuck.
Anyway, first Tuesday in a long time I DNF. Didn't mind the March Madness references generally thought.
I found this a bit out of sync, but that's to be expected for a syndilander. Even so, it was one of the easiest ever. I think it would have been improved by cluing the circled entries by normal definition instead of the giveaway clues provided. Let the solver "discover" that the answers appear at the appropriate number clue. That would seem like an EXTRA bit of depth to the whole theme. Instead you slap us in the face with it.
INAPIGSEYE reminds me of STTOS episode "Amok Time," when McCoy says that at the end. One of the best of the old series--maybe THE best.
Agree that AWGOON is a "DOOK." Had me scratching for a moment. Like RILE atop ANGER. Fun to do; birdie.
A Wordle disaster: DNF in 6. Too many _OUNDs. I went all around the right one.
MARCHMADNESS is long gone, but that's what we get. Completed it very NEATLY with no write-overs. Also a Wordle DNF, lotsa choices for that first letter.
Mike was the original shortening for microphone, until very small electronic devices came along. Mic wasn't used, because linguistsically that should be pronounced "mick", which is a slur name for an Irishman.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
.png)
99 comments:
@Rex, you have a minor typo at the start of the writeup: FINAL is at Four-Down, and ELITE is at Eight-Down.
I found the puzzle quite easy even though I'm only peripherally interested in the Tournament (my Michigan Wolverines didn't even make the cut). I didn't solve downs-only, but I avoided reading the clues for the long answers and the circled answers and I still finished in what seemed like normal Tuesday time.
Easy for readers of the Times' sports page, medium to hard for anyone else. I finished it in about 20 minutes, with only one problem to solve. I had ASSURE instead of ENSURE, but the crosses made the change routine.
Who's doing the puzzle? The answer shouldn't be YOU, it should be IAM. I'd be interested in comments from others about this.
The short fill was wanting in places. But, all in all, I really enjoyed this puzzle. The themed clues covered pretty much all of the jargon used during MARCH MADNESS and it’s certainly timely. And BRACKETOLOGY… how good is that?! Very nice puzzle.
Now to cheer on my alma mater: Go Penn. Oh, that’s right, the Quakers are staying home once again. I’m learning to hate Princeton (which, apropos of nothing, is the only Ivy League university with no Medical School. )
Don't see Conrad's error. Agree with Bob on who's doing the puzzle. Easy puzzle for me, and enjoyable since I still like March Madness. Years ago I had an annual bet with one guy - we would alternate in picking teams. We would bid on who got the first pick, an auction that usually cost $50. Then the stakes would increase for each round, starting at $1 and ending at $100 for the final game. In 1992 I would have had all four teams in the Final Four if Kentucky had beaten Duke. But Duke won and then won the tourney. That's when I decided to hate Christian Laettner. You can read about his shot here: http://bit.ly/42o5IAn
A fun puzzle, even for someone like me who doesn’t follow sportball of any kind. A chewy Tuesday for a downs-only solve.
Interesting point, @Bob Mills. I guess I’m answering “YOU” the voice of the puzzle, not my own voice. Feeling a bit like Paul Winchell. (Cultural reference from the OLD DAYS, which were only so-so in my opinion, though that Jerry Mahoney could pull off a GASSER now and then.)
Easy enough.
Who is IGA? Crosses are your friend.
PSALMIST looks and sounds really weird, but if you need a word for the people that wrote them that’s as good a choice as any (I wonder if “lyricist” looked weird at one time as well. It’s probably a lot easier to make a living as a lyricist though. Correct me if I’m wrong - are new psalms still being written, set to music and published (I’m familiar with the term from the Bible, but have never heard it refer to something contemporary).
Once again Rex gives LENIN and the rap “artist” a pass (at least he didn’t invent something to feign outrage about, so I should probably just let that sleeping dog lie (lay?)). I also held off on the YOU vs. I AM until the crosses made it clear. I noticed we toggled back from PEE to ASS again.
Peter Gordon has remarkable range. He makes blisteringly hard puzzles filled with arcane facts and wit (you can get your fill of these if you subscribe to his site Fireball). And, as today’s puzzle shows, he can spin out a breezy fill-‘er-up. One thing all his puzzles have is construction mastery. That is evident today in how he got the circled answers in proper 4-8-16 rising order – and having those numbers match their clue numbers! – not to mention two of them crossing BRACKETOLOGY, for heaven’s sake.
The puzzle had sparks for me as well. The abutting synonyms RILE and ANGER. The riddle clue for EGG: [Something that has to be broken before it can be used]. The echoing ELM and ELMO. The internal rhymes of PLEAT, SWEET, ELITE, and NEAT(LY).
Plus, the puzzle brought me a lovely little post-solve rabbit hole. “Ken Burns” in a clue made me think of George Burns, and two answers in the grid suddenly started flashing. One was PSALMIST, because of George’s movie “Oh,God!”, and, even better, speaking of George, was GRACIE.
Thank you, sir, for this fun outing, and please, keep ‘em coming!
Fixed it, thanks! ~RP
This one put up a bit of a fuss. Quite fun to stick with it and finish with a lay-up. I struggled on top, so went to the basement, found the revealer, and then * poof * those circles made sense and the rest dropped. I'm sure lots of us wrote Cinderella STORY before TEAMS.
BRACKETOLOGY is a great concept. It's a fun tradition to fill out the bracket with zero interest in college basketball by picking the teams from the coolest sounding towns and then forget to check the results.
The IGA/GRACIE cross was kinda mean. UPROSE is kinda not a word.
My plan is to go to Germany and get a springerle cookie someday and say, "I prefer a thin mint," and then say, "IN A PIG'S EYE" real quick to avoid deportation.
The answer to [Who's solving this puzzle] is ME, not YOU, right?
Uniclues:
1 Ordered McDonald's from Uber-Eats.
2 The New York Times crossword department creedo.
3 Why the company is under performing.
4 Truck stop is huge.
5 Mocking comment over the news my little brother got a job.
6 Pig's cup of Alka-Seltzer.
1 RANG SAD DINING
2 ENSURE ASS RILE
3 TOP BANANA'S ACID
4 MACK AREA AMPLE
5 "AW, GOON EARNS"
6 STY GASSER MUG
ALEX, NIA and GRACIE seemed way outside the normal Tuesday fare, but of those only GRACIE seems likely to cause trouble, if you didn't know IGA, or thought iNSURE instead of ENSURE.
IN A PIG'S EYE/TOP BANANAS were the highlights. The low point - possibly of the year - was IRAIL.
Harmless MARCH MADNESS puzzle - and finally the NYTXW does it temporally relevant. Could have done without the circles. Like other things in life - don’t have much patience for minutiae as I get older - but although I don’t keep up on all the teams I still enjoy watching the college games.
Agree with the big guy that the overall fill is strained - GEOG, EENY, STY etc. UPROSE? I liked PSALMIST and IN A PIGS EYE. Filled it in in real time - no pushback.
Enjoyable Tuesday solve.
We’ve had a GAS this time - it’s really been a GAS
I don’t indulge in basketball but I I know all the lingo somehow and finished this pretty easily—and thought it was quite clever and well executed. I liked the old-timers, esp INAPIGSEYE, and look forward to LMS’s take on that expression!
For me MARCHMADNESS feels rather quaint compared to the Trump/Pence games.
Perfect! A March Madness puzzle. Hit the first themer, dropped down to the reveal, and had enough already to grab FINAL, SWEET, and ELITE.
The others went in without missing a beat. Very much looking forward to the Tournament. We should try a commentariat pool some time. Lots of other fun fill. Learned to drive trucks in a MACK.
Don't know my rappers but Nicki was easy from the downs and at least got an "oh yeah, Nicki". Only do-over was ELM for oak, and then I was done.
I spent a huge chunk of my career representing NBA players as well as a number of NHL, MLB players. Learned to detest pro sports. With that said , can anyone help? Anything I can read to learn more about grid construction. I can finish the puzzles but seems as if I am missing a whole dimension of puzzling. Thanks
Why do you assume that EVERY rap star is a monster who proves that Rex is inconsistent in his outrage? Nicki Minaj is a woman, a feminist, a gay icon. What do you find objectionable about her?
This one was kind of a stinker. Not hard at all, it just felt forced. Almost like the editor wanted a themed puzzle and this was the least-bad option they had.
Theme answers were lame and some of the fill was ugly. All in all it had the excitement of two teams in a play-in game to be a number 16 seed
I could tell you why he assumes every rap star is a monster. It’s not exactly a mystery.
OY! Don't remind me.
When I entered college my school was national champions in basketball. This year we went 3-29 overall and 2-18 in the conference. On the plus side, they were and still are on the top of their game academically, which used to be a more important way to rate a university.
I’m not into basketball at all, but I had no problems with this — though it wasn’t the most puzzle fun I’ve ever had.
I think a podcaster would be much more likely to buy a mic than a mike.
Yep, this puzzle was not for me. The juxtaposition of the old timey speak with the sportsballing made it doubly not up my alley. Agree about I AM vs YOU - though it reveals the constructor’s bent towards showing what he could do vs the experience of the solver imo.
Something nice about the puzzle - I liked SCREECH, and I liked the cluing for ANISE.
I also liked being able to dredge up the basketball terms from growing up with my brother (sans BRACKETOLOGY, which I’ve never encountered before and hope to never encounter again). My brother is 6’5”, and was on a lot of basketball teams all through his childhood, and I appreciate some of the nice memories this puzzle brought up.
My father, despite being 6’7”, never played. When people used to ask him if he played basketball, he would say, “No, do you play miniature golf?” He’s the best.
To rid unwanted
hair down there,
The KEA/LOA
is NEET/NAIR…
Burma Shave
(though NEET apparently has been called VEET since 2002)
@Joaquin, go Hoyas. I still remember the 1982 loss to the Tar Heels, and the '84 win over Phi Slama Jama. Pulling for UConn this year...
Fairly tricky for me as a Brit - I had no idea re BRACKETOLOGY or CINDERELLA TEAMS never having heard of those before, but at least they were gettable from the crosses.
Pleased to see IGA Swiatek in the puzzle - the world's number one female tennis player and ahead of the rest at the moment, so probably a good one to learn for future reference.
The S from PSALMIST gave away the game. and it was a fast break from there. Liked seeing BRACKETOLOGY, a great word. Back in my teaching days a lot of us did brackets, and one year I chose my teams by flipping a coin. I did about as well as I always did.
Someday I will learn NIA and ALEX and IGA as clued, although IGA for me is, or was, a chain of grocery stores. And does anyone really say GASSER.? Anyone at all?
I'm not sure ELM is usde that often in cabinetry. I do know it is almost useless as firewood, as it burns with little heat and is virtually impossible to split by hand.
Nice timely Tuesday, PG. May your Picks Go far, and thanks for all the fun.
Totally agree. I wrote in “I am,” then had to change it.
BRACKETOLOGY???!!!!
Well, let's see. First of all, I had the ?RACK, so when I saw "Process of picking winners", I immediately thought of horse racing and wrote in tRACK. So I now had tRACK??OLOLY. Whassat?
Oh, yes, I forgot to add that my "Park ranger's subj" was GEOL, not GEOG. I know some very well-educated park rangers.
This is a very niche puzzle -- especially for a Tuesday. I was all prepared to write:
Niche
Is a bitch
But then I saw that niche is pronounced neesh and not nitch. Oh, well.
The one thing that made me feel better about almost not finishing this in the BRACKETOLOGY section? I knew that @Hartley would be struggling even more :)
Wasn't all that impressed by the fill, but hallelujah, the #NYTXW comes up a themer that is timely! When was the last time that happened?
Hola @Joaquin,
Been there, suffered that. My senior year of college, my school won the 1-AA national football championship. Which upon, they fell off a cliff and sucked hard for the next 17-18 years. They finally made it back to the title game this past January... and got their butts kicked.
Amy: since I lived in Western Massachusetts for years and listened to WAMC out of Albany, GRACIE was a gimme.
@BobMills, not only did YOU instead of I AM draw a side eye, UPROSE caused an upraised eyebrow. I'd say "they revolted," not they uprose.
Hey All !
The ole MARCH MADNESS. Have to admit not being a fan of college b-ball. I know, shocking. Hang me up by my toenails and throw EGGs at me.
Neat how the corresponding places are in the actual places, ala the FINAL four at 4, etc. Also neat how BRACKETOLOGY nicely fits with the FINAL and ELITE. Plus, that Upper-Mid section comes out amazingly clean. Way to construct PG.
The GRACIE/MALIGN/IGA section was tough. No idea what the G was supposed to be (in retrospect, should've seen MALIGN), so threw in an R for IRA, making non-word MALIRN. Oh well, you live and MALIRN.
NEATLY ASS. Har
What you say to a bumbling henchman?
"AW, GOON"
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
As a person who is not at all a sports person, and especially not a shool sports person, this puzzle was not my favorite. POW worthy? I think not. Some of the terminology I got from osmosis, some I did not. I expect puzzles not suited to me, even on a Tuesday, but that doesn't mean I can't complain about them.
The more crossword blogs you read, the more you learn about construction. If you want to get more involved with construction, speak with Jeff Chen over at XWordInfo.com. He enthusiastically responds to emails. And this blog will contain advice now and then about how to construct better puzzles (or at least puzzles preferred by those who come here).
> (Note: the AREA of a standard NBA / NCAA basketball court is 4,700 square feet)
Chirp chirp!
This reminds me of a classic bit on The Simpsons. Bart interacts with a talking statue of Smokey the Bear, which has a sign in front of it reading “Only WHO can prevent forest fires?” and two buttons, one labeled “You” and the other labeled “Me”. Bart pushes the “You” button.
“Wrong!” says the bear. “You chose “You”, as in me. The correct answer is “Me”, as in… YOU”.
It’s really special that “poop” is part of the clue for ASS.
YOU FAT SAD RAT ASS. Gotta love today’s 3’s.
What does it mean that we have ERIC, MACK and MIKE scrunched between the FINAL 4 and the Elite 8? One thing for sure is that they put the ICK in NICKI.
I’d rather hear an owl SCREECH CREEDS than reach screeds.
Pretty prescient to slip this year’s TOPBANANAS (TIDES) into this puzzle (for those who don’t follow this stuff, the Alabama Crimson Tide are the top seeded team in this year’s tourney). Of course it would have been even more incredible to insert the eventual winners (Zags). Remember you read it here first.
Pretty easy and predictable puzzle. No surprises after the super early FINAL 4. I still enjoyed it a bunch. Thanks, Peter Gordon.
Always a frustration for me when I hurry through a clue and make an obvious error. Today it was dropping in eMAIL instead of GMAIL and bustling along my way. So as I'm wrapping it up, I have no clue who IGA is, and I am slightly ambivalent between ENSURE and iNSURE. That leaves me eRAC?? for the mayor's house. I know GRACIE Mansion. Period. But it took me so long to open my eyes. I'll blame it on COVID, which has finally visited me and my wife.
Would have liked one more theme related answer at 61A (ANISE) to add one more touch of symmetry to the grid. But it would take a complete overhaul of the SW, and may not even be possible since 4 of the downs cross the MARC of MARCH MADNESS.
Seems to me you can do something with a egg without breaking it. It is a real object in the real world, after all. Just sayin'
I think the bracketology clue is wrong. That word normally refers to predicting who gets in the bracket and the seeding, not the results of the tournament. If you goggle bracketology, you will get results for projecting who is in the tournament, not predicting the tournament winners.
1) Author of "Make a joyful noise unto your global health care partner"
2) "I'm not taking that science course and you can't make me!"
3) A product for those who like their laundry whites slightly more yellow
1) PSALMIST AETNA
2) GEOG IN A PIG'S EYE
3) TIDE'S EXTRA EGG
One who rudely holds the ball at the apex of it's bounce
PALMIST
Old-timey backboards
ELM
Leaders of the 1917 ball
WSUCOUGARS
Arching route to the paint
BANANACUT
More than enough
ROUTE
Tick off
SHOTCLOCK
Sounds from the Texas Women's University mascot
SCREECHES
Bama and Tulane, for 2
TIDES
How a well-arched ball ends up
NETLY
Who is solving this puzzle at the U of U
UTE
Stephen Curry and 2008 Davidson College, for one
CINDARELLASTORY
Candyman of LA
LAMARODOM
Giant insurance in the key, say
BIGMAN
Air Bud's frat brand
ALPHABETA
Your mother's mother at the buzzer
GRANNYSHOT
From where your mother shoots free throws
MALIGN
Nada
AIRBALL
180 square feet
THEPAINT
Very timely Tuesday puzzle! I guess I’ll keep an eye out for IGA on the tennis court.
@pablo, I put in oak as the cabinetry material and had to side-eye when I saw it was ELM. Maybe it is a Northeast cabinetry wood but I don’t believe I’ve seen ELM furniture or ELM cabinets. Mahogany, Cherry, Oak, and even Pine but not ELM.
Also, I have never called the NCAA basketball tournament the MARCHMADNESS tournament. I think of it as causing said “madness” among college basketball fans and even for non-fans who decide to use their BRACKETOLOGY skills to win their office pot o money. However, this did NOT cause me to be MAD at the puzzle!
I guess I don’t think of INAPIGSEYE as any more “old-timey” than “when Hell freezes over” but I think I’ll Google it now because both EYE and PIG seem pretty random.
Loved the theme. Making the clues a 4, 8, and 16 was clever. Also stumbled on CINDERELLASTORY before CINDERELLATEAMS. I think "Story" is the right one here. I don't think people talk about "Cinderalla teams". I agree with Daniel that Bracketology is predicting the bracket itself before Selection Sunday (which would have been another fun theme word to squeeze in).
I'm also on team IAM for the puzzle solver. I'm the one answering the clue, so it's in my voice, not the puzzle author's. I would have appreciated the fourth-wall-breaking a bit more with the first person answer.
Also, @SouthsideJohnny, when you put rap artist in scare quotes like that, you're telling on yourself, as the kids say. Nicki Minaj is excellent.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure I've never heard the expression "in a pig's eye". Maybe it's a regional thing? I'm nearly 40 and lived most of my life in the US midwest.
Thx, Peter, for the timely themed puz; excellent effort! :)
Med+
Wednes. level for me.
Thx to @Rex for pointing out the '4', '8' & '16' connections to their respective spots in the grid. :)
Had eMAIL, and knew neither GRACIE nor IGA, so was able to make the logical 'I' guess after switching to GMAIL.
NICOn before RICOH.
Fun adventure; liked it a lot! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Suffering from sports MADNESS as I do, this puzzle was nothing but net. (Oh, that would’ve been a SWEET grid entry.) But the whole time I was thinking that folks who don’t follow basketball (hi @Nancy) would probably not like it so much. Oh well, we can’t all be ELITE solvers every day. Of course it makes all the difference in the world too, that the construction is obviously the work of a real pro.
Just yesterday, I checked the BRACKET to see if game times had been set yet. (Yes they have.) Mizzou plays Utah State on Thursday and CBS sports predicts it will be one of the best first round games to watch. With a #7 seed, they may not be one of those CINDERELLA TEAMS who make the FINAL but it would be nice if they could avoid the AGONY of an early defeat. We’ll see.
Happy Pi Day! 3/14, like the first digits of the decimal representation of pi, 3.14159... Pi is the most famous of the irrational numbers and there are an infinite number of them.
Mediumish for me. IGA and NIA (as clued) were WOEs and me too for story before TEAMS. NCAA plus a couple of fine long downs, liked it. Jeff gave it POW based partially on the circle clues.
Curiously --
my wife, my sister, and myself, all daily solvers, each completely independently put in GEOL instead of GEOG. This gave us BRACKETOLOLY...
... which independently took each of us forever to spot, because the surrounding "G" letters fooled our eyes into scanning "BRACKETOLOGY".
Meanwhile,
"Daniel said...
I think the bracketology clue is wrong." Agreed.
I agree with other commenters on ELM. Maybe better clueing would have been “Popular urban street tree wiped out by blight”.
Not my cuppa, but seems ok for basketball fans who are also into trivia.
Alternative clues:
* Introductory course in the art of shelving
* Exasperated response to a foolish person who has disappointed you
* Fortune teller who sings your future
* BRACKETOLOGY
* AW, GOON
* PSALMIST
Ay, Dios mío...I know nothing about anything college tourney's. If it's not soccer, I go sit in my corner and suck my thumb. Speaking of which:
@Weezie 8:30. It seems like ALL the men in my family got the grow tall gene. My nephew, nicknamed "Bear," is 6'5 . He is always asked if he plays basketball..he responds: "No, I kick balls for a living." He's a soccer guy.
The only MARCH MADNESS that overcomes me is St. Patrick's DAY. While we don't dump green goo into the Sacramento River, it seems that everyone drinks green beer, A Jamison ginger and lime cocktail and DINING on corned beef and cabbage....And then get drunk.
So, speaking of the puzzle. It felt kinda old timey to me. The Leaves at the library clue is one I thought might've been shelved long ago. OLD DAYS are "Good" times? GASSER might've been said during my granpappy's life and I don't think they make NAIR anymore. Just a few little thoughts that jumped up and out to me.
I know "When Pigs Fly" as an oldish saying but I don't think I've heard anyone say IN A PIGS EYE. I don't know how that works.
Never heard the term BRACKETOLOGY nor CINDERELLA TEAMS. I know what a BRACKET is and I know who CINDERELLA is but why on earth are they used for any team.....[sigh]
I did finish, though...
@Wanderlust 7:43. NICKI Minaj needs to have her adenoids removed.
Yuck. Very surprised at this since the constructor is usually great. May we never see AWGOON again. I suspect this puzzle was slapped together very quickly.
Reading the clue, I thought the ranger's ology would be ECOL, and I still think it's more apt.
I am glad to know that you also struggled with CINDERELLATEAMS. I am no college basketball expert, but I have heard a lot of Cinderella stories and I have never heard them referred to as Cinderella teams.
If you’re a college basketball fan and have never seen the movie Glory Road, now would be a great time to do so. Based on the true story of 1966 Texas Western (now UTEP) coach Don Haskins, who led the first all-black starting lineup for a college basketball team to the NCAA national championship. I guarantee it’ll get you in the mood for some MARCH MADNESS but fair warning: keep a box of Kleenex close, you’ll need them for the FINAL scenes.
“Mike” when it should be “Mic” is killing me! Other than that, fun puzzle!
NEATLY done! I thought the long theme answers were colorful; didn't notice the crucial 4, 8, and 16 numbering until after I was finished - 3 cherries on the top!
Had a DNF as I filled in Ah go on, and Sheet. Knowing nothing about basketball Sheet seemed as good an answer as Sweet. :(
@Weezie, LOVED your father’s retort “Do you play miniature golf”! I have NEVER asked a man or woman a question that relates to their height OR lack thereof, and it just seems rude. My nephew’s fianceé is 6’ and SHE apparently gets asked constantly if she played basketball and volleyball. She DID play volleyball but beside the point.
Thanks @Daniel for clarification on BRACKETOLOGY.
Any puz that has both MADNESS & BANANAS in it is A-OK by m&e. Luved the FINAL/ELITE/SWEET bonus trick, up-top.
staff weeject pick: IGA. Had trouble rememberin her name, even tho I saw that US Open final. Crossin GRACIE didn't help, for a many a nanosecond.
Primo weeject stacks in the NW & SE, btw.
some faves: TOPBANANAS & MARCHMADNESS. INAPIGSEYE. SCREECH. PSALMIST. BRACKETOLOGY [Only puz debut-word].
UPROSE. har
Thanx for the Nice Crossword + Also Amusin time, Mr. Gordon dude. And congratz on yer POW award.
Masked & AnonymoUUs
**gruntz**
Another agraeemanet wit ?Bob re 63A who is doing the puzzle. Answer should be I am. Think I've been that in another puzzle recently and it bothered methane as now.
The revealer caught my eye... MARCHMADNESS, bam. And then FINAL ELITE SWEET right away. But that's as far as my March Madness knowledge goes, I needed a lot of crosses for CINDERELLATEAMS and I stumbled around AWGOON and the -OLOGY part of BRACKETOLOGY, never heard of that. Even then, my time was slightly faster than yesterday. The GRACIE/IGA/ALAI area, meh. But TOPBANANAS and INAPIGSEYE, great stuff.
I was expecting... more, for a POW pick, but maybe it's just my lack of interest in sports that didn't make me like the theme. Here's hoping for something good for tomorrow - HOLY GUACAMOLE, no way it's going to be as bad as last Wednesday's.
✋for "oak"!
✋for "mic"!
This got POW? AW GO ON! I find watching basketball the most ho-hum activity imaginable and so couldn't muster much enthusiasm for this puzzle.
Is ELM actually used in cabinetry? I wouldn't think there were enough elms left alive to use for wood, and so many kitchens have oak cabinets that oak was my first answer, but I was pretty sure most people wouldn't hold their hot cocoa in a keg.
Peter Gordon, I hope you're enjoying the MARCH MADNESS.
FINAL, ELITE and SWEET strike me as partials in the context of MARCH MADNESS. (They are all five letters so I don't see any basketball connection there.) That's pretty thin soup when it comes to overall amount of theme material so it looks like a CINDERELLA TEAM was conscripted in an attempt to beef things up. It's a bit of an outlier though. One may or may not appear in any given NCAA tournament. And it's very rare for one to win it all and become the TOP BANANA. SAD to say but both CINDERELLA TEAM and TOP BANANA come up short and clang off the front of the rim.
The "Who is solving this puzzle" type clue for 63A YOU has appeared numerous times during the Shortz era, including this past January 6. Hey NYTXW, it's ME. I am the one solving, not YOU.
I UPROSE and cheered to see some good OLD DAYS stuff like ELO, ALAI and IGA, the latter formerly clued as a grocery store chain.
I am correct. I mean, YOU are correct. I mean...
I really struggled with this one, but I think it's because I'm not from the US, and know nothing about basketball. Also, I'd never heard of "in a pigs eye". What a delightful phrase!
Or "they rose up"
I went ahead and set up a March Madness Pool for those of us here that would like to fill one out for the NYTXWD Commentariat Bracket.
Our motto is OKO ORR ENO and the password to join the pool is Natick. Hope some of you will think that's fun and join. Entries have to be finalized by the start of the first game (Maryland vs west Virginia) at noon on Thursday (play-ins today and tomorrow don't count).
You can dye them for the Easter bunny 🐰
Shouldn't someone (i.e. Rex) complain that BRACKETOLOGY and MARCH MADNESS require cheater squares? Or do cheater squares not count as cheater squares when used with theme answers?
OLD DAYS stands alone just fine in the Windy City.
Thanks for the reminder, mathgent! Now I need to bake a cherry pie for my Billy Boy 🍒
Gil I. - Haven't you heard the phrase "goold old days"?
Anoa Bob - The terms Final Four, Elite Eight, and Sweet Sixteen have been used for yeras and years to describe the rounds of the NCAA championship tourney.
Another sport besides basketball is being played these days. The Israeli National Baseball team, fresh off of its amazing victory over Nicaragua on Sunday, took the day off Monday. Unfortunately, they were playing Puerto Rico at the time and lost 10-0 without getting any runner to first base. Ouch! (I.e., it was a perfect game for PR.)
It might have been a mistake for Israel to leave its mascot (The Mensch on the Bench) behind this time. It's the only team mascot that wears a tallis.
Verv common expression once. I am 70 and grew up and live in urban New England. Don't think it is regional Probably dying out.
Anonymous @ 6:49 is right.
Puzzle: Who’s solving this puzzle?
You: I am?
Puzzle: Yes, YOU.
Great Tuesday puzzle but I don’t think anyone says or writes OLD . It’s OL’.
@JT 2:07, I'm familiar with FINAL four, ELITE Eight and SWEET Sixteen as NCAA Tournament phrases and it would have been nice if those had appeared in the grid along with MARCH MADNESS. But the letter counts---9, 10 & 12---preclude that so we just get the first parts of those phrases. These are called "partials" in xword lingo. Partials are incomplete and are usually seen as less than desirable fill, similar to things like abbreviations, random Roman numerals, random Roman numeral Popes, crosswordese, etc. So I thought those partial theme entries were demerits rather than assets to the puzzle's quality.
Liveprof,
I dunno about amazing. Beating Nicaragua may not be the achievement you're suggesting. They are woeful 0-4 in the tournament. And having a perfect game pitched against you is, well, almost unimaginably bad. And I suspect there'll be more of the same for the Israelis. They've yet to face the class of the group-Venezuela who are undefeated and the Dominican republic. If i were a betting man, I'd feel mighty be confident that Israel will finish 1 and 4.
Gasser is slang for a particular conditioning drill run by, wait for it, basketball teams
I gotta think that is what inspired PG to use it, but that that context was deemed too difficult for a Tuesday
@Anoa - They’re not partials if the entire answer is in the grid square. Each of those answers has the # in the square.
For anyone who follows tennis, IGA Swiatek is perfectly acceptable as an answer.
And for anyone who has ever lived in the NYC area, GRACIE Mansion seems perfectly fair.
An easy but timely puzzle. Let's go Duke!
@Joaquin 8:20
Cal Berkeley 1959. Your football team has been none too good either.
Missed opportunity for Rex, "stuck the landing" (gymnastics reference) could have been "beat the buzzer" 😁
Winchell Mahoney Time!
As a Saturday/Sunday print subscriber, I would say the Times’ sports page these days might not be much help on something as mainstream as March Madness. Their sports coverage (usually only 2-4 pages on weekends) skews pretty esoteric. You’re more likely to see in-depth coverage of European soccer and yet another think piece about Pickleball than NCAA bracket coverage.
I stopped working this puzzle after realizing that “mike” was the intended solve. Just, NO.
Malign! Perfect.
I am not a frequent commenter, but I really just didn't like this one. Particularly hard/bad/difficult:
*Mike
*Ali crossing Elo
*Its 100% Cinderella Story not teams
*Ricoh??
*Uprose
*IGA (as I was blanking on Gracie)
*Irail
*In a Pig's Eye? (43 years on this planet, living on the east coast and midwest, and have never heard that)
*Park Ranger's subject - GEOG?? yuck.
Anyway, first Tuesday in a long time I DNF. Didn't mind the March Madness references generally thought.
I enjoyed that one. A bit silly in places, but fun. More than I expected on a Tuesday.
Please excuse the intrusion. I'm just trying to figure out how get a comment published.
@Les: Looks like you just did. Welcome.
I found this a bit out of sync, but that's to be expected for a syndilander. Even so, it was one of the easiest ever. I think it would have been improved by cluing the circled entries by normal definition instead of the giveaway clues provided. Let the solver "discover" that the answers appear at the appropriate number clue. That would seem like an EXTRA bit of depth to the whole theme. Instead you slap us in the face with it.
INAPIGSEYE reminds me of STTOS episode "Amok Time," when McCoy says that at the end. One of the best of the old series--maybe THE best.
Agree that AWGOON is a "DOOK." Had me scratching for a moment. Like RILE atop ANGER. Fun to do; birdie.
A Wordle disaster: DNF in 6. Too many _OUNDs. I went all around the right one.
I guess it’s more fun if you are into basketball. Otherwise, just OK.
Pretty ho-hum unless you are into basketball. Then it’s probably okay.
ENSURE FAT
NICKI really likes her DINING,
EXTRA SWEETs that FEMME won't pass,
she'll SCREECH and GO_ON whining
that we MALIGN her AMPLE ASS.
--- MIKE MACK
MARCHMADNESS is long gone, but that's what we get. Completed it very NEATLY with no write-overs.
Also a Wordle DNF, lotsa choices for that first letter.
Mike was the original shortening for microphone, until very small electronic devices came along. Mic wasn't used, because linguistsically that should be pronounced "mick", which is a slur name for an Irishman.
I hear the term in a pig's eye quite often, but then again, I live in a retirement community.
Post a Comment