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Spotted nocturnal mammal / SUN 4-9-23 / Pants, slangily / Do some maintenance on, as a PC's disk / French name that is an anagram of a German river / Obsolescent circus workers / When repeated a 1999 #1 Santana hit
Sunday, April 9, 2023
Constructor: John Ewbank
Relative difficulty: Easyish
Theme answers:
- A BIRD IN THE HAND ... (22A: *"Let's stick with what we've got...")
- GREAT MINDS ... (33A: *"How clever we both are ...")
- SPEAK OF THE DEVIL ... (50A: *"Look who it is...")
- IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT ... (68A: *"Timid types shouldn't be here...")
- ALL THAT GLITTERS ... (88A: *"Looks can be deceiving...")
- WHEN IN ROME ... (105A: *"Well, if the locals are doing it...")
In the maintenance of file systems, defragmentation is a process that reduces the degree of fragmentation. It does this by physically organizing the contents of the mass storage device used to store files into the smallest number of contiguous regions (fragments, extents). It also attempts to create larger regions of free space using compaction to impede the return of fragmentation. Some defragmentation utilities try to keep smaller files within a single directory together, as they are often accessed in sequence.
Defragmentation is advantageous and relevant to file systems on electromechanical disk drives (hard disk drives, floppy disk drives and optical disk media). The movement of the hard drive's read/write heads over different areas of the disk when accessing fragmented files is slower, compared to accessing the entire contents of a non-fragmented file sequentially without moving the read/write heads to seek other fragments. (wikipedia)
• • •
What about the rest of it? I dunno, it was there and I did it. I had no idea McDonald's had a SECRET MENU (47D: Where a grilled cheese can be found at McDonald's). Is this true? I mean, I'm still never going there, but I'm curious. EXTENDING felt super-awkward as an answer for 79D: Like many suitcase handles. They're called "extension handles" or maybe "telescoping handles" or "telescopic" or "collapsing"—the idea that they are (currently in the act of?) EXTENDING seemed weird. The puzzle's weird infatuation with that creep ELON Musk continues unabated (two days in a row now) (58A: Twitter boss Musk). Apparently we're going to keep making TROU happen for the rest of my life (95A: Pants, slangily). There are two many variations on the spelling of ISADORA for me ever to be confident with the version I'm writing in (30A: Modern dance pioneer Duncan). Are the "characters" in 122D: Either of two lead characters in "Kiss Me, Kate" (KAY) literally just the letters at the beginning of "Kiss" and "Kate"??? So that "lead characters" = "first letters"??? That is nuts. I mean, clever, but shouldn't that clue have a "?" on the end of it? Anyway, that clue may be my favorite thing in this puzzle. STOMPS before CLOMPS (84A: Hardly tiptoes). ELENA before ELLEN (107D: Pompeo of "Grey's Anatomy"). I thought that where there was smoke there was FIRE, but apparently where there is smoke = the fireplace FLUE. That one got me. Not much else got me. I just hacked through it methodically, deliberately, funereally. Oh, ROAD GAME, that clue was tough—and good (10D: What an "@" might signify). [a ROAD GAME is also known as an “away game,” i.e. not a home game … like when the Tigers play @Twins]. Besides "the rest" of "SPEAK OF THE DEVIL...," the one thing I well and truly did not know today was that a SHIRE was a draft horse (20A: British draft horse). A SHIRE is a place name suffix or a place where a Hobbit lives or maybe a Talia. A draft horse, you say? I'd like to think I'll remember that. I doubt it, but I'll try.
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141 comments:
Easyish seems right. Cute, smooth, and fun, a nice breezy solve. Liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
NW was a tad tougher than the rest because I have no idea what a FRET SAW is.
I think it’s “Speak of the devil, here he/she is.”
Pretty harsh, Rex. Maybe, overly harsh. Yeah, I agree with your qualm about SPEAKOFTHEDEVIL, but the rest of the adequately clever and enjoyable. At least that's my humble opinion.
tc
I didn’t know the last half of the Devil quote either, and I also don’t know what a “road game” is
Very MEH and ISH
This went by very fast. Sundays usually seem a slog but not this; it zipped along.
I agree with most of what Rex said. But I would add that most of these "partial" sayings are often used as is: A BIRD IN THE HAND, IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT, and WHEN IN ROME. The exception is GREAT MINDS, and the internet says the full expression is actually "Great minds think alike, though fools seldom differ"; I mainly know the part before the comma. And as Rex also said, with SPEAK OF THE DEVIL I'm pretty sure I have never ever heard the remainder.
[Spelling Bee: Sat 0; my last word this 4er. But it's amusing that of these 3 words, only the 6er was not accepted even though it is used 40 times as often as the 5er, and is a close cousin of the 7er. Sam, Sam, Sam!]
I’ll bet most of us got that TINGLE of anticipation, that whoosh whoosh here I come feeling, when we dropped in FRETSAW at 1A with no crosses. Am I right? Well, you can lead a horse to water while the cat’s away, I always say.
On a more SIRIUS note (I’m pointing at you, Orion), we got a wonderful new Kealoa today in QUASAR/pulSAR. But I won’t take up another SECOND of your astronomical time with this Starry Night stuff.
The McDonalds SECRETMENU may EXIST, but IPASS. @Gary J will surely appreciate the I PEE ASS reading possible here.
I’m with Rex on both the meh-ity of the theme and the obscurity of the the denouement of SPEAKOFTHEDEVIL. I didn’t know there was an idiomatic second part.
cross of FRETSAW and TARDIS was tough for me.. Never heard of that saw. Had the same prob as Rex w FireE/FLUE. I agree with OFL, where was the wit, the twist, the curveball. NON-existant. CIVET? do a google image on that... scary!
ditto @Alice Pollard: the FRETSAW/TARDIS natick took what little joy there might have been in this puzzle completely away for me...
Agree fretsaw and tardis was a fail for me
Wikipedia says it's "Speak of the devil, and he doth appear." Or "shall appear", if you wanna get all modern.
"Where there's smoke" was weird to use as a clue since it could have been a theme answer in its own right.
Can BIEL and ALBA be kealoas? Oh please please please, can they? I've never seen either of these Jessicas and I always put the wrong one in first.
WENT DEAF seems like a pretty insensitive crossword answer, crassly clued to boot. What next?— "What Michael J. Fox did in the 1990's? GOT PARKINSON'S. Yeesh.
I thought it was an OK puzzle. Nothing great. But not as bad as some other recent Sundays.
@Cyclist227 at 2:05 a.m.
"But not as bad as some other recent Sundays."
I believe that qualifies as a back-handed compliment.
But I am in agreement.
Record time for me. I lucked out that the oddities like Tardis and fret saw were in my lexicon, and I’m old enough to use all the adages (and know the second halves.)
I've always heard "Speak of the devil, and up he pops". The equivalent French expression is, "Speak of the wolf, and you see his tail."
I felt shortchanged by this puzzle because it was so easy.
The version of "Speak of the devil..." that I remember from childhood ended with "...and here he comes!" My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all used this saying, and I honestly can't remember a time when I did NOT know the phrase or what it meant. It was only as an adult that I learned of the more erudite form of the conclusion, but the folksy version of my grands and all expressed the sense perfectly. As always, YMMV & etc.
A perfectly competent and reasonably entertaining puzzle from my perspective.
@Joe Dipinto – Right? I put a big smiley face next to that clue, “Where there’s smoke.” It feels like a sly little wink at the theme.
I dunno, Rex. I rather liked being shown this list of common sayings that we never finish. But I do agree that SPEAK OF THE DEVIL is the outlier. The rest of the themers can feasibly be finished with . . . and all that.. Next month I’m visiting my daughter in Boston, and we’re going to a dim sum place. I will absolutely try a chicken foot. WHEN IN ROME and all that.
Rex – I had trouble getting EXTENDING, too. I kept wanting “extendable” or some such. This southwest area was definitely the hardest for me. I didn’t know DINETTE was a place, but I had never really thought about it. And the clue for WHEAT was brutal. I almost gave up, but where there’s a will, and all that. . .
Liked Desmond Tutu and DALAI LAMA crossing GREAT MINDS.
I was expecting some pushback for WENT DEAF. Went limp, went cold, went silent. Though as I type these, I’m thinking that maybe they’re phrasey enough.
There are four women named FRANces who live in this senior community where I now live with Mom. (In addition to the three FRANceses Mom keeps up with from her high school class. Her best friend here, a Frances, goes by her last name, Herche (pronounced like the chocolate), to avoid confusion. Herche can still drive, and she’s wonderful about being Mom’s means to get to all kinds of functions. In fact, she’ll be here in a few hours to take Mom to Sunday school and church, affording me the rare window of time where I’m alone here. This is usually when I do my meal prep for school because Mom, despite being a bit DEAF, can hear the garbage disposal from anywhere in the house. She’s convinced that using it will cause a clog, so I don’t dare touch it. Except on Sundays when she’s gone. When the cat’s away . . .
Mary Louise Kelly of NPR opened her 2015 article on her experience of early hearing loss with the line "The interesting thing about going deaf is you don’t realize it’s happening."
I had that same experience (albeit at a later age) and I know others have, too. You maybe notice that people are mumbling more than they used to, and wonder why. Eventually someone helps you understand that it's you, not them.
"Hearing loss" is probably a more appropriate and sensitive term to use, as there are degrees of loss, and for most people it's not like throwing an on/off switch. But I do believe that Beethoven's hearing loss eventually became quite profound. While somewhat blunt, "went deaf" seems an appropriate description of his situation, and I did not find it offensive.
Here's the link to Kelly's piece in the Washingtonian.
Very tough going at first, but it got much easier as I went along. Agree with Rex that there was little joy here but I didn’t hate it, and many of the non-theme answers were quite nice, in retrospect. EXTENDING also gave me some trouble.
If you're a really old guy (like me) and you can remember Paul Harvey, then the revealer is also a theme: "And now you know ... the rest of the story.
Yes fretsaw to tardis to isadora to shire was a natick combo (natick cubed?)
Fretsaw tardis isadora shire was a natick cubed
@Joe Dipinto, Not only do I always guess the wrong Jessica but I usually misspell the one as BeiL or BeaL. The saving grace is that they have no letters in common (even with my misspellings) so a single cross limits the field.
I'd hate to be the cause of distracting you from your Sunday cavorting with the garbage disposal, but I imagine that, lover of language that you are, you would enjoy learning about anapodota (which these are) and anacoluthons (which are related). I did. Man, those Greeks! They thought of everything...noticed and named it, anyway.
The phrase is “all that GLISTERS is not gold” !
I found this puzzle to be a lot like my old girlfriend: Fast, easy, fun.
I have always heard "speak of the devil and you see his horns." From what others have said, I guess that's an outlier.
Ugh. Too easy for an Sunday and also boring. I agree w Rex on this one.
I enjoyed it, mainly as a salve for yesterday's burning defeat - got a Sunday PB on this one.
It's "Speak of the Devil and he appears." Like when you were just talking about someone and then they show up.
Yeah, agreed, the theme wasn't good. And there wasn't enough excitement in the fill for my taste. In general, though, I thought it was fine. I didn't love WENT DEAF; the answer wasn't the issue for me so much as the jokey misdirection of the clue. I recently started getting the daily tinnitus that my mother got at my age before she eventually got profound hearing loss, so I'm definitely sensitive around it. I'm not clutching my pearls; just think it was in slightly poor taste.
I had RaisINs before ROMAINE, and another hand up for FIRE over FluE. I hope for a world in which TAMERS are obsolete rather than obsolescent and appreciated the cluing.
The tetracycline clue was another reminder that I had to take prophylactic doxycycline yesterday; tick season has begun, sigh.
Have a good Sunday, folks.
You're bad!!! But I agree......about the puzzle, that is 😏
Lol at everyone having a different version of that devil proverb, so much for “you know the rest”
This was OK. I too did not know there was anything more to SPEAKOFTHEDEVIL...
Also, I should've known TARDIS from the get-go, but had mortar in there first, which threw things off for a while. (And when I had mortar, I'm scratching my head, thinking "Well, it sounds like Beethoven WENTDEAF then, but with the 'r', maybe it's WENTGRAY!")
I enjoyed the cluing for ROBE, BLT (my wife thought it was BAT at first), and LASERTAG.
To top off my obviously foggy day, I'm staring at GRE---Y as a "popular papal name" and drew a blank. Mind you, I'm Catholic. And my wife (who is Jewish) comes up with GREGORY! Oy vey, Happy Easter! ;-)
I was charmed by this theme. It was simple and sweet, like hearing a brook in the distance, while hiking. Oh, I love themes that involve witty and/or hard to crack wordplay, or that involve making gyrating journeys through the grid, but I like the other side as well, simplicity. And here it was, “phrases whose endings we really don’t need to say”, a small piece of life’s jigsaw puzzle that made me go, “Oh yeah, that happens.” Sweet.
A lovely lilting solve complemented the theme. No hair pulling. Several of the clues, like the theme, charmed me as well. A couple of never-done-before clues, for instance: [A tick or a tock] for SECOND, and [Very formal, or very informal, garment] for ROBE. I also liked the play on “lead characters” in [Either of two lead characters in “Kiss Me Kate”] for KAY.
This was a lovely nightcap to a week of solving, and a just-right follow-up to Sid’s high-energy masterpiece yesterday. Congratulations on your first NYT Sunday puzzle, John, which left me happy and satisfied. Thank you for this!
@loren -- Lovely catch on Tutu and the DALAI LAMA crossing GREAT MINDS!
Please explain 10D ‘road game’ clue
I had SARDINE before ROMAINE which made a mess of the NW for the longest time. I stuck with it and cleaned up that mess and was done in with STOMPS instead of CLOMPS - BELT looked fine in the cross and I have no idea what a SIVET is, but I went with it anyway because there are a lot of NYT answers that I have never heard of.
I’ll stand proud knowing that I fought my way through the FRETSAW, TARDIS, ISADORA obstacle course and take some comfort in what is probably about my 9th or 10th one or two letter DNF.
I’ll be the anti-Rex today, and am probably swimming upstream against the popular sentiment here as well, but I liked the theme - simple, straightforward, lays back and stays out of the way . . . It even contributes to a few crosses now and then. I like it when the theme is a help and not a cryptic, barely decipherable hinderance to the solving experience.
I’ll (carefully on this one) dip my toe in the water and wonder aloud what Rex finds so offensive about Mr. Musk (admitting that I know very little about him). I mean, so he is wrecking Twitter - the world would be better off without it anyway, and you are probably free to buy a different type of car if you don’t like the ones he makes. Maybe this is just another case of Rex lobbing a grenade at someone because their opinions are contrary to his own, a la Bret Stephens. Personally, I would rather have Elon Musk, Bret Stephens, Mo Dowd, Gail, Frank or any of the others rather than some creepy, vulgar rap “artist” any day of the week. So I guess I am the anti-Rex today.
My goal this AM was to finish in time to be able to red all the comments and post something before starting the half hour drive to church where we're singing a lot of stuff this morning. Mission accomplished, although the NW was not helping. TARDIS is a complete WTR but from somewhere I remembered FRETSAW, which I think looks a little like a coping saw. The rest was no speed fest but smooth enough.
When AGIRDINTHEHAND went in I thought, that's it? Are they all going to be that obvious? Turns out, yes and yes.
OK Sunday, JE. Just Easy enough to get me out the door on time. Thanks for a proper amount of fun.
Happy Easter to all who celebrate. Big day at our house and double fun for me, as I get to do a lot of singing and celebrating with my family. Hope your day is equally enjoyable.
Anon 7:57 and others - on a team schedule, the home games may be listed in caps and the road games with an @ sign, so the Knicks or Rangers might look like @Philadlphia when they are on the road. There will probably be about 40 others chiming in with an explanation on that one, as it is not at all an unpopular convention.
Yep - pretty easy and a disjoint theme but I had some fun with it. Common half phrases aren’t exactly mind boggling - thought the overall fill decent and smooth. Was hoping we’d get an ELON mash up from the big guy today - maybe he’s mellowing.
Moses come ridin’ up on a QUASAR
@LMS - add AGEE to the GREAT MINDS near cross also. Not so sure about BIEL. Yes - FRET SAWS are used by luthiers to cut frets - definitely not used to RIP. Been awhile since we’ve had a Pope GREGORY - maybe a bunch of them but not a temporal clue. Thankfully TAMERS are obsolescent.
Enjoyable Easter Sunday solve - hope everyone enjoys the day.
the great Tammy
Am totally deaf in one ear, mostly deaf in the other. But am not offended by the clue - it’s just so inelegant.
Loved Joe’s GOTPARKINSONS alternative! That post gave me far more joy than this MEH puzzle.
Agreed with most of Rex’s screed, though maybe not the reason why Elon seems a creep. Using Johnny Depp’s penthouse for his tryst with Amber Heard and Kara Pescatarian (I don’t know how to spell Kara’s last name any more than I did fish eater) - with all his money, he couldn’t get a hotel suite? - is creepy, cheap, and yes, inelegant!
Im always amazed when Rex bemoans the state of Sunday puzzles, as if there was some Golden Age of NYT Sundays. I have found the great majority of them to be just tolerable at best, and I have been doing them a lot longer than he has. This one was one of the better ones, IMO.
It is amusing when he goes off on one of his rants, however. And he's never gone to a McDonalds. How many adult Americans can say that.
What's with the road game.
Sorry, I still cant make the question mark appear on this new keyboard. Or parentheses.
As a couple of others have said, I thought this puzzle was better than a lot of recent Sundays, and maybe that's damning with faint praise. But I enjoyed it more than a lot of recent Sundays.
Unlike most of you, I found the challenge level on this to be medium, not easy. Groaned out loud when I finally got ROAD GAME--I don't associate the @ symbol with much beyond cyberworld, and not at all with baseball, so I wasn't even warm at first. "Anchovy" instead of ROMAINE at 19A--a confident early answer--messed up the NW corner for quite a while. Another confident entry was at 116D, where I entered LEda and moved right on. Never heard of LETO. Googled her after, and she's right up there on the pantheon--daughter of Titans and all. And, of course, the father of Apollo and Artemis? Zeus. Ancient Greece could have used a good #MeToo movement for that guy alone.
Speak of the devil and you see his tail—that’s how I know it.
“SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and there he is” was the complete phrase I remember from my childhood. So I found all of the themers and the revealer apt and in the language, which may be a low bar but is one many Sunday themes fail to clear, so should be noted.
The ROAD GAME clue was brilliant, and even this sports fan who once worked in athletics had a hard time seeing it, even with ROAD-AME … I was just so sure it had to be some kind of nAME.
I’m not sure if this is a good puzzle or not, but it’s balm for the beleaguered solver after yesterday. I enjoyed it – a lot more than Rex did – so that’s something.
I must have a clichéd mind – I enjoy old saws. I couldn’t help myself: I took a dive into the origins of these.
It seems that in our more religious past, there was a prohibition among the godly on talking about the DEVIL or saying his name for fear of courting disaster, an idea that was taken up in the Harry Potter stories. The first written version of the saying is from the Italian writer Giovanni Torriano in 1666 (appropriately): "The English say, Talk of the Devil, and he's presently at your elbow."
This is an interesting article about ALL THAT GLITTERS. Apparently, the expression predates Shakespeare, and had already changed from his ALL THAT GLIsTERS to the more familiar form by the time of Dryden a hundred years later.
GREAT MINDS’ first incarnation appeared in a play in 1618 as “good wits doe jumpe,” jumpe here meaning agree. But, in the second edition of The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine was a naysayer about the whole idea, writing “I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree.” Perhaps his contribution was the “fools seldom differ” second half.
WHEN IN ROME was advice given by St. Ambrose to St. Augustine (4th C.), who was aghast when he moved from Rome to Milan to find that Milanese churchpeople didn’t fast on Saturdays as they did in Rome. St. Ambrose put it all into perspective by saying “when I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but here I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whatever church you attend, if you do not want to give or receive scandal.”
Harry S. Truman gave us IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT in the 1940s. While still a senator, he was quoted in the press as coining the expression when a member of his war contracts investigating committee objected to his strenuous pace.
And, finally, all I know about A BIRD IN THE HAND is that it’s an ancient Greek proverb.
Yeah, FRET SAW – that was a toughie to throw at us at 1A. I had FRET before SAW, and really hoped the tool was called a FRETter (a woodworking tool that worries). Fortunately, I know enough about Doctor Who to know TARDIS. I made the pUlSAR/QUASAR error and was delighted by this cosmic kealoa. Nice that SIRIUS was also hanging out in the grid. I haven’t thought of ISADORA Duncan for years but remember the vivid impression Vanessa Redgrave made in the movie. For [Very formal, or very informal, garment] I popped in tOga! Well, you know: the contrast between Roman senators and frat parties.
[SB: yd -2. Two small words. Too #$%^&ly aggravating to dwell on. Though I did get everything you mentioned, @okanaganer.]
10D 'road game' - When looking at sports schedules the @ is used to denote where the game is played.
I am always tickled by Rex's outrage at anything outside of his frame of reference, especially when it corresponds to my apparently fringy pool of knowledge. Maybe I just love idioms, but I really thought "...and he shall appear." was common knowledge. For those digging through the comments, I recommend deeper dives on extremely abridged sayings "The best laid plans..." and "A jack of all trades..." These two get cut way short and lose a fair amount of context.
Shouldn’t 130A be ‘Formerly popular papal name’? The last one became pope in 1831, and the one before that was more than 500 years ago.
Some unfamiliar PPP (MARIA, IAN, ELLEN, SID, MOORE), but all the crosses I think were fair.
ErgoNomic before EXTENDING, sAbER wAr before LASER TAG, rAd before FAD.
Can’t imagine what a BELL sENT is.
Learned it in French class: Parlez du diable et on en voit la queue.
Acrostic: Our first in the post-Cox/Rathvon era, was pretty good. Definitely harder than the last few from C/R, but in their normal range. If I had not known going in it was a new constructor, I would not have noticed a change.
I liked this one. Easy, yes, but lightly amusing. Not to Rex's taste? Tough.
UNICLUES:
1. Quick summary of the movie “The Sound of Woodwork.”
2. One in the bush?
3. Actor McKellen receiving a premonition of his date with the Balrog.
4. Gripe about the evils of cafeteria food.
5. Parody of director Kazan in a fedora.
6. Stand by…the Colosseum?
7. Uncle Sam Wants You.
8. Yikes! Nudist diner with flimsy napkin ladling hot soup. (I can’t look.)
1. FRETSAW MARIA ARDENT
2. UNLIKE A BIRD IN THE HAND (~)
3. IAN ALAS OMEN CHASMS
4. SPEAK OF THE DEVIL MEAL
5. ELIA BRIM SENDUP
6. WHEN IN ROME, “WYNETTE.”
7. ENLIST…YOU KNOW THE REST
8. NAKED MANIA PROP USER
Only Rex could hate this puzzle so much - but that's ok. I liked it. Where there's smoke there's FirE. I had that for too long but LETO fixed it. SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and he shows up. That's a common phrase, but plainly not where Rex lives. Agree with the FRETSAW TARDIS group, but knew ISADORA.
Easy but fun. Except road game, which is meaningless.
I use, and hear, the phrase "speak of the devil" all the time. Never hear the end "and he doth appear". It is more fun than "we were just talking about you.".
My Mom was the sort of person who would utter such idioms in their full glory, so I heard "Speak of the devil, and he shall appear" many times when I was growing up. This has nothing to do with the puzzle but she also liked to say "cheese is milk's leap towards immortality."
@ROADGAME - When you see in the sports section NYY @ BOS it means NY Yankees are playing at Boston, i.e. it's a road game for they Yankees. It's the same for all sports.
fretsaw/tardis one of the last things I put in, but not a Natick (only one a proper noun). It had to be a freesaw or a fretsaw and tardis looked better than eardis. And nice to think about a tool for making instruments. Woodworking tools well covered today with ADZE.
Same problem with stOMP/CLOMP. Went back and forth between EXTENsion/ding until crosses came into view.
I think McDonalds secret menu is an internet fad, so many of which challenge employees to create stuff not on the menu for no extra tip. Hopefully the McD one is just normal stuff (like the "short" coffee you can get at Starbucks if you aren't up for a "tall").
Agreed about "Where there's smoke" themer reference.
roadgame egs: laughing audibly at "I’m pointing at you, Orion"
On Easter morning, "MYGOD" sounds a little sacrilegious. If it was a themer, the Holy Week ending would be "...why hast thou forsaken me?" Off now to blast some organ pipes and not speak of the devil...
Amy: @TJS: the Red Sox are on the road, @Detroit this afternoon.
Found this much more pleasant and amusing than Rex. A neighbor has a bumper sticker: My Other Ride is a TARDIS. I had to look it up, and now today, very glad.
Since clues involving French are often sticky for me, thrilled with getting HENRI.
"SPEAK OF THE DEVIL......and the Devil appears" is spoken by Alec Baldwin in the 1993 movie Malice....
...and up he pops.
Thx, John; happy to say I wasn't 'Clue'less on this one! :)
Med.
Bang on avg Sun. time.
Pretty much on the right wavelength this AM.
Always work these Sunday xwords slowly and steadily; so many chances for typos and wrong entries along the way.
GREAT theme, which I grokked fairly early on; very helpful to the solve.
Had pULsar before QUASAR, but the DALHI LAMA wasn't going for it.
Very enjoyable adventure! :)
___
@Son Volt: the Sat. Stumper was just under 2x the Sat. NYT, so med. dif for me.
@Acrosticers: found Mark Halpin's Sun. acrostic on xwordinfo.com relatively easy. Got the author of the quote's audiobook on hold: spoiler here.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
@Son Volt There are FRETSAWS and fret Saws. A Fretsaw (which looks like, and differs only slightly from, a coping saw) has a very thin (.009 - .04") and narrow blade (.1") The frame of a fretsaw looks like a huge U. A Fret Saw has a thin (.023"), wide blade (2.5") blade with a heavy back, and an adjustable stop to control the depth to which it will cut.
Fretsaws are used to cut fret work (lattice work), and by a luthier to cut out the f-holes or other openings in acoustic stringed instruments. The fret saw is used to cut frets, or with the depth stop removed, any other joinery the luthier may need.
Hey All !
SPEAK OF REX and he will grumble.
Har! Just kidding, Rex.
I, too, didn't know the "REST" of the SPEAK OF THE DEVIL idiom, I was going to complain that it's an outlier, but after reading Rex, see that yes indeedy, the saying goes on.
I thought this a clever theme. Half of known sayings (well, besides the DEVIL one, obvi [as the kids say these days {do they still say that?}]). And I did KNOW THE REST. Well... 😁
Got my DNF (because what would a SunPuz be without one?) at stOMPS/sIVET/BElTTENT. Wanted a BENT TENT for a while there. Those crazy Glampers! Give me a yurt, and I'd be happy (granted I'm not a camper, glamping or otherwise).
Fun clue for HARLEY. Had the FirE-FLUE writeover, also Adhd-ACNE.
A J short of a Pangram. C'mon, John, try harder next time! 😁 Could've had one at BOBS, change to JOBS, but then C_J isn't anything.
A FRET SAW get me anxious.
Har.
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
What Rex said. Exactly. When the shoe fits...
I hate trivia and so am definitely not a NERD -- as I was happy to see confirmed today.
I also really, really enjoyed the theme.
So it was sort of a race to see which would happen first:
I would drop out early so I wouldn't have to contend with -- or even think about at all -- stuff like the Santana hit, the game of Catan, the Toy Story antagonist, the rapper, and Gray's Anatomy.
Or I would solve as little of the puzzle as I could get away with -- but enough to give me the few letters I'd need to get all the theme answers.
I ended up doing neither.
The half-quotations were easy enough and clued so incredibly fairly to boot that I got all of them with almost no crosses, and two of them -- SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and WHEN IN ROME -- I got with no crosses at all. So now I'm in a position where I can drop the rest of the puzzle just like that. Splat. Except that the long answers have now made getting the pop trivia I was avoiding pretty darned easy. And so, Dear Reader, I finished it.
Bottom line: I found this a fun theme with pretty dreary everything else. But of course there will be people who loved the trivia. There always are.
I dunno why but I enjoyed this one immensely, but I sympathize with 🦖. Way too much short stuff and an awkward theme, but it happens on Sundays. Thankfully light on proper names. I needed plenty of crosses for each theme answer, but happily they were there without much slogging. The southwest resisted mightily, but it finally gave up without help.
Biggest problem was putting in ABANDON ALL HOPE for A BIRD IN THE HAND.
I'm with @Joe Dipinto1:56 AM and I don't like the clue suggesting Beethoven played a role in going deaf. It happened to him. It happens to lots of people without them doing anything.
Uniclues:
1 Passionate luthier from Buenos Aires.
2 An eagle in an aerie.
3 Squash succotach.
4 Gettin' jiggly in Jaboticabal and Jaboatao.
1 "FRETSAW MARIA" ARDENT
2 UNLIKE A BIRD IN THE HAND (~)
3 SPEAK OF THE DEVIL MEAL
4 "I WANNA SAMBA" ROAD GAME
@Barbara S. 8:53 AM
Wow! Epic! Sunday uniclues are sooo challenging and you've found a cornucopia. Nice work Barbara.
All the confusion of @ sign as commonly used for ROADGAMES (an equally used term for Away Games, despite Rex’s FRETting) reminded me of trying to teach my 90+ year old dad, via phone, how to use email.
He kept typing in “at” when I was referring to @. He even tried typing “atsign” - carefully listening to my instructions. Finally, after half an hour, I was describing the squiggly circle that looks kind of like copyright which he eventually found but was too tired to try to write an email.
A couple years later, mom wanted to Google. Got her to the Google.com page and she said it’s not doing anything. Why isn’t it working? Told her she needs to type in a term she wants to explore. “What term? Why won’t you help me?”
Tried to explain what it does, she said she’s not interested in looking anything up, she just wants to GOOGLE!
As much as they drove me crazy, on this Easter morning, I miss them both…
Surprised to not see you illustrate the themer with this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM2YtcJZOEE
The Easter scarred.
Screed
…and he shall appear
Charming theme and refreshing feel. But alas, all good things
Oops. A DNF that I had no idea about until I came here. Having never heard of a FRETSAW, I never once thought of a FRETSAW, and thus I wrote in FREESAW -- even though:
1) A FREESAW sounds like the very opposite of a "precision" tool -- in fact it sounds like the sort of tool that will remove your entire leg if you're not careful...and
2) EARDIS sounds like the name of no one ever -- not even a someone from "Toy Story".
Am I unhappy about my DNF? Not a bit. GREAT MINDS really don't care about this kind of stuff :)
TARDIS is the answer for 4 down. 5 down is the Toy Story clue.
Rex, you could not have been more correct. The Sunday puzzle is supposed to be fun. This was more like filling in a mad libs book. “Oh just write anything down, it will be fine”. No fun, no reveal that matters, a puzzle is supposed to be puzzling. The only puzzling thing out of this mess was why any editor would have accepted it.
I see Edward beat me to the punch.
https://youtu.be/GM2YtcJZOEE
Well SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and here I come. I really enjoyed this! I haven't been doing Sundays on a regular basis because they bore me...not today!
While trying to master English speak, my grandmother would toss out some of these little nuggets and expect me to know what they meant. One of my biggest bafflers was A BIRD IN THE HAND. I'd really wonder why it was better than two in a bush. In my childish mind, I'd think they were safer in a bush making a nest and having little birdies. Do you have to be a grown up to understand?
I think my favorite is WHEN IN ROME. Now that's phrase I could relate to... I could finish it with: Don't rent a car. Don't go to the Vatican in a tank top. Don't swim in the Trevi Fountain and don't keep yelling CIAO.
So, I had fun.
Speaking of DEVIL. I learned to say that it was better the DEVIL you know than the DEVIl you don't. That I can understand. I would think that every time we'd get a new narcissistic boss who'd demand that all his "girls" in the office serve him hot coffee and a fresh croissant first thing in the morning. His secretary probably spit in his latte a few times. ON TO THE NEXT DEVIL...
I enjoyed this; I learned what an anapodotan is and now I must get ready and see if my lamb roast looks like a duck.
Easy-breezy puzzle today. The phrases were all well-known. The cluing wasn't wacky but I'm okay with that; at least they made sense. Any trouble I had today was self-induced, especially that typo at 8D. MEET Aa made __NA really hard to figure out as Hephaestus' forge. stOMPS before CLOMPS.
MANIA MARIA. EVE ERE. NIL NON. Bad pun at 99D's "dyeing ART". "Deck treatment" = STAIN and NEAT for "shipshape" are related in my mind. ISADORA symmetrical with WYNETTE. These are all pluses for me. None of the really clever wordplay today but somehow it was satisfying. I get what Rex is saying but I just can't feel all that ARDENT about it.
Thanks, John Ewbank!
Glamming option? Looked up Glamping in Urban dictionary and I cant even…. Certainly not a tent!
Oh, right, thanks, Anon (10:44)! It was the "Dr Who" clue and not the "Toy Story" clue where I didn't know my EARDIS from my TARDIS. In a bass-ackwards and completely unintended way, this mistake of mine, which sailed right under my radar, sort of sums up my entire attitude towards pop culture cluing.
@GILL (11:01)-- What a nice little girl you were! You were obviously thinking about the happiness and well-being of the cute little birdies rather than the acquiring abilities of rapacious, grasping and greedy humans. And I also love your WHEN IN ROME thoughts.
I agree … it was a non-theme.
I liked the fact that all the expressions were ones that are commonly used without the ending. At least I hear them used that way often, with the intonation implying the "dot dot dot". "Great minds..." "A bird in hand..." It did disappoint me, then, that "Where there's smoke..." wasn't fire.
I don't know what Rex is talking about with the spelling of Isadora Duncan. I've never seen it spelled any other way.
Re: “Kay” as the answer to two leads in “Kiss Me Kate,” that’s a cryptic crossword clue which I didn’t recognize as such until after I’d gotten it with the crosses. It seems like lately there’ve been more cryptic crossword clues in the regular NYT crossword. I love cryptic crosswords but am not sure mixing genres enhances the pleasure of the NYT regular crossword such as that may be on a meh Sunday.
Sorry if I'm repeating this but I accidentally put it under yesterday's comments.
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.
Like others here (who acknowledge Sunday’s low bar) I enjoyed this one.
ANDREW @10:20, your Easter tribute to your parents was lovely. And it rings so true.
@Loren, I love how you ended your post with another perfect example of the theme!
I'm a fan. I liked how the theme pointed out that we need only the first part of these expressions, something I'd never thought about, nor how many of them there are (I did know the second part of the DEVIL one). Easy, yes, but still fun.
Kind of a non theme today. Much going on with birthdays and Easter. Had to do this late last night then get the QB in one sitting. TARDIS, BELLTENT and LETO needed help from the crosses. That last one really ought to be beaten into my head.
yd -0
@Sailor thanks for the link to Mary Louise Kelly’s article on hearing loss. I found it enlightening. I’m at the stage now where a doctor has suggested hearing aids and I feel I don’t really need them yet. Maybe I’m wrong
In a hurry this AM and forgot to thank some folks for birthday wishes, so many thanks to @egs, @Son Volt, @GILL I, and @A. Much appreciated.
Hey @puzzlehoarder-Sounds like exactly what's going on at my house.
The only thing I got from this is that Brits think Americans are stupid and clue-less.
“If looks could kill…” is what comes to mind when I imagine Rex sitting in his room and glaring at his Sunday crossword puzzle. I must say I had the opposite reaction. Loved learning about anapodotons which turn us into mind readers when we hear them. Liked all of the themers and thought the revealer was just right. Would have enjoyed a couple of more themers but ALAS all good things…
also, ratatat in Spelling Bee by Sam but not in NYT mag today by Frank Longo.
Anonymous
@605
In all my 84 years, having lived on both the east and west coasts and a few places in-between, I have only heard it as all that GLITTERS. Maybe you are doing as Beethoven??
For anyone wondering about GLITTERS, this from Led Zeppelin:
There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
Surprised that DEFRAG hasn't caused any consternation.
@ Unknown 11:43
Great minds Us. I too have never sen Isadora spelled any other way and wooded what Rex was misthinking of
Threw down TARDIS and NERD first, appropriately. As highlights go, I'll take that.
I've almost stopped looking forward to the Sunday morning moment of Zen that I'd the NYT crossword in the coffee shop. This was just....meh. I was halfway in and realized I just didn't care. Where is the sparkle? The flair? The hard won answer for a great clue?
I was surprised to see so many of yous FRET over the second half of the old SAW "SPEAK OF THE DEVIL...". And I was offended, indignant even, that so many suggested blatantly sexist answers involving "He..." or "His...". The correct answer is, of course, "SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and look who's here!"
I'm a lifelong amateur woodworker and have a bunch of SAWs but not a FRET SAW. That is a very specialized tool and I doubt that very many woodworkers have one. Another woodworking tool that is even more specialized and rarer is the 78A ADZE. It is, however, classic crosswordese, having appeared more frequently over the years in crossword puzzles than in everyday conversation or print. It has shown up 48 times during the Shortz era and 168 times overall in a NYTXW, the first time in 1943 during the Farrar era. It's very handy if one is building something like a log cabin or dugout canoe completely from scratch, i.e., using just raw sections of tree trunks.
I had anchovy before romaine. I guess anchovies go in the dressing only. I like anchovy filets in the salad too.
Unfortunately, adages start with an ad … but they do age pretty well, after that. Plus, the themers were easy as pie to figure out, even with only a low % of their letters showin.
Alas, not a very humorous theme, but can't all be that way, I reckon.
staff weeject picks: HER & HUR. Coupla film titles, darn nearly.
Thought SECOND had a cool clue. fave fillins included: DALAILAMA. ENERGYCZAR. SECRETMENU. AQUATIC/QUASAR. TOBESURE.
Oh, and HARLEY clue had ROAD in it, echoin the ROADGAME answer. That's ok by m&e, tho. Runtpuzs'll do it all the time.
Thanx, Mr. Ewbank dude.
Happy Easter, bunnies -- if the egg fits … etc.
**gruntz**
Oh geez, it was real, it was fun, but it wasn't real fun. All I'm going to take away from this one is a determination to say these phrases more, but mix them up, say... "When in Rome, get out of the kitchen," or "all that glitters is better than two in the bush," IDK.
PULSAR / QUASAR may be a kealoa depending on your knowledge of astronomy, not sure.
ALBA / BIEL I'm not sure qualifies because no letters in common?
ELON is also a college in the Carolinas (?) somewhere, wouldn't that be a better clue at this point than Musk. I don't really have a strong opinion on the guy but it's getting played out.
Is GREGORY a popular pope name? No idea but sure. Beyond LEO's and PIUS's, I'm out.
FRETSAW/TARDIS I could see being a Natick for some, have seen Dr. Who a few times but couldn't have come up with TARDIS with a gun to my head, which was fortunately not the case (btw, just googled it and from the pictures that come up it looks more like a port-a-potty than a time machine. Which gives me a great concept for a new screenplay...)
A message to our Muse: As a one-time resident of San Francisco I have eaten tons of dim sum. Don't grab those chicken wings. They are in no way worth putting in your mouth. Have another plate of pork bao, or try anything else that you think you might like.
I enjoyed the puzzle a lot. I put in GLITTERS and then wrote "GLIsTERS over it, then went back to GLITTERS. I left the F in FRET SAW out, but would have put it in, on further reflection. Now I know they are a special saw to make a place for the FRETs on the neck of a guitar. Who knew? What I certainly didn't know is TARDIS.
For me the usual phrase after SPEAK OF THE DEVIL is, "and here he is." Obviously mileage varies.
This is certainly one day (or SOL) that OFL was at his grumpiest, and with no good reason, I ween.
Apart from being dull, this one lost me by using two of my three least favorite answers, "trou" and "bae." I don't know if anybody has ever actually said these with the idea that they are part of the English language, but I doubt it. Adding "deet" would have completed the hat trick of shame.
You have to admit, any crossword with RGYCZ as a correct sequence has something going for it.
@Gary Jugert
Thanks! I don't usually post uniclues on Sunday, but I sure went nuts today. When inspiration strikes...
I agree, rap artists shouldn’t even be in the New York Times puzzle.
Throwing the penalty flag on Will Shortz for his note accompanying the print version of the puzzle, which reads in part:
"... The theme is examples of anapodoton ... a rhetorical device you probably use yourself but never knew there was a name for. Well, now you'll know."
Two infractions here. First, it gives a direct hint to the theme, thus implying that the puzzle is too difficult for his audience; this seems to be a recurring, irresistible compulsion for WS. The second infraction is the condescending dangling of the word "anapodoton." (When I was 5 years old I used to infuriate my 3-year-old twin sisters by saying "I know something you don't know." I grew out of it by the time I was six.) Btw, wouldn't you think crossword solvers, of all people, would be more likely than average to be familiar with obscure rhetorical terms?
Rex is right about the demise of the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle. Much better puzzles are offered by the New Yorker Magazine on weekdays, and a cryptic on Sundays only.
@DigitalDan 3:01
what is RGYCZ????
That is the one rhetorical term this old timer never heard of, and I am grateful Will provided it.
We get it, you don’t like Black people, move along
Yes! anapodoton Should have been the reveal
Way back in the 1940s and 50s, my family frequently used the expression “Speak of the devil and hear a flapping of the wings.” I don’t know if others used the expression or they just made it up.
@Anon 4:48
Who are you talking to?
I'd always heard it was "Speak of the devil, and in s/he walks."
Seems like a pretty good puzzle is one that teaches lots of people (including Rex) that they've only been using/aware of half an idiom, right?
It can’t be that. Glitters or Glistens?
@MKM - I loved DigitalDan's point: RGYCZ is an odd-looking, but correct string of letters that form part of the answer ENERGYCZAR.
Did anyone else notice that part of the endings for the first two partial phrases cut through them? "Great minds" had "Alike" going up and "Bird in the hand" had "Two" going down. Had me very confused thinking I was missing something.
@Anoa Bob - What, a life long woodworker and never wanted to make a Windsor Chair? Man, you need to get yourself an ADZE and get to work.
Of course you have a fret-saw. It's just a gent's saw re-labelled to jack up the price. Some have built in stops to limit the depth.
a road game is a game played away from a team's home field, arena etc.
That story hit me hard.I am in the process of a decline in my hearing. I am 70. What got me to the doctor was tinnitus, While not (yet) as severe as as that of the reporter you linked to, I was surprised by the degree of hearing loss. So I went through the same process of coping and denial as she did. A telltale sign should have been my older brother always lowers the sound on my TV. And yes I use subtitles But still I keep putting off the inevitable. Perhaps being reminded of the fact that the more I wait the worse outcomes are might spur me to get going.
Thanks for the link!
Yes, you are correct, and a British crossword maker would surely know that! (full disclosure, I am a British crossword solver!)
male swan crossing w/ male turkey? 1A being "fretsaw"?
"road game" is not a thing.
apparently the second part of "speak of the devil" is >>> "if it isn't so-and-so"
news to me, but my partner who doesn't do xwords knew it
Speak of the devil… am I the only reader who recognizes this iconic line from The Dark Knight Rises?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HIwlTWAcaVg
Or from Banecat (1:35 in):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5ywjpbThDpE
Rex said the clue on ROAD GAME was tough and good. Do you even know what “fretting” means?
Another great song for this puzzle from one of my favorite NYC residents: https://youtu.be/qcXUlOoUM3w
https://youtu.be/qcXUlOoUM3w A great song. At the end, Patti sings “All that glitters is not…”
I've heard "Speak of the Devil, and he's sure to appear" all my life. Maybe that's because I'm 85, and you young whippersnappers don't use that phrase any more.
Apparently no one else experienced the Natick I did. I was tired and hurried, so when I saw the the "@" sign, I thought of computers, and when I had _OADGAME I thought of computer games, so LOADGAME seemed an appropriate phrase. When "MALIA" showed up at 7-A, no red flags were raised, and I moved on.
Okay, somebody has got to explain SECRETMENU to me. I mean, what IS that besides an oxymoron? Isn't a MENU supposed to afford customers a choice? Then WHY make it SECRET?????? WHAT is the POINT?? I tell you, the REST of this puzzle was easy enough, but when that showed up on crosses, I thought, this CAN'T be right. IT. MAKES. NO. SENSE. Anyone?
BTW, I agree that it's "drill," not REST. That turned a snappy revealer into a MEH phrase. It is quite obvious that the Sunday bar has been lowered. Bogey.
Wordle bogey, but with a ten-pointer in the word I don't feel that bad.
Never did get the SB 7er; wonder what it was.
SLEPT GREAT
OH, ELLEN just CAN'TSTANDTHEHEAT
OF BOB'S NOT so SECRET, ARDENT quest:
THE SECOND those TWO DEVILs MEET,
it's SIRIUS, and YOUKNOWTHEREST . . .
--- MARIA MOORE
Not very hard but packed with PPP, some 20 or more people's names, then there's places or things and such. Jessica BIEL from MN, yeah BAE BAE.
Wordle birdie!
This is the last time I'm going to mention this(maybe???):
Every single clue and answer in a Xword puzzle is trivia! And this is coming from a lifelong word nerd! I used to READ the dictionary for FUN as a kid. It took you to different countries and languages and civilizations. And it would lead you to other words. I LOVE WORDS!!! And I love the journey it takes you on!
(Sorry for all the !!! marks)
ny 3rd attempt to post
Technology (Hal) is winning the world.
Diana, LIW
81D. BAT before BLT. Club relative. Bat just made sense.
Energy czar. 36D
The good thing about my Sunday Left Coast paper is that it arrives on Saturday so I can finish (usually) before Sunday morning so I can post and have the rest of the day for other activities. The bad thing is that it is from the relatively distant past, so not the normal syndicated version, so very few people remain to read the blog.
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL actually fits comfortably with the theme YOU KNOW THE REST. Anytime someone says speak of the devil that "devil" has appeared. Everyone there knows it. So it is known. You don't fill in a phrase because the phrase would not be universal. But what follows is known.
Very good Sunday puzzle.
And I agree why hate on Elon Musk. As stated by another post you need not buy his cars nor sign up for Twitter.
It would've been nice if I hadn't read "WENT DEAF" in yesterday's discussion. Doesn't anyone monitor these comments to check for spoilers? Do I have a DNF now that I was told an answer the day before??
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