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Monastery head's jurisdiction / SAT 3-11-23 / Air-purifying device / Makeup kit item / Fund-raising attractions at carnivals / Pumps up
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Constructor: Tom Pepper
Relative difficulty: Medium-Hard
THEME: None
Word of the Day: OH HELL (1A: Trick-taking card game) —
Oh Hell or Contract Whist is a trick-taking card game of British origin in which the object is to take exactly the number of tricks bid. Unlike contract bridge and spades, taking more tricks than bid is a fail. It was first described by B. C. Westall around 1930 and originally called Oh! Well.[1] It was said to have been introduced into America via the New York clubs in 1931.[2] It has been described as "one of the best round games."[3]
• • •
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| Here are giraffes in a SAVANNA. They look happy tbh. |
Such wide-open middles are very hard to fill colorfully, but this was a real masterclass with only ENDEARING being more neutral, and all the other entries feeling fun to me. And outside the middle, things like HANG ON A SEC, GO WHOLE HOG, GIMMICK, SAVANNA, COOLIO, etc, etc, were exciting and kept me powering through the solve.
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| I had never heard of a TOONIE before, but this is the back of one |
There's really not much to complain about here ... the fill is very smooth. HIC is maybe a ding, but I do think this Latin angle really rescues it. INRE and WEN also feel a bit meh, but it's all a small price to pay for the fun and smoothness everywhere else with this ambitious grid design.
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| I am obsessed with KALE, and this ribollita looks fire |
What else? MANCAVE is weirdly gendered but is in-the-language and harmless enough that I don't really mind it ... HORCRUX is ... well ... I won't get into the whole JKR situation. Cluing had big Saturday energy. Nothing totally wowed me, but a lot of nice angles like ACROBAT referencing the "walking on tiptoes" word origin, the ELIAS HOWE anagram, nonstandard angle for PENCIL, etc. I could have maybe used a few more wordplay clues? But I think I'm just looking for things to complain about at this point.
Bullets:
- OCTET (1a: Four + four) — This being a Saturday puzzle, I *knew* there was no way this could be EIGHT but I still wanted it so so bad. I spend a solid few seconds thinking ... could it be? No! Ugh, but ... maybe?
- TERI (20a: Jack Bauer's wife on "24") — I watched a lot of 24 in high school (over 10 years ago at this point) but I absolutely did not remember this name.
- ELI (4d: Name in "fuel injection") — This kind of clue is controversial! I don't mind it, but I know some people see it as "lazy" ... here this is sandwiched around a lot of other propers so I understand the editorial decision to go with this angle.
- CHAGRIN (11d: Discomfiture) — I think the word CHAGRIN is very fun. That's all.
- HANG ON A SEC (49a: "Hold up ...") — This felt familiar, and I realized I had a puzzle in October that debuted HANG ON A SECOND, which I also clued as ["Hold up ..."]!
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113 comments:
Tough. I started out with ecarte at 1a and continued to stumble from there (e.g. wait ONe sec before HANG ON A SEC). The only big gimme was BLOCK CHAINS. It didn’t help that OH HELL and HORCRUX were WOEs. Anyway, this was loaded with good stuff, liked it a bunch and Jeff gave it POW at Xwordinfo.
Weird not to mention the Natick at ALOHA OE/ FOVEA in the write-up. Never heard of either of those (I know, this is probably on me, but there we were, and I just did not find that vowel inferable!). Also no idea who Elias Howe is, and using an anagram clue wasn’t helpful or interesting (especially when the same puzzle uses one of those “name hidden in a phrase” clues for ELI elsewhere - both annoying gimmicks to me).
Overall felt like this puzzle skewed very old - the MASH reference, and I never watched 24 but Wikipedia tells me that Teri got killed off in the first season which makes it a 20+ year old reference at this point. Also, sure “even” and “tie” can mean the same thing but I’ve never heard anyone just using “evening the score”, it’s always “evening up the score”, where you would say “tying the score” so I feel that clue was reaching too hard. Just not my kind of puzzle, I guess.
Yesterday's puzzle was a blast and it wasn't POW, so I was very hopeful for today. Top-notch crossword. TURING and ESC were easy enough so my first thought when seeing 3D was... SORCERY? At least I knew HORCRUX and that gave me XRAY, but TECHS took some thought. I was confident about MOO/GOADS and I wanted ___LSD at 58A. Would've been Naticked at ELIASHOWE/SWIT if it weren't for the anagram clue.
19D is pretty much the least appropriate comment for a puzzle like this.
Extremely hard, maybe the most difficult all year for me.
OHHELL crossing HORCRUX was particularly appropriate.
That’s Saturday cluing, when the portcullis slams down again and again and you look for other entrances.
That’s one impressive centerpiece of white, crossing five 9-letter entries with three 11-letter ones. AND practically all the answers have buzz. Huh! Wow!
That’s one heap of freshness, with nine NYT answer debuts, and all such marvelous additions to the oeuvre: BLOCKCHAINS, CHINESE TEAS, DUNK TANKS, GIMMICK, GOT INTO IT, HANG ON A SEC, MAN CAVES, WHAT A DOWNER, XRAY TECHS.
That’s cute, having WHAT A DOWNER going south, having HELL and RAIN (high water).
That’s a box full of lovely answers: BRIOCHE, CLAPTRAP, GO WHOLE HOG, CHAGRIN, GIMMICK.
That’s trickiness-in-cluing sparkle: [Evening] for TYING, [Close one, in brief] for BFF.
That’s one piece of fine work, Tom, a tough and worth-the-work outing. You are a pro and I am a fan. Thank you for this!
Loved it! Got hung up on WEN (sebaceous cyst), which I think of as not so much a “blemish” as just an anomaly. And ABBACY was a new one for me. (Learn something every day, right). But overall pretty smooth and appropriately hard for a Saturday. 😀
I could tell that I didn’t have a chance at this one right away in the NE which is pretty much all trivial - OH HELL, COOLIO, TURING, HORCRUX, TERI and LING - that is brutal because there are hardly any non-trivial crosses to rely on for assistance.
Congrats to all who were able to fill in FOVEA crossing ALOHAOE without any help - that shows some serious Saturday solving chops right there. It’s interesting that right across the grid they go from the FOVEA section to MOO crossing TOONIE, which made for an interesting contrast in styles.
I don’t know anything about Jack Bauer or his wife; I’m assuming they are/were a fine couple, But I am disappointed that we were not able to take advantage of the opportunity to pay homage to the very lovely and elegant Ms. TERI Garr.
As someone who has managed to avoid Harry Potter, except for in crosswords, the top left corner stamped me. Horcrux and Oh Hell? Tough puzzle. Pretty much used up the full half hour before I'm allowed to eat breakfast after morning pills!
Definitely well built - that huge center is tough to fill cleanly but ends solid today. At first I had a little side eye to the ELIAS HOWE clue but warmed to it. OH HELL is cool to start. I don’t care about the author but have always thought the kiddie lit series gets far too much play. Loved the ALOHA OE - SAVANNA stack.
CHAGRIN Falls
FOVEA is classic crosswardese. Never watched “24” so that was backed into. Learned ACROBAT. I’m leaning towards Rex not caring for this one with the crypto, JKR and MANCAVES. The splash factor is lacking with this one.
I’ll take Matt Sewell’s Stumper today - but this was also an enjoyable solve on a cold, rainy morning.
DEBRA Kadabra
Extremely hard. I hated every moment of solving this.
Thanks, Rafi, for the cheery write-up today (though I must confess a part of me was looking forward to Rex's thesis-like rant about MAN CAVES).
Much to my CHAGRIN, I needed an OCTET of cheats to finish this one. You'd think after 50+ years of solving crosswords I'd be better at it. You'd think ...
Any Saturday puzzle that I can complete without deferring to Sergey and Larry can't be any harder than Medium.
HORCRUX was a total WOE to this Harry Potter noninitiate, and I needed all the crosses for ABBACY after the ABB. Shame on me for not knowing FOVEA: I know a little more about retinas than most people, having had both of mine detach.
I did know ALOHA OE, but the last letter was a toss-up among E, I and Y (I was really hoping for Y) until DEALER filled it in.
Only major overwrite was BRouleE before BRIOCHE at 14A. I didn't really think a patisserie would sell anything brûlée, but I haven't been to a whole lot of them.
Tried to start in the NW, per usual, and thought, oh oh. The NE actually seemed easy, and BLOCKCHAIN is something I have seen in connection with cryptocurrencies, but they fall into the category of "things I've heard of but have no idea of what they are". See also HORCRUX.
Unknown names in this one included TERI. LING, and DEBRA, all as clued.
I wrote in the execrable AGAZE, but really, really didn't want to. Also hesitated on ALOHAOE, which I sort of knew, but then was thinking that the Hawaiian alphabet didn't included the letter E. There it is though.
I guess I should have known FOVEA as I've had three operations on my RETINA but I don't remember that term ever coming up.
I don't think I've ever known anyone who said "COOLIO", and I think if I did hear someone say that, I would take pains to avoid them in the future.
Nice challenging Saturday, TP. Took Plenty of head scratching which led to great satisfaction after a successful completion, and thanks for all the fun.
And now for the Stumper.
Another NYT/WaPo duplicate answer today (third time this week), with pretty similar clues. I noticed a cryptic clue in the WaPo as well, which is pretty unusual, so something is definitely up. My money is on the Zombie Apocalypse - I’ve invited some friends over for a screening of The Day of the Triffids this evening to celebrate.
Wow, that was a CHALLENGE! I got it though, phew. Or is it whew? I will never know. That NW corner KILLED me. And while I agree about JKR, I wish her horrid personal opinions didn’t have to interfere with the work she did because Harry Potter is all about acceptance! It’s baffling to me. Like two completely different people. Although of course it’s not. So sad. I wish people could just Live and let Live.
So. Many. Naticks.
Insanely hard, the NW almost unfairly so. Of the five answers I’ve never heard of, four are in that section (OH HELL, ELI, LING, TERI). Throw in what I think is a bad clue for OCTET and tough clues for COOLIO and HOUSED, and yeesh. Didn’t help that euchre and bridge and hearts and spades all fit for 1A, so I had all these things to try and pull out and try again and pull out and it turns out to be none of the above.
Oh! I just got ELI. Take that off the "never heard of" list, but another tough clue.
Even ignoring the complete mess that is my NW:
deer TiCkS before XRAY TECHS
Coin/corneA before CENT/RETINA
adam/mold befor ENOS/SMOG
cakewAlKS before DUNK TANKS
CHIli SalsAS before CHINESE TEAS
A real fight that I very much enjoyed.
'TURING' is trivial? Very dim comment.
Hard puzzle, but fair except for that spot with FOVEA and ALOHAOE…
The puzzle fell pretty fast for me until that spot…had to stare at that spot for a long…. long…. time…
So my finishing time really hurt the ol’ Saturday average, lol.
When BFF finally “popped” to my eye (my fovea?), then “aloha” made sense as a folk reference and I was done…
Pretty sure I’ve seen FOVEA in the puzzle before, so I wouldn’t call it a true natick?
Feels great to finish this one.
Well, I got ALOHAOE right away, and maybe five other answers in my first run. Eventually I gave up and did some significant cheating - having the app fill in squares and words. As tough a puzzle as I can recall in my 50+ years of solving. Of course my memory isn't so good now at 88, so I could have forgotten some tougher ones.
OH HELL -- to my CHAGRIN I had to cheat. WHAT A DOWNER!
Actually, it was only one legitimate cheat: DEBRA. Everything else was a "check" -- using what I already had or surmised instead of just looking it up. So, for example, I typed in HORCR with no mention of the Harry guy and up popped HORCRUX. I typed in Lisa LING and Google said "Bingo!" I typed in TOONIE and up popped a coin. (I had had LOONIE at first; isn't there some coin with a loon on it?)
What are SUNK TANKS and why do they get people to donate money at carnivals? The fact that I don't know what BLOCK CHAINS are is why I would never invest in cryptocurrency.
What's a WEN? What's a FOVEA? And I had XRAY TEstS before XRAY TECHS.
Chock-full of stuff I didn't know, I found this one of the more arcane puzzles in a while. And while there were things I loved in it -- ELIAS HOWE; GO WHOLE HOG; BIPED and MANCAVES -- I'm never a happy camper when I'm driven to cheat. Not even when my cheating is more like "checking" than cheating. A real bear of a puzzle.
I wrote some papers in grad school about simulated FOVEAs so that came pretty easily to me but it felt pretty specialist. And I used to play OH HELL with my cousins every summer so that wasn't too bad... at least once hearts, bridge, and spades were definitively disproved. Thankfully, euchre didn't occur to me. Also had TiCkS for the longest time. What cost me the most was reading 44A wrong so I was trying to think of what might be a little pit on a FOVEA?!?
First Saturday in a while that I haven't had to look anything up, but I was well above average time.
The northwest corner was a struggle to untangle. The only thing there I was semi-sure of was OCTET and COOLIO. I've not used COOLIO in speech before, but I will admit to realio-trulio. At last I saw TURING and voilá.
Had a challenge getting CHINESETEAS too, writing in poinsettias and wondering where the red ones were… and server farms before BLOCKCHAINS.
I enjoyed this puzzle!
...and speaking of bears: I posted this very late on yesterday's puzzle and I doubt many of you saw it:
A Bear Should Be Bare
I went back to the drawings from '43
In the book from my childhood I needed to see
And Pooh was as naked as naked could be!
The bear was all bare!
Oh, yes, he was "pantless" -- he certainly was!
But also most shirtless, and that is because
A bear's not required to cover his fuzz --
A bear should be bare.
So Pooh in a shirt is a blasphemous fault.
(We know his red shirt was selected by Walt.)
"Oh, bother!" Pooh cries and I cry "Oy gevalt!" --
'Cuz a bear should be bare.
Amy: uncle! I give! (Well not really, but like @Joaquin, today's solve required some robust assists.) Glad ppl are honest here, or I'd probably feel pretty blue about my ineptitude. Perhaps Spelling Bee will assuage my bruised ego.
Question: Does Rex do the puzzle on days when he has a guest blogger?
And appreciate your review today, Rafi.
Never got the northwest, I gave up. I had TURING which gave me OCTET and LOGO, but that was it. But I did have DUNKTANKS at the bottom of it, a recent commenter thought it was sUNK... Hopefully your boss is sitting in a chair over water, and if you hit the right spot with a ball it dumps him in.
I never heard of Yellow Tea, by the way.
I could tell a long RETINA story, but it would be boring. Now that I have the kind of insurance that pays for things my eye doctor keeps wanting me to see specialists to monitor a tiny out-of-the-way spot of pigment that has not changed size or appearance for many years. Don't get me started....
I had CAKEWALKS instead of DUNKTANKS and tried to build the middle from there after verifying my error with the cross BLOCKCHAINS, and it did not go so well.
Great Saturday puzzle! I thought that NW section was going to do me in. I'm not at all familiar with OHHELL. Mind you HORCRUX was a gimme for me off the __UX but it sat up there all by itself for a long time. I can't explain why ESC kept on well.... escaping me but I finally teased out OCTET and HOUSED which gave me all the leverage I needed to finish. For anyone who had to solve the NW knowing neither HORCRUX or OHHELL I feel ya.
In the SW I had a brief scare when _OVEA gave me nothing. Luckily I recognized the BFF clue after a few tries and FOVEA came back to me.
Other than those two trouble sections the puzzle was normal Saturday difficulty.
@Nancy, I read your Winnie the Pooh poem last night and I found it quite "Winsome."
@cdilly52, glad you're feeling better and congrats on finishing yesterday's puzzle. I screwed it up with VEDI.
ABBACY is an SB classic speaking of which... everything has been -0 since I last commented except for Thur. I couldn't spell the 9 letter drug to save my life.
This was one that I chipped away at and even though I finished with errors (Hoc instead of Hic) - I fixed them but I've given up on being a speed solver. The NW corner was long in coming to me - I spent the first five minutes thinking "I know that word" I just cannot recall it. Toonie drove me nuts! I could see the coin in my head (I know we have some around the house) but it took almost all the acrosses to get there. @Nancy - these are the Loonie ($1 Loon) and Toonie ($2 Polar Bear) are Canadian coins.
Thanks @kitshef for typing for me!
deer TiCkS before XRAY TECHS
Coin/corneA before CENT/RETINA
We play a version of Oh Hell. It is a great game for four+ players. In our version, which we call F*** Your Buddy, the number of tricks bid cannot equal the number of tricks available. It is also called Annoy Your Neighbor and, when playing with one's very adept (and ever sober) father-in-law, Lose to Grampa.
The northwest here is a disaster. OHHELL? You got to have some pretty strong "I hate rap" energy to avoid COOLIO directly as the rapper in lieu of COOLIO as meaning "sweet", even though the saying does derive from the rapper. HORCRUX?
Northwest corner was rough. Who else fell for the euchre and eight?
Hey All !
First pumps in the air as I finished and got the Happy Music! Toughie in each section. When I first looked at the grid, with that ominous center of Long crossers, I said, "Holy moly, this is gonna take forever!", but I plodded on undaunted (OK, I really was daunted), and got each section bit by bit.
NE was first, ARAL, BIPED and DEBRA getting me off to a good start. Got ACROBAT off just the B, had YEa, saw BRIOCHE, then filled in full. (Did change my YEa to YEP.)
Next was SE, MOO and CENT helping there.
Next, SW, even though I had wAitONeSEC holding me up. But got MID, DEALER, then OVER, IONIZES, which helped me see ALOHA OE. Finished up there.
Next, Center section, with those 97 Long crossers. 😁 Was chipping away at it little by little throughout the solve, WHAT A DOWNER was a fruitful guess, deciding twixt CHINESE TEAS or sEAS. But, now that I think of it, there's only Green Paint, not a Green Sea. Finally figured out XRAYTECHS. Had the TECHS, XRAY was well hidden. (Wanted Tattoo Artist first! Too long.)
Finished in NW, with the X helping tremendously. OH HELL is a card game I'm unfamiliar with. Thought about XII for ESC for a bit. (XII [12] being NW of 1 [I] on a clock face.) Nice one on that, Tom.
Evening clue was dastardly! Had it to T_IN_ and couldn't get the ole brain off Nighttime. Finally after XRAY, the lightbulb went on.
I forget (there's a shock) who used to look for the Diagonal words, but found one from Square 59 heading NE, DONNA.
Uniclue:
"What did you do, you hep cat author?"
OH HELL COOLIO TURING
Just the one!
Happy Saturday All.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Can we please stop with the Harry Potter clues? Every time I come across one I have to turn to my 18-year-old daughter for help! (She read the series twice.) I hate when a puzzle has words I never heard. Wen? Fovea? Abbacy? Oh Hell no!
OH HELL, I said with a chuckle when I finally sorted out my big mess in the ESE quadrant. I had been lazily filling in the grid, by no means whooshing but certainly things were moving along, when I hit a roadblock caused by the most innocuous of errors.
First off, I had to change my cakewAlKS to DUNK TANKS in order to get the NW finished, but that was an easy fix.
No, it was my (albeit reluctant) SHORt at 28D and my oh so silly ON A lID (hey "lid" is one of those drug terms, right?) at 58A that probably tacked on 25% more time today. Imagine staring at GOTItT__ for "Started fighting" or G_MMIlK for "Attention-getter, maybe". Yes, Got MIlk went through my head many times and it would have been so cute crossing MOO but if MOO was right then Got MIlK couldn't be and so the circular reasoning goes around again.
I finally figured out that ELIAS HOWE was the anagram (had to cross off the letters one by one to get the final E) because he invented the sewing machine, if I remember correctly. That gave me ENOS, not much help in clearing up 39D but I eventually noticed if I changed my t of SHORt to an N, hey...! 42A, woohoo.
So, GIMMIlK, har, I got the chuckle when I finally saw I'd been semi-dooked at 58A and it was ON ACID. Tom Pepper, you got me, thanks!
@Nancy, nice poem! To be honest, yesterday's bear answer was a poser for me as I didn't associate him with Disney but with the books and a four-letter Disney character starting with P didn't just pop in like it should have, even as clued.
Challenging but not so hard it was frustrating. I love when that happens. Lots of things I did not know though, starting right off at 1A. OH HELL is certainly a familiar expression but not a card game. BLOCK CHAINS, TOONIE, WEN, ALOHAOE - all dark mysteries. But CLAPTRAP, that I know. A most excellent word which I’m gonna start working into my lexicon more frequently. Along with piffle, now that I think of it.
Rafa, thanks for spending time with us today. And BTW, anytime you need some extra KALE for your soup, you can have mine.
OH HELL might sum up a lot of the angst I felt last night and this morning.
Like @pablito, I always start in the NW section. OCTET and TURING...that was it. So per my usual Saturday flailings, I just went around trying to find anything that I knew for sure....An ABBACY here, a BRIOCHE there, some CLAPTRAP and my favorite clue for DEBRA Messing.
Like most of you, I hate to cheat. Today, it was more of a checking in with Google to see if my answers were correct. COOLIO was my first. Isn't he a singer? FOVEA RETINA looked right but was it? Is it really GO WHOLE HOG? Did I spell ALOHAOE correctly? Is it truly CHINESE TEAS?....And so it went until the boatload of unknowns took hold and I simply had to seek an answer:
I've never heard of OH HELL. Why wasn't it Hearts? HOR CRUX? and ELI and LING exhausted me. Then I get to the bottom part and I think I stared at that makeup kit item for a century. So the answer is PENCIL? Really?
The middle section was one big blank. Another two cheats for XRAYTECHS and ELIAS HOWE. I was getting antsy; I didn't want the entire puzzle to be one big cheat.
I actually was proud of myself for getting as much done as I did. To my ENDEARING CHAGRIN, I even figured out TOONIE.
The cluing was Saturday hard but Tom Pepper is a pro. He got me good in most places but I was still able to tip toe through a lot of this....
@CDilly: So sorry to learn of your recent hospital stay. I hope you heal rapidly...I always look forward to your posts....
HARRY POTTER IS #1! The author of the series is unfortunately not doing anybody any favors these days. For context, you anti-Potter-ites, a HORCRUX is a magical object a murderer can use to hide a piece of xi's soul and later use to gain immortality. Kinda handy.
My Saturday guilty pleasure is to stop hoping the obscure people and vocabulary will magically somehow appear in my brain and just go look things up along the way and this is how I learned Elias Howe simultaneously invented the sewing machine and the mullet. His portraits are legendary. And how 'bout Alan Turing? Fascinating and tragic figure.
I needed every single cross for CHINESE TEA while writing in BLOCK CHAINS off the KC, so this is why we don't depend on my brain. In Denver over the last two decades we've been busy seeing how many people we can get un-HOUSED while the prices have become cartoonish. Hopefully the rich are getting richer. I teach ukulele, so Aloha Oe was a pleasant gimme.
Uniclues:
1 Monastery that's just sick of it all.
2 Reaction to the boss bringing in the fancy donuts on a Friday.
3 The Enigma codes.
4 Radium.
5 Last night's result after my wife criticized how I walk the dog.
6 Cow requests a bit more time at the trough.
7 Doing all that while holding a Chinese teapot.
1 OH HELL ABBACY
2 "BRIOCHE? COOLIO." (~)
3 TURING CLAPTRAP
4 XRAY TECH'S TNT
5 GOT INTO IT FLAP (~)
6 HANG ON A SEC MOO
7 ACROBAT GIMMICK
Wow, this one was hard. Felt really good when BLOCKCHAINS fell right into place and then TOONIE was a gimme (I'm Canadian). Still don't know why it's not called a TWOnie, since it's the $2 coin, but whatevs.
The song ALOHA OE - I know the song, but had no idea how the last word was spelled. I thought either OI or OY, but left those two spaces blank just in case. Luckily, IONIZER and DEALER made it so I didn't need to revisit the down clue at all.
For those who think they're unfamiliar with the song, look it up on YouTube or something. From the first three or four notes, you're going to go "OOoooooohhhhhhh, THAT song."
@pabloinnh 8:17 AM
Fair warning: I say COOLIO all the time.
Thanks for a nice response to a truly wonderful Saturday grid Rafa. That NW was a bear! Never went past being a muggle, so that HORCRUX really cast a blindness spell on X-RAY TECHS. Didn’t take as long to replace Asimov with TURING thankfully. Just what I needed before donning the snowmobile suit to shovel the driveway again and again and……..
This puzzle was very difficult but not because it was clever or well constructed. Any puzzle will be difficult if the constructor sifts through the dictionary and finds the most archaic words available, then shoe-horns them into the grid.
Games, words, people I've never heard of:
OHHELL
ELIASHOWE
FOVEA
WEN
ALOHAOE
TOONIE
And I'm still trying to figure out how TYING relates to evening.
This comment was from yours truly @puzzlehoarder. I have a new phone so I'll have to reestablish my blue name.
Medium, made up of 3/4 slow-but-steady and 1/4 stare-at-white-space. First in: ABBACY x ARAL and an enjoyable stepdown through BRIOCHE and CLAPTRAP to DUNKTANK, where things got stickier, but no less rewarding. Talk about a grid chock-a-block with winners! First prize from me: GO WHOLE HOG. My last frontier was the NW, where I had only ELI and LOGO, with the U from DUNK my only hint to the Harry Potter reference. Thankfully I finally got the crucial X of X-RAY TECHS, which gave me HORCRUX and the key to finishing.
Do-overs: euchre before OH HELL, SHORt before SHORN, lOONIE before TOONIE.
No idea: LING, TERI, OH HELL. Happy for: mutual reinforcement of FOVEA and RETiNA. Happy for being old, I guess: ALOHA OE.
Some guys are leg men, but I lOVEA FOVEA. See my memo about Ike’s wife. It’s titled INRETINA.
@Nancy. I liked your poem last night, and commented on it. Today I like your sUNKTANK. I guess it’s a description of the tank after everyone has been dunked and they’re just lying on the bottom.
In the recent Superbowl, some liked the Eagles, some liked the Chiefs. I was yelling “GOADS!” Of course, if you’re more of a Razorback fan, you’d be yelling “GOWHOLEHOGs”. Or you might just Huck a Bee.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on my anti-tinnitus campaign. It’s called ENDEARING.
Somehow, this was easier and faster for me than yesterday’s puzzle. But a really enjoyable Saturday. Thanks, Tom Pepper.
I believe Elias Howe is in every American history textbook in HS, or maybe it’s in Middle School. Inventor of the modern sewing machine? Doesn’t actually help with solving the anagram, but supplies a nice aha moment when you do.
Brutal, excellent, devilish. I had a couple of full cheats and a couple of confirmations, so a technical DNF for me. ALOHAOE I think was fiendishly but fairly crossed, because most of us do know ALOHA, I would say. Like @Conrad, I had recognition but not recall memory of the song itself, but would have never guessed how to spell it. The most overwrites and WOEs I’ve had in a long time, but I’m not mad at it. I love learning new trivia through puzzles such as these.
Alas, now that I’m done, more snow shoveling. At least it’s powder!
HORCRUX/OHHELL? ABBACY?
And yesterday (I didn’t get to yesterday’s comments) POOH is not really a Disney character. It is a character owned by Disney.
@Photomatte – think TYING the score of a game
This puzzle had so many fun, unusual answers and clues. We had to pay for it with a couple of Naticks and some iffy answers, but it was well worth it for so much vibrancy and originality.
Had me going there! DEER TICKS? CRAB TICKS? (hope not). Lovely challenge!
@Nancy 9:14 AM
Honestly Nancy, I've got to stop you here. And to all of you Boomers in those photos from the 70's showing you going naked at muddy music festivals:
There comes a time when a bear wants a little style to set him apart from the humdrum work-a-day fashion choices of all the other critters scattered around those hundred acres, when keeping up appearances with the smartly attired Christopher Robin becomes a meaningful and TikTokable goal, when one desires a little extra tweed comfort from the inhospitable weather of not-Aruba, and, perhaps most importantly, when one finally matures to the point of getting beyond the classic Me-Generation opinion of "God made this hunk-o-love and God don't make no junk ... here let me show you mine."
I want my bears to grow into their jackets, to find top hats, and monocles, and canes,and pocket watches, and pants or no pants, the bears I like have candies in their pockets to give to children and worry the parents.
Doing these puzzles with so much baudy tween-erisms can confuse the pro-nudity crowd, but there's nobody outside of a magazine run by an airbrush department who looks better nude. Put a jacket on. Society will esteem you. You might even get a contract with Disney.
I’m splitting hairs here, but BRIOCHE would be a Boulangerie offering, not a Patisserie offering…
OHHELL this was hard. Had to cheat. EVENING was a great misdirect. Read all the HP books, could not remember how to spell HORCRUX. I finished this right after I did Sunday’s (I get the hard copy early) so maybe too much. Sunday’s was easy, this was a bear and not enjoyable
ACROSTIC NEWS
Apparently the Acrostic, as well as the puzzles that alternate weeks with the acrostic, are available at xwordinfo.com. It requires an annual subscription, which is $10 per year for Seniors or Students.
This comes with big But. Cox and Rathvon are retiring. I don't know what that will mean for the Acrostic going forward. It would be a pity to pay your money only to find that two weeks from now, there is no Acrostic. OTOH, supporting xwordinfo is (in my judgement) a good thing.
Thanks to @egs, @Teedmn, and I think (AMIRITE?) @puzzlehoarder for your nice comments.
I see my sunk/DUNK mistake now. Pure carelessness. But I don't know what a DUNK TANK has to do with fund-raising any more than I know what a SUNK TANK has to do with fund-raising. I mean do they hold you down underwater until you cry "Uncle" and give them money?
FYI: Talk about your really boneheaded algorithms: The Wordplay Blog nixed my first comment because it reproduced 1A's words OH HELL. I retyped the comment to read "OH H---" and it sailed right through. I'm sure glad we have real human moderators here!
Could someone enlighten me as to why ELI is a "name in 'fuel injection'"?
Decent one. Favorite long down was WHATSDOWNER.
@Kitshef
Thanks for the Acrostic heads-up.
@Shirley
fu EL Injection.
Spelling Bee non-spoiler alert. My sister (Nancy Rubin), after a 30+ year career as a teacher, took up a new career - photography. Today the NYT Spelling Bee used one of her photos. I'm a proud big brother!
We learned ELIASHOWE in history class as the inventor of the sewing machine. He's probably not taught any more. How about Eli Whitney?
I had CHIN?????AS. Could it be CHINCHILLAS? I looked them up. They come in many colors. I filled it in.
I had enough of the grid filled in so that I was able to correctly guess some of the words I didn't know. FOVEA (crosswordese, someone said?) ABBACY. TERI. IONIZER. HORCRUX. LING. BLOCKCHAINS. EROS.
It took a long time, and I got some significant help from my wife, but I enjoyed it a lot. Lots of sparkle. Smart cluing. Some clever wordplay.
Do Canadians carry TOONIEs and loonies around with them? I don't carry coins any more.
Teri Garr and Teri Polo have been well-represented in the nytxw for years. I think it was nice to see a fresh take, even if it wasn’t in my wheelhouse.
Amen!!! Horcrux/Teri is just wrong
Son Volt @7.43, thanks so much for the Zappa/Beefheart clip - great song from a great album!
@Gart Jugert-This is the thanks I get for Bob and Ray? The next time you walk through my yard, go around.
@Nancy – I liked your bare bear poem yesterday.
Today's puzzle inspired me to write a little verse:
There was a giraffe named Rosanna
Who had a pet terrier named Toto
They lived on a grassy savanna
In Africa somewhere— I don't know.
This was the most difficult Saturday puzz in a long time, and I really liked it. As it was for most everyone else, the NW was the last section to fall. Hated the anagram clue – can we please dispense with those for the weekends, at least?
@Kitshef – the link at XWord Info to solve the daily puzzle goes to the NYT Games site, so I assumed the Acrostic link did too. If the Acrostic is no longer available on the NYT site it's unlikely that it would still be available via XWord Info. Where did you see that Cox & Rathvon are retiring?
66-worder and 4 Jaws of Themelessness. This SatPuz meant business.
Entry-level stuff [i.e., where M&A was able to enter some stuff into the puzgrid]:
The friendly NW-of-ELIASHOWE area: ARAL. ABB-somethin. DEBRA. TNT. ANT. RAIN. BOTHER. YEP.
Some definite attention-getters:
GIMMICK. HORCRUX & BLOCKCHAINS [No-knows of fiction, in different ways]. ESC clue. XRAYTECHS & clue. ELIASHOWE anagram clue [C'mon -- Don't U luv it, when they use the A-Word?]. GOWHOLEHOG. CLAPTRAP.
staff weeject pick: WEN. Wasn't familiar with this puzblemish. honrable mention to YEP & MOO, of course.
This here solvequest put up a heckuva big fight, at our house. And yet it only had two ?-marker clues to mess with yer head, along the way. How'd it do that?
M&A theories on that:
1. Puzzlin clues. Coupla examples: {It's northwest of 1} = ESC. {Apt anagram of "I sew a hole"} = ELIASHOWE.
2. Vague clues. Coupla examples: {Stir} = FLAP. {Patisserie offering} = BRIOCHE. {Cut off} = SHORN. {US government product made at twice the cost of what its worth} = CENT. That last one had sooo many day-um possibilities...
3. Harry Potter stuff. [I attended all them flicks, but always fell asleep early]. Getting drowsy now, just relivin it.
4. Names of mystery, such as: ELI. LING. TERI. Soup ribolilita. EROS. TOONIE. Knew SWIT & DEBRA, at least.
5. Lotsa longball entries, incessantly crossin each other, like a huge herd of berserk whales.
6. Not enough 3-letter weejects to get firm footholds at. Only 12 of the sweet lil helpers, today.
Thanx for the challenge and congratz on yer POW award, Mr. Pepper dude. It was like a well-made wordplay dunktank.
Masked & AnonymoUUs
@Joe D
The Acrostic is available at xwordinfo. It appears in the first line in the big yellow box titled "Variety puzzle tips."
You have to subscribe ($!0).
This gets my vote for best puzzle of the year so far! It's tough but fair, and entertaining too, in spite of the TV names I did not know, which were mercifully short. I struggled in the NW corner until the light dawned and OHHELL/OCTET fell into place. I somehow missed the COOLIO generation, but that has become crosswordese by now. AGAZE was the weakest entry, but pretty much everything else was terrific IMO. CLAPTRAP! DUNKTANKS! BLOCKCHAINS! GIMMICK! So many ENDEARING entries.
fu-EL I-njection
Actually found this pleasantly challenging, except for that horrid northwest. OH HELL, COOLIO, and TERI crossing HORCRUX and LING... I knew none of those things! The rest of the puzzle was just fine; didn't know ELIAS HOWE or DEBRA but got the crosses.
I'm embarrassed that I fist put in LOONIE instead of TOONIE, mainly because I haven't so much as touched one of them since Covid started. And as anonymous pointed out, thanks to Spelling Bee for ABBACY! Speaking of,..
[SB: yd 0 but it was tough. My last word this 7er, which several times I tried to wanted to remember as this which has no C.]
Hated it. Also, too many horrid words (pointed out by others), and I have always known the expression to be “ go THE full hog”, as you go THE full nine yards.
Never heard of OH HELL (seriously?) or Lisa LING, and I thought COOLIO was only the name of a rapper, so I hated that corner. Also thumbs down on TOONIE; I would have happily accepted LOONIE. Not wild about ABBACY.
Another chip away, chip away Saturday solve. Finding toe holds were challenging but I was able to push through almost all of it. OH HELL and HORCRUX fell eventually with crosses even though I have no idea who ELI is. Wasn’t familiar with either FOVEA or ALOHA OE (at least by name, we all know the tune) but the BFF and other crosses let me see ALOHA and that fell too.
My biggest challenges were SMOG, which I finally got with GOADS, and ABBACY which is a TIL word. So a technical DNF since I had to look that one up.
I always thought the Canadian two-dollar coin should be called the "moonie", because it has the Queen on one side with a bear behind. Groan...
COOLIO - one of those words that doesn’t appear in nature. Shows up only in XWD puzzles.
ABBACY - is this a thing?
We of the baby boom generation need puzzles that don’t cite JKR or the rap culture.
Grumble, grumble.
If a puzzle needs stuff like COOLIO and TOONIE to complete the grid, it isn't well constructed. Sorry to be on the negative side, but this one had too much junk.
@JC66 – yes I know there's a link. So then Jeff Chen and Jim Horne reproduce the whole thing for their own site? (I don't do the Acrostic online anyway, I'm just curious how they set it up.)
No new comment, just trying to get my commentary name running again.
@Joe D
Yep, just like AcrossLite.
Saturdays should be hard, but they should not be obscurantist. The fill-in commentator of today -- sucking up to the powers-that-be in the Sword world? -- put a brave face on it, but he can't disguise the fact that this was a ridiculously hard puzzle.
Ridiculous puzzle; absolutely terrible, tone-deaf write-up by "Rafa."
Your final was my second to last. What's ironic about that is there's a good sized one in front of my house. Nothing fishy about it.
A lot to like overall, and my only difficulties were stuff I didn't know, which is fine.
Never heard of TOONIE, but the L changed to a T with the cross. Does anyone say COOLIO? Did they ever?
A few that I just had no idea: OHHELL, WEN, FOVEA. HORCRUX??? Not a Harry Potter person, so I had SORCERY and between that, OHHELL, LING and TERI it really mucked up the NW for me.
I wasn't sure who ELIASHOWE is but I knew the name so was able to put it together with a couple of crosses and the anagram clue.
Classic coll. degree clue which is always a bit of an eyeroll, is it MAS, MSS, BAS, BSS?.. I usually start with xA because of the vowel, this time I guessed right. Is that a KEALOA? Was happy to know ALHOAOE which helped out there.
@Nancy, yes that was me, I'm still working on the name issue.
Not sure why some consider FOVEA as half a Natick. It is an actual thing - not a made up word like HORCRUX which has 3 or arguably 4 Naticks and is non-existent made up word. Struggled to find the X of XRAYTECHS because 27D Evening = TYING absolutely destroyed me. Brutal, but fair. Same for 17A It's Northwest of 1 = ESC. All I could come up with is a clockface thinking the 12 (XII) was Northwest of the 1, but couldn't find the 1 on my keyboard for the life of me.
1.
1.
1.
1.
1.
@Joe D
I just started, and it's much better than AcrossLite.
Like many, the NW corner was the last to fall . . . I really wanted "eight" and "euchre" in there. To the point that I tried to tell myself "maybe it's really spelled "euhcre" . . . what? Once I gave up on that and filled in the computing paper with who I had thought it should be all along, the corner came together. Will have to try playing Oh Hell sometime. Fun solve!
Thx, Tom, for an outstanding, challenging Sat. puz! :)
Hi Rafa; good to see you again! :)
Very hard (and, not only bc of the dastardly NW corner); over 2x my Sat. avg.
Whew! & Phew! I'm pretty STOKEd that I managed to get this one right! :)
I had tried COOLIO, but scrubbed it due to thinking 4D was either ram or stp.
Loved working out the ELIAS HOWE anagram.
I'm a TOONIEs delivery person tipper.
Unknowns/hazies/learnings: OH HELL; ELI; HORCRUX; LING; 'Versace' EROS; BRIOCHE; Piffle/CLAPTRAP; 'Jack Bauer'/24/TERI; HIC; FOVEA; WEN.
All in all, a wonderful workout! :)
@kitshef (11:37 AM)
Thx for the ACROSTIC NEWS info. Yes, supporting xwordinfo.com would be a good idea, in any event! :)
@JC66 (12:23 PM)
Thx for the ELI explanation. I usually catch those 'name in' cryptic clues, but absolutely missed this one (even after the fact). My excuse is that I was exhausted by that NW corner, and once it finally came together, my fuel was spent, and I just beat a hasty retreat! :(
@mathgent (12:24 PM)
Yes, I for one, do carry a few TOONIEs & lOONIEs in my coin pouch.
___
On to Matt Sewell's Sat. Stumper. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
This was super-tough but I enjoyed it immensely. The longs were fresh and the fill, mostly, was gettable. Like many here, I had to consult on a few with Dr. Google (he’s so smart!). Weren’t there a lot of G’s in this one, or is it me? Great challenge! Bravo TP!
I made a couple of vulgar gestures at that northwest opening section. I did appreciate that OH HELL summed up my feelings there. Don't know LING or TERI and HOROCRUX is definitely unCOOLIO. I thought 1D "Four + four" might be some kind of all terrain vehicle. OCTET just sounded off key, too Mondayish easy for that. Without TURING I probably would not have ESCaped that corner.
I'm surprised, nay, shocked that so many of yous out there in Commentaristan didn't know FOVEA or thought it as being crosswordese. If you are reading this, you can thank your FOVEA. It is a tiny area of visual receptors---cones--- in the RETINA that are so densely packed that there isn't even room for blood vessels. It gives us the highest acuity vision, the ability to distinguish the smallest of details, like seeing tiny letters on the screen of an electronic communication device.
The plural of convenience (POC) sightings have been scanty here of late but make a resurgence today. There are several long entries that needed some help filling their slots and also a couple of the uber-helpful two for one POCs, where a Down and an Across both get a letter count, grid fill boost from a single S. (See the lower, rightmost square, where a two fer is most likely to appear.) Here are some entries that needed boosting: DUNK TANK, X RAY TECH, BLOCK CHAIN, CHINESE TEA, MAN CAVE, GOAD & STOKE. Oh, and BA.
"Contract Whist"??? Seriously??? This is as bad as if you did a UK crossword puzzle where the answer was "Texas hold 'em".
FOVEA is absolutely ludicrous. I’m still angry.
@Joe DiPinto – I can verify from personal experience that the March 12 acrostic (tomorrow’s) is available on Xword info.
Someone on the NYT site mentioned the upcoming retirement of Cox and Rathvon. I don’t have independent confirmation.
@Stan Combs - perhaps the two-dollar coin should be a POOHNIE, given the pantsless bear.
I do, too! 😎
✋for "phew!"
Je suis d'accord!
OH HELL. WHAT A DOWNER.
Great to have a really tough puzzle.
Every summer my hometown put on a little carnival which included a DUNKTANK. You paid a dollar or so to try to dunk a local “celebrity,” maybe the mayor, police chief, etc. In a big tub of water. The revenue was donated to some organization involved in charitable work. It was fun.
Very tough puzzle for me but this is a Saturday. I was able to solve it but double yesterday's time. The area you are complaining about is brutal when, like me and many others you haven't read or seen the source material. However there are still ways to get the answers. I don't think it's "wrong". If you do get all the other letters, it has to be an r.
Fair for Saturday in my opinion
[in living color hated it gif]
fuELlnjection.
Wow! I can't believe I finished a NYT Saturday puzzle on the same day I started it...and within hours even.
My pattern for doing Fri. & Sat
themeless puzzles is to read through all the clues, and yellow highlight the ones I absolutely know the answer to. Then I fill those in...and I'm off and running (or more likely stumbling).
This puzzle did sidetrack me a few times. I hung in with HANG.ONE.SEC for awhile, and tried both XRAYTESTS & XRAYEXAMS before crosses fell into place. And in the spirit of Full Disclosure: I did use my favorite reference book, The 21st CenturyCrossword Puzzle Dictionary (which I pray someday gets Updated), and consulted the Crossword Angel who resides online at Crossword Heaven.com regarding clues I was completely clueless about, like HORCRUX and FOVEA.
I agree with the majority that this was a well designed puzzle, and satisfying Saturday solve.
SPOILER ALERT!...
For all of you surprisingly Unfamiliar with the series '24', clueless about who Teri Bauer was:
The first season began with Homeland Security Agent Jack Bauer's daughter kidnapped, to force him to assassinate a Presidential candidate.
Later on Jack's wife Teri is also grabbed by the bad guys.
After numerous plot twists & turns, Jack defeats the mastermind behind the assassination scheme (played by Dennis Hopper), and saves the day. But during the last few nail-biting minutes, after everything Jack has gone through, Teri is unceremoniously murdered...an ending which left a Bad Taste in many viewer's mouths...but was an early declaration from the producers & writers that on '24', no one was safe...which proved to be true throughout the series.
Thursday level obscurity for some of these clues/answers. Wen? Toonie? WTF is a horcrux? Perhaps a key point a street worker is trying to make?
How Dunk Tanks are used as fund raisers:
They can usually be rented from companies that supply items like Bouncy Houses.
Someone prominent in the community (like a politician or teacher) sits on a ledge in the tank, goading onlookers & passersbys into paying money for the opportunity to throw a ball at a target...which if successfully hit, collapses the ledge, causing the goad-ee to fall into water below.
Terrible. Worst for me in years, since I didn't know Blockchain, and had blockshares, which worked with xraytests (instead of techs) Didn't know "wen" had "loonie", was pleased to have gotten most of the stuff I never heard of, Elias Howe, Fovea, hated the clue for "cent," but even had I gotten "blockchain," which would have given me "got into it," and the entire right side, even if I had...... "Coolio with Ling" is just an unacceptable Natick. It can be Ling, Long, Lang. Cooloo? How the heck could I know? That's what makes this one so awful. Even had I waded through all the junk, Harry Potter, "24", Versace "eros," I STILL had no way to guess 14 across. Can't remember the last time I had more than a square or two wrong.......
both eli AND elias howe? lazy
Horcrux, Teri, fovea, wen, this is the first NYT puzzle I just could not finish. Hated it
Too hard to be fun for this solver. In the end I needed to reveal on FOVEA and ALOHAEO like many other solvers but that corner was made harder by my biggest wtf moment: FLIP clued as "Stir". What am I missing here? I guess notionally they're both things you do with food. But you don't stir an omelet or flip a soup. Genuinely asking for an explanation to this clue?
EROS' GIMMICK
ONACID, "OH,HELL!", DEBRA cried,
"WHATADOWNER IT's been,
ELI GOTINTOIT, or tried.",
with ENDEARING CHAGRIN.
--- SAVANNA STOKES
Medium-hard? No. Make that really fucking hard. DNF because of one square. The C in ESC and HORCRUX.
Made it, despite total unknown HORCRUX. 100% crosses and a prayer. Also momentarily tripped (but not ONACID) up by Coin before CEWNT. That SE was a bear, and the last to fall. Me and my anatomy: FOVEA is one that slipped by me; who knew it was part of the RETINA?
All good though, luckily the crosses were fair enough. Saturday-tough for sure, with scads of triumph points. Birdie.
Wordle eagle!
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