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Become absurdly outlandish as a TV show / MON 7-10-23 / Expressions of gratitude in texts / Snoopy's alter ego in sunglasses / Disposable parts of grocery purchases
Monday, July 10, 2023
Constructor: Brad Wiegmann
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only)
Theme answers:
- POKE THE BEAR (17A: Antagonize a powerful figure)
- JUMP THE SHARK (27A: Become absurdly outlandish, as a TV show)
- SHOOT THE BULL (43A: Chat idly)
- FLIP THE BIRD (58A: Gesture rudely, in a way)
The Fault in Our Stars is a novel by John Green. It is his fourth solo novel, and sixth novel overall. It was published on January 10, 2012. The title is inspired by Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which the nobleman Cassius says to Brutus: "Men at some time were masters of their fates, / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." The story is narrated by Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old girl with thyroid cancer that has affected her lungs. Hazel is forced by her parents to attend a support group where she subsequently meets and falls in love with 17-year-old Augustus Waters, an ex-basketball player, amputee, and survivor of osteosarcoma.An American feature film adaptation of the same name as the novel directed by Josh Boone and starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Nat Wolff was released on June 6, 2014. A Hindi feature film adaptation of the novel, titled Dil Bechara, which was directed by Mukesh Chhabra and starring Sushant Singh Rajput, Sanjana Sanghi, Saswata Chatterjee, Swastika Mukherjee and Saif Ali Khan was released on July 24, 2020, on Disney+ Hotstar. The American film adaptation and the book enjoyed strong critical and commercial success, with the latter becoming one of the best-selling books of all time. (wikipedia)
• • •
My only other (minor) complaint is that the clue on JUMP THE SHARK feels off (27A: Become absurdly outlandish, as a TV show). Yes, Fonzie's jumping the shark was "absurdly outlandish" but the term just refers to the point at which a show runs out of steam, runs out of ideas, and starts to go south, i.e. generally just ... gets worse. A show can JUMP THE SHARK without actually being "absurd" or "outlandish."
The toughest part of solving this Downs-only was the NW, i.e the first part, which is (as I say all the time) not surprising. The part that's likeliest to be hardest is the part you start on, when you have nothing in the grid to help. I moved through those Downs up there OK, but FATEFUL was very, very hard for me, even with the FA- in place (5D: Momentous). FANTASTIC, FABULOUS, FATED ... nothing was working. And POKE THE BEAR was really hard to parse, since anything starting POKE- seems like it's going to have POKER as the first word. After I got a few more short Downs up there, I could see POKER was wrong, and that THE was probably gonna be the second word, so POKE THE BEAR, boom. Seemed like a phrase I'd heard before, all the crosses checked out, fantastic, moving on. The next hardest part of me was also up top: WRAPPERS (9D: Disposable parts of grocery purchases). Something about "grocery" had me thinking ... I don't know, but not candy bars, which would be the locus classicus WRAPPERS example. "Disposable parts" + "grocery purchases" just had my brain going "nope, doesn't compute." So that took work. But I got there. Nothing in the bottom half of the grid proved nearly as challenging. Longer Downs are frequently the most challenging part of the Downs-only experience, but most of today's longer Downs were straight-up gimmes. JOE COOL, for instance (27D: Snoopy's alter ego in sunglasses), and WORD SALAD (11D: Speech jumble), and OPTOMETRY (33D: Field of vision?), and CLEMENS (42D: Samuel Langhorne ___ (Mark Twain's real name)). All of them went straight in with no help from crosses. When most of the longer Downs are pushovers, you've got a good chance of a successful Downs-only solve.
The toughest part of solving this Downs-only was the NW, i.e the first part, which is (as I say all the time) not surprising. The part that's likeliest to be hardest is the part you start on, when you have nothing in the grid to help. I moved through those Downs up there OK, but FATEFUL was very, very hard for me, even with the FA- in place (5D: Momentous). FANTASTIC, FABULOUS, FATED ... nothing was working. And POKE THE BEAR was really hard to parse, since anything starting POKE- seems like it's going to have POKER as the first word. After I got a few more short Downs up there, I could see POKER was wrong, and that THE was probably gonna be the second word, so POKE THE BEAR, boom. Seemed like a phrase I'd heard before, all the crosses checked out, fantastic, moving on. The next hardest part of me was also up top: WRAPPERS (9D: Disposable parts of grocery purchases). Something about "grocery" had me thinking ... I don't know, but not candy bars, which would be the locus classicus WRAPPERS example. "Disposable parts" + "grocery purchases" just had my brain going "nope, doesn't compute." So that took work. But I got there. Nothing in the bottom half of the grid proved nearly as challenging. Longer Downs are frequently the most challenging part of the Downs-only experience, but most of today's longer Downs were straight-up gimmes. JOE COOL, for instance (27D: Snoopy's alter ego in sunglasses), and WORD SALAD (11D: Speech jumble), and OPTOMETRY (33D: Field of vision?), and CLEMENS (42D: Samuel Langhorne ___ (Mark Twain's real name)). All of them went straight in with no help from crosses. When most of the longer Downs are pushovers, you've got a good chance of a successful Downs-only solve.
Had some trouble parsing LETS SLIP, but the -IP ending eventually gave it away. Had ROAM before ROVE (klassic kealoa*), but it ended up really clashing with its neighbors, so it didn't take me long to pull it. This is a grid with ordinary fill and few proper nouns, so there's nothing much that needs explaining. Thanks to Rafael Musa for filling in for me yesterday. My Saturday was so full that there was no way I was going to be able to blog the Sunday without extreme exhaustion and non-sleep. Picked up my wife from her writers workshop in Saratoga Springs, squeezed in coffee and conversation with friends (and crossword constructors) Erica Hsiung Wojcik and Mike Nothnagel...
...and then, after driving back to Binghamton, turned right around and headed up to Syracuse to see Elvis Costello play (again—this makes six times for me). While at the venue (The Landmark Theatre), I got recognized for the first time in my life (excluding crossword tournaments). This woman came down stairs and bounded past me, then did an immediate 180, pointed at me, and said, "I know you, do I know you?" I said, "I don't think so." Her: "Are you sure?" Me: "I look like every other 53-year-old in this place." Her: "You're ... the crossword guy, right?" Me: [staring wide-mouthed and wondering if "Candid Camera" is still on the air] "oh my god." Her name was Elaine and she's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Rochester and she couldn't have been lovelier! (not pictured: her sister, also lovely):
So it was a full day. My life is a whole lot of nothing and then one big day of everything. "July 8" is now gonna be shorthand for an impossibly full but also very good day. The concert was unbelievable, but I'll spare you the details. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*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.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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70 comments:
Sometimes it just feels good to think I'm a genius. A wheelhouse puzzle on a Monday does the trick.
Yeah, I know. The puzzle was easy and I'm no genius. But still ...
Easy. I did not screw the pooch on this one. I breezed through it. Brad’s notes at Xwordinfo are worth a read. A fun and mostly smooth Monday, liked it.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #824, unlike last week’s puzzle, was pretty easy for a Croce. The NE was the toughest section for me. Good luck!
@Rex if you are reading this - It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen NYT puzzle by Mike. Is he still constructing? I really enjoyed/looked forward too his work!
Rex, it sounds like Saturday was a darn fine day. I've had a few of those but none recently. Maybe next weekend!
I too did downs only and it took a while but I got there. I actually had STORMED for 25 down "Walked angrily", but realized LARBS and ESM were ridiculous. Hands up for ROAM before ROVE, and tried SPORTS for "It might have multiple seasons."
I wanted RED BARON for Snoopy's alter ego but it didn't fit. A scarf is mainly what I remember, but there were also goggles... which per Google images, look a lot like sunglasses! (I Googled and got goggles on a doggie.)
Do you realize that MOHS rotated 180 degrees is SHOW!
[Spelling Bee: Sun. pg -1 AGAIN missing a 6er, this is getting tedious. Barbara S from late yesterday, as for remembering my wrong guesses: I installed a Javascript hack which, among other things, sends a log of all my attempted words to the Console of the Firefox Developer Tools so I have a record. Why?... probably because I can't resist.]
OUR PADRE was a gentle BEAR of a man. He'd be SPIED ON at THE HELM of his NAVY SHIP, the RCA TYS, with his PETS BIRD, EBONY ONE SEED perched on his shoulder. You could, at times, hear a FATEFUL ODE, full of WORDS, that would TINGE the air with a WAD of joy.
PADRE would never JUMP SHIP - ESP after his SHIP mate, DEAN ARCO, would POKE a SHARK with his FAT SPEAR. He liked any SHARK. Even the STOWS under the HELM of his SHIP with a WAD of COKES liked a good SHARK.
Back home, MOHS would FLIP a BIRD she would prepare for PADRE when he'd come to see her.. She had to BARTER with CLEMENS, THE owner of the BULLS and ALES BAR, for a few LAMBS as well. She had a TAB running with CODES and a DATE of each purchase. She also had a BET with CLEMENS that she could SHOOT any BIRD with a SPEAR held up to her EAR. "POOH", yelled CLEMENS..."I ain't JOE COOL for nothing...I can POKE a BULL in his HUBS that'll make him JUMP through an eye SPOOL at the OPTOMETRY office." "A BET is a BET" said MOHS. "There are no THEFTS at the ATM and I'll eat a SALAD with ALOE before I take your cock and BULL!!"
They would FLIP a coin to see who could SHOOT a BIRD with a SPEAR held up to an EAR or who could POKE a BULL in his HUBS at the OPTOMETRY office. TRY to guess who won!
MOHS took a fast LOPE home. She won her BET...She had some legs of LAMBS in WRAPPERS of TERRY cloth that she will SLIP into her ETHANOL oven when she gets home. She had all the GEAR needed to welcome home PADRE and his PETS BIRD, EBONY ONE SEED.
She heard his KEYS SLIP into the door. He was AGELESS. He STOMPED in like the BEAR he was and gave MOHS one COOL NAVY POKE. The BIRD was delicious...so were the LAMBS. EBONY ONE SEED was chirping and all the PETS were COOL....A happy way to end this ODE...And that's the truth!
This is how it should be done. Wonderful puzzle with great longer answers on a Monday. JUMP THE SHARK is my favorite. Poor Fonz.
Tattooing a boy? WORDS A LAD.
Uniclues:
1 Watched basketball with binoculars and malice.
2 Swag for a black bear.
3 Buys a beer for the dude in sunglasses.
4 Jean Valjean's bread and Robin Hood's tax rebate program.
5 "I have no idea where we're going."
6 Mormons doing hip hop lite.
1 ONE SEED SPIED ON
2 EBONY POOH GEAR
3 ALES JOE COOL
4 FATEFUL THEFTS
5 HELM LETS SLIP
6 UTAH WRAPPERS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Guitar playing minion, with caveman like terseness, explains he owns the pork BBQ instead of the minion claiming said BBQ. STU RIB, NOT HIS
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Could TYS have been short for "Territories" in the 1964 puzzle?
JUMP THE SHARK is the best answer in the grid. FLIP THE BIRD has revealer potential (and probably has been used as a revealer in a NYT crossword - FLIPPING THE BIRD would be a neat 15-letter answer)
FLUS - awkward plural
SLRS - awkward pluralized acronym
TYS - just no.
My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. The emptier it is, the more of it you have (4)
2. Difficult position, maybe (5)
3. Business in which one is paid to establish relationships (3)(7)
4. Play checkers, informally (4)
5. Milk duds? (7)(3)
ROOM
ASANA
DNA TESTING
REFS
NURSING BRA
Enjoyed reading Rex’s blog post today - I love the way he complained about a word he didn’t even fill in because if he had filled it in, he knew he would have hated it. We all have our idiosyncrasies - I, for example would willingly forgo the arithmetic quizzes in foreign languages in exchange for more three-letter text-isms any day, lol. For taste, as they say, there is no argument.
I wonder if it would be feasible to get a “Where’s Rex” type of situation going - if you spot OFL out in the wild, you can take a picture and post it here or something like that.
Reading the excerpt from Julius Caesar I noticed it is different when I read it in HS, actually aloud. The word bondsmen has be replaced with underlings. I wonder when that happened? Dumbing down to reflect peoples' new lack of vocabulary?
TYS 1964 = Territory(s) Northwest Territory, Indian Territory, etc
This puzzle is making me curious - just how gettable is MS-DOS for a younger (than me, I’m 49) new solver. Would a millennial or Gen Zer be able to get it with some crosses? Even if they got all the crosses would they still look at like a meaningless string of letters? As someone who used DOS before windows, I have zero idea how common/rare that knowledge is to other people.
That was my thought as well. Northwest Territories and Indian Territories both work.
Nice Monday puzzle with a helpful theme. Only difficult spot for me was the NW, where I had ECOLI instead of EBOLA for a while. I suspect the constructor knew the confusion would result.
Simple - clear headed theme and well filled. Yeah TYS and the equally ugly adjacent plural FLUS - but overall clean and slick. POKE and FLIP are top notch. Love Saratoga - just caught Derek Trucks at SPAC a week ago.
And on that grand and FATEFUL day
This is the best I’ve done yet solving downs-only. I got JUMP THE SHARK and POKE THE BEAR doing downs-only and even had something-THE BULL and something-THE BIRD but some (blind) across guesses were wrong so at some point I had to look at some across clues. But for the first time I could see the light at the end of the downs-only solve, and this was a great puzzle on which to practice and build confidence in that solving method!
I disagree with Rex on the JUMP THE SHARK clueing: I think it was apt. (To me, it connotative not just running out of steam/ideas, but doing something desperate - and over the top - as a result of said lack.)
STalkED then STOrmED before STOMPED. Other than that, a pretty breezy solve and a nice clean theme.
Oh, terrific theme, tight with colorful zingy answers, the kind where, once I got the concept, I wanted to figure out the remaining theme answers with as few crosses as possible. Which kept me plugged in and happy throughout the solve.
Tight is right. What other answers can you think of? I was wondering if this theme had ever been done before and found a 2009 Los Angeles Times puzzle that did it (by Joy Frank) – it’s the only other puzzle with this theme that I’ve found – which used two theme answers that are in today’s puzzle, but had another that I liked: PASS THE BUCK.
One moment I loved was when I saw “Pepsis” in the COKES clue, parsed it as rhyming with “sepsis”, and for the slightest moment thought of it as possibly some sort of condition, before, with a “Hah!”, realizing what it really was.
Sweet to have a backward BAT crossing the San Diego ballplayer. Speaking of backward, I had a lovely introspective moment when I realized that SPOOL backward is LOOPS, and mulled over how the two words are intertwined.
I love when a puzzle turns out to be more than just filling in boxes, and this certainly was. Thank you, Brad, for a most engaging outing!
Saw Elvis Costello once and it was awesome. Sounds like a great time. Thanks for the write up. Agree, it was a lovely Monday.
Wow, solved downs only so missed John Green clue, thus very surprised to see the cover of a book I read *last week* as WotD. It happens that Green hit when my kids were too old and my students too young, but a book club friend mentioned that she recently read Looking for Alaska simply because it's a banned book, so figured I'd give it a try, and The Fault in Our Stars was just a logical follow up.
FWIW, back when I received gifts (you know, when people still came over for holidays and parties in large numbers, remember those days?) I always made a list headed "TYs".
Hand up for ROam before ROVE, otherwise very easy downs as @Rex said, and I don't know why but when I had POK... my brain said POKE THE BEAR. Maybe it just feels Mondayish?
And curious if plunking in OPTOMETRY with no crosses is a symptom of doing too many crosswords... asking for a friend!
I suspect your high school text was the expurgated one. “Bondsmen” does not even fit the meter.
Comment about Julius Caesar was @Todd - apologies, I’m not used to commenting on my phone.
I’ll join the lion’s share of opinions this morning and pronounce this is a simple yet solid Monday. WORD SALAD was my favorite entry, always reminds me of certain politicians who like to hear themselves talk but rarely say anything of substance. I admit TYS is a little weird, but no more so than “Pepsis” which looks like some kind of awful disease like EBOLA.
I liked starting out with two of my favorite drinks, DECAF and diet COKES and then the little bonus critters within the grid. I SPIED the AGELESS POOH, a sweet BEAR who always brings a smile to our faces. I know a couple of people who keep BIRDs as PETS and one who hosts a big birthday party every year for her thirty-something parrot. When my brother was a youngster in 4H Club he won several blue ribbons with a huge Charolais BULL who was as gentle as a LAMB. Somewhere there is a picture of them with my brother sitting on his back at the state fair.
Hey All !
Congrats on being recognized, Rex! Did she get your autograph?
Nice little MonPuz. Nothing to scuttle more brain cells. I usually try to read every clue, even if the answer Auto-Fills, but I missed the TYS that caused Rex such consternation. Agreed - Cobbs, or go home. 😁
Double O fest in West-Center. Add ROVE-ROam to the kealoa list.
Nominating Winnie-the-___ as an @M&A easy-e answer.
Nice puz, OPENish grid. Good job Brad.
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Fwiw I’m an old millennial (‘85) and just barely old enough to remember MS-DOS, mostly because a children’s magazine I subscribed to in the early 90s had a coding section.
Thx, Brad; fine early week puz! 😊
Med.
FLUid trip; no hitches along the way.
Loved the LAMB at the HUB of the themers.
Fortunately, THE BIRD saved me from disaster at CLEMENS; I might've had an 'O' in there. whew!
WORD SALAD: A Guide to Cryptic Crosswords by Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto is a book worth having. It definitely hold the KEYS to successful solving.
Enjoyed this adventure thru the land of fauna.
___
Thx, jae; on it! 🤞
___
Fun & relatively easy Tracy Bennett PandA yd on xwordinfo.com.; Natan Last's Mon. New Yorker on tap for tm.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Best Monday in a long time. Loved the theme and thought the fill was solid. Can’t believe that Rex devoted half of his review to a three-word answer he didn’t like.
Many TYS to Brad Wiegmann for starting my day on a high note.
Saw Elvis in his first US tour circa 1977 and many, many times since. Such great original songs - what word play! - but my favorite will always remain this Nick Lowe classic. (Shout out to Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas, longtime Attractions/Impostors collaborators)
What’s so funny ‘bout Peace Love and Understanding
Great to hear about your fabulous day! Funny how life can't spread things out evenly - opposite of your day is "when it rains, it pours". Sending wishes out to the folks in Rockland County who got up to 10 inches in a few hours and washed out some main arteries.
Nice puzzle, as noted. I loved WORDSALAD - we were on that topic recently with bloggers and podcasters highly adept in this art form.
I'm with Trina on JUMPTHESHARK implying some act of desperation to keep a show relevant/entertaining. Seems like every plot line of soap operas were JUMPTHESHARK moments, yet they ran for decades.
Haven't thought about Elvis Costello since @Z stopped posting here. I'm glad many people enjoy him - I still don't really get it; probably more the lyrics/posturing than the music/singing? If memory serves me, Joe DiPinto will back me up?
okanaganer: Snoopy had a Red Baron connected alter ego, but the alter ego was always trying to down the Red Baron.
Easy.
Nice pics, Rex.
@burtonkd – You are correct.
Lewis @8:09 WALK THE DOG! As in the yo-yo trick. But I don't think there's much else.
I'm very familiar with POKETHEBEAR as it's used frequently by Boston Bruins sportscasters when the opponents try something underhanded and retaliation is swift and severe. "Don't POKETHEBEAR,", they are reminded.
For a more humorous take on POKETHEBEAR, you can check out my comments from a couple of days ago on an alternate meaning of POKE. This would not be a good idea either.
I'm sure OFL had a nice cold bottle of Saratoga Vichy while in town. A pleasing bubbly liquid version of sulfur dioxide. Also hoping that the evil TYS does not spoil the month of July for him.
Lots of use of "solid" to describe this admirable Monday, and I heartily agree. Well played BW. Bodaciuos Work, and thanks for all the fun.
My echo: a very fine Monday. Along the lines of Lewis's question, "What other answers [i.e., theme expressions] can you think of?" I wondered if there were any phrases that included a reptile, amphibian, or even insect, that might have replaced one of the mammals and given us four animal families. I couldn't think of any. In other news: I'm not sure what it says about me that I know MSDOS but have no idea about Elvis Costello.
@Lewis, I was hoping you'd include "Play checkers," with its "play" with parts of speech that is so well disguised! Just great misdirection.
Do-over: WRAPPing. Know only from crosswords: WORD SALAD, anything to do with Fonzie.
Anon@10:43 & Lewis @8:09. SKIN THE CAT/RABBIT (when trying to peel clothes off a squirming toddler)
Way, way too much ranting on TYS…and Word of the Day is OUR?? Granted it enabled a nice plug for a great book, but…really?
I do Mondays “Downs Mostly” (that is, til I really need an Across to get started) but fail to see how Rex “Had some trouble parsing LETS SLIP, but the -IP ending eventually gave it away” how did he get the -IP ending, if not from acrosses?
Anyone else notice the string of plurals at 23-25A?
Running very late this morning. Smooth grid, grown-up fill, liked it.
When in the SW, M&A luvs to play SPOTTHELIZARD.
Sooo … great MonPuz themers.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: What @Roo said. [But that Mark Twain clue was also a contender.]
staff weeject pick: TYS. Nice texter meat. Texters really do need to use U's more, when makin up new acronyms, tho.
goodies: WORDSALAD. JOECOOL. RAMONES. That one (and only) ?-marker clue, for OPTOMETRY.
And yep, many PETS do go bigtime for them belly rubs. Bro-in-law's dog tops the list … rolls over whenever I take step one into its house.
Thanx for the fun with animals, Mr. Wiegmann dude.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
Good solve, but for me, I'll shoot the breeze or engage in a bull session, but I would never shoot the bull.
As an optometrist I’m very appreciative for the shout out of “a field of vision” 33 down
Here's a joke on "Poke the Bear"
So a soldier is captured during wartime. The enemy captain tells him if he can perform three feats of valor they will let him go. He says, sure -- what are they? First, you must swim this snake-invested lake across and back in 30 minutes. If you survive, we will bring you to this tent containing a fierce bear that is suffering from an abcessed tooth and hasn't been fed in days. You must extract the tooth. If you survive that, we will bring you to the tent of our princess, who has had many lovers but has never been satisfied by a man. Your final feat is to bring pleasure to our princess.
Let's get started, the soldier says, and he dives into the lake. Fighting off the snakes, he makes it across and back in just a few seconds under 30 minutes. They bring him to the bear's tent. He enters and they seal it off behind him. You hear the most godawful screams and roars for what seems like forever and then it's eerily quiet. The doorway opens slowly, and the soldier staggers out -- alive, but only barely. OK, he says to the captain -- now where's that lady with the bad tooth.
*********
Alright -- I didn't say it was a good joke.
As I tell my students, it's important to pay attention to the instructions.
TYS is the 3-letter airport code for Knoxville TN, for McGhee Tyson Airport… IMO far,far preferable clueing, as Metropolitan Knoxville Airport, or Airport in Alcoa TN, or something similar.
Best. Monday. Ever!
Not only did I race through it, I laughed and laughed with each themer. Each is so totally absurd when taken literally. Shot any bulls recently? Flipped any birds ever? Could you ever jump over a shark, even if it was lying helplessly on the beach? And whatever you do, don't ever, ever poke a bear.
I, too, don't really know what TYS means. Been around the Internet since the early days and don't remember ever seeing it. But it does occur to me it means "Thank you, sir." And in the back of my mind, I think I have gotten that same message sometimes when I have cleared up some enigma for folks.
Scrolled down to comment this. Seems to be a very outdated abbreviation, but that's gotta be it.
My after-dinner coffee order is a double espresso; a DECAF is not going to keep me awake for the drive home. Fortunately, my answer didn't fit.
I also thought the clue implied SHOOT THE Breeze more than the BULL (which I think of as more boasting than chatter), but that didn't fit either, along with not being an animal.
Not being Canadian, I don't know whether NW TY is legit; an alternative would be "Suffixed after twen and fif." No, better not.
Nice theme, fun Monday. I do think maybe PGA should have been clued with a little edge, though.
Born '92 and I knew it, but I'm also a nerd whose career revolves around software, so I might not be the best measuring stick.
I’m old enough to know it but forgot and couldn’t get it. Filed in by other across clues.
Kept wanting Rove to be Roam. Had to look it up, ironic in that all I did was Rove around the U. S. From 99’ to 04’. All that time I just thought I was wandering.
@Frank Lynch 10:31 am... oh yeah! And his alter ego was nameless?... something like "flying ace".
CHOP CHOP
@Carola -- Look again! (#4)
Only one thing bothered me about the puzzle: the total repetition in the SW. Somehow, TYS went right by me as typical crosswordese.
Never used , heard or seen the poke or jump sayings. . But nice Monday puzzle. Shoot the bull? No one says that, do they today. Have a Sunday NYT xword compilation edited by W.W. with lots of puzzles by Maleska (sp.? ) who I gather was a popular editor . Many answers like that TYS. We’ve been spoiled by the cleverness of Shortz.
Freestylers-Pretty smooth ride on the 824, but got off the tracks for a while in the SE, as the "jocular" plural took a while to kick in. Fun stuff and not at all impossible.
Nice balance of a solid theme that didn't overwhelm the grid space so there was ample room left for some quality fill.
I thought JOE COOL and OPTOMETRY were first rate fill. I work with inlaid crushed stones so I'm familiar with 47A MOHS mineral hardness scale. It's a relative hardness scale based on what minerals can scratch what other minerals. Talc is the softest---can't scratch any other minerals---so it gets a score of one, while diamond is the hardest---can't be scratched by any other mineral---so it gets a score of ten.
My favorite fill was WORD SALAD. It's a common symptom of some forms of schizophrenia where a person's speech is like words randomly "tossed" together so as to be meaningless and incomprehensible.
After a motorcycle wreck a few years back, I was given some pain killers. When I started taking these my thinking become more and more erratic and jumbled and I thought "So this is what it's like to have schizophrenia!" It was very scary and I quit taking the pain meds. The pain was preferable to feeling like I was losing my mind.
Dare I admit it, @Liveprof. I didn't see it coming...and I laughed.
@Liveprof: 😂 good one
@Lewis @2:00, I'm sorry - I wasn't clear. I meant that I'd been hoping you'd include it and was happy you did. My fault!
Ha! Don't admit it!
@Carola - Aha, and I'm smiling because I do things like that all the time!
@Loveprof -- Good one, and well told!
Slow day at the Vitalant blood bank where I do punch & cookies for donors gave time to revisit Sunday grid and actually enjoy a slog through the oversized grid. Cute concept and a nice guest write up filled the slack time, so belated thanks to both constructor and critic Rafa are in order. Thanks also to Rex for sharing his fully filled adventures with the commentariat & that Alfie shirt….gosh!
Anoa Bob,
Wow. Thanks for your dime store analysis of what schizophrenia is like.
Ty Burrell was nominated for an Emmy nine times and won twice. I think he can be added to Cobb for a legitimate TYS clue.
Good puzzle, and good joke by LiveProf.
Kealoa! I can never remember if it was a K or an L and I've always thought I was losing my mind. Couldn't figure out why i could never remember the damn word.
A perfect beginner-friendly puzzle to start the week.
All these are potentially dangerous actions, but especially the first and last ones. In THIS town, you FLIPTHEBIRD and you're liable to get shot, no joke. As for bear-poking, only if I'm with a slower runner than me.
Like: WRAPPERS, WITH the W, TY. 'Bout time. JOECOOL. CLEMENS.
Writeover: AGELESS over endLESS. Just SPEDUP too fast through there.
Decent start to the week. Birdie.
Wordle par.
NAVY CODE
POKETHEBEAR and it's FATEFUL,
if ONE LETSSLIP THE WORD,
when you TRY to SHOOTTHEBULL,
ORE you FLIP him THEBIRD.
--- TERRY JOE CLEMENS, ROTC
Ahh Monday...always soothing to my soul.
I'm gonna be off the grid in more ways than one for about a week. Be back next Wednesday. Happy Solving everyone!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
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