Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for me, might just be me)
THEME: none
Word of the Day: NOISE MUSIC (11D: Nonmelodic genre) —
Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect.
Noise music can feature acoustically or electronically generated noise, and both traditional and unconventional musical instruments. It may incorporate live machine sounds, non-musical vocal techniques, physically manipulated audio media, processed sound recordings, field recording, computer-generated noise, stochastic process, and other randomly produced electronic signals such as distortion, feedback, static, hiss and hum. There may also be emphasis on high volume levels and lengthy, continuous pieces. More generally noise music may contain aspects such a improvisation, extended technique, cacophony and indeterminacy. In many instances, conventional use of melody, harmony, rhythm or pulse is dispensed with. (wikipedia)
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No flow whatsoever today, but I don't think it's the puzzle's fault. Not entirely. I just couldn't find the handle on a ton of clues, and much of the grid was just outside my knowledge or off my wavelength. I think the low point for me was looking at HO-DESKED and ... looking at HO-DESKED and ... just looking, really. Figured I had an error, but no. HOOD-DESKED? No, wait, too many letters. Ran the alphabet to get "T," and immediately thought "Oh, yeah ... I guess I heard that somewhere" (36A: Shared a workspace, in modern parlance). Basically "I guess I heard that somewhere" was the order of the day. And I'm speaking as someone who flat-out knew both BALLERS and PLAYER-HATERS ... though the latter took me a few beats because hoo boy shouldn't that have "in times of yore" or "once" or "quaintly" or something attached to it? I feel like I haven't heard that term since the '90s. BALLERS is most common in sports (to describe people who are very good at them) but has extended out from there to have (professional athlete) lifestyle implications ("baller" is also an adjective, just fyi). But back to my not knowing things: NOISE MUSIC (11D: Nonmelodic genre). I am sure I've heard the phrase before, maybe seen it in xwords, but that didn't help me at all when I had -MUSIC. That NE corner pushed me around badly until I managed to get SCHOLARSHIP up there (10D: Knowledge, or a means to acquire it). NOISE MUSIC is definitely a thing but also definitely a supervague thing that I never hear mentioned despite listening to and reading about music literally every day. I'm told Sonic Youth falls in this category, so apparently I am very familiar with NOISE MUSIC and just didn't know it. Really thought I heard some "melodies" on Goo but maybe I don't know what "melodies" are. Not sure what I know at the moment. All bets are off!
Speaking of "in times of yore" or "once" or "quaintly": MAKES LOVE! (30D: Pursues a passion?). Oof, that phrase has always made me cringe—it's got a creepy euphemistic quality about it, but its non-explicitness made it (for a time) exceedingly popular as a phrase for sex in popular music (back when popular music mostly wasn't allowed to be explicit about such things). Exceedingly popular. And yet I had MAKES- and just blanked. I couldn't really accept that the puzzle was gonna reach back to the 20th century for the sex term, so after MAKES OUT (which didn't fit), I just didn't know. Also didn't know: the OVER- part of OVERGRAZED (54A: Like some land no longer good for livestock) and the NOT ONE part of "NOT ONE WORD" (51A: "Keep this between us"). Me: "Well, MUM'S THE WORD doesn't fit, I quit." NOT ONE WORD seems like something you'd say when someone is about to sass you or taunt you or otherwise give you s**t and you want to indicate that they had better not if they want to avoid injury. So despite the fact that the grid looks like it should've been whoosh-whoosh—lots of interlocking long stuff—my experience was definite slog-slog. But then I blanked on stuff I knew today, so I don't think my judgment can be trusted. I had MERCY- and thought "ugh, what do they call it when they invoke the MERCY rule (!) to end a game? MERCY ... KILLING? No, way too harsh. MERCY ... CALL? That sounds wrong." Etc. That was the kind of day it was. Seeing the actual answer and looking right over its shoulder. (30A: Youth sports mismatch ender)
LOLLS and MULLS before MILLS (20A: Idly moves (about)), which had weirdly serious implications for getting "I COME IN PEACE" and LOINS (the latter was particularly baffling, as I thought the literal meaning of "Mutton chops" was meat and so was thinking the "?" wanted me to think about the sheep's ... actual mouth? ... I dunno man, I slept 7 hours so I don't know what's up with my brain this morning). The very idea that the word MEMO is on a check baffled me today—and I actually still handle and write checks on a regular basis.My [Tough nut to crack] was a PECAN before it was a POSER (speaking of "in times of yore" / "once" / "quaintly"—crosswords are literally the only place I see POSER). No idea what Spit is so SLAP is just four letters to me, absolutely no clue there (43A: Action in the card game Spit). SLAP hurt because it crossed CLING, which had the vaguest clue of them all (40D: Stick). I even picked wrong on the NOM/NOD kealoa* (51D: Academy recognition, for short). Tripping over my own shoelaces everywhere I went. The grid looks good, but the cluing and I just didn't get along. Nothing to be done about that. Just ... come back and try again tomorrow, I guess. See you then.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. OK one complaint—that clue on SEGA is terrrrrrible (6A: Company whose name, aptly, is an anagram of GAMES minus a letter). "Minus ... a letter?" I got news for you, if you gotta anagram it and drop a letter, than you have lost your right to use the term "aptly." This is like saying that LUCY is an apt name for someone with CURLY hair because see you just drop the "R" and then mix up the letters, see, see!
P.P.S. OK one last complaint—"living large" is already slang; no need for "in slang" to be in that clue for BALLERS (23A: Ones who live large, in slang).
*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.
I managed to finish this in 20 - a really good Friday time for me - even though I had an almost empty west half of the puzzle after the initial pass. I had no problem with NOTONEWORD (although my first thought was not A word).
I know I'm biased here - I've been following Hemant's podcast for years - but I liked it. I learned PLAYERHATERS, NOISEMUSIC, and BALLERS, although none of those terms are music to my ears.
I'm still having trouble with the clue for NOM. Do people really say that? Hey, I got a NOM last night. She always gets a NOM but never a win.
Apparently (judging by what XWStats says) a lot of solvers found this easy. I'm with Rex here, it was more of a medium Saturday for me (I didn't even know BALLERS and PLAYER HATERS). The only relatively whoosh-y section was the NW. But I also wanted LOLLS for MILLS, though LOINS made sense. No idea how PENS eluded me for so long.
In the SE I had SLOPE for LIMIT (LIMIT is definitely more of a technical calculus term, but I've definitely seen SLOPE clued via calculus). I also considered OPEN-something for 54A, so... a SCONE at 43D?
I knew Spit, and it's actually a pretty fun game (all speed, no turns, there are piles of cards in the middle of the table and you just get rid of your own cards by placing them on top of the middle piles, but you can only put cards that are one higher or one lower than the one shown). Couldn't decide between SLAm and SLAP at first, and I'm not even sure what that's referring to (either "slap" just means to put down a card, or it's when all players are stuck and have to play a new card, but that's just called "spit" as far as I know)
About the UDDER clue - it's perfectly okay to remove some question marks on late-week puzzles to make the cluing trickier, but is that allowed with exclamation marks too? I didn't really know what "milk it" meant but apparently it's a thing.
"Overthinking themeless mode" moment for today: I thought "extending an olive branch" was supposed to be some kind of weird jargon, I was surprised by how literal the clue actually was.
For me, this was: sloooow start, rip through the SE like a BALLER, pretty whooshy left into the SW and up to the NW, total standstill in the NE. That section took me as long as the rest of the puzzle. But I got it and felt very satisfied at the end.
I had only NO MAAM, EMOTE and EARS in that section. Wait, you say, there is no emote, and owls can’t move their EYES not their ears. Exactly. But I was sure of emote for “milk it,” and I stuck with it way too long. And immovable ears seemed right.
I finally made some progress by educated-guessing MUSIC. That got me to see CHICKS, and that mideast sub-section fell. Then SCHOLARSHIP saved the day, as is it so often does. I liked the misdirection on “get behind something, say” for HIDE.
Can we have a MERCY RULE for life? On one of those days when everything is going badly, the referee blows a whistle and the torture is over.
Thought this was relatively easy for a Friday although some of the cluing was odd. Wanted RACE to be pace so spun my wheels a bit in the southwest. Also thought jealous critics was going to be theater related somehow. The SEGA thing, I guess you could take letters out of a whole lot of words and make them an anagram or something. Why?
Can we have a MERCY RULE for life? On one of those days when everything is going wrong, the referee blows a whistle, and the torture is over. Good game, shake hands, go out for pizza.
My path through the puzzle went like this: sloooow start, destroy the SE like a BALLER, pretty whooshy through the SW and up to the NW, total standstill in the NE. That part of the puzzle took as long as all the rest of it. NOT ONE WORD for the longest time, or at least not one correct word. I stuck with emote for way too long for “milk it.” Educated-guessing on MUSIC made me see CHICKS and that sub-section fell in line. (I had EarS before EYES for the owl’s immovable parts.) Then SCHOLARSHIP saved the day, as it so often does. I liked the misdirection on “get behind something, say” for HIDE.
OVERGRAZED is a good term to use at the end of a party. “AM I TOO LATE?” you ask upon arriving. “Yes, the buffet table is OVERGRAZED “
Very satisfied feeling upon completing this one. I liked it.
Nah, Sonic Youth isn't "noise music." It's occasionally NOISY music. For actual noise music, see, on the rockish side of the spectrum, Japanese artiste Merzbow, or, on the contemporary classical side of the spectrum, the electro-acoustic work of Iannia Xenakis. You'll thank me the longest day you live. Or not!
One of those two-puzzles-per-year that Rex rates as challenging that I found easy. In this case, very very easy.
And perhaps because of that, fairly dull. M&A makes frequent use of 'almost anagrams' in Runt puzzles, but Rex is completely right that 'aptly' is inapt.
MAKES LOVE, long before it became a euphemism for sex, meant simply courting or pitching woo, and that is how I interpreted that clue.
A work of art, that’s what this puzzle was for me.
Oh, there were answers that I slapped down – that’s knowledge, not art. That’s science. The art comes in other ways. For instance: • The knack of figuring out the unknown on the solver’s part, that is, taking crafty stabs, knowing when a guess isn’t working, filling in beginnings or endings of answers even when the entire answer is still elusive, etc. • The ability of the constructor/editor to anticipate trouble areas for the solver and adjust the difficulty in those areas accordingly.
Today, there were five answers out of my wheelhouse: MERCY RULE, HOT DESKED, NOISE MUSIC, BALLERS, and PLAYER HATERS. They are terrifically colorful, and I love them, but it took art – both kinds – to fill them in. Little things, like having only the final C in NOISE MUSIC filled in, and my brain thinking that there’s a good chance the answer to [Nonmelodic genre] ends with MUSIC. That’s art.
Or the constructor/editor noticing that two possibly vexing answers (PLAYER HATERS and NOISE MUSIC) cross a third (BALLERS), and making sure that the clues for the other answers crossing BALLERS were not inscrutable, making that word guessable. That’s art.
There’s also art in cleanly filling a grid with varied and vivid answers, as Hemant did today.
So, credit to Hemant, to the editors, and to my crossword-seasoned brain, for bringing art into this outing, adding beauty and pleasure to the satisfaction that comes with filling in the squares.
I think it was about 40 years ago that I actually felt like I knew the difference between AFFECTS and eFFECTS. I’ve been struggling on and off for years now to try to regain that understanding. If anyone here would care to enlighten me, I’m all ears.
There must me something in the water in upstate NY today - it’s a rare day indeed when I flow through a Friday grid feeling pretty confident and Rex struggles a bit. Going light on the PPP and the arcane stuff definitely helped, so thanks to the constructor for that one. We even had a pretty discernible clue/answer (TRES) for today’s foreign language math problem. I could come around to enjoy Fridays like this one.
Didn’t find it particularly difficult, but Thursdays for me tend to be more. BRUTE FORCE than whoosh whoosh. Put ExAm for EVAL, which hid VERY CLEVER for a while. Otherwise, it was mostly slow but steady progress across the grid. The only long answer that would have been an instant get was PLAYER HATERS, but I usually hear/see that as “playa” so I didn’t think it would fit.
Happy National Paper Airplane Day. (Who decides these things?)
I liked this and finished in a reasonable time, but also made some of the popular mistakes. I had loLLS, too, but didn’t like it – lolling is lying around, not moving about, or not moving much. And for a while, directly below it, I kept alternating between PENS and styS – not a kealoa (no shared letters) but a kelo, in @JC66’s VERY CLEVER terminology.
The section that gave me the most grief was the NE, probably because for far too long I had “omit” in place of SNUB at 10A [Fall to include, say]. Never heard of PLAYERHATERS, but finally had __AYERHATERS and thought it could be nothing else. The P gave me POSER. It took a while to grasp MERCY RULE, although I had the beginning and end: MERC___LE. But what finally broke the log jam was starting to fill in SCHOLARSHIP from the bottom up, first ___SHIP, then ___ARSHIP, then – revelation! Got rid of OMIT, had MUSIC already and thought of NOISE, then SNUB became apparent and the thing was done. With few crosses, I somehow pulled BALLERS out of my mind with no idea how I know it.
I’m in and out these days, mostly out, it seems, although I’m always happiest when I’m here chatting with you beautiful people. Real life is being pesky and demanding. But I’ll show up as much as I can.
[SB: My week – 0,-1,-1,-1,-1,0,-3. Yesterday what cost me so dearly was missing a whole family. Never mind – onward and upward.]
Good to see another puzzle from The Friendly Atheist! And quite a good puzzle at that!
Though having Hatred instead of HUBRIS led me to TrialError as the inelegant way to solve a problem caused a major POSER for me. HOTDESKED was new to me and didn’t make sense (unlike, say, NOISEMUSIC).
My adult hockey leagues had the MERCYRULE, which was just to let the clock run when a team (usually mine) was down by an insurmountable number of goals. Can’t remember how many - apparently, my memory is giving me a MERCYRULE of its own.
LOVED the lack of PPP and texting abbreviations (BRB, IMHO) in this. Had OREOS for dessert to be eaten outdoors because it’s ALWAYS OREO (and it was present, just not where I expected).
This was a challenging, well-crafted xword. Kudos, Hemant!
(PS - Rex finds the term MAKESLOVE cringy and creepy? “Oof” is right! Yesterday, a slipped DISC makes him queasy, today the fact that “the puzzle was gonna reach back to the 20th century” is cringe? Never know what’s going to trigger Rex but as Roseanne Rosannadanna said - way back in the 20th century - “It’s always SOMETHING!”
Very clever and smooth sailing despite the fact that there were answers I simply didn't know such as noisemusic, ballers, nom and playerhaters. Yet somehow it came together which I must attribute to the skill of the constructor. Lovely Friday.
I had a hard time too. I thought you would say it was easy so I feel better now, LOL. I had to look up where Cologne is because I knew it’s a place they were looking for but I thought it was in France!!! Ok, so that’s on my bad geographical knowledge. Now I learned something, in addition to Noise Music. Which I figured out but never heard of before.
Apologies for the duplicated (sort of) post. I thought I had accidentally deleted the post but I actually accidentally posted it. Rewrote and posted again before realizing the first one went through.
Oh these youngsters and their phraseology. Today I learned PLAYERHATER, HOTDESKS, NOISEMUSIC, and BALLER as clued. Also where to find "Better Call Saul" if I ever need to do that.
This was mostly a series of "oh yeahs" and not "ahas!" but it wound up flowing smoothly enough and felt about right for a Friday. Some first guesses turned out to be right, like FRIAR and NOM and those are always helpful.
I liked your Friday just fine, HM. Had Me at MAKESLOVE (NOTWAR), and thanks for all the fun.
And today is the day I finally give in and accept that late-week NYT crosswords are not for me. Absolutely floored by the idea that anyone could get anywhere with this. I DNFed with acres of white left. No short fill that was decipherable with which to get a foothold and hack away at the seemingly ubiquitous question mark and “say” clues that could be almost anything without crosses.
Don’t have many nits to pick with specific clues, because I didn’t get that far … but can someone explain POSER for hard nut to crack?
“Loses interest, say.” Yes. Yes, I did. MERCY RULE, I needed one.
I had a feeling about the constructor while doing this crossword, “I’m sure he’s a lovely person, but we wouldn’t be close friends.” There was a lot I didn’t love, between the antiquated slang, and answers that are both boring and way outside of my wheelhouse, and that truly awful cluing for SEGA. UDDER and MAKES LOVE also brought the squick factor.
That said, I found today easy-medium, and I found that it was fairly crossed. There were some answers I enjoyed seeing in the grid, like BRUTE FORCE and I COME IN PEACE.
And ANIL was nice - I thought it would be a kealoa for HUSK or HULL so that was an enjoyable writeover. There’s an excellent natural and human history book called “The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History” that I highly recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest in plants, anthropology, or ecology.
I very much appreciate taking an occasional personal MERCY RULE of a day. Sometimes when I’m really struggling and feeling stuck, whether it’s crafting the perfect fundraising email or figuring out what exactly I’m going to do with all the brush that needs clearing, when I can, I allow myself a pass to call it a day, do something nice for myself, and try again tomorrow..
Finished it without cheating, because of a lucky guess at the NOM/MEME cross. After I got the happy music I realized that NOM was short for "nomination'" and that MEME had nothing to with illness.
The other sticking point was in the NE, where I had SHUN for "fail to include" instead of SNUB. Also, PLAYERHATERS came slowly, because the clue didn't specify what kind of players were hated. I think of the word as referring to ballplayers, not actors.
I had a lot of guesses but very little fill until I worked my way down to the SE. A few crumbs (51A had to end in WORD, 52D WAA? NO wait, WAH!) got me 54A: OVERGRAZED and thern that corner fell along with a big chunk of the East Coast. 30D (MAKESLOVE) got me 30A: MERCYRULE (fun term) and pretty soon I was racing to the NE. 21:D PLAYERHATER was sticky--I hate those compound words where getting one of the terms doesn't tell you anything about the other. But then 10D: SCHOLARSHIP and it was all pretty much over for that side of the puz. 25:A I kept thinking PRIDE, which didn't fit, but then 36A: HOTDESKED came to the rescue, along with HASH and HUBRIS.
BTW, the (kinda ugly) term HOTDESK is by-analogy from HOTRACK or HOTBUNK. Both from military jargon, the former land-based military and the latter naval though long in usage in long-distance sailboat racing. But at any rate, from crews/teams/units working in shifts where some of the hands sleep while the others are on duty/on deck. Could be as many as three sharing the same bunk, one sleeping, one on duty, one on RandR. But the idea is the bunk is still warm from the last sleeper when the next one crawls into it. So HOTDESK. Though I guess it would be the chair that's still warm, not the desk.
Just one POSER; the cross of BALLERS with AMC and PLAYER HATERS.
I'm wondering about the 'O' in OVAL being OVAL as opposed to circular. I know the number '0" is definitely OVAL.
We had a MERCY RULE in Little League: if winning team was 10 (or more) runs up at the conclusion of the losing team's 4th at-bat.
BRUTE FORCE reminded me of how I passed the GED test in boot camp, wrt the math (algebra) section. Got the job done, tho. :)
"The existence of a brute force solution to a problem usually implies the existence of a more elegant but perhaps less obvious solution. You could take a basic algebra problem as an example: 2x + 100 = 500. To solve this with brute force, we simply check every possible value of x until one works." (vice.com)
Speaking of algebra, I'm slowly but surely learning the basics (with the very patient assistance of ChatGPT). I didn't have the chops for it in h.s., but am loving it now (largely bc I see it as one more great puzzle solving opportunity).
Anyhoo, a lovely Fri. puz; very much enjoyed the adventure! :) ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
I liked most of this puzzle, especially the long Down answers. All except one: 21-Down (Jealous critics, in slang). The answer is PLAYERHATER, which always makes me cringe. The idea that a difference of opinion automatically makes someone a "hater" is such a cop out. You don't like Tarantino films? I do, therefore you're a hater. You don't like 70s music? I do, therefore you're a hater. What an easy way to prevent discussion on any issue. Ugh.
@Lewis, you summed up my solving journey today. I had to back into a multitude of answers that were definitely not in my wheelhouse, but it was ultimately doable by trial and error.
@Southside Johnny, does this help? Effects —brings about, causes Inflation effects a change in consumer spending.
Affects—has an impact on Inflation affects consumer spending. (If you were to use “effects” in the above sentence it would almost mean the opposite)
@Andrew. I feel pretty damn old when the Nineties are deemed Yore and Quaint.
@Anonymous 8:31. I don’t understand the POSER clue either.
Oedipus or Icarus (25A)? Oedipus is the one who solves the riddle of the Sphinx, and gouges his eyes out when he discovers too late that the man he killed was his father and the woman he married his mother. The one suffering from hubris would be Icarus who believed he could fly to the sun and fell to his death when the sun melted the wax holding his wings.
Near Friday record time for me but absolutely no zing to this grid at all. Never heard of PLAYERHATER so that was the final bit to fall. Could only think of Kevin Bacon so filling in ESSAY was a “Doh!” moment….
Why is a POSER a tough nut to crack? Regarding Sonic Youth, I would say that they are more noise music adjacent - their songs usually have melody and harmony. They definitely had some noise music elements and Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo are definitely noise music fans. Lee Renaldo's solo stuff is pure noise.
Unsure why I couldn't click with some of the clues. The ole brain isn't fully awake, I guess. Had to use Check Puzzle feature to ferret out the wrongness just to keep getting toeholds here and there. After a bit, flew through the West side, wondering why I was hung up in the first place. Weird.
Well, someone needs to explain 1D (haven't read y'all yet, so apologies if it's already been answered.)
MAKES LOVE, risque NYT! 😁
Good FriPuz. No HUBRIS from me about solving quickly. I either need a SLAP or a few BEERS.
Is it gross that I first entered tisSue before ERASER for the teacher/sleeve clue? I first had mEGA instead of SEGA... like the lottery game. MAKESLOVE is beautiful, what can be better than that? Nothing, in my world. Never really heard of NOISE MUSIC or BALLERS in that context. MERCY RULE was easy - if a kids soccer game gets to be 7-0 the game is over. Nice Friday puzzle, not too hard. Looking forward to the weekend
Oh, good grief. Children wouldn't help, but maybe if I had grandchildren? Great grandchildren???
It seems that at some point when I wasn't looking, the entire English language that's made up of slang and idioms got emptied out and reinvented.
BALLERS??? MERCY RULE??? PLAYER HATERS??? HOT DESKED???
I guessed HOT DESKED from HOTDES. I figured it wasn't HOT DESERT. The other stuff, all clumped together, was beyond me. BALLERS/BILLERS/BULLERS/BELLERS? MERIT RULE/MERCH RULE? PLACERHATERS/PLATERHATERS/PHASERHATERS/PEACERHATERS?
Well, what can be expected from a brave new world that has both the concept of and the reality of NOISE MUSIC? Yuck. Double yuck. I knew it because I've seen it here before and it's not the sort of thing that hyper-noise-sensitive me is likely to forget.
Some words from our old language that I liked: BRUTE FORCE, HUBRIS, and OVERGRAZED for liveliness and color. MAKES LOVE and I COME IN PEACE for their sentiments.
Another very youthy puzzle. Much too youthy for the likes of me.
Easy down the left side and over to the GETS BORED-SMORE column, then challenging. DNF at the cross of PLAtERHATERS and MERit RULE, as I had no idea about either expression (not that my answers made sense, just couldn't come up with anything better). I like the face-off between I COME IN PEACE with the HATERS across the way. Do-over: irANI. Help from previous puzzles: NOISE MUSIC.
I know this one! “Effect” is the noun form (usually) because it’s “thE Effect” (the E from “the” is the tip-off). Of course, it doesn’t help that there is also a noun form of affect and a verb form of effect, but IN GENERAL the “thE” rule will help!
But I guess for the noun “AF-fect” and the verb “EF-fect” you’re very clearly pronouncing the vowel& at the start so should be able to get it from the sound.
Having SCHool where SCHOLAR began was today’s major hiccup. Otherwise I’ll say hi to @Kitchef for nailing what I would have said. Will ADD that the NE corner of tiny words with sneaky clues was an UDDER delight.
When did MAKE LOVE become old or passé? There are gazillions of us who still use that phrase, especially because sex is an act but making love is an emotional experience.
Flew through most of this. Stuck in a couple of areas- in the SE. Sonic Youth were definitely considered part of the post-punk noise rock scene, but the song Rex shared is from the era when they went more traditional in song writing and instrumentation. Check out EVOL or Sister for their noisier, more experimental stuff. Or Daydream Nation for the transition between eras.
Absolutely brutal for me. Like Rex, I just couldn’t get a handle on the clues. No trivia to hang my hat on, lots of relatively obscure slang. Finished well over my Friday average, and I had to look up a couple answers to get me going. Brutal.
My big problem was 8-D. I figured that, in keeping with the rest of the puzzle, "Loses interest" must have a tricky meeting, like putting your money in a savings account and ending up with less than you started; to the best I could come up with was GETS hOsED. That left me with a MEsC_RULE, and no idea about either AMC or PLAYER-HATERS. I finally gave up, searched for 'mesc _ rule' and Duck-Duck-Go kindly asked me if I really wanted MERCY RULE. DOH!
Omit for SNUB and NOT ONE sOul (whom you shouldn't tell, rather than what you shouldn't say) didn't help. But I finally got through it with that single cheat.
Like a couple of others here I couldn't think of the HUBRIS in the Oedipus story, so I looked it up. It's either that he's too proud to stand aside for a king, so he kills Laius (his father, unbeknownst to him) instead of doing so, or else that he vainly tries to evade his prophesized fate.
Doesn't anyone else think the clue for 55-A is weird? You could clue TRES in Spanish as a number or in French as an adverb -- but what's the point in using a Spanish reference to a French novel? That's at least as bizarre as the clue for SEGA.
I share @Nancy's sense that the language is slipping away from me, but for a different reason. I can't wrap my head around the reality that so many have never heard anyone say "that's a real POSER." I don't doubt you, I just feel old.
I expected to read "Here is the woosh woosh Friday I've been waiting for". I saw medium-challenging and assumed we had a guest blogger. Easy, fun Friday for me. Huh, wheelhouses...
I agree with Rex about the SEGA clue. I don't even bother with the NPR Radio Sunday puzzle anymore because it is one of those clues every week. "Take a popular company, remove 2 letters, rearrange the rest of the letters and add an -RS to get something made by that company".
Gotta run, I look forward to readying everyone's take later today.
The NE really beat me up, but I succeeded and that makes a satisfying solve.
Unknown : MERCYRULE BALLERS PLAYERHATERS NOISEMUSIC SPIT AMC as clued
The nut clue for POSER was terrific, and the APRON clue had me expecting some other slang I'd never get, but Yay! I think of mutton chops as facial hair first, so even LOINS required crosses.
@Anonymous 9:20 - I also thought of Icarus for HUBRIS instead of Oedipus.
Is the pursuit clue the cringy part of MAKESLOVE, Rex? With the older use @Kitshef mentioned “courting,” it’s not stalker-ish. I think the euphemistic usage is more intimate than the word sex, so maybe that's what was cringy? PLAYERHATERS and another word we see too often - POPO - are much cringier to me.
Mostly easy FriPuz, except for the hard spots. Same no-knows as for most folks: MERCYRULE. HOTDESKED. PLAYERHATERS. BALLERS. Kinda knew NOISEMUSIC, from somewheres.
Lotsa neat longballs and clues, tho. Some faves: VERYCLEVER. ICOMEINPEACE. BRUTEFORCE. NOTONEWORD. HIDE clue. ESSAY clue. ERASER clue. SEGA clue, semi-aptly.
staff weeject pick (of a meager 9 candidates): WAH. Mainly cuz it runt-rolls eastward into WAHOOS.
Kinda intriguin reaction from @RP on that there MAKESLOVE entry. It seems to be his new M&A-equivalent of PEWIT.
Thanx for the slang-fest, Mr. Mehta dude. Always good to learn new stuff.
Alternated between feeling smarter than I thought I was, and more out of touch than I thought I was. All this time, thought Baller was a basketball player. Noise Music isn't music, it's just Noise. Never heard of Poser. Made the NE corner harder than it actually was.
Good time of year for Prom Dress, so that was easy. Somehow knew Hot Desked. Liked Brute Force.
Amitoolate could be a word. He was Amitoolated for six months after using Brute Force. There's a Limit to what you can do.
I think it's a good idea if constructors put a ready-made compliment for their puzzle in the grid, as happens today with 14A VERY CLEVER. BRUTE FORCE and MERCY RULE, among others, did the trick for me.
NOISE MUSIC is what my parents called the music I was into as a teen. No, wait. They just called it NOISE.
One thing did stand out in this one and not in a good way. There are almost too many POCs (plurals of convenience) to count. They are all over the grid including a bunch of two for one POCs, where a Down and an Across both get a letter count, grid filling boost by sharing a single S at their ends. Three of them are in the right most column.
With SELL, BEER, MILL, PEN, PROM DRESS, PLAYER HATER, BALLER, LOIN, GET BORED, EYE, MAKE LOVE, CHICK, AFFECT, AIR, ADD and SHOO all getting POC assistance, the Committee gave this grid a POC Marked rating.
"And in the end, the LOVE you take is equal to the LOVE you MAKE" (Beatles' "The End" from their 1969 Abbey Road album)
Granted, I don't think POSER is a term spoken much irl, but I'm surprised at the number of people saying they've never heard of it when it's been a Times puzzle answer roughly once a year going back to 1994, almost always clued similarly. It's most recent appearance was just this past March. It feels like an X-word staple to me.
Well, lets see. I can only describe this as interesting, what in the world, puzzling and a bit exhausting. I think I ran the alphabets so many times that I started singing my grandchild's ABC song. Oof. What was interesting is that I finished this without having to call anybody. My what in the world started with BALLERS. Would I dare say to my wealthy Uncle Bud that he's got a lot of BALLERS and would he share? Would part of the bargain be his MERCY RULE? He never HOT DESKED with any one and his NOISE. MUSIC was a HASH of dis and dat. Puzzling out SLAP CHICKS and then stopping at the owl. I got your EYES answer but I wasn't exactly happy. Owls blink their EYES, no? Owls can blink, and that's a movement even though they don't move the EYE. I overthink too much. Oh you pigs digs. You are always sty's. I wallowed on that one. Held me up something fierce. I wanted something smoking for that formal attire because, well, sty's starts with an S and I had no idea about LOINS being mutton chops...I used the teachers sleeve and erased, erased, erased and stuck a Pen in there. Well I managed to finish. I didn't visit joy world. I usually do when an easy/hard/puzzling puzzle is finished by my Oedipus HUBRIS flaw. I'm still wondering about BALLERS and the Owl.
Of course, we should also remember that at one time, to "make love" to someone basically meant to sweet-talk him or her, not to actually "have sex" (as we say today). We often see that expression in older fiction, or hear it in early movies.
In fact, the term "PLAYERHATER" has been around for at least 30 years, if not longer -- it's hardly "youthy". To the best of my knowledge, it was first coined by California rapper Filthy Phil somewhere around 1988 or '99 (usually spelled, and pronounced, along the lines of "PlayaHata"). It spread rapidly throughout the Bay Area hip-hop community, and soon went national. That's well over a generation ago, folks.
Oof this is one of those puzzles that makes me wonder "am I getting too old to do the NYT?" That upper right was just a disaster, as I've never heard PLAYER HATERS or NOISE MUSIC; never heard POSER or BALLERS used that way; MERCY RULE was a whaa?; and had SEINE before RHINE cuz Cologne sounds French. And after all that I also had Rex's NOD before NOM, and to add insult, SMORS before SMORE.
MERCY RULEs make watching minor baseball very confusing. Why are they running off the field?... there's only one out!
Other typeovers: TAKE before EVAL and HOT SEATED before HOT DESKED.
[Spelling Bee: yd -2, missed these 6ers. @Barbara S, that was a bad family to miss! My week 0, -1, -2 so far.]
Played at an "Easy" time for me, but did have slowdowns in the east. Had HATERS but didn't know the PLAYER part; had OVER but had to chew on the GRAZED part; had MUSIC but couldn't hear the NOISE part; had omit for SNUB which was the biggest hang-up. Finally saw SCHOLARSHIP and that helped it all fall into place.
As a dad who long ago coached youth sports, loved MERCY RULE. Also like BRUTE FORCE and I COME IN PEACE separated only by PROM DRESSES.
No problem with this one -- a rare Friday that is easier than a Saturday, in my experience. MAKing LOVE was a kind of taboo phrase back in 1957, but I knew it had something to do with sex, which definitely was not taught in our schools. One did sometimes see it in print. The first time I remember hearing it was when it was a hit for Larry Williams (or his pal Little Richard): the singer and his girlfriend were "MAKing LOVE underneath the apple tree." I rather think the mainstream stations refused to play it, but we all listened to the old KDAY in Santa Monica, which played all the Top 40 hits.
Cologne is the French name for Koln, which is on the Rhine and has a huge cathedral, which I think got bombed during the War. It is easily visited if you are on a train heading north from Basel to Hamburg or Amsterdam, as you can get off, spend an hour or so looking at the Cathedral, and get right back on the next train.
A 16:53 for me. I didn't love or hate this puzzle. If you have kids and have witnessed an unevenly matched game, you know Mercy Rule (aka the Slaughter Rule). My biggest pet peeve with this one was what you called the kealoa (great term) of nom. Like you, I went nod at first. I thought it was a lazy, lame clue that lacked creativity.
Had a bit of a chuckle today, as I was singing a little Skee-Lo to my 7- and 9-year-old daughters this morning while getting their school lunches ready: "I wish I was little bit taller, I wish I was a baller" and doing silly Mr Rogers Riffs on them: "I wish I was a kitty/living in the city" "I wish a was a penguin, a little more sanguine." "Dad, what does sanguine mean?" "Oh, like optimistic, hopeful, positive, happy. 'Sang' comes from a Latin root meaning 'blood' and --" "OK, that's enough dad." Well, I'm sure it goes in one ear and out the other, but I try. :) Incidentally, they were familiar with the original. It also surprises me a little how many pop cultural references from my time they're familiar with.
Anyway, when I got to the puzzle and 23 Across later in the morning, I chuckled, filled in BALLERS, and started rapping again to an audience of just myself.
The puzzle ran easy for a Friday. Overall, I found it very enjoyable. I did wrinkle my nose a bit for that silly anagram clue for the same reasons Rex did. Took longer than it should to get MERCYRULE -- all I could think of is "slaughter rule" which is what we called it back when I was a kid in the 80s, at any rate. HOTDESKED is the only term I was completely unfamiliar with and needed almost all the crosses to get. I haven't worked in an office since 2006, so I have an excuse. Oh, and NOM, as clued, means nothing to me. I assume an acronym of "something of something."Oh, wait -- it means "nomination" or "nominee" doesn't it? Well, that's a shortening I don't recall hearing.
PLAYERHATERS did probably have its public heyday in the 90s, but I hear the term here and there. I'll even use it myself, but typically in a tongue-in-cheek manner. You also hear the related "Don't hate the player, hate the game" every so often in pop culture.
kealoa = 2 possible correct answers that share a letter. malapop = a wrong answer that turns out to be the correct answer later in the puzzle.
Do we have a shorthand term for a wrong answer that gets us a lot of the correct letters? Today NOd was a big enough helping hand to be able to loop back to NOM.
@egs: I read your comments without checking the name, went to the puzzle to check the 14A clue/answer and thought "this sounds like egs". Voila!
I think being involved in sports, music, and adjacent enough to youth culture really gave a leg up today. All of the listed trouble spots jumped right in. Waiting for my wheel(house) balance to be restored tomorrow...
I understand the HUBRIS in Oedipus to be the pride to think one can avoid their fate. Agreed that Icarus would be a clearer example.
Lots of great clues; I don't think "Man on a mission?" for FRIAR has been mentioned.
The elementary school science teacher incubates eggs and hatches chicks every year. The joy that brings to the students is incalculable AND she beams every year as if it was her first time witnessing it too!
When I see these slang terms I can’t help thinking of someone like Edward G. Robinson saying them out of one side of his mouth with a big cigar in the other side and wearing a pinstriped suit . I guess I’ve got to learn this stuff if I am going to enjoy the NYT Xword .
Pretty fun Friday for me. Really gave me some resistance (much lime @Rex) with HOT DESKED and the PLAYER part of PLAYER HATERS. I got the HATERS easily but needed help from the crosses which did not come easily!
The clues were exceptionally tricky in the best possible way. Bacon bit? - even with the ? at the end gave me fits! Loved it. Another toughie for me was the clue “nonmelodic genre.” I plopped in “twelve tone” instantly (thinking of Alban Berg and his era of composers) and thought that’s what it must be. Big oops! Took me quite a while to undo the mess that made. I left it in way too long because my brain had way too much trouble with SNUB, CODE and HIDE. Thankfully, POSER, BALLER and NO MA’AM seemed very possible but given my goofs already in there, I was reticent. When those worked out though, it solved the entire right hand third north to south since I already had the SE from CHICKS all the way down through the tens: NOT ONE WORD and OVERGRAZED. I got my “whoosh, whoosh on!
@burtonkd (3:38 PM) I didn't actually search the rexblog archive. I remembered that @JC66 made his "kelo" comment on a day when the puzzle wanted a 4-letter answer for a clue something like [Draped garment]. At the time, I figured there were two possible answers, SARI and TOGA. So, today, in order to find when this occurred, I went to xwordinfo.com, searched SARI, and found two recent [Draped garment] clues. I thought the oldest one was the more likely (12-29-2022), so I checked the rexblog comments for that date and voila!
I had the same reaction. Rex thought this was hard!?!? One of the fastest Friday times this year for me. (Though of course I am much slower than Rex) Also agree the fake anagram clue was dumb. (I would blame Shortz. Sounds like his type of clue). Didn’t find it dull though b
Always find your comments interesting. But I strongly disagree with your & Rex’s criticism of MAKE LOVE. Pabloinnh also made a reference to it, but I also thought of MAKE LOVE not war. Nothing cringy or awful about it to me. As I also mentioned above, maybe it’s a generational thing?
Yech. Real life started early today so just now finishing up the puzzle. It's really good. The northeast was super tough for me.
Tee-Hees: It might seem odd to have such a jaded partay theme masquerading as a themeless, but we know how lonely our editors can be in those closets listed as studio apartments: BEER, PROM DRESSES (woot), MAKES LOVE, HASH, BALLERS, MERCY RULE, CHICKS, SLAP, BOA, NOT ONE WORD, BRUT FORCE, I COME IN PEACE, LOINS, GETS BORED and of course PLAYER HATERS. I take my hat off to the slush pile editor for finding this gem.
Love the word HUBRIS because it reminds me of my college English classes. Poor Oedipus. And hello Bacon bit = ESSAY. Suhweet.
Proud of myself (for no legitimate reason) after writing in AM I TOO LATE, GETS BORED and NOT ONE WORD with no crosses. Sometimes luck goes my way.
Using a sleeve as an eraser? Do they have me on camera?
N-Ks: HOT DESKED. I also knew nothing about Spit. 😉
ACORN, PECAN ... POSER, what?!
Uniclues:
1 A toe on your shin under the dinner table. 2 Question and rather hostile answer for tardy attendee of a surprise party. 3 You're allowed to have super groan-y dad jokes about wine on a maximum of two. 4 Each of the women I met in my dating years. 5 Drills holes in the paddle. 6 What a right wing nut job hopes National Public Radio will do. 7 Church leadership choice of authors for the "Whoops We Did It Again" apology note. 8 Free ride to trombone college. 9 Composition professor at the state university.
1 VERY CLEVER CODE 2 "AM I TOO LATE?" "HIDE!" 3 APRON MERCY RULE 4 ERASER CHICK 5 AFFECTS SLAP 6 AIRS NOT ONE WORD 7 MEMO UP TO FRIAR 8 WAH SCHOLARSHIP (~) 9 NOISE MUSIC BOZO
@JC66 Yeah, well, I'm perfectly capable of forgetting the absolute must-do on Tuesday afternoon or what I had for lunch yesterday...but when I'm hot, I'm hot!
Anyone else experience a little schadenfreude in Rex's relating of his stumbles today? Captures my solve experience at least two or three times EACH month!
I never had heard of the term “hotdesk”. After finishing the puzzle, I started reading “The List” by Mick Herron. On page 31, there it is: “J. K. Come, was hot-desking on the fourth floor…”.
Yes, thank you for doing the needful. I’m shocked by the number of people who’ve never heard of BALLERS but had no issue with this usage of POSER that I’ve never come across once in my 44 years on earth. I’d also never heard of an AÑIL but that doesn’t bother me.
@Anonymous 7:10, that type of clue shows up from time to time, something like “Step on it!” And the answer something like “scale” or “pedal.” I feel like they’re usually in brackets or something, but I’ve come across that type of clue several times recently in the NYT puzzle, where the answer is a noun answering an action in the clue. Like “it sucks!” might be “vacuum.”
I think the idea with PEA COAT is that they are generally Navy Blue. Even on Wiki whatever it says that, “A pea coat (or peacoat, pea jacket, pilot jacket, reefer jacket) is an outer coat, generally of a navy-coloured heavy wool”. Not the Pea color. A bit confusing in that case.
It played easy-medium here--for a Friday. In many cases, though I didn't actually know the answer, I could infer it after a few letters. Examples include HOTDESKED, PLAYERHATERS, OVERGRAZED. In short, I did not need to do this by BRUTEFORCE.
Some interesting symmetry pairs: MAKESLOVE/GETSBORED (uh-oh!); anagrammed POSER/PROSE.
Lots of long answers with a little pizzazz. Fun. Eagle.
Wordle birdie: the ol' putter is heatin' up again!
I was zipping right along, had most of this done. And then I hit a wall in the NE corner of all places. Just could not get OMIT out of 10-A and that left me scratching my head. Even after looking up SNUB, I still had to have another clue with BEERS and CODE. Then I could finish.
Still, not bad for me for a Friday. And not a lot of PPP!
@Nancy 9:51am: Like Rex, I delved into noise music, and found that it dates back to the 1910's in Italy. Who knew? It's over 100 years old, and not youthy at all.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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105 comments:
I managed to finish this in 20 - a really good Friday time for me - even though I had an almost empty west half of the puzzle after the initial pass. I had no problem with NOTONEWORD (although my first thought was not A word).
I know I'm biased here - I've been following Hemant's podcast for years - but I liked it. I learned PLAYERHATERS, NOISEMUSIC, and BALLERS, although none of those terms are music to my ears.
I'm still having trouble with the clue for NOM. Do people really say that? Hey, I got a NOM last night. She always gets a NOM but never a win.
Apparently (judging by what XWStats says) a lot of solvers found this easy. I'm with Rex here, it was more of a medium Saturday for me (I didn't even know BALLERS and PLAYER HATERS). The only relatively whoosh-y section was the NW. But I also wanted LOLLS for MILLS, though LOINS made sense. No idea how PENS eluded me for so long.
In the SE I had SLOPE for LIMIT (LIMIT is definitely more of a technical calculus term, but I've definitely seen SLOPE clued via calculus). I also considered OPEN-something for 54A, so... a SCONE at 43D?
I knew Spit, and it's actually a pretty fun game (all speed, no turns, there are piles of cards in the middle of the table and you just get rid of your own cards by placing them on top of the middle piles, but you can only put cards that are one higher or one lower than the one shown). Couldn't decide between SLAm and SLAP at first, and I'm not even sure what that's referring to (either "slap" just means to put down a card, or it's when all players are stuck and have to play a new card, but that's just called "spit" as far as I know)
About the UDDER clue - it's perfectly okay to remove some question marks on late-week puzzles to make the cluing trickier, but is that allowed with exclamation marks too? I didn't really know what "milk it" meant but apparently it's a thing.
"Overthinking themeless mode" moment for today: I thought "extending an olive branch" was supposed to be some kind of weird jargon, I was surprised by how literal the clue actually was.
For me, this was: sloooow start, rip through the SE like a BALLER, pretty whooshy left into the SW and up to the NW, total standstill in the NE. That section took me as long as the rest of the puzzle. But I got it and felt very satisfied at the end.
I had only NO MAAM, EMOTE and EARS in that section. Wait, you say, there is no emote, and owls can’t move their EYES not their ears. Exactly. But I was sure of emote for “milk it,” and I stuck with it way too long. And immovable ears seemed right.
I finally made some progress by educated-guessing MUSIC. That got me to see CHICKS, and that mideast sub-section fell. Then SCHOLARSHIP saved the day, as is it so often does. I liked the misdirection on “get behind something, say” for HIDE.
Can we have a MERCY RULE for life? On one of those days when everything is going badly, the referee blows a whistle and the torture is over.
This was a whoosh whoosh Friday for me. The west played like a Tuesday, the eastern half was much more Friday-ish. Enjoyed it.
Thought this was relatively easy for a Friday although some of the cluing was odd. Wanted RACE to be pace so spun my wheels a bit in the southwest. Also thought jealous critics was going to be theater related somehow. The SEGA thing, I guess you could take letters out of a whole lot of words and make them an anagram or something. Why?
Can we have a MERCY RULE for life? On one of those days when everything is going wrong, the referee blows a whistle, and the torture is over. Good game, shake hands, go out for pizza.
My path through the puzzle went like this: sloooow start, destroy the SE like a BALLER, pretty whooshy through the SW and up to the NW, total standstill in the NE. That part of the puzzle took as long as all the rest of it. NOT ONE WORD for the longest time, or at least not one correct word. I stuck with emote for way too long for “milk it.” Educated-guessing on MUSIC made me see CHICKS and that sub-section fell in line. (I had EarS before EYES for the owl’s immovable parts.) Then SCHOLARSHIP saved the day, as it so often does. I liked the misdirection on “get behind something, say” for HIDE.
OVERGRAZED is a good term to use at the end of a party. “AM I TOO LATE?” you ask upon arriving. “Yes, the buffet table is OVERGRAZED “
Very satisfied feeling upon completing this one. I liked it.
VERY CLEVER Friday - lots of fun all around.
Over the RHINE
Nah, Sonic Youth isn't "noise music." It's occasionally NOISY music. For actual noise music, see, on the rockish side of the spectrum, Japanese artiste Merzbow, or, on the contemporary classical side of the spectrum, the electro-acoustic work of Iannia Xenakis. You'll thank me the longest day you live. Or not!
One of those two-puzzles-per-year that Rex rates as challenging that I found easy. In this case, very very easy.
And perhaps because of that, fairly dull. M&A makes frequent use of 'almost anagrams' in Runt puzzles, but Rex is completely right that 'aptly' is inapt.
MAKES LOVE, long before it became a euphemism for sex, meant simply courting or pitching woo, and that is how I interpreted that clue.
Some good stuff in there, but overall, similar experience to Rex (and agree on SEGA, awful clue)
East side just not a very pleasant vibe.
Also, would be fine never, ever having a NYT clue/answer again.
A work of art, that’s what this puzzle was for me.
Oh, there were answers that I slapped down – that’s knowledge, not art. That’s science. The art comes in other ways. For instance:
• The knack of figuring out the unknown on the solver’s part, that is, taking crafty stabs, knowing when a guess isn’t working, filling in beginnings or endings of answers even when the entire answer is still elusive, etc.
• The ability of the constructor/editor to anticipate trouble areas for the solver and adjust the difficulty in those areas accordingly.
Today, there were five answers out of my wheelhouse: MERCY RULE, HOT DESKED, NOISE MUSIC, BALLERS, and PLAYER HATERS. They are terrifically colorful, and I love them, but it took art – both kinds – to fill them in. Little things, like having only the final C in NOISE MUSIC filled in, and my brain thinking that there’s a good chance the answer to [Nonmelodic genre] ends with MUSIC. That’s art.
Or the constructor/editor noticing that two possibly vexing answers (PLAYER HATERS and NOISE MUSIC) cross a third (BALLERS), and making sure that the clues for the other answers crossing BALLERS were not inscrutable, making that word guessable. That’s art.
There’s also art in cleanly filling a grid with varied and vivid answers, as Hemant did today.
So, credit to Hemant, to the editors, and to my crossword-seasoned brain, for bringing art into this outing, adding beauty and pleasure to the satisfaction that comes with filling in the squares.
On the Easy side of Medium for me.
I have a personal kealoa on the crosswordese seed covering ARIL vs. the crosswordese dye AnIL (3D)
ShUn before SNUB at 10A
SLAm before SLAP at 43A (thanks, @Anon 6:16 for the explanation)
NOd before NOM at 56A
NOISE MUSIC (11D), PLAYER-HATERS (21D) and BALLERS (23A) were WOEs but fell into place from crosses
I think it was about 40 years ago that I actually felt like I knew the difference between AFFECTS and eFFECTS. I’ve been struggling on and off for years now to try to regain that understanding. If anyone here would care to enlighten me, I’m all ears.
There must me something in the water in upstate NY today - it’s a rare day indeed when I flow through a Friday grid feeling pretty confident and Rex struggles a bit. Going light on the PPP and the arcane stuff definitely helped, so thanks to the constructor for that one. We even had a pretty discernible clue/answer (TRES) for today’s foreign language math problem. I could come around to enjoy Fridays like this one.
Didn’t find it particularly difficult, but Thursdays for me tend to be more. BRUTE FORCE than whoosh whoosh. Put ExAm for EVAL, which hid VERY CLEVER for a while. Otherwise, it was mostly slow but steady progress across the grid. The only long answer that would have been an instant get was PLAYER HATERS, but I usually hear/see that as “playa” so I didn’t think it would fit.
Happy National Paper Airplane Day. (Who decides these things?)
I liked this and finished in a reasonable time, but also made some of the popular mistakes. I had loLLS, too, but didn’t like it – lolling is lying around, not moving about, or not moving much. And for a while, directly below it, I kept alternating between PENS and styS – not a kealoa (no shared letters) but a kelo, in @JC66’s VERY CLEVER terminology.
The section that gave me the most grief was the NE, probably because for far too long I had “omit” in place of SNUB at 10A [Fall to include, say]. Never heard of PLAYERHATERS, but finally had __AYERHATERS and thought it could be nothing else. The P gave me POSER. It took a while to grasp MERCY RULE, although I had the beginning and end: MERC___LE. But what finally broke the log jam was starting to fill in SCHOLARSHIP from the bottom up, first ___SHIP, then ___ARSHIP, then – revelation! Got rid of OMIT, had MUSIC already and thought of NOISE, then SNUB became apparent and the thing was done. With few crosses, I somehow pulled BALLERS out of my mind with no idea how I know it.
I’m in and out these days, mostly out, it seems, although I’m always happiest when I’m here chatting with you beautiful people. Real life is being pesky and demanding. But I’ll show up as much as I can.
[SB: My week – 0,-1,-1,-1,-1,0,-3. Yesterday what cost me so dearly was missing a whole family. Never mind – onward and upward.]
Good to see another puzzle from The Friendly Atheist! And quite a good puzzle at that!
Though having Hatred instead of HUBRIS led me to TrialError as the inelegant way to solve a problem caused a major POSER for me. HOTDESKED was new to me and didn’t make sense (unlike, say, NOISEMUSIC).
My adult hockey leagues had the MERCYRULE, which was just to let the clock run when a team (usually mine) was down by an insurmountable number of goals. Can’t remember how many - apparently, my memory is giving me a MERCYRULE of its own.
LOVED the lack of PPP and texting abbreviations (BRB, IMHO) in this. Had OREOS for dessert to be eaten outdoors because it’s ALWAYS OREO (and it was present, just not where I expected).
This was a challenging, well-crafted xword. Kudos, Hemant!
(PS - Rex finds the term MAKESLOVE cringy and creepy? “Oof” is right! Yesterday, a slipped DISC makes him queasy, today the fact that “the puzzle was gonna reach back to the 20th century” is cringe? Never know what’s going to trigger Rex but as Roseanne Rosannadanna said - way back in the 20th century - “It’s always SOMETHING!”
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Very clever and smooth sailing despite the fact that there were answers I simply didn't know such as noisemusic, ballers, nom and playerhaters. Yet somehow it came together which I must attribute to the skill of the constructor. Lovely Friday.
I had a hard time too. I thought you would say it was easy so I feel better now, LOL.
I had to look up where Cologne is because I knew it’s a place they were looking for but I thought it was in France!!! Ok, so that’s on my bad geographical knowledge. Now I learned something, in addition to Noise Music. Which I figured out but never heard of before.
Apologies for the duplicated (sort of) post. I thought I had accidentally deleted the post but I actually accidentally posted it. Rewrote and posted again before realizing the first one went through.
I was surprised to find a Friday puzzle with a theme, today's being: Things Joaquin never heard of. Oh well ... nothing wrong with learning new stuff.
Hint for Kent: today is Friday.
Oh these youngsters and their phraseology. Today I learned PLAYERHATER, HOTDESKS, NOISEMUSIC, and BALLER as clued. Also where to find "Better Call Saul" if I ever need to do that.
This was mostly a series of "oh yeahs" and not "ahas!" but it wound up flowing smoothly enough and felt about right for a Friday. Some first guesses turned out to be right, like FRIAR and NOM and those are always helpful.
I liked your Friday just fine, HM. Had Me at MAKESLOVE (NOTWAR), and thanks for all the fun.
And today is the day I finally give in and accept that late-week NYT crosswords are not for me. Absolutely floored by the idea that anyone could get anywhere with this. I DNFed with acres of white left. No short fill that was decipherable with which to get a foothold and hack away at the seemingly ubiquitous question mark and “say” clues that could be almost anything without crosses.
Don’t have many nits to pick with specific clues, because I didn’t get that far … but can someone explain POSER for hard nut to crack?
“Loses interest, say.” Yes. Yes, I did. MERCY RULE, I needed one.
I had a feeling about the constructor while doing this crossword, “I’m sure he’s a lovely person, but we wouldn’t be close friends.” There was a lot I didn’t love, between the antiquated slang, and answers that are both boring and way outside of my wheelhouse, and that truly awful cluing for SEGA. UDDER and MAKES LOVE also brought the squick factor.
That said, I found today easy-medium, and I found that it was fairly crossed. There were some answers I enjoyed seeing in the grid, like BRUTE FORCE and I COME IN PEACE.
And ANIL was nice - I thought it would be a kealoa for HUSK or HULL so that was an enjoyable writeover. There’s an excellent natural and human history book called “The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History” that I highly recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest in plants, anthropology, or ecology.
I very much appreciate taking an occasional personal MERCY RULE of a day. Sometimes when I’m really struggling and feeling stuck, whether it’s crafting the perfect fundraising email or figuring out what exactly I’m going to do with all the brush that needs clearing, when I can, I allow myself a pass to call it a day, do something nice for myself, and try again tomorrow..
Finished it without cheating, because of a lucky guess at the NOM/MEME cross. After I got the happy music I realized that NOM was short for "nomination'" and that MEME had nothing to with illness.
The other sticking point was in the NE, where I had SHUN for "fail to include" instead of SNUB. Also, PLAYERHATERS came slowly, because the clue didn't specify what kind of players were hated. I think of the word as referring to ballplayers, not actors.
I had a lot of guesses but very little fill until I worked my way down to the SE. A few crumbs (51A had to end in WORD, 52D WAA? NO wait, WAH!) got me 54A: OVERGRAZED and thern that corner fell along with a big chunk of the East Coast. 30D (MAKESLOVE) got me 30A: MERCYRULE (fun term) and pretty soon I was racing to the NE. 21:D PLAYERHATER was sticky--I hate those compound words where getting one of the terms doesn't tell you anything about the other. But then 10D: SCHOLARSHIP and it was all pretty much over for that side of the puz. 25:A I kept thinking PRIDE, which didn't fit, but then 36A: HOTDESKED came to the rescue, along with HASH and HUBRIS.
BTW, the (kinda ugly) term HOTDESK is by-analogy from HOTRACK or HOTBUNK. Both from military jargon, the former land-based military and the latter naval though long in usage in long-distance sailboat racing. But at any rate, from crews/teams/units working in shifts where some of the hands sleep while the others are on duty/on deck. Could be as many as three sharing the same bunk, one sleeping, one on duty, one on RandR. But the idea is the bunk is still warm from the last sleeper when the next one crawls into it. So HOTDESK. Though I guess it would be the chair that's still warm, not the desk.
I would call the crossing of PROMDRESSES and APRON a Cinderella story.
We all may disagree on many things, but I guarantee that all of us think that the answer to 14A is very clever.
I guess a long and lean piece of hair is a LANK HANK.
No whooshing for me today, but no great difficulties either. Enjoyed it enough, so thanks, Hemant Mehta.
Thx, Hemant; VERY CLEVER! 😊
Easy.
Pretty smooth all the way.
Just one POSER; the cross of BALLERS with AMC and PLAYER HATERS.
I'm wondering about the 'O' in OVAL being OVAL as opposed to circular. I know the number '0" is definitely OVAL.
We had a MERCY RULE in Little League: if winning team was 10 (or more) runs up at the conclusion of the losing team's 4th at-bat.
BRUTE FORCE reminded me of how I passed the GED test in boot camp, wrt the math (algebra) section. Got the job done, tho. :)
"The existence of a brute force solution to a problem usually implies the existence of a more elegant but perhaps less obvious solution. You could take a basic algebra problem as an example: 2x + 100 = 500. To solve this with brute force, we simply check every possible value of x until one works." (vice.com)
Speaking of algebra, I'm slowly but surely learning the basics (with the very patient assistance of ChatGPT). I didn't have the chops for it in h.s., but am loving it now (largely bc I see it as one more great puzzle solving opportunity).
Anyhoo, a lovely Fri. puz; very much enjoyed the adventure! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
I liked most of this puzzle, especially the long Down answers. All except one: 21-Down (Jealous critics, in slang). The answer is PLAYERHATER, which always makes me cringe. The idea that a difference of opinion automatically makes someone a "hater" is such a cop out. You don't like Tarantino films? I do, therefore you're a hater. You don't like 70s music? I do, therefore you're a hater. What an easy way to prevent discussion on any issue. Ugh.
@Lewis, you summed up my solving journey today. I had to back into a multitude of answers that were definitely not in my wheelhouse, but it was ultimately doable by trial and error.
@Southside Johnny, does this help?
Effects —brings about, causes
Inflation effects a change in consumer spending.
Affects—has an impact on
Inflation affects consumer spending.
(If you were to use “effects” in the above sentence it would almost mean the opposite)
@Andrew. I feel pretty damn old when the Nineties are deemed Yore and Quaint.
@Anonymous 8:31. I don’t understand the POSER clue either.
Faith in a seed by Thoreau is also nice.
Oedipus or Icarus (25A)? Oedipus is the one who solves the riddle of the Sphinx, and gouges his eyes out when he discovers too late that the man he killed was his father and the woman he married his mother.
The one suffering from hubris would be Icarus who believed he could fly to the sun and fell to his death when the sun melted the wax holding his wings.
Near Friday record time for me but absolutely no zing to this grid at all. Never heard of PLAYERHATER so that was the final bit to fall. Could only think of Kevin Bacon so filling in ESSAY was a “Doh!” moment….
Why is a POSER a tough nut to crack? Regarding Sonic Youth, I would say that they are more noise music adjacent - their songs usually have melody and harmony. They definitely had some noise music elements and Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo are definitely noise music fans. Lee Renaldo's solo stuff is pure noise.
Hey All !
Wanted YOKO ONO for NOISE MUSIC clue. 🤣
Unsure why I couldn't click with some of the clues. The ole brain isn't fully awake, I guess. Had to use Check Puzzle feature to ferret out the wrongness just to keep getting toeholds here and there. After a bit, flew through the West side, wondering why I was hung up in the first place. Weird.
Well, someone needs to explain 1D (haven't read y'all yet, so apologies if it's already been answered.)
MAKES LOVE, risque NYT! 😁
Good FriPuz. No HUBRIS from me about solving quickly. I either need a SLAP or a few BEERS.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Played as four cool puzzles, one of which I DNFed due to my stubborn (and foolish) commitment to BANGERS.
the 'o' - the first letter of the answer - is an oval shape.
Is it gross that I first entered tisSue before ERASER for the teacher/sleeve clue? I first had mEGA instead of SEGA... like the lottery game. MAKESLOVE is beautiful, what can be better than that? Nothing, in my world. Never really heard of NOISE MUSIC or BALLERS in that context. MERCY RULE was easy - if a kids soccer game gets to be 7-0 the game is over. Nice Friday puzzle, not too hard. Looking forward to the weekend
Oh, good grief. Children wouldn't help, but maybe if I had grandchildren? Great grandchildren???
It seems that at some point when I wasn't looking, the entire English language that's made up of slang and idioms got emptied out and reinvented.
BALLERS??? MERCY RULE??? PLAYER HATERS??? HOT DESKED???
I guessed HOT DESKED from HOTDES. I figured it wasn't HOT DESERT. The other stuff, all clumped together, was beyond me. BALLERS/BILLERS/BULLERS/BELLERS? MERIT RULE/MERCH RULE? PLACERHATERS/PLATERHATERS/PHASERHATERS/PEACERHATERS?
Well, what can be expected from a brave new world that has both the concept of and the reality of NOISE MUSIC? Yuck. Double yuck. I knew it because I've seen it here before and it's not the sort of thing that hyper-noise-sensitive me is likely to forget.
Some words from our old language that I liked: BRUTE FORCE, HUBRIS, and OVERGRAZED for liveliness and color. MAKES LOVE and I COME IN PEACE for their sentiments.
Another very youthy puzzle. Much too youthy for the likes of me.
Easy down the left side and over to the GETS BORED-SMORE column, then challenging. DNF at the cross of PLAtERHATERS and MERit RULE, as I had no idea about either expression (not that my answers made sense, just couldn't come up with anything better). I like the face-off between I COME IN PEACE with the HATERS across the way.
Do-over: irANI. Help from previous puzzles: NOISE MUSIC.
A POSER is a hard question or problem to solve. So in this case, a POSER is like a gumshoe's case being difficult to crack....
I know this one! “Effect” is the noun form (usually) because it’s “thE Effect” (the E from “the” is the tip-off). Of course, it doesn’t help that there is also a noun form of affect and a verb form of effect, but IN GENERAL the “thE” rule will help!
I just played Rex's example of NOISEMUSIC. That doesn't seem to fit the definition he provided. Wouldn't a drum solo qualify?
Wanderlust (6:48) and Dr BB (8:49). C'mon down here. We've got a nice piece of cake for each of you.
But I guess for the noun “AF-fect” and the verb “EF-fect” you’re very clearly pronouncing the vowel& at the start so should be able to get it from the sound.
Having SCHool where SCHOLAR began was today’s major hiccup. Otherwise I’ll say hi to @Kitchef for nailing what I would have said. Will ADD that the NE corner of tiny words with sneaky clues was an UDDER delight.
Unusually easy as most Fridays/Saturdays have been the past few weeks. They're getting way too generous with the cluing.
When did MAKE LOVE become old or passé? There are gazillions of us who still use that phrase, especially because sex is an act but making love is an emotional experience.
Thank you. I’ve never in all my days heard it used like that, but I’m seeing it now as a second definition on some dictionary websites.
It is gross but accurate. I am a newly retired teacher and I filled in tissue before eraser!
Flew through most of this. Stuck in a couple of areas- in the SE. Sonic Youth were definitely considered part of the post-punk noise rock scene, but the song Rex shared is from the era when they went more traditional in song writing and instrumentation. Check out EVOL or Sister for their noisier, more experimental stuff. Or Daydream Nation for the transition between eras.
Easyish for me. CLassy before CLEVER was it for erasures and I COME...went in with no crosses. Smooth grid with some fun long downs, liked it.
No idea what NOISE MUSIC is.
Absolutely brutal for me. Like Rex, I just couldn’t get a handle on the clues. No trivia to hang my hat on, lots of relatively obscure slang. Finished well over my Friday average, and I had to look up a couple answers to get me going. Brutal.
My big problem was 8-D. I figured that, in keeping with the rest of the puzzle, "Loses interest" must have a tricky meeting, like putting your money in a savings account and ending up with less than you started; to the best I could come up with was GETS hOsED. That left me with a MEsC_RULE, and no idea about either AMC or PLAYER-HATERS. I finally gave up, searched for 'mesc _ rule' and Duck-Duck-Go kindly asked me if I really wanted MERCY RULE. DOH!
Omit for SNUB and NOT ONE sOul (whom you shouldn't tell, rather than what you shouldn't say) didn't help. But I finally got through it with that single cheat.
Like a couple of others here I couldn't think of the HUBRIS in the Oedipus story, so I looked it up. It's either that he's too proud to stand aside for a king, so he kills Laius (his father, unbeknownst to him) instead of doing so, or else that he vainly tries to evade his prophesized fate.
Doesn't anyone else think the clue for 55-A is weird? You could clue TRES in Spanish as a number or in French as an adverb -- but what's the point in using a Spanish reference to a French novel? That's at least as bizarre as the clue for SEGA.
I share @Nancy's sense that the language is slipping away from me, but for a different reason. I can't wrap my head around the reality that so many have never heard anyone say "that's a real POSER." I don't doubt you, I just feel old.
Loses interest, GOES TO BED, screws up the East.
I expected to read "Here is the woosh woosh Friday I've been waiting for". I saw medium-challenging and assumed we had a guest blogger. Easy, fun Friday for me. Huh, wheelhouses...
I agree with Rex about the SEGA clue. I don't even bother with the NPR Radio Sunday puzzle anymore because it is one of those clues every week. "Take a popular company, remove 2 letters, rearrange the rest of the letters and add an -RS to get something made by that company".
Gotta run, I look forward to readying everyone's take later today.
The NE really beat me up, but I succeeded and that makes a satisfying solve.
Unknown : MERCYRULE
BALLERS
PLAYERHATERS
NOISEMUSIC
SPIT
AMC as clued
The nut clue for POSER was terrific, and the APRON clue had me expecting some other slang I'd never get, but Yay!
I think of mutton chops as facial hair first, so even LOINS required crosses.
@Anonymous 9:20 - I also thought of Icarus for HUBRIS instead of Oedipus.
Is the pursuit clue the cringy part of MAKESLOVE, Rex? With the older use @Kitshef mentioned “courting,” it’s not stalker-ish. I think the euphemistic usage is more intimate than the word sex, so maybe that's what was cringy? PLAYERHATERS and another word we see too often - POPO - are much cringier to me.
Mutten chops are sideburns most commonly. Thus the “?”.
I don’t understand why POSER is a tough nut to crack? I had PECAN in there (which led to SPACE MUSIC), which totally derailed me.
Mostly easy FriPuz, except for the hard spots.
Same no-knows as for most folks: MERCYRULE. HOTDESKED. PLAYERHATERS. BALLERS.
Kinda knew NOISEMUSIC, from somewheres.
Lotsa neat longballs and clues, tho. Some faves: VERYCLEVER. ICOMEINPEACE. BRUTEFORCE. NOTONEWORD. HIDE clue. ESSAY clue. ERASER clue. SEGA clue, semi-aptly.
staff weeject pick (of a meager 9 candidates): WAH. Mainly cuz it runt-rolls eastward into WAHOOS.
Kinda intriguin reaction from @RP on that there MAKESLOVE entry. It seems to be his new M&A-equivalent of PEWIT.
Thanx for the slang-fest, Mr. Mehta dude. Always good to learn new stuff.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
Alternated between feeling smarter than I thought I was, and more out of touch than I thought I was. All this time, thought Baller was a basketball player. Noise Music isn't music, it's just Noise. Never heard of Poser. Made the NE corner harder than it actually was.
Good time of year for Prom Dress, so that was easy. Somehow knew Hot Desked. Liked Brute Force.
Amitoolate could be a word. He was Amitoolated for six months after using Brute Force. There's a Limit to what you can do.
I think it's a good idea if constructors put a ready-made compliment for their puzzle in the grid, as happens today with 14A VERY CLEVER. BRUTE FORCE and MERCY RULE, among others, did the trick for me.
NOISE MUSIC is what my parents called the music I was into as a teen. No, wait. They just called it NOISE.
One thing did stand out in this one and not in a good way. There are almost too many POCs (plurals of convenience) to count. They are all over the grid including a bunch of two for one POCs, where a Down and an Across both get a letter count, grid filling boost by sharing a single S at their ends. Three of them are in the right most column.
With SELL, BEER, MILL, PEN, PROM DRESS, PLAYER HATER, BALLER, LOIN, GET BORED, EYE, MAKE LOVE, CHICK, AFFECT, AIR, ADD and SHOO all getting POC assistance, the Committee gave this grid a POC Marked rating.
"And in the end, the LOVE you take is equal to the LOVE you MAKE" (Beatles' "The End" from their 1969 Abbey Road album)
@Barbara S
Thanks for the shoutout, but as far as I can remember, it wasn't me.
I had "tissue" first too.
Granted, I don't think POSER is a term spoken much irl, but I'm surprised at the number of people saying they've never heard of it when it's been a Times puzzle answer roughly once a year going back to 1994, almost always clued similarly. It's most recent appearance was just this past March. It feels like an X-word staple to me.
Well, lets see.
I can only describe this as interesting, what in the world, puzzling and a bit exhausting. I think I ran the alphabets so many times that I started singing my grandchild's ABC song. Oof.
What was interesting is that I finished this without having to call anybody. My what in the world started with BALLERS. Would I dare say to my wealthy Uncle Bud that he's got a lot of BALLERS and would he share? Would part of the bargain be his MERCY RULE? He never HOT DESKED with any one and his NOISE. MUSIC was a HASH of dis and dat. Puzzling out SLAP CHICKS and then stopping at the owl. I got your EYES answer but I wasn't exactly happy. Owls blink their EYES, no? Owls can blink, and that's a movement even though they don't move the EYE. I overthink too much.
Oh you pigs digs. You are always sty's. I wallowed on that one. Held me up something fierce. I wanted something smoking for that formal attire because, well, sty's starts with an S and I had no idea about LOINS being mutton chops...I used the teachers sleeve and erased, erased, erased and stuck a Pen in there.
Well I managed to finish. I didn't visit joy world. I usually do when an easy/hard/puzzling puzzle is finished by my Oedipus HUBRIS flaw.
I'm still wondering about BALLERS and the Owl.
Of course, we should also remember that at one time, to "make love" to someone basically meant to sweet-talk him or her, not to actually "have sex" (as we say today). We often see that expression in older fiction, or hear it in early movies.
In fact, the term "PLAYERHATER" has been around for at least 30 years, if not longer -- it's hardly "youthy". To the best of my knowledge, it was first coined by California rapper Filthy Phil somewhere around 1988 or '99 (usually spelled, and pronounced, along the lines of "PlayaHata"). It spread rapidly throughout the Bay Area hip-hop community, and soon went national. That's well over a generation ago, folks.
Its most recent appearance
Oof this is one of those puzzles that makes me wonder "am I getting too old to do the NYT?" That upper right was just a disaster, as I've never heard PLAYER HATERS or NOISE MUSIC; never heard POSER or BALLERS used that way; MERCY RULE was a whaa?; and had SEINE before RHINE cuz Cologne sounds French. And after all that I also had Rex's NOD before NOM, and to add insult, SMORS before SMORE.
MERCY RULEs make watching minor baseball very confusing. Why are they running off the field?... there's only one out!
Other typeovers: TAKE before EVAL and HOT SEATED before HOT DESKED.
[Spelling Bee: yd -2, missed these 6ers. @Barbara S, that was a bad family to miss! My week 0, -1, -2 so far.]
Played at an "Easy" time for me, but did have slowdowns in the east. Had HATERS but didn't know the PLAYER part; had OVER but had to chew on the GRAZED part; had MUSIC but couldn't hear the NOISE part; had omit for SNUB which was the biggest hang-up. Finally saw SCHOLARSHIP and that helped it all fall into place.
As a dad who long ago coached youth sports, loved MERCY RULE. Also like BRUTE FORCE and I COME IN PEACE separated only by PROM DRESSES.
No problem with this one -- a rare Friday that is easier than a Saturday, in my experience. MAKing LOVE was a kind of taboo phrase back in 1957, but I knew it had something to do with sex, which definitely was not taught in our schools. One did sometimes see it in print. The first time I remember hearing it was when it was a hit for Larry Williams (or his pal Little Richard): the singer and his girlfriend were "MAKing LOVE underneath the apple tree." I rather think the mainstream stations refused to play it, but we all listened to the old KDAY in Santa Monica, which played all the Top 40 hits.
Cologne is the French name for Koln, which is on the Rhine and has a huge cathedral, which I think got bombed during the War. It is easily visited if you are on a train heading north from Basel to Hamburg or Amsterdam, as you can get off, spend an hour or so looking at the Cathedral, and get right back on the next train.
@JC66 (12:38 PM)
Check out your comment at 11:15 AM. You're wittier than you remember!
A 16:53 for me. I didn't love or hate this puzzle. If you have kids and have witnessed an unevenly matched game, you know Mercy Rule (aka the Slaughter Rule). My biggest pet peeve with this one was what you called the kealoa (great term) of nom. Like you, I went nod at first. I thought it was a lazy, lame clue that lacked creativity.
@Barbara S
Thanks again.
Had a bit of a chuckle today, as I was singing a little Skee-Lo to my 7- and 9-year-old daughters this morning while getting their school lunches ready: "I wish I was little bit taller, I wish I was a baller" and doing silly Mr Rogers Riffs on them: "I wish I was a kitty/living in the city" "I wish a was a penguin, a little more sanguine." "Dad, what does sanguine mean?" "Oh, like optimistic, hopeful, positive, happy. 'Sang' comes from a Latin root meaning 'blood' and --" "OK, that's enough dad." Well, I'm sure it goes in one ear and out the other, but I try. :) Incidentally, they were familiar with the original. It also surprises me a little how many pop cultural references from my time they're familiar with.
Anyway, when I got to the puzzle and 23 Across later in the morning, I chuckled, filled in BALLERS, and started rapping again to an audience of just myself.
The puzzle ran easy for a Friday. Overall, I found it very enjoyable. I did wrinkle my nose a bit for that silly anagram clue for the same reasons Rex did. Took longer than it should to get MERCYRULE -- all I could think of is "slaughter rule" which is what we called it back when I was a kid in the 80s, at any rate. HOTDESKED is the only term I was completely unfamiliar with and needed almost all the crosses to get. I haven't worked in an office since 2006, so I have an excuse. Oh, and NOM, as clued, means nothing to me. I assume an acronym of "something of something."Oh, wait -- it means "nomination" or "nominee" doesn't it? Well, that's a shortening I don't recall hearing.
PLAYERHATERS did probably have its public heyday in the 90s, but I hear the term here and there. I'll even use it myself, but typically in a tongue-in-cheek manner. You also hear the related "Don't hate the player, hate the game" every so often in pop culture.
kealoa = 2 possible correct answers that share a letter.
malapop = a wrong answer that turns out to be the correct answer later in the puzzle.
Do we have a shorthand term for a wrong answer that gets us a lot of the correct letters? Today NOd was a big enough helping hand to be able to loop back to NOM.
@egs: I read your comments without checking the name, went to the puzzle to check the 14A clue/answer and thought "this sounds like egs". Voila!
I think being involved in sports, music, and adjacent enough to youth culture really gave a leg up today. All of the listed trouble spots jumped right in. Waiting for my wheel(house) balance to be restored tomorrow...
I understand the HUBRIS in Oedipus to be the pride to think one can avoid their fate. Agreed that Icarus would be a clearer example.
Lots of great clues; I don't think "Man on a mission?" for FRIAR has been mentioned.
The elementary school science teacher incubates eggs and hatches chicks every year. The joy that brings to the students is incalculable AND she beams every year as if it was her first time witnessing it too!
@Barbara, how did you search the archives to find @JC66's comment from 2022? I should probably already know, but don't.
When I see these slang terms I can’t help thinking of someone like Edward G. Robinson saying them out of one side of his mouth with a big cigar in the other side and wearing a pinstriped suit . I guess I’ve got to learn this stuff if I am going to enjoy the NYT
Xword .
Pretty fun Friday for me. Really gave me some resistance (much lime @Rex) with HOT DESKED and the PLAYER part of PLAYER HATERS. I got the HATERS easily but needed help from the crosses which did not come easily!
The clues were exceptionally tricky in the best possible way. Bacon bit? - even with the ? at the end gave me fits! Loved it. Another toughie for me was the clue “nonmelodic genre.” I plopped in “twelve tone” instantly (thinking of Alban Berg and his era of composers) and thought that’s what it must be. Big oops! Took me quite a while to undo the mess that made. I left it in way too long because my brain had way too much trouble with SNUB, CODE and HIDE. Thankfully, POSER, BALLER and NO MA’AM seemed very possible but given my goofs already in there, I was reticent. When those worked out though, it solved the entire right hand third north to south since I already had the SE from CHICKS all the way down through the tens: NOT ONE WORD and OVERGRAZED. I got my “whoosh, whoosh on!
All in all a Friday I completely enjoyed.
Played easy for a Friday
Didn’t get the clue equal meaning are?
@burtonkd (3:38 PM)
I didn't actually search the rexblog archive. I remembered that @JC66 made his "kelo" comment on a day when the puzzle wanted a 4-letter answer for a clue something like [Draped garment]. At the time, I figured there were two possible answers, SARI and TOGA. So, today, in order to find when this occurred, I went to xwordinfo.com, searched SARI, and found two recent [Draped garment] clues. I thought the oldest one was the more likely (12-29-2022), so I checked the rexblog comments for that date and voila!
I had the same reaction. Rex thought this was hard!?!?
One of the fastest Friday times this year for me. (Though of course I am much slower than Rex) Also agree the fake anagram clue was dumb. (I would blame Shortz. Sounds like his type of clue). Didn’t find it dull though b
Always find your comments interesting. But I strongly disagree with your & Rex’s criticism of MAKE LOVE. Pabloinnh also made a reference to it, but I also thought of MAKE LOVE not war. Nothing cringy or awful about it to me. As I also mentioned above, maybe it’s a generational thing?
“Udder” is a noun; “milk it” is a verbal (phrase). Not tricky, and also not an idiomatic pairing. One of a couple 3 truly awful clues.
Yech. Real life started early today so just now finishing up the puzzle. It's really good. The northeast was super tough for me.
Tee-Hees: It might seem odd to have such a jaded partay theme masquerading as a themeless, but we know how lonely our editors can be in those closets listed as studio apartments: BEER, PROM DRESSES (woot), MAKES LOVE, HASH, BALLERS, MERCY RULE, CHICKS, SLAP, BOA, NOT ONE WORD, BRUT FORCE, I COME IN PEACE, LOINS, GETS BORED and of course PLAYER HATERS. I take my hat off to the slush pile editor for finding this gem.
Love the word HUBRIS because it reminds me of my college English classes. Poor Oedipus. And hello Bacon bit = ESSAY. Suhweet.
Proud of myself (for no legitimate reason) after writing in AM I TOO LATE, GETS BORED and NOT ONE WORD with no crosses. Sometimes luck goes my way.
Using a sleeve as an eraser? Do they have me on camera?
N-Ks: HOT DESKED. I also knew nothing about Spit. 😉
ACORN, PECAN ... POSER, what?!
Uniclues:
1 A toe on your shin under the dinner table.
2 Question and rather hostile answer for tardy attendee of a surprise party.
3 You're allowed to have super groan-y dad jokes about wine on a maximum of two.
4 Each of the women I met in my dating years.
5 Drills holes in the paddle.
6 What a right wing nut job hopes National Public Radio will do.
7 Church leadership choice of authors for the "Whoops We Did It Again" apology note.
8 Free ride to trombone college.
9 Composition professor at the state university.
1 VERY CLEVER CODE
2 "AM I TOO LATE?" "HIDE!"
3 APRON MERCY RULE
4 ERASER CHICK
5 AFFECTS SLAP
6 AIRS NOT ONE WORD
7 MEMO UP TO FRIAR
8 WAH SCHOLARSHIP (~)
9 NOISE MUSIC BOZO
Knew you wouldn’t like noise music. Not a fan myself. But it has been around for a long time now. Always enjoy your (and Joe D’s) commentary on music.
Gotta love it when the churlish cat man Rex calls it medium-challenging and I slay it.
I forgot about that song!
@Barbara S
I wish I had a memory like yours.
@JC66
Yeah, well, I'm perfectly capable of forgetting the absolute must-do on Tuesday afternoon or what I had for lunch yesterday...but when I'm hot, I'm hot!
Anyone else experience a little schadenfreude in Rex's relating of his stumbles today? Captures my solve experience at least two or three times EACH month!
I never had heard of the term “hotdesk”. After finishing the puzzle, I started reading “The List” by Mick Herron. On page 31, there it is: “J. K. Come, was hot-desking on the fourth floor…”.
Yes, thank you for doing the needful. I’m shocked by the number of people who’ve never heard of BALLERS but had no issue with this usage of POSER that I’ve never come across once in my 44 years on earth. I’d also never heard of an AÑIL but that doesn’t bother me.
Joe - Ah, yes, the good ol’ Meinhof-Baader effect! Happens to me all the time as soon as I learn something new.
@Anonymous 7:10, that type of clue shows up from time to time, something like “Step on it!” And the answer something like “scale” or “pedal.” I feel like they’re usually in brackets or something, but I’ve come across that type of clue several times recently in the NYT puzzle, where the answer is a noun answering an action in the clue. Like “it sucks!” might be “vacuum.”
Whoops! Baader-Meinhof I meant.
Yep, you got me to scroll back up to see if I agreed about the answer to 14A. Yes I do.
I think the idea with PEA COAT is that they are generally Navy Blue. Even on Wiki whatever it says that, “A pea coat (or peacoat, pea jacket, pilot jacket, reefer jacket) is an outer coat, generally of a navy-coloured heavy wool”. Not the Pea color. A bit confusing in that case.
COME OVER
PROMDRESSES worn by MERCY BALLERS,
VERY CLEVER they are NOT.
NOTONEWORD for POSER callers,
they’re PLAYERs with LOINS so HOT.
--- BOZO MILLS
It played easy-medium here--for a Friday. In many cases, though I didn't actually know the answer, I could infer it after a few letters. Examples include HOTDESKED, PLAYERHATERS, OVERGRAZED. In short, I did not need to do this by BRUTEFORCE.
Some interesting symmetry pairs: MAKESLOVE/GETSBORED (uh-oh!); anagrammed POSER/PROSE.
Lots of long answers with a little pizzazz. Fun. Eagle.
Wordle birdie: the ol' putter is heatin' up again!
This one was a “tough nut to crack”. Challenging but fair. Good one Hemant Mehta!
I was zipping right along, had most of this done. And then I hit a wall in the NE corner of all places. Just could not get OMIT out of 10-A and that left me scratching my head. Even after looking up SNUB, I still had to have another clue with BEERS and CODE. Then I could finish.
Still, not bad for me for a Friday. And not a lot of PPP!
Diana, LIW
When I hear the word baller, my mind instantly goes to Las Vegas, and not sports, even though I know that's where the term comes from.
@Nancy 9:51am:
Like Rex, I delved into noise music, and found that it dates back to the 1910's in Italy. Who knew? It's over 100 years old, and not youthy at all.
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