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Rapper with the 2010 hit "No Hands" / WED 5-24-23 / Khmer temple / Whoops in a text / Yuzuru ___, first skater to successfully land a quadruple loop in competition / Funky bit of noodling / Academic acronym / Feeding apparatus at a petting zoo
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Constructor: Kavin Pawittranon and Nijah Morris
Relative difficulty: Easy (except, in my case, for the SE corner)
Theme answers:
- PELLET DISPENSER (17A: Feeding apparatus at a petting zoo)
- GHOST OF A CHANCE (28A: Slightest opportunity)
- FRUIT OF THE LOOM (45A: Big name in underwear)
- WAKA FLOCKA FLAME (58A: Rapper with the 2010 hit "No Hands")
Juaquin James Malphurs (born May 31, 1986), known professionally as Waka Flocka Flame, is an American rapper. Signing to 1017 Brick Squad and Warner Bros. Records in 2009, he became a mainstream artist with the release of his singles "O Let's Do It", "Hard in da Paint", and "No Hands" (featuring Roscoe Dash and Wale), with the latter peaking at number 13 on the US Billboard Hot 100. His debut studio album Flockaveli was released in 2010. His second studio album Triple F Life: Friends, Fans & Family was released in 2012 and was preceded by the lead single "Round of Applause" (featuring Drake). [...] In April 2015 Waka Flocka did a collaboration campaign with Rolling Stone magazine in which he pretended to run for president. [...] In April 2015, Malphurs announced that he was running for president, despite the fact he was below the constitutionally required age of 35, as he was only 30 by the time of the 2016 United States presidential election. His platform included legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum hourly wage to $15, and creating better trade opportunities for school students. His other proposals included banning dogs from restaurants and making it illegal for people with shoe sizes above 13 to walk on the street. He also seemed to be dismissive of Congress, and had an anti-war stance. Former professional wrestler Ric Flair was his running mate. (wikipedia)
• • •
So I've written a Lot about how important it is to handle your names—how all kinds of names should appear in puzzles, regardless of whether they are universally famous, but that the puzzlemaker should always have an eye on that part of the solving population that *doesn't* share their particular cultural demographic, and make sure that those folks are brought along for the ride. This is typically done by watching *all* the crosses on the name in question and making sure they're fair, and that you're not essentially creating two puzzles: an easy / fun puzzle for those who know the same pop culture you know, and a challenging slog for those who don't. Here, I think the crosses are all fair, but so *much* of the puzzle rides on this answer—it's not just long, it's the punchline—that I think that it's going to be divisive along predictable cultural lines, with younger solvers appreciating it far more than older solvers. Essentially your love of the puzzle is going to depend on how you feel about the name WAKA FLOCKA FLAME, and a lot of that is going to be dependent on whether you knew him in the first place. It's a lot of weight to put on one name. We'll see how it plays. I like it—as I say, the theme is nothing without it—but I *knew* the WAKA FLOCKA part and *still* got brought to a screeching, jarring halt in the SE. I don't have much patience for the "I don't want any rapper names in my puzzle!" crowd, but I'll have at least a little sympathy for those who struggle with this particular name today.
WAKA FLOCKA FLAME isn't the only name the puzzle throws at you today. There's also HANYU (9D: Yuzuru ___, first skater to successfully land a quadruple loop in competition), totally unknown to me, but in that case, the answer is short and all the crosses are easy and so it's only a small bump in the road. This makes it easier to appreciate the new (to me) name. I was a bit worried about the general quality of the fill at the start of this one, as that NW corner really did not bode well:
WAKA FLOCKA FLAME isn't the only name the puzzle throws at you today. There's also HANYU (9D: Yuzuru ___, first skater to successfully land a quadruple loop in competition), totally unknown to me, but in that case, the answer is short and all the crosses are easy and so it's only a small bump in the road. This makes it easier to appreciate the new (to me) name. I was a bit worried about the general quality of the fill at the start of this one, as that NW corner really did not bode well:
 |
| [Kinda disappointed when first themer turned out not to be PELLE THE CONQUEROR] |
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112 comments:
@Rex said, "younger solvers [will appreciate] it far more than older solvers. Essentially your love of the puzzle is going to depend on how you feel about the name WAKA FLOCKA FLAME."
I'm an older solver and I'd never heard of the rapper, but I love the name, and I enjoyed the puzzle. The PACMAN revealer was a great way to tie the themers together.
My only (brief) sticking point was 56D, which I thought could be YMCA or YwCA and WAKA FLOCKA FLAwE made about as much sense as the real answer.
I am neither bragging nor complaining but the fact is this: I played PAC-MAN once in a bar shortly after it was released (c: 1980/1) and that was my one and only experience with video games. So this puzzle was nowhere near my wheelhouse, yet it was easy to complete. I enjoyed it.
I didn’t know waka flocka flame , but I was able to infer the waka from my misspent youth playing pac man. So that was a fun finish.
Yes, that wakaflockaflame was a doozy. I guess I am older (sigh), never heard of him, and got it but thought it might have been W, AKA flockaflame. --\••/—
I also got WAKA FLOCKA but couldn't remember the end. It came fairly easily. But I don't know what a HANK is. Seems like a weird way to clue a straightforward answer that could have been a much needed cross for many solvers. I also paid no attention to the theme until I came here, but I'm glad I did as I enjoy video games and like seeing them in the grid!
Waka who? Waka what?
Lost me
I've never heard the word "hank" as a bit of hair.
Finished it easily, even without understanding the theme. The fill was easier than many Wednesdays, so I was able to grasp some of the weird theme clues through the crosses.
One objection...ALLS I was saying? That's not even close to being grammatical. It sounds flat-out stupid.
Had never heard of WFF, but got it easily from crosses. Thought this puzzle was a delight! I got a good ‘aha’ and laugh from the revealer.
PAC-MAN has a special place in my heart:
my dad was such a fan of the game that back when he was a fighter pilot flying the F4 Phantom, his call sign was Brack-Man (our last name is Bracke).
I am in that category of people who know nothing about Pac-Man and have never heard of the rapper. So, while the puzzle was still pretty easy, I really had no idea if it was filled in correctly until visiting the blog. Being so completely at sea really pisses me off. It seems overly nichy for the New York Times.
Although, I'm starting to think I need to learn something about Pac-Man-- and maybe even (GULP!) play it --because it has become so ubiquitous in puzzles. That also pisses me off.
I didn't like the puzzle all that much until I got to the Waka Flocka Flame part and the revealer. It made me smile, and reversed my opinion of it.
It helped that I knew his name, but I had to think about how to spell the Flocka part. I couldn't remember if it has a C or not.
Otherwise, the puzzle felt very closed off into small sections and had a lot of short answers, which always makes it feel more like a slog. Also, ABC as clued was terrible.
Very fast other than SE. The big miss for me was actually 60D as SUB, which is a much more natural response to BASS BOOSTER. Led me astray for a long time there trying to figure out if 68A was supposed to be BATMAN somehow.
Memorable moments while solving:
• Running through the alphabet to figure out _ _ L, the state abbr. that’s also a word.
• Wondering, “What’s a WAKA?”
• Thrill of getting PELLET DISPENSER with only the first three letters filled in, topped by loving that answer.
• Uncovering BABY, clued [One who is one], from the crosses, then finally understanding the clue, with an out-loud “Hah!”
• Seeing GHOST OF A CHANCE with just a few crosses, and thinking, “Oh, I love this phrase, but it’s too old-timey,” then waiting for more crosses. Utter happiness at finally filling it in.
• After revealing it, thinking that WAKAFLOCKAFLAME, which I’d never heard of, was easily worth the time it took to get, and then gleefully saying it over and over again.
Kavin Pawittranon and Nijah Morris, I adored your previous NYT puzzle (a debut, 2/10/23)), a Friday rife with colorful answers and smart cluing, a puzzle that simply sung. Today’s offering, while easier, exuded the same vivid aura, and that makes me hungry for more from you two. This started my day with a huge bounce. Thank you!
To be clear I hate all rap references in crosswords. Most of the names are close to random letter sorts. And the last rap group l listened to was Run Dmc. And have never heard of this guy, But in the puzzle the crosses gave me the answer and I finished in well below average time for a wednesday. So I think it was fair.
WAKA FLOCK was that? Completed puzzle pretty quickly but not much fun. GHOST is the only word I connect to PACMAN.
And why not MS PACMAN? Why oh why was the Y not YWCA instead of YMCA? SEXIST! PATRIARCHAL PIGS! LOL! OLE!
(Has AREOLA replaced ASS as the new taboo breaker? MY Bad if not - I’m old school and don’t abbreviate 3 letter words)
Wowowowowow. I cannot believe SAFEWORD made it in. Between that and AREOLA, a good day for @Gary and his enjoyment of teehee answers (me too).
This was an easy puzzle for me, but I got WAKAFLOCKAFLAME from jump. I’m glad it was fairly crossed, and that PACMAN was a bit of a foothold for folks, but I still do look a little askance at its inclusion. Interestingly it’s Pac-Man that didn’t reveal a thing to me - I’ve never played arcade games and wasn’t allowed to play video games as a kid. I wonder if the balance for the constructors was that while WFF was pretty contemporary, the PACMAN revealed privileged the knowledge of a different generation than WFF, so that was fine?
EIGHTBALL was a great clue-answer combo, the kind of thing that I agree made up for the crosswordese. In general, a whooshy fun wheelhousey puzzle for me, albeit with a couple misgivings.
Essentially your love of this puzzle is going to depend on the very old song, "A Rag and A Bone and a Hank of Hair" and having the H in there. Or maybe not.
I pondered over this puzzle.
Fruit of the Loom is such a bizarre name for underpants.
One Who Is One, e.g clue. One what? THE one? As in, "Hey Baby you're the One"? Or "Stop crying, you're such a Baby, wait you actually are a Baby?"
Alls I'm Saying. Why the S? It's a thing I've never understood. Does it take All from meaning every one to simply this one thing?
The pondering was fun.
I found this to be almost Monday-easy except for the SE, where I had all the same troubles as Rex and others. MYB unknown to me (I tend to write texts with spelling out all the words.) I like WAKAFLOCKAFLAME a lot but needed all crosses for FLAME and FAA and LLC were also a little hard to come by. Overall, a fun puzzle - if a bit too easy for Wednesday!
For hank of hair remember the song Honeycomb by Jimmy Rodgers
I think the Venn diagram for people who appreciate the rapper and Pac-Man is going to be relatively small. Also, Pac-Man is hypthenated! For someone who gets cranky over things impossible to put in a grid like tildas the way you do, I thought this would've troubled you more. It probably doesn't simply because you don't know the game so well.
I’ve heard of WAKA FLOCKA FLAME and “recognized” it after a few crosses, but had no idea how to spell it so needed most crosses. I thought they were fair, though I agree with @Conrad that YwCA is at least defensible if you hadn’t heard of the rapper. I love a theme like this. Even though I had all four long answers, I had no idea what the common thread was until I hit the revealer, and even then it took a beat. Well done!
An ODE to PAC-MAN? I’ll channel my inner @Z with my distaste for tribute puzzles.
A Town Called MALICE
I got Waka Flocka flame without ever hearing it before pretty easily from the down crosses. But “one who is one” =BABY has me scratching my head!
Another oldster here who enjoyed making the acquaintance of Mr. Flame.
ALLS must be a regionalism from someplace I’ve never lived, and I’ve moved around a lot. Can anyone elucidate?
Yuzuru HANYU is my favorite skater since the days of Sasha Cohen and Evgeni Plushenko. Graceful and athletic, and his fans would throw stuffed Winnie-the-Poohs on the ice instead of flowers after a performance. First man to win back-to-back Olympic gold since Dick Button in 1948-52
58A has to be the most outliery of outliers I've ever seen in a puzzle. And on a Wednesday, no less.
An easy yawned all the way through. The cluing on EIGHT BALL rubbed me the wrong way, as that's only the last ball you'd hope to sink if you were playing... well, EIGHT BALL. SAFE WORD was the one moment of joy in this whole grid.
Agree with @jae on Croce 810 – quite easy. None of those prickly sections where nothing seems to make sense, and only a couple of real head-scratchers.
Last time I played PACMAN was ca. 1983, at a place called the Hole in the Wall. No memory whatsoever of the "WAKA" sound, or ghosts or pellets. Fruit, yes. I wasn't very good at it. So the theme was a dud for me, but I'm genuinely happy for those that got a chuckle from it.
Not only have I never heard of the rapper in question, I thought the element of PACMAN in his name was probably FLAME. Of course, I was looking for something trickier and less straightforward than most of the clues, because I was thinking it's Thursday. Where's the gimmick, I kept thinking. That kind of a morning.
No other real unknowns except for the mysterious Mr. HANYU. Good crossword name but hardly world famous, IMO.
One who is one is BABY grandson Jack, who will be ONE in a week. Massive celebration in the works.
OK Wednesday (lousy Thursday though) KP and NM. I Kept Putting in Answers until No More were required, and that's what it's all about. Thanks for some fun and education.
In sports news, my Celtics finally won a game and I read some reasons in today's Boston Globe. The team "galvanized", and when a player started hitting three's, "his confidence brimmed". Some creative writing there.
One year old
For Andy Freude: "ALLS I was saying" is a phrase I've heard a few times, always uttered by poorly educated people. It's a bit like saying, "That's a whole 'nother matter." What I can't fathom is why a newspaper like the New York Times, with a reputation for accuracy and high editorial standards, would enjoy including ungrammatical language in its crossword puzzles.
That's alls that I'm going to say about this.
What did the Zen master say to the hot dog salesman?
Make me one with everything.
Count me among the "sizeable segment of the solving population" who had no idea of Mr. Waka. Now, if the clue had been "Frank Zappa album of 1972" I would have gleefully entered "WAKAJAWAKA". By the Way, OFL blew a perfect alliteration by adding population to that line, rather than just "sizeable segment of solvers".
Had a NJ roommate at Brown U who would often use “Alls I’m saying.” So maybe a NJ/New England thing?
A one year old individual is “one who is one”…
Thx, Kavin & Nijah; yay PACMAN! 😊
Easy-med (Tues time).
Needed all the crosses to get GO SLOW, but the rest of the puz was pretty 'fast'.
WAKA FLOCK FLAME filled itself in with easy crosses. (whew/phew!)
Fun adventure! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
Don't think I can post links here but maybe you can reconstruct it
h t t p s : //www.waywordradio.org/alls-im-saying/
You couldn’t be in undergraduate school in the late 2000s/early 2010s without hearing WAKA FLOCKA FLAME at least one time. Loved the theme and loved the reference specifically for millennials of a certain age.
“Girl the way you movin, got me in a trance….”
I was addicted to PACMAN in the early '80s, and so were many of the guys and girls I hung with back then. At lunch time would get in line at an arcade and hope to get in a game or two before I had to return to the office. The other big games back then were Space Invaders, Galaxian, Missile Command. At the US DOJ where I then worked you could play Space Invaders on the Wang word processors. Wang also kept track of the top 10 scores. so it was very competitive, especially for those of us who worked in the Antitrust Division.
The quotation marks in the clue "___I'm sayin is..." takes us out of grammar world and into quote world. A quick google led me to the Breaking Bad character Hewell ("alls I'm sayin' is Mexico"). It has since become a meme and song. It was already a folksy regionalism.
I don't consider myself an old crank yet, but uninferrable, here today gone tomorrow rapper names do induce a groan. Yet, with the fair crosses, I smiled to get the WAKA sound and theme, and grant this is a fun name.
I love the trio of women beginning with 41A! FEY OMAR CARRIE. Alls I'm sayin is if you are going to PPP an entire row, this is how you do it.
My inner tweener snickers at SAFEWORD AREOLA and boggle SEX in the SW.(WAKA WAKA WAKA, formerly belonging to Fozzie Bear)
I'm in my late 30s and felt right in the target demographic. Puzzle had a buttery flow. Actually set a Wednesday time record today with 7:19!
Yup!
Hey All !
Have seen, heard, spelled WAKA in reference to PACMAN for what seems like forever. Amazing to me how "man of the world" Rex never heard that word before. We're pretty much the same age, and a bit of my life experience corresponds to his, but little things like this catch me off guard. I figured all of who grew up Late 70's- Early 80's 10+ years old knew WAKA WAKA WAKA. Side note related to this: Have a friend who knows quite a bit about stuff, once teased him that he was "Mr. Know It All", he said he doesn't know it all, just a good amount of stuff. So started calling him "Mr. Knows A Lot."
(Another side note: Did y'all notice how Ms. PACMAN supplanted regular PACMAN after a while? Ms. was everywhere, regular PACMAN was tough to find.)
Anyway, a PACMAN tribute puz. Interesting. Without reading the constructor notes, I'm betting the two (well, one of them) saw WAKA and immediately thought of PACMAN, then wondered how to get them in a puz as part of a theme. Phone conversation went something like, "Hey, did you know there's a rapper named WAKA FLOCKA? Wouldn't it be cool to make a PACMAN WAKA themed puz?" "What's PACMAN?"
(Last scene dependant on age 😁)
BteAm-BETAS, WAn-WAT (after an accidental misspelling of OREO as ORoO, getting me PoLLEN to start 17A), zIE-SIE.
FRUIT OF THE LOOM or Hanes are my choices in underwear, in case anyone was wondering. 😜🤣
On that note, I'm a GONER
Six F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Why do you hate rappers’ names in crossword puzzles? Do you hate rockstars’ names? What about architects’ names? What’s the difference?
hank as a bit of hair? In what world?
Wednesday cute is becoming an expectation & today’s duo were as @Lewis posits, “Cute as a one year-old in the BABY CAGE.” OK, MYB cause he didn’t really say that. Maybe it was just an INNER ear echo of days when our middle aged sons were still in that crib so Mom could take a needed ten minute break? @burtonkd really nailed my response to this APEX grid.
Sort of what Rex said, except I had no idea about WAKA FLOCKA FLAME. Moreover, that answer is the only connection between the SE corner and the rest of the grid. So I had the experience of drifting along on a pleasant Monday puzzle and then hitting a brick wall. Oof! As for "fairly crossed," FAA or tsA? LLC or Ltd? MAIM or iron? YMCA or YwCA? as for the acrosses, we have the theme, the revealer, a texting abbreviation, and either MALICE or rAncor. Oof again! But there were a few toeholds: AMP, BEEN, and the fact that FLAME is an actual word, so a little more inferrable (though of course one couldn't be sure that it was an actual word).
Well it was a challenge, and a good one, so that's fine. Plus I appreciated the Belafonte tribute so soon after his death. As for GHOST OF A CHANCE, I'll let Bing Crosby have href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH5gmttW-sg">the last word. Also recorded by Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, among others. One person's "old-timey" (Hi @Lewis!) is another person's "standard."
Didn't understand the WAKA PACMAN part or know the rapper. Otherwise, pretty smooth WedPuz solvequest.
staff weeject pick: MYB. Cuz whoops, I didn't connect at all with its clue. Mind Yer Business = whoops? Pretty waka, man.
fave stuff: SAFEWORD. EIGHTBALL. BESTCASE.
no-knows: HANYU. BTS. STEM as clued.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Kevin & Nijah folks.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
My eyes have been opened. Previously, when commenters have written that they've solved a M-W puzzle as a themeless, I've wondered, "Why would you do that?" Now I understand. I completed the grid, but had no idea what was going on. Well, I did know that GHOST was a PAC-MAN character, so then assumed that there were other characters named PELLET, FRUIT, and WAKA, as random as that seemed. I had to go to YouTube and watch a video to see and hear what was going on. Those are PELLETs? And that sound is WAKA? Okaaayyy.
Anyway, it was fun to solve - GHOST OF A CHANCE was very good (nice cross with BEST CASE) and (the unknown-to-me) WAKA FLOCKA FLAME terrific. Also liked ASTROTURF and EIGHTBALL. Me, too, for associating HANK with Jimmy Rogers's Honeycomb.
Oh no, it's Wednesday. That means less than 24 hours to go before the raging begins over the Thursday puzzle. I better get to the gym.
Waited until the end to fill in PAC-MAN hoping I could guess the theme, but what a surprise. Great fun for me. I can barely remember the details of the game, but the wokka wokka will go with me to the grave. I first played it at José O'Shea's Mexican restaurant on Union Blvd. in Lakewood, Colorado in the 80s. The restaurant is still in business. My first girlfriend dumped me there after a chimichanga.
WAKA FLOCKA FLAME sounds like a less than great human, but he did think up an awesome rap name, and it's way better than Juaquin James Malphurs. The last letter I guessed was the K in HANK (never heard of a hank of hair) after sounding out other options for FLOC-. If I start a parody band of him, I'll call it Waketa Flawketa Flam and we'll feature banjoleles and songs about the little TSA room at the airport where you explain why there's a loaded gun in your suitcase.
Tee-Hee: Appearance of AREOLA number two this week. HANES from last week upstaged by the good folks at FOTL. Wonder if I could make a real underwear themed puzzle with lingerie below destinations -- "under where"? Maybe I should try a themeless first.
Uniclues:
1 The little TSA room at the airport where you explain why there's a loaded gun in your suitcase.
2 Tool designed to destroy those over-priced name-brand speakers when they prove to be an on-going and laughable disappointment.
3 Whatch y'all sit on in the summer out on the porch.
4 Emergency exclamation to hit the power button when you hear Belafonte's first syllable.
1 BABY CAGE
2 LOL! BOSE ICE AXE!
3 OLE ASTROTURF
4 DAY-O SAFE WORD
I don’t feel any particular MALICE but definitely not my favorite Wednesday. However, pretty much saved by the fact that it was largely fair and well done. I had no idea what the theme was supposed to be, even after getting the revealer. And I didn’t have a GHOST OF A CHANCE of knowing what the FLOCK was supposed to go in 58A. It seemed like an odd choice to BASE a solver’s success or failure primarily on that unguessable grid-spanning name . . . and combine it with a theme which is solidly steeped in a video game which originated 40 years ago. BZZT! That’s quite a hefty gap there.
I lived in Madison, Wisconsin during the dawn of the PAC-MAN era. Summer months meant locals had to deal with the influx of Chicago weekenders who clogged the highways and generally mucked up the peaceful serenity of the pastoral countryside. People there have an interesting acronym for those who hale from ILL.
Loved this one. Solely because of Waka Flocka and Safe word
No fun at all. I didn't know that Pac-Man was saying a word -- I thought that it was just background noise. And I hadn't heard of the rapper. But I solved it easily, so this isn't sour grapes. The only nice clue was for BABY and the fill (except for GHOSTOFACHANCE) was meh. Not to mention that there are 23 threes clogging the grid.
My father-in-law was a highly educated, non- stupid Chicago native. He would say something such as “All is I want to say …” or
“All as I want to say… “ or similar usages. I never asked him the spelling but have leaned that ALLS is probably a contraction of
All is or all as, which are uttered by educated folks from England. and should be written ALL’S.
.
@Bob Mills 7:00 AM
Maybe a regional thing, or maybe growing up in a house full of hillbillies, but "alls I'm saying is..." IS exactly how one says it 'round h'yar.
All's I know made me cringe. Here in NJ people say it all the time.
I was familiar with shepherd-turned-rapper Walka Flocka Sheep, so his fireman brother, WAKAFLOCKAFLAME, came naturally enough.
ICEAXE and ICEE? BESTCASE is that deserves a side eye.
I thought I was joining a FRUITOFTHEmonth Club, but I sure seem to be accumulating a lot of tightly whities.
BABY, ALLS IM SAYING is GOSLOW around the AREOLA, or I’ll use the SAFEWORD.
I hope some solvers could guess the revealer from the theme answers. I tried and failed, but was delighted to tie it all together with PAC-MAN. Great puzzle, Kavin Pawittranon and Nijah Morris.
P.S. @NEWBOY 9:41. I think it’s odd to put your middle aged sons in a crib. ALLS I’m sayin’ …….
The less said about WKAFLOCKAFLAME, the better.
I was actually enjoying this puzzle ALLS (??!!) the way down to FRUIT OF THE LOOM. The themers seemed pretty lively and I couldn't imagine what they had in common.
Now that I see the revealer, I still don't.
DNF the SE corner, what with the text abbrev, the WAKA gobbledygook, and the PACMAN revealer. (It didn't help that I tried LLD and then LLB for the Inc cousin. That's on me.)
The bottom of this puzzle seems in-your-face youth-y to me. But what do I know? Someone's gonna tell me that PACMAN has been around for 57 years and the WAKAFLOCKAFLAME guy/gal has been around for 39 years. But please understand that I never had a GHOST OF A CHANCE in getting either one.
For those interested in the "alls" construction, there's a nice linguistic analysis of it here: https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/alls-construction
There are several theories as to what the origin of it is, from being a reduced form of the archaic "all as" construction to possibly being related to the word "alles" in German.
Who knows. At any rate, I like it, but I tend to especially like non-standard English constructions. Plus I do use it from time to time.
Overall, faster than average. Never heard of the WAKA guy or the song, and I tend to expose myself to popular music and rap. I must have been up to something else in 2010, I guess.
Have played Pac-Man, have never heard WAKA associated with it, nor have I heard of Waka Flocka Flame. It wasn’t a hard puzzle per se, but it wasn’t really fun for me, either. I got hung up on just gets(by). I resisted ekes for the longest time because of that parenthesis. No parenthesis? Sure. Ekes. Just gets by (out)? Even better. But is “Ekes By” even a phrase? That, paired with my general Waka ignorance, slowed me down considerably.
RooMonster and Gary Jugert made me wonder if OFL wears FOTL.
Sadly, at 81, I'm beginning to feel I have aged out of the NYT crosswords, dependent as they have become on words from a pop culture I have zero familiarity with or interest in. That might be OK or even instructive if the crosses could lead to solution. I have trusted my kids (three of whom are rock musicians) to keep me "kinda hip," but now that they are all in their fifties, even they probably wouldn't know stuff like WAKAFLOCKAFLAME. And PACMAN is a game I've heard of but never played. Maybe my kids did, though. But they don't live here anymore.
People still play PAC-MAN? I used to indulge about 30 years ago, but managed to shake the habit and can’t say that I’ve missed it. I do, however, remember the WAKA WAKA sound as the little guy wandered through the maze.
Great misdirection in the clue for BABY. I knew the answer but had no idea of why it was correct until I came here. Also see that 2D gives us another entry for the Oreo English Dictionary.
Didn’t know the rapper or the skater but both were easily gettable from the crosses and am happy to learn some new names, though I will probably forget them by lunchtime.
Highlight of the puzzle is SAFE WORD. In GOSLOW, Scotland, I believe it’s usually “nae.”
Easy. I’ve never played PAC-MAN but I know enough about it so that the reveal made sense. Delightful set of themers, especially the unknown to me WAKA..., liked it a bunch.
I was pretty sure when I finished this that Jeff would give it POW. and I was right!
Mr. WAKA's name is fun to say. I've never heard of him, but it didn’t matter. I had mostly lucky first guesses in the SE. Except iron for mangle, which was easily fixed.
I'm not familiar enough with PACMAN for the theme to work for me, but I enjoyed the puzzle anyway. EIGHTBALL and BABY were the most puzzling clues, and NITRO made me wait for crosses due to too many options.
Going through this like butter is an apt description.
@Joaquin 6:11 AM: I completely agree even though I never played Pac Man nor have I ever heard of the humorously named rapper. The crosses made this puzzle solvable and fun with a tad of resistance.
Can I ride this roller coaster again? I'd say it was WAKA fun. It did have a lot of ups and downs, but guess what? I held my breath and the ride was different but fun.
OK. So the ups started with PELLET DISPENSER. Hmmm. Then I got zippy downs from that one thrill.
On to the next....Could it be GHOST OF A CHANCE? Did I have one on my up ride? I did. Hmmmm. What am I getting into here.....Could the next WAKA be a FRUIT OF THE LOOM? It was. I'm needing some real whee time for the downs. Why is ASTRO TURF taking so long? And EIGHT BALL??? Yikes, That one scared me.
OK..I'm still holding my breath. Ride almost over.
I'm getting to the end and I'm feeling a bit dizzy. Fun dizzy to be sure. I look around me and all I see is WAKA. I've ridden you before; you look familiar. I still hold my breath going down. SAFE WORD? You caused me some angst and agita . I tolerated you. You gave me a LOCKA thrill. Now to wonder what's waiting for me on that final turn. Can you be the FLAME I want? You were. I'm counting the seconds for my ride to end. It did. The ride operator asked me to disembark. I asked him if I could sit for a while. He said I had 5 seconds. He seemed like he knew all of the rides, so I asked him about the PELLET, the GHOST, the FRUIT and the WAKA. He told me they were all fun but I needed to walk over to the PACMAN entertainment area. I did. I rode them all. My favorite was the WAKA FLOCKA FLAME ride. It was the Zipper of the Carnival. I didn't flip my car and I didn't get dizzy; I just had a fun day.
Lots of pearl clutching in the comments today. Easy puzzle with some fun stuff that spoke to all ages. One person doesn’t believe rap names belong in a puzzle. I don’t like country western music but feel it’s fair to include country artists’ names. Enjoy the puzzles. They keep the brain sharp and provide the occasional giggle.
One uniclue today:
I gather you go "chomp, chomp, chomp" a lot.
But save for that, I fear I know thee not.
BASE ODE PACMAN
Half empty? Half full? Who cares? Meh puzzle.
What @jberg 9:43 said.
getting whoosh whoosh and wheeeeeee! all the way to the SE corner. I know who and what pacman is--I've even played it a time or two--but didn't get any of the associations until I came here.
Never heard of Mr. Waka. Listened up his song. I absolutely love it.
Good morning everybody! Look who is posting before noon!
I just went with the downs. Trust the gut, right? My theory for today is that those of us (like me) who have learned all our Pac Man and rap from doing crosswords will have plenty of knowledge to solve this. Sure, there was a little “”oh heck, just go with it,” when the crosses yielded WAKA, but after several years of the Muppets’ Fozzy Bear and his ever present “Waka waka waka,” at least the word was familiar. However, someone is going to have to explain to me exactly how WAKA fits into the game. Sound effect, I suppose? Gotta learn this stuff for the library.
So, yes, the puzzle was easy, mostly. I had snags in the NW and SE. Not dreadful snags, just clues that were head-scratchers. 1A in quotes made me think it was theme material and that the answer was going to be urban slang for “take it easy” not a literal plain vanilla translation. And then the “part of a smile” I took literally and penciled in lipS. Oh yes I did. OREO being something opened with a twist only gave me a nanosecond pause simply because it is one of the most common xword answers. Thankfully, The. WAT took a second because I hadn’t thought of the Khmer people since the last time they appeared in a puzzle probably and I had to dredge up WAT from deep deep deep in the “stacks.” Aside: how many of you remember obtaining your very own jealously coveted “Stack Pass” to your university library? Oh the joyous hours. OK, back to work. As I said, the crosses fixed the NW.
Everything worked smoothly despite the rapper spanning the grid. I just went about my merry way. Then the SE. First, there were those last 5 letters that honestly could have been anything given what my previous answers had produced, so there was that problem. Next, I read “Bass booster” as something having to do with fish. C’mon now, quit laughing as the former professional musician thinking fish when handed the word “bass.” I was at a meeting yesterday dealing with the dire situation with algal blooms in the lake that supplies our drinking water and the effects to the entire ecosystem out there including fish populations. The lake is the site of several annual fishing competitions. Anyway, I was stumped trying to think of a three letter word that would help fish thrive. After that, putting in TSA rather than FAA didn’t help. Finally, add to I don’t use “text speak,” and am learning the abbreviations from others and of course from xwords. So that pretty much made the SE a big toxic dump of a mess, the final clunker being I had absolutely no idea what the theme could possibly be!
By this time, I had probably spent as much time on the SE as the entire remainder of the grid, and started to work up some real MALICE toward the thing. I did have LLC (after Ltd, but only momentarily since I probably set up several hundred LLCs while in private practice). Onward! Once I had erased the TSA and put in MALICE, the fish went out the window and I plugged in my AMP, filled in the blanks, got the happy music and said “What???”
As I did the full grid review, it took me at least a full minute to figure out how the theme words related to PACMAN. I just trusted that they did and rolled into the community of Rexhaven confident the neighbors would shed light on my woeful state of ignorance.
I really enjoyed this one because I adore being confused this early in the week! I adore learning things, and I adore cleverness. High marks for our constructors. What a fresh lersoective and what clever theme span ers to get the theme taken care of in a very confusing manner. I always try not to look for the reveal and today not giving in to my frustration truly laid off. I had no clue at all and I loved it!!!
Fictional detectives are always finding hanks of hair at grisly crime scenes.
I think ALLS I am sayin’ is fair game because 1) it’s in quotes and 2) “Sayin’” is slangs. Nice to see AREOLA appear again. Never heard of WAKA.... and never played PACMAN though plenty of my friends did back in the day. Finished no errors 12 minutes
p.s.
Re-scanned that long @RP write-up, and reached a better understandin of MY B. Sooo … thanx, for that, @RP.
WAKA is a traditional Maori canoe, btw. And Do-waka-do-waka-do might be a Roger Miller oldie. sorta. Just sayin, for completeness sake.
ALLS I'm saying is definitely a cool phrase, in our parts. ALLS I'm sayin' is even better. ALLS well that ends well is all-so a good runner-up.
M&Allso
I visit your page occasionally and find you often have great takes on puzzles. Most of my visits are because I found a puzzle clunky, funky, or otherwise odd, and want to make sure I'm not overthinking it. It's refreshing to read your candid opinions. In those cases, I also read the Times commentary, but find it to be like a homer radio or TV announcer who lauds the drafter regardless of the merits of the puzzle. You know, in a "look how clever" this drafter is kind of way. Thanks for doing what you do day in and day out. It's appreciated.
"SAFEWORD"??!!!
As a younger solver and hiphophead - LOVED this revealer. Thought it was hilarious with the waka waka waka sound pacman makes. Actually running a trivia night tonight and thinking of changing the audio round to old school video games (hear the sound tell me the game...).
Anyway, my 2 cents to your spiel about names is that your point is very fair and should be what the builders aim for... butttt, again as a younger solver, it is FREQUENT the a puzzle hinges on a name I don't know, from generations before me, and the crosses are not 'fair' enough for me to get it. I run into that allllll the time. So sure, while our favorite vegan rapper might not be well known to the NYTXW solvers general demo, I do think the downs were all very solvable and fair.
The crossword itself didn't do much for me.
But turning Waka into a sound that immediately popped into my head after the revealer...
Chef's kiss.
Yes, if they are spelled in unusual ways such that the only way you can get them is to know them.
Must be regional. Early in our relationship, my wife (Boston) teased me (northern NY) for saying “alls”. Cured me 40 years ago. Love that it showed up in NYT x word, which we solve together every morning.
"All's I'm sayin'" can be heard around NYC.
Usually I'm at least familiar with the names of the rappers in the puzzle, but this Waka dude completely bypassed my radar during his apparently not-very-lengthy heyday. But the crosses confirmed every letter, so —not a problem.
I did play Pac-man occasionally, way back in the day— it feels like light years ago. I only vaguely remember the waka noise and the fruits. If the revealer weren't there I'd have no idea what the themers had in common.
My favorite Hank.
Using text abbreviations for filler -- LOL and MYB in this puzzle, for example -- was cute and edgy for about five minutes a few years ago. Now it comes across like all other filler. Lazy and irritating.
JD, LLM, PHD. Love the colloquialism.
Played PAC-MAN occasionally many years ago and had no idea the sound effect had a name!
@Peter P: Thanks for that link! Interesting stuff. Seeing ALLS in the puzzle startled me, even though I heard it a lot in my Midwestern youth. My mother's stepmother and half-sibs all used ALLS. Her birth mother and full sibs did not. So that was kinda strange now that I think about it. :-)
DNF here. Never heard of WAKA in connection with PACMAN. Had Ltd instead of LLC. Didn't have anything close to MALICE. And obviously didn't know the FLAMEd out rapper. The one clue I loved was for BABY.
So I'm in the group that says this belonged in the reject pile.
Count me among those who played PACMAN a few times, but was absolutely addicted to Ms PACMAN and her lovable GHOSTS. When we moved to this house way back in 1978 I found a favorite bar, and played that game over many a pint of beer. The bar morphed into a place with great music, the Ms PACMAN was taken out, and for its final few years, the bar acquired a hard liquor license. Then it met its inevitable end -- it was right next to our JC campus and everyone knew sooner or later the JC would buy the place and tear it down. When it did, I was, I think, in England and my second daughter said, "Now where will Daddy go every night?" Well, not every night, but their pub grub has never been equaled, and we had taken our girls there often to hear Irish music.
I still miss the place.
And I am wondering what Madison folks call visitors from ILL.
Not into rap at all, so unless it's DR DRE or that NAS guy I'm lost. Fortunately the crosses were fair, which is vital with rappers because as others have pointed out, their names have very unpredictable letter sequences. And thank gof I knew FRUIT OF THE LOOM cuz sometimes we don't get them American brands up here.
Typeover: SUN TAN before SUN TEA. I thought "steeping" was a new description for tanning: soaking it up and changing color... quite apt!
[Spelling Bee: yd -1, missed this tricky 6er. Several other goofy words yd.]
I got WAKA FLOCKA FLAME pretty quickly. Came here expecting old heads to complain, but glad to see this population of puzzle solvers aren’t being cranky about a unique answer.
Side note: I plopped down Victoria Secret pretty confidently for FRUIT OF THE LOOM. Weird that they both have 14 letters. Shrugs.
@egsforbreakfast - I thought I was being racy until I saw your hilarious SAFEWORD vignette. Love the jokes, keep it up!
@Joe D 1:16p - sweet link. That Soul Station album is one of the greats.
@ ol
it is FIB
@Jacqueline Donnelly 10:46 AM
{Getting out soapbox.} Uh, you're not supposed to know everything. It's supposed to have a challenge. You're supposed to fail sometimes. We're supposed to be curious about words we've never seen and maybe go look them up and try to get smarter about the ever changing world around us. We ask young solvers to know Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi, so isn't it fair to ask us to know something about Pac-Man? And when we don't, we can open up our good buddy Go-ogle and a robot will help us for free. We have an enormous encyclopedia set sitting on our digital shelves.
Sometimes, the crosses allow you to figure out an answer, but you don't usually learn anything when you get the answer that way. It's a normal occurrence for daily posters to say they've never seen a specific word, even though that word was in a puzzle last week or last month. They got it off crosses, they've seen it, but they learned nothing. I personally hate TV stars and Asian cooking ingredients in puzzles, but it's not because I am aging out of the puzzle, it's because Will Shortz hates me. Kidding of course. I need to learn that stuff, or go look it up. Many here would rather die than look up something, but that's because they're playing a weird game of chicken with the possibility they might be losing their minds. Be okay with not knowing once in awhile. There's lots of beautiful things waiting for us to discover. {Descends from soapbox.}
Can't remember the last time I was unable to finish a Wednesday puzzle without help. FLAMEd out on this one. Not only did I not know the Rapper, I did not know that PELLETS, WAKA or FRUIT had anything to do with PAC-MAN. And I *have* watched my kids play it many eons ago. Couldn't see MAIM or YMCA. I suspected MY B, but didn't trust my instincts, I've only heard people say it, not write it. Didn't know the skater, but at least he fell into place eventually. Did not enjoy this one at all.
Not only Frank Zappa's "Waka Jawaka," but, closer to the bone, Shakira's 2010 song "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).
I am seventy, been in New England since birth and knew the expression immediately. Don’t think I ever use it but it is a quite common spoken American English term. Not even sure it’s regional. This blog has been an education for me as to how people react so differently to colloquial English. In this case many people might have heard “alls” and simply edited out the s in their minds. It is that common.
WTF with alls
I'm 62 and I played a lot of PacMan in college (@Rex's employer). I have never heard of the rapper but his name was inferable from the crosses. I would have had no idea of how to parse the theme until the waka part so I appreciate the reveal.
You can also get them by getting the crosses. It’s no different than other names like Hanyu in this same puzzle.
Never heard Waka until today. Great music. I sorta felt like , I think it is was a Jacqueline earlier who was lamenting her not being part of the crossword culture any longer. My solution was to listen to rap, hip hop, rock genres, etc, got info modern slang, cyber text— all I could absorb. It’s fun! I even know a lot of titles by ADELE although I must admit I cannot understand the appeal. I am 83.
one who is one can be clued as «a person who’s one year old »
I always called the PELLETS dots, and Fozzie Bear said WAKA WAKA.
Record Weds time for me today, despite the unknown names.
ALLS was awful. I’ve heard people say that and it makes me cringe. It’s just so wrong.
What would you call this interesting grid? I’ve read in the blog about mirror symmetry and diagonal symmetry but it doesn’t seem to be either. Nor rotational. Oh, okay, thanks, Rex; I see you noticed the oddness too, of course, and commented. As did many others.
Didn’t take long to suss out the theme at whippets, WHIP PETS, and after getting the revealer, it was awfully helpful to keep clicking on it to quickly pinpoint almost all of the highlighted themers (REAP PEAR not getting the yellow highlight in my Times Crossword iPad app) and drop in those P’s. Which made for a quick solve.
SPLIT PEAS reminded me about the bag of them in the souP Part of the pantry closet. Thanks, for that, Andrew and Garrett, and for the METS, DAMASK, and the clues for ROYAL WE and EAU.
@Joseph Michael – And I see what you did yesterday (10:51). Oreo English Dictionary. OED. Clever. I always notice the new clues for the ubiquitous OREO and now know where to store them. Notice those for “eels” too, which I guess will be in its supplement, the Oxford Eel Dictionary.
"take a hank a hair, and a piece of bone get a walkin' talkin' Honeycomb!"
EROS, BABY
CARRIE had A GHOSTOFACHANCE,
BESTCASE – HANK won’t be hurt,
Lose THE FRUITOFTHELOOMs INNER pants
And GO SLOW and be A FLIRT.
--- OMAR FEY
Great puzzle by two new constructors. Challenging for me because of WAKAFLAOCKAFLAME. An added element of difficulty was the fact that my newspaper did not include the last row of the puzzle that somehow got chopped off. So I had to manually draw in the last row of little squares and two black boxes to get 66 to 68 across. My first clue something was amiss was when I noticed 59, 60, 61 and 62D were all two-letter answers. Anyhoo, that’s on the local newspaper not the constructors. Good job Kavin Pawittranon and Nijah Morris!
Yes, it was wicked hahd for me because rapper. Needed every blessed cross. Same deal with HANYU, a really desperate PPP--but then when your first and last letters are lockawakaed into two themers, you got troubles. HaikU, maybe, but then we couldn't have today's SASH winner Tina FEY.
Having all but that SE, I really struggled for a while trying to connect those theme starts. Especially that last...and then it hit me in one of the most jarring aha! moments I can recall. Despite 29d and 58a, this turned out to be a fun solve. No MALICE here; birdie.
Wordle bogey.
My newspaper cut off the bottom row so nothing made sense in the south, I thought maybe was supposed to be a Thursday puzzle
I was just on Diary of a Crossword Fiend, and there was a link to a YouTube video of the iconic Pac-Man sound that is 12 HOURS LONG!!!
You heard me RIGHT!!!
I believe it has been outlawed as a torture device by the Geneva Convention.
Easy puzzle but I'm not particularly excited about rap so I had to infer the name from the downs. If rap and rap artists never appeared again in the nyt puzzle I'd be fine, but I know it is here to stay. So be it. I can still solve the puzzles without getting too worked up.
Yes, is was easy peasy until...
The bottom.
The name (of a rapper, of course) and the fact that there was NO BOTTOM ROW IN THE PUZZLE FOR THE SECOND DAY IN A ROW. Fortunately, the clues were still there so I could finish it. But as @Spacey said, I needed every cross for the N A M E.
Diana, LIW
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