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Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tuesday—themers took some thought, all else easy)
Theme answers:
- BARTENDS (16A: Poets + 10 = Serves drinks)
- NEWS EVENT (35A: Small amphibian + 7 = Story worth covering)
- STONE AGE (58A: Phase + 1 = Ancient period)
- BONINESS (18D: Supervisor + 9 = Quality that makes a fish hard to eat)
- "IT WORKED!" (28D: Annoyed + 2 = "Success!")
A lichen (/ˈlaɪkən/ LY-kən, UK also /ˈlɪtʃən/ LITCH-ən) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. Lichens are important actors in nutrient cycling and act as producers which many higher trophic feeders feed on, such as reindeer, gastropods, nematodes, mites, and springtails. Lichens have properties different from those of their component organisms. They come in many colors, sizes, and forms and are sometimes plant-like, but are not plants. They may have tiny, leafless branches (fruticose); flat leaf-like structures (foliose); grow crust-like, adhering tightly to a surface (substrate) like a thick coat of paint (crustose); have a powder-like appearance (leprose); or other growth forms. (wikipedia)
• • •
I like the grid quite a bit, though. Chuck the math parts and make it a Tuesday themeless, and you're in business. The largish corners are (mostly) full of solid, colorful answers. I don't love LICHENS in the plural, and there's a reasonable amount of short overfamiliar gunk I could do without, but overall the grid has a lot of variety and bounce. ZIP, even. Got slowed down only a few times today. Parsing "IT WORKED" took my brain a few swings ("I ... TWERKED?"), and I couldn't remember how to spell NYONG'O (specifically, I couldn't remember the first letter). I also misspelled LICOLNS, thusly. I got UNTAKEN easily enough, but something about that "word" feels absurd. Frost wrote "The Road Not Taken," not "The Road UNTAKEN." You'd say "is this seat taken?" of course, but you wouldn't say "no, it is UNTAKEN," or "there are lots of UNTAKEN seats up front"—you'd say "open" or "empty" or something like that. The seat angle is somehow not working for me here. I hope that the last movie in the "Taken" series (so ... the 17th installment, made when Liam Neeson is 90) is called "UNTAKEN." That would be cool. And then you'd have a good clue for UNTAKEN.
I don't think any clues need explaining today, so I'm off to make coffee and bother my cats. See you tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteWithout reading the clue, BONelESS before BONINESS at 18D, and RETRacT before RETREAT for "Pull back" at 43D.
Would you say that late spring births are GEMINIS (37D)? Isn't GEMINI already plural?
Nope. One would say "I'm a Gemini" or "Bob and Mary are both Geminis".
DeleteCute theme - well filled for the most part. Fun Tuesday solve.
ReplyDeleteADAMANT
Too easy
ReplyDeleteI spelled XENA with a Z, which caused all kinds of problems up north - and of course no clue on NYONGO. It wasn’t much of a theme as you could just plug in the number and backfill the rest, witch is the way a theme should be in my opinion (harmless and unobtrusive). Good Tuesday effort.
ReplyDeleteA fun Tuesday. And Rex, I for one love LICHENS. Acadia National Park is a great place to admire them in all their diversity. Foliose! Fruticose! Crustose! Mrs. Freude and I are looking forward to our annual pilgrimage there soon.
ReplyDeleteI live in Bar Harbor, ANP’s home, and reading Rex’s Wiki description of lichens, I thought, Acadia has got to be the lichen capital of the world! Enjoy your lichen hunting this year, Andy and Mrs Freude! Town’s already busy and awaits your arrival!
DeleteMore cats please.
ReplyDeleteIndeed!
DeleteI love this kind of theme, where you figure it out when you uncover the first theme answer, but each new theme answer is a separate riddle to crack, so you stay interested all the way through. They were so fun to figure out, that toward the end I was hoping there’d be one more – and there was!
ReplyDeleteThe theme set is tight too. The numbers 1, 2, 7, 9, and 10 are already used, so can’t be used again. There are at least a couple that can be used with 8 (HEIGHTEN from a poster on WordPlay, and I'll add WEIGHTED), but beyond that, it looks to me like the pickings are slim, so plaudits to Lee for coming up with this set.
I loved the drinking mini-theme of TEA / SLURP / BARTENDS / PINT / SHOT. And I especially loved the gorgeous looking threesome of three-syllable O-tails: TABASCO / NYONGO / GAZEBO. What a lovely earworm!
Finally, STONEAGE is especially sweet, in that it contains two embeddings, ONE in STAGE, and TONE in SAGE.
Struck by the cleverness and originality of the theme, and greatly entertained by the riddle-cracking fun – thank you for a terrific Tuesday, Lee!
I’m with @Lewis -I love words hidden in other words or phrases. And I appreciated Rex’s comparison to a cryptic. I’m still too afraid to try my hand at those, but, maybe someday.
ReplyDeleteBONINESS isn’t a common word, but this one was my favorite. I would have lived the rest of my life not noticing that there’s a NINE there. Cool. I guess I could use the word to describe the chicken foot that I tried at the dim sum restaurant I went to in Boston. The meat itself was kind of gelatinous, but its BONINESS was startling.
Too bad there’s no reveal to tie these together. DO A NUMBER ON could work if the phrases injected with the numbers were all people. Lee sure did a number on bards, on the boss, on Gingrich. . .
I always ask people how they pronounce APRICOT. Do you say /AY * pri cot/ or /Æ * pri * cot/? However they answer, I nod my head slowly like I’ve just read their palm.
Loved the clue for VIVALDI. Sometimes I choose VIVALDI to play in my lamp-lit classroom hoping that some staff member will come in and notice the music. Ask about it. I figure that since it’s not the obvious Mozart or Beethoven, the person will be deeply impressed by my sophisticated taste and see me in a different light. So far no one has taken the bait, but I’m hopeful.
I haven’t been to many cemeteries, but do people still have EPITAPHS on their tombstones? I would want something funny on mine, maybe acknowledging my JESTERery. I resurrected my yogurt-in-the-mayonnaise-jar prank yesterday, and the response was electric. Kids gagged. Questioned me.
Kid: You’re eating mayonnaise?
Me: Yeah. I forgot my lunch, and I’m starving.
Kid: But out of the jar?
Me: [takes a huge spoonful] Sure. Why not? Want some?
Kid: [gags]
A couple of students came to my door during transition to ask if it was true, that I was eating mayonnaise straight from the jar. Ariyana tried to grab the jar to throw it away. Ms. Smith, I’m worried about you. Hah. I privately told Cyrus the truth, and he was delighted. So in front of other students, I gave him a spoon, and he took a bite. More gagging. I’ve refilled the jar, so Cyrus and I are gonna have us some more fun today.
Oh, and ESCAPEE. I have little posters with sentences like
Nia Vardalos is full of envy.
Don Knotts’ teeth were full of decay.
Quentin Tarantino is a cutie.
Irene Cara’s driveway is icy.
Steven Karl Pifer is an ESCAPEE.
When a student finally sees it, they’re like, Oh. Ms. Smith, you cringey.
Lee – a fine Tuesday offering. I liked trying to come up with others: Married + 8 = made heavy? Nah.
Yep, a day where my general lack of interest in themes actually increased my enjoyment of the puzzle. I thought, “Oh they’re doing something weird with math but I can just solve these from the back half of the clue, so I’ll wait til I read Rex to grok it.” I’m glad I did.
ReplyDeleteIn general otherwise, some really nice answers in this puzzle, more than enough to ignore the theme. I had TApAtiO before TABASCO which is a very specific kealoa, I suppose. Today felt easyish, but mostly because I didn’t bother with the theme on its own terms.
And yes, LICHENS is fine with me. Even finer is Acadia National Park, @Andy. I went a couple summers back and stayed at the Seawall Campground on the quiet side and it was absolutely magical to fall asleep to the sounds of the sea and the wildlife, and wake up among the misty trees and perfect sunrises. I’ll be camping in the Adirondacks in two weeks’ time, and I truly cannot wait.
The answer for 26A is patently wrong. Italy has the longest border on the Adriatic, and it’s not close. Surprised how that made it through the NYT editorial process.
ReplyDelete@Eric, maybe they are counting the shorelines of all the islands? I won't opine on the correctness, if they are.
ReplyDelete@Eric Not sure where you got that idea from, but Croatia (mainland and islands) has 5835 miles of Adriatic coastline to Italy's 1272. You're correct on one count—it's not close!
ReplyDeleteNot sure where “5835” came from but from another Google search: The Croatian Adriatic coastline is 1,777 km long and occupies most of the eastern Adriatic shoreline. It is only 526 km from the most northerly to the most southerly point as the crow flies, but due to many bays and coves, it is among the three most indented shorelines in Europe. (Italy has 1,249 km *coastline* on the Adriatic Sea although it has a longer N-S range.)
DeleteI liked this puzzle more than Rex did, maybe because I caught on to the theme right away. I had GoogleAPPS at first, which obviously wouldn't work.
ReplyDeleteNYONGO looked wrong, but constructors have ignored apostrophes since crosswords were invented, so it's OK.
@Eric (7:32) - Italy does, indeed, have the longest "continuous" border along the Adriatic, but Croatia, with hundreds of islands, has more total border on the sea.
ReplyDeleteCroatia has a mainland coastline that stretches approximately 1,777 kilometers. The portion of Italy's coastline that lies on the Adriatic Sea is approximately 800 kilometers (497 miles) in length. Like you say, it's not even close.
ReplyDeleteLICHENS is fine
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it. The theme clues were more explicit than ideal, but it’s Tuesday. A revealer like @lms suggests might have allowed the clues to be a bit more cryptic.
ReplyDeleteI'm on the "liked it" side on this one. Sure cryptic clues would have been great, but wouldn't have worked for many solvers, and it was still fun to figure out the embedments. And hey, GAZEBO! I don't know if it's really a pavilion, but I don't care.
ReplyDeleteLICHENS is definitely correct as a plural, a very common usage in fact -- "beautiful lichens on that tree." GEMINI is trickier; plural in Latin, but as a sign, it seems to me that it's singular.
@Loren, you'd love doing cryptics -- but be sure to learn the rules, it's probably impossible to figure out all of them for yourself. During Frank Lewis's long tenure at The Nation, they would run a little item that read "If you don't know why lures = ground rules, send for those of Mr. Lewis." I did know, so I never sent for them, to my later regret. Decades later I subscribe to the American Values Club, and one day they sent out a cryptic by Francis Heaney accompanied by a compilation of the rules for all the different types of clue. What an eye-opener! Picciotto and Kosman have a book called "Word Salad" that also explains them, in more detail, I think, but I haven't read it. Go on, give them a try!
"Civic duty" for TAX was a pretty good clue.
Hey All !
ReplyDelete*This* close to a Pangram. Dang, Lee, you need to squeeze in that Q somewhere!
Nice puz, took a sec to find the "wraparound" answers. Did get it at the first Themer I got (BARTENDS). Saw the X of OXEN/XENA, then a K, the J, and said to myself, "Okay, just need that Z and Q for the 'gram." Found the Z, disappointed at not finding a Q.
Nice Center Themer crossing both Down Themers. Two iffy POCs, LICHENS and GEMINIS. Or am I being CYNICal?
PSA: Don't SLURP TABASCO. Or your APSE will hurt. 😁
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
It's a Tuesday. So what if the clues were not of cryptic quality? It was a much better puzzle than we usually see on Tuesdays.
ReplyDelete÷ instead of + would have made much more sense.
ReplyDeleteThis was OK but seeing "10" as part of a clue and then having TEN in the answer, and on and on in this vein, just made it too easy. Ms. NYONGO was the only real unknown. I shared OFL's reaction to UNTAKEN, and BONINESS would make a good title. May I introduce you to His Boniness, Ichabod Crane?
ReplyDeleteI'm with @LMS in choices for EPITAPHs. I've always leaned toward "Thanks for all the fun."
Nice Tuesdecito, LT. Lovely theme, and yes, thanks for all the fun.
On EPITAPH (41D):
ReplyDeleteSteve Post, my favorite radio personality (WNYC) who died in 2014 said he planned to have his tombstone say "He didn't wanna," because whenever his wife said there was some event for them to attend, his reply was always "I don't wanna."
And he invited his listeners to send in their planned epitaphs. He said he would read them over the air. I wrote the following to him: For many years, I was planning for my stone to say "Struggled with his weight his whole life," but more recently I've switched to "Suffered from rectal itching." He saved it to read last, laughed when he read it, and murmured "I can relate to that."
It's my one claim to fame in seven decades of living. And it's enough.
Thx, Lee; IT WORKED like a charm! 😊
ReplyDeleteMed.
Great theme. Took a few minutes post-solve to suss it out.
Fun Adventure! :)
___
@jae: still working on Croce's 810 (over 3 hrs in, and still much to do)! 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
Croatia also has the longer mainland coastline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Sea
ReplyDeleteHey Rex,
ReplyDeleteYour cats look beautiful on that windowsill! Did you tell them they were highly revered by the early Egyptians? But wait a minute! They’re cats! They already have swagger; they know they’re revered! The puzzle was fun. Since it’s a Tuesday I think the extra theme clues were okay. They made the solve a bit easier.
I think a good epitaph would be “You’ll never know.”
ReplyDeleteThe word RENEGE absolutely always looks wrong to me. Maybe because it is most often used in the past tense as “reneged”. Come to think of it, shouldn’t you have to “nege” before you can renege? Feels related to the orphaned negatives of recent NYTXW notoriety. And sitting right next to RENEGES today is RETREAT. When I buy the first round for my pals, I say “My treat.” If I buy the second, I say “I’m gonna RETREAT.”
I’m expecting a link from @Joe DiPinto to an ADAM ANT song today.
Personally, I never META Facebook clue that I liked.
The crossing at 25 evoked some memories of good times with SHOT SKIS. You’d take an old ski whose mate had been lost or broken, and attach 8 or so shot glasses to it in a line from tail to tip. Fill the glasses with Jaeger or something and have 8 people drink simultaneously by tipping the ski. Much hilarity ensued. My 35 year old daughter still owns one of these.
I think this was cryptic enough for a Tuesday. Thanks for doing five numbers on us, LeeTaylor.
Oy. Rex, this wasn't a cryptic. It was a Tuesday-themed XW.
ReplyDeleteStop with the niggling.
Loved the Vivaldi VEES clue.
Cute theme and a fun solve. No complaints regardless of who has the longest border along the Adriatic. Even included an homage to English singer ADAM ANT.
ReplyDeleteCrossword connections:
CATS & MEWS
BARTENDS & SHOT & PINT
TEA & SLURP
@liveprof, for the sake of future generations wandering through cemeteries, you might want to shorten that to SFRI.
This was a pretty good Tuesday but the theme? I’m not sure what to say about it. I agree with Rex that it was easier by ignoring the first half of the themer clues. In fact, I found the whole something-plus-a-number a tad annoying. I suppose without that, there would really have been no theme. But the rest of it was fun and enjoyable.
ReplyDelete@Rex P: Loved the kitty pictures! They look like quite a pair. I’m convinced my CLAN of CATS must think we live in Egypt. The attitude is beyond belief some days. 🙄
Any early week puzzle that introduces new solvers to the world of the Cryptic Crossword is is wonderful, as far as I'm concerned. While cryptics will never replace standard crosswords in the U.S, they require an entirely different way of thinking and therefore provide excellent brain stimulation. I know that Will Shortz loves the genre and I think he has a bit of an agenda in making the format more familiar to the solving public at large.
ReplyDeleteWould today's puzzle seem unusually hard to a novice solver? It's hard for me to judge. Maybe a Wednesday would have been a more apt placement? But as for me -- I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Zipped through that one. Glad I am not 🦖 as I have nothing to talk about on this one. It's fine.
ReplyDeleteUniclues:
1 A typo.
2 Killed it as a caveman.
3 Those with good musical tastes.
4 Mean nickname for skinny Mitchell.
5 "Actually, we're glad he's gone -- the creep."
6 Málaga.
1 EDITOR'S ESCAPEE
2 NAILED STONE AGE
3 ADAM ANT ERASERS (~)
4 JONI BONINESS (~)
5 UNTAKEN EPITAPH
6 PICASSO RETREAT
Medium. This was a solve the puzzle and then figure out what’s going on with the theme effort for me, so Tuesday themeless seems apt. It turns out that the theme is pretty clever, liked it.
ReplyDeleteFrom the echo chamber:
ReplyDeleteLike @Lewis, I enjoyed the guessing game of the theme. After BARTENDS had more or less filled itself in, it was easy to see the pattern but still just fun to try to come up with the rest with as few crosses as possible (biggest success: STONE AGE; hardest: IT WORKED). Like others above, I thought @Rex's criticism about the clues was wide of the mark - they need to be easier than cryptic clues for a crossword and on a Tuesday.
@Loren, like @jberg, I encourage you to try your HAND at cryptics. I think with your love of and talent for wordplay they'd be right up your alley.
When I was quite young and my mother would leave me alone in the house, I would eat mayo out of the jar with a spoon. Not too much so that my mother wouldn't notice. I still love the stuff. My favorite sandwich is sliced turkey on white bread and a sea of mayo.
ReplyDeleteI like cryptic-ish clues, so this was a big yes!
ReplyDeleteFor me ITWORKED took some thought since I expected the crosswordese ired instead of irked. Nice.
Very little junk.
EPITAPH I used to favor “ Never satisfied in life; don’t expect to be now.”
@egs – @Son Volt already obliged at 6:09. But here's something for the answer next to it.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't a cryptic, it's not trying to be one. As @B$ says, it's just a Tuesday Xword.
Solved as a themeless (& quicker than those of late too)
ReplyDeleteso thank you, Lee.
LOVED the pics of the kitties, Rex!
Really like @RP's suggested alternate, Galaxy of the Guardian*, approach to cluin up the themers. A more cryptic(al) approach woulda been neat. Might have to move the puz to Thursday then, tho.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the @RP SIX challenge, M&A humbly (and desperately) offers:
{Appropriate salute to Trump with his veep in attendance + 6 = "The" Maugham novel} = MOONANDSIXPENCE.
Seems like Louis IX el oui etude might also have some (desperate) possibilities, somehow. But not sure how to clue it up.
faves: SLURP. PICASSO. APRICOT. EPITAPH.
staff weeject pick: OST. Better clue: {Most of most??}.
Thanx for the fun, Ms. Taylor darlin. Cool way to do a number on us.
Masked & Anonymo1U
* Title used for several cryptic runtpuzs, a few years back. (The Guardian, Brit newspaper, publishes lotsa cryptic crosswords.) M&A could never seem to fully get the hang of that there style, tho.
**gruntz**
As a fellow cryptic solver, I had similar feelings. Like, I would have even accepted the word + number format if the clues had left off the second half of the equation. It wouldn't have been a Tuesday, but it would have been better and more fun.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, excited about the Out of Left Field rec. Always like to discover a new cryptic.
I don't even know what a cryptic puzzle is. I'm not sure I could tweak my mind to think outside of law and order. I looked up the meaning and it confused me even further.
ReplyDeleteI only have time to do the NYT puzzles. I guess they're pretty tame (brain wise). If this is a tame one, I really liked the idea. Maybe I should dip a toe in one late at night.
Well if this is one, I thought it very clever. I took me a bit of a stare fest at the first theme. BARTENDS. I wanted to sniff out the theme pronto. AH...There's the BARD and yep...there's that (10) TEN. Wow...On to 18D. There's your BOSS hidden in a BONINESS along with the NINE. Pause. I don't think Ive ever used that word to describe a hard fish to eat. One of my favorite fish to eat is a whole grilled trout. Boy can I whip those bones right out of its carcass. So you get the spine out and hold it up so that everyone likes you, then go fishing for the little ones. Pick, pick, pick. It's like playing tic tac toe. All bones gone; gobble that white tender thing; sit back and contemplate about how good life is. Hey...my EPITATH could be: "She ate a trout without swallowing a bone and passed on BONINESS."
@mathgent 11:02. I love mayo too...Boy do I do the same with. sliced turkey on white bread. I even like mayo on my peas. I won't even eat French fries unless I get a side of the stuff.
I solved it without the theme, then looked at the theme clues. It would've been better with just the cryptic clues. Omit the "real" clues and run it on a Thursday.
ReplyDeleteA nice bonus to learn about Croatia's coastline. I was shocked just now when I looked at a map and saw how long it is! The mainland part doesn't actually look longer than Italy's but it must be all the inlets. (Humblebrag: Canada's is over 200,000 km / 125,000 mi.)
ReplyDeleteTypeovers: NETTED before NAILED (think "Got exactly" for wages), and RUNAWAY before ESCAPEE.
(Humblebrag #2: My town's Penticton VEES won the BCHL last week after a remarkable regular season of 50 wins and 3 losses.)
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, even though I did it late and tired after the Victoria Day weekend at the lake. Last week, Mon to Fri: 0, 0, 0, 0, -1; missed "ninepin" on Fri to end my QB streak at 10; didn't do Sat or Sun.]
Yeah, I got the answers on the literal parts of the clues, and only uncovered the meaning of the "equations" afterwards, which was sort of a sad trombone.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I’ve been very erratic in posting lately because the AT&T internet in my immediate area has been dropping out for hours lately and it’s made posting difficult. Looks like I have plenty of bandwidth this afternoon, so I’ll get right to it.
Holy cow! The puzzle was easy but sussing out the theme was not. And such a labor intensive theme to create. Wow. This is a prime example of why I love words and crosswords, but words absolutely fascinate me.
What was just a tad irritating was how easy it was to figure out the theme answers without figuring out how the + (number) works. I imagine had I slowed down a tad, I would have figured it out before completion, but I was whooshing and zooming right through this one, so didn’t stop. As usual, I also made the theme much harder than it needed to be by thinking I somehow needed to count letters rather than look for a word representing a number. Really.
The human brain, right? We will never completely understand its innermost workings. Certainly not the odd mess between my ears!
One of the tough spots for me was first, spelling Lupita Nyongo’s name properly. Add to that the fact that I continued to ERR by trying to count letters to grok the theme. That misunderstanding left me in the weeds for a bit. I finally gave up trying to figure out exactly what to do with the theme’s numbers game and just plopped in the correct answers. Like Miss Scarlet, I thought “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” Or sometime.
So, as I finished up the SE corner with President Truman, the happy music joyfully let me know I’d succeeded. So, as I usually do, I enjoyed reviewing the grid. When what to my proverbial wondering eyes should appear but bigger than life, the word SEVEN practically screaming at me from the center of the grid. It’s hardly a worthy NEWS EVENT, but that’s when I got the theme. For some reason (placement? that the NEWT fairly skitters off the page to grab one’s attention along with the word SEVEN?), it was at that moment that the theme’s workings smacked me in the face. I love that! I can laugh at myself while appreciating our constructor’s cleverness in first noticing that this could be a theme and for finding a sufficient number of good examples. Well done, Lee Taylor! The joke most certainly is on me.
Any puzzle with 54D JONI Mitchell in it has won me over. I still have 7 or 8 of her vinyl LPs. She helped me a lot getting through the trials and tribulations of grad school. Many was the time when I would listen to her late at night and she would take my mind off the ordeals of the day and soothe my furrowed brow.
ReplyDeleteI don't think of a CYNIC (30D) as being a "Jaded person", as clued. I'm a CYNIC about many things and it's a distrust in the sincerity of what people of power and position, like politicians, are trying to get me to believe. I think of someone who is jaded as being bored or tired after having had too much of something. I would clue CYNIC along the lines of "Disillusioned idealist".
I think I'll make myself an APRICOT AND TABASCO smoothie with LICHENS sprinkled on top. SLURP, SLURP!
Seeing her name in clue/ answer was great. I also have old Joni Mitchell vinyl records, about the same amount.
DeleteAlways thought of her as an astounding songwriter and love her voice. Great that she recently was able to sing a few songs in public after her stroke. Very interesting person also.
Liked the puzzle.
Saw the theme, realized I didn’t care about the theme, and went from there.
ReplyDeleteLoved the cryptic elements in the puz. Always welcome cryptic clueing.
ReplyDelete@okanaganer (2:13 PM)
Congrats to the 'VEEs'! That's quite a season! 🏒
The kids were married in Penticton, then jobs took them to Trail, and finally on to Westbank.
___
@jae, pablo: finally finished (or dnfed) Croce's 810. Was pleased to have come close on this one (couldn't make sense of 'pika' / 'TLC' / 'counterpart'), so a two-cell gaff.
Made up for it by acing Gorski's Mon. New Yorker in a relatively fast time (akin to a NYT' med-challenging Sat).
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
@ookanganer-No idea about TLC and my NE is filled in but I have my doubts. The rest went relatively fast for a Croce.
ReplyDeleteI lived in London during the 1970s and got big time into cryptic puzzles in newspapers and other English sources and kindred addicts. This one is a great Tuesday NYT puzzle. It isn’t a cryptic as I know them.
ReplyDeleteGingrich swallows seven!
ReplyDeleteBest line ever.
Agree with Rex that these clues went only semi-cryptic, and I would have preferred that they go the whole hog. But I was happy to get what we did get.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about UNTAKEN, which is a very common word used for seats (when booking concert tickets).
it is so nice to see the cats getting along!
ReplyDeleteNAILED IT
ReplyDeleteA STONEAGE JESTER calls IT this,
for SLURP BIOTIC effects,
IN MENS LAPs a HAND or KISS,
AND XENA LICHENS IT to SECTs.
--- SASHA PICASSO
Wordplay isn’t everyone’s cup of TEA. It sure isn’t Rex’s otherwise he would have like this puzzle. Not perfect, but a pretty enjoyable solve with not very much junk fill.
ReplyDeleteRes’s cats are pleasantly plump.
ReplyDeleteAgree with OFNP that the theme clues were oversimplified. The whole puzzle was pre-Monday easy--until trying to get into the NE. I mean, if you missed 12 Years a Slave, which I did, 34a will have to go in totally on crosses. Which it did. That section was no picnic.
ReplyDeleteI will say the 4-corner 7-stacks are fairly impressive, but TAKEN as a whole I didn't like this one. Bogey.
However, I NAILED the Wordle: YBBBB, GGGGG! First eagle in a while.
Wait - is it Thursday already? Not in difficulty, but in the trickiness!
ReplyDeleteBut, as @Spacey said, an easy trick to suss out.
Only a name or two that was outside my wheelhouse, but the crosses filled them in.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
I absolutely hated this puzzle. Even while completing it faster than my average, I still had to come here to figure out what the theme was.
ReplyDelete