Word of the Day: RHONDA Vincent (45D: ___ Vincent, bluegrass singer inducted into the Grand Ole Opry) —
Rhonda Lea Vincent (born July 13, 1962) is an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.
Vincent's music career began when she was a child in her family's band The Sally Mountain Show, and it has spanned more than four decades. Vincent first achieved success in the bluegrass genre in the 1970s and '80s, earning the respect of her mostly male peers for her mastery of the progressive chord structures and multi-range, fast-paced vocals intrinsic to bluegrass music. Vincent is an in-demand guest vocalist for other bluegrass and country music performers, appearing on recordings by Dolly Parton, Alan Jackson, Tanya Tucker, Joe Diffie, Faith Hill and other notables.
The absolute heft of this grid! Four thick corners larded with three longer answers each, plus the two long zingers across the middle, and a grid as clean as all get out. I winced precisely zero times while solving this (except the inevitable wincing that comes with confronting one's own ignorance—had a few of those moments, for sure). This was a Proper Saturday, an "I've come to push you around, whaddyagonnadoaboutit" bruiser that knows you (I) like it tough, but ultimately rewarding. Make me sweat and make me like it, that is what I want from my Saturdays, and this one delivered. Complete wash-out on my first pass at the NW? Check. Multiple confident answers that ended up being wrong? You better believe that's a check. Answer after answer that made me think "ooh, nice" or "ohhhhhhh ... dang"? Check and check. I was staring at a lot of empty space and a sad, lonely RILL before I finally hit on FAT, my first *real* answer in the grid (RILL was first, but FAT (21D: Nickname for France's Louis VI, with "the") was the first thing I could confirm with crosses, namely THIEF). Then a hero showed up in the form of Ving RHAMES and finally got me going (typical of KAC's grids to have a film answer or two in them—see also LAURA DERN and "LARA" (though she wasn't clued cinematically) and Willem DAFOE, what the hell, I had no idea he was in *either* of those movies (2D: Actor in "American Psycho" and "Nightmare Alley")). Then the first answer I ran up into the NE corner was ... SNAP PEAS! (14D: Produce in pods). Looking good ... until it wasn't. Almost willing to accept that there was some vegetable called a MAYA that I hadn't heard about (18A: Remoulade ingredient => MAYO), but no way was the [Grp. influenced by the 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique"] gonna be N.O.P., so I took another look at the peas and saw that they were SNOW, not SNAP. Finally, I had a corner locked down. And what a corner! "I CAN'T EVEN!" right alongside "DO YOU MIND!?" Huge hit of colloquial goodness.
Never too thrilled by businessspeak or tech stuff, so TECH START-UP, GET, and SIEMENS created a bit of thrill-pause for me there as I transitioned out of the NE, but then the puzzle got RED HOT again as I crossed the grid and spilled down into the SW via SCARE AWAY (wanted SCARE OFF, but, you know, letter count). And here I made another costly ERROR—thought I could handle the Ghanaian ethnicity clue and with the "W" in place wrote in ... IWOS (54A: Millions of Ghanaians, ethnically). This, it turns out, was me conflating a *lot* of things. Actually, it's me taking the thing I really wanted—IBOS—and just changing one of the letters to a "W." Sigh. Turns out IBOS (or Igbos) live primarily in Nigeria, not Ghana. Ah, that bracing reminder of one's own ignorance. Thank you, Saturday puzzle. The actual answer here turns out to be an ethnic group in sheep's clothing, namely EWES.
[Ewe-speaking region = yellow]
After finally getting hold of EWES and the rest of that corner, I rode "MEANING WHAT!?" (another burst of colloquial energy) out of the SW and over to the SE. Wait, no, at some point I must've realized that the NW was still empty and since I wasn't going to get any more help with crosses, I should go back and face it. Tough getting in. I had originally wanted BUSH HOG (?) to be some kind of HOE, but now that it was a HOG, I didn't know what to do (8D: Land-clearing tractor attachment). I had ARTISTES but it wasn't helping much. STITCH was eluding me. Somehow I just ... got ... CARICATURE, from the final two letters (and the "I" from RILL), and that was pretty much that for the NW (15A: Sketchy boardwalk offering?). Once you drive a long answer through a corner like that, you're really in business. No more panic. When I got ADDRESS BAR (1A: Field of computing) I had this quick flicker of emotion, going from "what the hell?" to "ohhhhhhh ... man ... [grumble grumble] ... yeah, that's good. Not the greatest answer, but a very, very good clue" (an ADDRESS BAR is a "field" to the extent that's a blank space you have to fill in). Finished up in the SE, which felt very easy until I got to 53D: Miss, which I wanted to be PASSed (i.e. "that was the exit back there, we just PASSed it"). And the cross on that first letter was an island involved with a film festival that I thought for sure I didn't know. But when I got it down to -IDO, I thought "well, PIDO seems very wrong, so ... I've heard of LIDO, does that? ... yep! Miss, LASS, that works!" Done and done.
Two kealoas* for me today: wanted ACRID before ACUTE (1D: Sharp) and (of course) wanted SIS before SIB (39A: Fam figure). Never heard of the bluegrass RHONDA, but I'm gonna take a listen today. I grew up with bluegrass music in the house, but I don't recognize her name. Nothing much else that I didn't know today (beyond what I've covered—i.e. EWES, BUSH HOG). Frank NORRIS is kind of a toughie, but not for an English professor. I can never remember exactly what "unicorn" means in techspeak, but I feel like it typically involves making awful people very rich. "Privately held start-ups valued at over $1 billion." There you go. "Unicorns" (so-called because of statistical rarity, though wikipedia says there are over a thousand of them). Let's think about nicer things. Like UFOLOGISTS! (17A: Ones tracking disc-overies?). And that fantastic clue on ADELE (49D: Who had us at "Hello"?). I always forget she sang a "Hello"—for me, there will only ever be one:
Hope you persevered with this one, and had a good time doing it. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.
Rex – I really enjoyed your write-up this morning. But for me this was one of KAC’s kinder, gentler offerings. Getting BUSH HOG very early didn’t hurt. Once I changed “growl” (as in stomach) to DROOL and “logo” to ICON, I had this puppy sewn up pretty quickly for a Saturday.
Then I sat, yet again, pondering the difference between DROOL and slobber. Slobber feels much more active and exuberant, like the slobberer is fully engaged and aware. But DROOL feels quieter and sneakier. Like maybe the DROOLer isn’t even aware of their offense. Also, DROOL is a naptime event. If I happen upon a napper who is slobbering, I’ma back myself out of the room on tippy toe and rethink my relationship with this person.
GOING RATES reminded me of all the pay toilets in Europe.
“Words said when one is speechless.” Wait. What? I would argue that you say I CAN’T EVEN when you’re almost speechless but not quite. A couple of weeks ago, a girl in my homeroom answered my question about another student with a hummed mm MMM mm meaning she didn’t know. I said, Hey! You just said I don’t know without saying the words! But then we decided what with Uh uh and Uh huh that this wasn’t that ground-breaking, and we kept it moving.
Man oh man the clue for EWES was tough. Who knew? I don’t know much at all about Ghana, but judging from the pictures I just looked at, I can tell its EWES are friendly.
I was confused by the clue for ARTISTES. The word feels almost sarcastic or cynical. Like Monet is the real deal, an artist. But a caricaturist is an ARTISTE, not quite ready for prime time. Put another way, Florence Foster Jenkins is an ARTISTE, whereas Kiri Te Kanawa is an artist.
Mom and I have a THEME party coming up – a Derby Day at the clubhouse of our little community. She was so excited about it, about having me participate with her, that I didn’t have the heart to say no. There will be food! And games! And we have to dress up and wear hats! And this year no one will be admitted without a ticket, so we have to get ours fast! (Apparently last year, there were sneakers-in who crashed the event, so the food ran out pretty quickly. People are still talking about it.) Look. I’m no spring chicken, but I can tell you that an afternoon spent being charming to Mom’s friends, pretending to enjoy the cloying punch (ladled out from the actual punch bowl into the matching little punch glasses), nibbling on the nuts and after-dinner mints. . . jeez Louise as I type this, I hate myself for being such a jerk. But now I’m caught up in finding the perfect white hat to go with my outfit. And I’m borrowing some white gloves from my sister. Mom got her hat from a nearby Goodwill-type store nearby for only $3. I’m looking on Amazon for mine. Go big, or go home.
A clip from the Venice Film Festival entry Ox Day Afternoon, starring Laura Dern and Ving Rhames
(Avia is at her kitchen table, tinkering with a shiny object. Her late-teenaged daughters Lara and Rhonda flounce in and plop down at the table)
Lara (to Avia): "Today is Japan's Midsummer Day of the Ox, in case you didn't know. So could you make us some eel so we can celebrate? Like, right NOW. Do you mind??" Rhonda: "Wait – eel? Shouldn't she make ox?" Lara: "It's called a misdirect, sweetie. That's what they do in Japan, to confuse you. Like today. It's dedicated to one animal but then they eat a totally different one. Anyway, when I eat ox, French people say I look fat, so eel is better." (to Avia) "Eel. With snow peas. And sesame seed dressing. And octopus." Rhonda (petulantly): "But I don't want eel or ox or octopus." (thinks for a few seconds) "I know! Make me some bowtie pasta!" Avia: "Well, lasses, I would, but I was busy all morning." Lara: "Meaning what, exactly?" Avia: "I've made a tiara for you to wear to the ufologist's tech-startup party in the park tonight, Lara. So I didn't have time to get to the market yet." Rhonda: "But I'm so-o-o hungry." Lara (opening the refigerator): "All that's in here is some rye bread and a jar of mayo." Rhonda (practically in tears): "Are you trying to scare us away?" Lara (slamming the door): "Listen you tool, we are artistes. You can't treat us like this. And I'm not going to any ufologist party, they're all a bunch of sketchy sleazos, so you can keep your tiara. (pause) Anyway, your cooking sucks. They have better grub at the Army mess tent. C'mon, sib, let's go over there. We'll flirt with the soldiers." (to Avia) "We're leaving." Avia: "After everything I do for you, this is your attitude? Well then, get out!! GO, INGRATES!!!" Rhonda: "Hey maybe Willem Dafoe will be there and I can say 'Oh, hi'. I mean, he was in Platoon and all..." (Lara and Rhonda depart) (pause) Avia: "I...I can't even."
•
About the right amount of tough. Hardest was the northwest area – I couldn't imagine who the actor could be, even with some letters in place (I never saw either movie but was kind of aware of the main cast members of both). The rest of it was actually pretty smooth, even while requiring some thought. Nothing seemed outlandish. Well maybe EWES, but eventually that couldn't be anything else, so okay, whatever. I enjoyed it.
This one played medium for me. It started tough. I didn't hit pay dirt until I put in EDGE and supported it with SLANG. Once started the solve became steady and stayed that way.
Did anyone else think at some point that 24A might be TECHnicolor. Of course I was at a party store yesterday picking out balloons so I kind of had that in my mind.
The clue for EWES is a Shortz era debut . Pre-Shortz there are only a couple of examples. The one from '53 is a doozie "Natives of The Slave Coast."
Backfilling the NW to finish I tried to kick start it with PORTRATURE at 15A because I'm always good for creative spelling. I even supported it with SPICY and was wondering if the Japanese eat YAK or YAM when I just said no and got out the eraser. RILL and TOOL showed the way. As I said once the solve started it always found a way to keep moving.
Didn’t really like this one, definitely played hard but also 1a was by far the weakest clue in the puzzle and as the most prominent one it set the tone for the puzzle.
This was a DNF for me - lots of wrong starts. I'm usually able to get unknowns from crosses, but not today. Too many misspellings and not enough effort on my part. SHONDA instead of RHONDA - resisted TIARA for so long because of MITRE.
@LMS - What happened to Mint Juleps on Derby Day? I thought that was the whole point.
Overwrites includes gROwL (3D) and logo (16A). Hi, @LMS!
UFO LOGgerS before UFOLOGISTS at 17A (I thought there might be people who log UFO sightings)
BUSHHOG at 8D and GET as clued at 31A were both WOEs. I wanted BackHOe, which left me with the nonsensical eET for the impressive hire. Eventually got it by trial-and-error when the happy music didn't play.
This is all before a host of lovely clues, including the tricky [Produce in pods], the so-fresh and somehow-make-me-feel-wonderful [Who had us at “Hello”?], and the never-done-before beauty [Note taker?]. Not to mention a host of lovely answers: CARICATURE, SCATTER, MEANING WHAT, SCARE AWAY, BUSH HOG, I CAN’T EVEN, and DO YOU MIND.
That is a lot of wow in one grid. I said last week re Sid that his puzzles are events. Well, so are yours, Cameron. I’m very grateful for the pleasure your puzzles bring me, including today’s jewel. Thank you!
As s life long city dweller I struggled with BUSHHOG until the bitter end, Overall just about right for a Saturday but if UFOLOGISTS is a real thing it shouldn’t be,
Fearfully hard to get started. AVIA/RHAMES was my unlikely entry, but those led nowhere. It was not until LARA in the far SW that I really got a foothold. Some days, the PPP giveth.
I really appreciate that despite the overall trend to easyness of the NYT puzzles, there is still a constructor or two out there that is given the leeway to provide satisfyingly difficult one.
Kameron’s cluing is always an outlier for me - I like it but takes me some time to settle in. The NW quadrant was rough - and the last for me to finish. Like @LMS had “growl” in lieu of DROOL and UFOLOGISTS was obtuse. Land clearing attachments are BrUSH HOGs - BUSH HOG is a long standing brand name - that one gave me some fight.
The rest of the puzzle was slick and went in fine. Loved the conversational stuff - MEANING WHAT and I CANT EVEN. BOWTIES x SESAME SEEDS is cool. Always relate LARA to Julie Christie. EWES was backed into.
Enjoyable Saturday solve. Nice one-two punch with Mossberg’s Stumper.
@kitshef: Agreed, this lovely puzzle by KAC counters the NYT’s overall trend to easiness. But that may be true for all of this week’s puzzles. I don’t pay close attention to my times, but I believe they were all over my average for the past several days. Either the puzzles are getting tougher again, or I’m . . . Never mind. The puzzles are getting tougher again.
I fought the good fight but eventually succumbed to the SE corner crossingss of VAN and LIDO with ADELE. Hoping for better luck with the Saturday Stumper.
Totally missed the clue on ADELE (I’m so awesome at popular culture). I thought maybe she was a character in Hello Dolly or some other play or movie. Crossing with an island off of the Italian coast didn’t help.
The highlight of the day for me was the clue for EEL, an answer that shows up about twice a week. I love that they went with “doyo no ushi no hi” - and they even translated it for us. That is classic NYT.
Was sorry to see that they went with the Bluegrass RHONDA instead of the RED HOT RHONDA (of Help Me RHONDA fame). Similarly, with so many NORRIS’s around, they went with the dude from like 1900 when they could have slipped a perfectly delightful Hermione into their clue set today. Oh well, chacun à son goût on that one I guess.
I’ll admit to being confused by the clue for TIARA. I know that the Catholic Church has been struggling with the whole gender-bending and age of consent quagmire for like centuries now, but still the thought of the Pope in a Miss Universe contest still seemed like a stretch to me. Then I saw that a TIARA is also a diadem “worn by a Pope” - so today I learned that diadem is a synonym for a funny hat.
Did anyone else have UrOLOGISTS, wondering uncomfortably what kind of discs they deal with? I literally was thinking about disc-shaped kidney stones until Willem DAFOE came to me.
That whole NW was super-hard for me. I wanted to take a BUSH HOG to the whole thing, or a BackHOe as I and surely many others had originally. I had CARtoon aRt on the Boardwalk crossing a starT button. I thought the French king’s nickname must have been the rAT or the cAT. The former had me briefly putting in (Brenda) Starr as the note-taker. She was a reporter. (That was indeed a great clue for THIEF.)
My start came in the east, where I had every single box in the four rightmost columns filled in, top to bottom. You would think that would help me expand westward, but the only trail that I found in that direction was SESAME SEED, all the way down at the bottom. I came at the south from the other end, which was pretty easy except that I put in MEANING tHAT (and SIs), which gave me an unappealing pasta called sOtTIES. Ick. I fixed that, but the brutal NW awaited.
So, very hard for me but satisfying to finally conquer it. So many great clues, my favorite part of the solving experience.
OK, popes wear TIARAs? Under the mitre or over it? Are these drag queen popes? (Of course, I had mitre first, although I left the last two letters blank because sometimes it’s miter.)
Touché, @JOE DIPINTO. it was worth reading your story to get to GO, INGRATES.
What's all this talk I hear about lowering the standard for financial transactions? GO INGRATES? You mean to say that we should celebrate and promote people who have no appreciation or gratitude for the sacrifices - the blood, the sweat and the tears - that give hardworking men and women the financial means to make these transactions possible. That's ridiculous.
I'm appalled. And appalled that the New York Times could promote such degeneracy.
Hand up for GROWL. And SIS. And STENO. And even UROLOGISTS. Come on, man.
I was wondering how much trouble folks would have with BUSHHOG. When you own a lot of open fields, like we used to, we had to have them BUSHHOGGED every year. Otherwise the brush starts growing, which is why I have also heard the term "brush hog".
Maybe @JoeD can link to "My Girl is REDHOT (your girl ain't doodly squat) which always makes me smile.
Great Saturday, KAC. I Knew A Cool puzzle was coming when I saw your name. and was not disappointed. Just the right amount of obscure answers and sideways cluing, and thanks for all the fun.
Too tough for me. I threw in the towel early and began reading Rex's blog, and peeking at his solution. Agree with E. Litella about 56A; nice comment, E.
@LMS - The ARTISTES answer was close enough to get me the answer eventually, but virtuosi are people with highly developed skill. As you suggest, there is a certain "poser" quality to artistes, at least in English.
While trying to get 15A, I was picturing the sketch artists that hang out under the American Elms in Central Park while searching for the exact word that my brain temporarily denied access to.
Dafoe had a great, perfect role in Nightmare Alley. I can't remember him in American Psycho; I mainly remember that great scene with the business card envy.
Perfect Saturday, even solved completely at night in bed, so probably easy for KAC puzzle.
Wonderful construction. Hard but lots of chances for breakthroughs. Lucky to get CARICATURE from the “sketchy” misdirect. But wondered for the longest time what UrOLOGISTS had to do with discs.
I agree with Andy Freude that this week has been tough. Weds/Thurs/Fri/Sat were all much harder than usual in my book. Last week's Sid Saturday was tough, too. I gotta say that the typical Saturday NYT crossword is at that sweet spot for me between satisfyingly difficult and frustration, and I really hope that the puzzles don't get shifted into the harder direction too much.
@burtonkd 9:15a - I’ve been walking through the Park for years and still am amazed at the elms and the overall majesty of the Mall. I always find time to visit when I’m in the area. If you head north to the Reservoir - the Okame Cherrys are in full bloom right now.
Send out the UFOLOGISTS to interview the constructor of this nightmare of a puzzle since he inhabits an entirely different planet from the one I inhabit. I Googled DAFOE for my first cheat and when that wasn't nearly enough, I came here, scrolled down to the answer to 1A -- while averting my eyes from all other answers.
ADDRESS BAR for "field of computing"??? Surely you jest. A TECH STARTUP is a "unicorn"??? Really???
FAT went in immediately -- so I wrote in "stafF" (instead of THIEF) for the "note taker." That put the whole NW completely out of reach. And don't even get me started on crossing the bluegrass singer...with the novelist...with the Mission Impossible person...with the company. It just isn't done, Kameron -- or at least it shouldn't be.
Major cheats and I still ended up with a DNF because I wanted a HOE for the land-clearing clue. My cheat enabled me to go from BUTT HOE (that 2nd "T" from STAFF) to BUSH HOE -- but BUSH HOG was way beyond my ken. Of course BUSH HOE left me with EET for the "impressive hire". What on earth? Extra-elevated techie? Hell, why not? After all, it was that kind of puzzle.
Re: ARTISTE. I've only heard it in a positive sense - a particularly skillful performer - or at worst neutral. I suspect if people are hearing it used pejoratively that's coming from the same people who want to make 'intellectual', 'elite', and 'educated' into insults.
Ha, BUTT HOE would be for another kind of puzzle entirely @Nancy (yes I too can have the sense of humor of an eleven-year-old boy at times).
This was a gym puzzle for me. I didn’t have a ton of fun in the solving (and allowed myself a couple googles to confirm certain guesses), but I feel very accomplished now. I had a similar experience to @Son Volt in that it took me a while to get used to KAC’s cluing.
I got CARICATURE right away, thank goodness, and did a pretty quick pass of the puzzle with very little filling in before I got to realize I needed to start with the shortest words and backfill from there. That meant closing in fill from the edges, which eventually became satisfying - I really earned the finish today. Not brutal, but challenging.
Re: yesterday, had a no good very bad day and didn’t get to solving til the evening, so a belated comment. My partner actually was on Eton’s rugby team (they’re American, but their father was in the foreign service), so it was fun when I asked then for help on that clue as I had liON first. Apparently everyone there must be in one sport per term - aristos have to be well-rounded I suppose?
Yeeshk. Typical Saturday for me. Stuff I've never heard of next to clues designed to be the opposite of helpful. Quite a hobby.
Did you do @Masked and Anonymous's uniclue puzz yet? It beat me up pretty good in only 7x7.
Uniclues:
1 Miracle Whip, ya know, because they believe in fake things. 2 Public relations plan for the Kardashian family resulting in way too many butt photos. 3 Corporate big wigs in charge of deforestation. 4 Request famous vocalist shut it.
1 UFOLOGISTS' MAYO 2 RED HOT THEME 3 BUSH HOG BOW TIES 4 DO YOU MIND ADELE?
I was feeling so proud of myself for finishing. Finally figured out that it was VAN/NOSED rather than VAg (for vagabond)/gOrED, that those medical researchers were dealing with a CELL, not a piLL. (Like Rex, I considered iWoS, but unlike him I know where the Ibos are found, and finally remembered EWES. I could even see how SIEMENS might be linked to Westinghouse. And I ultimately realized that THIEr was unlikely (at least I'd avoided the 'steno') misdirect, so #6 wasn't "Louis the rAT." But I'd forgotten about DAFOE, so I too went with UrOLOGISTS -- didn't make sense, but it sounds a lot like neurologists, who do deal with discs (first-hand knowledge here). And I left in SIs, forgetting to check the crosses.
I think the last thing I got was RATS ON (malapop!); I'd thought the singer must be rapping, but couldn't make that work with 34A. Doh!
I did love the colloquialisms; and I've read The Octopus and bicycled around the LIDO, so that helped.
In the end, a lot of fun -- but it would have been more fun if I'd checked those crosses!
I wanted to enter CARICATURE at 15A right off the bat, then backed off because I was sure it began with CH. Otherwise would have finished ten minutes sooner.
Zilch in the NW, then SNOW PEAS got me GOING in the NE. Had SNap PEAS originally.
BackHOe before BUSH HOG.
Slow and steady the rest of the way, until getting back to the NW, which took forever, and resulted in an embarrassing dnf at the DEFOE / UFOLOGISTS cross. Was thinking an UvOLOGIST might be involved with 'overy' (another sp lapse) discs; DAFOE / DeFOE is a kea/loa for me, with a 'V' in place of the 'F' sometimes working its way into the mix. To make matters even worse, I couldn't locate the error. :(
Nevertheless, time well spent, and maybe a lesson learned. :) ___ Hoping for a better performance on Steve Mossberg's Sat. Stumper. 🤞 ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
I have a dentist appointment I’ve been dreading next week. Having attempted to solve this puzzle will make it seem much less painful in comparison. So there’s that.
Medium here. "Gentler than usual" came to my mind, too (Hi, @Loren); it certainly was a faster solve for me than KAC's previous bruiser.
Unlike others here, I found the NW the easiest quadrant. A start with CARICATURE x ACUTE gave me enough to fill it all in except for the tractor attachment, which I left as BUS: the next letter was the second in T?IE?, which I absolutely could not parse - I could only see a misspelled "their" or the German city Trier. Anyway, I headed to the SW via REDHOT and RATS ON; after I finished there, BOWTIES opened up the SE, and then I climbed up the right side to VIDS x VIM. That left me with the hole where I needed the tractor attachment and the nickname of a king - let's see: bAT, cAt...seriously, I needed the alphabet run for FAT, and suddenly there was the THIEF, and a nod of appreciation for "best clue."
Do-overs: SIs before SIB, ionS before TAUS, mItRe before TIARA. No idea: NORRIS, RHONDA, BUSHHOG. Lucky guess: SIEMENS with no crosses. Crucial squares: the OE that gave me DAFOE and the P of PEAS that jogged my mind to STARTUP.
I think I'll mosey over to the Reservoir right now and take a look at the cherry blossoms. Too bad I don't know what either @Son Volt or @burtonkd look like or I'd suggest we all meet there. (I'll be going in at East 90th Street -- around 11:30.
The elms at the Mall are indeed majestic -- but it's one of my least favorite areas of the park. Too manicured. Too much concrete. Too many skateboards. Not "wild"-looking enough.
(I know Central Park is entirely man-made -- but parts of it actually look like pure wilderness -- almost.)
Now see....this is how to clue a proper beast. I want to work for my delicious supper because I know the sweet aroma will still be wafting under my nose. It did. I had some agita angst moments, to be sure. IA was a stare fest. Can I even pick out something with this huge menu? Oh wait! Like @Rex, I got RILL. Names that had me reaching for the Pepto Bismo: RHAMES, RHONDA and DEFOE. They busted my chops. I left the attic and headed elsewhere. Hmmm, smells good down in the basement area. First longie was MEANING WHAT and RING TONE. Those two answers gave me hope. Yes. Back up to the attic and try, try, try to get into Kameron's wheelhouse. Ah, yes. Of course, CARICATURE makes sense if you squint and squish your eyes at the clue. Brava to me. I smelled a cheat coming. I was the note taker THIEF. It was worth it. It wiped the DROOL from my face. ADDRESS BAR? Drats, I had to look you up. You were worth it because you gave me the downs I needed to feel FAT and happy. Words began to pop in. They went in slowly. I wasn't at all sure if I could identify all the ingredients . I would write you in and then check if you tasted right. Yes! I guessed a ton... payoff in check....except you, BUSH HOG. You were the HOE today. I also liked that EIT was my impressive hire. Sigh. One bad apple in the lot. The rest of the fruit was ripe and delectable. When I finished, the taste in my mouth was still sweet. I learned that with patience I can get a TECH START UP unicorn...that the clue for EEL is probably the longest most convoluted one I've bitten into and that UFOLOGISTS aren't urologists. A primo Saturday. I was truly proud at myself for getting practically everything tossed at me. @Joe D, our maitre d' ARTISTIS gives us the house special for dessert.......Buenisimo!
Took me 1 hour and 1 minute finished with no cheats, I'm very happy with that! Just stared at top corner forever. Finally got DAFOE and UFO Also had growl. Didn't know RILL so it was hard hard hard! After watching Rex's creepy Lionel Richie video, I looked it up, and that's been voted in the top worst music videos of all time. I wonder if a non blind actress stumbling around pretending to be blind while her older teacher stalks her would fly today? That made me find this GEM with Lionel Richie and Jimmy Fallon, worth a watch. Sorry spent too much time trying to imbed click able link I'm typing on phone, not going well
https://youtu.be/xXJSmGfw9oI
Or Google Lionel richie jimmy Fallon it's so funny!!
Two look ups today, and two errors. I didn't know the films featuring DAFOE, or the work of Mr. NORRIS. And I was dead in the water. Either the puzzles have been a bit tough this week, or my allergy meds are kicking me in the …
BUSHHOe/eET - like @Nancy I just had to shrug at eet for the big hire. The other error was not noticing sOWTIES. Thanks, SIS.
I liked SCATTER after trying to make expanse work, and I had a fuzzy memory that there was a new-speak use of unicorn when stuffed toy and kiddie poster wouldn't fit. Yay for REDHOT, STITCH and RINGTONE.
Sometimes I feel the colloquial phrases are overdone, but DOYOUMIND was very nice, and MEANINGWHAT was okay too. Maybe next time I’ll remember GAM as an alternative to pod.
Fun challenge. Way above my average time. Hands up for gROwL and SIs. I wanted the note taker to be some kind of musical _clEF for the longest time. Erased STITCH at least twice. The blank squares were pretty resistant around the NORRIS/RHONDA cross. Resorted to Google for the ethnic group. Had _W_S and was sure that was wrong. Looked up the demographics of Ghana and there they were, the EWES, and that little four-letter word helped me get the puzzle’s west coast.
I did this with my boy, and at first we had an awful lot of WHITESPACE. Then, when he put in Ibos for EWES, I said, “I smell a RATSON. But let’s keep going and see if we ERROR not.” Once we got to 45D, he said, “Dad, so help me RHONDA is Ms. Vincent’s first name.”
I believe I once saw Cari Cature and Lara Lynx in a drag show in San Francisco.
There’s no peas like SNOWPEAS, and this puzzle reminds me that it’s about time to plant them.
This was the first Saturday puzzle that I can remember having a THEME in it (28A).
Great cluing made this a a tough one, especially around the EDGES. Thanks, KAC.
Agree with LMS that an artist is always respectable, while artiste can connote shallowness or pretentiousness. I definitely don't equate artiste with virtuoso, which is someone with a supreme mastery of difficult skills.
Cannot pass on a KAC Saturday (although I soon won’t have the chance - Customer “Service” just informed me that they are discontinuing the Digest for individual subscribers). As expected, a gem of a solve. Right with Rex on the NW, along with CARICATURE appearing from the depths to save me.
@LMS - Artist ➡️ ARTISTE ➡️ ARTISTE feels like it happened in my lifetime. I still occasionally hear ARTISTE as a compliment, but mostly it is said with the “what a poseur” sneer.
Once again, just like yesterday … tons of neat stuff. Plus, a few bonus no-knows: UFOLOGISTS. RHONDA. NORRIS. BUSHHOG.
staff weeject pick: VAN. M&A can kinda identify with its clue … we own a 16-year-old VAN, that has been to most of the US states. We're talkin Augusta, Montpelier, Columbus, Champaign-Urbana, Nashville, St. Pete, New Orleans, Abilene, Santa Fe, La Jolla, Vegas, Fargo, KC, Nebraska City, Minneapolis, Green Bay, Bismarck, Sioux Falls, Boise, Missoula, Denver, Buffalo, Mackinac Island, … more, but, I digress. And Canada.
UFOLOGLISTS do prostrate exams on flyin saucers, fwi.
Thanx for the feisty fun, Mr. Collins dude. And congratz, on @RP likin it.
To me it felt like Friday and Saturday were switched. Am I the only one?
I started out with RILL, TOOL and a guess on EEL that paid off. After ACUTE and DROOL, the three Acrosses in the NW went right in. I had PEP for VIM, but I knew that 16A had to be LOGO-adjacent, so VIM and ICON it is. "I CAN'T EVEN" was my favorite answer in the whole puzzle.
The SW looked tough to crack with just LYNX and SAX in place, but luckily SCARE AWAY was easy with the Y. I'm not good with celebrity names but thank goodness I know LAURA DERN from crosswordese. I finished on the BUSHHOG/GET crossing.
I know it's Saturday, but NOW is a word. Always annoying to see acronym clues where there is no need for them.
Finished it, but had to cheat. I first had BACKHOE, then BUSHHOE, then Googled BUSHHOE and got BUSHHOG. When I just typed in "BUSHHOG" my computer changed it to BUSHING. So I feel justified in having cheated.
Otherwise it was a difficult puzzle, especially in the NW. I didn't like the clue for ADDRESSBAR, but that might just indicate my lack of tech knowledge. The bottom of the puzzle was easier, I thought.
The Papal TIARA (a three-tiered crown, actually) was retired by Paul VI in a gesture of support for the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. No pope has worn it since 1963. So a bishop's mitre has been the actual "Papal topper" for the last 60 years.
Lots of things to like in this Saturday challenge. Unlike Rex, the NameFest hurt me instead of unlocking the grid for me: Frank NORRIS, LIDO island, Ghanaian EWES, Boris Pasternak's LARA, FAT Louis, RHAMES Ving, RHONDA Vincent were all ??? for me and made the grid much harder. At least I knew of DAFOE and LAURA DERN but I needed a fair number of crosses before those fell. The NORRIS/RHONDA was fairly Naticky, especially when I still had dIalTONE instead of RINGTONE, and I was looking for a Frank aO_RIS.
Since Sailor brought it up… The Bishop of Rome, AKA the Pope, wears a lot of hats. Yes, a miter is one, it denotes his authority. But they also wear zucchettos, reddish purple, always. ( it’s officially amaranth red). But I have a question. Why is Southside Johnny’s flippant, and profoundly ignorant anti-Catholic post permitted? Imagine his using turban as the launching point for a riff on Sikhism? Or a yarmulke to mOck Judaism? And I guarantee, absolutely with 100% certainty he wouldn’t mock Mohammad if there were any chance he could be identified. He wouldn’t have the physical,courage, because, well, ask Charlie Hebdo survivors what happens to those who mock Islam? But CatholicIsm? That’s fair game. Why is that?
@MetroGnome - a unicorn is a start-up/private company that has a valuation of more than one billion dollars. A NYTimes article today about the rising trend of criminal prosecutions of start-up executives (The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley) noted that there are currently around 1200 such companies. I worked for one of the ones mentioned in the article and my former boss reports for prison on April 27th. I have a nice bottle of champagne reserved for the occassion.
“Go big, or go home,” suggests @LMS and that could be an apt description of Kameron’s grid, Rex’s critique or our tag team effort this morning. iboS before EWES, SIs before SIB among the many ERRORs that needed a RESET. Had to start in the middle of the grid with AVÍA recalled from marathon moments, NORRIS from novels taught in AmLit and SIEMENS from the hearing aid charger ensconced bedside. KAC is a byline we’re always delighted to see.
As is often the case with these bruising puzzles, the salvation is in the downs, sine qua I would have no chance whatsoever. My initial tour through the acrosses, following my methodology, left a near-empty grid. I finished in a reasonably salutary time, though, so . . . fun.
Usually KAC's puzzles are a little too opaque for me, but this one was just the right amount of tough. For 46 across "Your point being?", I had the T at the end and immediately saw WHAT ABOUT IT. I misread the clue for 39 across as "Farm figure" (those danged r-n r-m combinations in that Across Lite font look identical!) and put in EWE which turned out to be a malapop of 54 across.
The only -- Vincent singer I could think of was ST. Vincent which doesn't fit even if you spell it out SAINT. And hands up for wanting MITRE before TIARA.
[Spelling Bee: yd -1, for some inexplicable reason missed this 6er. Even though I got these evil twins!]
Nice to have 2 (or more) good answers to lots of clues, even with rather long answers. With a minimum of trivia and even with the obligatory ADELE, this was a splendid puzzle.
@SouthsideJohnny 7:44 AM HARRY POTTER IS #1! The cat Mrs. Norris is owned by Argus Filtch, the building caretaker at Hogwarts, while Hermione's cat is named Crookshanks and he needs to be in way more puzzles. There is also the lost diadem of Ravenclaw that looks exactly like a tiara Harry must destroy in order to prevent the spread of Catholicism (ehem, joking).
This puzzle was not at all enjoyable for me - A lot of stuff I didn't know and not enough help on the crosses to suss out. Bush hog? Random Blues singer? Taus? Ufologist - which I did figure out, but WTH? Has anyone ever heard anyone referred to as a ufologist? I didn't realize that tech start ups were called unicorns. Have never read Pasternak, nor have I heard of "The Octopus". Cool to learn new things, but it made this puzzle utterly brutal for me.
I wasn't as pleased as Rex with this one. I especially didn't like the NW - I agree with Phillyrad1999 that if UFOLOGISTS is a real word it shouldn't be. Are presidential scholars potusologists? Are the scientists at Monsanto gmologists? Maybe the ufology department at the local university can answer these vexing questions.
This wasn’t as difficult a KAC puzzle as I expected. I usually struggle mightily and am faced with the dreaded DNF. Today, once I ignored my snow blindness from the very blank NW and moved on, things got much easier. Not easy mind you, just less than impossible.
Not that I didn’t enter a ton of WAGs, but each had at least one other possibility so thank goodness for backspace! And then there’s my misspelling. I finally got DAFOE (who but a real film minutiae buff would know he was in both those?). I usually remember that he is Willem not William, but alas, almost never spell DAFOE correctly the first time, but since I was at the end of my struggle, I caught it quickly since I “saw” the “sketchy” clue with clarity. Of course, CARICATURES!
The mistake (merely one of a bazillion) that nearly DNF’d me though was the BUSHHOG. In the three plus decades of acting as legal counsel for thirty elected and appointed county officers, I can say with certainty that in oklahoma the machine is an BrUSH HOG. Usually two words, occasionally one. Never in all the years of discussing and preparing bid documents for purchasing those did I ever see it advertised as a BUSH HOG. Accordingly, I scoffed, yes - full on scoff at the “incorrect description” of what must be a Back HOe. So, in addition to the NW being just super tough (for me) today, I compound the difficulty with my misplaced scoffing. For shame! Thank the crossword goss for CARICATURE (again!) because neither ADDRESS BAR nor UFOLOGISTS that looked like it was missing an extra O to make it pronounceable. Again, to me in my admitted ignorance - is the ET aficionado a “you-followgist rather than a U-F-O-ologist? Whew! Just something else that slowed me waaaaay down.
What a pleasure this tough-ish Saturday turned out to be! I feel as if KAC deliberately made some of this one easy just to lure all of us who see that byline with trepidation with a false sense of security. Fabulous Saturday; more please!
The party description made me miss my mom. Good for you for going. I promise that there comes a day you would give anything to be able to be her date again.
I have noticed that for end of week puzzles the Times doesn't always have in brief etc for shortened word, especially frequently used ones. So the Times sets the rules of their puzzle. I see nothing wrong with the clue.
I solved this one in just under 2 hours. For me, that’s fast. Most Saturdays take a day or two of ruminating, for me. But this one fell into place too quick for me to love. I prefer a tougher challenge— and thus more rewarding. But I liked it, overall. Struggled in the SE, but eventually reasoned it out even though I don’t actually know anything about Adele or Lido.
Stumbled with minx instead of lynx, at first. And had growl before drool, but those were the only real missteps that I fairly quickly corrected.
So yeah, enjoyed it. But also kinda disappointed to solve it so fast.
Another Saturday of stretchy clues that lost my interest early. ADDRESSBAR is not, technically, a computing field, but a browsing field. There is no computation done with this information, just a lookup. And when I worked summer maintenance at a golf course during college, it was called a BRUSHHOG, not a BUSHHOG (maybe its like soda and pop). Then all of the names, and I punted early to watch Svengoolie ( I work the puzzle in the evening after I have settled in for the evening). I haven't even checked the rest pf the puzzle to see what other stretchy clues I can complain about!
@CDilly52, here is a Google Ngram chart of BUSH HOG vs BRUSH HOG plus the single word versions, for American English. For the two word versions it's pretty much a tie in recent years. Might be a regional thing!
Given the Catholic church's history of: Inquisitions, Witch Hunts (hundreds of thousands of women in Europe burned at the stake); Nazi support (even celebrating Hitler's birthday up through 1944); Crusades; Genocide (Rwanda, for example); Centuries of non-dissent (though they did apologize for imprisoning Galileo in 1992); Protecting pedophiles; And on and on and on ---
--- I think it's fair game to make fun of their hats.
In addition, I don't believe Jews (over the centuries) ever complained about their hats being made fun of.
Also, whereas making fun of Jewish beanies (or Muslim turbans) would be making fun of the cultural choice of millions of people, making fun of the pope's hat is making fun of exactly one person's hat -- the (funny) hat of the CEO of one of the richest institutions on the planet.
DNF: NW. Again. And again, and again. I HATE THE NW! I'd rather die than move there. Of course, I'm one of the 99.9% who never heard of a BUSHHOG. I had the MUCH more knowable BackHOe, and nothing else up there would work.
Note taker = THIEF?? Yeah, a taker can be a THIEF, but note??? MEANINGWHAT, banknotes? Dollar bills? Oh brother, that one borders VERY close to unfair territory. That clue is ASKING you to miss the answer. And there are more than one of those here. ADDRESSBAR, for a leadoff example.
However, it's a good day: the Golden Knights prevailed in a squeaker last night, going one up on Dallas. Uoward, Cupward!!
I haven't finished yet, but just had to comment: I love the () around "Midsummer Day of the Ox" as if, "Hey. You know. The old midsummer holiday, Doyo no Ushi no Hi. Right?"
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords and noter of things parenthetical
@Sailor 1:09pm: With a zucchetto worn under the mitre. That was some deep Catholic delving for me to remember the papal tiara. I was in grade school the last time the Pope wore it.
Having worked in a metallurgical laboratory for over 45 years, Siemens was a gimme answer for 36A. We got samples from Siemens-Westinghouse for several years until they dropped the Westinghouse name altogether. The Westinghouse name you see on TV's and appliances is owned by Electrolux. TMI. (I never thought this day would ever come.)
This was hard. And I've only ever heard of that machine called a BrUSHHOG, so I really didn't like that one. RHONDA Vincent gets a yeah baby, and yee haw. Disappointing Wordle par; as Chico Marx might say - atsa no FLASH atsa FLASK.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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101 comments:
Rex – I really enjoyed your write-up this morning. But for me this was one of KAC’s kinder, gentler offerings. Getting BUSH HOG very early didn’t hurt. Once I changed “growl” (as in stomach) to DROOL and “logo” to ICON, I had this puppy sewn up pretty quickly for a Saturday.
Then I sat, yet again, pondering the difference between DROOL and slobber. Slobber feels much more active and exuberant, like the slobberer is fully engaged and aware. But DROOL feels quieter and sneakier. Like maybe the DROOLer isn’t even aware of their offense. Also, DROOL is a naptime event. If I happen upon a napper who is slobbering, I’ma back myself out of the room on tippy toe and rethink my relationship with this person.
GOING RATES reminded me of all the pay toilets in Europe.
“Words said when one is speechless.” Wait. What? I would argue that you say I CAN’T EVEN when you’re almost speechless but not quite. A couple of weeks ago, a girl in my homeroom answered my question about another student with a hummed mm MMM mm meaning she didn’t know. I said, Hey! You just said I don’t know without saying the words! But then we decided what with Uh uh and Uh huh that this wasn’t that ground-breaking, and we kept it moving.
Man oh man the clue for EWES was tough. Who knew? I don’t know much at all about Ghana, but judging from the pictures I just looked at, I can tell its EWES are friendly.
I was confused by the clue for ARTISTES. The word feels almost sarcastic or cynical. Like Monet is the real deal, an artist. But a caricaturist is an ARTISTE, not quite ready for prime time. Put another way, Florence Foster Jenkins is an ARTISTE, whereas Kiri Te Kanawa is an artist.
Mom and I have a THEME party coming up – a Derby Day at the clubhouse of our little community. She was so excited about it, about having me participate with her, that I didn’t have the heart to say no. There will be food! And games! And we have to dress up and wear hats! And this year no one will be admitted without a ticket, so we have to get ours fast! (Apparently last year, there were sneakers-in who crashed the event, so the food ran out pretty quickly. People are still talking about it.) Look. I’m no spring chicken, but I can tell you that an afternoon spent being charming to Mom’s friends, pretending to enjoy the cloying punch (ladled out from the actual punch bowl into the matching little punch glasses), nibbling on the nuts and after-dinner mints. . . jeez Louise as I type this, I hate myself for being such a jerk. But now I’m caught up in finding the perfect white hat to go with my outfit. And I’m borrowing some white gloves from my sister. Mom got her hat from a nearby Goodwill-type store nearby for only $3. I’m looking on Amazon for mine. Go big, or go home.
A clip from the Venice Film Festival entry Ox Day Afternoon, starring Laura Dern and Ving Rhames
(Avia is at her kitchen table, tinkering with a shiny object. Her late-teenaged daughters Lara and Rhonda flounce in and plop down at the table)
Lara (to Avia): "Today is Japan's Midsummer Day of the Ox, in case you didn't know. So could you make us some eel so we can celebrate? Like, right NOW. Do you mind??"
Rhonda: "Wait – eel? Shouldn't she make ox?"
Lara: "It's called a misdirect, sweetie. That's what they do in Japan, to confuse you. Like today. It's dedicated to one animal but then they eat a totally different one. Anyway, when I eat ox, French people say I look fat, so eel is better." (to Avia) "Eel. With snow peas. And sesame seed dressing. And octopus."
Rhonda (petulantly): "But I don't want eel or ox or octopus." (thinks for a few seconds) "I know! Make me some bowtie pasta!"
Avia: "Well, lasses, I would, but I was busy all morning."
Lara: "Meaning what, exactly?"
Avia: "I've made a tiara for you to wear to the ufologist's tech-startup party in the park tonight, Lara. So I didn't have time to get to the market yet."
Rhonda: "But I'm so-o-o hungry."
Lara (opening the refigerator): "All that's in here is some rye bread and a jar of mayo."
Rhonda (practically in tears): "Are you trying to scare us away?"
Lara (slamming the door): "Listen you tool, we are artistes. You can't treat us like this. And I'm not going to any ufologist party, they're all a bunch of sketchy sleazos, so you can keep your tiara. (pause) Anyway, your cooking sucks. They have better grub at the Army mess tent. C'mon, sib, let's go over there. We'll flirt with the soldiers." (to Avia) "We're leaving."
Avia: "After everything I do for you, this is your attitude? Well then, get out!! GO, INGRATES!!!"
Rhonda: "Hey maybe Willem Dafoe will be there and I can say 'Oh, hi'. I mean, he was in Platoon and all..." (Lara and Rhonda depart)
(pause)
Avia: "I...I can't even."
•
About the right amount of tough. Hardest was the northwest area – I couldn't imagine who the actor could be, even with some letters in place (I never saw either movie but was kind of aware of the main cast members of both). The rest of it was actually pretty smooth, even while requiring some thought. Nothing seemed outlandish. Well maybe EWES, but eventually that couldn't be anything else, so okay, whatever. I enjoyed it.
This one played medium for me. It started tough. I didn't hit pay dirt until I put in EDGE and supported it with SLANG. Once started the solve became steady and stayed that way.
Did anyone else think at some point that 24A might be TECHnicolor. Of course I was at a party store yesterday picking out balloons so I kind of had that in my mind.
The clue for EWES is a Shortz era debut . Pre-Shortz there are only a couple of examples. The one from '53 is a doozie "Natives of The Slave Coast."
Backfilling the NW to finish I tried to kick start it with PORTRATURE at 15A because I'm always good for creative spelling. I even supported it with SPICY and was wondering if the Japanese eat YAK or YAM when I just said no and got out the eraser. RILL and TOOL showed the way. As I said once the solve started it always found a way to keep moving.
yd -0
Didn’t really like this one, definitely played hard but also 1a was by far the weakest clue in the puzzle and as the most prominent one it set the tone for the puzzle.
This was a DNF for me - lots of wrong starts. I'm usually able to get unknowns from crosses, but not today. Too many misspellings and not enough effort on my part. SHONDA instead of RHONDA - resisted TIARA for so long because of MITRE.
@LMS - What happened to Mint Juleps on Derby Day? I thought that was the whole point.
Overwrites includes gROwL (3D) and logo (16A). Hi, @LMS!
UFO LOGgerS before UFOLOGISTS at 17A (I thought there might be people who log UFO sightings)
BUSHHOG at 8D and GET as clued at 31A were both WOEs. I wanted BackHOe, which left me with the nonsensical eET for the impressive hire. Eventually got it by trial-and-error when the happy music didn't play.
Another WOE: The EWE people of Ghana.
Very hard getting rid of ALGORITHMS for {Field of computing}
Some random observations:
• Last Saturday Sid Sivakumar and today KAC? Crosslandia heaven.
• I hate brutal one-word clues like [Fluff] for ERROR, then I love them when I get them.
• Lovely PuzzPair© of LARA and THEME.
• I liked the unsavory person vibe undertone of TOOL, CAD, and RAT.
• Learned EWES and BUSH HOG.
• Five NYT debut answers, all excellent additions to the oeuvre: GOING RATES, MEANING WHAT, NOGOS, TECH STARTUP, and UFOLOGISTS.
• ADDRESS BAR is appropriately on top, while the SNOW PEAS are appropriately on the side.
This is all before a host of lovely clues, including the tricky [Produce in pods], the so-fresh and somehow-make-me-feel-wonderful [Who had us at “Hello”?], and the never-done-before beauty [Note taker?]. Not to mention a host of lovely answers: CARICATURE, SCATTER, MEANING WHAT, SCARE AWAY, BUSH HOG, I CAN’T EVEN, and DO YOU MIND.
That is a lot of wow in one grid. I said last week re Sid that his puzzles are events. Well, so are yours, Cameron. I’m very grateful for the pleasure your puzzles bring me, including today’s jewel. Thank you!
As s life long city dweller I struggled with BUSHHOG until the bitter end, Overall just about right for a Saturday but if UFOLOGISTS is a real thing it shouldn’t be,
Fearfully hard to get started. AVIA/RHAMES was my unlikely entry, but those led nowhere. It was not until LARA in the far SW that I really got a foothold. Some days, the PPP giveth.
I really appreciate that despite the overall trend to easyness of the NYT puzzles, there is still a constructor or two out there that is given the leeway to provide satisfyingly difficult one.
Kameron’s cluing is always an outlier for me - I like it but takes me some time to settle in. The NW quadrant was rough - and the last for me to finish. Like @LMS had “growl” in lieu of DROOL and UFOLOGISTS was obtuse. Land clearing attachments are BrUSH HOGs - BUSH HOG is a long standing brand name - that one gave me some fight.
American SLANG
The rest of the puzzle was slick and went in fine. Loved the conversational stuff - MEANING WHAT and I CANT EVEN. BOWTIES x SESAME SEEDS is cool. Always relate LARA to Julie Christie. EWES was backed into.
Enjoyable Saturday solve. Nice one-two punch with Mossberg’s Stumper.
THIEF in the Night
@kitshef: Agreed, this lovely puzzle by KAC counters the NYT’s overall trend to easiness. But that may be true for all of this week’s puzzles. I don’t pay close attention to my times, but I believe they were all over my average for the past several days. Either the puzzles are getting tougher again, or I’m . . . Never mind. The puzzles are getting tougher again.
I first cringed at UFO Logists? Huh? Seriously?
Until I got the multi-level word play. Then loved it. Loved it a lot. Even more than a lot. Like tons more than even a lot.
I fought the good fight but eventually succumbed to the SE corner crossingss of VAN and LIDO with ADELE. Hoping for better luck with the Saturday Stumper.
Totally missed the clue on ADELE (I’m so awesome at popular culture). I thought maybe she was a character in Hello Dolly or some other play or movie. Crossing with an island off of the Italian coast didn’t help.
The highlight of the day for me was the clue for EEL, an answer that shows up about twice a week. I love that they went with “doyo no ushi no hi” - and they even translated it for us. That is classic NYT.
Was sorry to see that they went with the Bluegrass RHONDA instead of the RED HOT RHONDA (of Help Me RHONDA fame). Similarly, with so many NORRIS’s around, they went with the dude from like 1900 when they could have slipped a perfectly delightful Hermione into their clue set today. Oh well, chacun à son goût on that one I guess.
I’ll admit to being confused by the clue for TIARA. I know that the Catholic Church has been struggling with the whole gender-bending and age of consent quagmire for like centuries now, but still the thought of the Pope in a Miss Universe contest still seemed like a stretch to me. Then I saw that a TIARA is also a diadem “worn by a Pope” - so today I learned that diadem is a synonym for a funny hat.
Did anyone else have UrOLOGISTS, wondering uncomfortably what kind of discs they deal with? I literally was thinking about disc-shaped kidney stones until Willem DAFOE came to me.
That whole NW was super-hard for me. I wanted to take a BUSH HOG to the whole thing, or a BackHOe as I and surely many others had originally. I had CARtoon aRt on the Boardwalk crossing a starT button. I thought the French king’s nickname must have been the rAT or the cAT. The former had me briefly putting in (Brenda) Starr as the note-taker. She was a reporter. (That was indeed a great clue for THIEF.)
My start came in the east, where I had every single box in the four rightmost columns filled in, top to bottom. You would think that would help me expand westward, but the only trail that I found in that direction was SESAME SEED, all the way down at the bottom. I came at the south from the other end, which was pretty easy except that I put in MEANING tHAT (and SIs), which gave me an unappealing pasta called sOtTIES. Ick. I fixed that, but the brutal NW awaited.
So, very hard for me but satisfying to finally conquer it. So many great clues, my favorite part of the solving experience.
OK, popes wear TIARAs? Under the mitre or over it? Are these drag queen popes? (Of course, I had mitre first, although I left the last two letters blank because sometimes it’s miter.)
Touché, @JOE DIPINTO. it was worth reading your story to get to GO, INGRATES.
Re 56A
What's all this talk I hear about lowering the standard for financial transactions? GO INGRATES? You mean to say that we should celebrate and promote people who have no appreciation or gratitude for the sacrifices - the blood, the sweat and the tears - that give hardworking men and women the financial means to make these transactions possible. That's ridiculous.
I'm appalled. And appalled that the New York Times could promote such degeneracy.
Hand up for GROWL. And SIS. And STENO. And even UROLOGISTS. Come on, man.
I was wondering how much trouble folks would have with BUSHHOG. When you own a lot of open fields, like we used to, we had to have them BUSHHOGGED every year. Otherwise the brush starts growing, which is why I have also heard the term "brush hog".
Maybe @JoeD can link to "My Girl is REDHOT (your girl ain't doodly squat) which always makes me smile.
Great Saturday, KAC. I Knew A Cool puzzle was coming when I saw your name. and was not disappointed. Just the right amount of obscure answers and sideways cluing, and thanks for all the fun.
Too tough for me. I threw in the towel early and began reading Rex's blog, and peeking at his solution. Agree with E. Litella about 56A; nice comment, E.
UFOLOGISTS???
Gunther Toody of Car 54 came to mind as I uttered “Ooh Ooh!” at several late discoveries.
Not to mention his classic, DOYOUMIND!
https://youtu.be/RAqnyppikGg
Ugh, I had a hard time. Not my day! I finished but with some googling so it doesn’t count. I did learn something’s I guess? So that’s a plus!
Always love a Mr. Collins puzzle.
@LMS - The ARTISTES answer was close enough to get me the answer eventually, but virtuosi are people with highly developed skill. As you suggest, there is a certain "poser" quality to artistes, at least in English.
While trying to get 15A, I was picturing the sketch artists that hang out under the American Elms in Central Park while searching for the exact word that my brain temporarily denied access to.
Dafoe had a great, perfect role in Nightmare Alley. I can't remember him in American Psycho; I mainly remember that great scene with the business card envy.
Perfect Saturday, even solved completely at night in bed, so probably easy for KAC puzzle.
Wonderful construction. Hard but lots of chances for breakthroughs. Lucky to get CARICATURE from the “sketchy” misdirect. But wondered for the longest time what UrOLOGISTS had to do with discs.
Amy: a super Saturday; all's right in the world.
Wow. Just Wow. 👍👍
I agree with Andy Freude that this week has been tough. Weds/Thurs/Fri/Sat were all much harder than usual in my book. Last week's Sid Saturday was tough, too. I gotta say that the typical Saturday NYT crossword is at that sweet spot for me between satisfyingly difficult and frustration, and I really hope that the puzzles don't get shifted into the harder direction too much.
29D. Instead SCAREAWAY had SCAREEASY which crushed me on the EWE cross.
If you have not heard it, give a listen to Scare Easy by Mudcrutch. Medium cut and essential Tom Petty.
Amazing how my solving experience tracked with Rex’s. Zactly. Serious fun.
@burtonkd 9:15a - I’ve been walking through the Park for years and still am amazed at the elms and the overall majesty of the Mall. I always find time to visit when I’m in the area. If you head north to the Reservoir - the Okame Cherrys are in full bloom right now.
Send out the UFOLOGISTS to interview the constructor of this nightmare of a puzzle since he inhabits an entirely different planet from the one I inhabit. I Googled DAFOE for my first cheat and when that wasn't nearly enough, I came here, scrolled down to the answer to 1A -- while averting my eyes from all other answers.
ADDRESS BAR for "field of computing"??? Surely you jest. A TECH STARTUP is a "unicorn"??? Really???
FAT went in immediately -- so I wrote in "stafF" (instead of THIEF) for the "note taker." That put the whole NW completely out of reach. And don't even get me started on crossing the bluegrass singer...with the novelist...with the Mission Impossible person...with the company. It just isn't done, Kameron -- or at least it shouldn't be.
Major cheats and I still ended up with a DNF because I wanted a HOE for the land-clearing clue. My cheat enabled me to go from BUTT HOE (that 2nd "T" from STAFF) to BUSH HOE -- but BUSH HOG was way beyond my ken. Of course BUSH HOE left me with EET for the "impressive hire". What on earth? Extra-elevated techie? Hell, why not? After all, it was that kind of puzzle.
Re: ARTISTE. I've only heard it in a positive sense - a particularly skillful performer - or at worst neutral. I suspect if people are hearing it used pejoratively that's coming from the same people who want to make 'intellectual', 'elite', and 'educated' into insults.
Very nice puzzle…just like yesterday’s.
Ha, BUTT HOE would be for another kind of puzzle entirely @Nancy (yes I too can have the sense of humor of an eleven-year-old boy at times).
This was a gym puzzle for me. I didn’t have a ton of fun in the solving (and allowed myself a couple googles to confirm certain guesses), but I feel very accomplished now. I had a similar experience to @Son Volt in that it took me a while to get used to KAC’s cluing.
I got CARICATURE right away, thank goodness, and did a pretty quick pass of the puzzle with very little filling in before I got to realize I needed to start with the shortest words and backfill from there. That meant closing in fill from the edges, which eventually became satisfying - I really earned the finish today. Not brutal, but challenging.
Re: yesterday, had a no good very bad day and didn’t get to solving til the evening, so a belated comment. My partner actually was on Eton’s rugby team (they’re American, but their father was in the foreign service), so it was fun when I asked then for help on that clue as I had liON first. Apparently everyone there must be in one sport per term - aristos have to be well-rounded I suppose?
Yeeshk. Typical Saturday for me. Stuff I've never heard of next to clues designed to be the opposite of helpful. Quite a hobby.
Did you do @Masked and Anonymous's uniclue puzz yet? It beat me up pretty good in only 7x7.
Uniclues:
1 Miracle Whip, ya know, because they believe in fake things.
2 Public relations plan for the Kardashian family resulting in way too many butt photos.
3 Corporate big wigs in charge of deforestation.
4 Request famous vocalist shut it.
1 UFOLOGISTS' MAYO
2 RED HOT THEME
3 BUSH HOG BOW TIES
4 DO YOU MIND ADELE?
I was feeling so proud of myself for finishing. Finally figured out that it was VAN/NOSED rather than VAg (for vagabond)/gOrED, that those medical researchers were dealing with a CELL, not a piLL. (Like Rex, I considered iWoS, but unlike him I know where the Ibos are found, and finally remembered EWES. I could even see how SIEMENS might be linked to Westinghouse. And I ultimately realized that THIEr was unlikely (at least I'd avoided the 'steno') misdirect, so #6 wasn't "Louis the rAT." But I'd forgotten about DAFOE, so I too went with UrOLOGISTS -- didn't make sense, but it sounds a lot like neurologists, who do deal with discs (first-hand knowledge here). And I left in SIs, forgetting to check the crosses.
I think the last thing I got was RATS ON (malapop!); I'd thought the singer must be rapping, but couldn't make that work with 34A. Doh!
I did love the colloquialisms; and I've read The Octopus and bicycled around the LIDO, so that helped.
In the end, a lot of fun -- but it would have been more fun if I'd checked those crosses!
I wanted to enter CARICATURE at 15A right off the bat, then backed off because I was sure it began with CH. Otherwise would have finished ten minutes sooner.
webwinger
Thx, Kameron; terrific Sat. creation! :)
Tough.
Zilch in the NW, then SNOW PEAS got me GOING in the NE. Had SNap PEAS originally.
BackHOe before BUSH HOG.
Slow and steady the rest of the way, until getting back to the NW, which took forever, and resulted in an embarrassing dnf at the DEFOE / UFOLOGISTS cross. Was thinking an UvOLOGIST might be involved with 'overy' (another sp lapse) discs; DAFOE / DeFOE is a kea/loa for me, with a 'V' in place of the 'F' sometimes working its way into the mix. To make matters even worse, I couldn't locate the error. :(
Nevertheless, time well spent, and maybe a lesson learned. :)
___
Hoping for a better performance on Steve Mossberg's Sat. Stumper. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
I have a dentist appointment I’ve been dreading next week. Having attempted to solve this puzzle will make it seem much less painful in comparison. So there’s that.
Medium here. "Gentler than usual" came to my mind, too (Hi, @Loren); it certainly was a faster solve for me than KAC's previous bruiser.
Unlike others here, I found the NW the easiest quadrant. A start with CARICATURE x ACUTE gave me enough to fill it all in except for the tractor attachment, which I left as BUS: the next letter was the second in T?IE?, which I absolutely could not parse - I could only see a misspelled "their" or the German city Trier. Anyway, I headed to the SW via REDHOT and RATS ON; after I finished there, BOWTIES opened up the SE, and then I climbed up the right side to VIDS x VIM. That left me with the hole where I needed the tractor attachment and the nickname of a king - let's see: bAT, cAt...seriously, I needed the alphabet run for FAT, and suddenly there was the THIEF, and a nod of appreciation for "best clue."
Do-overs: SIs before SIB, ionS before TAUS, mItRe before TIARA. No idea: NORRIS, RHONDA, BUSHHOG. Lucky guess: SIEMENS with no crosses. Crucial squares: the OE that gave me DAFOE and the P of PEAS that jogged my mind to STARTUP.
I think I'll mosey over to the Reservoir right now and take a look at the cherry blossoms. Too bad I don't know what either @Son Volt or @burtonkd look like or I'd suggest we all meet there. (I'll be going in at East 90th Street -- around 11:30.
The elms at the Mall are indeed majestic -- but it's one of my least favorite areas of the park. Too manicured. Too much concrete.
Too many skateboards. Not "wild"-looking enough.
(I know Central Park is entirely man-made -- but parts of it actually look like pure wilderness -- almost.)
Now see....this is how to clue a proper beast. I want to work for my delicious supper because I know the sweet aroma will still be wafting under my nose. It did.
I had some agita angst moments, to be sure. IA was a stare fest. Can I even pick out something with this huge menu? Oh wait! Like @Rex, I got RILL.
Names that had me reaching for the Pepto Bismo: RHAMES, RHONDA and DEFOE. They busted my chops. I left the attic and headed elsewhere. Hmmm, smells good down in the basement area. First longie was MEANING WHAT and RING TONE. Those two answers gave me hope. Yes.
Back up to the attic and try, try, try to get into Kameron's wheelhouse. Ah, yes. Of course, CARICATURE makes sense if you squint and squish your eyes at the clue. Brava to me. I smelled a cheat coming. I was the note taker THIEF. It was worth it. It wiped the DROOL from my face. ADDRESS BAR? Drats, I had to look you up. You were worth it because you gave me the downs I needed to feel FAT and happy.
Words began to pop in. They went in slowly. I wasn't at all sure if I could identify all the ingredients . I would write you in and then check if you tasted right. Yes! I guessed a ton... payoff in check....except you, BUSH HOG. You were the HOE today. I also liked that EIT was my impressive hire. Sigh. One bad apple in the lot. The rest of the fruit was ripe and delectable.
When I finished, the taste in my mouth was still sweet. I learned that with patience I can get a TECH START UP unicorn...that the clue for EEL is probably the longest most convoluted one I've bitten into and that UFOLOGISTS aren't urologists.
A primo Saturday. I was truly proud at myself for getting practically everything tossed at me.
@Joe D, our maitre d' ARTISTIS gives us the house special for dessert.......Buenisimo!
"Stuff I've never heard of next to clues designed to be the opposite of helpful." -- @Gary J
Plain wonderful description of today's puzzle and other equally sadistic examples.
Mediumish. Solid, smooth and Saturday tough.
WOEs: TAUS, BUSHHOG, EWES (as clued), RHONDA (as clued) (could have used some “Beach Boys” here).
Time suck erasures: Like @lms et. al. gRowL before DROOL, dial before RING, mItre before TIARA.
Crunchy solve with some fine long downs, liked it a bunch!
Took me 1 hour and 1 minute finished with no cheats, I'm very happy with that! Just stared at top corner forever. Finally got DAFOE and UFO
Also had growl. Didn't know RILL so it was hard hard hard!
After watching Rex's creepy Lionel Richie video, I looked it up, and that's been voted in the top worst music videos of all time. I wonder if a non blind actress stumbling around pretending to be blind while her older teacher stalks her would fly today?
That made me find this GEM with Lionel Richie and Jimmy Fallon, worth a watch.
Sorry spent too much time trying to imbed click able link I'm typing on phone, not going well
https://youtu.be/xXJSmGfw9oI
Or Google Lionel richie jimmy Fallon it's so funny!!
Two look ups today, and two errors. I didn't know the films featuring DAFOE, or the work of Mr. NORRIS. And I was dead in the water. Either the puzzles have been a bit tough this week, or my allergy meds are kicking me in the …
BUSHHOe/eET - like @Nancy I just had to shrug at eet for the big hire.
The other error was not noticing sOWTIES. Thanks, SIS.
I liked SCATTER after trying to make expanse work, and I had a fuzzy memory that there was a new-speak use of unicorn when stuffed toy and kiddie poster wouldn't fit. Yay for REDHOT, STITCH and RINGTONE.
Sometimes I feel the colloquial phrases are overdone, but DOYOUMIND was very nice, and MEANINGWHAT was okay too.
Maybe next time I’ll remember GAM as an alternative to pod.
Fun challenge. Way above my average time. Hands up for gROwL and SIs. I wanted the note taker to be some kind of musical _clEF for the longest time. Erased STITCH at least twice. The blank squares were pretty resistant around the NORRIS/RHONDA cross. Resorted to Google for the ethnic group. Had _W_S and was sure that was wrong. Looked up the demographics of Ghana and there they were, the EWES, and that little four-letter word helped me get the puzzle’s west coast.
I did this with my boy, and at first we had an awful lot of WHITESPACE. Then, when he put in Ibos for EWES, I said, “I smell a RATSON. But let’s keep going and see if we ERROR not.” Once we got to 45D, he said, “Dad, so help me RHONDA is Ms. Vincent’s first name.”
I believe I once saw Cari Cature and Lara Lynx in a drag show in San Francisco.
There’s no peas like SNOWPEAS, and this puzzle reminds me that it’s about time to plant them.
This was the first Saturday puzzle that I can remember having a THEME in it (28A).
Great cluing made this a a tough one, especially around the EDGES. Thanks, KAC.
Was too reluctant to give up on SKETCH rather than STITCH, otherwise nice, time-consuming Saturday fare.
You're a "stitch!"
MAYO is a clinic. What sort of sauce would that be good in?
An appropriate clue would be "Brief dressing", or some such.
Here is Red Hot, for @pablo.
And another little ditty by pianist Marc-André Hamelin.
Agree with LMS that an artist is always respectable, while artiste can connote shallowness or pretentiousness. I definitely don't equate artiste with virtuoso, which is someone with a supreme mastery of difficult skills.
@johnk -- How about "Short term" for "Brief"?
Cannot pass on a KAC Saturday (although I soon won’t have the chance - Customer “Service” just informed me that they are discontinuing the Digest for individual subscribers). As expected, a gem of a solve. Right with Rex on the NW, along with CARICATURE appearing from the depths to save me.
@LMS - Artist ➡️ ARTISTE ➡️ ARTISTE feels like it happened in my lifetime. I still occasionally hear ARTISTE as a compliment, but mostly it is said with the “what a poseur” sneer.
Once again, just like yesterday … tons of neat stuff.
Plus, a few bonus no-knows: UFOLOGISTS. RHONDA. NORRIS. BUSHHOG.
staff weeject pick: VAN. M&A can kinda identify with its clue … we own a 16-year-old VAN, that has been to most of the US states. We're talkin Augusta, Montpelier, Columbus, Champaign-Urbana, Nashville, St. Pete, New Orleans, Abilene, Santa Fe, La Jolla, Vegas, Fargo, KC, Nebraska City, Minneapolis, Green Bay, Bismarck, Sioux Falls, Boise, Missoula, Denver, Buffalo, Mackinac Island, … more, but, I digress. And Canada.
UFOLOGLISTS do prostrate exams on flyin saucers, fwi.
Thanx for the feisty fun, Mr. Collins dude. And congratz, on @RP likin it.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
tetra-clues, sorta:
**gruntz**
To me it felt like Friday and Saturday were switched. Am I the only one?
I started out with RILL, TOOL and a guess on EEL that paid off. After ACUTE and DROOL, the three Acrosses in the NW went right in. I had PEP for VIM, but I knew that 16A had to be LOGO-adjacent, so VIM and ICON it is. "I CAN'T EVEN" was my favorite answer in the whole puzzle.
The SW looked tough to crack with just LYNX and SAX in place, but luckily SCARE AWAY was easy with the Y. I'm not good with celebrity names but thank goodness I know LAURA DERN from crosswordese. I finished on the BUSHHOG/GET crossing.
I know it's Saturday, but NOW is a word. Always annoying to see acronym clues where there is no need for them.
Finished it, but had to cheat. I first had BACKHOE, then BUSHHOE, then Googled BUSHHOE and got BUSHHOG. When I just typed in "BUSHHOG" my computer changed it to BUSHING. So I feel justified in having cheated.
Otherwise it was a difficult puzzle, especially in the NW. I didn't like the clue for ADDRESSBAR, but that might just indicate my lack of tech knowledge. The bottom of the puzzle was easier, I thought.
@JoeD-Thanks. You're a brick, and anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight.
Hey @Z-Hi!
How the hell is a unicorn a TECH START-UP??
The Papal TIARA (a three-tiered crown, actually) was retired by Paul VI in a gesture of support for the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. No pope has worn it since 1963. So a bishop's mitre has been the actual "Papal topper" for the last 60 years.
Lots of things to like in this Saturday challenge. Unlike Rex, the NameFest hurt me instead of unlocking the grid for me: Frank NORRIS, LIDO island, Ghanaian EWES, Boris Pasternak's LARA, FAT Louis, RHAMES Ving, RHONDA Vincent were all ??? for me and made the grid much harder. At least I knew of DAFOE and LAURA DERN but I needed a fair number of crosses before those fell. The NORRIS/RHONDA was fairly Naticky, especially when I still had dIalTONE instead of RINGTONE, and I was looking for a Frank aO_RIS.
How is Sings about = RATSON?
GOING RATES reminded me of all the pay toilets in Europe...genius!
Bravo!
Since Sailor brought it up…
The Bishop of Rome, AKA the Pope, wears a lot of hats. Yes, a miter is one, it denotes his authority. But they also wear zucchettos, reddish purple, always. ( it’s officially amaranth red).
But I have a question. Why is Southside Johnny’s flippant, and profoundly ignorant anti-Catholic post permitted?
Imagine his using turban as the launching point for a riff on Sikhism? Or a yarmulke to mOck Judaism?
And I guarantee, absolutely with 100% certainty he wouldn’t mock Mohammad if there were any chance he could be identified. He wouldn’t have the physical,courage, because, well, ask Charlie Hebdo survivors what happens to those who mock Islam?
But CatholicIsm? That’s fair game. Why is that?
@MetroGnome - a unicorn is a start-up/private company that has a valuation of more than one billion dollars. A NYTimes article today about the rising trend of criminal prosecutions of start-up executives (The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley) noted that there are currently around 1200 such companies. I worked for one of the ones mentioned in the article and my former boss reports for prison on April 27th. I have a nice bottle of champagne reserved for the occassion.
MetroGnome,
a unicorn is a startup valued at one billion dollars or more
“Go big, or go home,” suggests @LMS and that could be an apt description of Kameron’s grid, Rex’s critique or our tag team effort this morning. iboS before EWES, SIs before SIB among the many ERRORs that needed a RESET. Had to start in the middle of the grid with AVÍA recalled from marathon moments, NORRIS from novels taught in AmLit and SIEMENS from the hearing aid charger ensconced bedside. KAC is a byline we’re always delighted to see.
As is often the case with these bruising puzzles, the salvation is in the downs, sine qua I would have no chance whatsoever. My initial tour through the acrosses, following my methodology, left a near-empty grid. I finished in a reasonably salutary time, though, so . . . fun.
Usually KAC's puzzles are a little too opaque for me, but this one was just the right amount of tough. For 46 across "Your point being?", I had the T at the end and immediately saw WHAT ABOUT IT. I misread the clue for 39 across as "Farm figure" (those danged r-n r-m combinations in that Across Lite font look identical!) and put in EWE which turned out to be a malapop of 54 across.
The only -- Vincent singer I could think of was ST. Vincent which doesn't fit even if you spell it out SAINT. And hands up for wanting MITRE before TIARA.
[Spelling Bee: yd -1, for some inexplicable reason missed this 6er. Even though I got these evil twins!]
What on earth is wrong with me! CORRECTION:
[Spelling Bee: yd -1, for some inexplicable reason missed this 6er.]
@Sailor (1:09). Drop down to this corner of the playground (by the drinking fountain). We've got a nice piece of cake for you.
Nice to have 2 (or more) good answers to lots of clues, even with rather long answers. With a minimum of trivia and even with the obligatory ADELE, this was a splendid puzzle.
@SouthsideJohnny 7:44 AM
HARRY POTTER IS #1! The cat Mrs. Norris is owned by Argus Filtch, the building caretaker at Hogwarts, while Hermione's cat is named Crookshanks and he needs to be in way more puzzles. There is also the lost diadem of Ravenclaw that looks exactly like a tiara Harry must destroy in order to prevent the spread of Catholicism (ehem, joking).
@Joe D 6:31
Popping in to say what an awesome scene! Had me chuckling the whole time!
RooMonster Only Wishes He Could Write Such A Great Scene Guy
This puzzle was not at all enjoyable for me - A lot of stuff I didn't know and not enough help on the crosses to suss out. Bush hog? Random Blues singer? Taus? Ufologist - which I did figure out, but WTH? Has anyone ever heard anyone referred to as a ufologist? I didn't realize that tech start ups were called unicorns. Have never read Pasternak, nor have I heard of "The Octopus". Cool to learn new things, but it made this puzzle utterly brutal for me.
I didn’t know the VFF island, and had to just guess between LASS and PASS, but other than that thoroughly enjoyed it.
I wasn't as pleased as Rex with this one. I especially didn't like the NW - I agree with Phillyrad1999 that if UFOLOGISTS is a real word it shouldn't be. Are presidential scholars potusologists? Are the scientists at Monsanto gmologists? Maybe the ufology department at the local university can answer these vexing questions.
Ditto re “Going rates!” Classic @LMS
I call on NORRIS / RHONDA.
This wasn’t as difficult a KAC puzzle as I expected. I usually struggle mightily and am faced with the dreaded DNF. Today, once I ignored my snow blindness from the very blank NW and moved on, things got much easier. Not easy mind you, just less than impossible.
Not that I didn’t enter a ton of WAGs, but each had at least one other possibility so thank goodness for backspace! And then there’s my misspelling. I finally got DAFOE (who but a real film minutiae buff would know he was in both those?). I usually remember that he is Willem not William, but alas, almost never spell DAFOE correctly the first time, but since I was at the end of my struggle, I caught it quickly since I “saw” the “sketchy” clue with clarity. Of course, CARICATURES!
The mistake (merely one of a bazillion) that nearly DNF’d me though was the BUSHHOG. In the three plus decades of acting as legal counsel for thirty elected and appointed county officers, I can say with certainty that in oklahoma the machine is an BrUSH HOG. Usually two words, occasionally one. Never in all the years of discussing and preparing bid documents for purchasing those did I ever see it advertised as a BUSH HOG. Accordingly, I scoffed, yes - full on scoff at the “incorrect description” of what must be a Back HOe. So, in addition to the NW being just super tough (for me) today, I compound the difficulty with my misplaced scoffing. For shame! Thank the crossword goss for CARICATURE (again!) because neither ADDRESS BAR nor UFOLOGISTS that looked like it was missing an extra O to make it pronounceable. Again, to me in my admitted ignorance - is the ET aficionado a “you-followgist rather than a U-F-O-ologist? Whew! Just something else that slowed me waaaaay down.
What a pleasure this tough-ish Saturday turned out to be! I feel as if KAC deliberately made some of this one easy just to lure all of us who see that byline with trepidation with a false sense of security. Fabulous Saturday; more please!
I agree with "made in Japan." UFOLOGISTS is a contrived word, and this is a crossword puzzle.
The party description made me miss my mom. Good for you for going. I promise that there comes a day you would give anything to be able to be her date again.
Ugh. Anothe ignorant, flippant anti-Catholic post? ( see Southside Johnny)
Wow. Just wow.
I have noticed that for end of week puzzles the Times doesn't always have in brief etc for shortened word, especially frequently used ones. So the Times sets the rules of their puzzle. I see nothing wrong with the clue.
I solved this one in just under 2 hours. For me, that’s fast. Most Saturdays take a day or two of ruminating, for me. But this one fell into place too quick for me to love. I prefer a tougher challenge— and thus more rewarding. But I liked it, overall. Struggled in the SE, but eventually reasoned it out even though I don’t actually know anything about Adele or Lido.
Stumbled with minx instead of lynx, at first. And had growl before drool, but those were the only real missteps that I fairly quickly corrected.
So yeah, enjoyed it. But also kinda disappointed to solve it so fast.
Singing to the police, an old SLANG term, crosswordese now.
Another Saturday of stretchy clues that lost my interest early. ADDRESSBAR is not, technically, a computing field, but a browsing field. There is no computation done with this information, just a lookup. And when I worked summer maintenance at a golf course during college, it was called a BRUSHHOG, not a BUSHHOG (maybe its like soda and pop). Then all of the names, and I punted early to watch Svengoolie ( I work the puzzle in the evening after I have settled in for the evening). I haven't even checked the rest pf the puzzle to see what other stretchy clues I can complain about!
@CDilly52, here is a Google Ngram chart of BUSH HOG vs BRUSH HOG plus the single word versions, for American English. For the two word versions it's pretty much a tie in recent years. Might be a regional thing!
Great scene! Thanks!
@Anonymous 1:32PM
To answer your question:
Given the Catholic church's history of: Inquisitions, Witch Hunts (hundreds of thousands of women in Europe burned at the stake); Nazi support (even celebrating Hitler's birthday up through 1944); Crusades; Genocide (Rwanda, for example); Centuries of non-dissent (though they did apologize for imprisoning Galileo in 1992); Protecting pedophiles; And on and on and on ---
--- I think it's fair game to make fun of their hats.
In addition, I don't believe Jews (over the centuries) ever complained about their hats being made fun of.
Also, whereas making fun of Jewish beanies (or Muslim turbans) would be making fun of the cultural choice of millions of people, making fun of the pope's hat is making fun of exactly one person's hat -- the (funny) hat of the CEO of one of the richest institutions on the planet.
Had BackHOe before BUSHHOe. BUSHHOG beat me to the ground. I hope you’re happy Kameron. You win.
DNF: NW. Again. And again, and again. I HATE THE NW! I'd rather die than move there. Of course, I'm one of the 99.9% who never heard of a BUSHHOG. I had the MUCH more knowable BackHOe, and nothing else up there would work.
Note taker = THIEF?? Yeah, a taker can be a THIEF, but note??? MEANINGWHAT, banknotes? Dollar bills? Oh brother, that one borders VERY close to unfair territory. That clue is ASKING you to miss the answer. And there are more than one of those here. ADDRESSBAR, for a leadoff example.
However, it's a good day: the Golden Knights prevailed in a squeaker last night, going one up on Dallas. Uoward, Cupward!!
Wordle par.
GET ACUTE REDHOT LASS
DOYOUMIND perhaps ONEDAY
that YOU START me UP to DROOL?
YOU CAN'TEVEN SCARE me AWAY,
I'll RING SIEMENS from that TOOL.
--- LARA VAN LIDO
I haven't finished yet, but just had to comment: I love the () around "Midsummer Day of the Ox" as if, "Hey. You know. The old midsummer holiday, Doyo no Ushi no Hi. Right?"
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords and noter of things parenthetical
An unpleasant attitude to this one. No fun.
Excuse my terminology, but Amen.
@Sailor 1:09pm:
With a zucchetto worn under the mitre. That was some deep Catholic delving for me to remember the papal tiara. I was in grade school the last time the Pope wore it.
Having worked in a metallurgical laboratory for over 45 years, Siemens was a gimme answer for 36A. We got samples from Siemens-Westinghouse for several years until they dropped the Westinghouse name altogether. The Westinghouse name you see on TV's and appliances is owned by Electrolux. TMI.
(I never thought this day would ever come.)
BUSHHOG???? UFOLOGISTS??? WOE???
Those two are worse than PPP. Total DNF
Diana, LIW
This was hard. And I've only ever heard of that machine called a BrUSHHOG, so I really didn't like that one. RHONDA Vincent gets a yeah baby, and yee haw.
Disappointing Wordle par; as Chico Marx might say - atsa no FLASH atsa FLASK.
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