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Catholic academy like Gonzaga or Xavier / MON 6-5-23 / Eating utensil with a serrated edge / 13-time N.B.A. All-Star Kevin / What to mind when exiting a train in London / Tap mockumentary rock band / Sizzling Tex-Mex offering / Built-in feature of some camisoles / Prepare for use as a Slip 'N Slide
Monday, June 5, 2023
Constructor: Eric Rolfing
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- GRAPEFRUIT SPOON (16A: Eating utensil with a serrated edge)
- JESUIT SCHOOL (32A: Catholic academy like Gonzaga or Xavier)
- "QUIT STALLING!" (40A: "Stop dragging your feet!")
Kevin Wayne Durant (/dəˈrænt/ də-RANT; born September 29, 1988), also known by his initials KD, is an American professional basketball player for the Phoenix Suns of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played one season of college basketball for the Texas Longhorns and was selected as the second overall pick by the Seattle SuperSonics in the 2007 NBA draft. He played nine seasons with the franchise, which became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008, before signing with the Golden State Warriors in 2016, winning consecutive NBA championships and NBA Finals MVP Awards in 2017 and 2018. After sustaining an Achilles injury in the 2019 finals, he joined the Brooklyn Nets as a free agent that summer. Following disagreements with the Nets' front office, he requested a trade during the 2022 offseason and was traded to the Suns in 2023. Durant is widely regarded as one of the greatest players and scorers of all time. [...] In 2012, he ventured into acting, appearing in the film Thunderstruck. (wikipedia)
• • •
Made an error right out of the gate with TENET at 1D: Religious doctrine (DOGMA). I could feel that it was ... shaky, but I wrote it in anyway, 'cause it was all I had. No idea about UNROLL (Slip 'N Slide, really??? That's your go-to reference for UNROLL?! Not yoga mat? OK). But after that, things got easier, and eventually the GRAPEFRUIT part was easy to see. I thought it was gonna be GRAPEFRUIT JUICE, but again, the Downs were easy and took care of that misconception quickly. Never seen "Love Is Blind," but "I DO" was still kind of a gimme (11D: Declaration delivered (or not) in a "Love Is Blind" finale). One of the cool things about solving Downs-only today was wanting both FAJITA (23D: Sizzling Tex-Mex serving) and AQUA (36D: Blue shade) upon first reading their clues, and then being able to kinda sorta pre-confirm them simply by the fact that the high-value Scrabble letters (the "J" and "Q," respectively) fell into the *first* position in their respective answers (JESUIT SCHOOL & "QUIT STALLING!")—precisely the place you most expect to find such letters. Hard to trust a "J" or "Q" when solving Downs-only unless you are *absolutely* sure about the answer, but when those letters fall into the first position, well, you feel ever-so-slightly more secure about your Down guess. After DOGMA, the only Down to give me any hassle was, weirdly, KAL, and only because the only three-letter airline starting with "K" that's familiar to me is KLM. Brain: "KLM ... that stands for 'Korean ... something,' right? Oh, crap, no, it's Dutch, I think ... wait, is it even KLM? What about KLF? OMG remember The KLF! What is that song even about!? 'The KLF! Uh huh, uh huh!' Man, the '90s were wild. OK, what was the question?"
I had a little trouble with SLRS too, only because of the "Pro" part of the clue (5D: Pro photography purchases, in brief). I've known lots of non-pros who owned SLRS (single-lens reflex cameras), so I was looking for something way more ... narrowly and specifically part of a "pro"'s set up, like, I dunno, maybe tripods or special lights or something. As far as potential Downs-only disasters, I think the only real trouble spot (for non-sports-followers) might be DURANT. If you don't know it instantly, then you're in trouble. I think you might end up making a lot of names out of -U-A-T (the blanks being squares you can't infer from a Downs-only vantage point even if you've completed the rest of the grid). Yeah, that could be fatal. But as basketball players go, he's stratospherically famous, so I was OK today. Hope you enjoyed your Monday solve, however you solve. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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67 comments:
Easy. Very smooth grid with a clever theme that is highly likely only to be discovered post solve, liked it.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #814 was on the easy side for a Croce except for the SW quadrant where I made a couple of very lucky guesses and finished. Knowing the Nickelodeon answer (which I did not) would have eliminated some of the guess work. Good luck.
I'd say easy-medium by my solve time, but it was really just easy with a stumble at bEnd/LEAP.
NYT is going to need to update the camera clues going forward! SLRs and DSLRs are dead. It's all about mirrorless.
I got a lovely AHA with the revealer. Easy and cute Monday.
Average difficulty for a Monday. I solved it without considering the theme.
Some solvers will object to using the clue "religious doctrine" for DOGMA. In common usage DOGMA is a word that suggests intolerance of disagreement (dogmatism). A better clue might have been "inflexible religious doctrine."
Theme doesn’t contribute to the solve. Could have gone local with Fordham or St. Pete’s for JESUIT SCHOOL. Overall fill is fine - keep ELOPERS out next time.
Pleasant enough.
STAPLE my lips shut
My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Calling for tails, maybe (6)
2. One working with a set of keys (5)(5)
3. Styx figure (8)
4. Shape or edge, say (9)
5. Negative space? (8)
FORMAL
PIANO TUNER
ACHILLES
LANDSCAPE
DARKROOM
About as easy as they get. The only trouble spot was parsing together the OKEEFFE lady’s name. Didn’t notice there was a theme until post-solve, which is always a good sign as well.
Is WREN the OREO of birds ?
The theme in M,T,W puzzles usually involves the longer acrosses so I keep my eye on them as I solve. I like to see if I can grok the theme before I see the revealer. What I noticed today is the "UI" sound is different in each answer. A nice touch tjat@Rex missed .
Super easy downs-only solve - so easy that my time was about the same as my Monday average, most of which is from before I started solving downs-only.
I got the three themers very quickly (except the second part of JESUIT SCHOOLS), noticed the UIT pattern (but not the S) and wondered WTH the revealer would be. Unlike Rex, I had a nice Aha! when it revealed.
My only trouble was at the end when I guessed PToS (a classic kealoa), which gave me aRGoN. That made the supermodel UPTaN, which seemed unlikely, and sure enough, no happy music. I don’t count it as a DNF because I knew it was probably wrong and would not have turned it in if I were in a contest.
I went to the Georgia O’KEEFFE museum in Santa Fe a few months ago. She strikes me as the opposite of the tortured artist stereotype. She seems like she was truly happy, had a long and loving relationship with another artist, was known and beloved in her own lifetime, and kept working until she was quite old. The opposite of the other greatest female artist of the 20th Century, Frida Kahlo.
It’s mojito season, and the garden has plenty a MINT LEAF. Just need to buy a bag of limes.
Second recent puzzle that has the beginnings of a nice themeless, but where the theme is just terrible.
Fun for a Monday!
Croce 814. Wow. Very different experience to @jae's. Very hard (even for a Croce), with a pair of two-letter Naticks. 38D/49A/55A I guessed both letters correctly. 46A/34D/47D I guessed both letters incorrectly. Although that second one might not be a technical Natick. Two complete unknowns crossing a common word with a tricky clue that had several plausible answers. And as is often the case, I struggled with the center and NW.
Sometimes, after zipping through a Monday puzzle, my brain isn’t ready to move on, and I find myself staring at the grid to see what serendipitous connections might pop out. For some reason, my brain enjoys this, and finds it to be a nice transition from solving mode to everyday mode.
Today there were quite a few serendipities:
• Three double-doubles, that is words with two double letters, including OKEEFFE, which, even after all my crossword years, I still want to enter with one F.
• That lulu of a column (column 8) containing LOU and LOO.
• A sweet multisyllabic schwa-tail trio: DOGMA / AQUA / FAJITA.
• The MOON / TOON / SPOON convocation in the NE, each answer touching the other two.
• A DUST up.
• As a PuzzPair©, MOLE goes nicely with a FAJITA.
• In the one-degree-of-separation department: STALL → stable → SECURE.
Serendipities are generally accidental, but this grid has intentional goodness as well, with those lively theme answers, junk-free answer set, and oho-producing revealer.
All to say, Eric, I had one heck of a good time with your puzzle. Thank you so much for making it!
Bob Dylan has a song called Let's Keep it Between Us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLQI8GbsQIw
Looks like he redid it for his new album as well.
Liked the puzzle and the theme... thumbs up here!
Are the other fruits jealous of the grapefruit since it's the only one with a special utensil devised for it? They must be, right?
Rex, the reason it sounds funny is that it should be "KEEP IT BETWEEN you and me." Like the earlier anon comment, I had noticed the different-sounding UITS, and was hoping for a theme about that, but the revealer would have been tough.
I did get DURANT from the clue, despite my non-sports-fan status. I was so proud of myself.
Calling grand SLAM a tennis term is like calling 'point' an American football term. It's pretty generic.
@Bob Mills, I thought of the same thing about DOGMA, but really it just means "teaching" and the whole point of almost any religion is that there are certain shared beliefs, so I decided it was fine.
Something to muse on: are clues like "Hilo 'hello,'" using a cute clue to make a crosswordese cliche easier to take, an annoyance or a good thing? I'm leaning toward a good thing on a Monday, to put a smile into your solving experience. See also "Elton's John."
Hey All !
Plenty of easy clues for @M&A to choose from. Mine today is ___Vegas, Nev. You didn't even need the Nev. part. Everyone knows ___ Vegas. Did you know, however, that there is a Las Vegas, NM? Small Town.
Another hand up here for looking for the theme after the puz was done. Did get Revealer, but still didn't put it together mid-solve. It's like the saying, "Stop and smell the roses" - "Stop and figure out the theme". Ain't nobody got time for that!
A bunch of OO's, most in NE corner. Two itself in MOONROOF. In case you care, the difference twixt a Sunroof and a MOONROOF, a Sunroof is the flip up type, which doesn't open fully, whereas the MOONROOF is the type that slides back into the roof. Trivia night stuff...
18 Doubles. @Lewis has me noticing these when it seems like a high number. 😁
FunMonPuz. Got a kick out of constructors name, Rolling. ROFLing!
It's the simple things...
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Thx, Eric; this one sUITS me just fine! 😊
Med.
Smooth Mon. solve except for Deism before DOGMA.
Still have my poached EGG midday; cut out the hard-boiled one late day.
Went to SCHOOL in Cheney, not far from 'Gonzaga' in Spokane.
Fun puz! :)
___
Jim Horne's NYT Sun. acrostic on xwordinfo.com. was on the easy side, esp after getting the two longs at the start.
___
Thx @jae; on it! 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
I’m surprised neither @Rex nor any previous commenter has complained that IT appears in the themers not “between” US but “within” US. This seems to me to be a total disqualifier for the theme. Maybe the revealer could have gone with the ungrammatical “keep it between you and I” and used the letter string UITI, though I have no idea what words or phrases might work for that.
webwinger
The tennis SLAM refers to winning the four major tournaments: Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open. Not really comparable to a point in football.
@bocamp - a real rough weekend for me apparently. In addition to getting beat up by the Croce, I though the Acrostic was unusually tough. Only one dead cert on the first pass, with six or seven 'probably' answers (all but one of which did turn out to be correct).
Wait. Stop. Listen. I know I didn't grow up wealthy, but I am getting up there and have worked hard enough to buy any kind of spoon I want, so somebody at some point should have tipped me off about the existence of grapefruit spoons. I've been clawing away at them with a regular spoon for 50 years like an animal all because the serrated elite wanted to keep their little utensil all to themselves. Thanks for nothing. I am headed off to the spoon store to see what other secret utensils are there. If I find they still make those ice cream scoopers with the trigger and the little half-moon scraper thingy, heads will roll.
RPM isn't a speed.
Musical moment: LOU WII LOO
Uniclues:
1 Santa Fe tourist.
2 A sock in the backseat.
3 How the music died, sadly.
4 "You will sit at the kitchen table and hold your sister's hand until you learn to get along with her."
1 O'KEEFFE ADMIRER (~)
2 ALT AUTO PUPPET
3 ALAS, ORGAN PART
4 SON CENSURE
KLF is gonna rock you
Being a native Texan, I can assure you that you never "offer" a FAJITA, you offer fajitas. You may offer a fajita taco, but boo to clueing fajita in the singular that way. Better would be "Particular tex-mex taco".
That concludes your tex-mex lesson of the day.
Always seem to have problems with sp O'Keeffe. Again, crosses to the rescue! :)
@kitshef (10:05 AM)
Clarification: the two longs came fairly early on (not actually at the start). It helped that I got clues A & C at the start.
BETWEEN you and @jae, I don't know what to expect from Croce's 814. 🤔
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
I'm with those who noticed the UIT pattern while overlooking the following S, hiding right there in plain sight. So when I got to the blank reveal row, I tried to make something of "you and I," obviously without success, and needed plenty of crosses to get the correct phrase. I thought it was a very clever way of turning a letter string into words that will work in a common expression, illustrated in three very solid theme phrases.
@Anonymous 6:40 - Thank you for pointing out the 3 different UIT pronunciations.
Help from previous puzzles: UPTON. No idea: DURANT.
Where are there par twos in golf? There aren’t any. Seems like a pretty serious editing mistake to me.
Well DUST is a fine way to start, but MOLD fits too and will certainly slow you down a lot more, so that's the one I chose. Another early puzzler was the utensil starting with GRAP, which I thought might be GRAPPLINGHOOK. I haven't thought about GRAPEFRUITSPOONs in years, so that was like seeing an old friend.
I found this one on the interesting side for a Monday and thought the revealer was just fine and, well, revealing, as I didn't really see it coming.
I had a good time with your Monday, ER, which I found just about Exactly Roight for a Monday, and thanks for all the fun.
The Croce will have to wait as it's a child care day. I may try to squeeze in Natan Last's NYer during nap time. He's often a challenge.
This was a rather stupid little "theme" and "Let this be our little secret" makes me cringe since it evokes thoughts of child molesters. Sorry, but I've worked on too many of those cases.
I was looking for a different pronunciations theme, so I skipped ahead to see what the revealer would be. This revealer is much better than that.
Unfortunately it doesn't make the puzzle any less slam-dunk or mindless. I'm running late and I only finished what I needed to do to reveal the revealer. Not enough here to hold my interest.
An additional nicety that Rex may have missed is that “IT” as a sequence doesn’t appear anywhere but between “U” and “S” in the grid. So it is, indeed, kept between us.
QUITSTALLING may have been the chief lesson learned by Senator Larry Craig from his Minneapolis bathroom arrest.
With regard to 26D (Burrowing animal), I say you’ve got to pick your side. Some like to whack a MOLE, some like to guac a MOLE. I guess you could go both ways by eating a whacked MOLE with guacaMOLE in a FAJITA.
I just returned from a completely off-line weekend at Sol Duc Hot Springs in Olympic National Park. There is something to be said for such a break from one’s devices, but I missed the puzzle and this blog for sure.
Thanks for a fun Monday, Eric Rollfing.
Since when does a Single Lens Reflex Camera need a mirror?
While solving this blindfolded, the most suspenseful moment was worrying that “100% behind” was going to be ALL ASS. Other than that, it was a pretty easy solve without much drama.
a grand slam means winning all 4 major tennis championships in one year
Yup, they are delicious and unhealthy.
Easy & enjoyable Monday. I liked it a lot.
5A would be much better clued with bridge, if you insist on "coup".
Oh & really liked Elton's John!
@Gary Jugert If you had grown up wealthy you would have had no need of the serrated grapefruit spoon.
Your grapefruit would have been served to you with each section neatly cut loose from the "skin".
My non-wealthy household knew about them over 70 years ago. But those serrated edges are not so comfortable to eat from.
Perfect Monday. While I don’t know what a GRAPEFRUIT SPOON is, nothing else in here was too obscure. It had a theme but not a gimmick/trick, and the revealer makes sense in the context of the theme.
I look at Mondays like, “could I recommend this to one of my noncrossword friends and would they like it?” And this perfectly fits the bill.
@egs -- I miss Larry Craig. I still think of him whenever I see a shoe under a stall wall.
JM -- good one!
What fun seeing OKC Thunder’s original star KD in my morning puzzle. And the Word of the Day too. KD helped establish the Thunder as a really legit NBA team. When they came from Seattle, nobody in OKC except the money people pushing to have a pro sports team in the city thought it would last. Mostly because it wasn’t football. But it worked and KD was everyone’s favorite. So many super-fans were devastated, but they stuck around and the Thunder is an integral part of why OKC’s complete revitalization has made it to so many “top 10” lists for extraordinary cities to live in, to visit, etc. So much fun to see him today in a new light.
As for the rest of the puzzle, I thought it was just pure fun. Don’t know why, but GRAPEFRUIT SPOON made me laugh. Of all the oddball things to put in a puzzle; I wonder if our constructor uses one regularly.
And it really made me wonder how many people wouldn’t even know that it’s a thing. Personally, I am not a fan of the device. Perhaps I never had or used a good one, but using one typically just gives you a face full of squirted juice. I just use a paring knife to cut between the membranes to loosen the flesh and spare the splatter. But it made me laugh none the less
The theme was a classic, and perfect for a Monday. The fill, while easy was as junk-free as an easy puzzle can be. And the “meatier” (or at least a tad more interesting) fill would challenge a newer solver but not be too tough. This is just the kind of puzzle that a novice solver would enjoy and feel a sense of accomplishment at completing it. And create another crossword daily solver.
As for @Rex’s issue with no “let’s,” it was unnecessary. The clue had “let” right there and I don’t think there was any awkwardness in the reveal at all. Sometimes I feel that @Rex completely forgets the purpose of the NYT Monday. It’s suppose to be easy. Today the blog feels as if OFL resents the tome he spends on the easy Monday because it’s beneath him to solve much less take time doing a critique. But his appreciation for KD shows that he knows some round ball 🏀 ! Liked this one lots. Excellent Monday fare.
Oh every once in a while DOGMA changes. CatMA, never!
Spoon store!
Miniature golf. Though pars 4 or 5 are more common. Because the posted number is a suggestion to birthday party hosts it’s time to move on to the next hole even though one of the kids is just hopeless
Just last night I found my mother’s old grapefruit knife hidden in a drawer . I was delighted to see it in today’s puzzle - well, until I realized that the puzzle answer was spoon!
I did too.
Didn’t notice that. Thanks.
Exactly. RPM is revolutions per minute of the engine, not speec.
@kitshef - re:Croce - The 38d crosses were where I guessed right. I knew 47d which made 34d inferable and 46a pretty obvious. However, the front part of 39d was a major WOE which toughened up the middle for me. Time wise it was a medium + Croce only because of the staring/guessing in the SW.
Like always? It’s the first thing you see when you remove the lens.
Uniclue:
1. "Well it sounds like that's what the lead singer of the garage band is saying"
1. LOU WII LOO EGG
Gary Jugert @10:07 am
For a wedding present many many years ago we got an asparagus serving spoon. Never used it. You might look for one. !!!??
@Roo
Who plays ice hockey in the desert? 😂
Upon first opening the puzzle:
"Today’s puzzle has an extraordinary quality. Can you discover what it is?" Uhhhhh could it be the two dick'n'balls going diagonally across the grid? (Sorry to be crass this early in the morning, I just couldn't stop seeing it. And the cheater squares are flicking me off. Why did I wake up with the brain of a middle school boy?)
This comment does not have anything to do with today's puzzle. I am a longtime reader here but I do the puzzles in NYTimes puzzle books, so I'm always at least several years behind the daily posts. But I want the opinion of people who are Smart About Words.
Why am I so often these days seeing the phrase "well know" instead of "well known"? Is that now acceptable usage, or are the people who use it as wrong as I think they are? It's driving me a little crazy. Would appreciate any comments you can throw my way.
Pretty good puzzle but with a lackluster gimmick. Why put in so much effort to support a theme that just doesn’t add much to the solving experience?
To Kate C 8:07 AM - You are on the wrong page. The puzzle you are talking about originally appeared on June 6, 2023 and was by Kunal Nabar. So you are commenting on the previous day’s puzzle which has little “dick’n’balls” in the grid.
To Book Puzzler 6:22 PM. This must be a local thing. I have never heard of the phrase “well know” and a Google search reveals no such phrase in common use.
@JC66: The Vegas Golden Knights play ice hockey in the desert--and they do it quite well, thank you. They are currently the proud holders of the Stanley Cup.
Also, "Grand Slam" applies to golf as well, signifying victories in the Masters, US Open, PGA and [British] Open Championships. We all know the baseball one, and there's one in bridge, too: bid and take all thirteen tricks.
Now then. A nice Monday-easy puzzle, with only three theme lines plus revealer. I did notice the repeating -ITS- patterns, but strangely failed to notice the U before each. So the reveal was an aha moment for me too. The fill, including DOD Kate UPTON, had room to breathe. Birdie.
Wordle par.
I thought it was going to be about the various ways UIT sound, but not so much. Kate UPTON? I'm and ADMIRER.
Wordle DNF with several wrong shots at BGGGG.
It's probably not true, but I saw on Twitter that Lou Ferrigno skips to his loo while saying Wii! I feel like such a bad egg for mentioning this.
My only question is does anyone have a good GRAPEFRUITSPOON? I sure could use one when I'm eating a bowl of strawberries and stevia. yum
I love Mondays - someday I'll explain why.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
For 8.5 years it hasn't been very often that the verse gets moderated out, but today and yesterday that has been the case. I wish they would QUITSTALLING it.
@Diana LIW: Stevia is good, but monkfruit is the bees' knees. Try it. Zero calories.
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