.png)
One getting pwned often / WED 7-19-23 / Dynamite hitmakers 2020 / Stringed instrument in some psychedelic music / Event often in caps on a syllabus / 2006 animated film that really should have starred Adam Driver and Parker Posey?
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Constructor: Billy Bratton
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- DECK OF CARDS (17A: Deal with it!)
- ADHESIVE TAPE (28A: Stick with it!)
- BOARDING PASS (43A: Get on with it!)
- BOWLING BALL (58A: Roll with it!)
Leonhard Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/ OY-lər, German: [ˈleːɔnhaʁt ˈɔʏlɐ] [...] ; 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and music theory. (wikipedia)
• • •
It's nice when a very easy puzzle is also very good. I love the whoosh-whoosh feeling of flying through a grid, but it's a lot more thrilling when the scenery that's flying by is varied and interesting and when you change elevation, swoop around curves ... when the view out the window isn't entirely monotonous. You can do 90 or 100 in the middle of the Utah desert, but while the scenery is occasionally beautiful, it doesn't change for long periods of time. Speed becomes almost meaningless. And some easy puzzles can feel this way. "Well, the speedometer says I'm flying, but ... am I really moving at all?" I had my customary trouble getting out of the gate today, with DUG IN instead of HAD AT at 1A: Began devouring, say. I do not associate HAD AT with food. It's more ... dueling? Fighting in some way, anyway. Extremely Shakespeare. So my first step was a bad one. And then I had a little trouble coming up with FISH (18D: Rummage (around)), which seemed likewise obliquely clued. I had MESS / MUSS / FUSS / god knows what else. But once that answer got sorted, and once I saw what the theme type was going to be, I took off. And I mean, Took Off. Got blocked trying to descend via the long answers in the SW, but just reversed and went the other way and did not stop until I'd circled all the way back to those same long answers, filling them in from below to finish things off. I no-looked the last two themers. Just ... didn't need the clues. Parsed them on sight. BOARDING PASS, bam. OK, I did muff the last one a little, writing in BOWLING PINS instead of BOWLING BALL, but crosses made that error disappear quickly (DILLY got me out of the pickle!), and I still never saw the themer clue. Blazing fast. Fast-Monday fast. Hard to knock a puzzle that makes you feel all-powerful. FEEL ME? (26A: "Ya dig?"). I hope so.
A few more things:
- 40A: Not be square, say (OWE) — this is what stopped me from coming flying down the west side of the grid early on. I figured if I could just get the next short cross to work, I could see enough of the opening letters in at least one of the two long Downs to solve at least one of them. But no. Even with "O" I couldn't get OWE. So I went another direction and the "W" in this answer ended up being the last letter I filled in. I thought this clue was related to 9D: Not even (ODD) when I first saw it. In fact, I thought "square" meant "even" in this clue. Processing failure. No big deal in the end.
- 51D: Pioneer in calculus notation (EULER) — I was reading one of my very earliest write-ups, one from late '06 (!) (please, have mercy on me and do not do this, it's quite embarrassing). In that write-up, I complained loudly about the obscurity of this particular mathematician, only to have the armies of mathematicians in my audience (so, probably four mathematicians, at that point) pelt me with rotten fruit and say "boo to this man!" as they impatiently explained that EULER was not, in fact, obscure. So I have never forgotten the name. It was years later, however, before I figured out I was pronouncing it wrong in my head (it's "oiler" like "boiler," not "yoo-ler" like "Ferris Bueller").
- 25D: 2006 animated film that really should have starred Adam Driver and Parker Posey? ("CARS") — I had the "CA-" and my brain absolutely seized up as both "ENCANTO" and "COCO" tried to fight their way out at the same time. I really should've read the clue to the end. Or taken the year more seriously. This clue is corny as hell and I love it.
See you tomorrow.
P.S. it appears many of you don't know "pwned." This bit of gaming slang is so old by now that I figured it had entered general solver consciousness, but I guess not. Anyway, let Merriam-Webster show you the way....
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Save And Share :
78 comments:
I found the puzzle easy after coming up with DECKOFCARDS. The theme answers were actually easier to come up with than some of the fill, especially ADORBS, BAE, and OHO, which apparently are Gen-X (Gen-Z?) expressions.
Now it's back to the Spelling Bee.
“Light, breezy. OK.” I agree! 😁
Rex – I really liked your metaphor comparing flying through this puzzle to flying through a Utah desert. People who don’t read your write-ups are missing some very enjoyable writing.
With the CK in place, I didn’t hesitate to write in DECK OF CARDS, and happily settled in to enjoy the other definitions of the word IT. DECK OF CARDS and ROLL WITH IT feel more tenuous since you really just deal/roll it more than deal/roll “with” it. But after staring out the window for a bit, I decided they were just fine. Whew.
This theme reminded me of a Sunday by Patrick Berry (August 12, 2012) that also played around with the meaning of the word IT. I loved that one.
Rex – I know, right? The clue for HAD AT brought me up short. For me, have at implies a challenge. And the more I chew on it, the more I’m thinking that this phrase is usually a command? You wanna see if you can do better? Have at it, buddy. It would feel weird to say something like, Mom’s necklace chain was in a knot. I had at it but couldn’t fix it. Annnyways. . . as regards food, I could imagine using this only to someone facing a challenging dish, challenging either because it’s hard to figure out how to go about it or hard because it’s notoriously icky.
Oh that? That’s some leftover haggis from last month. Have at it.
You ordered this burger? Have at it.
Here is your bone marrow. Have at it.
You’ve never seen a steamed artichoke? Have at it.
The clue for PINE AWAY felt off for me, too. I mean, I can be all forlorn and sad, but I don’t just sit around pining away. I lead my life acting all happy and stuff.
“Creator of a spread” – charcuterie mavens. My sister just threw a party and hired a charcuteresse. She worked two hours creating a stunning display that even had little bowls of honey and jam. I didn’t really understand what to do with the honey, so I didn’t have at it.
Loved the clue for ASK, forcing its nounness, a big thumb in the eye to the language police. Y’all seem to hate watching a shift occur in real time. But since language is one ever-shifting, ever-morphing wonder, anything that comes out of our mouths these days is the result of shifts from Old to Middle to Modern English. APRON was originally napron, but we started dividing a napron to an apron, et voilà! [see also umpire and adder] A similar mis-dividing is occurring right now, right under our feet, and we’re creating a new word. An other is shifting to a nother in That’s a whole nother story. and the word has reached the Holy Grail of wordship: it’s in the dictionary. [see also notch, nickname, and newt/]. Follow me for more fun facts to know and share.
I’m at the airport now, waiting to “Get on with it!” That was my favorite clue and answer. I liked this and like thinking of other possibilities. Do it! (The Hustle) Run with it! (Relay baton) Dig it! (Gravesite) Stuff it! (Thanksgiving turkey) Drop i! (New Year’s ball) Screw it! (….Lightbulb. Get your mind out of the sewer)
Surprised KEN wasn’t clued for the doll being played by Ryan Gosling. At first, I thought it was a cute idea to make a Barbie movie but I am now so sick of the hype and the blatant merchandising that I wish they’d never done it. Skip it! (The Barbie movie)
I remember back in high school, when the math teacher explained the proper pronunciation of Euler, one my classmates asked if the mathematician was from Houston. Haha!
EULER is about as obscure in math as Einstein is in physics.
Cutie patootie is ADORBS -> NOT. Oh man, talk about a new high in low. That should easily be one of the worst clue/answer combos of the year. Unfortunately, it may not even rank in the bottom five for this week. Trying too hard has become an NYT staple.
Very disappointed not to get ONO in the grid, after getting BTS and ENO early on. And not to get Pluto, once HADES appeared.
Very nice puzzle fill with lots of interesting long downs. I don't like '!' clues, so the theme was a bit of a downer, but everything else was really nice.
But … a bit easy for the day. This would have been better slotted on a Tuesday.
@LMS a) Your necklace chain example sounds perfectly in the language to me ... so maybe regional? b) You should have asked Pooh, who would have told you to eat the honey. Maybe after he sampled it to make sure it was the right kind of honey.
When I rummage around (18D), I noSe around before I FISH around. Debated ampS or OHMS for the 36A electrical unit, but that was quickly resolved by NOOBS.
Thx, Billy; well done! 😊
Easy-med.
With the exception of the NW, I pretty much ROLLed thru this one.
Fun adventure; enjoyed IT a lot! :)
___
Will Nediger's Mon. New Yorker was relatively easy; (NYT med-hard Sat. level), except for getting 'tripped' up 'on the light fantastic' / 'bent person' cross. :( Another fine production, tho. :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Euler's formula was fundamental to my career. @LMS, I am thrilled to learn that "nother" is showing up in dictionaries (apparently not in my browser's spellchecker dictionary though). I've said it for many years and have been mocked for it. ASK as a noun still makes me cringe a bit though, maybe because I associate it with corporate-speak.
Not sure why "One getting pwned" is noob?
Liked this puzzle. It was easy, although I started at 1A with DUGIN until HADAT emerged from the rubble. NE corner slowed me down some. Whole bunch of entries to like, especially THREEPEAT.
So I guess it's just me? Not a single comment from Rex or anyone else about "pwned?" How common in general usage is this word that I thought was a typo?
The theme was light and fun and well executed. Once I filled in DECK OF CARDS I jumped to the others to give them a try and filled in ADHESIVE TAPE with a few crosses and BOARDING PASS with none. I thought “Roll with it” was going to be a pair of dice, but…no dice. I hit a lot of the same small trouble spots as Rex (DUG IN, FISH, OWE, CARS) but they seemed to slow me down more than they did him.
My first thought on “Sorry, not sorry!” was some variation of “deal with it,” so it was fun to run into the first theme clue a moment later.
Fresh and breezy as the big guy said - light theme but well filled otherwise. EULER is god-like to many. I loved the BOOK MAKER - THREE PEAT stack. PINE AWAY, SARCASM, SURE FIRE are all fantastic. Don’t like ADORBS - especially semi duping with ORB.
Pleasant Wednesday solve.
RCA + Elvis + SITAR
As a mathematician I definitely don’t think of EULER as obscure. He’s arguably one of the three greatest mathematicians in the last millennium, along with Newton and Gauss. If you work with almost any kind of mathematics beyond arithmetic you run into some formula, theorem, or method named after him. Even the constant e is named for Euler.
However, if your several years out of school and only took the required math classes (thus probably forgot everything about two weeks after the end of class) I could see not knowing him. Heck, most people only know the name Gauss because of the blurring function in photoshop.
Billy is a quick study. He got into crosswords in early 2020, had his first NYT puzzle published (at age 18) in September of 2021, and his six puzzles include a Friday and three Saturdays.
High props to him for coming up with a theme that has a classic oh-yes-this-should-be-a-crossword-theme feel. I love its sense of play. I love that it’s one of those themes that triggers people to think of alternative answers.
The grid buzzes, too, with liveliness – BESO, EXUDE, SARCASM, FEEL ME, OH WOE IS ME, SPIEL, PERILS, SUREFIRE, DILLY. I like the two NYT puzzle debuts – OH WOE IS ME and PINE AWAY – that impart an old-timey feel, not to mention a stab of emotion. I also like seeing HADES going down, and the inclusion of palindromes ENO and ONE.
Can’t believe I’ve gone through my whole life thinking that EULER rhymes with “ruler”, only to find out today (thanks, @Rex!) that it’s pronounced “oiler”. Huh!
Billy, in your short crosswords career, you’ve become a solid fixture in my lineup of greatly-look-forward-to puzzlemakers. You say (in your notes) that you’re taking a constructing break – and may it go well – but also that you’ll be back, and, IMO, that bodes well for Crosslandia. Thank you for a splendid outing today!
BAE. and ADORBS, two of the dumbest words on the planet.
After getting the “K” in ask I immediately entered “pacK of cards”
That caused me mucho time.
Liked the puzz!
And pwned? I’m surprised Rex didn’t mention this new to me word which apparently is a thing in gamerspeak.
@lms, I agree, turning a verb into a noun, like ASK, is perfectly OK and kinda fun. But I object to turning a noun or any other part of speech into a verb — can’t stand that. If you disagree, please don’t @ me.
When nothing in the NW was instantly obvious, I went FISHing around and started with the gimme SAUL in the SW and solved from the bottom up, so my first themer was BOWLINGBALL, and the game was afoot, like a Sunday NYT xword.
This meant I ran into ADORBS fairly early, which nearly spoiled everything. Give me OHMS any time.
HADAT was about the last thing I put in. Always makes me think of someone saying "have at you" to which the reply is "gesundheit!".
The Packers may have had a couple of THREEPEATs but the term was invented by Pat Riley, and he has a registered trademark to prove it. I bet the estimable Dennis Eckersly wishes he had done that with "walkoff", which is his coinage and currently in very wide use.
@LMS-Am I right in thinking that "an uncle" used to be "a nuncle", or did I make that up? Guess I could look it up, if I had more ambition.
Very well played indeed, BB. I was neither Bewitched nor Bothered and had a fine old time with this one. Thanks for all the fun.
And today you will get the “armies” of biologists, also probably four, ranting that BIOME and BIOTA are most definitively words that are not made up for crossword puzzles. Granted, you don’t hear them in daily life but neither do you hear ALAS or ERE or EIRE for that matter but if you take an ecology class you will hear them for sure. And with a mathematician for a mom and husband, Euler comes up at our dinner table from time to time!!
Also dropped DUG IN at 1A
/ˈpəʊnɪŋ/ jump to other results. pwn somebody to completely defeat somebody, especially in a video game; to be completely successful against somebody/something. I'm going to pwn some noobs (= players who do not have much experience) in this game. We got pwned by the other team in the final game.
Pwned is so old, so dated, it never occurred to me it needed explaining—RP
Never heard of it either. So here’s an OHO/AHA definition:
past tense: pwned; past participle: pwned
(especially in video gaming) utterly defeat (an opponent or rival); completely get the better of.
"I can't wait to pwn some noobs in this game"
Easy puzzle, so here I am before leaving for the hospital.
A couple of years ago Rex complained about OWNED in a grid when, according to the clue, it should have been PWNED. They mean the same thing. He has also complained about NEWB when it should have been NOOB. Folks need to pay attention!
I was disappointed that it wasn't dug In, which seems fresher than HAD AT, but I generally loved the puzzle, particularly it's intergenerational language, running from ADORBS to humdinger/DILLY. The kid has an ear.
I saw the central R in 54-A and figured it had to be saRaN. I almost took out PINE AWAY, and decided to work some more crosses. AXON bailed me out.
@Conrad, I think it depends where you are rummaging. I'd nose around in the attic, but FISH in my pockets (or, if I had one, my pocketbook).
"Honey, would you nose around in the closet and see if my scarf is in there? No, I MEANT HAT!
Thanks again for all the supportive comments for my wife. Three more days and we'll be done.
And thanks for enlightening me about baling TWINE. I did know about the big round bales that @Sailor mentioned, but not the twine. It must be much stronger than the twine in my house!
Next you'll be telling me they don't milk cows by hand anymore!
This is the earliest I’ve ever gotten into this blog because I finished the puzzle last night as soon as it became available on the NYT site. Was not nearly as fast for me as for others but it was absolutely addictive and I could not stop.
This one was just so much fun. Why I love crossword puzzles. The theme wasn’t even a real theme, but the clues were clever and funny, and the answers fresh and interesting. Loved it!
Hey All !
I'm going to WRITE WITH IT! (Post on this blog)
Yeah, terrible, I know. 😁
A theme with clues that usually aren't liked by a number of people, but apparently if they are good enough, it turns out to be good. Is that like two wrongs making a right? (They don't, in the saying, but an analogy that Sort of makes sense...?)
Decent fill today. Thanks to @Claire for me always knowing BTS. How many boys in that group? Like, 26? Har.
Getting a pretty good week of puzs this, well, week. Has Chen given his POW yet? If not, dang, more good puzs coming up.
You know what day it is... Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike 😁
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Happy commemoration of the Seneca Falls Convention, 1848. It’s the 175th anniversary. (“VOTES FOR WOMEN!”)
I get a kick out of these “It”-type clues. I used to hate them and always felt asea whenever I encountered one, but they grew on me. I’m not sure why. I think I started to like the challenge, and also their jaunty informality amuses me. My fave today was Get on with it! for BOARDING PASS.
Lots of neologisms and new(ish) usages today in answers and clues: NOOB, ADORBS, BAE, THREEPEAT, ASK (meaning a favor), FEEL ME (meaning “Understand me?”), TAKES (meaning opinions), TOAST (meaning goner), pwned (meaning dominated), and “Sorry, not sorry!” The evolving language indeed.
I kept putting in right answers and then taking them out. Or, at least, removing the second half. That happened with both SUREFIRE and PINEAWAY. I ditched the FIRE part of SUREFIRE because I was convinced that [Defend the hive, in a way] was “Swarm,” and I doubted WR__ as the answer to [Quick cut]. And AWAY got axed from PINE AWAY because my [Kitchen wrap?] was “saRaN.”
I loved how things were “dripping” in this puzzle: [Drip with] for EXUDE and [A comment may be dripping with it] for SARCASM. Those clues somehow conjured the flavor of maple syrup and I’m still mentally tasting it. I liked the clues [Not even] and [Not good] with their answers on top of one another. I initially interpreted [Not even] as in “I asked for volunteers and got not even one.” Eek, how do you express that meaning of “not even” in a 3-letter word? What turned out to be the straight literalness of both clues gave me a smile. As did the whole puzzle. Thanks, Billy Bratton.
[SB: Mon -2, Tue 0. This 5er was one of my misses on Mon. I thought this 6er would have covered it. But, hmm, maybe the shorter one is metaphorical. @okanaganer, I hope your QB streak is still alive!]
I'm thinking that the origin of "pwned" was a typo by a noob gamer that hit the adjacent key and meant "owned".
There is another slightly famous EULER, Carl, who will be known to birders thanks to the Euler's flycatcher. That 'Euler' is pronounced 'yoo-lur'.
I'm very familiar with Euler's work, primarily in number theory, but also in graph theory. This is the first I've heard that he developed notation. Compared to his other monumental accomplishments, that is minor.
The Good: Very few proper names and trivia. The Bad: pwned. Not completely foreign but couldn’t remember what it meant. The Ugly: ADORBS. Sorry, not sorry. That word just automatically generates loathing. TOO BAD.
Re: The 'Big' ASK:
Loved @LMS's final para re: the 'ever shifting' sands of language, e.g., 'nother', which my auto-corrupt doesn't care for, but M-W does.
'Whole Nother': Wrong or Right?
The history of 'nother' goes back longer than you'd think –
What to Know:
"Nother is a real word which functions similarly to other and another, and its use traces back to the early 14th century. In the late 19th century it became more common to see the word nother paired with whole, constructing the phrase a whole nother. The reason this is often seen as an error today is because this phrase is used almost exclusively in dialogue or to represent informal speech in writing." (M-W)
Fun coincidence:
Came across a clue in one of my xword experiences from yd, "A whole nother" or "un-freaking-believable," e.g.. The answer was a word I wasn't familiar with, and almost dnfed on; here so as not to spoil it for those who may not have solved it yet.
I really enjoyed researching this word and had some fun with it on ChatGPT.
In today's blog, a number of iterations of 'nother' have appeared, but only two – one from @Rex & one from yours truly – have it as 'another'. Interesting that @Rex could have used "a whole nother" in its stead, but not so with my usage.
@Taylor Slow (7:31 AM), Anonymous (8:20 AM)
I learned 'pwned' from xwords; not being a gamer has necessitated learning some new (to me) terms, which I always welcome.
What does ‘being pwned’ mean?
"The most popular theory suggests the term ‘pwned’ originated in the online computer game Warcraft. One of its developers misspelt the word ‘owned’ during the coding. When a player was defeated in battle by a computer-controlled player, it was designed to say “*player* has been owned”. However, due to the typo, it instead came up as “*player* has been pwned.
The word was quickly adopted within the gaming world. It now broadly means to completely obliterate an opponent, often trouncing them without taking any damage. Stemming from the word ‘own’, to ‘pwn’ someone is to hold something over them.
In gaming, it’s a harmless expression that players throw around every now and then.
However, the term has filtered across into the cybersecurity industry. Here, it’s more serious. In the same way, being ‘pwned’ means to be ‘owned’, in the sense of being defeated. It usually means that a hacker has access to your account and the details it contains. They’ll often get hold of this information during a data breach." (AMDH Services Ltd)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Medium for me, with the theme answers coming quickly but many a hesitation elsewhere, especially in the midsection between ADHESIVE TAPE and BOARDING PASS. I agree with the accolades for the fine non-theme answers. My favorites were PINE AWAY and SURE-FIRE and the "Gritty film" clue ("Is 'scum' really gritty?").
Help from previous puzzles: BAE, BTS, EULER, the meaning of "pwned."
“I may be a NOOB getting PWNED, but my BAE is ADORBS.”
What language is this?
I had SARAN in for APRON, and spent a full minute saying "Pines...way?" out loud before I considered changing the s to an a and working to correct the rest of the crosses.
I found the theme answers to be the easiest part of the puzzle -- at least I did once I had just a few letters. DECK OF CARDS was especially easy since there's no other object you can deal with. For "stick with it!" there could have been dozens of answers other than ADHESIVE TAPE: I'm not counting letters now, but ELMERS GLUE; SCOTCH TAPE and FENCING SWORD would all work.
The NYTXW has prepped us all for the "! = the noun you do the action with"-type clue, so there was no surprise there. My hardest time was in the NE since I had BIOta instead of BIOME and therefore had trouble seeing either EXAM or SUREFIRE.
OH WOE IS YOU if you ever say FEEL ME to me when you mean "Ya dig?" In fact you'll be TOAST. What a truly obnoxious expression that is!
Nice clues for BOOKMAKER, SPIEL and APRON.
M&A was definitely pwned by the NOOB clue. Behold, my confusion …and "Watch it!", Shortzmeister.
Enjoyed the theme. Eazy-peazy, for a WedPuz.
staff weeject pick: RCA. Definitely Elvis's label. For Diana Ross, I vote Motown.
@Muse darlin: Liked yer "Go with it!" avatar. If M&A had an avatar today, it'd be a big ole roach, with caption "Step on it!"
some faves: OHWOEISME paired with IMEANTHAT. PINEAWAY. SUREFIRE. SARCASM. HADAT clue [wanted DUGIN, tho].
Thanx, Mr. Bratton dude. Good job.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
I was oddly happy that @Rex enjoyed the puzzle as much as I did. Hand up for dug in before HADAT and SaraN before APRON. I was pleased to see our own @cDILLY(52) show up today also. I wasn’t too surprised at the HADAT because it seems that maybe I had said that to my kids to indicate they can go ahead and start eating before I sat down, like “okay, you can go ahead and have at it.” The commentary kind of made me wonder what other oddball phrases that have popped out of mouth over my lifetime.
TIL from @Rex that Euler is pronounced “oiler” which makes me wonder whether Euclid is pronounced Oil-klid. All I know is that I have a lot of mathematicians names tucked in to my brain, of which many I couldn’t tell you EXACTLY what they did…like Euclid:geometry, Pythagoras:theorem, etc…I DO know there was NO mathematician named Hypotenuse, although perhaps there should be cuz it’s a great name!
I learned pwner several years ago LISTENING to a book. There was a character whose gaming avatar had the name and I thought it was “Poner.” So, I called my daughter (who had already listened to the book) and said “What’s up with this “Poner” thing…seems significant. What adult daughter does not want to provide a “teaching moment” to her mother?
Well..when I finished (and not with ease), my first thought: This sure has some cutesy colloquialisms that I"d rather not use in my ever evolving vocab...Hi @Loren.
Cutesy galore....I'm not dancing with ADORBS and NOOB. TOO BAD!
I downloaded the puzzle last night and stared. That is what I do. Nothing popped at first. HADES, you were my first. The hardest for me was getting 2D. Lord I looked at that clue. What kind of court? Law? Tennis? Pickle ball?. Ah...I finally got "IT" at DECK OF CARDS. That E gave me ARENA. I'm still confused.
I somehow felt completely out of touch with Billy. We did not really dance to the same music. I always like to feel up to date and with IT on all things said and done. I finished you but....SOOT.....>NOIR and SARAN....>APRON. Mistakes that really held me back.
I also had trouble with BIOME. I had BIOTA from Mondays HOT OKRA BEEF TACO with BIOTA UNI.
A girl can imaginate, No?
While music was playing, I began to warm up. Some of this was clever and entertaining. Perhaps too cutesy in parts but I liked IT well enough.
My favorite entry? OH WOE IS ME. I thought of others first: Pity Poor Me... Poor Little Me... Alas Poor Yorick...And finally... I CAN'T GO ON.
Thursday will probably kill me.
Easy-medium. My most costly erasure was oddsMAKER before BOOK, plus devil>satan>HADES (HAD AT did not leap to mind from the 1a clue).
A fun Wednesday with some fine long downs. Liked it.
So "pwned" is based on a typo, is it? Some people have all the luck.
I'm an absolutely terrible typist -- and my typing is made even worse by a newish laptop that tends to both skip letters and double letters willy-nilly. With the end result that I'm responsible for probably a thousand typos a year.
But are any of my typos turned into trendy new words that are then immortalized in the NYTXW? No-o-o-o!!!!
If they were, I would have by now, like Tolkien, invented a whole new language.
Nearly 50 years ago my brilliant math professor informed our class that, given EULER's amazing insight into all kinds of problems, he was the "universal lubricant".
I started out loving this puzzle & thinking "Wow the NYT is finally listening to us!" Loved Be Forlorn/Pine Away).
I ended up just liking it - got tripped up up 31D cause I didn't know what PWNED was, 11D Three Peat cause I don't know football & Biome 21A cause I was getting frustrated with myself.
Not your fault,, Billy!
BTW, there was a theme???
.
Pwned is apparently an example of Leetspeak, another term of which I had never heard.
If including such words are in our crossword future, OHWOEISUS!
LEETSPEAK!
@mathgent - you may be thinking too deep about it. While I agree with you that EULER’s complex and multivariate analysis work was outstanding - he was instrumental in standardizing such now common notation as i for imaginary numbers, sigma for sums and the common function notation f(x). Nothing minor about that.
For the interested layperson - Feynman provides gushing praise of his work.
AMEN @Barbara S! So excited to see someone else celebrating Seneca Falls. Now we need to fix the Roe debacle and get some equality for all momentum going.
I'll just make my whole post be about RCA.
First: Weird to use Diana Ross as an example of an RCA artist when all her huge hits, including post-Supremes, were on Motown. She switched to RCA in the early 1980's, had a few lower-end Top 10 hits, then returned to Motown at the end of the decade.
Second: I was working in Sam Goody's record store in August 1977 when Elvis died. Starting the next morning there was a endless stream of customers coming in to ask for something, anything, by Elvis. We had had maybe three albums total in stock because he just wasn't selling at that point. Now, suddenly, *everybody* had to have his music. This went on for weeks. RCA was completely unprepared to deal with it!; whatever product they had on hand disappeared immediately, and they couldn't manufacture and ship enough to satisfy the insane demand everywhere. It took months before we got any more Elvis albums in stock.
•••
I liked the puzzle. Except for the OH before WOE. Also had DUG IN before HAD AT and SARAN before APRON.
Private EYES, by another RCA artist
The tight grid, and the consistent theme gave this such a lovely smooth solve that I can forgive the weaker clues. This was just such a solid, classic NYT Wednesday.
@LMS, along with others, I appreciate and enjoyed your final comment about language. Like our Constitution, language must be flexible in order to respond to societal, historic and artistic change.
Excellent Wednesday. Thanks Billy Bratton
@Joe D: Thanks for the Diana Ross explainer. I thought that must have been an error.
"I was working in Sam Goody's record store in August 1977 when Elvis died," says Joe Dipinto. Aha! The scales have fallen from my eyes.
Now I finally understand Joe's incredible ability to remember what was on the Billboard Charts year by year, decade by decade. I always attributed it to his having a photographic memory, but it's a lot less surprising when it's part of a person's job.
It's like my working at the Literary Guild in the '60s and '70's. Give me a book title from back then, pretty much any book title, and out pops the name of the author. I didn't read all those books, mind you -- I didn't read the overwhelming majority of them-- and in any event the Guild took only a small fraction of what was published. But somehow title/author was in the ether and it seeped into my consciousness and seems to have stayed there more than most things these days -- other than song lyrics, of course.
I went into Sam Goody's every now and then back in the day, and I wonder if I ever saw you there, Joe?
This was a fun little theme. Rex's suggested title is quite clever. They should have titles every day, it would be excellent!
I can't remember any typeovers except for SATIR before SITAR, which is just my tired sun-addled brain being silly last night.
Speaking of last night...
[Spelling Bee:
No SB Sun or Mon as I was at the lake until yd, meeting my great niece and nephew's new significant others, and my latest 2 great great nieces! This also meant I didn't start Tues until 9 pm after 4 hours driving home, and only got to -1 before crashing. But I got the last word just now Wed morning, so I'm counting it as a 0. So @Barbara S, I'm also counting my streak at extending to 5.
Last week, Sun to Sat: -1, 0, -1, 0, 0, 0, 0.]
What we need is the Equal Rights Amendment passed. If we had that we’d still have Roe.
@Nancy – I worked in the Rockefeller Center Sam Goody's, at the corner of 51st St. and 6th Ave. Lots of celebs used to come in.
As far as remembering stuff, if it's an area you're interested in I think all sorts of ephemeral stuff will naturally stick in your head.
Finished it without looking up a thing, so a winner in my book. Still a noob.
pwned is ridiculous not matter how “old” it is. NYT should be above this crap.
Since so many of you all liked this puzzle, I'll have to go over in the other corner and stand by myself. I didn't think it was TOO BAD, it just that, other than being mundane and uninteresting, I don't see any other discernible connection among the alleged theme entries. I guess I'm just not "with it" today.
I won't PINE AWAY or say OH WOE IS ME. There was some interesting fill and for the plural of convenience (POC) aficionado, there were four of the two for one variety to hold my interest. SOB/TAKE, CAR/OHM, END/ART and PERIL/EYE all got a letter count boost by sharing a final S. Those Ss are the equivalent of helper/cheater squares. They make it easier to fill the grid without adding much of value to the puzzle.
I thought this group would appreciate that I fell asleep while solving (I always solve right before bed and yesterday I moved houses and so it was midnight and I was very tired), so even though I solved it relatively quickly (finishing in the morning), my solve time was six hours and 53 minutes!
Adorbs has been in the Times fairly often of late.
I remember the first few times many didn’t like it but each time the complaints got fewer.
People don’t complain about’60’s slang so why complain about current lingo? I tell myself that even though I don’t like the sound of it.
I just don’t agree that there is something especially wrong about the Times puzzle and the editor’s’ choice of words.
I liked the puzzle.
Join with all who disown pwned. Also don’t like the way too cutesy ‘adorbs.’ But I did like the puzzle. I must have had pine away before apron, because Saran never came to mind. Also Hades before any 1 Across so the ugly ‘had at’ filled in. I read devouring as destroying (fire devouring a house) not as eating.
This was pleasant, awkward, and fast. Kinda like me.
Finally an OHO instead of the very wrong AHA.
Uniclues:
1 Instructions I will include in my will.
2 Where I intend to host my next pity party.
3 Befuddled inner monologue while surfing Realtor.com.
4 Boats, according to the movie Titanic.
5 Become a Swiftie.
6 Sweetie with a flat patootie.
7 Raising a glass when they cover the spread.
8 DQ saves.
1 ASH BOWLING BALL
2 OH WOE IS ME ARENA (~)
3 I MEAN ... THAT ... DECOR (~)
4 SURE FIRE PERILS
5 ESTEEM SINGER
6 ALT BASS BAE
7 BOOKMAKER TOAST
8 DILLY ENDS SOBS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Where exactly should we grab and lift? HOIST ITT ISSUE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
NYT should not accept a "word" like PWNED that originated as a typo (and still makes sense only as a typo).
You just self pwned, noob.
Asking that question is a self pwn, noob.
"(please, have mercy on me and do not do this, it's quite embarrassing)"
This is the success and beauty and pay off of a daily writing practice - you only get better by actually doing the work, not sitting around and waiting to get better. So yay you.
I also hate looking back at my previous self, but imagine how boring your life would be if you looked back a decade or two or three and DIDN'T cringe!
Too much Newspeak to suit me. Never did like BAE: too lazy to pronounce the second B? ADORBS...isn't. And then there's NOOB--and its clue! Cmon, guys: pwned??? IT'S EVEN IMPOSSIBLE TO PRONOUNCE!!! Oh, that's right. Today we don't speak with our tongues anymore; we speak with our thumbs. I tell ya, I'm glad I'm old! Centuries from now, explorers will unearth a frozen human, and they won't find a larynx.
But his thumbs will be slender and have six joints.
Theme was OK, the solve was easy if irritating, and good old UMA comes back for another DOD sash. Par.
Wordle whew! 6, but with two sets of repeating letters--one of them V's--I think I did OK.
ODD & ENDS
UMA HAD an EXAM,
a SUREFIRRE DILLY, you see,
THAT doc said, "IMEAN, ma'am,
LET's RETRY THAT from 'FEELME'."
--- SAUL EULER
BEATNIKPOEM: Snap to it! And it fits. UMA BAE BAE.
Wordle bogey 5
Good puzzle. Challenging for a Wednesday.
I've always loved the Euler(s), and was sad when he moved from Houston to Tennessee, but at least now, he is a Titan!
@aon - haha I get the German pronunciation. Good one.
Hi, I am always a few weeks behind on my puzzles. So this is a bit late. Re 26d, Parker Posey, Adam Driver.... Cars. Is this because of their names? Parker and Driver? Or am I missing something? Thanks
Post a Comment