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Kimono tightener / TUE 8-1-23 / Bollywood Star Aishwarya ___ / Record label that declined to sign the Beatles in 1962
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Constructor: Kathryn Ladner
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (pretty average time for me)
THEME: UP A TREE — Circled letters spell out the names of 9 trees, rising up in the grid.
Word of the Day: ZARA (Multinational clothing retailer based in Spain) —
ZARA (Spanish: [ˈθaɾa]) is a Spanish multi-national retail clothing chain. It specialises in fast fashion, and sells clothing, accessories, shoes, beauty products and perfumes. (Side note: It's never a great sign when headings on your company's Wikipedia page include "Exploitation and Child Labour" and "Allegations of Anti-Semitisim").
• • •
Hey folks, it's Eli back filling in for Rex again! When I agreed to write the blog for August 1, I neglected to realize that it would involve solving and writing on July 31, which is my wife's birthday (Happy Birthday, Melissa!). So, here I am, husband of the year, blogging the puzzle for all of you. Forgive me if I keep it a little brief.To begin with, there's a lot of theme here. Like, A LOT. I don't always even pay attention to circled letters in an early week puzzle, and there were So. Many. Of. Them. That's not necessarily a negative thing, but this much theme density is always going to strain the fill. Rather than list all of the clues impacted, I'm just going to list out the trees (see above re: wife's birthday).
Theme answers:
Theme answers:
- MAGNOLIA
- ELM
- BIRCH
- ASPEN
- CEDAR
- PINE
- MAPLE
- FIR
- SYCAMORE
 |
| Number 1: The larch |
Really, though, the theme is fine. Impressive construction for sure. But the fill does suffer a bit. There's a lot of short crosswordese that isn't doing the puzzle any favors: OBI, ETAL, AERO, TOR, ACAI, ENE, ELAND, ANI, etc. Also not a huge fan of EVILER (51D: More dastardly) or partials like NO I (57A: "There's ___ in team") or VENI (9D "___, vidi, vici"). Such is the way of the Tuesday.
There's some fun stuff, too, though. Haven't thought about the BAHA MEN in a while (15A: "Who Let the Dogs Out" group):
Not exactly something I need or want to reminded of, but it made for a fun answer. Let's balance it out with some Beatles, who get a double dip today in DECCA (26A: Record label that declined to sign the Beatles in 1962) and RINGO (43D: Bandmate of John, Paul and George).
Who Let the Hey Bulldog Out? If you open those two videos in separate tabs and play them at the same time, you'll open a wormhole to another dimension.
Bullets:
- IN A-FLAT (18A: Like Chopin's "Aeolian Harp" étude) — I don't think I saw this while solving and thought the clue might be something like, "Where you might live in London."
- INFO (20A: Deets and dope) —This clue just tickled me a bit. Somehow both fresh feeling and old-fashioned.
- ALLEN (21A: William G. ___, patentee of a kind of wrench)
 |
| Ikea owes William a debt that can never be paid. |
- MORALES (66A: Miles ____, teen who becomes Spider-Man in "Into the Spider-Verse)— Two great movies (so far) and some really entertaining comics. One of my favorites.
A quick personal note before I go: I'm currently training for the Malibu Triathlon, which raises money for Children's Hospital Los Angeles, a leading pediatric cancer research and care facility. If you should feel generous and want to donate, you can do so at this link:
Thanks for the consideration!
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter (at least for now) and BlueSky @eliselzer.bsky.socail (Sorry, I don't have any invites)]
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83 comments:
I would say that there’s no real symmetry in a forest, and trees tend to be all scattered, so I didn’t mind how they’re placed on the grid. Also, I thought the short fill was pretty decent! Especially for a Tuesday.
Thank you, Kathryn!
Very easy. The theme seems vaguely familiar? OK Tuesday, mostly liked it or pretty much what @Eli said.
No erasures and ZARA and MORALES (as clued - ESAI would have worked) were it for WOEs.
Nice write up. Thanks!
An odd Tuesday: I often solve early week puzzles without reading the clues for the long acrosses. Today there weren't any long acrosses.
Overwrites included Cardinal before CHAPLAIN for the religious officer at 3D and beD before AND for the B&B part at 46A. Mild protest there, having "&" in the clue for "AND".
ZARA was a total WOE.
Bahamen?? Rai?? Naticked on a Tuesday!
Oy vey - another TIC.
Expect tomorrow this clue:
[Accessories for insects.]
TICK TACK.
Had to run the options for ELAND and INAFLAT but got lucky. Same for BAHAMEN and RAI.
The nit-picky things that bother other people (especially Rex) don’t bother me. Like Eli said, the theme is fine. Just fine. Perfect, if fact, for a Tuesday. The fill was fine too.
Thank you Kathryn!
Very ADEPTLY constructed but also quite fun to solve. I marveled looking at the longer trees, MAGNOLIA and SYCAMORE, and the way she not only found backward sense in those letters but also made the crosses work, and fit in seven more trees. That marveling happened at the end, because I solved completely as a themeless, got the revealer from crosses, and only saw the theme once I was done. Then I shimmied up each of those trees. I tried out a few other varieties to see how they could make backward sense and ruled out a long list, from juniper to hickory to willow. Oak could work with aorta. Apple and palm wouldn’t be hard.
I had a WTF moment at the end when (like almost everyone, I’ll bet) I put in beD for the B&B part. DECAMP fit fine, of course, and “green, in a way” had to be Eco. But then CREW CUT had to be right. I thought the Armada would be Force…and all of a sudden, I felt like I was in a Saturday, not a Tuesday. Even when I got FLEET, I was like, “bLECKS? eEW?” It took forever to see that AND is also part of B&B. You got me.
I love the “cold comfort?” clue for COAT, and trying to figure what is both a lamp and a cake (LAVA). I’m not entirely sure what a LAVA cake is, but I’m imagining hot gooey chocolate, and I want one right now.
OBELISK ? Welcome to the NYT, lol. Nice way to clue AND, I wonder how many fell for it.
I agree with our guest blogger that the theme put way too much strain on the grid, and the fill really suffered - but, such is typical with the NYT, where you can slog your way through an entire grid of subpar fill to be able to spell MAGNOLIA upside down (thrilling, I know).
Solved as a themeless - I can’t see the circles on the app. EVILER?
Big time tuze.
My favorite RINGO song - sounds like in E and definitely not on DECCA
60A - is Will just trolling us now?
Pretty easy except that ELAND crossing INAFLAT and DECCA. Yikes! Lost on me. At least I learned something, I guess.
I was completely charmed by this puzzle, probably because I’m a sucker for anything tree-themed, plus I loved how the grid itself was vaguely tree-shaped.
Looking back over the grid, there are a few nice words with a couple of proper names that initially slowed me up, but basically this puzzle was a snap and close to a record for a Wednesday. I never felt up a tree. The theme, as difficult as it might have been to construct, was completely irrelevant to the solving experience. In other words it's really there to please the constructor, or to fulfill an obligation to have some sort of theme on a Wednesday. Is it worth it? Or does having a blah theme end up being more of a negative?
Clearly I woke up not knowing what day of the week it was.
Certainly not A SNAP the same way yesterday's was. IN A FLAT, DECCA (as clued), TOR, MORALES, RAI(???), ZARA(???), plus a bunch of crosswordese that we all know but a new solver won't (OBI, AVA, ANI, ELO) keep this out of what I would normally think of as a Tuesday range.
Very much disagree with Eli on Into the Spiderverse. I love Spiderman stuff, but at least the first of those movies was terrible, in the same way that The Lego Movie was. Too much noise and flair, not enough humanity.
Some random thoughts:
• Fitting that an UP A TREE puzzle has a cat as one of its answers.
• For [Yearn (for)] I initially had PINE, only later to find that word backward elsewhere in the puzzle. I think that would qualify as a malapop with an asterisk. (“Malapop” is crossword lingo for when you place a word in a puzzle, erase it for being the wrong answer, then later find out that it is the right answer elsewhere.)
• When I first looked at the empty grid, my thought was “double flying-geese formation!”
• Puzzle bonus: A Boggle-style PALM beginning with the P of PLAT.
• Last night I finished watching “The Beatles: Eight Days A Week”, Ron Howard’s documentary about the group’s touring years, so seeing RINGO in the puzzle was icing on the cake. In this documentary, you can see and feel the Fab Four going from boys to men.
Kathryn, I love how you took “UP A TREE” and turned it into a puzzle. That, and your skill and persistence at what must have been a very tough build, filled me with smiles and wows. Thank you for a lovely outing!
The beD/AND misdirect @Wanderlust mentioned felt a little tricky for a Tuesday and slowed me down a little bit.
This was a weird little puzzle right? I think I liked it, it played easy-medium for me as well. I basically solved as a themeless on principle.
While there was a lot of crosswordese, I thought it was clued cleanly enough that I didn’t mind it. Also I *loved* learning that ELANDs are moose-sized - who knew! And oof yeah, EVILER is no good. Not a perfect puzzle and definitely a bit different, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Also I was tickled by Eli saying they don’t have any invites for BlueSky - I doubt most of us are even on Twitter (I refuse to call it X lol), but fair warning I guess!
@Son Volt from Sunday - yep, I did both Camels Hump and Thomas Cole in the end. Since I’m hiking with a neurovascular condition I have to really pace myself and see where my body is at; I felt the pull to tack on Black Dome but it would have been unsafe. So instead I’ll be back to summit Black Dome and Blackhead together. Sunday’s hike was gorgeous though and also yielded some delicious golden chanterelles for dinner. I’ve actually decided to join in a Hike for the Catskills fundraiser this August; I’ll share the post here tomorrow in case anyone wants to pitch in or just see what my hiking plans are for the month!
Only stumbling block for me was the BAHAMEN/RAI cross, because I had never heard of either, but trial-and-error did the trick.
Didn't pay any attention to the circled clues until after solving it, because the fill was very straightforward. Average Tuesday difficulty, I'd say.
@ Joaquin: I'm expecting tactic lol.
I've said before that I solve old archival puzzles alongside the daily, and I'm constantly experiencing the Baader-Meinhof effect and seeing uncommon words on the same day. The puzzle I solved prior to today's was May 17, 2007, which contained DECCA, so that came right to mind when I encountered it (although it's always unsettling when it happens).
I liked the theme, but it was hard to look at, and I'm pretty sure I solved the revealer before completing any tree names, so it was given away early.
I got BAHA MEN immediately, but as I did so I thought about how many people will not like the potential Natick there. I don't blame them -- why should people know that name? I roll my eyes when people look back and say, "I can't believe that song was popular" when it's so painfully obvious at the time that it's a terrible song. I mean, what were you expecting? See also: The Macarena
Lol at TIC. We're being trolled hard.
One other thing I just remembered: I had ANI filled in before seeing the clue, and when that happens I always dread that I'll look and find it's clued as "Darth Vader, familiarly" or something. Thank goodness it wasn't. I was prepared to rage.
Anyway, interesting that ANI and OBI both appeared. That is all.
I missed the revealer on my first pass and kept trying to find a pattern in the circles letters going across. Once I had enough filled in that the pattern somehow clicked I was able to fill out all the trees and the rest was mostly a breeze. Didn’t even notice the short fill because a lot of that just got completed by crosses.
Had a bit of a Natick at ELAND/IN A FLAT because I’d never heard of the animal and surprisingly don’t know the keys of pieces of classical music. But really it had to be a vowel and there were only two options so I dropped “A” in there and got the finishing music.
Fun Tuesday.
Really, really easy -- once you get to the revealer, which is in the top half of the puzzle, you can fill in most of the trees from one letter (except for the BIRCH/BeeCH kealoa).That sped things up quite a bit.
I think I must have heard of BAHAMEN, because I guessed the A instead of the equally plausible O -- but really, crossing two proper names is bad constructing.
I've seen ELANDs in the wild, so that was easy for me -- but I didn't know they were that big until I saw them, so that would have been a stumper.
AND as my first choice, but then changed it to beD in order to accomodate eco- at 47-D. Doh!
With the exception of Wonder Woman, I haven't seen any of those superhero movies, but I have to ask--what happened to Peter Parker?
Thx, Kathryn; FLAT out fun puz! 😊
Hi Eli, good to see you again; thx for your write-up! 😊
Easy-med.
Didn't catch the theme until post-solve; loved it!
Seem like I was always UP A TREE in my pre-teen years. We lived on the edge of a forest.
Wore a CREWCUT from jr. hi until I joined the FLEET, so the bootcamp hair cut was a quick job for the SSMB and easy for me to take.
Always like to see my fave footwear in the puz: CROCs.
Very enjoyable adventure today! :)
___
Croce's 830 was med-hard (4x NYT Sat avg); the SE was very tough, but eventually yielded.
___
On to Anna's New Yorker Mon.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Couldn't see the forest for the theme, or something. Downs only, average time, guessed right on BAHAMEN/RAI cross. Obviously didn't see the revealer clue. So spent quite a few post-solve minutes reading the circles forward, backwards, down and even boustrophedon, haha (or lol), but up did not occur to me. Now it will every time, of course, and, of course, it will be months - years! - before it comes, um, up, again.
The most fun in this one came from remembering BAHAMEN instantly. I think it stuck with me because I always wanted BAHA to be spelled BAJA, as in Baja California.
Miles MORALES? What happened to Peter Parker? Now I'm wondering about Clark Kent, among others. Talk about feeling out of the loop.
Another one of those segmented puzzles that had a choppy feel, which made it hard to get any real flow going, which detracts from the enjoyment. Didn't see the tree thing coming but it's a nice enough trick.
Also, I'm solidly with the anti-EVILER crew. Just no. Don't do that.
OK Tuesday, KL. Kinda Liked it, didn't love it, but thanks for a fair amount of fun.
Very clever and well executed theme. MAGNOLIA and SYCAMORE especially! (Will never see the Macy’s logo the same…)
Was happily surprised with the great misdirect from the obvious and ever-present beD and eco. That slowed me down but made me ROTFS (Roll On The Floor Smiling, as the kids say). And it was totally fair - AND NEW being valid answers, we’re just used to the goto answers.
TITTER/TATTER/TATTLE is my new Tic/Tac/Toe, though only TATTLE was in any crossword (the other two in my head from yesterday’s post).
Great Tuesday, Kathryn!
Hey All !
Pretty neat idea. I'm sure filling the grid was a nightmare. Wondering if MACYS was the catalyst for this theme. Picture Kathryn looking at SYCAMORE, and saying, "Hey, look at that. SYCAMORE backwards ends with MACYS. I wonder if I could make a puz out of that..."
Et voila.
Fill was surprisingly decent considering the constraints. Sure there's a bit but f dreck, but hey, it's a TuesPuz. I'm giving the fill a clean pass. 😁
Neat left/right symmeTREE. As someone said earlier, the Blockers make the grid resemble a TREE.
Awesome job, Kathryn. I MEAN, don't LET EM get you down! There's NO I in puzzle. Har.
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I had BED instead of AND forever and it tripped me up a lot there at the end. I kept thinking “is a BLECK some kind of British slang for a wiseguy?” ::facepalm::
Sheesk, there's a whole damn forest in here and still a clean-ish fill. Love the mixed metaphor in the reveal with "cornered up a tree." I used MAGNOLIA and ASPEN to finish BAHA MEN. That's a band name you need to see the space in the middle or its pronunciation will go into all manner of crazy talk. RAI and ENE were being unhelpful.
Let's all agree to use EVILER in a sentence in the real world today and see what happens. It's time for us to stop saying, "Nobody says that in the real world," and instead take these nonsense words out into the streets and normalize them. We're supposedly the smarty ones who can do crossword puzzles, so let's bring crosswordese to the unwashed masses.
My comment from yesterday never appeared. I wonder if I should get all paranoid like one of our regulars when he's not taking his medicine and go all "you can't handle the truth," or should I assume Blogger ate it? Since I don't quote bumper stickers, I will assume it's Google being Google. Pretty sure they'd like this platform to go away. I only mention this to say how much I love it when a constructor stops by to say "hey." It's like a parent showing up to a school meeting after their child has done something reprehensible and everyone knows it. Brave.
Ah TIC TAC, you just wanna give and give.
BED for AND like everybody probably. You know those BLECKS are soooooo "smart."
ZARA has one of the most annoying mobile websites I've been to yet. I never could get through the pop-ups to see what they sell. It's fine, I wasn't going to buy anything anyway.
Uniclues:
1 Bought too many comic books.
2 Tom in London (or a Catcerto).
3 You are here.
4 Burning up Miami Beach.
5 My artwork.
6 Crosswordese monument to Esai.
7 Brown paint.
8 Why the Zoom got less fun.
9 "See me in my office."
1 OVERRAN ARCHIVE (~)
2 SIAMESE IN A FLAT
3 PLAT INFO
4 IGNITES ART DECO
5 ADEPTLY GENERIC
6 MORALES OBELISK
7 ADOBE'S PRIMER
8 CHAPLAIN JOINED
9 RELOCATE TATTLE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Expression of surprise at learning your friend is overly enthused about quoting catch phrases from horror movies. OH, YOU REDRUM?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
BIRCH, a BICHON and The BEATLES - what’s not to love? This was fun, clever, and visually appealing. Thank you Kathryn and thank you Eli for your illuminating commentary today.
I have several Sugar Maples in my yard which provide copious shade and which are spectacular in the Fall. They also provide good cover for the squirrels who my dogs just live to terrorize. They barrel out the door and race to chase the offending trespassers UP the MAPLE TREE like rulers of the universe. The squirrels of course have figured this out and instantly skitter out the maple branch to the roof, then down the other side and onto my neighbor’s ELM. No doubt they sit there in the branches sniggering at the idiot dogs who are still there barking up the tree and have no clue they were long ago outwitted by rodents.
@Joaquin 5:17 AM and @Anonymous 7:45 AM
+1
Or, suburban home construction material per one folk tune. TICKY TACKY.
@Joe from yesterday - your link solved a long time mystery: kids used to say "Here Comes the Judge" in that exact rhythm if they thought they were about to get in trouble. I had no idea that was a song, a very funky one at that!
I did the NYer first, which had two tree answers - I was all ready to call foul on dupes, but I caught myself and reason prevailed.
I'm glad to have someone think of ENT as a feature, bonus nod, rather than a cause for an editing rant.
Nice review today ELI, esp the IKEA - ALLEN wrench connection:)
Did anyone mention the grid art; looks like a lonely pine?
Natick of the day: B_HAMEN/R_I
I found the fill to be overly predictable both in the sense that I was often able to guess at an entry just by looking at a partially filled set of lights, and in the sense that I could often guess the clues from the entries. Maybe this arises from the dearth of longer entries? I mean, as soon as you have IG at 37A, IGNITES is pretty much a done deal, without even glancing at the clue. As for the predictability of the clues, for example, I got 53A, IM ON, from crosses before looking at the clue, and thought, "Watch—The clue is going to be something about a cue," and of course, the clue was "That's my cue!" I realize it's a Tuesday, but it felt a bit gimme-heavy nevertheless.
Baader-Meinhoff effect (thanks Mack), related to RAS. I'm just typing this so I have a chance to remember both.
I retract my Natick of the day since it would have been obvious if I had sussed out the theme while solving. EL_ND/IN_FLAT is the winner, although it is more of a 50/50 kealoa in that it could only be E or A.
For those wondering about Miles Morales/Peter Parker - too long to explain here, but PP still exists in multiple forms. This pair of movies is fantastic visually and in a moving human way as well. What they do with animating comic styles in 3 dimensions is truly stunning. Yes, they are also loud and busy.
@Weezie, I don't see where Eli mentioned BlueSky. There is an interesting piece in the Atlantic about the splintering of social media post-Twitter that goes into BlueSky and its user base. Funniest line is them trying to make "skeeted" a thing, apparently unaware of the (urban) dictionary usage already prevalent.
Same here.
@Smith (8:55 AM)
Did the same as you, 'even boustrophedon'. lol
Finally looked at the revealer: UP A TREE, and 💡.
Btw, thx for the new word:
"'Boustrophedon' is an ancient style of writing that dates back to the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Greece. The word itself is of Greek origin and translates to "ox-turning" or "as the ox plows." This name comes from the pattern of the writing, which resembles the path of an ox plowing a field.
In the boustrophedon style, the text is written in alternating directions, right to left and left to right, in successive lines. The lines change direction, much like the back-and-forth motion of an ox plowing a field, hence the name. It was used in early writing systems, such as the early Greek alphabet, some ancient scripts, and even in some ancient inscriptions." (ChatGPT)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
I respectfully disagree with @Gary Jugert about taking EVILER to the streets. I’m sticking to my tried and true dastardlier.
It may be true that Elizabeth I only had a TUDOR house, but it had lots of windows.
A more proper undercoating of paint on an introductory textbook would be a primmer PRIMER primer.
Fun puzzle. Thanks, Kathryn Ladner.
Nice puzzle. More sparkle than a usual Tuesday.
I get a little thrill every time I see the Washington Monument. House of Cards used to have a lovely shot of it at the beginning of each episode. I saw one yesterday while watching the tennis tournament in DC. (Note to word lovers: One of yesterday's winners was an American, Michael Mmoh. His father is Nigerian.)
@jberg, @pabloinnh - it's a multiverse thing. In our universe, Peter Parker was bitten by the radioactive spider. But in other universes, it was Miles Morales, or Gwen Stacy, or Pavitr Prabhakar, or Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-ham (not kidding).
Challenging for me, as I stopped at a quarter and at half-way down the grid to figure out what the circles were doing - in vain, even though the rising ELM, ASPEN, FIR, and PINE were already in place. I was not helped by having guessed the reveal to be "in A TRap." Once I corrected that, the theme did help me in getting DECAMP (from guessing CEDAR) and also my final apPLE tree, oops, not. Anyway, once complete, I thought it was a lovely forest - especially having the tall MAGNOLIA and SYCAMORE at the sides and sheltering their smaller brethren. A really good Tuesday in my book.
@Cassieopia 7:14 - Thank you for pointing out the tree shape in the grid. As I filled in ART DECO, I was seeing the top of the Chrysler building.
Do-overs: in A TRap, beD (loved that trick), RAo, GENERal, apPLE. Help from previous puzzles: BAHAMEN. No idea: RAI, MORALES.
Your write up with "The Larch"...are you referencing the Flying Circus episode of "How to Recognize Different Trees From A Very Long Way Away"?
Neat E/W symmetry, with tree-like puzgrid art. UPATREE revealer was neat but woulda been even neater, if ENT [with its T dippin into TREE) hadn't had "tree" in its clue. So obvious, U can't help wonderin if it was all done on purpose.
Anyhoo … clever theme idea.
staff weeject picks: MLE & RIF. Themer respect for the runtwords. Also, MLE/ELM gave m&e enough of a theme mcguffin clue to finish up fillin in that there AILONGAM's lower AM letters, without lookin at any related clues. And thus was the TuesPuz solvequest made easier than usual.
other fave stuff: BAHAMEN. ARTDECO. OBELISK. CREWCUT. TATTLE. MACYS as a primo SYCAMORE buildin block. RINGO.
EVILER does produce a perfectly good RELIVE tree, growin upward.
Thanx for the TuesPuz nature walk, Ms. Ladner darlin. The puz kinda grew on m&e.
And tree-hugs, all around, includin to all the blog subs like the Elimeister.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
There was a theme?
I don't care for throwaway "themes" like this that are separate and apart from the solve.
What's the point of a theme if you notice only after you've finished, other than to remark "my, what a clever constructor to hide those words without me even caring to notice?" If it were really hard then maybe it could be useful to the solve, otherwise no.
I Enjoyed your commentary. THE LARCH.
Whenever I see mirror symmetry I take a hard look at the grid and see if the pattern of black squares is telling me something. Today the center screamed "tree." When ELM revealed itself early on, it was a thrilling feeling.
I think if Rex were here today, he would be unhappy that ELM and FIR were intact, while the rest of the themers break across black squares. He'd wish it had been consistent and that the revealer were something like "chopped up tree."
@jb 129
You must have missed the clue for 34A, or not read it in its entirety.
I’m not much of a fan of themes and today was especially easy to ignore. As in I didn’t care enough to even look even after solving the revealer. The NW corner was tough with bahamen and rai. Zara? Decently tough for a Tuesday.
The very last line of the post, “ BlueSky @eliselzer.bsky.socail (Sorry, I don't have any invites.” And oof, oh no, I feel bad finding that as funny as I do! Nothing wrong with being on BlueSky ofc; just was tickled at the thought that many folks here would be as well.
@kitshef-Thanks for the update, but the "multiverse" connection makes me realize that I am even further out of the loop than I had thought.
Taste is subjective and it’s fine that you didn’t like Into the Spiderverse, but to claim it lacked humanity is like criticizing Mama Mia for failing to include Abba songs.
Plat books evoke CHINATOWN and of course JJ Gittes’ journey towards tragic misunderstanding. Youthful Beatles shots are precious. There should be a section of the dictionary under “talent” that shows their picture. An enjoyable puzzle with a fantastic theme and a grid to go along. Thanx Kathryn.
@Weezie, thanks for following up. It didn't show up on my page (even ran a CTRL+F), then since you said it was last, I clicked the highlighted @3:30AM, and there it was along with the pics and triathlon info. I wonder what else I have missed over the years. I get your point about the thin to non-existent Venn diagram slice of Rexites and BlueSky wannabes.
Can anyone confirm that all of these trees could exist in the same forest? I think of ASPEN as high altitude/cold/Western and MAGNOLIA as a more southern/eastern/warm. Not that this is necessary for the puzzle...
Eli, nice insertion of The Larch. In Canada, we call that tree a Tamarack... good luck fitting that in the grid upside down.
The only themer that really impressed me was fitting SYCAMORE backwards into only 2 words.
I had to guess at the A where RAI crossed BAHA MEN.
[Spelling Bee: Mon 0, at last. Last word this 6er.]
@JC66 - yes I did. Sped through the puzzle & didn't bother looking back at 34 across. Thx for the heads up!
I can now identify that tree from a rather long way away.
Sped through this forest despite the haphazard placement of the trees because the fill was very easy as it should be for aTuesday. I fell right into the nice soft bed at the B&B AND had ti correct. Even with that little stumble, this a much quicker solve than yesterday largely because of all the “ho hum” fill - necessary to accommodate the large number of theme entries. The tradeoff was worth the short stuff.
Excellent feat of construction. I like when theme entries are so plentiful. Demonstrates construction skill so kudos. I can see yesterday and today being maybe the first time a newer solver goes two in a row and keeps coming back. Good job Kathryn Ladner.
Very easily solved as a themeless. Never looked at the silly circles. Now I can't see the forest for the trees.
!!!
@egsforbreakfast 10:40 AM
+1
This blog comment section needs to be EGSIER.
To add some INFO on our guest blogger's Ikea image, I'm guessing that, like many GENERIC makers of assemble-it-yourself furniture, they use socket head screws and bolts as fasteners in their kits. ALLEN wrenches, aka hex wrenches, are needed to tighten or loosen these fasteners. If you happen to be in Great Britain they're called ALLEN or hex keys. You're welcome.
Yesterday's EVIL EYES got even EVILER today. Maybe tomorrow we'll see EVILEST. Or would that be a tick too tacky? Okay, I'll cut my loses and DECAMP.
Everybody
That mystery A y'all seem to have had trouble with at the cross of BAHAMEN/RAI .... was triple checked by the MAGNOLIA TREE, yes? I don't want to sound mean or condescending (or EVILER), but there is no MAGNOLIe TREE.
RooMonster No Tree (Or Puz [Or Anything, Really]) Expert Guy
Did this in a fast Monday time while ignoring the theme completely. Some of the fill was icky (“eviler”? Really?) but some was nice. As a father of young boys the Miles Morales clue was a nice gimme.
MONGOLIA is a country, not a tree. How did the editors let such a horrendous error slip through?
Rosemary DECAMP played Marlo Thomas's mother on "That Girl".
Today was the first day in maybe five weeks or more where being outdoors was a joy instead of an ordeal. First I had something I really wanted to take care of this morning (not the puzzle) and then I wanted to go out on the early (for me) side.
I had already Naticked at R?I/B?HAME?, had no idea why the tiny little circles were there or what the theme was, still had the SE to fill in, and just wanted to get out of the house. I could have brought the puzzle with me, of course, but I was afraid it might spoil a beautiful day in the park.
I completely forgot that I hadn't done the puzzle. I saw it on my coffee table after I had dinner tonight -- and I finished the SE -- still without solving the Natick or having any idea what the theme was.
I tend to heartily dislike puzzles with randomly placed tiny little circles and this one was no exception. In fact it was more annoying than most.
Wow, Joe D., sometimes you're not very funny.
The clue "more dastardly" made me smile and IMO "eviler wa perfect as th answer.
In another setting I might have raised an eyebrow at eviler. But it worked perfectly here.
I just finished tomorrow's puzzle, and I can't wait to read the comments.
@JC – I know, right?
Agreed, that was a brutal cross. Pure trivia, and both the crosses are completely uninferrable if you don’t know them.
I loved this grid otherwise but those two ads IMO inexcusable on a tuesday.
Is eviler really a word?
@okanaganer... I am of the same vintage as you and live in the neighbouring province to the east... We have many Larch trees here and not once, in my many years, have I heard them referred to Tamarack. At Lake Louise ski area there is a Larch chair lift and an accompanying run called Larch....
Is it still a Natick if there are 3 crosses to use (as IA of MAGNOLIA was there)?
Cute theme. Fun to solve. CROC should always be plural unless you are talking about a reptile inhabiting the Everglades. EVILER is a bit of a stretch. Besides that, it was a solid offering from a (relatively) new constructor - Kathryn Ladner. I posted yesterday but it did not appear so I will say it again. Jeff Chen has left the XwordInfo blog and now it is on hold until his former co-pilot takes the reins.
I just noticed the tree shape formed by the black squares in the middle of the grid. I thought the puzzle was great but now I think it’s tree-mendous.
Very well depicted tree-shaped grid, adding an extra layer. Points.
You had me at SYCAMORE. Fabulous.
Misdirect of the week (probably the month as well): "Part of B&B" = AND, not BED. Perfectly fair...but nasty. HAD to be scores of overwrites there.
Theme density inevitably produces desperation. INAFLAT & EVILER, I'm looking at you. Still could've been a lot worse. Birdie.
Wordle birdie out of nowhere: YBYBB BYBYB GGGGG! Wotta stab!
NEW CREW
TERI AND PAM did the BAHAMEN
INAFLAT ON MAPLE Street,
AND I BELIEVE they’ll RELOCATE when
they JOIN UP with the FLEET.
--- IVAN MORALES
I noticed the pattern.
I saw the circled trees.
Now I see that we can put them together.
duh, once again
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
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