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Hong Kong action hero who frequently collaborated with John Woo / SUN 5-7-23 / Mudhole wallower / Steam trains in the 19th century / Rosalind of Star Trek Deep Space Nine / City that hosts an annual pirate festival / Astronaut Ellen of shuttle missions / Flour variety with palindromic name / Award-winning sci-fi author Bacigalupi / Selection of appetizers in Greek and Turkish restaurants / Chef food writer Samin / Person living between Liberia and Ghana
Sunday, May 7, 2023
Constructor: Will Nediger
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- SHIP OF THESEUS (22A: Thought experiment that asks whether an object remains the same object if its parts are replace one by one)
- CHIP AND DALE (33A: Acorn-loving duo)
- CHOPSTICKS (48A: Restaurant pick-up option?)
- CHOW YUN-FAT (51A: Hong Kong action hero who frequently collaborated with John Woo)
- SHOWBOATING (71A: Ostentatious behavior)
- SLOW MOTION (87A: Dramatic action-movie effect)
- SLOP BUCKET (90A: Pail for feeding pigs)
- SLIP-ON SHOES (107A: Loafers, e.g.)
- SHIP OF THESEUS (121A: Thought experiment that asks whether an object remains the same object if its parts are replace one by one)
The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. According to legend, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?
In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time, and has inspired a variety of proposed solutions and concepts in contemporary philosophy of mind concerned with the persistence of personal identity. (wikipedia)
• • •
The fill is all over the map. Mostly it's good, and it's certainly ... uh, trying? Trying to be fresh? I think. Stuff like LATA and APPA felt very intentional. That is, I've never heard of either, and I'm guessing that's true of lots of solvers, but the puzzle makes those answers very gettable, so I was happy enough to learn them. Although, I should probably actually *learn* LATA Mangeshkar now. Hang on. Here we go. Per wikipedia:
Lata Mangeshkar ([ləˈt̪aː məŋˈɡeːʃkər] [...]; born Hema Mangeshkar; 28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an Indian playback singer and occasional music composer. She is widely considered to have been one of the greatest and most influential singers in India and one of the world's greatest singers, according to BBC. Her contribution to the Indian music industry in a career spanning eight decades gained her honorific titles such as the "Queen of Melody", "Nightingale of India", and "Voice of the Millennium"
OK yeah that definitely sounds like someone whose international stature makes her crossworthy. As I told Rachel while solving, "if she's the 'Queen of Melody' the way Aretha is the 'Queen of Soul,' then that would make her very much worth knowing, I guess." APPA crossing ATTA might've been tricky for some, but first of all everyone should know ATTA by now and second of all even if you didn't, the "palindromic" in the clue meant that the cross with APPA should not have been a problem. If you've got the "A" from TOASTS (and why wouldn't you...?), then you've automatically got the initial "A" in APPA. There were a lot of names in this one, particularly pop cultural names. CHAO NOSRAT PAOLO EMMA CORRIN—these were really the only places in the puzzle that were likely to slow you down. Not usually the biggest fan of relying almost exclusively on proper noun trivia for "difficulty," but again, because the puzzle was so easy, I didn't mind the glut of names too much. I was actually happy to be reminded of CHOW YUN-FAT, a handsome and charismatic actor many solvers won't know, but who is a genuinely huge star in Hong Kong cinema, and had a brief star moment stateside in the '90s when he starred opposite Mira Sorvino in The Replacement Killers (1998). He's best known for his work with John Woo in the '80s and '90s, in the crime dramas A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992)—movies where Woo's "bullet ballet" style is in full effect. Violent, but gorgeous, and hugely entertaining.
Rachel and I were unsure how we felt not just about OTIOSITY as a word, but about the OTIOSITY / NULLITY crossing, which feels like a sci-fi thought experiment of its own. Is it possible to be so lazy that you literally cease to be? This is the existential question at the heart of ... The OTIOSITY NULLITY (coming from Riverhead Books this fall). Speaking of "does it exist?" ... FETTLE. Really not a fan of this word standing there all by its lonesome. What even is FETTLE? It sounds like feed for your stock ("SLOP BUCKET's empty! Fetch some more FETTLE!"). But it just means "condition," from what I can tell, and you never ever see it unless it's preceded by "in fine." Bah. I also balked at HADIN (95A: Invited over). Rachel thought it was fine. I thought the phrase was "had over." You have someone over and you ask someone in. HADIN feels forced/off. We both agreed that we'd never heard UPPISH, ever, but Rachel thought she might like to hear it, and anyway both of us agreed that it's better than the answer we had in there originally, which was UPPITY, yuck (43D: Hoity-toity). OK, that's enough, the cats are getting crazy and crawling all over my desk and keyboard, which means it's feeding time. See you later.
Here's the video of me and Rachel Fabi solving this puzzle, wherein I coin the term "Tolkienista":
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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99 comments:
Easy. WOEs: NOSRAT, LATA, PAOLO (as clued), CHOW YUN FAT, TOPOS, EMMA CORRIN (and I watched the show), SHIP OF THE THESUS...fortunately the crosses were mostly fair as some of these are not exactly inferable.
Thanks @Rex for the LATA and THESUS articles.
Pretty good word ladder puzzle wrapped in a thought experiment. Liked it.
Got a big smile (if not an AHA) from the theme; glad @Rex (and presumably also Rachel) had similar reaction. A very fun Sunday overall, for a change.
webwinger
The SW nearly killed me. Never heard of EMMACORRIN. Finally guessed that the 82D/125A crossing was a Y rather than E. I won't call that a Natick, but Jiminy Xmas.
A lot of proper name fill in this, but aside from EMMACORRIN, they were obvious via crossings.
(I hate to complain about actor names in the grid, but I check EMMACORRIN on imDB and I have seen exactly nothing she has appeared in. Apparently she's made no weird public appearances that would pop her up in my news feed. You go, girl!)
The theme was "meh", which is to say, better than most #NYTXW Sunday puzzles of the last multiple months.
Weirdly enough, I did read an article about the theory of the SHIP of Theseus within the past month (or two). So at least that answer actually made actual sense.
I solved while watching the Kentucky Derby (the horse I bet on should cross the finish line any day now), so the puzzle didn't have my undivided attention. I had parsed 22A as SHIP OF THE SEUS (alternate spelling of a children's author or Greek god?) and didn't make sense of it until I got to the duplicate at 121A. Other than that, probably Easy but Easy-Medium for me due to my distraction.
UPPISH? OTIOSITY? I finished with UPPIty so a DNF for me. Everything else I got right, though I never hear of EMMACORRIN or the YUNFAT guy. So I guess I cant say it was easy if I had a DNF. DNL (did not like)
Often puzzles that display the constructor’s cleverness have nothing else going for them. The fact that we participated in the word ladder leading back to the original theme answer changed all that. I was expecting a blah final answer and I was delighted to have that subverted. And even though there was some rough fill, it didn’t feel like a slog. I’d love more cerebral fun like this on Sundays.
Regarding Chow Yun-Fat, he was making films released stateside for more than a decade, including acting in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I don't know how well has endured, but it was pretty huge in its time and surely introduced many more in the US audience to him than The Replacement Killers did.
I was expecting to see the two halves of the word ladder use the same words except that the second half would have used C words: Clip/Slip, Chow/Show, Clap/Slap, etc. That would have been a great bonus, given the title (Sea Change)!
Loved the theme! It certainly helped that I was very familiar with the Ship of Theseus.
Ok, this is weird. I read an article this week that asked the question of whether something is still the same thing after total replacement of all parts. So what went from a word ladder to something this clever was surprising and fun despite the WOEs @jae pointed out. In the NYT? Can't remember.
However, impressed to see a firm I worked for right before retirement, Slipon, Spyon, & Slidinto, LLC. Providing Nullity for Blunderers. Call 1-800-HAHA and get the settlement you deserve! I wrote that commercial.
Love this theme!
Those of us mere mortals who aren't into Greek philosophers know this as George Washington's hatchet. "This is the hatchet that George used to cut down the cherry tree. It's been in regular use ever since. Every now and then it's needed a new head or a new handle, but by golly, it's the same hatchet!" Wrapping it up in a crossword with unknown names and boring fill makes it neither philosophy nor art. I rarely loathe a puzzle, but this one crossed the line.
There’s a very funny TV show called Kim’s Convenience which features a Korean family, and it uses the name Appa for the father. Check it out.
The theme felt just a touch off to me because in the SHIP OF THESEUS question, the idea is you replace each part once and ask whether the ship is the same thing. But in the puzzle, every part of the ship is replaced twice. And there’s never a version of the ship in which all four parts are different from the original.
Let’s say the S of SHIP is the mizzenmast. (Is that a thing? Sounds right.) You’ve taken it off and replaced it with a new mizzenmast, C, to get CHIP. But then you seem to be putting that same old rotting original mizzenmast back on when you go from CHOW to SHOW. And by the end, you’ve put all the original pieces back on, which is not what the thought experiment does.
Yeah, I am way overthinking this. Maybe even SHOWBOATING (kinda nice that that themer is also kind of a ship). I actually enjoyed solving it and thinking about the theme and whether it works or not. Seems like I have read that over seven years, every cell in our bodies has been replaced by a new one. So is my body the same one I had seven years ago, and was that one the same as the one from seven years before that? I’d like the cells back from 35 years ago, please. (Is that whole body replacement factoid even true? Someone here will know.)
Apart from the theme, lots of nice long answers, especially SLOP BUCKET. Reminds me of having teenagers in the house. And at least two clues that made me smile - “object for binding contracts” for STAPLE and “restaurant pick-up option” for CHOPSTICKS.
Aioli before PESTO. And for some stupid reason FiddLE before FECKLE.
What a theme, rebellious and masterly! The audacity of duping a 13-letter answer on top of presenting a device – the word ladder – scorned by many purists as being tired and a turn-off. Then vanquishing these objections with a brilliant meta theme based on the SHIP OF THESEUS conundrum: Is that second SHIP, with each letter having been replaced through the ladder, the same as the first? Is it a dupe or not?
All this sparked by appealing answers: MASTIFF, IVORIAN, CHOW YUN-FAT, SHOWBOATING, NO SILLY, SMOOCH, and NULLITY. NULLITY! Plus, clue cleverness, such as [Object for binding contracts?] for STAPLE, and [Restaurant pick-up option?] for CHOPSTICKS.
Not to mention a striking international clue/answer vibe, including London, Essex, Liberia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Canada, Hong Kong, and Paris. Not to mention bringing everything down to earth with the PuzzPair© of STY and SLOP BUCKET.
This puzzle was made with skill, confidence, and guile, the work of a pro. Will, your thought-provoking theme will linger with me for long to come, and marked this Sunday offering for me as one of the special ones. Bravo and thank you!
Theme didn’t work for me. The parts are being replaced twice; once with something different, then a second time with something resembling the original piece. That’s not the ship of Theseus idea.
This is a really well made, high-quality grid. I just wish the theme were better than a word ladder.
Oops, I meant FETTLE.
This would seem to be a puzzle that an avid crossword aficionado would find attractive, with a lot of unusual entries like IVORIAN, UPPISH, SACRUM, NULLITY, FETTLE, PAOLO, CHOWYUNFAT,EMMACORRIN, OTIOSITY, RECTO, MASTIFF, NOSRAT, BAFTA, et c. That’s a lot of real estate to wrestle with if you are mostly unfamiliar those terms. The crosses must be pretty fair since a lot of posters are calling it on the easy side thus far.
I found the word ladder kind of clunky and cumbersome - mostly due to CHOWYUNFAT. Probably could have slipped a CHOW in there somehow without having to resort to a movie guy.
I’m sure many here are familiar with Samin NOSRAT (she used to write for the NYT). If you don’t have a copy of Salt Fat Acid Heat, it’s an easy read, loaded with good info and available on Amazon.
A clever puzzle diminished by its Tuesday-level difficulty. Hoping for
a greater challenge on Sunday. Hoping for a greater challenge on
Sunday.
tc
.
.
I find word ladders to be boring and silly, and this one was no exception, made worse by too many obscure names — even though the puzzle was mostly way too easy. But after reading Rex I do have an appreciation of the theme.
Unlike yesterday's SPATTED, or today's UPPISH, not to mention OTIOSITY AND NULLITY, FETTLE may be out of style, but it is actually a word. I don't understand how intelligent people can let the NYT get away with simply making up "words." Am I the only one who finds this insultingful and idiotical?
I didn’t love HADIN either. Had up, had over, but it’s not reall a big deal. fun, easy, quick, not too shabby!
115 Across: Obscure to be sure. I only knew it from watching Kim's Convenience, a silly Canadian sitcom on Netflix. The papa is Appa.
Solvable but not fun. This puzzle was a disgrace.
Hmmm. I read something about it, too, but don't recall why. Was there a NYT article that referred to it? Very strange, I thought, to see it in the puzzle so soon after I learned the concept
Here's the article: Inside the Delirious Rise of ‘Superfake’ Handbags https://nyti.ms/3VAlq8u
In Partnership Taxation, it used to be that if over 50% of the partnership's ownership interests changed hands within a 12-month period, the old partnership was deemed to have terminated and a new one instantaneously formed. This could come as quite a surprise to the partners, especially when it was a small transfer that nudged them over the 50% mark. Congress eventually did away with the rule, thinking, apparently, it's still the same old ship, ax, or whatever.
That makes a SHIPOFTHESEUS triumvirate this week. I read about it somewhere, I thought perhaps here, in a discussion about Greek philosophy. Then just yesterday, I listened to a "Stuff You Should Know" podcast titled "Does the body replace itself?" that explored how much of the material in our body replaces itself over time. It seems that only parts of the brain, heart, and optical systems are original. And now this!!
Hands up for Kim's Convenience APPA - it's jarring to see that actor playing other parts with English-speaking fluency and accent.
Complaints about the order of the letter replacements seem to be overthinking. You have to add back the same parts (letters), or it is definitely a different ship. They aren't all being replaced at the same time on a real ship, or car for that matter. How many tires do you replace before an engine block?
Fettling is the sand casting foundry process in which all the extra bits required in to get the molten metal into the mold and to create enough pressure to prevent shrinkage when it cools, are trimmed off. So my guess is that the word "fettle" means essentially to prepare. A well fettled object will required less final finishing.
Once I recognized the word ladder, I figured we’d end up at some other four-letter sea-related word, and wondered what that would be, but wasn’t expecting much of a payoff. The final rung was a pleasant unexpected twist.
Never heard of SHIPOFTHESEUS and read is at SHIP OF THE SEUS, which made no sense. Kept thinking it was SEaS, but the crosses meant, as Sinatra crooned, It Had To Be U.
In the CHOPSTICKS vernacular, this was sweet and sour - so much obscure PPP but they were inferable from the too easy crosses. NOSILLY Sallies but a lot of obscure YUNGFAT and NOSRAT (and LIV and CHO, Ughs for younger solvers.)
@Beezer from yesterday - the Queen Diana comment was just a joke mixing the C/K Kart Kontroversy (took several overwrites for iPad to accept Karriage) and the non-word SPATTED with yesterday’s UPPISH event in London. I may not know Theseus, but I did hear the sorry saga of Charles and Diana. Congrats, Queen Kamille - you win! Was just waiting for her first words as Kween (using the Kwik /Quick quontroversial spellingj to be “ITOLDYOUSO!”
I liked this puzzle, and am always amazed by Will Nediger's cruciverbalist capabilities.
Slowed me down: UPPITY instead of UPPISH; TOHIRE instead of ONHIRE; HASASEC before HASTIME; EMMACORWIN before EMMACORRIN (my wife's error!).
It's also quite the coincidence (not?!) that - as @Ellen just pointed out - the Times Magazine also contains an article by Amy X. Wang on superfakes, which starts: "Once upon a time, the legend goes, Theseus slew the Minotaur and sailed triumphantly home to Athens on a wooden ship. The vessel was preserved by Athenian citizens, who continually replaced its rotting planks with strong, fresh timber... the philosopher Plutarch found it to embody a 'logical question of things that grow': After Theseus's ship had been stripped of all its original material, could it still be considered the same ship?"
As a kid I heard the story of the guy who bought George Washington's axe. (The one which which he chopped down the cherry tree and fessed up, "I cannot tell a lie"). In the meantime the axe had a new blade and two new handles. I didn't know until today, more than half a century later, that this was a thought experiment and that it actually had a name. I somehow feel that my life is now complete!
Can someone explain the clue “Jersey call” and it’s answer “moo?”
Jersey is a kind of cow
Hey All !
With the title, I at first thought the C's were going to change to S's, and the S's to C's. Quickly DISAVOWed of that notion after the Themers made sense as written, and didn't make sense when swapping the C's and S's.
So then after getting a few letters hither and YON in the shaded parts of the Themers, realized it was going to be a word ladder. Ah, says I, but why is the last Themer shaping up to be like the first Themer? Clues were the same, could it possibly be the same answer? Lol and behold, it was. Hmm, interesting.
Didn't catch the significance of that until reading Rex. Man, sometimes I feel like a real bonehead.
A few PPP's I didn't know, a few words I didn't know (looking at you OTIOSITY), led me to an FWE (Finished With Errors, in case y'all forgot.) Oh well. Hit Check Puzzle, it crossed out my wrongness, then was able to tweak the ole brain into seeing the correctness. Got the Happy Music, but no SHOWBOATING accompanying it.
I bet Samin NOSRAT got teased as a kid.
Hey @pablo, an EMMA sighting!
Who had COCCYX first for SACRUM *Raises hand*
Someone more clever than myself can make a story with the Themers. They seem to want to go together!
Enough BUNK outta me
Six F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Thx, Will; great challenge! 😊
Very hard.
Cute theme which I grokked only at the end,
Made even harder by not knowing how to spell AMHERST and having uLO for the rating system. Took 2 1/2 hrs to finally wake up. Shoulda/woulda/coulda 'red flagged' uLO from the get-go. When will I ever learn?? Knowing ELO as the rating system for chess, I carelessly tossed it out with bath water, thinking it had to be something unique to 'Scrabble', and I was so happy with AMHuRST. :(
Even without the BLUNDER, I was well over my avg Sun. time.
Nevertheless, a worthwhile (maybe) expenditure of few couple hrs, and lots of stuff Googled and (maybe) learned for future use. ;)
___
@pablo, & other Sat. Stumpers: Steve Mossberg's Stumper came in at at med. (2 hrs). Good exercise, as always! :)
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Looks like a Mark Halpin acrostic at xwordinfo.com, so on to that adventure. 🤞
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Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
I’m surprised no one has mentioned that CHOW YUN-FAT’s huge filmography includes Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which received 10 Academy Award nominations in 2001, including Best Picture, and won 4 Oscars.
Sorry, @OldCarFudd, I didn't see your post before I chimed in. You beat me to it.
I hear that next year’s Kentucky Derby will only allow IRONHORSES to enter, as there are no longer enough flesh and blood ones that survive the run up to Derby Day.
In the SHIP OF THESEUS (SOT)conundrum, do you replace even the parts such ASSAIL? I note for the record that ASSAIL could also refer to hemorrhoids. Funny that the SOT was mentioned in the NYT Fake Handbag article, which I read, but also in the book I’m currently reading, which is Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them by Antonio Padilla. Must be something in the air, or, more likely, in the water.
If you didn’t think there was enough woosh, woosh today, at least there was SWISH SMOOCH. After yesterday’s APSC, I thought APPA might be college-level Physical Anatomy taught in high school.
I think the concept here was more interesting than the execution, which is just a word ladder with a slight twist. But I certainly enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks, Will Nediger.
I thought you were going to completely pan this one … the theme made it so easy to solve and left me feeling sort of like “that’s it?!?” I even tried taking all the replaced letters to see if they spelled out something that might create a bigger aha moment.” If there was one, I missed it. But I appreciate the puzzle much more after reading your review. I guess some weeks are just easier than others.
Meant to say, that in the Classic Car world, the SHIP OF THESUES theory doesn't really apply. You Can change every part of a Classic, and if you don't tell anyone, they will ooh and aah over it, thinking it's just a nice restored car.
Or even just restoring a car, keeping certain parts
I know what I'm trying to say, but can't seem to convey it clearly. Ah. Me
RooMonster The Ole Brain Needs A Restore Guy
If you’re going to mention Chow Yun Fat movies, for god’s sake remind folks of his epic performance in the commensurately epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Surely Chow Yun Fat became world famous via Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. As for appa, many people might have learnt that word watching Kim's Convenience, a really fun show. It's hilarious that yesterday you were taking about not having to guess and today you are talking about exactly that.
Regarding number 5 down- the clue reference to steam trains is misleading. The Iron Horse is referring to a steam locomotive. There is a difference.
It was the lede of the NYT article on fake handbags ... which is in this week's magazine section but was online earlier. Can't be coincidental. (See link above.)
The plural of "coho" is "coho."
Uppish (43-Down, clued as hoity-toity)? Seriously? No, the word is Uppity. This entire puzzle was a slog, from the useless theme to the insane amount of esoteric fill. It felt like the constructor emailed four friends and asked them to create 1/4 of a puzzle without ever consulting any of the other friends. Utterly incoherent.
Sorry, Will. Since I've never heard of the "thought experiment" known as SHIP OF THESEUS, this entire theme sailed right over my head. In fact, I didn't even know how to read the themer: Was it SHIP OF THESEUS or SHIP OF THESE U.S.?
Nor could I finish the SE corner. I had UCLA, not UCSF (and never questioned it) and I had KIDS MENU instead of KIDS MEAL. Should have thought of EARHART, but my brain froze up when I saw the clue, and I was sure it would be someone I never heard of.
So I'm left with a bone at the base of the spine that's a LA?RUM> And, of course, there isn't one.
Fun Sunday solve, despite the ponderous ladder concept. Candidly, I wouldn’t have even thought about the whole laddering thing were it not for @rex offering the fulsome explainer.
Was momentarily tripped up with 79A (Augurs), thinking “Augers” so had BORES instead of BODES.
Exceptional fill and lots of cool trivia. Loved seeing CHOWYUNFAT blazing his way across the grid!
Happy weekend, all.
@Ellen, Yes! Thank you.
Thanks to those on the blog who brought what had seemed to me like a very esoteric philosophical concept vividly to life by explaining exactly what happened to the SHIP OF THESEUS and also exactly what happened to George Washington's hammer.
So now it's not a purely philosophical question. It's a very real question: Are these really the same things once you've replaced every part? And in some ways a highly practical question too: Would you be willing to spend any money at all to buy George Washington's hammer once every single part of it had been replaced?
I don't have a philosophical brain (sorry, @Birchbark). I have a very pragmatic brain -- and this intriguing question has suddenly become of much greater interest to me.
An interesting question. I'll go out and ponder it in the beautiful sunshine. Maybe an apple will fall on my head.
Gad. Glad that's over. Gonna have to sit on Will's couch and watch the same TV as him. He needs to ask himself if maybe it's time to pare down that enormous word list in his software. Strained answers with grammatically odiferous modifiers, PPP blockers throughout, and foreign partials made this unfun. I PASS.
I think 🦖 is letting friendship temper his honesty (as one does) here. Maybe we shouldn't let him out of the house anymore.
Oh, I did love NO SILLY.
Uniclues:
1 This puzzle.
2 Those who've suggested the Sunday crossword has gone to the dogs.
1 SLOW MOTION SLOP BUCKET
2 "I TOLD YOU SO" BLUNDERERS
Started by thinking word ladder, ugh. Ended with word ladder, fun.
My fastest Sunday time yet
Rex - your musing on OTIOSITY NULLITY got a laugh out of me. Not sure I exist!
@Roomonster. Samin NOSRAT is smart and charming in her TV series but I almost choked on my coffee laughing when you pointed out the teasability of NOSRAT. Not a hoity-toity reaction. 😀
I'm generally not great with names, but CHOWYUNFAT was familiar with a few crosses. He's been a busy guy and a pleasure to watch.
Interesting to consider the question too. My vote is that ultimately it's not the same boat, car, body, theme answer. But without the word ladder, the theme answer would be a duplication.
Good puzzle, but over too quickly.
I guess I had a DNF because I had AMusE and NOSRuT for 54D and 68A. Never heard of Mr. Samin, and my "u" made as much sense as any other vowel. Though I was concerned that AMusE seemed a little mild as a descriptor of being blown away.
Ah, well. I loved this. Had never heard of the theory of the ship and at first, like many others, thought SHIP OF THESE US was pretty weird. I didn't catch the theme of replacement till very late because I was all over the puzzle during my solve. But the aha moment was very sweet. I love the whole concept of the theory.
Hate that woah is becoming an acceptable spelling for whoa. Hell in a handbasket I'm tellin' ya...
Amy: lots of fun. On the easy side, but that's fine. The weather is perfect here so got outside early for a ramble (today I took note of garden and lawn statuary of my neighbors). After the baseball game, planning on some gardening and another stroll.
This was more enjoyable (& easier) than the last few Sundays. Thanks Wil!
If WOAH or WHOA is meant to be a monosyllabic command or interjection, would not WOH be a better spelling?
If I were ranking the most important philosophical questions of all time, the SHIP OF THE SEUS thought experiment would be near the bottom, right in there with "Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?"
Just got through reading about the mass shooting in an Allen, Texas mall. Apparently it is the 200th(!) mass shooting in the U.S. this year. And then I opened Rex's blog to see two guys pointing guns at each others heads. Maybe a more important question than the SHIP thingie would be "Does the constant glorifying of gun violence in movies and on TV lead to 'Copycat' gun violence in the real world?"
Right on all accounts, @photomatte! A puzzle with this much obscure PPP to top off a tired theme deserves file #13, which is where I put it. Worst puzzle in quite a month of Sundays, and that's really saying something!
It’s in today’s paper, in the magazine no less! Coincidence or deliberate?
Pretty easy-breezy one for me, which I appreciate on a Sunday. Makes me feel like less of a dunce heading into the week. Plus I learned a couple of things. Having skipped Philosophy in college, the Ship of Theseus was utterly alien to me, but I dig the concept. Also, Chow Yun Fat is a total bad a$$. Fun to see him in a puzzle.
@Anoa Bob - I can't rule out the violence in media or in first person shooter games as a root cause. They say it doesn't lead to violence IRL, but how can anyone fully believe people don't imitate what they take in when advertisers pay billions to get people to do just that?
Well, I think I'm in a fine FETTLE...and then I began to think about that SHIP OF THE SEUS. I had to read that clue about twenty times. What is SEUS doing? What's he replacing? Will it look the same in the end? Was something hidden in Green Eggs and Ham? I think my mind was filled with NULLITY OTIOSITY. So I took another road.
Oh, look...a word ladder. I think my first puzzle smile was with a word ladder. It was a long time ago and I think it might've started with a head and finish with a tail. Or something like that. This one intrigued me because I had no idea what my tail would end up looking like.
Fill in the others easily enough, know your dealing with a word ladder, get to the end and because I'm thick, saw that we were dealing with a SHIP from start to finish, looked up the meaning of THESEUS's little thought, threw Dr. SEUS out the window and pondered. Would I look the same if all my body parts were replaced one by one? EGADS...
Anyway, this is a long way to say that I really enjoyed myself and that I will remember LATA whatshisname because LATA in Spanish is can.
JD 6:39. Good to see you back HAHAHAHA......
The U.S.S. Constitution ("Old Ironsides") -- still a commissioned U.S. Navy vessel, still commanded and crewed by U.S. Navy personnel -- gets my vote as the closest real-life exemplar of Theseus's ship. According the the Navy, 10-15% of the original (c. 1797) wood remains. Even that much seems remarkable for a structure made of wood that spends most of its time in water.
Totally funny to me that, 27 pages earlier in the same issue of the Magazine, an article about fake fashion handbags, starts with "Once upon a time, the legend goes, Theseus slew the Minotaur...," and goes on to explain the Ship of Theseus conundrum and its extension by Hobbes. This totally gives fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theory I subscribed to in the 90s that everything in the daily crossword had to be mentioned somewhere else in that day's paper.
This SunPuz is certainly on the M&A SHIP list.
Had no idea about the whole SHIPOFTHESEUS thing.
Did spot the bunches of word ladder rungs pretty quick -- probably cuz they were hi-lited by gray squares.
Sooo … one kinda cancelled out the other, there, as far as solvequest feistiness.
Lotsa names besides THESEUS that were no-knows. And didn't know themer CHOWYUNFAT. Did know CHIPANDDALE, tho. So much for M&A's level of filmstar knowledge.
fave stuff: NULLITY & NOSILLY. ITOLDYOUSO was also pretty good.
Also kinda partial to them there neighborin ANIMAL & STAPLE clues. har. Way to toughen up a NE corner in a hurry, dude.
staff weeject pick: MOO. Always welcome, in the runt-word herd.
If U ask m&e, I'd hafta say that a SHIP ain't a SHIP, as soon as it becomes a CHIP. It has done shipped out. That there SHIP has sailed. QED.
Thanx for the SHIPyl & Hide transformation trip, Mr. Nediger dude.
Masked & Anonymo9Us
**gruntz**
Chow Yun Fat also played the King of Siam in a remake of Anna and the King. He was great.
Late to the party after another music in church Sunday, so I won't repeat a lot of people's objections to the obscure PPP except to say that I found a lot of the PPP to be obscure.
Have seen lots of word ladders but never one that did a 180 and got back to where it started, so that was different.
I'd say the best part of doing this one was finishing it, as I was not exactly pegging the fun meter.
Impressive feat, WN, but I Won't Need another one like this for a while. Thanks for some fun at least.
@bocamp-Thought the Stumper was mediumish, maybe as tough as a Saturday NYT.
@Roo-Yeah, I was going to give EMMA a shout out, but you beat me to it.
@Nancy-I know you meant "hatchet", but the vision of George chopping down a cherry tree with a hammer is too funny to forget.
Too many facts, not enough word play. And ..... a word ladder?! Ugh.
Better than the usual Sunday offering of late. DNF because I had eMotE instead of AMAZE. There wre too many WOEs and proper names crossing AMAZE = Not fair.
This was what I would call a cerebral Sunday. If you are a regular solver, you lick up the word ladder very quickly. When you get the “literal” definition at the very first SHIP OF THESEUS, it’s all out there, and the rest is just getting it done. Which is not to say that the puzzle isn’t good or has nothing to offer. It is and it does. As OFL mentioned, there’s something for everyone.
Word ladders are not my favorite of the “tried and true” themes. This one, though really did a super job of crafting a well-known theme and bringing some flavor to it. Explaining the SHIPOF THESEUS was, in my opinion a very nice touch. Right up front so the savvy solver watches as the “parts are replaced one by one.” The less savvy has something to ponder.
Overall pretty easy, but I really enjoyed the wide variety of the ladder answers. And the remainder of the fill was far from boring. A masterful feat of construction from one of the master constructors.
Veeery easy. My fastest Sunday for sure. SHIPOFTHESEUS went right in, and with that title my first thought was "...oh, word ladder" and I filled CHIPANDDALE and CHOPSTICKS with no crosses. No idea about CHOWYUNFAT or NOSRAT - the F and R in FIRED were my last two squares. So many names but no Naticks, at least for me (which is odd as Sundays can get Natick-y with fewer names than this). My only real slowdown was filling in the wrong EMMA (WATSON, which worked with SPY ON, no clue about CORRIN).
MEZE looks like a bit of Maleska-era crosswordese but no! Its only other NYT appearance was in 2020.
Actually a puzzle in fine fettle
Rex lightly complains that the theme would have worked better if all four letters were completely replaced by the center point of the grid. That sort of happens in a more clever way. The dead center of the grid is BOAT which is a fine replacement for SHIP. Extremely clever.
@pabloinnh (2:13) -- I cannot tell a lie: it IS pretty funny when you stop to think about it.
Well now I've done two Sundays in a row. I wasn't going to today, but then I saw the constructor's name and plunged in. I wasn't sorry. It was a great experience.
I had no idea about the big dog -- there are so many -- so I skipped it, got to I PASS, and ended up working my way down to the bottom, then across to the left and back to the top. So my first SHIP OF THESEUS was the bottom one, and I thought it was just a neat concept. Then I finally got back up there, had SHIP, saw the identical clue, and -- decided philosophers must have two different names for the concept. It took almost all the crosses to make me see that it was THESEUS again for the first time, and another moment or two to realize that the concept was illustrated by the word ladder. WOAH!
Sure it was easy, but that's a plus on a Sunday. A hard Sunday takes more time than it's worth.
I somehow knew it was going to be CHOW YUN FAT, but didn't know how I knew -- but of course it was from "Crouching Tiger." I loved that movie, and loved the way all my intellectual friends, who also loved it, insisted that it wasn't really a martial arts movie. It was, but they'd never seen another one.
Dictionary.com says UPPISH has been around since the late 17th Century, and OTIOSITY from the mid-18th. Good enough for me.
As for MEZE, it's a big fad in the restaurants around here, although I wanted a double Z.
I'm not sure Will Shortz knows what else is going to be in the magazine. I always start with the puzzle anyway, so no spoilers there!
Less well-known is the Subway of Theseus, which poses the inverse: if no parts are replaced and no maintenance is done, how long will it take for the MTA to run the system into the ground?
| The dead center of the grid is BOAT which is a fine replacement for SHIP. Extremely clever.
And if you accept it's by design, you could argue that the creator is show-boating...or boat-showing!
Same
Welp, CHOWYUNFAT/NOSRAT/MEZE was a killer for me. Was thinking ceramics were RIGID.
Welp, chiming in quite late to say I stupidly persisted in forgetting to look at or think about the theme while solving until I was done. Second Sunday in a row, c’mon Weezie.
That said, being with a philosopher for a dozen years meant that SHIP OF THESEUS was a gimme. In some ways I’m glad I solved this as a themeless so that it was just breezy rather than leaving me grumping about it being annoyingly easy for a Sunday puzzle.
I liked learning the word OTIOSITY; I’m sure I’m in the major minority in being excited about its inclusion today. An enjoyable week, all in all!
He starred in Flying Tiger, Hidden Dragon with Michelle Yeoh
What a funny and delightful comment, @overtherainville (6:00)! May I assume you're a fellow New Yorker?
Lata Mangeshkar was namechecked in the wonderful song "Brim Full of Asha" by the British band Cornershop.
I had a completely different interpretation of this puzzle than Rex (or many of you) had. Slogged for me with so many unknown names I gave up and went to the blog. Then I noticed all of the words highlighted in bold in Rex's blog and realized that they may be considered 'easy' to a longtime, avid NYT solver, but an average off-the-street person would/should know NONE of these. I have been working the puzzles for may years and most were unknown to me. For instance, why should I know the name of an Indian pop star because they are known in India, or among Indians throughout the world. Since I don't speak Indian, I don't watch their media. Yes, I know, subtitles, but even most American media I take in I don't watch/learn/memorize the actors in the show. And with SOOO many media outlets today, why should you presume I know the name of a chef on a channel/website/blog that maay have 30 hits.
It is not “dead center”
Did not like. Too many very weird words like otiosity and the theme left me feeling meh. Like is that all there is? Wouldn’t want to see anything like this again . Fill uninspiring eg staples? Couldn’t there have been a better clue for that?
It's not uppish...the correct word should be uppity. Just sayin...
I have Geo Washington's hatchet, replaced the head and the handle, but it was used to chop down the cherry tree!
Even if you don’t know the words (I didn’t), it’s reasonably inferrable from context that NULLITY and OTIOSITY end in Y, not E. NULLITe is clearly not a “status”, nor could OTIOSITe mean “idle*ness*”.
Definitely not a natick, and imo not even particularly difficult.
Thank you for pointing out the reference in the fake handbag article. I recalled reading about the concept somewhere but couldn't place it. It was making me crazy!
The word ladder thing and the theme generally were interesting but didn't add anything fun or engaging to the solving of a crossword puzzle. I found this puzzle too easy and very dry, with no "aha" in sight.
DNBTF; I just stopped, dead in my tracks. WHY?
--> Hong Kong action hero who frequently collaborated with...who?
--> Award-winning sci-fi author...I can't even spell it
--> _____ and again, I can't spell it, Indian singer known as the "Queen of melody"
When I got to that last one (forced down that far by not knowing the others), I just said this is ridiculous and put my pen down.
Folks, we have gone batty with all of these UBER-obscure names! It has got to stop! I'm just not gonna wrestle with them anymore. This is NOT what I signed up for. How in the world OFNP rated this easy is WAAY beyond me.
Wordle par.
AAH, NATURE
ITOLDYOU if EMMA HASTIME,
AND with the CACHET OF YALE,
SLOWMOTION IS SO DARN sublime,
she'll AMAZE both CHIPANDDALE.
--- ETHAN EARHART, UCSF
Oh, a word ladder. I kept waiting for the "reveal theme" clue to show up, and didn't pay attention to the progression until it was all over.
And yes, @Spacey, I didn't know those names. I no longer consider obscure names to be part of the puzzle and I look them up with no qualms.
The rest - a fine Sunday romp.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Only a coupla commentors noticed the MOTION from SHIP to SHOWBOATING to SHIP. That BOAT dead center in the middle seems obvious to me. Not that I'm a word ladder fan. Noticed: SLIPON SPYON. Circled: TORI Amos, LIV Ullman, EVAN Rachel Wood, EMMACORRIN.
Disappointing wordle par.
I agree with Spacecraft. Too many very, very obscure persons. I often also think I'm going to quit this, but then I just look them up if there is too little in the crosses to determine their exact names. And then I return to solving. It's not perfect but it's still a win.
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