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Embellish something unnecessarily / SAT 8-19-2023 / Component of a Zoom call / Bronze finish, maybe / They come full circle / 1909 Nobelist for contributions to the invention of radio / Fall behind in the end
Saturday, August 19, 2023
Constructor: David P. Williams
Relative difficulty: Challenging
THEME: None
Word of the Day: MITOSIS (11D: Cell division) —
In cell biology, mitosis (/maɪˈtoʊsɪs/) is a part of the cell cycle in which replicated chromosomes are separated into two new nuclei. Cell division by mitosis gives rise to genetically identical cells in which the total number of chromosomes is maintained.[1] Therefore, mitosis is also known as equational division.[2][3] In general, mitosis is preceded by S phase of interphase (during which DNA replication occurs) and is often followed by telophase and cytokinesis; which divides the cytoplasm, organelles and cell membrane of one cell into two new cells containing roughly equal shares of these cellular components.[4] The different stages of mitosis altogether define the mitotic (M) phase of a cell cycle—the division of the mother cell into two daughter cells genetically identical to each other.[5]
• • •
Onto the puzzle. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this kind of themeless grid design. I find the big middle very intimidating at first, so I always start around the corners and see if I can get traction anywhere. The corners can be a bit closed off from the middle (understandably ... it's already very hard to get two triple stacks to intersect ... are significantly harder if they are also very dependent on every corner), but eventually I get enough of a foothold and things move quickly. That's always my experience with this type of grid ... slow and fighting for every single entry at first (the hate part of the relationship) and then, suddenly ... whoosh whoosh I'm filling all the long answers in one after the other (the love part). Do other people have this type of experience with grids like this? Let me know!
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| A LOLCAT. It's funny to me that this used to be peak internet humor. It does not seem funny to me in 2023! |
Anyways ... lots of fun stuff in the corners: HELL YEAH, SPRAY TAN, SIDE EYE, MITOSIS (I like science, okay), GO TO TOWN, TOO BAD. The intersecting stacks didn't wow me as much, but I'm pretty sure that's on me. CABARET CARD, HOBBY HORSES and GILD THE LILY were all new to me, and while they are fun and evocative phrases, I find it a lot more rewarding to plonk down familiar long stuff. The first was really totally new to me, the latter two were in this hazy place in my brain where they felt like things I'd seen before, but I wasn't totally sure about them. I did love CABARET CARD as an entry though ... there is an interesting history behind it (involving racism, sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly) that I encourage you to read up on. Oh, and MOLLYCODDLE is great. 10/10 word. Other words should take note and be as good as MOLLYCODDLE.
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| Why does a LOONIE have 11 sides? This is certainly something I could easily Google |
Because of the unfamiliarity of some of the stuff in the middle, this one played hard for me. I have a brutal error in the bottom right ... DRS instead of MDS ... and then RELAYS (a relay radio is a thing, right? I thought the trickiness was "radioactive" as in active on the radio) instead of DECAYS ... which I "confirmed" with the R, and the E, and the A, and the Y, and the S! I was working hard to convince myself that a DEBTEE might be [One getting schooled] before fixing that mistake.
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| SATAY is yum |
The short stuff here is super solid ... there's very little I could reasonably try to fault. FIE, perhaps? RIAS? It really is a remarkably clean grid. Impressive!
Bullets:
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
- 40D MAYER: Supposed subject of Taylor Swift's "Dear John" — I am a *huge* Swiftie so this was, naturally, my favorite clue in the puzzle. Plus it was nice to be 100% sure of an answer in that tricky corner.
- 25D PEELE: Key's partner — Fun misdirect in the clue, the age-old proper noun hidden in the first word of the clue. As you may recall from previous posts, I am not a movie person ... but I have been meaning to watch Peele's "Nope" -- should I?
- 29A MONEY SAVERS: Coupons, e.g. — Sometimes I get TikTok videos of extreme couponers buying cartloads of things for something like $0.31 after scanning all their coupons. That sounds like a lot of work, but it is quite thrilling to watch the total keep decreasing as the coupons are getting processed.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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91 comments:
I do like me some fiendish/devilish cluing for my Saturday rush. How should I put this....Today, I felt like a storm might be brewing and it did. It was full of hazy clouds and rain and snow and some hard pelts of hail. Of course this doesn't make any sense except to me.
So, a basketball is a SPHERE....Check... but boring. So theater backers are SCRIMS which I'm assuming is short for scrimmage which is some sort of competitive game you play yada yada yada. Check. Put that in the hazy clouds category. A Swish miss is a RIF? If you say so...Reduction of force? I think of Swish as a hissing sound......So... these little nuggets were a few of the hazy clouds hanging over my head....There were others; I shan't bore you.
The weather improved with some really nice sunshine. The longies!. I got you....HELL YEAH, I did.
So I do a little MOLLY CODDLE with GARBO as she does her GILD THE LILY dance. Fun to watch. I wasn't too happy with HOBBY HORSES becoming preoccupations although I'm sure they do worry. My husband gave me SPLIFF because he likes Bob Marley and he knows those thing. I got MILAN and ARLES because I like art and know those things. I like STINK EYE better than SIDE EYE. Should I worry about Swift's "Dear John" MAYEW? I won't
So...my little Saturday chocolate bon bon didn't really fancy my tickle. Perhaps the nuts needed less salt. Maybe my Callebaut No 811 got lost in Belgium....I don't know.
Will I change my mind after I go to sleep? Wake me when the sun comes up.....
Easy-medium. This was fun! The NW and SE were delightful. Liked it a bunch! A fine debut!
My biggest problem was waiting for answers like FAYE and MARCONI to float the the surface.
lotto before BOCCE
ALDEN (as clued) was a WOE.
Agree with Rafa - very clean grid! Had no idea about "Cabaret Card", so also good to learn something new. The phrase "hobby horse" was rattling around somewhere in my brain, but didn't associate it with preoccupation. Always happy to finish the Saturday in just a couple of cups of coffee!
Everything went smoothly until the SE. I had to lookup SKYNET to finish. I've seen most or all of the Terminator movies but SKYNET doesn't ring a bell.
If you'd like to help, Maui Food Bank seems to be a good choice.
Some sweet entrees and only eight Terrible Threes. Very nice.
Not exactly whoosh-whoosh but Medium-ish for a Saturday. I got hung up in the SE until I realized that "Ones calling the shots" at 35A is a three-way kealoa: DRS/RNS/MDS. Trying each one I managed to get MENTEE, which led to solving the corner and the happy music.
Wanted PREset for the concrete clue at 2D; in fact, the incorrect set was the first thing I entered. That slowed me a bit in the NW, but was fixed by EXT. angelS before SCRIMS for the theater backers at 7A, INborn before INNATE at 18A, because I misremembered the "Anchorman" character as ROb. Wanted STratUm for the Level at 33D, but it didn't fit. Briefly considered STrata.
A rare Saturday finish for me! Many delightful phrases as noted and fun references. SE was hardest and I had several attempts of some words ("easy" before "MEEK") then erasing and figuring out "DECAYS" which made things more obvious. If Saturdays were more like this I would try more often .... :-)
You need to fix your SE corner! Looks like you had fEwEST instead of MEREST, giving you RIf instead of RIM and MAYEf instead of MAYER. Also, a SCRIM is a backdrop on a stage, not short for scrimmage.
I had similar solve. Tough to get going, then whoosh-whoosh it's complete. 80% of the time to fill in about half the grid, then very quick on the rest.
Low word count - segmented grid. Some decent entries - but overall I thought the cluing voice was inconsistent - combination of nuanced misdirects, ?s and some just plain ugly stuff.
Liked SPLIFF to start but agree with @Gill - SPHERE is a useless entry - cross it with EXT and the mess of a clue for EMCEE and that corner is shot - even with the wonderful PROSAIC.
Center stack was a fine - maybe a little flat but I liked GILD THE LILY. SIDE EYE atop MEREST is apt. Liked TOO BAD x GO TO TOWN. LOONIE and GARBO jazz things up.
Not a bad puzzle - but lacking in the smoothness of yesterday’s KAC and Mossberg’s Stumper today.
It’s TOO BAD
The perfect vague-fest for me, where first pass yields little because there’s little to be sure of, and I’m thinking, “How am I going to get from here to there?”
But it’s the perfect-for-crosswords vagueness, that is, not hopelessly vague with seemingly endless possibilities, but gettable vague, where the correct answer pops with a cross or two. Where a foothold begets, and the begotten begets, then one of the six interlocking 11’s falls, then another, then, seemingly suddenly, the NE-to-SW sash is filled in.
And there I sit in amazement “Wha”-ing and “Huh”-ing for a moment, before tackling those insulated NW and SE corners, where, emboldened and not taking defeat for an answer, and infused with grit, I reach the finish line.
That is, a thrill solve. A sweet Saturday. Where I want to shower the constructor with gratitude.
Along the way there were many beauteous answers – 10 especially spoke to me, my favorites being MOLLYCODDLE, SIDE EYE, GO TO TOWN, and GILD THE LILY. And, by the way, is this not a gorgeous grid design?
When it comes to NYT crosswords, I’m like a kid in a candy shop, I seem to like them all (and, mind you, there are many crossword puzzles I don’t like). But some puzzles stand higher than others – grab me, shake me, and spit me out filled with contentment. This was one of them. Thank you, David, and congratulations on your NYT debut!
Swish miss in RIM, as in a basketball not “swishing,” but instead, hitting the rim.
SCRIMS sure looked wrong to me - I kind of know what they are now thanks to a post-solve Google excursion. EMCEE probably makes an appearance about once a week - did they really have to come up with that foolish clue that required a font so small that you need a microscope to read it ? Some may say HELL YEAH but I say F*** NO to that one - just clue it as “host” and move on.
If there is such a thing as linguistic natural selection, LOLCAT will quickly devolve and remove itself from the lexicon (and will hopefully only be heard from again when the NYT staff is stuck for something arcane to gum up one of their grids).
Side note: many have mentioned it already, but if you would enjoy an example of a puzzle with sufficiently difficult but fair cluing, check out @Lewis’s offering in the LAT/WaPo yesterday - a very stellar effort !
I was flying through this one, all the long answers went right in (well, HOBBYHORSES as clued was a little weird) and then things came to a halt in the SE, as experienced by many. Don't know any of Taylor Swift's songs, well excuuuuuuse me, never heard of SKYNET, and thought the clue for RIM was, um, unacceptable. But everything got done eventually and it was still much faster than my usual Saturday struggle.
I have been to ARLES and they keep the cafe the same shade of Van Gogh yellow that it is in the painting. Pretty cool. Also am familiar with the LOONIE, which is a very good idea, but forgot that it isn't round. Oops.
Breezy Saturday, DPW, but kindly Don't Put Whatever I don't know all in the same corner. Thank you, and thanks for all the fun.
I got the top third IN A HURRY, but there was a lot of white space from the triple stack south for a long time. Betting on the Y in HOBBY was the key to opening it up. That made me see MONEY SAVERS (I already had a few other letters) and then I started whooshing. I did not add HORSES to HOBBY for the longest time because I thought HOBBYHORSES were just rocking horses.
Learned something new, along with CABARET CARDS and the fact that New York harbor is an example of the crossword behemoth RIA. I thought a RIA was basically the same as a firth, which NY Harbor does not seem to resemble. Went down a rabbit hole looking up rias and firths and fjords and estuaries and inlets … rias and firths/fjords are both “coastlines of submergence” but firths/fjords are the result of glaciation while rias are not. As a result, firths/fjords are deeper than their adjacent sea, and rias are shallower. Fascinating! To me and probably not even one more of you.
GILD THE LILY and MOLLYCODDLE are a delightful pair. I have been guilty of both. Mollycoddle was once the pangram in Spelling Bee and I was exuberant when I found it. GO TO TOWN, HELL YEAH and SIDE EYE … more winners. I loved the clues for SPRAY TAN and especially ARSON. I liked SLICE next to CONE. Pizza and ice cream. That might be my choice for a last meal if I ever find myself on Death Row.
Thx, David; I say, HEck YEAH to this one! 😊
Hi Rafa; thx for your write-up! 😊 and, a belated ty to Malaika for yd's 😊
Med (bang on avg time).
Glad I toughed it out in the NW; thot SPHERE right off the bat (or 'ball'), but wasn't sure enuf to drop it in. Got ISLES, FAYE & FIE, and it all came together nicely.
The rest of the top 1/3 came together quickly. Knowing SCRIMS & LOONIE made for an easy NE.
Got a few LOONIEs lying around, but mainly tOONIEs; tips for the grocery delivery person.
Things got somewhat tougher on the way down, with the three longs in the middle falling with crosses.
The SW wasn't TOO BAD, but definitely harder than the rest to that point.
But, the SE was a doozy. Had rnS, before MDS, net before RIM (a total d'oh), tire before FADE, but it was getting MEEK that led to SKYNET and Bob was my uncle.
Had a semi-malapop (or as @Frantic Sloth coined: half-a-pop). Thot EeriE before EMCEE, but didn't enter it, hence the half-a-pop.
Never played BOCCE, but it looks fun. Will have to check with ChatGPT for a 'compare and contrast' with curling, which was one of my fave sports (both competing in and viewing).
Still slogging thru Hofstadter's 'I Am a Strange LOOP'; way above my pay grade, but I'm determined to finish it, and gain some kind of insight or grokking.
___
On to Lewis's LAT; with Steve Mossberg's Sat. Stumper on deck. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
I also had to sneak and look up SKYNET but was otherwise able to finish - MAYER and PEELE both really helped me out there, though!
Your SE corner has some mistakes! A swish miss refers to missing a “swish” (ie the ball going in the net) in basketball, which would make it a RIM. And Taylor Swift was talking about musician John MAYER. So the bottom across is not fEwEST but is MEREST (as in “most mere”). Also a SCRIM is a piece of fabric hung at the back of a stage in the theater. It’s not short for anything.
My fastest Saturday yet. Guess it was in my wheelhouse.
This was kind of a perfect mix of crossword answers. SPLIFF over HELLYEAH over EMCEE is giving NYC street party vibes. SPRAYTAN over SIDEEYE made me laugh. And throwing in SATAY, ARLES, and CABARETCARD for a bit of culture and history caps it all off nicely.
A proper Saturday workout. Rafa, my solving experience sounds like the opposite of yours. My first long entry came early: CABARET CARD, which is in my own odd wheelhouse but made me think, “A lot of folks will be hitting some unfamiliar stuff today.” And that includes me. I’ve made a point of remaining ignorant about Taylor Swift’s personal life, on the premise that if a song is good you don’t need to know the songwriter’s bio to understand it. So plenty of challenges in both long and short entries for me, meaning lots of stop and start. But that’s what I expect on Saturday, and this puzzle certainly delivered.
Looking back, this seems to have been a good week for NYTXW all around, yes?
@Lewis, that's just what I was going to say about your puzzle yesterday -- delightfully vague clues compelling me to figure out how to interpret each one. I did love this puzzle, although I had to look up Ms. Swift's ex; now I know his name, but nothing else about him. Until then I had MEager, then MEasly before MEREST, and just couldn't come up with MEEK.
@Gill, a SCRIM is a sheet of cloth that's hung at the back of the stage -- it may have some scenery painted on it, or be designed so that it changes its appearance in different lighting. More or less the same as a drop, most of the time.
The clue for 36-D is a stretch -- a substance doesn't decay unless it is radioactive beforehand, but I guess you can say that when it emits radiation it is decaying, so OK. It was really hard to see without a few crosses, though.
On my wavelength, up my alley, in my wheelhouse -- whatever you want to call it, this one started quick and kept going. I absolutely felt the whoosh, especially when I could infer answers I never heard of -- like CABARET CARD. I guessed it had CARD at the end, and just had to wait for the CAB to figure out the rest.
Pretty sure I was on course for a record or near-record Saturday until I reached the SE. I couldn't see SPRAY TAN to save my life, and without that Y there was no way I was going to know the topic of any Taylor Swift song. It also meant I was missing the A in FADE, and I couldn't get that with just --DE.
So that took some extra ruminating until I changed AIR to RIM and DRS to MDS and everything else fell in place. I changed my assessment from easy to easy-med for that.
Biggest quibble: The ? in "Goes radioactive?" This is a literal clue-answer pair -- not a misdirect, not a pun. Of course I was sure it would be "on air" or something related to actual radios. DECAY is exactly what happens when something goes radioactive.
Small quibbles: Didn't like the clues for VIDEO and AIDES.
Loved it! So hard but I only had to look up the name ALDEN And that was the key to that area.
Rest was tough but eventually came to me.
This was a perfect puzzle for Saturday. Smooth like Berry and chewy like Walden. It allowed the crossword brain to float, expand, and land.
Completed it without cheating, thanks to several very lucky guesses (LOLCAT, MAYER, SPLIFF, LOONIE), none of which made any sense to me whatsoever. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart.
Similar experience. Slow going at first, and then picking up pace in the corners, and then suddenly it all gave way. Ended up being easy-medium ish for a Saturday. Is 1A a new entry in the puzzle, or have we seen SPLIFF before? Can anyone tell me?
Some days you're on and some days you're not. Some puzzles fit with the workings of your brain, and some show its limitations. I can scarcely ever get my head around a Meta, for example.
Anyway, 18 mins was a good time for me on a Saturday, and this was after I felt like an eternity wasting away staring blankly at the middle section after the top slotted in with Tuesday ease. So Friday and Saturday combined were 32 minutes. Both on the fast side of normal. But Thursday? It was a complete mystery. The theme baffled me despite knowing the revealer. I actually gave up. Blame sleep apnea. It limits ones patience with obstructions.
As soon as I saw the “Challenging” rating in the review, I knew Rex must have the day off. Pretty easy Saturday. Loved the science trifecta of mitosis, decay, and cyclotron.
Easy Saturday to follow the very easy Friday.
Some stuff I didn't know from the clue but guessed well on: LOONIE, SPLIFF, ARLES.
Every time LOLCAT appears, I Google it after the solve. I still don't get it.
Hey All !
Typical toughie SatPuz here. Check Puzzle use, along with a couple Reveal Words (just the Threes to get me restated after staring too long at white space). That A-name trifecta was unknown, ARLES-ARSON-ALDEN (the N being my last square), but thankfully they mostly filled in from crossers.
NYTXW has been getting chippy/risque lately. FART YesterPuz, Damn and HELL today. My word, I have never seen such foul language in a puz before. 😁
These idiot NSA people named their thing SKYNET? Self fulfilling prophecy, there. You could've named it anything at all. NETSPY. INVASION OF YOUR PRIVACY BOT. Har. But SKYNET? Wow.
Liked the massive six crossing 11's. And the push to get some F's in.
Happy Saturday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Solid. Like Rafa, I had to cudgel the corners bloody and then afterward the long middle answers were gimmes.
N-Ks: SCRIMS, MARCONI and SATAY.
Tee-Hees: SPLIFF! HELL YEAH!
Uniclues:
1 The crossword coin.
2 Put something nice on and straighten up.
3 When you're orange.
4 When he's orange and standing right there.
5 Under attack by one invasive species burning it up.
6 When you don't mind sticky fingers.
7 One saying, "Just tell me what to do."
1 PROSAIC LOONIE
2 ACT VIDEO FANCY
3 TOO BAD SPRAY TAN
4 UNWISE SIDE EYE
5 SPHERE STATUS
6 CONE EVILS FADE
7 IN A HURRY MENTEE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Dieter's exasperated comment to the enemy. "SCALES, I'VE HAD IT."
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rafa, yes, see Nope. Twice. With subtitles. Hell yeah.
“Ow! You broke MITOSIS!” (Wasn’t that a recent joke here?)
Even with a Getcrazy/StylEs miscue in SW, broke the 11 minute Saturday mark, 4 minutes off average. Without GILDing THE LILY, HELL YEAH!
Nice debut, Mr. Williams!
(Now back to doomscrolling about what the hell is actually happening in Maui - which apparently is now less newsworthy than Britney Spears’ marital state or The Blind Side guy’s adoption status. Like the Powers That Be are trying to cover up something!)
Medium here, averaging out "mostly easy" with some "very tough," and all very enjoyable to solve. So many dynamite entries - HOBBYHORSES, MOLLYCODDLE, GO TO TOWN - and fiendish clues, my favorite being "Goes radioactive," which I was sure would be something like "tunes in." I got off to a slow start on the Acrosses in the NE with PUSH x SEETHE, finished that corner, and came to a halt. Time to look at the Downs. Thank goodness for crossword friend LOLCAT and for FAYE, which got me HELL YEAH and then a cascade through the funhouse center of the puzzle. Ended with lots of futzing in the SE - the "very tough" area -until it all fell into place. In the end, maybe more fun than brain-racking than an old-school Saturday would be, but for me this one is a gem of a puzzle.
Do-overs: STATic, SpYNET. Help from previous puzzles: LOLCAT, LOONIE, HELL YEAH. Help from travel: MILAN. No idea: PEELE (because I forgot a previous puzzle appearance), ALDEN.
Outstanding Saturday puzzle!
Quite possibly my favorite Saturday EVER !!! Just excellent! Clever and so much fun ! Thank you !!!
@SouthsideJohnny, and @jberg -- Thank you for those kind words!
Just great fill today. Super-fast, by luck of mind-meld and interest match, except for the SE corner. Didn’t know the Taylor Swift answer, and the clues for mentee and merest both seem a little less than perfect. Great Saturday puzzle overall.
While you light your WHAT?????? SPLIFF???????? Good grief!!!!!!!!! What kind of word is that?????????????
Nonetheless, I finished this beast with only one cheat, and it wasn't in that section. I did have to look up John MAYER to finish the SE. (I should know from Taylor Swift's love life?) But as high praise for this puzzle, I should point out that it was the only place in the SE I could have cheated since there were no other proper names. Elsewhere there was FAYE, but she was a sorely needed friend today.
The high points for me were GILD THE LILY (even though the accurate phrase is "paint the lily"-- but absolutely no one knows that); MOLLYCODDLE; GO TO TOWN; and HOBBYHORSES. (Though I am tempted to paint my walls green and then decorate them further with CLOSED LOOPS.)
Biggest (linked) write-overs for me: My "level" was STrata (not STATUS) leading to ruT (not ACT) for "routine". UNWISE finally wised me up.
A real toughie -- and other than the ridiculous-looking SPLIFF (whatever that is) a real Saturday beauty.
Loved this puzzle. I backed into the NW last, and the irony is that I "got" SPHERE and PREMIX right off the bat, but wanted to hold off writing them in until I confirmed with some crosses; but then I couldn't get *any* of the crosses, and I forgot that I knew 1D and 2D, so the whole NW remained a big blank until the end! Also I confused "Bonnie and Clyde" with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (which I think is a perfectly reasonable thing to do), so I boldly entered ROSS (as in Katherine Ross) for 5D—But that bothered me, because I knew it should be a first name, not a last name, based on the format of the clue (see, I'm learning). Anywhozits...thrilled to see SKYNET in the puzzle—and delighted/horrified to learn that it is an actual NSA surveillance program! For me, it's clues that make a puzzle, and DPW's cluing is not just impeccable, it's like having brunch with a scintillating raconteur!
For anyone who cares, here's the actual "paint the lily" quote that no one's used correctly for several hundred years:
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
–
With the exception of the SE corner this was an easy solve. In spite of a SPLEEF/SPLIFF write over the NW corner felt early week. My logic was if it's spelled like miff and riff it should rhyme with them and if it rhymes with reef it should be spelled that way. Not hard to fix.
In the SE I found it much harder to go from MEYER to MAYER and WANE to FADE. In the down slots TUTEE and DEEJAYS kept coming back to me even though they are respectively too short and too long. It was weird to have two near kea/ loas next to each other like that. Changing MUTE to MEEK finally cleared the way.
Preoccupations are simply hobbies. I've never seen HOBBYHORSES used this way but that's what fit the slot.
Sa - Th -0
It's funny that some folks don't know what a SPLIFF is, especially since it's clued with Bob Marley ��
I had COSTCUTTERS in for 29 Across (the clue was Coupons, eg) and that really threw me for a bit. Agree with others that RIM as the answer for Swish miss (47-Down) was egregiously bad. Yes, I understand what a swish is - when the basketball goes through the net without touching the RIM - but if you airball a shot in basketball, that's also not a "swish" - it's a swish miss, too - so the answer of RIM is pretty bad. Don't follow Taylor Swift at all but somehow remembered she used to date John Mayer so that was a gimme.
This puzzle felt choppy in parts, as if the constructor had some tricky areas to fill in and simply googled some words that would fit, then created arcane clues for them. Pretty easy for a Saturday, though!
The only thing missing for me was lollygag! Very enjoyable puzzle. My experience was much like @Lewis's. The most difficult part of the central stack for me was MONEYSAVERS. I wanted some kind of toy top for CLOSED LOOPS too. But it all came together - very satisfying. Great debut!
Also @Lewis - really loved your revealer yesterday - and the theme as a whole. Lots of fun. Thanks for the heads up to look for it!
Couldn't get DECAY, and had MEAGER instead of MEREST, so those made the SW corner hard. But I loved loved the SW through NE middle path, which came easily. Lots of fun words.
@ Gill I., the answer to a swish miss is RIM. In basketball a shot that is made with the ball not touching the rim of the basket is a swish shot.
I could never bring myself to describe something as a "whoosh whoosh" experience, even if I heard whooshing noises while it was happening.
This one started out a little slow but then moved along fairly briskly. Again, after yesterday, the cluage leaned toward being straightforward. Of course I hated the EMCEE clue, but those are going nowhere until Will Shortz does.
The giant syllable is spelled FI as far as I know. FIE is a somewhat archaic exclamation of disgust or annoyance. If you google the giant's phrase with FIE it redirects to FI.
All in all, a pretty impressive debut. Also impressed that the constructor didn't post a long-winded saga about the genesis of the puzzle on XWord Info, letting it speak for itself.
Fee-fi-fo-fum, I can feel the presence of someone
Overture to "Candide"
You should also see "Get out" by Jordan Peele. The movie stays with you for days.
A spliff is a marijuana cigarette
@beverly c -- I'm glad you enjoyed it!
A tale of two solves: blazing down the grid and then entering the cul-de-sac in the tiny SE corner. GILD THE LILY goes in for a slam dunk but MDS was a tragic swish miss that took forever to fill even though the clue built in crutches aplenty. Even with DECAYS crossing SIDE EYE locking the corner FADE, FANCY, and SPRAY TAN were seemingly impossible to grok until MEEK & MEREST saved a dnf.
Thanks and admiration for Mr. Williams pinwheel grid of intersecting triple stacks filled nuthin but net with a resounding swish! And always a delight to have a write up by Rafa who knew not only Taylor Swift but also dear John Mayer……ahhh, to be young and actually give a rip about popular culture. We octogenarians are more in tune with yesterday’s LA Times grids (thanks @Lewis) where 38 across gives happy Paris vibes! Now we must light a SPLIFF, crank up the 8track Marley & enjoy the sunset!
It would take a pretty good TOOB AD to get me to buy Tough Cookies.
@Nancy. From the clue, you know that a SPLIFF is something that Bob Marley would light, which narrows it down quite a bit. Here’s another hint: Ganja.
I liked all 5 of these mini puzzles. Congrats on a great debut, David P. Williams.
Found this very challenging. My first pass yielded little beyond Faye and cone. Then pennysavers came to mind and stayed in the center far too long. Gild the lily and mollycoddle came next. And I thought, okay now, I can do this. No wooshing for me.
I wish to join in the praise of Lewis’s puzzle yesterday. Loved the double bang of the revealer, which I didn’t grasp until after finishing the puzzle. I struggled with the puzzle through the first pass and kept thinking “that Lewis is too smart for me” ( and he is), but once I got a hold I did woosh a little bit! Thank you, Lewis.
Plonked down gild the lilly just from the g & the y. Few down crosses & then mollycoddle. Easy after that but struggled with the swiftie corner.clue for arson best one all week!!
Easier for me than this weeks Thursday and Friday. I cabaret card, mollycoddle, guild, the lily, spliff and Marconi all fell into place rather quickly. Completely unfamiliar with the phrase hobbyhorses meaning preoccupations.
In what universe is a pop diva’s ex-boyfriend from 15 years ago considered general knowledge? This one clue ruined an otherwise good puzzle for me.
I thought I made a mistake with MOLLY so close to GOLLY - ?
Also never heard of LOONIE.
But I can't complain since it was a DNF for me :(
Those of you who do not understand this meaning of hobbyhorse should read Tristram Shandy, which happens to be one of the funniest books ever written, if I do say so.
A fine Saturday puzzle. The NE fell first (helps that I have a theater background) , with some nice whooshes through the middle stacks and in the southwest, but then I was left with almost blank corners in the NW and SE and almost no way in. A little trivia quiz for my solving partner (my husband, solving across the table, who is better versed on Bob Marley lyrics and Terminator movies than I) and the corners finally fell with a satisfying feeling of victory.
Lots of fun clues - I quite liked GILD THE LILY, and love both MOLLYCODDLE and HOBBYHORSE. My Swiftie daughter has schooled me on all things Taylor Swift as part of her prep for the Eras Tour, so John MAYER was fresh in my mind.
Thanks Nancy for the paint the lily poem. I just looked it up. Shakespeare, King John.
CABARET CARD, HOBBY HORSES and GILD THE LILY are familiar to many of us. again, age is often an advantage.
Didn't know a LOONIE had 11 sides, but sure did know this SatPuz had 4 Jaws of Themelessness. Nice.
staff weeject pick: FIE. Clue kinda pushes it, since Fee-FI-Fo-Fum is the real deal, giant-wise. I'll grant that somebody somewhere might go with FIE, but it still rates an M&A SI-FIE-DEEYE.
Some faves: MOLLY/GOLLY. HELLYEAH, we now fart at this arena. GILDTHELILY. GOTOTOWN + INAHURRY.
Thanx for the challenge, Mr. Williams dude. And congratz on a mighty jawful debut.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
**gruntz**
Super proud of myself for finishing such a challenging puzzle. Probably took me close to 90 minutes (certainly seemed that way!). No cheating although my wife gave me MITOSIS and my son gave me EERIE and CANDY. Glad I stuck with it!
So of course I needed to figure out the 11 sides. If coins aren't round they need to have 11 "sides". However these sides are not flat - they have a slight curve so that there is always a constant diameter no matter where you draw a line. This enables them to work in vending machines properly. You can only create that type of shape with an odd number of sides. Math is fun.
This took me 16 hours to finish; I started it last evening as usual but couldn't concentrate due to distractions (see below). This is the first time in years that I've solved in the morning! It was indeed very challenging until the toehold was achieved, the floodgates burst, and it was all whoosh-whoosh as they say. Very nice puzzle.
Evidently, the Loonie is technically not an eleven-sided polygon, but an eleven-sided curve of constant width called a Reuleaux polygon. Interesting article here.
I'm still a bit rattled after waking up yesterday morning at our Shuswap Lake cabin to encounter high winds and rampant paranoia about the Adams Lake wildfire in the upwind direction. We very hastily packed up and fled, and a darn good thing we did as we are on a dead end road, on which two wooden bridges were closed yesterday afternoon trapping hundreds of people. Spent the evening doomscrolling social media accounts with very disturbing video of burning buildings and trees along the road. Multiple posts saying that most public buildings in Scotch Creek were destroyed. I was very relieved to read this morning that they were not; in fact it seems the only public building destroyed was the Fire Hall. How's that for irony? However many homes were lost; lucky for us the fire seems to have stopped a few km from our place, whew.
[No Spelling Bee last week for me.]
Preoccupations as HOBBYHORSES….shouldn’t that be a ‘?’
Thought maybe Loonie had 9 sides to it since top and bottom would make up the 11 sided coin. It’s Saturday so should have said 13 to really mess with people’s minds.
I hope you and your wife get better soon.
Oh look! Our long lost friend, @Questinia is back...Yay! Hope you're here to stay... :-)
@Wanderust 7:05...Yikes! Thanks for clarifying my DNF....
@jberg 8:32...SCRIMS. Proof that that clue fit into my hazy day.
@Nancy...As usual, thanks to you I just might "paint the lily."
Molly Coddle and Gilda Lily are two of my favorite people. But not as favorite as Faye Dunaway, who as a fellow student at my college,gave a brilliant and STILL unforgettable performance on stage in “Juno and the Paycock”
@okananganer-Yikes! Glad you're OK and very sad to hear of all the losses in your part of the world. A friend in the Colorado Rockies had to run for it years ago and lost everything but his truck and his chainsaw.
Best to you and yours.
@newboy and@anon11:52--Thank you for your feedback and kind words!
Commenters point out multiple kealoas and three-way kealoas without mentioning the best one (maybe of all time):
FEE / FIE / FUM
🙃
Excuse me while I light my SPLIFF was a gimme, and that set the tone for a very easy Saturday. Beautiful stacks in the middle and a lovely puzzle with many colorful answers, but not much resistance.
@Lewis,
Just want to say thanks for yesterday's LAT puzzle. It was a clever theme. But I really enjoyed your 4/4/19 NYT puzzle, which you rightfully touted when a similarly-themed puzzle ran in the NYT recently. The cinema-clued themer in that was really great.
Thanks again!
Me too! Was expecting not to finish at all given all the longs and the segmentation but got the infamous whoosh whoosh thing going!
Your first thought of angel would have been a great answer! got scrim but I always thought they are towards the front of the stage,
I live in Rhode Island- where Narragansett Bay is - and of course never heard it referred to as a ria. (Autocorrect changed it to Tia! BTW) I said to myself, so that’s what a ria is! After all these years of never looking it up after I put it into the squares. Thanks for doing the work
Interesting comparison of movies.
Could be an age thing. To me they are very different, other than dealing with outlaws
Bonnie & Clyde was shocking bloody and violent for the time. The Hayes code had just faded away and the director went all the way with the new freedom. Even now it’s not an easy watch if you don’t like that sort of thing.
(It is a 56 year old movie is spoiler alert necessary? ) Anyway the ending
shows close up the 2 getting shot full of holes, literally. With artistic cinematography no less
Butch Cassidy was the other extreme. Just before the 2 were shot up , they froze the picture. And ended the movie.
The clue also had a hint. Bonnie was implying the answer was a first name. The bank robber’s full name was Bonnie Parker
Ma
@Uncle Moishy -- Oh, that 2019 is one of my favorites as well, maybe in my top two. I'm honored that you remember it!
You didn't think of hobby horse as a preoccupation because it isn’t. A hobby horse is a wooden (well, was wooden when I was a kid) horse on a rocking bottom for kids to play on
You don't get lolcat because you don't know what it is or because you do know what it is but wish it would go away. It was the last letter to my puzzle because I refuse to allow such things to penetrate my brain. Thus, I fall into the I get it but wish I didn't.
You mentioned that you have a love-hate relationship with a specific type of themeless grid design where the big middle can be intimidating at first. Can you share more about your approach to tackling such grids? Tel U
Why is Peele the correct response to 25 D?
Because of the comedy duo Key and Peele
Another definition of a hobbyhorse is a preoccupation.
Rafa, seems no one answered if you should see the movie Nope. Yes, most definitely! Loved it, and it too will stay with you for a few days.
Challenging, especially the SE and NW corners. New to me were CABARETCARD and HOBBYHORSE clued as it was. Not much junk fill. This was a solid themeless Saturday puzzle.
@Rafa: I do have similar experiences with late-week puzzles, this being one. I go through the clue list and am lucky if I know three things. Today it was TRON/MARCONI, but that trailed off. Eventually I found MITOSIS and was able to score the NE corner. Then it was a lot of guesses until the long central answers started to plop in. Finished in the SE.
But someone tell me please: how in the world do you get from "Preoccupations" to HOBBYHORSES? I can't wait to hear THAT one.
One's gimme is another's "Huh?" I had no idea about 40-down. Must be a pop-culture thing. The M of MEEK was my final letter.
Suitably challenging for a Saturday; he certainly didn't MOLLYCODDLE us. Still not the knottiest puzzle ever. Birdie.
Another Wordle birdie.
STATUS: HOT
HELLYEAH I'm INAHURRY,
she'll FANCY CANDY by GOLLY,
it's UNWISE TO ACT worried,
just GOTOTOWN with BIGMOLLY.
--- RON MAYER, M.D.
@spacey - years ago Taylor Swift and John MAYER were an item. TOOBAD for him as it stands now. Always like a RON in the puz. SSTS in the corners.
Also wordle birdie; I believe that's 6 under in the last 4.
WAYS is a stupid American expression that should go away. How can WAYS which is the plural of WAY be singular ? And it still means WAY. Rubbish !
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