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Haasan Indian megastar in over 200 films / FRI 3-3-23 / Queeg's ship in a 1954 film / Topping for San Diego-style fries / Comstock 1850s discovery
Friday, March 3, 2023
Constructor: Eric Warren
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: KAMAL Haasan (40D: ___ Haasan, Indian megastar in over 200 films) —
Kamal Haasan (born 7 November 1954) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, playback singer, television presenter and politician who works mainly in Tamil cinema and has also appeared in some Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali films. He has been recognised as an influence for actors and filmmakers in the Tamil film industry. He is also known for introducing many new technologies and cosmetics to the Indian film industry. He has won numerous accolades, including Four National Film Awards, Nine Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, Four Nandi Awards, One Rashtrapati Award, Two Filmfare Awards and 17 Filmfare Awards South. He was awarded the Kalaimamani Award in 1984, the Padma Shriin 1990, the Padma Bhushan in 2014 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier) in 2016. // Kamal Haasan (born 7 November 1954) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, playback singer, television presenter and politician who works mainly in Tamil cinema and has also appeared in some Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali films. He has been recognised as an influence for actors and filmmakers in the Tamil film industry. He is also known for introducing many new technologies and cosmetics to the Indian film industry. He has won numerous accolades, including Four National Film Awards, Nine Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, Four Nandi Awards, One Rashtrapati Award, Two Filmfare Awards and 17 Filmfare Awards South. He was awarded the Kalaimamani Award in 1984, the Padma Shriin 1990, the Padma Bhushan in 2014 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier) in 2016. // Haasan started his career as a child artist in the 1960 Tamil-language film Kalathur Kannamma, for which he won the President's Gold Medal. His breakthrough as a lead actor came in the 1975 drama Apoorva Raagangal, directed by K. Balachander, in which he played a rebellious youth who falls in love with an older woman. He won his first National Film Award for his portrayal of a guileless school teacher who cares for a woman who suffers from retrograde amnesia in Moondram Pirai (1982). He was noted for his performances in K. Viswanath's Swathi Muthyam (1986), Mani Ratnam's Nayakan (1987), and S. Shankar's Indian (1996). Since then he has appeared in films including Hey Ram (2000), Virumaandi (2004), Dasavathaaram (2008) in which he played ten roles, Vishwaroopam (2013) and Vikram (2022). His production company, Raaj Kamal Films International, has produced several of his films.
• • •
RIB TICKLER is a fine answer but it's got an avuncular folksy Ned Flanders-y quality that rubs me the wrong way. But that's not the puzzle's fault. What is the puzzle's fault is KAMAL / KATANAS, which I got because I knew KATANAS, but ... does everyone know KATANAS? (40A: Swords used by Leonardo in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" cartoons). Because I guarantee you a decided minority of you know KAMAL Haasan, who is more than welcome in the puzzle, of course, he just needs fair crosses. This looks like a bad cross, but maybe KATANAS are a much more well-known thing than I think they are. Or maybe everyone knows KAMAL, or knows that KAMAL is the only reasonable guess for -AMAL. If I hadn't known KATANAS, I can easily see myself having written in HAMAL or something like that. So that cross didn't hurt me, but it did make me wince, the way you might wince imagining someone else getting hurt by some danger you managed to avoid. The one answer that really made me wince, though, was ON CASSETTE. It's just such a horrible prepositional phrase and it's not even properly in the language. "Videocassette" would've been distinguished from mere "cassette" (an audio format), we mostly called them "tapes," and anyway, stuff was released simply "on video," or maybe "ON VHS" (or maybe ON BETAMAX if it's the early '80s). The combo of prepositional phrase and language awkwardness really marred that NE corner for me.
I liked BEER FRIDGE OK, though it took me a while to get it (clue gets cute with "Bud" there). I guess CYBERSQUAT is original, but it's such an ugly word that I can't say I was happy to see it. My favorite stuff was probably CLOWN MAKE-UP and BEAR SPRAY. I saw Cocaine Bear yesterday and am now realizing that no one, literally no one in that movie, not even the park ranger, carries BEAR SPRAY. It ... might've helped, although ... you know, if the bear is on cocaine, who knows if the BEAR SPRAY would even register. I struggled a few times in this puzzle, most notably with SWEAT / SEATS (21A: Show nerves, say / 14D: Rears). This is because I had [Show nerves, say] as SWEAR, initially. Maybe that is just how *I* might "show nerves." Also fell into the (in retrospect, obviously designed) trap at 36D: Perfect. I thought it was an adjective and so wrote in A-ONE. But it's a verb and it's HONE. Great. I think I've heard of LARB (44D: Lao meat salad) but still wanted LAMB there at first (even though the clue was asking for the "meat salad," not the meat itself). Never happy to see KETO , a fad "diet" / marketing scheme that we are going to be stuck with forever because of its favorable letter pattern :( (34A: Regimen with so-called "fat bombs"). No idea what the "R" in J.R. Ewing was (and I lived through "Who Shot J.R.?" madness), but ROSS was easy enough to guess. I don't know ... I just wasn't feeling the Friday excitement today. Again, it's a well-made puzzle. It just didn't have enough sizzle. Easier to ignore the clunkers when there's sizzle.
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124 comments:
Reporting pretty hard from beautiful downtown Denver, NC this morning, especially the north and southwest. Rex – for me, it was actually two crosses with KATANAS (which I had spelled “catanas”) that were so hard, I didn’t even guess. When there’s a fiendish cross, I usually just outline the mystery square really dark with my pencil and give it the stink eye. Afterwards, I looked up what a “marque” was. Ok. So it’s a fancy name for the make of a car. I never would have guessed that the MINI was a BMW. And that KAMAL guy was not gonna save me.
I also learned that people eat CARP. We had some in our pond in WV, and they were roughly the size of a dorm FRIDGE. I never saw them actually swim; they were just these floaty bloaty blobs. My son and his friends ignored them and spent their time discussing which lures were most effective for the bigger bass. They didn’t talk much CARP. Ba dum tss.
I liked CANNER crossing PLAN A. I went to Cordova, Alaska the summer between undergrad and grad school to work in a cannery and make a ton of money. Yeah. Right. I worked for three days as a “patcher” on an assembly line – my job was to eyeball the filled-but-still-lidless cans as they went by and turn any visible skin over with my scissors. Oh, and take some salmon out if the can looked too full. It was brutal. After three days I had the opportunity to move to plan B - work as a deckhand on a tender, and I was like ADIOS AMIGO I’m outta here.
I’ve said it before – when I see pictures of FIRE EATERS, pole-sitters, people playing hacky sack, I’m struck with how much spare time we have as a species.
HIPNESS looks weird. I tried to investigate why HIP means cool but lost interest pretty quickly. I guess hippy, hippie are related. Hipster. HIPNESS would denote the state of being hip. Hippery could denote stuff like meditating, participating in love-ins, and wearing tie-dye. I spent a year one afternoon at a baby shower for a hipster and was asked to do all kinds of hippery, fun for the like-wow-man-ya know-cool guests, but extremely embarrassing for this buttoned-up Capricorn.
DNF without Google for me because of Kamal/KatanAs/serA. Completely agree about "on cassette" as well -- mixtapes were on cassettes; movies were on videocassette or played on a VCR. Hated the clue for beep. Never heard of oceanology, but ok. Felt like this could have been a fine puzzle, but these things kind of ruined it for me.
Solved tin 45 minutes with two cheats (I had to look up KATANAS and KARB).
Knowing Will Shortz' predilection for misdirected clues, I realized that "burning passion" suggested someone who liked fires. But "arsonist" didn't work, nor did "pyromaniac." I had to get FIREEATERS from the crosses.
A good puzzle, slightly easier than normal for a Friday.
This was one of those “gym” puzzles for me: a workout that I didn’t particular enjoy while doing it, but felt pleased and accomplished when I finished it. I had a terrible time in the northwest, for similar reasons to Rex. While OCEANOLOGY is a known term, OCEANOGRAPHY is more broadly used, and especially when talking about physical characteristics. So yes, I’ll happily take up that nitpicking mantle.
And yes, there were some other clunkers. I do think most people know KATANAS, for the record. In general, I just liked how unrelenting this puzzle was, with allll the long answers and slanting clues. I didn’t get any section fully filled out until the southeast, and then I worked my way back up. This might also have been because I started the puzzle first thing at around 4:15 this morning, once I finally admitted to myself that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, so, I woke up with the puzzle.
Because I had so little going filled in in the west coast sections, I badly wanted “professional string puller?” to be PUPPETEER (even going so far as to think maybe I was wrong and it was spelled with two t’s?), and then I had SEAMSTRESS, before finally landing on PIANOTUNER. That was fun. I would say a solidly medium Friday, for me.
A question for all you veteran solvers who can still remember when they first got seriously into crosswords - at what point did your solving skill more or less level out? Obviously there’s rapid improvement in the beginning when you start to log the crosswordese, get the hang of themers, know to watch out for rebuses on Thursdays, pay attention to the little grammarian gimmes in the clues… And then it’s been more gradual, steady improvement but I’m wondering if I’m plateauing (which to be clear I’d be more or less fine with! I just like to think about stuff like this). It’s been about 5 months for me, and I know many of you have been doing crosswords religiously for many years and some of you for many decades. So, fellow solvers - do you find that your skills are still improving, or that your solving experience is still shifting with time?
Totally Naticked at the Kamal/Katanas cross. I would have guessed S or H.
Ack! I forgot two things. One, I didn’t get to comment yesterday so here is a belated, omg congratulations Malaika! What an awesome feat that was, and may anyone who considers lambasting your wheelhouse in the future remember that puzzle and think again.
Secondly, I loved that the week started with BEARs and ended with BEARSPRAY! I of course keep it on hand at home and when hiking and camping, but I have never had to use it. Black bears are pretty docile as long as you observe proper bear etiquette, in my experience. Okay, done for real this time. 🙃
Re: 9D - The proper thing to do with EGG WHITES is put them in a small dish in the FRIDGE. Wait about three weeks and then try to recall why you have them, when you put them there, conclude they're no good, and TOSS them ASIDE.
My great aunt Nira used to make her own gefilte fish at her Passover Seders. Not much to look at (but then what gefilte is?), but it was delicious, or maybe that was the whole having to wait a very long time before we got to eat thing. I’m glad you didn’t work in the cannery too long - brutal work, I’m told.
Anyway, one of my favorite books as a kid was Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Stories for Children” - amazing folk tales and silly stories and morality fables set in the Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe. There’s one called “The Wise Men of Chelm and the Foolish Carp” that was a personal favorite. Highly recommend - I imagine it would hold up as an adult read.
Easy until I had to figure out wtf to do with the double Natick in the SW.
katanas crossing kamal and cera is unforgivable.
I had trouble with katana Kamal mostly because I spelled Cera Cere. I wrote in cybersquat with no letters. I remember my firm having to sue to get our name back on line.
This is my first time commenting though I have been a long time reader of the blog. I live in Chennai, India (Kamal's home turf) and am beyond thrilled to see Kamal Haasan make his debut appearance in the NYT crossword. He is an incredibly multi-faceted personality - he has written and directed some very fine films, and he is an excellent singer and dancer. Above it all, he is a prodigious acting talent who deserves to be as well-known as the Al Pacinos and Meryl Streeps of the world. One of his finest films, Nayakan (Hero), was listed in Time's All-Time top 100 movies. Many thanks to today's constructor, Eric Warren (and congratulations on the debut) for including him in the puzzle. Here is hoping that Kamal makes many more appearances in the future to the point that he can be a fair crossing for the last letter of "Natick" :)
I finished the puzzle with one open square at the Natick. Guessed a half dozen letters but never heard the jaunty little tune that is my first reward of the day. I finally let the puzzle plug in the K. Boo!!
Agree with Rex that some of the clues missed the mark (which may be partly a result of trying to make them Friday-level difficult) so we get the ON CASSETTE’s and the OCEANOLOGY’s, etc.
The KAMAL/KATANAS cross, and stuff like LARB, CERA and even BLAU are pretty standard NYT-type dreck that they seem welcome. Agree with Rex - fine, passable, no real complaints; but definitely not stellar. I preferred Malaika’s “voice” and style yesterday - I suspect I’m not alone with that sentiment.
A few of us might have known katanas from the Suzuki motorcyle marque.
If more Fridays were like this, I'd like Fridays more. All of the longs - and there are a ton of them - are solid entries that would be welcome in any puzzle (except for ON CASSETTE). This felt almost Berry-esque.
There are a couple of words that appear in crosswords a lot that I always misspell. One is KATANA, which I spelt as KiTANA. Fortunately, my error is in the second letter, not the first, so no Natick at KAMAL for me. The other one is the love interest in The Lion King, which is either Fala or Nala, but I invariably guess the wrong one.
Had BeerGarden (with the D crossing) and EggShells which sidetracked me, but ultimately it was that K that was the final challenge.
I couldn’t get a foothold in the west, but breezed (for a Friday) through the east and worked my way back. I always want Michael’s last name to be Cere for some reason, so KATANAS was a double-Natick for me. 13D would have been fine with a different clue, perhaps about mixtapes as Anon@6:08 suggested.
Agree w Christopher above…
Crossing katanas with kamal is bad enough,but throw in Michael Cera,
makes it worse…three proper obscure(to me anyway)nouns.
😑 ugh
Oceanology.?
This was really hard for me. I couldn’t get a toehold anywhere except the SE and I had that rare sinking feeling of looming across-the-grid failure. Then something clicked and I whooshed the NE, center and NW, but got stuck again in the mostly empty SW. Having ButtHEADS (given the NYT’s obsession with rear ends) and imSORRY really held me up. But it finally all fell in. I like @Weezie’s characterization of a gym solve - brutally hard and sometimes unpleasant but giving you a nice feeling of accomplishment at the end.
BTW, to your question of whether longtime solvers plateau or keep getting better, I’d say the latter, but not by much. I solve on the app, and it tracks my times. I’d say five days out of seven, I beat my average, which means I am getting faster. Not today, which was considerably slower than average.
I read “show nerves, say” as “shows nerve, say,” and I realized that moving that little “s” makes the expression do a 180. Showing nerve is the polar opposite of showing nerves.
I thought LSAT was a little off for pre-bar hurdle. The LSAT gets you into law school, so it is years between it and the bar. It’s technically correct but I still give it the side eye.
All that whining aside, I thought it was a very good puzzle with lots of nice long answers and some dastardly but clever cluing.
same. Loved this but for Oceanology and Beep.
@Joaquin, love your recipe for EGG WHITES! I've used it many times myself. BTW, I had EGG sHellS before WHITES.
@Weezie, if most people know KATANAS I'm in the minority. I may have seen the word before but I don't "know" it. I had _ATANAS and _AMAL and figured the letter had to be K or J. Luckily I never considered @Rex H or @Anon 6:20 S. K was a total guess and I entered it in "pencil," making a mental note to come back and try J if I didn't get the happy music.
Also @Weezie, I started doing crosswords when I was quite young, but I could only rarely do the NYT because my Mother or my sister would beat me to it. I didn't really start solving regularly until I got out into the Real World, but then I stopped due to budget constraints when I got married. Later, the Times started offering its puzzles for free and I started doing them again, but I stopped when they began charging extra, until money wasn't as much of a concern. So I've been solving with various degrees of consistency for about sixty years. You're right in that the learning curve is steep at first as you learn the argot (I remember telling friends, "You learn to think like Will Weng"), and then progress becomes slower as you improve in that area. But I'm still learning things every day, like KAMAL Haasan (Hi, @Dinesh Krithivasan).
@Dinesh, welcome! Hoping to hear more from you.
Also, San Diego-style fries are new to me and sound absolutely amazing!
Some random observations:
• Competition for NYT themeless puzzles is uber-fierce, and to get there on your first puzzle, well, that’s I-bow-down-to-you territory. Congratulations, Eric!
• Also impressive was that this puzzle has 10 NYT debut answers, practically all of them worthy additions to the oeuvre. They include all six answers of the 10-stacks in the NW and SE.
• Poor Alan ALDA, who went from being in the NYT puzzle seven times in 2021 to only twice in 2022. But with his appearance today, he’s already been in twice for this year, so maybe things are picking up for him.
• From the two-degrees-of-separation department: COBB → corn → bread → RYE.
• We saw “squat” yesterday in the clue for GYMS, and here it is again today hiding in CYBERSQUAT.
• The answer CARP has two diverse meanings, the fish, and the verb meaning to complain or pick at. Made me wonder if something about the fish begat the negative verb. Made me feel sorry for the fish. But a bit of research taught me that the verb CARP is not related to the fish. It comes from the Latin “carpere” meaning “to pluck into pieces”. Think of a carpet, formed of shreds, and one who carps shreds or picks nits. So, the fish is totally innocent here. Yay!
Eric, there was “Whee!” in the solving today, capped by lovely moments post-solve ruminating. Congratulations, and thank you for this!
I was a huge movie and video nerd in high school and college, AV club and editing music videos and such. I had some serious VCR hardware, SVHS stuff that cost thousands of dollars at the time, and a big collection of tapes.
I've never in my life called a VHS tape a "cassette." That answer completely snowed me. I got it from crosses and then just... moved on with the puzzle.
Like... what? No.
@Weezie - for me, no plateau but the rate of change is slowing. I would say initially, improvement is quite slow, because learning a word today will rarely help tomorrow, but may help in six months. Then you go through a rapid improvement phase. The improvement gets slower over time. I suspect at some point things will go backwards, due to either cognitive decline or increasing unfamiliarity with current pop culture, or both.
Hand up for finishing with a K. And jAMAL/jATANA looked so likely.
Ditto @Wanderlust on slow, incremental improvement (says this longtime solver, now in my 60s).
And thanks, @Weezie, for reminding me of the Wise Men of Chelm stories. I loved reading those to my kids and would enjoy re-reading them now on my own.
Yeah No. I did not know Katanas and Kamal and had to use Google to search that one up. But I learned about Kamal Haasan who seems like a solid guy to know about in general. Also not a W Wing fan, nor do I know German, unfortunately, so that SE corner took me a little longer than it should have. I agree completely, decent, but not great. I do better with French and Spanish clues, LOL. I also only knew the answer RYE, because I came across that exact clue and answer in an AVCX puzzle that I did recently. No idea what Sazerac is, but I guess it’s a drink of some sort…. Going to google now. have a great day.
This was a slow start. I was checking out the proper names and discovered I knew exactly one: Ty COBB. KAMAL sounds like an interesting guy but was an unknown. Thank goodness I remembered KATANAS from other crosswords, which makes me think that solving for a long time at least increases your crossword vocabulary, which gradually increases your solving skill (hi @Weezie).
My Dad's famous recipe for CARP--put the CARP on a shingle and cover it with lots of butter and some herbs and salt and pepper. Bake until done, then throw away the CARP and eat the shingle. Now that's a RIBTICKLER of a Dad joke.
My degree of HIPNESS is so low that ONCASSETTE bothered me not at all and CYBERSQUAT looks like a science fiction term.
Congrats on the debut, EW. Thought this was going to be impossible, but you Eventually Won me over. Solid Friday and thanks for all the fun.
Well, I was a bit sluggish getting started with this one. I got CFOS and ORCA in the NE and then cheerfully wrote in “roman” for [Pindar], which was wrong on many levels since he was Greek. I then got KETO and CERTS, so all my right answers were along the east coast and indeed it was the east I filled in first before hitting the Oregon Trail and heading west. I eventually finished the puzzle clean and in just a shade under my normal Friday time, but I had myriad writeovers along the way. In addition to the aforementioned Pindar debacle, there were: adES for ICES, stRawS for CORERS, att for ESQ, Rex’s aONE for HONE, dEetSPRAY for BEARSPRAY, TOSSESAbout for TOSSESASIDE (even though that one made minimal sense) and I, too, tried Puppeteer for PIANOTUNER and was crushed when it was too short.
I didn’t know the term LINE for [Gambler’s point spread], but I did OK in the NE anyway. It looks as if OCEANOLOGY is simply a synonym for OCEANOgraphy – hmm, that’s new. Like many, I was unfamiliar with KAMAL Haasan. But, being a veteran, I had no problem with KATANAS. In fact, it’s a word I learned from crosswords. In either singular or plural form, it’s appeared seven times starting in 2019. That’s enough for me to have committed it to memory, but your mileage may vary. I know there are lots of words/names that have shown up way more than 7 times that I still struggle with.
Oh – and another one of those rules of crossword-solving: whenever there’s a showbiz Michael with a four-letter last name, it’s CERA. You don’t need to know anything about him – just pop him in.
Anyway, I quite liked the puzzle. It was a good combo of the challenging and the gettable and it all fell into place relatively smoothly.
UNICLUES:
1) Corporate money managers who yuck it up at the quarterly fiscal reckoning.
2) Good-old-boy killer whale.
3) The return of your second sight creeps you out.
4) What rattle around in the heads of the stoopid.
5) Japanese fighting fish.
6) Benefactor’s remark on going broke.
7) Fragrant, bubbly spring nestled in a flowering glade, perfect for a languid soak.
8) Theaters that show a roster of movies such as “Chicken Run,” “Robot Chicken,” “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” and “The Egg and I.”
9) Attorney with an inexplicable and positively frightening name. (For god’s sake, take your business elsewhere.)
1) RIB-TICKLER CFOS
2) BEER-FRIDGE ORCA
3) ESP RENEW SWEAT
4) MINI BRAIN CELLS
5) KATANAS CARP
6) “SO SORRY, CAUSES.”
7) ODIST BATHWATER
8) CAPONS’ CINEMAS
9) CLOWN MAKEUP, ESQ.
[SB: yd, -1. Well, that broke my QB/miss alternation pattern, a pattern which I found frustrating at the time but which I now view with nostalgia because it means I missed twice in a row. This 7er was the offending word. (That’s right – blame the word for your own failings…tsk, tsk.)]
Nice low word count puzzle. Some obscurities but I liked most of the longs. Knew that the samurai sword is a KATANA - the plural was awkward. Wanted “knee slapper” before RIB TICKLER - but liked most of the longs with the exception of the Rex mentioned ON CASSETTE.
I’m sorry - SO SORRY
I need to get some San Diego fries - keep the CARP. Question of the day - was COBB a worse person than JKR? - talk amongst yourselves.
Enjoyable Friday solve.
Iron & Wine
Interesting. I had the opposite experience. I knew KATANAS without crosses. That corner was still hard because I didn’t know COBB and forgot how to spell that chicken variety up there. Or rather I did know, but refused to put anything in because I assumed I’d spell it wrong, and then in the end realized I do know it. I didn’t know Kevin Kline was in Bob’s Burgers! (I have an immensely difficult time watching cartoons, even those for adults). I really enjoyed this puzzle. Great words and great wordplay that never tripped me up too much, just enough to get me to smile. Favorite answers were FIRE EATERS, BATHWATER, CARNE ASADA, and who can deny RIB TICKLER? Favorite clues were Perfect for HONE, mind matter for BRAINCELLS, and circus covering for CLOWN MAKEUP. Surprised to see so many haters on here today as this was the best puzzle I’ve solved in a while. To each their own I guess!
-Brando
@weezie -- Long time solver here. Never been a speed solver; I prefer to sip my puzzles in. I don't mark my puzzle times, but I can still tell that they are still quickening, even though I'm continuing to sip. I think it's because I get more familiar with the clues, and my brain continues to get better at seeing cluing tricks. Most importantly, I still get a kick out of solving, out of gleaning the personalities of the constructors, out of finding fortuitous coincidences among the grid answers, out of new learnings. So yes, there is recordable progress going on, but even if there weren't, the experience would still be superior to "plateau-ing".
Agree with Rex on this one -- a beautiful, open grid whose entries don't quite do it justice. Some answers pop -- BATHWATER, BONEHEADS, ADIOSAMIGO -- but most don't. I'm with others in disliking ONCASSETTE in reference to films rather than music. Truly, no one circa 1981 ever said, "Come over tonight; I rented Chinatown ONCASSETTE."
Regarding the ALDA clue: why are we allowed to say "on [insert show here]" for television shows, but never for movies? We might say, "Martin Sheen played President Bartlet on The West Wing", but we would never say, "Martin Sheen played Bud Fox's dad on Wall Street". I'm not sure, but I think I say "in" no matter what. Feels like @LMS would have something far more entertaining to say about this!
Forgot to say: @Dinesh -- Welcome! Great post, and very cool avatar.
Enjoyable solve for a Friday. Lots of nice long entries. It's been a great week for the NYTXW.
Uniclues:
1 Bros with hilarious excuses for dismal results.
2 "Wanna play with my jellyfish?"
3 Overweight killer.
4 Key element in being naked, sudsy, and full of wonder.
5 Those destroyed by getting my repair estimate. (Seriously, it's $850 for an oil pan gasket! )
6 Why I got food poisoning from Senior Burritos, probably.
7 Page one to adjust my vibrators.
1 RIB TICKLER CFOS
2 OCEANOLOGY LINE
3 BEER FRIDGE ORCA
4 ODIST BATH WATER
5 MINI BRAIN CELLS
6 AGED CARNE ASADA
7 BEEP PIANO TUNER
"It's roomy in a courtroom" is one of the most perplexing non-cryptic clues I've ever seen. I had no idea. Which is one of the reasons I couldn't get a toehold in the NW and had to go elsewhere -- entering the puzzle at CAPONS/COBB.
First thought on CAPONS: I don't know how "choice" they are. After all, you can make any young male chicken "choice' simply by cutting off its you-know-whats. It's not as though you fed them better than your other chickens or gave them posher surroundings.
I found this a colorful fun-to-solve puzzle and felt on the constructor's wavelength much of the time. Clever and unexpected as both CLOWN MAKEUP and HIPNESS were, both went in quickly off their first letters alone. I needed crosses for RIB TICKLER, OCEANOLOGY and PIANO TUNER, though. For the PIANO TUNER clue, my first thought on "pulling strings" was a puppeteer.
I took a guess at the KAMAL/KATANAS/MINI cross since I knew none of them. But it seemed the most likely combo.
An entertaining puzzle that I'm betting most people here will give a big thumbs-up.
@Barbara S. 8:42 AM
IN FRONT! “Chicken Run,” “Robot Chicken,” “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” and “The Egg and I.”
And what do you all think the "C" in VCR stands for???
Discard EGGWHITES? The things rich people do. You make them into meringues, or angel food cake if you have a lot. By the way, when you roast a chicken, you make soup afterward, from the bones and scraps and the little packet of gizzards and necks that comes inside it. Plus all the shopworn veggies that are lying around here or there. Which I suppose rich people don't have because they put them all down the garbage disposal if they don't eat them the first day. Sheesh!
Hands up for knowing nothing about Ninja Turtles. And I got my first foothold in the SE and barely got out of there because I had trUstS for what Philanthropists have and andeS for the mints.
BEEP is the caller’s signal as in
“wait for the beep
you gotta leave your name
gotta leave your number
wait for the beep”
Hey All !
Brain TICKLER here, ala a toughie! Stuck all over, but dissuaded myself from any sort of cheat, plodded through, and eventually finished to the tune of the Happy Music! YAY ME!
LARB. Dang. Had LAmB forever there. Finally erased everything in 52A to C___E_S_DA, and finally saw CARNE ASADA. Plugged it in, and Bam! Aforementioned Happy Music.
dishWATER first for BATHWATER holding me up. Isn't that also a saying? dEetSRPAY first. Har. PuppeTteER with that extra T like someone said earlier. Why not two T's? rose garDen first for BEER FRIDGE. Like, a Rose bud. 😁
So nice BRAIN CELLS using puz. Not many of them little rascals left rolling around up there...Take it easy on me next time Eric!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Easy for me. Faster than Thursday and almost was fast as Wednesday.
Fair enough, I stand corrected on KATANAS. I knew I’d seen it in a few crosswords in the archive, so thought it might be semi-standard crosswordese, but seems like it was a bit rarer than I thought.
Really loving hearing about the various experiences of crossword solving progress - thank y’all for sharing.
And yes, welcome @Dinesh. Great comment - I hope you continue to post. I did my college semester abroad in Pune, and took a course on Indian film while there, which helped me recall KAMAL. When I was there, I’d hoped to get over to Chennai for various reasons, but especially to take in the rich history of Paradesi Jewish community there, having seen “Jewtown” referenced many years prior. Alas, I didn’t make it happen. Fingers crossed that I’ll get back to the region one day!
BTW I did have a fun DOOK today -- it's the one pictured in LMS's avatar.
Six appearances for KATANA or KATANAS in the last three years in the NYT, so it's in that gray area where it appears sporadically and some will remember it and others won't.
I’m probably weird but I love looking at an empty Friday grid like this one and seeing all that beautiful white space to fill in. I’ll admit there were CAUSES to SWEAT a little but there was plenty - like BEER FRIDGE - to AMUSE me as well. And not much to CARP about either. Thank you Eric and congratulations on your excellent debut.
While I certainly admire @Joaquin’s recommended use of EGG WHITES, I mostly cook them for my dogs, mix them with their food. They love them.
Show of hands - How many here need "sizzle" and a 'whoosh, whoosh, zoom feeling" to enjoy a difficult, well-constructed puzzle. . . I see one hand in the back.
Bear spray didn’t exist until the mid 1980s and was not prevalent in the market until some time after. As the movie takes place in 1985, it stands to reason that none of the characters would have had any.
Re LINE, there's a LINE in "Fugue for Tinhorns" in Guys and Dolls about the "morning LINE" which is how I got that one.
@Weezie : I've been doing crossword puzzles for many decades, and I'm going into reverse now--see @kitschef. (Unfamiliarity with popular culture) It's been interesting to see how the puzzle has changed over the years. I remember when it first started using brand names and how outraged my father was. I don't really mind the going backwards part; I like doing the puzzles for what images and memories they stir up. See above.
I also worked in a cannery in Alaska on the canning line as a patcher - the dreams I had of cans of raw salmon flying by on the conveyor belt still make me queasy. The next summer I move to the remarkably cleaner and quieter egg house to pack brine salmon roe to export to Japan.
KATANA was a gimme for me. I've mentioned before that I like to use it as a metaphor for solving skill. I used to HONE my solving KATANA religiously but now I just solve on the weekends. I've become something of a crossword duffer. This one took me almost 27 minutes to knock off so a little above average in difficulty for me.
The NW was typical of the whole solve. Initially all I could drop in we're ESP, TAR and LODE. RYE was a likely guess and those four were enough to get started and eventually the big ones started to fall.
I misread "nerves" as "nerve" ala @wanderlust. Worse was, I initially thought "Pindar" in the 29A clue had something to do with the internet. I must have confused it with Pinterest or whatever that is. This is the kind of fog I have to solve through.
CYBERSQUAT sounds like something a troll would "take." The internet can be like a bathroom wall.
I don't know much German but I recall there was an art movement at one time called Der Blau Ritter or something like that. I know that it meant The Blue Rider. At least that was all I could get through the fog of memory and it was enough.
SB news... since last Sun the only words I've missed were NAUTILI and GINKGO. Not because I couldn't think of them I just couldn't spell them correctly and then I just figured they weren't being "accepted."
Just glancing around for a safe step inside...ADIOS AMIGO and CARACAS invited me in. those two opened up a big door. I didn't just want to stand around; I needed to mingle and get to know everyone. I figured the main entrance was a good start.
RIB TICKLER introduced me to the RYE on top of the BEER FRIDGE. Someone was tossing out EGG shells. Wrong...the WHITES are the discards. And speaking of tossing, I like Bath WATER.... Is there a baby somewhere?
The west side of my party seemed to be the easiest to get to know. I whooshed about with a PIANO TUNER and some BONE HEADS. A let down and a failure to recognize KAMAL KATANAS. I thought someone said his name was GAMAL. Leonard danced with some GATANAS...I wanted to save face.
Could I? I did.
I had one big question, though.....it was about the LINE being a gamblers point. I had to call a friend. Yeah, as silly as it seems, LINE is the correct answer....Why?
I did have some fun with CLOWN MAKEUP and the FIRE EATERS. I eventually moved on down to the cellar with my BRAIN CELLS intact. the CARNE ASADA was delicious and I ended up in a dark discussion about CYBER SQUAT.
Party over. It did AMUSE me, though. I've been to better Friday parties but except for not knowing who KAMAL is, it seemed like a decent way to spend my evening.
Now to walk the pups and I will read everyone's review when I get back.
Great question- I’ve often wondered about this myself. My current solving streak is approaching one year, and for the most part my solve times are still coming in below my average, which speaks to continued improvement. Today was an exception, unfortunately- 5 minutes above average- yikes!!
Medium. It would have been easier except for 9d - End pieces>EGGshells>EGGWHITES. On the plus side I’ve seen KATANAS and LARB in recent puzzles with almost the same clues. Having been in the general vicinity of Curaçao a while ago also helped. Pretty smooth with a little bit of sparkle, liked it.
Challenging for me, was happy to finish. Starting out: "side splitter"? Or "knee slapper"? No. So after a measly TAR and CFOS up top, I adopted the "abandon ship and head for the sea bed" method, got my foothold at the bottom with BLAU x BAL, and backed into the grid from there. That meant trying to get those terrific long Downs from their final letters, and that was hard for me, e.g., what baking ingredient ends with HITES? The BRAIN CELLS struggled here and at plenty of other squares. Favorite moment: getting CLOWN MAKEUP, also loved BATHWATER. Last in: RIB TICKLER.
Do overs: "see you late...", oops, too long; rEpellant before BEAR SPRAY. Help from previous puzzles: CERA, KATANAS.
@Eric Warren - Thank you for this brain-racker and congratulations on you debut! I'm looking forward to more.
@Dinesh Krithivasan 7:06 - Nice to hear from you!
I had bAnANAS first, figuring it was something silly for a cartoon, then remembered KATANAS - just shown in an episode from season one of Atlanta that I'm catching up on.
VCR = Video Cassette Recorder. Sure, the term cassette is more normally used for audio, but still is technically accurate. It is Friday, it is supposed to twist your brain a little. Speaking of which, Friday is an appropriate day to have some answers that not everybody knows - looking at you KATANA. KAMAL is a common enough name, even though I couldn't identify that actor, shame on me.
@Weezie, you get incremental improvement, plus there are always new clueing trends and some words go in and out of heavy rotation. You do reach a level where your times are more related to the difficulty of the puzzle, wavelength, wheelhouse, grogginess than your actual lifetime acumen.
I had a funny experience with the Dallas clue: I had _OSS, then the clue was "What does the R stand for?". Hmmm, let me think.....
@kitshef -- I just sent you something.
I can say for sure that no chicken became a CAPON by choice.
I love a good meat salad. You might say I’m a LARB Gai. Get rid of the salad part and keep the meat and you’re on the KETO diet. Speaking of which, I glanced briefly yesterday at an article about some influencer who is attempting to lose weight on a 100% McDonald’s diet. I feel less than influenced. I think they result might be the breakfast test violation produced by the crossing of SWEAT and SPEW.
I know that dogs fetch, but do BEARSPRAY? Lord, I know I am not worthy, but I would become your most grateful servant if you could provide me with massive amounts of honey and cocaine.
A Friday themeless as a NYTXW debut? Pretty darn good, Eric Warren. Can’t wait for more from you.
I had 'step' for 'beep' thinking maybe the caller was a square dance caller who tells you what the next step is. Do si do your corner, swing your partner.
Solid puzzle, took a guess on the K for Kamal/Katana and was happy to hear the victory music.
I was expecting some sort of vague theme involving words that begin with C - I don't remember ever seeing a puzzle with so many C-words before. CINEMA, CERTS, CAUSES, CARP, CAPONS, CARACAS, CANNER, CAINE, CERA, COBB, CFOS, CLOWNMAKEUP, CORERS, CADDY.
Geez.
I was looking for some way to get ARSONISTS at 12D and it didn't help that I had MAKO instead of ORCA for awhile. Once I took that out, FIRE----- went in pretty quickly and we were off. Had OCEAN--- and BEER--- pretty early as well, but had to work for the ends.
The real killer was 27D where I thought the person pulling strings was a HARP PLAYER. That led me to believe that the special chickens were some kind of two-letter HENS, which just wrecked me on that side of the grid for a long time. It didn't help that HARP PLAYER also gave me DOPE HEADS, so I just knew it was all good there, until it wasn't.
Here's the irony of all that, compared to Rex (and many of you, it seems) - the answer that got me to realize that HARP PLAYER couldn't be right was KATANAS. That was the answer that saved me, I kid you not. Other than EPEE, KATANA is the only sword I know the name of, and I think we just had it a few days ago, yes? Or maybe that was the LA Times puzzle. Regardless, it saved my bacon and since PUPPETEER was one letter too short, I erased that whole column and everything fell into place soon enough.
cAMAL/cATANAS for me, so I finished w one error, no googles. OK for a Friday. ONCASSETTE is just wrong, I dont give a F what the C stands for in VCR. NO ONE ever referred to a movie being ONCASSETTE. its double bad when there are so many other options to clue this. Liked the long answers, Particularly PIANOTUNER. at first I thought Puppeteer, but it was too short. Had EGGshells before EGGWHITES. oh also I had LAmB instead of LARB, WTH is that?
Wonderful Uniclue possibilities today, but I was working on my own project earlier and now they've all been taken...
Gary -- I especially enjoyed numbers 3 and 6.
Barbara -- Number 8 was hilarious. But would you believe what I guessed for your #4? BONEHEADS CERTS!!
Sad that there's so much whining here today. Having to learn something and wanting a clue to be more precise threaten to drown out the praise for this excellent piece of work.
It was crunchy, sparkly, and sharply clued. It had 16 long entries, the result of only six threes.
I am old. I remember the days when not only did you rent movies from the video store, you had to rent the video player because because they were horrifyingly expensive. And yet, we never said such movies were ON CASSETTE.
Now, if you want to talk about cassette tapes, it would be fair to mention music. You know, mix tapes and the like before CD swamped the field.
CYBERSQUAT was meh. I had the last few letters crossing that and tried to enter DOMAINSQUAT, because this stuff I have encountered. But goldang, one letter too long.
I have done enough backpacking in the Rockies that carrying BEARSPRAY is a thing.
Quickie Friday here. My only write-over was EGG WHITES over EGG SHELLS, because who (besides the constructer or editor) would discard egg whites? Add them to your morning scrambled eggs, or use them to make your whiskey sour frothy.
What is hip? Hipness is. What it is.
“No one throws out EGG WHITES,” says Milady. And her soufflé is proof in my book. They sizzle unlike today’s grid as Rex points out. Harder than I expected & ON CASSETTE was the major blockade. Sorta a “thanks, but no thanks Eric” response here, so back up top for commentariat educational intervention to find the wonders I must have missed.
I agree with a lot of the prior comments about ONCASSETTE, ROBE, and CAPON being clued a bit oddly (not wrong at all, but not entirely on the nose either -- ONCASSETTE in particular seems to be an odd choice to clue as videocassette and not audio cassette), OCEANOLOGY and the KATANA/CERA/KAMAL crossing being Natickville. CINEMAS also has an odd clue, as does EGGWHITES (there are some baking recipes that call for more egg yolks, but speaking specifically about baking, I think it's relatively rare). It's a solid puzzle but the amount of "Hmm, well, okay then" seems more like Saturday than Friday to me.
So CARP diem must mean "complain about the day?" Complain about the fish? The fish complaining about the day?
Family lore has someone (not my mom, I think?) keeping a live carp in water in the bathtub for a while to be used for gefilte fish at Passover. I do recall her squooshing chunks of carp through a grinder to make it. And I recall my cousin Janet getting a bone caught in her throat one Passover, which caused quite an ado. Can't recall if she ended up in the ER, if it was otherwise loosened, or if it's still there.
Good times.
It was so cold yesterday, I saw a chicken walking with a capon.
How do you get a chicken out of the oven? Pullet.
@Weezie -- I have no idea what the answer to your questions would be. For one thing, I have never timed myself doing a puzzle, so I don't know if I've gotten faster or not. If I have, it would be of no interest to me and I would take no pride in it. It would be like saying: "Gee, I can polish off that lobster dinner in no time flat --much faster than I could 20 years ago." Or "Wow, don't think I could have chug-a-lugged that lovely Nuits Saint-Georges nearly so quickly when I was half the age I am now."
Can I finish more puzzles than I could back then? Probably -- but I don't remember. Whatever has or hasn't happened has happened organically and I've never thought about it. I don't remember ever being bad at puzzle-solving. OTOH, there are people here who I know are better solvers than I am. Which is fine with me: my competitive instincts -- and heaven knows I have them -- are not at all involved in puzzle-solving which I consider an individual and not a competitive challenge.
I would urge you not to think about speed at all, @Weezie, for I think you will have a much happier solving experience if you don't. And unlike the triathalon, puzzle-solving really isn't about speed, unless you yourself decide to make it so.
I suspect at some point things will go backwards, due to either cognitive decline or increasing unfamiliarity with current pop culture, or both.
(7:59 kitshef)
I can only second that observation and say that for this geezer anyway (sneaking up on 80 y.o.), I prefer to think that it is the unfamiliarity with current pop culture that is the villain here, although a little "cognitive decline" is unquestionably part of the picture.
One of the things that I think makes "pop culture" so obtuse, is that there is just so much of it out there. When TV consisted basically of three networks, it was easier to keep track even of the stuff you didn't watch. Now its totally out of (my) control. Culturally I am sure we are much better off as a society with the added diversity. And actually my only gripe with the whole mass of pop culture is that it makes solving the NYT crossword puzzle a lot harder. And as gripes go, at this age anyway, that's pretty far down the list.
@Weezie (6:16) I’ve been doing crosswords most of my adult life but didn’t start doing the NYT until about 20 years ago. I’d say it took a few years before I reached a level of feeling confident that I would be able to finish every weekday puzzle. But even now, I still don’t feel confident about finishing a Saturday - ever. I’m still continuing to learn and feel like I have lots of room left for improvement.
@Dinesh (7:06) Glad you decided to chime in today and join the commentary. Thank you for the information on Kamal, very interesting.
@pablo (8:41) Love your dad’s CARP recipe and definitely agree. A lot of people like it but the only way I’ve ever found it even remotely appealing was how my great aunt used to can it in jars. The taste was similar to canned tuna and she would put it in a casserole or fry it like you would salmon patties. Not bad at all but I’d never go to all that trouble. My CANNER days are over.
Yep!
Thx, Eric; you TICKLEd my fancy! :)
Easy-med.
Got off to a good start with ESP, then ROBE, ICES & BEEP, and more or less TORE thru this one!
EGGsHellS before WHITES; Ext before ESQ.
My limited German includes BLAU.
Thx to fair crosses for LARB (whew!).
Learned: TAR; KAMAL; LARB; BEER FRIDGE; ROSS; CARP; MINI.
Hazies: KETO; KATANAS; CARNE ASADA; CYBERSQUAT.
Fave clue / ans: 'Work done in the trenches' / OCEANOLOGY.
Grandpa was a PIANO TUNER.
I think I'm finally getting to know Michael CERA. Apparently, I've seen him in 'Veronica Mars', 'Twin Peaks' & 'Molly's Game', but I just can't place his face. Time to watch something he stars in, e.g., 'Arrested Development', and get him etched into my mind.
Looks like I need to take in some of 'Bob's Burgers' to catch Kevin KLINE's Calvin Fischoeder character.
Also, time to rewatch 'The CAINE Mutiny'. I think I'm conflating it with 'Mr. Roberts'. Got both dvds, so will get it sorted out.
Very enjoyable excursion today. Loved it! :)
@Dinesh Krithivasan (7:06 AM)
Welcome to the commentariat! 😊
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Under appreciated comment! Thanks for sharing this.
Nicely challenging puzzle. Perhaps someone fluent in Spanish will comment on the answer to Hasta Luego. I’ve been a Spanish student for about 5 years and somewhere along the line got the impression that if someone is your friend you would not address them as Amigo. Also, when parting from a friend, wouldn’t saying Adios be rather formal, sorta like saying Farewell?
Some very good answers here . Thanks!
I have been solving crosswords and specifically the daily NYTXW since I was about 9. Started sitting every day by my Grandmother who taught me all the types and tricks and all the things you mentioned. Once I hit young adulthood, I had a daily crossword gaggle at our favorite coffee hangout at the U of Illinois (The T-Bird), we started to try to do speed solves. Back in the early ‘70s without computers, mobile phones etc, there were no automatic streak counts and we used stop watches to time, and the really anal folks kept a solve diary with daily time. We had DIY streaks that way too.
Over the decades, I eschewed speed solving for enjoyment and unless a puzzle is way out of its NYT “bracket” - either much easier or much harder, my times stay pretty consistent. I found that I prefer meandering solves so I don’t miss learning new things or bits of cleverness and construction prowess.
You will continue to grow as a solver. Your times will improve. But you will also get to decide how you want to approach the solve every day. Some Mondays I do downs only or across only. Some days I try to ignore the theme clues and work the crosses only and wait until the solve is complete to suss out a theme.
Great questions @Weezie. No right or wrong answers. You are the solver. Do it the way that makes you happy.
So I looked up "playback singer" on Wiki since I'd never heard the term before:
A playback singer, also known as a ghost singer, is a singer whose singing is pre-recorded for use in films. Playback singers record songs for soundtracks, and actors or actresses lip-sync the songs for cameras...
So, Marni Nixon, or the Debbie Reynolds character in "Singin'In The Rain" (in which, ironically, Debbie lip-synced to the voice of singer Betty Noyes).
South Asian films produced in the Indian subcontinent frequently use this technique... Popular playback singers in India enjoy the same status as popular actors and music directors and receive wide public admiration... In 2011, Guinness officially acknowledged (Indian playback singer Asha) Bhosle as the most recorded artist in music history.
@Gary Jugert, @Nancy
Great uniclue crop today, @Gary! Sorry you were out of the uniclue business, @Nancy.
I’ve been obsessed with one of my own uniclues since I wrote it this morning. So here’s a short short story designed to get it out of my system.
Attorney with an inexplicable and positively frightening name. (For god’s sake, take your business elsewhere.)
CLOWN MAKEUP, ESQ.
My name is CLOWN MAKEUP, ESQ. What? you ask. How can that be anyone’s name? It is not the name given to me by my mother or my father. It is a name imposed on my delicate soul by my classmates in the third grade here in Devil’s Den, Wyoming. You see, I was born in Münster, Germany, and christened Claus Machkopf. But when I arrived in Devil’s Den at the tender age of 8, speaking no English, marred by a large red nose and crowned with wild curly hair, my school-fellows were only too delighted with their rechristening. This name has followed me all my life, through law school and right into this office where I sit and brood and wait for clients. But none come. I have changed my nameplate from Claus Machkopf to CLOWN MAKEUP in the hope of attracting novelty-seekers. But I have had no takers since my first three clients, Vic Timothy, Dee O. Ayers and Skell Eton. How can I be held responsible if they all disappeared under mysterious circumstances shortly after consulting me? So I sit and I wait and I pass my time reading old paperbacks which I salvage from the dump. The latest is the best: Stephen King’s It.
@Lewis I adore your thoughtful analysis every day. I also applaud that you always find something to like in a puzzle. Today, I learned that you also enjoy engaging in “post-solve rumination.” Gran taught me solving and she insisted nay, ordained that we would review the puzzle and the solve and find what we learned, what we liked and what was kind of distracting, off-putting or just plain inappropriate.
I remember one Sunday where she nearly had a DNF because part of the theme required drawing a symbol instead of a word (much like the one sometime last year when we had to enter the symbols for the 4 card suits). During our “post-solve rumination,” she had what for her was some really strong words. She considered the requirement to draw pure heresy. It was the only time from my age 9 until the last day of her life that I ever heard her say that anything a constructor did that was approved by the editor should be absolutely banned. She shook her head and said “These are crossWORD puzzles and I am vey cross because there should be a WORD in those squares.”
Because of my loving tutelage, I learned so much about so many things. Consequently, I engage in “post-solve rumination” after every single crossword solve. And now I have a classy name for the activity that is as much part pf my solve as anything else. Thank you @Lewis!
Agree completely @Ted.
Didn't know CYBER-SQUAT about KATANAS/KAMAL, but otherwise a fun puz ... for a themeless. ESP did not come thru for M&A, on gettin that mysterious K -- M&A picked up an "S" vibe, instead. Wrong again, M&A breath.
Some faves included: RIBTICKLER. BEERFRIDGE. anythingSQUAT. RIBTICKLER was especially helpful, at our house -- got it off just the B.
staff weeject pick, of only 6 choices: BAL. Better clue: {Reverse research area??}.
Amazin 68-worder puzgrid, for a debut constructioneer. Did he use some kinda CYBER-A.I.-Fill generator? Or, did he go the M&A squat-and-try-1000-wordcombos route, and just suffer a whole lot.
Thanx for the challenge, Mr. Warren dude. Primo debut -- congratz to U.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
Lots of dead ends and typeovers for me. ARCHEOLOGY before OCEANOLOGY because of "trenches". ON VHS TAPES because we actually used to say that, and it even agrees with the plural "movies" in the clue. And BANANAS before KATANAS... it was a cartoon, after all.
But the weirdest had to be CEDAR HEDGE before BEER FRIDGE. I was looking at -------DGE, and with "bud" in the clue I thought "something hedge?" and my mind just made that overly specific leap. Probably because I have a cedar hedge! Or at least I did until the deer ate it.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, no weird words except maybe for the one Barbara S missed. QB streak at 5 days!.]
I whooshed through this right into the NE where I clunked to a halt. No idea on 16A; I put in "odds" and with CeOS at 11A I wasn't going to get CLOWN or FIRE. However, ON CASSETTE shook that back open and then it was just a matter of fumbling for a few letters.
LARB: I happily splatzed that right in - I have a wonderfully written Thai cookbook that covers LARB, and a Mpls Thai restaurant had, for a while, WE LARB YOU on their sign, cute.
I did just see an error I made in my whooshing - with _AINE in place, I remembered the mAINE instead of the CAINE Mutiny. No wonder I'd never heard of mARP fish. Now there's a forehead-slapper of an oops! Made me laugh out loud in the office.
Eric Warren, congratulations on your debut.
@CDilly 52. Come down to this corner of the playground, I've got a nice piece of cake for you.
One of my sons lived in Japan for six years, and the other one was deeply into martial arts; between the two I had heard of KATANAS--but I still couldn't think of it, even when I had _ATAN_S. And I have a friend named jAMAL, so I was going to go with that -- but then I remembered that there was a Michael CERA, and suddenly I could see KATANS! Go figure.
Malapop: I thought you might keep your Bud in a miniFRIDGE.
@egs--I was thinking along the same lines about the CAPONS. Although you never know. My grandson has a great soprano voice, and performs with the boys' choir of his church. His parents were once approached by an agent who asked if he might be interested in a career as a castrato. They turned him down, horrified -- but the fact that he was asking suggests that maybe he sometimes got positive responses.
Dictionary.com defines OCEANOLOGY as "the practical application of oceanography." Yeah.
I solvle on paper, and have never timed myself, but I certainly keep improving in my solving ability. Like many, I think, I first learned of this blog because I usually had to do a web search for one or more answers. I still do that occasionally for the puzzles in The New Yorker, or on AVCX, but never for the NYT.
Just read the comments. Not knowing KAMAL, MINI, or CERA is reasonable to me, but I was shocked to learn that a KATANA is an obscure weapon! Usually, the knowledge of the people on this blog surpasses my own, so it's a very strange feeling when what I consider "obvious" is actually not obvious at all.
Katanas, I word I don’t know because I never saw the show, crossing with two names I never heard before. This made it impossible to solve for me.
13d reminded me of a particular occasion in an improvisational acting class I took in college, reenacted below. KG was the instructor and Miss West (this was pre-Ms. days) was a very charming but somewhat ditzy student in the class.
KG: So, for this exercise, the first thing I want you to do is imagine yourself in a particular location, and you are doing some activity. Okay? So, Miss West— where are you?
Miss West: At the beach.
KG: Okay, very good, and what are you doing at the beach?
Miss West: I'm lying down.
KG: Wonderful, and what else—
Miss West: On a blanket.
KG: That's fine. Okay. Now, Mr.—
Miss West: Listening to music.
KG: Oh, well okay, Miss West, we need to get to the other—
Miss West: Stevie Wonder.
KG: Yes, now Mr. Cra—
Miss West: On a cassette.
By that point KG was completely exasperated and we were all laughing so hard I think the exercise just got abandoned.
Agree - beautiful post, thank you!
Welcome, Dinesh! I just checked Netflix to see if they had Kamal's latest film, Vikram. Not yet, but I found some other of his films, so I'll add them to my watch list 😉 Hope to see you more often on RP's blog 🤗
✋for BEER garden and EGG shells! Such a waste to throw out EGG WHITES! Just make some macaroons - or macarons, if you're up for a more challenging cookie!
✋for knee slapper! And it's fun to say!
I so agree re: throwing out EGG WHITES - it's perfectly usable food! Macaroon cookies are a cinch to make - and your family, neighbors, colleagues would thank you!
As a longtime lurker, I have to thank Rex and all the regular commenters for enriching my solving experience.
I enjoyed the puzzle, except for the Natick. However, as a retired lawyer, I have to CARP about the clue for ESQ. In my experience, Esquire is an honorific that lawyers use to address other lawyers. I would never call myself an ESQ or put it on my business card.
Love ya, Roo! I'm so on your wavelength! (wish there were a kangaroo emoji!)
Pas moi! I just enjoy the scenic route 😊
@Weezie 6:16 - To answer your questions....First, "at what point did your solving skill more or less level out?" I'd say about 30 years ago when I could count on finishing a Saturday NYT puzzle correctly in one sitting without looking anything up. I started doing Times crosswords in the 1960s, solving the Sunday puzzles in the mag. A couple of decades later, when we could afford to have the daily paper delivered, I next tried my hand at Saturdays, the only other day I had time for puzzles, and it's a good thing I had it, because starting out they took many an hour and multiple sessions, if I could even finish. By the time I retired in 2010 and started doing the M-F puzzles, I had enough Saturdays behind me to speed up the learning curve of themes, rebuses, and Friday difficulty. And second, "do you find that your skills are still improving?" Marginally, in the area of seeing through tricky clues; I think this might be because I enjoy cryptic puzzles, where all the clues are tricky, and I'm slowly getting better at deciphering these. Thank you for the questions - I enjoyed thinking about them and reading others' responses.
As the clue indicates - a Laotian salad with meat. Laos is a SE Asian country that borders Vietnam.
I agree, MG!
As a retired lawyer, I remember in my state most lawyers did put Esq. on their business cards and often on office signs. Customs do vary. In any event for me the clue was fine and the answer went in immediately.
A couple of puzzles back, there was a kerfuffle in the commentariat about the term HIDEYHOLE. I grew up in NE Ohio and heard it often enough - and probably used it. My husband grew up in Oregon and he knew the word. And in the book I'm currently reading, what did I espy but the HH word! I like that word 🤗
@Weezie, having been at this about 2 years, I'd say you keep getting better! I'm still improving a bit at a time, gradually, though it is less steep now. Great puzzle, enjoyed getting BEARSPRAY and CLOWNMAKEUP. Didn't like OCEANOLOGY (not the normal term) and didn't like clue for ONCASSETTE--that should have said "80's mix tapes" or something like that, not videos. Great Puzzle Overall!--Rick
I raced through this one unimpeded until one square in two words, 40A and 30D, KATANAS and KAMAL, which I think is the most unfair cross I've ever seen in a NYTXW. I'm astonished that the "editor" let it through.
Speaking of bear spray: Was staying with my daughter a few years back who at the time was living outside of Anchorage and diligent about always taking bear spray on her daily walkies with her pup. One morning we heard a huge shriek followed by horrendous odor & eye stinging sensation throughout the house when she inadvertently dropped the spray canister in the entrance hall. Had to open all windows & vacate house for rest of the day…
Wow, Eric ! On learning today was your debut, I had to check out your constructor note at xwordinfo, but was disappointed at the lack. Like Jeff, I look forward to more “pulling strings” clues next time around. My meh of the previous post I humbly take back with a side order of crow.
And thanks to @CDilly, @Lewis, et al for eye opening responses as usual. KAMAL is a big add thanks to Rex & @Dinesh.
The carp in the bathtub for Pesach was a common practice I think! My great grandmother apparently would do the same thing.
I was certain that you would insert a video of Tower of Power playing “ What is Hip?” In a puzzle that includes “hipness” as an answer. https://youtu.be/oAatPPEaZDA
Is the K in KAMAL really such a problem when the clue specifies the person as Indian, and we have a VP named KAMALa who is famously of Indian descent? Sometimes dots can be connected outside the puzzle.
Otoh, that ROBE clue – wtf is up with that? It defies explanation.
This played tough for me. The KAMAL/KATANAS cross was definitely rough, but luckily K was the only letter that made sense. I liked CINEMA, FIREEATER, and CLOWNMAKEUP and some others but I agree with Rex on RIBTICKLER and OCEANOLOGY. Wow, it’s late for me to be solving and posting. Okay, on to Saturday!
You make me laugh every time I look at this blog. Thank you.
@Anonymous 3:16
👍
I work 8-5, and hardly ever have a chance to check the comments until after I get home around 6 (I'm on Pacific Time)(and then veg on the couch, forgetting to read the comments!), so I tend to miss comments directed at me. Which is why I don't respond a lot to others' posts.
Anyway, just wanted to say the Roo of RooMonster is actually a Rooster, not a Kangaroo.
And if you are the same @Anonymous as YesterComments asking about my F-stuff -- I noticed a few years back that F's seemed to be few and far between in puzs. Why I noticed is a mystery, even to myself. So like @M&A advocating for the U's, I figured I'd advocate for the F's. Sure, the "Scrabbly" letters, such as Q,J,Z are probably used less than the F, but once one gets a gnawing feeling about something, it sticks with you. So I count the F to highlight their plight. 😁
TMI to some, I'm sure.
RooMonster Wind Bag Guy
Too much trivia, not much wordplay. Disappointing.
Emily Litella left a message at the sound of a “Jeep” you know!
Perhaps I have played too many video games and watched too many samurai movies but KATANAS was a giveaway even if I couldn’t remember which turtle had which weapon. I was also watching Bob’s Burgers as I solved (though not an episode with Calvin Fischoeder in it) and am forever craving the CARNE ASADA fries of my hometown in San Diego. You can get some variation of them at Mexican places all over the country but it just isn’t the same.
Thanks for the replies, 🐓! I'm sure there is a story behind that moniker 🤔 And I'm glad that M&A and you are the champions of U and F. I might start counting Ks 😉 We had two great K answers today, but then again, "OK" and "OKAY" make frequent appearances... But that's OK 👌
Also thought arsonist there!
This was a hard one for me, almost record setting, and not in the good way. 1:10 or so and a miserable struggle the whole way. Tons of trivia I didn’t know and word plays I didn’t get.
Despite not knowing at least half a dozen entries, I think I'd rate this as easy-medium. The unknowns were either gettable or guessable without a whole lot of angst. Oceanography I know; never heard of the -OLOGY, but it was inferable. That's how a lot of it went down.
Strange that some discard their EGGWHITES, when others order their omelets made with EGGWHITES only. Debustagut. Me, I love the whole thing.
INFRONT always makes me think of the horse race announcer. As the winner (by usually a wide margin) is approaching the finish line, the voice booms "[name of horse] INFRONT!" Outside of that, I don't hear the expression.
A decent workout for the BRAINCELLS today, but nothing home about which to write. Par.
Wordle par as well. This week has had some toughies; makes me think I'm at Augusta National. I wish.
ON BONEHEADS
INFRONT "The RIBTICKLER" is MINI,
SOSORRY the MAKEUP is skinny,
the CAUSES BATHWATER,
SO FIRE UP CARNEASADA,
for CERTS, it will RENEW INHD.
--- ROSS CAINE, ESQ.
I had to use some BRAINCELLS on the actor/swords cross. Narrowed it down to J or K, figured KATANAS sounded better for swords.
Wordle birdie after BBBBB start.
I thought for sure we would have a bunch of anonymoti complaining that there's no such thing as bear spray! Since bears don't inhabit my neck of the woods, the only reason I know it, is because Duluth Trading recently had a holster for a canister of bear spray on sale.
One or two names shy of a perfect solve. Loved BATHWATER and CINEMAS. Worked my BRAINCELLS, too.
Many folks carry BEARSPRAY when they venture into Glacier Park - one of the loveliest places on earth.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
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