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Tourist town NE of Snowbird / SAT 7-15-23 / Crayon alternative / Plant genus named after the Greek goddess of nature / Concern for a physiognomist / One of many produced in a particle accelerator / Bloody Mary request / Tech debut of 2011
Saturday, July 15, 2023
Constructor: Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: EARL Boykins (50D: ___ Boykins, longtime N.B.A. player who stood at only 5'5") —
Earl Antoine Boykins (born June 2, 1976) is a former American professional basketball player. Standing at 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) in height, he is the second-shortest player in NBA history behind Muggsy Bogues, who is 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) tall. He was the head coach for the Douglas County High School boys varsity basketball team. He is now serving as an assistant coach for the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Miners. // Boykins was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1976. As a child his 5' 8" father, Willie Williams, would sneak Boykins into a gym in his gym bag. [...] Boykins played college basketball at Eastern Michigan University from 1994 to 1998. Eastern Michigan won the MAC tournament in 1996 and 1998. He earned All-Mid-American Conference first-team honors in his junior and senior year. Also, during his senior season, Boykins was second in the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship in scoring, with an average of 26.8 points per game. [...] Boykins was never drafted by an NBA team, but he was signed to short-term contracts by five different NBA teams before signing a five-year, $13.7 million contract with the Denver Nuggets prior to the 2003–2004 season. On November 11, 2004, Boykins scored 32 points in a 117–109 Nuggets' home win over the Detroit Pistons, making him the shortest player in NBA history to score 30 or more points during a game. (wikipedia)
• • •
"WE'RE ON A ROLL" is dad-joke stupid, which is probably why I liked it. Talking sesame seeds, why not? If you're gonna be silly, be Big Silly. I was able to get EXPLICIT CONTENT without looking at the clue because I drilled right down through the middle of that answer with ease and then explicitly (?) stopped to see if I could make out the answer from those center letters without looking at the clue. It wasn't hard. I had -ICITCON-, which means you pretty much gotta break the answer between ICIT and CON, and once you do that, bam, the answer's right there. The only hard speed bump I encountered was OIL PASTEL, which ... I don't know what that is. In art contexts, I know what OILs are and I know what PASTELs are, but OIL PASTELs, no sir. I was kinda proud of myself for taking a look at -ILP- and getting OIL PENCIL. Never heard of such a thing, but my brain was satisfied, very satisfied, with that answer's plausibility. And then the final "L" was right so I was feeling pretty happy with OIL PENCIL ... until everything broke down immediately thereafter. ALTA and PEER really wanted to be ALTA and PEER, which screwed with PENCIL. So (speaking of "screwed"), I screwed SCREW TOPS into place, pulled PENCIL, wrote in PEER, wrote in PASTEL, pulled CAPS, wrote in TOPS, and finally I was back in business. I say "finally"—it probably didn't take all that long. But that corner stood out from the rest of the grid, as it actually required some concerted effort.
Dropping down from top to bottom on this one was probably the most dangerous-seeming part. I failed to break through with ON THE INSIDE (no idea about the INSIDE part) (23D: Where spies work), but AMERICAN LIT was a cinch (25D: English class largely unconcerned with the English?), and I was able to get at the INSIDE part of ON THE INSIDE from below. Not much else to say about this one. It seemed a little "?" happy, but not in a way that was excessively off-putting. I had trouble making sense of the clues on FOAM (2D: Head of the bar?) (it's the "head" on your beer) and TURN (52D: Take for a spin?) (it's self-explanatory, but for some reason the clue just didn't compute—TURN was kind of anticlimactic, as "spin" is just a synonym for "TURN," so all the rest of that clue just felt like clutter; very low "wackiness" factor). I did not know Natasha's last name was FATALE, as in "femme FATALE," that's great (10D: Natasha ___ ("Rocky and Bullwinkle" antagonist). I even kinda liked the SHARD clue (36A: Item that can be described by changing its last letter to a P). Not usually a fan of the "... if you change three letters and then move the first letter to the end and say 'Candyman' three times" type of clue, but the simplicity of the change here, and the close connection between the two words, made this one feel clever. The ART pile-up in the SE is a mini-inelegance that I could do without (crossing ART with ARTIE and throwing ARTEMISIA (?) into the bargain), but I really don't have any significant gripes about this puzzle. Felt Friday, not Saturday, but I (more often than not) like Friday, so I'm happy. 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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73 comments:
Art film????
Art film https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_film
With the exception of the northeast corner, this felt more like a
Wednesday than a Saturday.
Haven’t moved through a puzzle this easily (long clues included) since,
well, Wednesday.
So it was fun, super-well constructed - but too facile for a Saturday.
tc
I don't expect a lot from a Jeff Chen puzzle so I wsnt disappointed when it filled in so steadily. This took almost the exact same time as yesterday's solve but it felt easier. Partly that was due to the Friday like level of resistance on a Saturday.
Once again I did this on my phone which I dislike but I didn't want to have to wait for the paper to be delivered in the morning. As so often happens the format tainted the solve. Phisiognomist was one of those words I couldn't quite pin down. I left RACE and RATALE in there knowing it was most likely wrong and when I got the "Almost there" after filling out the puzzle in the SW I immediately saw that it was FATALE and changed it but it still felt like a dnf. This was a good example of why I prefer solving on paper.
I partly blame RATALE on watching the the last episode of "Succession " before solving last night. Once again they mentioned a minor character called Ratfuck- Somebody and I always get a kick out of that name. It was a very easy fix but still less than a perfect solve.
yd -0
A lot of fun misdirection on the clues but this ended up playing pretty easy for a Saturday
WERE ON A ROLL alone was worth the price of admission. Just sweet and cute and I can’t wait to turn it into a joke for my 6-year-old nephew.
But yeah, generally a lovely, easy-ish puzzle for me, and I liked it more than I typically like Jeff Chen’s work. Today I learned about MESONs and got to feel proud of myself for dropping in ARTEMISIA with just the first A. I know not everyone enjoys a trivia-laden puzzle, but it’s probably my favorite part of late-week crosswords, that opportunity to learn something new or to coax some obscure fact out of the attic of one’s mind.
Also, I hope that I made someone’s solve easier today by having commented about Alex Haley’s work on the Autobiography of Malcolm X yesterday! That was a fun coincidence.
I’m off shortly to try and hike West Kill Mountain before it gets too rainy later in the day - wish me luck! (More Devil’s Path today for the few folks among you that might know the area.)
I have a half-dozen puzzles in varying states of development with ‘Natasha’, FATALE, or ‘Natasha Fatale’ in the grid. It’s never made it all the way into a puzzle I’ve submitted. Congratulations to Jeff for making it work.
Knowing that, plus PAULI really helped a lot with today’s puzzle.
Although overall I agree with Rex that there is no consistency in Friday difficulty compared to Saturday, I had the opposite experience to him this week. This was MUCH harder than yesterday’s. Not that it was particularly hard, just that yesterday's was so easy.
Attractive grid design - cluing was a little too straightforward for a Saturday. Knew a lot of the long trivia which helped - agree with Rex that the colloquial lean was comfortable. Any puzzle that includes the great PAULI is ok in my book.
SAY NO MORE
@Weezie - I grew up in the area and spent plenty of time on West Kill and Hunter and actually have studied the watershed. It’s a wonderful place - enjoy the falls.
You’ll spend more time with Mossberg’s Stumper today.
Here she comes you better watch your step
WHy for WHA slowed me down in the SW, making the second word in OIL PASTELS hard to see, especially considering that I, like Rex, had never heard of them. Still, a quick, easy solve overall.
So very, very quick. Like, Tuesday quick. But not bad at all. It somehow felt like it was making me feel smart by tossing me softballs that felt like I was being extra smart. Strangely, that made it fun.
Just too short.
I don't have many complaints. WE'RE ON A ROLL was wonderful.
Like Rex, I was briefly held up around the OIL PASTEL area. My problem was that although I immediately thought "OIL PASTELS", I threw in SRI as the foreign title and thought that made INK PASTELS, which felt wrong but what do I know? Then I tried SRA and ART PASTELS. Finally I hit on SAO, and it worked out.
BTW, @Rex: Oil pencils are absolutely a real thing.
With no other crosses I first wrote in TAOS, but immediately removed it because it was so obviously in the wrong direction. Replaced it with MOAB because that's at least in the same state. Had to wait for the first "A" before ALTA came to me.
Other thoughts: The wiki blurb about Earl Boykins is a nice follow-up to the eye-roll I made yesterday about sports stats: Shortest player to score more than 30 points in a game? Who keeps track of this stuff? There has only ever been one other player shorter than him. Whatever Bogues' highest score is, any amount over that will make Boykins "the shortest player ever to score X points." Such a waste of time. But not much more than me bothering to write about it. SIGH
Those "...take the second letter of the name of an obscure poet and replace it with the first letter of the number of the day he was born and turn the whole thing around and thow salt over your shoulder and do the hokey-pokey" clues are one of Shortz's favorites. Just listen to his Puzzlemaster segment on Weekend Edition. It's infuriating.
Final thought: shout out to Chen for the interesting grid layout. Rotational symmetry is one of the dumbest rules crossword snobs live by. How pretty all the black and white squares look is waaaay far down on my list of things I care about when solving a puzzle.
I got a chuckle out of the row with MESON THAIS - for some reason MESON THAIS sounded like something you would say to somebody that just sneezed in a foreign country somewhere (or maybe the name of a punk rock band a la Hüsker Dü).
I thought Jeff whiffed on the clue for WHA, which sounded like a real stretch to me (of course, a lot of JC’s clues are “real stretches”, especially on a Saturday, so no real news there). Maybe it’s a regional colloquialism and people do say “WHA?” when they are concerned that you are slowly distancing yourself from your own marbles.
Similarly SYLL seems like a stretch as well - APT as an abbreviation, sure. SYLL, well, not so much.
After first pass… “Oh. Ooh. Oof. So vague. Tough nut.” (Foot pointing toward the door.)
But a second look brought a few fill-ins. Then began the begats. One solving skill that experience has given me is seeing whole words when only one or two letters are filled in. Suddenly, with a cross appearing in an answer, a WHA clue becomes an aha clue, begetting a quick fill-in, which presents the opportunity for more of same. On the best days, the begats avalanche.
Today, for me, was one of those days. What I thought was going to be a marathon transformed into a heady sprint. My whoa became a whee.
There’s art and mastery in creating clues that transform from vague to obvious, and high props to Jeff on that. I also loved those gorgeous longer acrosses: TAKE CENTER STAGE, WE’RE ON A ROLL, SAY NO MORE, EXPLICITCONTENT, and CASE INSENSITIVE. Furthermore, I got a kick out of the fact that Jeff, a tech nerd, did not use a computer-related clue for USER. In addition, there was that lovely interconnected trifecta of ART, ARTIE, and ARTEMISIA (Hi, @Rex!).
Jeff, you scared me, ensnared me, then thrilled me. What a lovely Saturday solve. You are a Crosslandia treasure. Thank you for this!
Doesn't anyone remember cray-pas from their youth? Those oil pastels were so much fun to draw with.
OED unit = syll? Why in the world should a syllable be specific to the OED? Every word in every language in every dictionary in the world has at least one. Otherwise an ok puzzle.
Not easy here, finally got some traction and had a smooth-ish if slow-ish solve. Not exactly @Lewis's avalanche, more like a hillside creep, which is a term I learned in my ninth-grade Earth Science class. Of course one poor unfortunate who had a slope side house was immediately nicknamed The Hillside Creep.
Natasha FATALE ! Boris Badunov ! The R & B writers sure had some fun. I remember Bullwinkle's alma mater as Whatsamatta U. Great stuff.
Took too long to see EXPLICITCONTENT, as I had written in ALEXHALEY but my X looked like a Y. Unhelpful. Read that book on a boat going across the Atlantic, on my way to my Junior Year Abroad.
Liked seeing CENTERSTAGE, which is the name of a double album by my favorite acoustic guitar vituosos, Tommy Emmanuel. Highly recommended.
A very nice Saturday with just the right amount of pushback. This Judge's Choice for best Saturday in a while, JC, and thanks for all the fun.
Got everything except the WHA/OILPASTEL cross. I'm very surprised that Rex didn't comment on WHA as a question. It isn't a question, it's a sound, clued as a question for the sake of somehow completing a grid.
There's a lot of good in this puzzle, but for me WHA spoiled it.
It doesn't say it's specific to the OED.
FOAM was my first answer in, and from that lone A, I wrote in TAKE CENTER STAGE. A few of the other long answers went in quickly - WE’RE ON A ROLL with just a few crosses and ALEX HALEY without any (not sure I’d have pulled it from memory so quickly without seeing yesterday’s comment - thanks, @Weezie). With all those long ones falling, it should have been easier than it was. But both grid spanners in the bottom half were hard for me to see. I spent way too long trying to think of a record company that started with EX. And the long downs that ended in the south tripped me up: SCREW toPS for CAPS, I have to GO for BETTER, MAIN actor? stage? for EVENT, and OIL PenciL for PASTEL (the great three-letter answer WHA got me away from pencil pretty quickly but I still couldn’t see the right answer. Still pretty easy for a Saturday, but a fun solve.
Thx, Jeff, for the excellent workout! 😊
Tough.
Actually, had a great start in the top half; was ON A ROLL, and then it all fell apart.
Big GULP at the end, when I got the bad news: error!
Took a while to hunt down my gaff: ironically it was just under OH GOD, where I had casually dropped in OnE for OLE. I could see that PAUnI didn't look right, but totally forgot to come back to it. D'oh! 😔
OIL PAints before OIL PASTEL was a woe, esp since the clue was singular.
Oh well, can't win 'em all. Nevertheless, a fine puz and good mind stretcher. :)
___
On to Steve Mossberg's Sat. Stumper. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Brain wanted ASTERICAE for the plant genus, which fits, and happened to fit the few crosses I had at the time, and represents the common crossword flower ASTER, but is wrong on no less (and possibly more) than three counts (spelled wrong, not a genus, & nothing to do with any Greek deities).
Wow that SW corner had a LOT of proper nouns. Alex Haley, Alta and Earl Boykins that I could not just figure out like I usually do. Had to search up Earl (even though I had guessed it, but not for any particular reason other than it has a lot of Crossword letters) and Alex Haley which is highly embarrassing and I probably shouldn’t publicize it. Especially since I had ALEXH-, oh well. Otherwise, adorable. WERE ON A ROLL really cracked me up!
I used to own a small chain of Hot Diggity Dog stores. Our marketing tag line for food court developers was "We're On a Roll!" Groan!
Natasha fatale and Boris badinov - Cold War villains! Very enjoyable!
Welp, I’ll admit it: this was a challenge for me! I must be having an off day. But I have to groan at CASEINSENSITIVE because everyone says Google searches (or usernames or whatever) are “not case sensitive.” Who says they are “case insensitive”?
@Lewis, just had to say how much I enjoy your posts—and marvel at them! They’re always so gracious and articulate and positive, and you so beautifully capture the joys of solving. Thank you for being you.
Love!
The clock is ticking down. They're coming for my final answers. I have a split-second to make my decision...and both answers can't possibly be right:
Is it SCREWTAPS/ALTA or is it SCREWTOPS/OLTA?
I know that ALTA is a ski town, but I've never heard of OLTA.
I know that SCREWTOPS are a Thing, but I've never heard of SCREWTAPS.
At the last minute, I scrawl in an "A" over my "O" -- and cross my fingers. Then I come here.
Oh my goodness! Everything, except for ALTA, is wrong!!!
It's not tASk INSENSITIVE. It's CASE INSENSITIVE (whatever the hell that means.)
It's not kARL Boykins; it's EARL BOYKINS.
And it's SCREWCAPS!!! Why, of course it is!!!
(This, btw, is why I don't enter puzzle tournaments.)
A thoroughly enjoyable, well-clued, and challenging puzzle about which I don't have a single complaint or objection. A worthy opponent that beat me today -- though happily it was only a one-letter defeat.
Hey All !
Welp, further evidence of the decline of my OLE brain. Y'all thought this puz easy (well, a lot of you did), I found it quite tough! Didn't Goog today, but broke down and hit Reveal Word on a few of them! Easier than going to Goog. Har.
Revealed AMI, even though I should've gotten that one just from French Bestie, but angstness overwhelmed me after not getting anything in that SE corner. Also, had SRI for SAO, again, a blank slate in SW corner, so Revealed for SAO. Throw in a Check Puzzle or two, and you have the complete and utter breakdown of the puz kicking my butt. I have to go ice my eye...
SAY NO MORE reminds me of Monty Python's Wink Wink Nudge Nudge skit.
I always want to spell REESES as REECES. Maybe I'm confusing RECESS?
Oddly clued ALEX HALEY. Clue says " Writer who collaborated with Malcolm X on his posthumous 1965 autobiography". The way it's worded, it sounds to me like a collaboration after X died. I was like, "how do you collaborate with someone who is dead?"
Grid looks sort of like a smiley face with mutton chops.
Alright, I BETTER GO.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Meh. Saturday.
Sesame seeds don't talk! Well maybe they do. Whaddah I know? They're probably all, "I hate it nobody ever thinks of sesame plants and they gobble us down with all this wasted potential, and I liked living outside in Myanmar better than in this bottle in this lady's cabinet in Peoria, I wonder if she knows I'm an angiosperm {tee hee}, maybe she'll have an allergic reaction, I mean she deserves it the way she hangs out with those rat bastard poppy seeds like a hookah addict all day."
No salt on a Bloody Mary. Heh. I didn't know those are salted. Thought it was just margaritas.
Nice: That center stack.
Tee-Hee: OH GOD FACE and EXPLICIT CONTENT. Ohhhh yeah.
Uniclues:
1 The lids on every wine cooler I ever attempted to give to a woman. (Never worked.)
2 The one that makes the Monet's blurry.
3 Harrison on the outside, and...
4 Climbing into the squirrel cage.
1 APT SCREW CAPS
2 ASKEW OIL PASTEL
3 HAN ON THE INSIDE
4 COG'S MAIN EVENT
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The Moon Uncle in Fralatinish. LES LUNA TIO
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Medium, and fun to figure out. First in: FACE X Natasha FATALE, which put me in a good mood right away: I loved that show, which originally aired when I was just old enough to understand the INSIDE jokes. A treat of a show. Anyway, getting the NE corner easily allowed me to back into CENTER STAGE and finish the top half of the hourglass apace. Then a major slowdown and pick-pick-picking away to finish at CONMAN x CASE INSENSITIVE, a phrase I regarded with WHA? (hi, Marissa 9:02)
I really liked the stack beginning with the sesame seeds declaring WE'RE ON A ROLL, followed by the response SAY NO MORE - LET'S EAT!
@Weezie 6:53, you bet your comment helped me. I "knew" the name from having read the book years ago, but otherwise would have needed crosses to jog my memory. Instead: instant write-in.
What a healthy treat, virtually junk-free! This has been a winning NYT puzzle week, starting with the Sunday special and concluding with this charmer (Thursday was an outlier). Methinks the NYT may be ONAROLL.
Bravo Mr. Chen!
And thank you, Weezie @6:53, for reminding us of the Alex Haley/Malcom X connection yesterday. Read that opus decades ago. Just last week finished the new MLK bio (Malcolm is of course a player there), and it is a masterful work, with all the warts and the heroism newly viewed.
Sigh. Saturday is enough of a challenge for me but then add Jeff Chen to the mix and I know I’m probably in trouble. Needed help with the French terms and couple of the names but after all was said and done, I must ADMIT it was not as challenging as I expected. Thanks be to the GOD of crosswords for having mercy on me today.
AVER/AVOW, SHY OF/SHORT, WHY/WHA, HAILY/HALEY, HARL/EARL. Many erasures, again normal for me on day seven . . . which, come to think of it, is a good day for a nice Bloody Mary but I’ll take mine with plenty of SALT.
A friend of mine spent about 30 days in Mauritania on a business trip. I don’t recall he ever mentioned noticing any ARAB influence but it was not an altogether pleasant experience.
My brain made a connection between hockey's LEAFS answer yesterday and today's sesame seeds. It was looking back fondly to when (1) there were only the original six NHL teams: NY, CHI, TOR, MTL, DET, and BOS, and (2) there were only six bagel options: Plain, sesame, poppy, onion, garlic, and pumpernickel. Even "everything" was too exotic to imagine. (Rex -- I hope you got to enjoy the excellent bagels at Uncommon Grounds in Saratoga Springs when you were there.)
While many of you refer to @Rex as OFL, no one has yet mentioned that Boris and Natasha’s boss was ……Fearless Leader.
This might have been themeless, but there was plenty of food for thought. REESES, WEREONAROLL, NOSALT Bloody Mary, MILLE-Feuille, LETSEAT!
When a Downeasterner finally lets loose with his ire, I guess it would be a MAINEVENT.
ALTA is fine, but I prefer AVAIL or an Aspen.
Thanks for a fun Saturday, Jeff Chen.
A better clue for “coral” would be “rapacious jewelry material” or “destructive jewelry material.” Better yet, avoid the jewelry angle and connect the clue to coral’s importance in the ecosystem of our oceans.
@Eater of Sole - Astericae was better than you think -- Yes, it's spelled wrong and not a genus, but Asteria was a Greek goddess, probably best known as the mother of Hecate.
Well, I did finish without having to look up that basketball player, or anything else, but i found it a lot harder than most of you. I worked through the whole V-formation at the tom, down to ELI crossing NOSALT, but I couldn't see either EXPLICIT CONTENT or ON THE INSIDE, and for some reason neglected to look at the clue for AMERICAN LIT. (And why does that clue have a ? It's just literal. Is it supposed to tip us off to the informal LIT? No, can't be.) So I started over with the foreign title. I thought there must be more than Sri, so I left it blank. I can never remember when things happened, so ipad before SIRI, which blocked a lot. and then there was 33-D. I have to GO seemed so obviously right, and I wasn't sure if the puzzle wanted Moor or ARAB. And then, really stupidly, my mind told me that R and T were the 3d and 4th letters of ARTIE!
I can't even remember how I finally sorted it out, but sort it I did!
Mild complaint: a SCREWCAP is no more a bottle opener than a cork would be.
Interesting juxttaposition: SAO, a title you cannot obtain until you are dead, crossing ALEX HALEY, clued as collaborating with the dead Malcolm X. Haley says in his introduction that Malcolm was pretty rigid during their interviews, but Haley noticed that he kept scribbling notes on little pieces of paper, so Haley took to gathering them up after the session and found them full of insights. Malcolm never saw the text that was published, so "collaborated" may not be the right word.
Gird my loins...it's a Jeff Chen puzzle....!
EASY? Ay Dios mío. Or...OH GOD. I just stared for a while until something, anything, looked familiar. I started with REESES. That answer opened a few little doors. Staring and staring further at the long answers.
My first longie was WE'RE ON A ROLL. Fun. I checked to see if that was correct. It was.
The top part of the puzzle was coming together until.....physiognomist. So that wrong corner became and remained wrong. You were a NAME not a FACE and Natasha and I never met. I gave you NATALE. I also like MOGS for unimportant workers. Move on with my mistakes and don't look back.
SAY NO MORE...I gotcha!
Crayon alternative ...Ah yes..OIL PASTEL. I've used them making an apple and a pear. I much prefer Watercolors. They ain't for kids!
The bottom. ARTIE was an ARNIE and my unknown plant was ARNEMESIA. It looked fine. It was the wrong APT # but I still rang the bell.
NEXT!
Thank you @Weezie for ALEX HAILEY. I just pulled it out of my hat. I knew I heard his name somewhere.
Safe hiking.
I got CASE INSENSITIVE from the downs and it made absolutely no sense. Same goes for the clue for EXPLICIT CONTENT. I got you too...I don't understand you, though.
Finished.
I had 4 CASE INSESITIVE's today. They were silly little ones. I got the long ones on my own so I'm perfectly happy with my results.
Favorite clue? 47A. I have little bitty ants in my kitchen. I can't bare to kill them. If I leave one little tiny drop of syrup on the counter, they all congregate and slurp it up.. I watch. Boy they work hard. I don't see them taking anything back to Mama Queen - maybe she doesn't like syrup - so I leave a tiny crumb from my crumpet and wait. They don't like crumpets...only syrup.
It's going to reach about 110 today so I think I'll go play with the ANTs.
@Lewis @7:54 - I, too ,am in your fan club. I love the image of crossword solving as an avalanche (or cascade, as I live in the PNW) of begats.
OK, @Nancy. Since you asked, I threw some nonsense up on my profile. It includes the following bad joke I just made up: How many cruciverbalists does it take to change a light bulb? ANS: Eleven -- six across and five down.
When I first started doing the weekly puzzles (20-25 years ago?) I always felt Fridays and Saturdays were interchangeably difficult. Sometimes I found Fridays harder, sometimes Saturdays, but there was little to no differentiation between the two. Lately they're both much easier than they used to be.
And so, yeah, this was easy, more so than yesterday's. Generally very pleasant. TAKE CENTER STAGE was immediately obvious at 17a. No AVOW/AVER kealoa today since the downs filled in that corner. (I wouldn't have expected either one to be the answer from the clue. Wha?)
Hated the clues for 36a and 41a. Also the talking sesame seeds. Can't we lose this juvenilia? Funny that ARTIE shows up right after Paul Simon was in the discussion in reference to a song about Artie.
Sinatra and Jobim...
...and that bitch Anne Murray too
DNF here as I didn't know Pauli, and the 'Ohgod' answer for (Gulp!) doesn't compute. So the Dakota section was no can do. Especially since I couldn't move on from 'keENEYES' Oh well, put me in the 'Friday was much easier this week' group. But I dig Jeff Chen's work.
@jberg; re. ‘screwcaps’, you are exactly right. I was trying to think of an apt comparison but you beat me to it with the perfect one in ‘cork’.
@jberg (10:51). Wonderful Alex Haley anecdote. We've got' a nice piece of cake for you. We have another one for Gill and her little crawly playmates.
Jeff Chen is one of my most favorite constructors but this one didn't feel like one of his. He writes that he left a lot of the cluing to the editors.
Mediumish for me. This seemed tougher than it was, probably because I had a lot of white space for a while. TAKE CENTER STAGE finally got me started. Interesting grid with a bit of sparkle, liked it. Solid Saturday.
Me too for Sri before SAO and WHy before WHA.
WOEs: PAULI, OIL PASTEL, ARTEMISIA, MILLE, RON (as clued)
@Mothra and @Tale Told By An Idiot -- Thank you for those very kind words; means very much to me!
You did mine!
The ones that give me the most trouble are invariably the ones that Rex labels as "easy." Acrosses and downs were equally baffling to me for the longest time. At some point, it all filled in, but much agony was required. Things like OIL PASTELS and WHA didn't help. I would much have preferred WTF for the latter.
My biggest beefs are:
- Natasha FATALE (I guess I thought it was Badnik? But Google tells me Boris is Badanov, so close enough.) The NE in general felt rough because of that.
- Using the proper noun Crayon and then a generic medium being OILPASTEL feels rough. I kept trying to make something like Rose Art work.
- Never heard them called SCREWCAPS, so I was staring at that forever wanting Twist to work in some way?
This did not feel like an easy puzzle to me, I thought it was pretty squarely a hard Saturday, but I've also been shaking off rust from a long hiatus, so maybe that's why.
I truly envy you guys who say "I've been doing puzzles for 20/30/90 years and they're much easier now." Now on the far side of 75, I find the puzzles harder simply because of stuff I just can't remember anymore. I mean "Ron"Rivera? "Earl" Boykins? Natsha "Fatale"? It seems like only yesterday, those names would have popped up immediately. Now I have to scramble with the crosses, make a few guesses and (okay,I'll admit it) occasionally cheat (but only on Friday or Saturday)! Oh well, as long as I can still get out of my chair and make it to the bathroom on time and to the refrigerator for the next cold one, I'm okay ... Cheer up: things could be worse! So I cheered up and sure enough things got worse!
* My wikipedia search credits this gag line to Joan Howard Mauer who has the great distinction of being the daughter of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. That must have been a hell of a childhood!
Not a whole lot tougher today than yesterday. I wasn't liking how TAKE CoNTrol worked with 17A's clue and wasn't sure what the rest of the phrase should be so COGS leading to STAGE was a big help.
1D a kealoa with APT vs APo.
I've heard CASE SENSITIVE but not its opposite using INSENSITIVE - usually isn't it "not CASE SENSITIVE"?
And I was looking at a product shortage at 57A with liMIT ONE which was probably what made the SW the toughest sector for me today.
Thanks, Jeff Chen, this was fun.
This was pretty much the perfect level of toughness, going from very tough, to slight progress, to finishing with confidence. At the start I had poor old Wolfgang PAULI all alone up there! (thanks, B.Sc. in physics)
I was sure Natasha was FATANA, because Natasha Fantana, it just sounds so perfect!
I don't think of WHA as a real question; you can argue it's rhetorical, I guess.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0, last word this 6er again. QB 3 days straight!... big whoop.]
Rex >> Not sure I like this trend of having no clear difficulty differentiation between Fri. and Sat...
Just to clarify, the first part of my earlier post was in response to the above comment by Rex. To me it does not seem like a "trend"; it's always been the case.
I dont get Bloody Mary salt clue? On the rim like a Margarita or a Salty Dog? Never heard of it?
Enjoyed the SatPuz mini-themers: ANT/ANTl & ART/ARTIE.
Also luved the Jaws of Themelessness & the E/We puzgrid symmetry.
staff weeject pick: HAN. The Chenmeister decided not to go Solo, on this puppy.
fave stuff: LETSEAT. WEREONAROLL clue. SHARD clue. Them mini-themers.
SYLL= harful Ow de Speration moment.
Thanx, Mr. Chenmeister dude.
p.s. Cryptic crosswords, a daily event in British papers such as The Guardian, have unusual clues. The clues have a normal hint, buried within a cryptic [a la runtpuz ??-marker clues] hint.
Example: {Negligent about a young lady??} = REMISS. Negligent is the normal hint, and about [RE] + a young lady [MISS] is the cryptic hint.
With all that in mind …
**gruntz**
@Son Volt 7:39, re: the Stumper - Indeed, I did. It took me an especially long time to understand the clues in the NW.
@Mothra 9:32 I totally agree. Lewis is always a beacon of fresh air.
I found today a bit tougher than the typical Saturday . . . . . so there!
I'll pile on. I love Lewis!
Stumpophiles-
Thought today's was slightly harder than today's NYT, which I did not find easy, but on the whole easier than most stumpers, if that makes any sense.
Surprised to see that so many found this easy. I haven't struggled on a Saturday like this in a while. DNF for me. Could be the hangover.
Very nice blog profile, @Liveprof. And a really, really good cruciverbalist joke!!! Could this be the funniest Rexblog profile of them all?
Just think -- if you ever lose your day job, you may have a future at SNL.
Ditto. BTW, @Weezie, I know you’re relatively new to the blog. As a long-time lurker and infrequent commenter I want to let you know what a refreshing and entertaining voice you bring. I look forward to your comments like I do those of @LMS and @Lewis. (Not to slight the many other regulars whose comments I also enjoy.)
Thank you for the very kind words, @Nancy -- much appreciated! It's downhill from here.
Back indoors to find Jeff’s grid as a lovely way of avoiding the heat seems very appropriate for a Saturday afternoon. Ditto to anonymous’s Weesie appreciation….maybe @Liveprof going blue may inspire her to add a profile? And mayhaps it’s time for some of us to update our movie/book/etc? I’m remiss for sure.
I definitely agree that syll was odd. I guess Chen couldn’t find another solution and Shortz thought it was okay. Somebody somewhere has used that! But it looks ugly!
On the other hand I thought wha was perfect. I doubt that it is regional. All over the country, some people say it and some don’t.
Not my youth! Nor since. But as people say, learned something.
For me wha is a question, short for what. Thought it was a perfect clue/ answer. Each to their own.
@ROOMONSTER, if I ever stroke out and need someone to communicate for me, I'm sending someone for you. You nailed my sentiments today to a "t". I had to return to the grid 2x to finish it up, so stymied I was today. Kept getting bogged down and needed to return with a fresh perspective.
Yesterday was a walk in the park. Today a slog through a marsh.
They put the Friday puzzle on Saturday and vice versa.
@SaltySolver 12:42pm:
Crayola the maker of crayons, also makes oil pastels. The "c" in crayon is capitalized because the first word in clues is always capitalized.
I found this puzzle much harder than yesterday's, but then again, I found yester puzzle easy. Also, since I have a tendency to not write answers in, unless I'm pretty dang sure that the crossers are going to work, otherwise my grid ends up looking like an inkblot test. So, I finally tell myself, just go for it, and start writing answers in. Lo and behold, the only writeovers I had were in the southwest skyscraper section, parts of which only I and a cryptologist can decipher.
Eat too Artsy in the SE.
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