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Metaphor for one's personal perspective / SAT 4-8-23 / 2019 chart-topper for Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello / Source of masago in Japanese cuisine / Consumer of cod but not cow / Game that's hard to follow / Rock band named after its founding guitarist
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Constructor: Sid Sivakumar
Relative difficulty: Challenging
Word of the Day: Masago (6A: Source of masago, in Japanese cuisine => SMELT) —
Masago is the roe of capelin, a fish in the smelt family. It’s a popular ingredient in Japanese cuisine because of its distinct look and taste. Masago eggs are very small, and often used as a topping in a variety of sushi recipes. (izzycooking.com)
• • •
I had a bunch of half answers today. Had SOLAR but thought SOLAR YEAR (30A: Astronomer's calculation). Is that a thing? Had BEAMS at 6D: Supporting elements in a story?) and kept imagining an attic, not a highrise, and so STEEL never occurred to me. Had ONE long before I finally figured out the TO WATCH part (40A: A promising talent). Eventually had STEP but the only phrases knocking around my brain were "walk in (lock) step" or "march in time" so that one was elusive as well. The SE threatened to be a total washout. Thank god for SWOLE (he said, for the first time in his life) (38D: Ripped, in slang). That, and TESSA, and then ALPHAS, helped me corral an otherwise brutal corner. No idea about the 2019 "chart-topper," LOL, shrug. #1 songs just don't have the cultural reach they used to. (Also, despite being a huge fan of all kinds of contemporary music, the "charts"? Not interested). No way of getting to PILFERS from 46A: Lifts (even with the PIL- in place, no idea; I wanted PILLARS). Big leap from [Followers] to SHEEP, I think, but the puzzle does not think so. Lots of people "follow" this blog; I have a hard time seeing them as particularly ovine.
Explainers:
- COAL MINER (22A: One picking out something for a cart, maybe) — miners use "picks" to get ... ore? ... and put it in their ore carts; I think that's the idea.
- TENORS (13A: General senses) — this would've been far easier to get in the singular.
- TSA (26A: They have bags under their eyes) — one of the better trick clues.
- PILFERS (46A: Lifts) — "Lifts" as in "steals."
- AVONLEA (2D: "Anne of Green Gables" setting) — never read it, but this answer was one of the few gimmes (thank you, crosswords!).
- LOSINGS (9D: Money that goes to a casino)— from the gambler's perspective ... OK, sure.
- POND SCUM (28D: Dirty film) — definitely had "PORN" sitting in the first position here for a bit.
Have a nice rest of your day.
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131 comments:
My heart sank when I read the byline -- Sid's puzzles are brilliant but so far from my wheelhouse they're in steerage. I totally blanked in the NW. I got SULU at 5D and SEVEN UP at 11A and that was it. For the Grammy-winning brothers at 21A, none of the brother acts I could think of fit: Everly, Righteous ... I even thought of the Coen brothers, since movie soundtracks sometimes win Grammies. I had similar problems as @Rex with PiSCaTARIAN, a word I knew but didn't know how to spell.
As a result, I worked the puzzle clockwise starting in the NE. For me it was what kind of MINER at 22A, what kind of BONGS at 25A (hampered by the incorrect "a" in the second position) and what kind of SCENES at 27A.
In the SE I had sEA green for way too long before PEA at 32A, which made PIETIES hard to see. My "Rigidly conform" at 19D was wAtCHINg... something, which made for a lot of trouble in the South.
Challenging indeed.
Really not a fan of this one, I thought the leap from the clue to the answer was way too much of a stretch several times and needed editing to be tighter and fairer.
Practically identical to Rex, all driven by the A instead of second E, and then some pretty big leaps in answers as clued.
Thank you for the write up, Rex! It is extremely helpful to see how a pro processes the puzzle. As a novice solver, this puzzle was a huge stretch for me. I had to rework the East side several times for the same mistakes noted by others. I wonder how many solvers were wondering “BAER what? At a tailgate? Everything else looks right!” This puzzle totally broke me, but now I’m sad that it is over. This puzzle was not the work of a SADIST, but a maestro. I’m looking forward to solving more of Sid’s puzzles.
Woof this one was brutal. Could barely get it started.
Oh. Well. Here it is. A pool of loveliness. Gorgeous looking grid, sweet answers, and clues radiating with wit.
I came into the puzzle smiling, because that’s how I leave Sid’s puzzles, and because his picture in XwordInfo.com makes me happy. Worth a look.
There’s the technical excellence – the grid at a scant 60 words cleanly filled. Try that sometime. The grid peppered with eight NYT debuts, that is, answers appearing for the first time in more than 80 years, including DON’T RUSH ME and MARCH IN STEP.
The highlight of the puzzle, IMO, is Sid’s cluing – brilliant and humorous, wit and wink. I marked ten clues that dazzled me, when I’m usually thrilled with five. Shrewd clues like [Number in brackets], and leave-me-cheering clues like [They have bags under their eyes, for short].
Sid, your grids are never “just another puzzle”. They are events. You are a master constructor and entertainer, and I’ll be smiling again as I come to your next. I’m so grateful that your path led you to crosswords, and thank you for this terrific outing.
I can’t remember the last time I had to cheat twice (to get SENORITA and to NOT get SMELT because my source said eggs but not the kind of fish) and still give up. Abject failure does not feel good, but I’m not sure whether to
blame the puzzle or myself. Some of both.
Yes, the left side was fairly easy, and the right side was brutal. In the SE, I had the exact same answers as Rex (SWOLE, TESSA and ALPHAS). Couldn’t get past that without looking up the song title. That did help me finish the section. (I recently read that ALPHA wolves are a myth - they do not exist in packs in the wild.)
The NE was beyond me. Hand up for PESCaTARIANS, but I did fix that when I finally got SHOES and saw the hidden BEER. But to the right of MARCH IN STEP and above ART SCENE, I had only STIR and EATS IT. I finally gave up and came here to steal a couple of answers and “finish.”
Sid Sivakumar: You, sir, are a SADIST.
Tough for sure, but a truly great puzzle. LOVED the distances from the clues to some of the answers, all of which made perfect sense when found. I do a lot of late week puzzles in the archives and they are definitely tougher than most puzzles now. This was a true puzzle, so much fun in figuring it out. (Though I too got hung up by the e in pescetarian… that part was a little rough, but came out in the end.)
Saturdays can obviously be brutally tough on their own, and are much more enjoyable without the “stretch” clues like the ones for COAL MINER and BEER BONGS - of course some peeps may stop by a sporting event or a NASCAR race on their way to spring break, but that duo stacked right on top of each other is really lame to the point of dragging a promising grid back down to standard NYT territory. I would add “Sorry start?” for MEA as another example in that same category - you need an engaged editor who will tell those types of clues to “Please, just go away.”
I much prefer it when they challenge us with a clue that relates to the actual answer - see the way they handled PIETIES for example.
Yes on misspelling the word for a fish eater. Also yes for that being a major slow down. I thought this was going nowhere and then some things led to others, thank God for CNNDYBARS andCANADIANS. Also for TRIKES, which I missed during my first scan, and SWOLE.
The SE could have been a wasteland too except for TESSA, who is my granddaughter and turns 11 tomorrow, on Easter. This will be a big celebration with both sons and families, because coincidentally, and secondarily, it's my birthday too yeah (cue Beatles) . I had one other Easter birthday when I turned 3, which was, uh, quite a while ago.
Thought this was a great Saturday, since I finished it with no cheats. Lot of Croce-like misdirection and mini-aha!s when I finally caught on. A cool Sideways Saturday, SS, and thanks for all the fun.
I agree with @Conrad about the wheelhouse/steerage positioning, but not that this guy's puzzles are brilliant. I think he's a show-off who twists and finagles his answers to make the puzzle harder. Doesn't make it more fun for the solver, makes it less, in fact. Who needs the hassle? When I see his name on a puzzle, I just skip it. As I did today.
Another hand up for PESCATARIAN and being SO certain of the spelling that it took me forever to relent. I can both admit that there’s an alternate spelling, per Google, and insist that in my almost 25 years of vegetarianism I have never knowingly encountered that spelling. Dastardly choice, Sid.
This was medium-for-a-Saturday for me, but I think it’s a wheelhouse and style preference thing. I say that only because even though I had a lot of slogging, and a lot of working my way through the alphabet to figure out letters, I also had a few glorious whooshy moments where a section finally fell after much pecking away at it. And while I agree with folks that some of the answers were a bit of a leap, my ADHD-y brain appreciates a tangential reference, so I feel a bit more forgiving than Rex and the early bird commentariat this morning.
As a former faculty spouse whose very deserving and well-regarded ex FINALLY had his position converted to tenure track this year, I loved “Campus protection” for TENURE. APOSTLES was also great, and I really enjoyed learning that trivia tidbit about SEVENUP.
What I liked most about the puzzle is how differently it played than most puzzles for me. I found myself thinking, “huh, this is weird, I like it,” quite a bit. The cluing felt like it stuck to the letter of the law but not the spirit, and today that really worked for me.
I detected the aroma of the fish refinery.
I SMELT the SMELT SMELTer.
When you fill in BonJovi instead of SANTANA, barbecues instead of BEERBONGS, and ART school instead of SCENE, it sure makes finishing the puzz more difficult.
STEEL is not an element. And the nation of Canada host the Olympics, not individual CANADIANS. Really disliked this puzzle.
So you didn’t solve the puzzle but thought you’d talk some dumb shit anyway? Lucky us.
Can some please explain 7D Sorry start? Just not grokking how we get Mea
Not sure if Rex is joking when he says "I see now that PESCETARIAN is supposed to be a variation on VEGETARIAN," but it seems more likely it comes from PESCE being Italian for fish.
Anon@8:25. You are picking invisible nits. Comma usage is an element of writing style. Hail, wind, sleet, etc. are considered elements. None of these appear in Mendeleev's table.
MEA CULPA
Very hard. Took me almost three minutes to finally find something I could put in the grid – CANDY BARS – and almost a minute to fill in my last square (ENTRY - DON’T RUSH ME cross). Having DON’T pUSH ME made that hard to see. Putting it another way, this was about as hard as an easy-medium Tim Croce puzzle.
With DONT pUSH ME and PESCaTARIANS, I had two 10+ letter kealoas.
Had a lot of half answers along the way. ____MINER, ____BEAMS, SOLAR____, ART _____, and I guess ____ IT, but that hardly counts.
Great clue for SEED threw me completely. If only there had been some tournament with brackets and seeds recently, that might have clued me in.
This was a tale of two different solves. A very difficult Saturday that converted to a fun Friday on a dime. The initial resistance was courtesy of the brilliant cluing. I went through almost all the clues in the top half and all I came away with was STIR and no hope of supporting it.
Then I got to PLEA. That gave me PONDSCUM (PORNTAPE didn't work) which was the break I'd been looking for. With a little work I filled in the SW and from that point on all difficulty evaporated. Whereas before it felt like I could do no right. After the SW I could do no wrong.
I had the same A/E spelling issue with PESCETARIAN as a number of people but I just left it and kept on solving and the correction became obvious.
Once I got the puzzle started it was just a fun Friday romp but an entertaining one. This thing had SANTANA and the ISLEYs. When I finished I listened to "Samba Pa Ti" and "Who's That Lady" just because.
yd pg -1
@Carola, I made my comment yesterday before I had looked at the Friday SB. No intention for a spoiler it was just a weird coincidence. BTW congrats on that Supreme Court election.
I hated this puzzle from "dazes" to "tessa" cluing was awful and "coalminer? Really. Gah
Amy: agree that many of the clues were working overtime to be cutesy. And thanks for distinguishing us from sheep, Rex. Blind followers would be more descriptive.
Nice - super low word count puzzle. Yea - his cluing always tends towards the smarmy side - stretches the misdirects more than most constructors - but I liked this one. Same misspelling of PESCETARIAN as Rex - but easily fixed with BEER. The BONGS part doesn’t work for me.
Learned something new with SEVEN UP. Like ELECTRA x SENORITA. Got Anne of AVONLEA thanks to my sister’ books that were always lying around. POND SCUM is unique and the TSA clue is solid.
Enjoyable Saturday solve. Add Matt Sewell’s Stumper and we get a two-fer that’s fantastic.
WHARF Rat
Wow, this was hard. I’m not as up on individual constructors as many of you but when I saw Sid’s name, a tiny voice in my head whispered, “Uh-oh.” Unusually, I completed the NW corner first, thanks to SADIST(!), AVONLEA, ENTRY, SULU, then SEVEN UP, DON’T RUSH it (got ME later), ISLEY and TSA. The solve today was really a tale of four quadrants, as I then finished the SE, followed by the SW, until my final and most difficult struggle with the NE. Yeah, PESCETARIAN – I thought it had an A in the middle, too, but I was sufficiently shaky about the spelling that I was readier than some to change it to E. But that was far from my only problem in that area. I couldn’t fathom SHOES from the SH, I knew it was something IN STEP but what?, and couldn’t see MONTE (I really wanted “cricket” – too many letters – for a game that’s hard to follow). Before I was through I hit Reveal Word for both BEER BONGS and ART SCENES, of all things. I had ART but just couldn’t come up with that second word – galleries, museums, works, pieces? I liked the puzzle, though. I liked the difficulty, a Saturday that really felt like a Saturday, tough, unyielding, made you work for every square. That’s what Saturdays are for.
UNICLUES:
1. Nets, batters, fries and eats ‘em.
2. Boy band in the local soda shop.
3. “Cool it – I’m revising this article as fast as I can!”
4. Dull, generic paintings in airports.
5. The determination to be polite?
6. Ovines with terrible teeth.
7. JLo on her way to Mars in 2040.
1. DAZES SMELT
2. SEVEN-UP TENORS
3. “DON’T RUSH ME, WIKI!”
4. TSA ART SCENES
5. CANADIANS’ WILL
6. CANDY-BARS SHEEP
7. SPACEX SEÑORITA
[SB: -2. Missed two long ones.]
For me, got lucky with some guesses but ran into trouble similar to everyone else. I liked the puzzle even though I never got any speed going. It was all fits and starts.
Well, after finding yesterday's puzzle easy, I got my comeuppance today. Yikes. Three times as long to finish. And wasn't sure I was going to.
Had kayos instead of DAZES for a long time - so, despite having SEVENUP, had a lot of trouble with the NW. Even though had just seen Santana in the director's cut of "Woodstock" a week or two ago, took several crosses before I figured that one out.
Had TRIKES in early, but then doubted it and pulled it out. Man, was I glad to hear the music on this one - and I don't mean Santana or the Isley Brothers, good as they are. Tough but fair.
The one I didn’t know, even after solving the puzzle was “tares” at 31 down. Now I do.
I'm a SHEEP for what Rex said today. Only had ISLEY (50%sure), SANTANA (90%) and SWOLE on first pass. I thought ripped was slang, as is swole, but it may have been just enough help to steer me away from the torn sense of the word. Somehow, was able to just keep hacking away in fits and starts and made it over hill and dale to the finish.
The clueing was very clever and sat in that sweet spot where they don't use the most usual sense of a word, but ultimately are satisfying (see SHEEP, MONEY, LOSINGS, CANADIANS, ENTWINES, etc.) No idea what "conventional respects" was asking for, but in the end, PIETIES checks out.
I thought masago might be SpELT based, leading to the malapop "pEA" for MEA, went down immediately to fill in PEA-green. With Rex's WOtD, I 100% know what masago is, just not the name. MEA was just devilish, but ultimately solid.
Never really hung out at a tailgate party, but seems more like a sit around and drink for hours event than a chug a pint in 4 seconds BEERBONG occasion.
I just heard a podcast about 7UP containing lithium citrate the other day - nice touch that it crossed citrus/ZESTED.
How is Boots DEPOSES?
This was a “Chen cheat” puzzle all the way for me (go to Jeff Chen’s Xwordinfo and cheat one line at a time) but outside of BEERBONGS, thought it was well crafted.
Yes, lots of stretches in clueing, but happy to see an occasional “challenging” from the king of crosswords!
Excellent puzzle with no crosswordese. Some quite deceptive cluing that obscured what turned out to be straightforward answers. It took a while to make a single entry but ended up just beating 30 minutes. Didn't help to have pescAtOrian!.
This puzzle took me out back and beat me mercilessly. I'm at the point where I usually crush a Saturday in about 10 minutes, just fiddling around in the margins for the last few minutes in some cases. This was 20 minutes of death. Had to keep erasing answers, many for the same reasons as Rex and some of you.
That coal miner clue was too precious by half. Sure sure sure, it's clever, but my GOD you have to give us crosses that are solid and gettable.
I felt like every other clue was "A thing you can see... 12 letters!"
Finished, but brutal. Almost identical problems as Rex. PESCaTARIANS and Barbecue killed me for a long time.
I rarely enjoy Sid's puzzle, and this one wasn't an outlier.
Picks & carts in mining? I guess they might be some geriatric Ukrainians forced to pick up a pick and go to their local abandoned coal mine to find something to keep they from freezing to death, but they're the only COALMINERs who would use a pick today. Or a cart - the stuff hacked out of the mountain goes on the conveyer belt. Today, there are no picks, carts, wheel-barrows, no canaries - it's all fully automated, massive grinders pumping out rubble onto the conveyer belt, all controlled by someone sitting in a cabin above ground. The only people going underground are on the maintenance crews. Why use a deke to point to someone in a supermarket or in a warehouse to get to mining, when it's not even close to correct? Why not just say "Loretta's papa" and move on? You're never going to make me happy to get COALMINER, so don't piss me off with a double-fake to get there.
SOLAR TIME is the time that the position of the sun tells you it is, e.g. using a sun-dial. I know that the sun is a star, but my using a sun-dial does not make me an astronomer. There's a technical name for a sun-dial, I forget what it is ...research... gnomon, but that's only a piece of a sun-dial, a sun-dial remains a sun-dial, so my intended comment is not valid and thus not completed here, but you all now know that gnomon is word. If it's a word in SB today, you're welcome, but don't get all up in my face because I don't know if it is.
I would like to believe that no one uses BEERBONGS while at a tailgate party, but I would like to believe that no one uses BEERBONGS anywhere. If you absolutely, positively, need to get an ounce of alcohol into your body within 1.5 seconds, either get help for your dependency issues, or get vodka. The fact that a BEERBONG is nothing but a repurposed enema device should give you some idea to leave it alone.
Hey All !
Tough. Cheated twice, one for un-read me AVONLEA (thinking AVALON, I believe that's a story-based place? somewhere?), second one for SMELT, as not up on my Japanese foods.
After first Across run through, had zero answers. I let out an "Oh, boy, here we go", and ended up with two Downs after that first run through. But built it up until stonewalling with the two aforementioned cheats. Not terrible for me.
Had that incessant ticking clock on the app (which normally doesn't bother me, but after puzs take a while, I notice it more), and was saying to it "DONT RUSH ME!"
So I EATS IT twice, but a good brain workout in the end. HATS off to Sid.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
I'm writing a book called Saturday Mornings with Go-ogle.
This puzzle wasn't written for me.
Uniclues:
1 Singers with funny tummies.
2 Place to learn about relaxing.
3 D batteries for cattle prods.
4 Reason why helm officer is always prepared to make Spock toast.
5 Typhoons' skills.
1 SEVEN-UP TENORS
2 DON'T RUSH ME WIKI
3 SADIST COST
4 SULU BREAD BOXES
5 ENTWINES WHARFS
I take my time on Saturday (DONT RUSH ME!) and cheat shamelessly if necessary but even at that, I found this difficult. As is par for day SEVEN, lots of erasures, ironically starting with ERASES before EATS IT, followed by DONT PUSH for RUSH, TO DO for STIR, LIKE for COST and finally MEAT TONGS before BEER BONGS because the tailgate parties at the games I WATCH are for grownups. The BONGS belong with the CANDY BARS at the kiddie SCENE.
@ Anonymous (8:31) MEA Culpa is a common expression meaning “I’m sorry.”
@Andrew (9:51) DEPOSES = kicks out/boots out.
another reason to stop doing crossword puzzles. I'm with the commenter who finds Sid's puzzles the opposite of brilliant. This seems like a puzzle for professionals only.
When I saw 25A (Some tailgate party accessories), I immediately thought of hypodermic needle or sheet of blotter acid, but neither fit. I mean, WTF does smoking dope have to do specifically with tailgate parties? I haven’t been to one for a few decades, so maybe things have changed.
I know that many commenters already think that NYTXW puzzles contain too much LOTR trivia. Now you gotta know what Treebeard and his buddies drink — ENTWINES!
I think that @Rex missed a good chance for a rant regarding SPACEX and its founder, Space Karen.
I used to have several pieces of neckwear that had little pictures of fruit dessert printed on them. In most conventional respects they were simply PIETIES.
I always love Sid Sivakumar’s cluing, and today was no exception. And Happy Birthday to @Pablo and Tessa!
Wowza, tough! Seeing the constructor's name elicited the happy anticipation of a proper Saturday challenge...which gradually morphed into a "Be careful of what you wish for." Years ago, I learned to love Saturday puzzles for their ambiguous cluing, but this one was almost too much for me. Very happy to finish.
The NW was slow but doable: AVONLEA, SULU and the crossing SEVENUP gave me enough to fill in the quadrant up to PESCaTARIANS, Moving to the NE, I had my one moment of triumph, at STEEL BEAMS with no crosses. Then a mistaken EraSes and nothing else. The midsection yielded PLEA and TARES, the SW some sort of BARS, and the SE only ON IT, SWOLE and a misidentified oedipus. After that, it was a square-by-square fight, with even seeming breakthroughs on longer entries, like MARCH IN STEP, not yielding much in crosses. Crucial mini-breakthroughs were correcting EraSes to EATS IT, desperation guesses at COAL MINER and SOLAR TIME, and finally remembering, "My stars, how can Mars make such wonderful CANDY BARS." D'oh.
Favorite clues: Lifts, General senses, Conventional respects, Campus protection, Metaphor for personal perspective. Do-overs: EraSes, oedipus, some kind of WINdS (for "Coils"), PESCaTARIAN, for before ERE. No idea: SENORITA. Help from previous puzzles: SWOLE.
@puzzlehoarder 8:59 - No, no, I read your comment simply as meaning "This is a word I learned at some point from doing the Spelling Bee," not as a reference to yesterday's puzzle. My comment was directed at an Anonymous who posted the "solution" after you. I'm sorry about that confusion. Thank you for the congratulations! An 11% margin - I was thunderstruck. Man, if we could get ourselves un-gerrymandered....!
As a longtime SHEEP among Rex’s followers, I’m totally 💯 % behind his critique. Sid is never easy, but Yowzer! All the nits that OFL picked today were major stumbling blocks in our house. Only a tag team approach, Tylenol and looking up sushi options allowed a painfully belated finish.
The E in PESCETARIAN got me as well, but the killer for me was the northeast, where I kept wanting to write ERASED instead of EATSIT, and I couldn't see MEA until a few moments after it was filled (my last word, like Rex, apparently).
This was a great puzzle, but I’m glad they’re not all like this. Some really devilish cluing.
I was sorely tempted to give up and look at the answers on this one. My time was almost 70% slower than my Saturday average. I had the bottom half completed before I put the puzzle aside last night, but not much in the top half. When I came back to it this morning I somehow pulled AVONLEA from the dim corner of my mind (I’ve never read or watched the story, so must have been a vaguely recalled xword thing), and that opened up the NW.
The NE was the last to fall. Hands up for the “misspelling” of the seafood eaters. Thankful that second E crossed the first E in BEER BONGS, or I’d probably still be looking for a BEaR tailgate accessory (and yes, a frat party or spring break accessory would be more on the nose, but Saturday isn’t for on the nose clues, and I’ve seen my share of beer bongs at tailgates).
I really wanted some kind of BEAMS for 6D, but I had SOLAR wInd for 30A so couldn’t get it to fit for a long time. Pulling that answer down and starting fresh was the key to finishing.
I resorted to Google once, but it wasn’t as directly helpful as it could have been. I learned masago was the roe of a fish called capelin, but that obviously didn’t fit. I had the S and L, and when I saw the picture of the capelin I thought “that kinda looks like what I think maybe SMELT might look like.”
The other big mistake in that corner for me was EraSes for “wipes out.” But the M in SMELT got me to MEA, and that got me to where I could see the finish line.
Hardest Saturday in a while for me. As a pescatarian, its spelling didn't trip me up. Everything to the east of that? Hoo-boy.
By chance, Santana and the Isley Brothers made an album together a few years ago (Power of Peace).
Well, gee....Yesterday I whizzed through and today I melted. Shall I count the ways?
I will start by saying that I was delighted that OFL had the same missteps as I did. For this I feel brilliant. There's something joyful about sharing failures with someone who know the ropes. So for that...I congratulate myself.
Yeah...I will start with my very first answer: PESCaTARIAN. I'd be one but I love pig. Then I tried sniffing around for something else I knew for sure and maybe not misspell. The upper west was the area that I clicked with Sid. SULU up next followed by DON'T RUSH ME and so on.
The upper east side melted me into a puddle. I love Japanese cuisine but I couldn't remember masago. Was SMELT happy that I prefer a pig to some fish? I cheated on you. I also cheated on TENORS. Am I going to be a cheating woman today? Yes...I am.
Dear BEER BONGS...you really belong elsewhere. Don't go messing with my barbecues. I cheated on you too, and felt no shame.
So the B cheat for BEER gave me a lickety split BREAD BOXES and CANDY BARS. Move on.
Did anyone else think MARCH IN SYNC? No? Just me? Ah yes... SENORITA dancing with me in STEP...We are some eye catching DAMES, aren't we......
En fin....A bear of a puzzle. Some of it felt pleasurable but most of it felt like trying to pull an elephant out of a COAL MINERs HAT.
I don't understand why my personal perspective is SHOES...Did I miss something?
After I changed the A to an E in pescatarian, the rest of the puzzle worked itself out. Challenging but doable.
Who would have thought - I find out from my son that a BEER BONG is actually a funnel - which I can see being used at a tailgate - especially with those crazy Bills fans. Years ago - we would fill a proper BONG with beer occasionally - that’s why the tailgate connection was odd to me.
Happy Birthday @Pablo - I’ll raise a pint later for you and TESSA.
Anybody else starting to suspect that Lewis and SouthsideJohnny are really the same person? They always post about the same time and like the puzzle the same amount.
This took me, like, forever, but I solved it almost cleanly -- only checking to see if TARES was the sort of measure that would be used in a deli and also to find out how the bleep you spell PESCETARIAN.
My entire ability to solve this bear of a puzzle rested to a surprising degree on the spelling of the latter and I spelled it four different ways over the course of my slow and difficult solve:
1) PISCATORIAN (the "I" cleaned up by APOSTLES)
2) PESCATORIAN
3) PESCATARIAN (finally got PLEA! Yay!!!!!)
4) PESCETARIAN (finally got BEER something-or-other)
Every corner of this puzzle was hard. The clue that engendered the most curiosity in me was "Metaphor for one's personal perspective" I had the first and last "S", I had the "H" -- but what on earth...? Aha -- SHOES!!! Finally!!! What a marvelous clue! I love it when a clue provokes such unbearable curiosity.
I didn't really suffer today; I only "suffered". The kind of uber-challenging puzzle I may curse while I'm solving it but that I truly live for.
Yes tough with the top half quite a bit tougher than the bottom. Some wrong guesses: like many others I kept trying to fit some version of BBQ where BEERBONG was supposed to go, cross BEAMS before STEEL, ess before MEA, Erases before EATS IT, AVONLEE before LEA (I finally got the TSA clue)....tough!
Solid but a tad meh. According to Xwordinfo that may be the price you pay for a very low word count. Liked it.
Wow ! The good old days when you could catch a buzz with a Coke and then mellow out with a Seven Up. Would have saved me a ton in my twenties.
With Rex all the way on this one. Saturday tough for sure. Glad to see @ Lewis enjoyed one for a change.
Thanks for that one! Found puzzle difficult. Cheated a lot. Then found myself smiling when I finally figured some of these out.
@GILL -- "You can't understand how I feel unless you've walked in my SHOES."
I struggled with this clue, too, @GILL, as you'll see if my comment ever goes up. I was late posting today, so I'm expecting to see my words in print perhaps by 2025.
A good tough-love Saturday. Liked seeing Electra in there. Maybe it's the news of our day, but could only think of "deposes" as "takes a deposition from" so I finished correctly at the very moment I got the connection (oh, of course) with "boots, so to speak." On the c+e front, what about Celtic (except in Boston)?
Hard puzzle, and felt good to finish even if it took 52 minutes. The clues all seemed fair. Except 32 across -- "__-green" -- why was that hyphenated? I put in "pea" and took it out a dozen times because it's not hyphenated unless it's an adjective. And why would that be an adjective? I would have felt much better about a clue for the color, pea green. And beer bong -- wow, that made me feel old. I remember beer-filled bongs , I know about tailgates, and know about beer funnels -- but good to learn they've all converged. And coal miner - the multiple puns were great-- I just got "picking" (as in using a pick axe). "Eats it" was great, and "plea" for "appeal" was long in coming because I compartmentalized them as a lawyer rather than equating them based on the solicitations in my in box. So many misdirects . . . the breadbox is cleaned out this week for passover, so out of mind.
This puzzle started out so easy in the NW that I was afraid it was going to be one of "those" Saturday puzzles. I was glad when the puzzle finally put up its dukes.
PESC_TARIAN (my chosen mode of eating) was a gimme but I treated that 5th letter as a kealoa and the BEER clinched it. (Actually, I wrote in the A but made a mental note that it might be wrong.)
I had a dirty mind at 28D and the PO led me to POrn but CANDY got me out of that rut.
SENORITA - When I was in Iceland in Sept. 2019, my friend and I listened to the radio constantly while driving the ring road. "Senorita" was on nearly every 5th song which is the only reason I've ever heard of it. Later, back home, my friend and I were sitting in a pub and "Senorita" came through the speakers. I pointed out it was the song we heard so many times on our trip and she didn't remember it! I can only attribute it to the fact that she is hard of hearing and perhaps it didn't make as deep an impression on her as it did on me.
Thanks Sid, loved the clue for STEEL BEAMS. And LOSINGS is an interesting concept which for some reason reminds me of @Nancy's WORST clue/answer in an earlier puzzle.
First of all, I put in PiSCaTARIAN; second, wipes out is always 'erases' isn't it? Third, I remembered Anne as being from AruNdEl. After that I was just lost; I had to look up 3, maybe 4 answers to finish the puzzle. As an ovine @rexite, I say BAAA.
I did learn about BEER BONGS. I knew about BONGS, but had always thought they were used for something else.
This is the second day in a row the Times was not delivered to our house for some reason, so I solved it on their website. I'd probably have liked it better in the paper.
Another kealoa today: fAZES/DAZES. Guess which one I had!
@Barbara S -- Your #4 Uniclue -- One of the funniest ever!
LOL, I threw in PESCETARIAN with only 2 or 3 letters in place and was sure I would have to come back and correct the spelling or delete it entirely but somehow it didn't happen. Never considered PESCATARIAN.
PESCETARIAN: One who only eats Joe Pesce or members of his immediate family.
Thx, Sid, for the excellent workout; great puz! :)
Hard (esp the clever clueing).
This one was tough all over; ALLAYed only by faith, and never being in a big RUSH.
Had the same experience and conclusion as @Rex re: PESCETARIAN. I see many others had a similar take. Thx to @Twangster (8:36 AM) for "PESCE being Italian for fish".
Grateful to have had no errors (pleasant surprise). :)
Agree with @pablo (happy B.D.) & @kitshef re: Croce comparison.
@jae: MEA culpa re: yd's prompt; totally lost track of the calendar. Look forward to your Croce pick on Mon).
Very much enjoyed the battle. :)
___
On to Matt Sewell's Sat. Stumper. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Yes, SOLARYEAR is a thing, as is SOLARTIME.
The discussion of what a SOLARYEAR is gets down into the details of why there are leap years every 4 years EXCEPT for centuries not divisible by 400.
SOLARTIME is why the time of high noon changes every day, and varies between very roughly 15 minutes early or late compared to clock time (ignoring standard vs daylight time) over the course of the year. You can Google "equation of time" and "analemma" if you want to learn more.
Knowing SOLARTIME would be useful to astronomers because if one were to just use clock time, you might point your telescope up to 4 degrees off target.
Many aha moments were had. Loved this.
Finally a Sid Sivakumar puzzle I could solve without any help from Uncle Google.
Had to work my way up from the bottom and like many others struggled with how to spell PESKYTARIAN. For a while my tailgate accessories were BEER BOXES, thinking it was some kind of a parallel answer to BREAD BOXES, but I couldn’t imagine why anyone would bring a BOX of BEER to a football game.
Also struggled mightily with the NW corner where RAZES made sense for too long and I had no idea where Anne lives or what happens to citrus fruits.
Odd that SWOLE in some circles is considered a compliment.
Fun puzzle, but what do I do with these twenty lascivious turtles now that I found them?
Celtic in English came from the French and was originally pronounced with a soft 'c'. The change to a hard 'c' came much later, and didn't completely take over until the 20th century. Merriam-Webster goes into a lot of detail on this, one note being that Fowler went from soft 'c' being the established pronunciation (1926) to hard 'c' being the only pronunciation in standard English outside of sports teams (1996).
Thumbs up for this puzzle, which was tarhooties near impossible for the first half of my solve. Then I was able to chisel away at it. I did look up masago in desperation.
Boots out!
I forgot earlier - For those of you who just popped in the correct answer to 11A from the clue based on my post of a week or two ago, you're welcome. For those of you who didn't read my post of a week or two about Seven Up because when you see my name you say 'nah, I'll just skip over that jackass' and didn't get it, I'd say that it serves you right. Except that you're not reading this now, because you think I'm a jackass and don't read me.
Stiff competition. DONTRUSHM&E became the puztheme, at our house.
Liked the challenge, but sheeesh … tougher than snot. Can't blame the fillins much for that, tho. Only no-knows were PESCETARIAN and maybe them PIE TIES.
Sooo … it's the clues' fault, then. And maybe just that there were so many longball answers [due to 60-worder puzgrid, today] … but clued up unmercifully.
BEERBONGS & CANDYBARS. With 4 Jaws of Themelessness. Well, there's yer SatPuz party.
staff weeject pick: TSA. Primo sneaky clue.
Thanx for the ZESTED clues and many long ONEsTOWATCH, Mr. Sivakumar dude.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
Senior moment...How does BOOTS=DEPOSES?
@Nancy 11:29....Ay caramba SENORITA...Now I see and I have been redeemed. I think I would've gotten it had Sid added "walk a mile." My favorite "Don't judge a book by its cover."
@pablito and TESS. Feliz cumpleaños. Or as they say in my neck of the woods: APY VERDE TU JOO....
My solve tracked Rex’s pescatarian for pescatarian. That, to me, was completely unfair and cost me an hour at least.
wow. really shocked at how many veterans struggled with this. i thought it was easier than typical saturday and less time than yday. im not a master solver but the NW filled in itself like a tues without needing to know 2D. i mean, yeah i did the PESCA/BARB thing but knew 6D would be some sort of BEAM which fixed that pretty easily. SHARED data plan and ACTS for OPTS were also easily fixed because of the gimme CANDY. its not saturday without at least some writeovers.
fri/sat are the best days and i was happy with this weeks.
Another "crossword-solving hint" [esp. for @Joseph Michael]:
If it's a 3-letter preposition from Shakespeare, it's always ERE.
I initially toyed with "FOR" for the lascivious turtles quote -- plug it in; it fits beautifully -- but then said "Nah. It's ERE. It's always ERE. In fact it will be ERE for E'ER."
The NE was grueling for me. I've eaten masago for years, but always thought of it as flying fish roe. So I figured the answer must be the Japanese word for that.
No trouble with PESCETARIAN. I left the E space blank, then the tailgate had to be BEER something. But I have fortunately never heard of a BEER BONG and still don't want to hear of it.
As usual, Sid kicked me square in the SMELTS. This time he got some help from those dang, pesky tarians.
As in "the angry mob booted the tyrant from his throne".
BARBECUES as "accessories" to tailgate parties? Is that like being an accessory to a crime?
PESCETARIAN is the correct spelling as far as I'm concerned. Pesce is the noun for "fish" in Italian; pesca- would derive from the verb form pescare, "to fish"; but we don't eat verbs, we eat nouns. And I would pronounce it "pesh-etarian" if I ever had to say it out loud, just to be contrary. Anyway, no problem sliding that one in right away. Along with SANTANA and AVONLEA, which I remember from my sister's childhood bookshelf.
I took ART SCENES to include the creative milieus that draw aspiring artists to NY and LA, not just art viewers.
I liked COAL MINER's Daughter and Sissy SPACE(K/X) as a mini-theme.
Why does PEA-green need a hyphen? I mean, I guess you *could* use a hyphen, but I feel like the clue is telling me I have to.
This was a satisfyingly tough Saturday puzzle, far-removed from last weekend's April Fool crapfest. I liked the cluing (except for TESSA).
Sacro-MONTE
The spelling of "pescatarian" also doomed my chances. After working on the puzzle for several hours, that was frustrating. I agree totally with Rex Parker about this.
I’ve been doing crosswords for over 50 years, and I love a challenging grid.
Not this one…I require the grid to be solvable…I will NOT spend lots of time on someone else’s ego.
These types are simply time holes.
One of our favorite seafood restaurants overlooking the Atlantic near Charleston is named PESCE. Italian for "fish."
Wow yes hard for me. Hands up for the PISCATARIAN / BARBECUE train wreck.
And all the head-scratchers: MEA (I had ESS), LOSINGS (had nothing), MONTE (had FINAL.. get it?), SHOES (had SH--S and... nothing), and SEED (had LOSS; y'know cuz it's a negative number?). As someone else admitted, I had to google SENORITA to get any progress down there. Tough one!
[Spelling Bee: yd -2, missed this should've 9er and this never heard of 5er. Well @Barbara S, at least I got the 11er you missed!]
A true Saturday challenge - pretty sure I had to use more the 10% of my brain today. Almost resorted to cheating towards the end, but with all the fiendish cluing I felt like a gauntlet had been thrown at my feet and I wasn’t about to let this Sid person get me.
Same thoughts as @Rex re PESCa-, SnIt and ART museums. And MARCH IN STEP not landing quite right. Glad I didn’t think of pillars. AVONLEA not exactly a gimme but SEVEN-UP caused it to bubble-up from the depths.
I knew about Coca-Cola (Mom said her father called it “Dope”) but not 7-UP. Wonder what were the lithium years?
Definitely had to change out multiple thinking caps for this one, sometimes not for the better. I put on my “literal-minded” HAT at 48A - tried without success to think of a thing that is nice to have backward.
“Sorry start.” Was it iam or ess? Went with ess, then err. When I got MEA I said out loud to Mr. A, “Good God.” The COST/OPTS cross tricked me, too - had CaST/AcTS for a while. Worked either way with the clues, but even I know CAcPED data plans are not a thing.
Second day in a row for Ms. Cabello so I blame WILL for the unnecessary trivia clue for SEÑORITA. Wonder what Sid’s clue was?
This puzzle had zero junk, and very little to complain about. Oodles of esses from POCs, but I was grateful for the footholds in the beginning. Bigger side-eye to the hyphen in PEA green. Wanted PEA but pretty sure my old Crayolas didn’t hyphenate their greens. Isn’t Sta-green a brand of lawn fertilizer? CANADIANS - I’ve never heard anything but cities or countries “hosting” so that was a “yeah, I suppose so” moment. Same with “LOSINGS” - isn’t it losses? ONIT and TSA the only crosswordese, but that TSA clue was the best clue ever. Give me more like this every Saturday.
@Gary Jugert (10:22)
#1. You're a mad savant.
@Nancy (11:45)
Thanks. Helps make up for my missing ART SCENES in the puzzle.
@Pete (12:20 PM)
Whether or not I think you're a jackass is beside the point. I might shun jackasses or I might enjoy reading them. I'm sure it utterly depends on the particularities of the jackassery in question. And, in any case, I'm not saying that you're a jackass. But you are giving me far too much credit for my memory. (Sigh.) But I did get 11A without your involvement (although it's nice to know you had my back had I been able to remember and benefit).
@Nancy. Good one. Also applies to poetic contractions and missing three-letter words in poetic verse.
I know that the clues are where editors are most likely to make changes or to rewrite completely so I am always reluctant to give credit or blame to the constructor or the editor without first hand knowledge. So I'll just say that this puzzle was an exemplar of Saturday-tough, kick-butt cluing.
The SHOES clue reminded me of the lyrics from Everlast's "What It's Like".
Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom that said he was in love
He said, "Don't worry about a thing, baby doll, I'm the man you've been dreaming of"
Three months later he say he won't date her or return her calls
And she swear, "Goddamn, if I find that man I'm cuttin' off his balls"
And then she heads for the clinic and she gets some static walking through the door
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner and they call her a whore
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her SHOES
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to choose
I think the phrase was originally "Walk a mile in my moccasins", no?
I had a nice sense of accomplishment after wrestling this beast into submission but I couldn't help notice along the way that it got a lot of letter-count boosting, grid-filling assistance from the plural of convenience (POC), including several two for one POCs, where a Down and an Across both get a boost by sharing a single final S.
Here are entries that were not up to the task of filling their slots and needed S or sometimes ES or IES help.
DAZE, TENOR, APOSTLE, EAT IT, DEPOSE, SHOE, STEEL BEAM, ENTWINE, LOSING, TRIKE, BEER BONG, ART SCENE, HAT, BREAD BOX, CANADIAN, CANDY BAR, OPT, TARE, DAME, ALPHA, PIETY, WHARF and PILFER. The Committee was unanimous in giving the grid a "POC Marked" rating.
It usually makes me feel at least a little better to see I wasn't the only one making these errors. Also took the PESCaTARIAN route, which also lead me to BARBEqUE but then - see that pesky little Q? That gave me squab for 'game that's hard to follow' and from there it was just a losing tangle of errors. Did not enjoy, a slot for the sake of it with no sense of achievement at the end - with a small bonus that I've now googled squab and learnt it's domestic, not game, meat. A very small sliver of a silver lining... I think.
@nunya (12:28) DEPOSES = kicks out/boots out.
@Joaquin (12:53) As usual, your succinct summation of the situation brought a smile to my face.
Wishing a peaceful and joyful Easter Sunday to all who celebrate.
Nice to hear a little Housemartins this morning -- famous for Fat Boy Slim and Paul Heaton's fear of flying
Really delighted to get the Happy Music when I entered my final letter (the N in TENORS/ENTWINES) after just over an hour of genuine and genuinely engaging struggle.
@GJ: #1 Uniclue today is one of hour best ever!
SWOLE means "ripped"?! I've heard it as a vernacular (not really "slang") version of "swollen," but never meaning "drunk" or "high," which I assume is what "ripped" is referring to here.
Challenging I guess!!! Guess is the operative word here-and mostly guess wrong. Knew it was going to be a battle when I saw Sid Sivakumar’s byline, but he outdid himself on the clue disconnects. My lovely, soft-spoken mother-in-law never in the years I knew her never raised her voice. An “extreme” show of feeling (good, bad, or ugly) was Boy Howdy, I hope to tell you what! Sums it up for me. I get it; it’s Saturday. I appreciate and even enjoy a good fight for every square, but sometimes I feel that Sid (whom I sincerely respect, have never met personally and should probably address him more formally) stretches the connection between clue and answer beyond what is kosher even for the most difficult of Saturdays. Or maybe I’m just a whiner. As @BritsolvesNYT 7:38 AM aptly said “the leap from clue to answer was too much of a stretch . . . “. Couldn’t agree more.
I also think a couple answers were just plain incorrect. I have been to at least 100 serious tailgates in my life being the sports fan that I am and whether it os college, pro or rec, football “footie” (European football that is), baseball, basketball, softball, rugby, or whatever and never ever have I seen BEER BONGS at a tailgate. Period. Just no. And my tailgating spans from 1957 to date and most certainly included herbal items and alcohol of many descriptions and of course lots and lots and lots and LOTS of beer. Never a bong on sight. Or maybe I just went to the wrong tailgates. I’m sure some among our esteemed neighborhood will correct me and I will freely admit my mistake. But this one in a crossword seemed like an attempt to make the answer un-gettable rather than clever. So I call foul.
As for SHEEP, this one is on the edge of fair mostly (in my opinion) for exactly the reason @Rex called foul. Because SHEEP is an oldish appellation for those who follow blindly (“like sheep to slaughter”) and because today’s “followers” of internet blogs, musicians or other artists careers (in person or via social media) are the opposite of the old use of SHEEP this clue was tough for me. I quickly jumped to SHEEP and immediately thought “Oh wait, what about social media followers? Maybe the answer is STANS (which is a totally. Ew word for me this year). The S was good for either but using Stans not so much.
All I can say is I slugged it out and finished by the proverbial skin of my teeth. I really thought Sid had this one. Thankful that speed solving is not ny thing.
Every time I think about quitting, I push on for my reward - enjoying what y’all have to say. Good job today!
Throws out of office
It's a triple slang leap for muscular. Which took me on a Google trip (assumed it was double slang, realised ripped also doesn't really make literal sense) and came to find this:
"It looks like ripped came from an extension of cut, itself an extension of defined and moulded by way of having all that is extraneous removed, leaving just muscle. Other terms such as chiseled, razor sharp, shredded, sliced and lacerated follow the same pattern."
Beaten. Totally beyond my solving ability.
i too scoffed at beer bongs at a tailgate. that is until i was enlighted:
https://www.tailgatingideas.com/double-beer-bong/
must be legit - just look at the picture.
Why is seed a number in brackets?
@JoeD re your avatar, I pretty much ignore everything -rump, so I had no idea about that motto. Googled FIASCO and found dissentpins.com. Fun stuff. Actual size cuffs, lol.
@Pablo, Happy Double Easter Birthdays!
@BEER BONGS naysayers, I had no idea either but just went with it. Apparently, as @Son’s son told him, it’s a big funnel attached to a tube, not related to the bongs some of us knew and loved back in the day.
Now that I’ve seen a BEER BONG I am quite sure a brass player came up with the idea, because we already had these lying around. We call them hosaphones.
Tomorrow's debut non-Cox/Rathvon acrostic is the easiest thing ever. If you've never done an acrostic but would like to give it a shot, I would say jump on this one. (There's one potentially tricky answer, imo, but nothing obscurely difficult. And the quotation practically fills itself in.)
@Joe D
I enjoyed tomorrow's Acrostic, but didn't find it that easy; more easy/medium.
BTW the word is "elements" not singular.
A famous book, the Elements of Style" is not about the periodic table.
Perfectly legitimate Saturday misdirection cluem
According to Mirriam-Webster online you are right. It gives peace as the source. I was too lazy to look anywhere else. Seemed odd to me because as Rex said the standard spelling is pescatarian and that a doesn't appear in Italian. But that's English.
NCAA basketball March Madness.With it's brackets and seeded teams
A wonderful Saturday. Saturday is supposed to be tough, and this one fulfilled the promise.
My only nit . . . . TEA Green, SEA Green,. . . . [finally] PEA Green.
I'm color-blind, so no wonder I struggled with that.
Very few proper nouns; very few 3s; no common dreck . . . . what's not to admire?
Could have written Rex’s post; I had every experience he did with the spelling and the clues. At least I’m in august company! Clueing felt rather forced to me; few satisfying “aha” moments when I did get one. Is solar time a thing? Coal miner…okay, maybe. Argh.
I've never been more pissed off at the NYT than over pescAtarian. "Barbecues" was my cross there, and I was stuck
Rex, in your explainers section could you please actually explain? I appear to be the only one, but I still don't understand how TSA is "they have bags under their eyes".
@JC66 – Well I did have one writeover on the Acrostic. But I was able to guess almost half the answers correctly right off the bat. So it really did seem to go quickly.
@A – I guess you didn't see the comments yesterday, I had posted a link to Dissent Pins for you.
Missed rhyming clue opportunity: Rides for tykes instead of Rides for rugrats.
I agree, pescatarian and beerbongs sucked.
beerbongs are college parties, not tailgating. I hope not many tailgaters who are the drivers do beerbongs.
And that's just a wrong spelling of fish-eaters.
One of the rare put away for the next day solve attempt puzzles for me.
Dang! That's what a Saturday is supposed to be!
Anon 7:44 -- "Bags" as in luggage. When they're on the ground, they're "under" a TSA agent's eyes.
@JoeD, I reread my post and see how it could be interpreted multiple ways. Much like the clues today, minus the diabolical intent. I did see the link and didn't make that clear. Anyhow, thanks for sharing, and good luck deciding between the pins and T-shirts. Hmm, just now occurred to me they should add a Lewis "good trouble" pin.
I did not finish this puzzle! I had to reveal the entire NE corner, and i had the rest perfectly. I was very put off about the E in Pescatarian as well. Just agree 100% and I just hope they don’t start getting into Elon Musk’s children’s names because they are very odd.
On behalf of a dear friend that is losing his hearing, I personally was offended by the clue associated with the fact that Beethoven "went deaf" in his 30s and 40s. It is the wording of the clue that troubles me. I'm sure his hearing loss was not something he "did" but something that happened physiologically to him. There is no doubt that he was "doing" many other things when this occurred. In spite of my objections to this clue I was glad to read the responses of other bloggers that are experiencing hearing loss and stating that they were not offended.
“Smarmy” is the perfect word for such self-congratulatory clueing — it smacks of bad faith, not cleverness.
Took me until Tuesday to finish this Saturday puzzle after giving in and turning on auto check. Sigh.
Liked it. Hardly any junk fill. Challenging but fair.
When referring to tiers in a building its storey...not story, at least for we hosts of the 1988 and 2010 Olympics.
As if this puzzle wasn't hard enough...
Got 98.2%, so lots of triumph points for me.
Fave? TSA No doubt.
Diana, LIW
Note to Geome: Story is American. Storey is UK style. The NYT uses American style unless clued otherwise.
SADIST PIETIES
That DAME'S a COALMINER
ON the CANADIAN veldt,
DON'TRUSHME TO find her,
TIME WILL tell how she SMELT.
--- SENORITA TESSA SANTANA
For people of a certain age(like me):
Look up beer bong and you will see that it's not the same kind of bong that you used in highschool and/or college.
Two write-overs slowed things - DEPOrtS for DEPOSES and worse, BarbecueS for BEERBONGS. Noticed: EATSIT ONIT.
Wordle par.
Hand up for the A in PESC_TARIAN. Corrected to E for BEER...but BEER what? That was a long time coming. Bong to me holds hashish, not beer. Bad trip...but that's another story.
Bad trip indeed through this maze of obfuscation. Chief gripe out of several: LOSINGS(?). Losses, OK? Like real English. LOSINGS is nothing. Challenging indeed. But somehow, with several outright guesses, I filled it in correctly. Luck. Birdie for the triumph points alone.
Wordle par.
My fave PESCETARIAN. I'm not sure Rex knows that this is one who eats fish but is otherwise a vegetarian ? I guess he must, but he leaves doubt.
My un-fave TSA. I'll never understand why one would like someone x-raying your body and belongings, or patting you down.
I know I posted, but???
DEPOrtS before DEPOSES, BarbecueS before BEERBONGS. Noticed EATSIT ONIT. Circled: none.
Wordle par.
Holy hell, second time I successfully completed a Saturday puzzled rated challenging by Rex (first time was the April Fool’s puzzle).
But I had to go wAAAY over my personal limit of spending one hour on any single puzzle, so I am truly behind at life now, unfortunately.
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