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Never-seen character on TV's "Mork & Mindy" / SAT 8-12-23 / Perfectly acceptable, humorously / Serpentine symbol of rebirth, from the Greek for "tail-devouring" / Block of text duplicated and reposted online, in internet slang / True-crime series about a physician who commits gross malpractice / A baby one is called a red dog
Saturday, August 12, 2023
Constructor: Rachel Fabi and Christina Iverson
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: CROMULENT (1A: Perfectly acceptable, humorously) —
Cromulent first appeared in the February 18, 1996 episode of The Simpsons called "Lisa the Iconoclast," in what could be considered a throw-away line given during the opening credits. The schoolchildren of Springfield are watching a film about the founding father of Springfield, Jebediah Springfield. The film ends with Jebediah intoning, “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” One teacher at the back of the room leans over to another and says that she’d never heard the word embiggen before she moved to Springfield. “I don't know why,” the other teacher replies. “It's a perfectly cromulent word.”The word cromulent ended up in the script courtesy of a showrunner’s challenge to the writers. According to the DVD commentary for The Simpsons, the showrunners asked the writers to come up with two nonce words that sounded like words that could be in actual use. Writer David X. Cohen came up with cromulent as one of those words. It means "acceptable" or "fine."(merriam-webster.com)
• • •
The hardest part of the NW, aside from my total ignorance of COPYPASTA, was a. spelling OUROBOROS correctly (I knew the term but had it as OROUBOROS at first) (15A: Serpentine symbol of rebirth, from the Greek for "tail-devouring"), and b. trying to figure out what the hell kind of RACK it was in that damned kitchen if it wasn't a SPICE RACK (17A: Kitchen organizer = PLATE RACK). Legitimately had 4D: Bon ___ as MUC for a bit. Misspelled OUROBOROS + SPICE RACK = Bon MUC. But I fixed the spelling error on the serpentine symbol of rebirth, forced Bon to be MOT and got the car going again. Wanted "OWIE!" before the reduplicative "OW, OW!" (23D: Cry after stubbing a toe, maybe), but that was the last small hiccup before I got dumped out into the center of the grid and things got much simpler.
I had ITALIANI instead of ITALIANO (35D: Romano o siciliano) ("o" is "or" so yes the answer needs to be singular). I was originally trying to remember the Italian word for "cheese" before realizing that the words were merely terms for inhabitants of different regions. Seemed weird to have PASTES IN in the grid (29D: Affixes to a scrapbook, say) when COPYPASTA's whole second half is essentially a playful, only-one-letter-changed reworking of PASTE. Didn't love that, to be honest. Also didn't love ALAMOS in the plural (41D: Alternatives to Budgets). I got it easily enough, but can't imagine using it. "'Look at all those ALAMOS,' he said, gazing at the section of the rental lot that contained the rental cars that were available specifically from Alamo and not, say, Dollar or Avis." It's not really a plausible scenario. And I don't get how PONY RIDES are "hits?" (31D: Fair hits?). Is the idea that they are popular ... rides? At (county) fairs? Like ... they are "hits" with kids? I know you can't see me, but I'm making a face that's somewhere between dubious and "yikes." Are PONY RIDES still things? Are they hits? I have no purchase on this particular corner of the equine world (or any corner of the equine world, for that matter). Is "DR. DEATH" actually about Kevorkian? [...checks internet...] Huh, it's not. That is what they called Kevorkian, isn't it? [...checks internet...] Yes, it is. Perhaps such a reference was deemed too distasteful or upsetting, although I'm not sure how it's any less distasteful or upsetting than the "gross malpractice" of the actual physician "DR. DEATH" is based on. Seems there's no non-grim way to clue "DR. DEATH" so we have this heavily vague clue that doesn't require you to think about specifics (27A: True-crime series about a physician who commits gross malpractice). I guess that's fine. I thought "DR. DEATH" was also the title of a Stephen King novel, but turns out I was thinking of "DOCTOR SLEEP."
Speaking of sleep, I've stayed up late to blog (unusual for me) so I need to go get some. See you Sunday, I hope.
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95 comments:
Rare weekday evening post from Rex! Some nice chuckles in his writeup, including "...I'm gonna go back to Old Manville, where... I may in fact be mayor." I zipped thru this one pretty fast for a Saturday.
Never heard of COPYPASTA. Or LABNEH. The gimme OUROBOROS fixed a bunch of wrong downs; I shoulda read that clue first. In Canada ALAMOS are not alternatives to Budgets; I can't recall ever seeing one but I've heard the name somewhere.
Typeovers: with the P in place had PUT ON before PHASE; looking at --OW had OW OW then thought no, it's gotta be YEOW, then later changed it back.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0, last word this 8er which I typed in desperation with no idea what it means. QB streak 9 days!]
This Saturday was like mama bears' bed not too hard but not too soft either. It was very easy to start in the NE but the pairings of DRDEATH with DYNASTY and CROMULENT with COPYPASTA created big enough speed bumps to keep it in late week territory. I was slow with BALLET and BISON as well.
I had no idea how I was going to finish LABNE_ at 11D. The irony of DRDEATH to the rescue. Of course I needed SLOOPY to see DYNASTY and that D gave me DRDEATH. Tang kept me thinking of the flavor and the drink all part of a fun speed bump.
This is OUROBOROS's third appearance in the NYTXW with those first two being recent. On top of that it was featured repeatedly in the 4th season of "The Sinner" a crime series my wife and I binge watched. At first I tried to put the U after the B but it didn't work. MOT fixed the spelling for me too.
From the NE my solve went steadily clockwise and I finished with the A of AWL.
yd -0 my final word was an 8 pointer that was used to clue ESSENCE twice back in the 90s by the same constructor
Definitely an easy Saturday, but I hated one cross: I wanted OWWW, and SLOwPY sounds just as CROMULENT of an answer as SLOOPY!
Easy-medium. Delightful, liked it a bunch and Jeff gave it POW!
I might have winced at TARED if I hadn’t used it at my local fish market when the counter guy used the scale to lower the weight of my baja halibut so I paid less for a bigger piece than I requested. Me - “Oh, you TARED it!”
I thought it was a very easy Saturday (even solving while watching some pre-season football). But then the LABNEH/TARED cross left me in downtown Natick for longer than I cared to be there.
NW murderous for me. EWL had to be AWL, leaving COPYPASTA, which had to be wrong. Had to. Wasn’t.
I’m really not why the clue for cromulent is “perfectly acceptable, humorously”. What does the meaning have to do with humor? It did come from the Simpsons, but the clue implies it’s means whatever it’s talking about is acceptable in a funny way. I didn’t find the clue cromulent or funny.
Any Saturday I can complete without cheating is a win in my book, and unlike Rex OUROBOROS and COPYPASTA were gimmes for me; the former thanks to my love of Fullmetal Alchemist, that brilliant manga by Hiromu Arakawa, and the latter due to waaaay too many hours wasted on reddit. LEBNEH was a new one and sounds delicious, ima gonna hunt down some recipes.
NANNY state is the term conservatives use to scare Americans into giving up basic human rights such as universal health care.
I had this nightmare last night. I was exploring the NW county, traveling south on COPYPASTA. When crossing CROMULENT, OUROBOROS, and PLATERACK, I hit three towns, and they were all named Natick. A little later, driving south on NOCKED, going through the same three highways, I passed three other towns. Incredibly, they were also all named Natick. This was too much for my very old vehicle and it fell apart. It's still there waiting for replacement parts.
Struck out in the NW. Eventually got CROMULENT on my own, but needed Sergey and Larry for the correct spelling of OUROBOROS. Really wanted lemon OIL for the citrusy ingredient at 3D, but it wouldn't fit and was too unsure of NOCKED at 8D to commit to it until it became inevitable.
Had a bit of a pause at 18A. It had to be T-BIRD, but isn't Ford currently making an electric version? No, I came to realize -- the electric muscle car is a Mustang. Wanted AMOur for the opera at 44D because somehow the clue looked more French than Italian. Only other overwrite was I mean for IN SUM at 46D.
Copypasta, in my experience, is more about form/behavior than the actual content, so I wouldn’t index too much on the examples given in Wikipedia. It’s something that’s been copied and pasted repeatedly. Often it’s wrong or being misapplied or context is missing or it’s lost fidelity by being passed through phone screenshots and social media services. It might alternatively be something frequently posted just to annoy others. It has a somewhat pejorative sense.
Kind of boring. So many answers slid in with no need to wait for or look at crosses: EERINESS, A FEW, SLOOPY, TAIWAN, SALTS, NANNY, AT SEA, BALLET SLIPPER, ONUS, TOME, ESSO, UBER, LORI, ITALIANO, AMORE, GATO, HOT...
Simpsons references have overtaken Star Wars references as the primary bane of my NYT solving. Enough. CROMULENT is now 27 years old; it isn't funny anymore, if it ever was.
Quintessential three-chord rock
I was at a county fair yesterday, and, yes, pony rides are still a thing (at least at the Northwest Michigan fair).
It’s a handsome grid layout - but when 1a is your top entry there’s a problem. Definitely feels like a trying too hard puzzle - the misdirects are strained and the overall cluing obtuse. Add some obscure trivia and it’s a TSK.
Never realized there was a leading O in OUROBOROS. Those tattoos were hot for awhile. COPY PASTA and PASTES IN are rough. The ALAMOS plural should have been edited out. Love LABNEH but the remaining NE corner flopped.
Did not have the ATTENTION SPAN for this mess. Matt Sewell’s Stumper brings a little more heat.
We have a storm approaching later - I’m going surfing and reminisce about the west coast of Maui.
Not Rick Derringer
Anyone who describes Dateline as a “current affairs’ show has missed the past couple of decades of true crime slop.
Ugly start, with "humorously" crossing "in internet slang" ... both normally trouble for me. Never heard of COPY PASTA but CROMULENT I know.
But it turned out to be very, very easy. Wasted too much time thinking I would know and could come up with LABNEH, but that turned out to need all the crosses. But everything else would have seemed reasonable on a Wednesday.
Learned what COPYPASTA is from the comments - seems like a totally plausible, but somewhat unnecessary concept - but hey, it appears to be an internet form of word salad, so I guess it’s fitting that it has a culinary inspired name as well.
Didn’t bother looking up the other stuff - things like OUROBOROS, CROMULENT, NOCKED, LABNEH don’t even look like real words to me (I’m sure they are). But why look them up only to forget them an hour later.
Did this puzzle really use the name of a horse from the Olympics in 1976 as a clue/answer combination?
Crummy outing for me. I checked 🦖's ratings for the week and every puzzle is listed as easy except for the ID/EGO Thursday. He wasn't sure how to rate that. Now clearly these puzzles are all very different in terms of difficulty, so do any of you have any insight into his rating system?
I wonder if 🦖 could phone this one in early as he's friends with the constructors? Let's say he might have been a bit more exacting on this one had he slept on it.
Its obviously not whether a puzzle is easy for a typical human, because today would be un-do-able for the average person in the street. Even for us regulars this is going to come in on the crunchy side and COPYPASTA will cause many to fail. I assumed EWL is a type of poker game.
I think if you see these words in a puzzle:
CROMULENT
OUROBORO
DRDEATH
SLOOPY
NOCKED
LABNEH
and still call it "easy" you're just trying to be the ALPHA chess club member.
And, those are just the non-word words my spell check agrees aren't real. Then there's the sucky stuff:
PLATE RACK: You stack plates in 100% of every kitchens I've ever been in.
EERINESS: Huge waste of real estate to nounize an adjective.
PAK: Cricket abbreviations. AYFKM?
TAIWAN: Anybody wanna know where I was born? Anybody except Obama was born? Anybody?
I'M SO DONE, I'M EASY, SO AM I. Hello. Awful.
ORSON: Mork and Mindy minor characters. OK, sure, we'll rely on crosses.
NEWT: Thankfully it's the only possible animal on Earth they're studying or this would've been a really dumb way to clue this. Oh wait....
AMORE: Yeah, me and Donizetti had coffee last week and his new opera is called "The peanuts are making me ___." He's not sure on the last word, since it could be any Italian word ever.
ALAMOS: This stands alone as the most gawd awful POC ever. Remember all those Alamos? Yeah, not THE Alamo, the cars, they were like all those Hertzes, AutoEuropes, Avises, and my favorite Sixtes.
UBER: German, sure. LES: French, sure. GATO: Spanish, sure. ITALIANO: So much fancy cluing for so much wasted real estate. We have pretty good English words too.
HERE'S: Wow, so ugly.
ANNE: The 1976 equestrian events. I sure wonder if the 1976 Olympics had any other headlines of note because I sure think of it as the princess on the pony Olympics like everybody.
I am taking on faith that ORANGE OIL is a common item in people's kitchens, but we don't have any since I'm pretty sure nobody has any in Denver, but this is still kind of a cow town.
And finally, I loved finding BALLET SLIPPER, ATTENTION SPAN, and PONY RIDES hiding in here, but you'll probably need to read @Lewis to find the wonderfulness outside of the EERINESS on this one.
Uniclues:
1 China's resignation.
2 Chicago, uh, not so much.
3 The August 12, 2023 NYTXW.
1 TAIWAN, I'M SO DONE
2 LORI DYNASTY
3 HERE'S ANNE NEWS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The Joker's first act of business after he won the mayor's race. AXED BAT PHONE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Almost an identical experience to OFL. I think I set a record for number of erasures while trying to spell one word with OUROBOROS. CROMULENT made me think of @Z, who used to use it frequently in his posts.
Yep, AMOUR before AMORE (hi @Conrad), and for the same reason. Found out that TARE can be used as a verb and discovered LABNEH. Also made the acquaintance of DRDEATH, eek.
Did the whole thing with my GATO tucked in next to me in my recliner, always a nice thing.
Easy breezy Saturday, RF and CI. I went Really Fast and Came In well below my Saturday average, and thanks for all the fun.
Now to get my comeuppance with the Saturday Stumper.
@Southside Johnny – Princess Anne was the rider, not the horse.
Kazow! Here’s a Saturday bursting with freshness. Where’s the stodginess? Nowhere. Where’s the junk? Nowhere.
And lovely answers everywhere. My favorites: CROMULENT, OUROBOROS, RULE OF LAW, NOCKED, LABNEH, and BALLET SLIPPER (which I love for its comfy aura and how it rolls off the tongue). Half of these are NYT debut answers.
This is not the kind of Saturday puzzle that felt laborious to me, like making a term paper, or trudging through an equatorial forest, swatting flies away. This had spark, play, and the kind of delicious challenge my brain loves – cracking riddles, fiddling with words. This grid design, with its unusual diagonal symmetry, had flow. That is, where were the dreaded islands of doom where there are no ways out of stuckness? Nowhere.
Some lovely creativity, too. A tiny example – the clue [Show rooms?] for VENUES, a punny clue never used before, in any major venue. That’s a splendid easy-to-go-unnoticed touch. Plus, a sweet serendipity: SEA and AT SEA abutting SALT, featuring both the condiment (SEA SALT) and nautical (one who is AT SEA) meanings of SALT.
Amazing how a box of letters ripple with personality. Brava, Rachel and Christina for an exhilarating outing!
Thx, Rachel & Christina; a CROMULENT effort, indeed! 😊
Easy-med (says the timer anyway).
Seemed tougher, tho.
Thank goodness for fair crosses; needed them for LABNEH, OUROBOROS, TARED, VENUES, EERINESS, PLATE RACK, COPYPASTA, ORANGE OIL, ORSON.
SpicE RACK before PLATE RACK; PASTe before PASTA; I mean before IN SUM.
My Top 10 ALPHA playlist has somehow managed to climb to 58 songs; always my first choice for bedtime listening (about 1/2 hrs' worth). Just need to use Shortcut, 'hey Siri, ALPHA', and we're off and running on shuffle play.
Fave non-card game at college: RISK.
Best elective in jr. college: BALLET. 🩰
Was somewhat surprised I finished unscathed; I'll take it, tho. lol
Pleasant journey; liked it! :)
___
On to Matthew Sewell's Sat. Stumper. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Ballet slippers are not toe shoes. No ballerina dances en pointe in ballet slippers
Very easy -- app says 1/3 my average Saturday time. But it was on my wavelength, so I won't be surprised to see other people having some problems with some words.
CROMULENT, OUROBOROS and COPYPASTA were instant fills, so it hit the ground running. PLATE RACK got an eye roll -- not sure why plates need a rack when they stack perfectly well. It obviously was supposed to be SPICE RACK. It's the only option.
Another word I learned first from The Simpsons: LABNEH. Laura, the neighbor teen, introduces it to the kids while babysitting. Bart says, "That's some good labneh." Whenever I see it now I think of that, so it's another that came easily to me.
COPYPASTA has an offshoot called "creepypasta" that became just as popular in use. If the wiki examples are dark, it's probably because of that.
CROMULENT and OUROBOROS were total unknowns for me, as in WTF?!?! So was COPYPASTA, but that was at least inferable, and eventually gave me the first two. The rest of the puzzle was fun, sometimes challenging but gettable. Except, maybe, for the A in TARED, which was just a lucky guess.
Okay, see, this is my idea of what a puzzle should be. How many new facts did we learn?! How many did we get the chance to feel proud of ourselves for knowing already?! Like, how absurd is it that the state song of Ohio has SLOOPY in the title? (Yes I know it was a hit song, just a silly word imo.)
Plus, and this is a big part of what I think crosswords should aspire to: the word play was *so* fun. I literally had to put my phone down for a second to gather myself, that’s how excited I was about ATTENTIONSPAN. Between that and a typo, I wound up being 5 seconds off of my fastest Saturday time, but I know in my heart it was a personal best, ha. Probably could have used a bit more bite to it for a Saturday, but I think Rachel Fabi is one of the regular constructors with whom I have the most cultural overlap, so probably some of that is me.
In defense of COPYPASTA: I was a lead text volunteer on a 2020 campaign (sorry not sorry if you were in a swing state). We used the term all the time, as a noun of its own, to describe blocks of text that we would regularly post in the Slack Channels as moderators. I.e.,
“Okay, we’re going to hold off on responses for now til we get approval on language based on the new platform. Who can whip up some COPYPASTA on that?” And then someone would draft the copy, and we’d all regularly feed the volunteers that same COPYPASTA to make sure they were getting the message. So yes, it’s a term that comes from the computer commands, but COPY has the second meaning of “text that will be used to advance a certain goal” and PASTA is food. So all of that to say, the phrase is actually separate enough from PASTE that it’s fine that both are in the puzzle imo. All that said, I do *hate* the term, but mostly because I associate it with a certain mansplainy lead volunteer who was a PITA but also wrote a lot of our COPYPASTA.
Anyway, really good puzzles the last few days. Now let’s see if I can hike Panther Mountain before the rain hits.
Oh, and Rex, thanks for that clip of “I’m Easy” — a beautiful moment in an amazing film and that shot of Shelley Duvall is priceless.
I wanted Spice rack too! Who ever heard of a plate rack? I did not know CROMULENT, I guess I am not a big enough Simpson’s fanatic, so that was a stumper. Did not know COPYPASTA, and that whole area was a really tedious slog but the rest was super fun as noted. Thankfully, I do know how to spell OUROBOROS, it’s come up often enough in the puzzle!
This was not a POW! for me. More like a YEOW! (the better alternative for OWOW).
Easy in the bottom half, killer in NW.
CROMULENT?
OUROBOROS?
NOCKED?
LABNEH?
(I COPYPASTAed Gary’s list).
Did I like this xword? Not “ring-shaped reef” (ATOLL)!
I was feeling proud of myself for getting OUROBOROS with no crosses, but I see everybody else did, as well. And I was hesitant, since I never thought of it as a symbol of rebirth--I mean, it just keeps growing in front as it gets chewed up in the rear, right? No rebirth involved. So I checked a couple of crosses, got MOT and UBER, and thereby solved the spelling problem as well.
But I fanned on COPYPASTe. Doh! I'd certainly never seen or heard the correct term, and my version seemed slangy enough.
I stared at LABNE_ for a long time, trying to guess that last letter -- then gave up, worked the crosses, and as soon as I had DRDEATH I realized that I've seen the word LABNEH many times. Never had any though, as far as I can recall.
AviseS before ALAMOS, mentally carping that Budget and Avis are actually the same company, not 'alternatives,' but the puzzl was smarter than me.
@Gary J., take another look at the 3-D clue -- it specifies furniture polish, not an oil that you'd use in your kitchen.
@Ed Rorie from yesterday -- thanks for the spelling correction!
I think CROMULENT and OUROBOROS in the same area is a bit unfair. I've never heard of either in 82 years on the planet.
While we’re diametrically opposed on our views of this puzzle, that pun is niche crossword-meets-dad joke perfection.
LABNEH is a cheese dip (made from yogurt) but not a yogurt dip!!!
I've been on vacation all week so my days don’t always feel like what the calendar says, but I looked at the date on the top of this puzzle a couple of times to affirm that it was truly a Saturday; it was so easy, it was equal to my best Friday time record. Only the far SW gave me any pause because of unknown ORSON crossing an unknown opera and the kealoa “as AM I” vs. SO AM I. I needed more BALLET SLIPPER in this puzzle to keep me on my toes!
Nice puzzle, just not a Saturday challenge.
How on earth can you possibly call this puzzle easy? Do you only write this blog for lifelong crossword puzzle experts? Nothing like going through an entire puzzle, getting 4 answers, and then having Rex YET AGAIN say "EASY!". I think I need a new hobby, this one just leaves me enraged and feeling stupid.
As someone on Reddit, which is hugely popular, COPYPASTA was a gimme. Totally fair entry and I was tickled to see it. Also had a chuckle when I got CROMULENT. Fun Saturday puzzle which took me a little less than average solve time.
My first DNF in years, because of NW corner, and it gets an "easy" mark. Ugh.
The puzzle was very easy except for the 'outer boroughs' of the NW. Never heard of Cromulent either, whatever the hell THAT is, so it was a DNF. Weird how it could go from easy to impossible in one puzzle.
Hey All !
First off, I'm creeping (what doesn't seem) slowly toward grumpy old man status. I'm already kinda grumpy, and today I'm kinda older. 😁 Happy birthday to me!
Noticed the Diagonal Symmetry pretty much right off, so the ole brain is still functional. I do agree with Rex about the NW being rough. Finishing up area, as had rest of puz completed. Had to Goog for UBER, as nothing was being brought forth in my mind. Headslap after seeing the answer. One forgets UBER had that meaning before the Ride-Share stole the name. That got me to finish up the NW, but alas, Almost There! Really? Hot Check Puzzle, and saw I had an E at OUROBOReS/NeCKED. Dang. Who ever heard of NOCKED? (Unless you're an arrow flinger.)
LABNEH was new to me. As was COPYPASTA. But saw EWL couldn't have been correct. I actually think COPYPASTA is quite funny.
The ole SOAMI, SODOI, ASAMI, SOAMI, DITTO multi-keoloa conundrum showed itself today.Had the AMI, went with asAMI. Surprised I remembered ORSON pretty much right off. OWie-OWOW, stickSIN-PASTESIN.
Holy Grail line:
"She turned me into a NEWT!"
"A NEWT?"
"I got better - (pause) - Burn her anyway!"
Neat stack of ON US TO ME.
Happy Weekend!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
@jberg 8:48 AM
Whoops! Thanks. The only thing I know about the kitchen is it's where the coffee pot is. I wonder how sick you'd get if you cooked with orange oil? It sounds good. Orange juice with more substance. I am realizing now I have never used anything other than lemon Pledge to dust furniture.
How have I gone through an entire lifetime without having once seen or heard the word OUROBORIS? Beats me, but it's just about the most unfamiliar word I've ever seen in a crossword puzzle.
Not CROMULENT, though. CROMULENT would also be a great big "Huh?" if I hadn't spent the last (almost) decade on this blog. There are at least three Rexites -- I forget which ones -- who use the word regularly in their comments: "It was a perfectly CROMULENT clue." "It was a completely CROMULENT phrase." From the context of their various comments I knew it was an approving word, not a pejorative one. I would have guessed it meant "clear" or "fair" -- but now I find that it means "perfectly acceptable." And also that it's humorous.
Other things I've never heard of: COPY PASTA (???!!!) and LABNEH and the strange answer to the "Budgets" clue.
Note to self: Never write heavily in dark ink on a Saturday even if you're sure. That final "O" in 52A from PASTES oN for "affixes to a scrapbook" made DITTO a slam dunk for "same here". No sooner did I write it in, (darkly, darkly), then I thought: "Oh no! You paste something IN a scrapbook, not ON it, dummy!" And I immediately realized the answer wouldn't be DITTO, but something ending in "I". AS AM I. SO AM I. SO DO I. It would be one of them -- and it was. What a mess the write-over would be.
A nice, crunchy Saturday. I kept the faith, plowed forward without cheating, and was rewarded with a clean solve. Extremely enjoyable and rewarding.
Happy Birthday RooMonster!
May your year have many Fs...
I'm not knocking NOCKED (8D), I just never heard of it and it knocked me for a loop, especially since it crossed that serpentine thing that was also foreign to me.
NOCK NOCK
Who's there?
No, not that kind of knock!
OK, go away then.
My g'son Leon, who is six, works knock knock jokes like this:
Leon: Knock knock
Me: Who's there?
Leon: Who's there?
Me: Hey, that's my line! but we're already roaring by then.
Regarding NOCK's connocktion to bows and arrows:
Knock knock
Who's there?
Archery
Archery who?
Archery tree produced a ton of cherries this year.
(Needs work.)
41A Nonplussed. A contronym.
Original meaning: surprised and confused so much that you are unsure how to react.
Now often used to mean not disconcerted; unperturbed.
Language is a funny old raccoon.
To the 7 deadly sins, I think we should add COPYPASTA as the PASTESIN.
Todays NEWS: No NEWTS is good NEWTS.
It’s always nice to see the brother of former US Open golf champ Julius Boros make an appearance. Hi, OURO!
Easy Saturday. Good fun. Thanks, Rachel Fabi and Christina Iverson.
We were stuck in that NW corner just as @MMORGAN described so well. Sneaky little bits here and there led to a Swiss cheese grid that finally took a cheat to get LABNEH that was totally wtf, but now that I’m up to speed I’ve finally found a recipe I can nail in the kitchen. Thanks Rachel & Christina for a real Saturday workout.
Fun puzzle. Started out seeming hard, but then turned “whoosh whoosh” for me too. Went to Google for check on OUROBOROS and CROMULENT, but not much else.
I have a 2002 “retro” T-BIRD convertible/hardtop combo 2-seater coupe (Thunderbird blue—best color it came in), and it is by far the funnest car I’ve ever owned, though matched in terms of affection by our other auto, a 2004 Honda Element in classic copper color, my most practical vehicle ever. Hoping I won’t need to buy a new set of wheels until the Apple car is available—expecting it to come in a really cool box.
CROMULENT and COPYPASTA were gimmes, and that let me whoosh whoosh through most of the puzzle, but that NE corner was mostly empty for a long time. The yogurt dip was unknown to me, and the crosses weren’t obvious. The last two to fall were TBIRD (I love those cars but got fixated on ThIRD - maybe some oddball car named after Henry Ford III?) and TARED (I only ever think of “tare” as a noun or adjective so I rejected it while running through the possible vowels).
That trouble spot aside, this was a smooth and fun solving experience.
Today I can agree with @Rex's "easy," after my struggle to finish the Friday puzzle most here breezed through. As for others, my way in was OUROBOROS with its helpful crosses that got me through the NW; then EERINESS and SLOOPY provided pathways eastward. Soon, the puzzle was definitely saying I'M EASY. Like @Joe Dipinto and @Teedman, I'd have wished for a little more pushback, but there were A FEW that did give me pause: ATTENTIONSPAN, which my ALy instead of ALI obscured for a good long while; VENUES,; and DYNASTY - I enjoyed the "reveal" when I finally saw them.
Help from previous puzzles: CROMULENT, I'M SO DONE. Help from having a spouse who grew up in England with cricket culture: PAK. Help from my inexplicable fascination with the British royal family: ANNE. Can't imagine how I knew: NOCKED. No idea: COPY PASTA (I like it!) and DR. DEATH.
I agree with garyj and anonymous at 8:09: puzzle was not easy and ballet shoes do not hold up your feet. Don’t watch the Simpsons but do have a Persian DIL, so knew labneh.
Gary, I’m glad you posted this because I agree with just about everything you brought up. If I wanted to do crosswords in foreign languages then I would buy a foreign language newspaper.
I thought Rex would tear this puzzle apart but there’s obviously a bias when the constructor is his friend.
I had to laugh at “cromulent” because I remember watching that episode when it first aired and thinking how funny it was. Great Saturday puzzle, all around.
Hey @Roo
HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎁🎉🎈🎂🎊
Have a great day and an even better year.
Ballet slippers don't keep you on your toes, pointe shoes do! Didn't stop me from getting the clue, but did make me roll my eyes.
Okay CROMULENT I knew but OUROBOROS? COPY PASTA? LABNEH? I kept looking at that corner thinking that can’t possibly be right. L-A-B-N-E-H is a dip? AMORE clued as an opera. And ALAMOS?? OW OW! Needless to say, I did not find it easy - a day of getting schooled with a healthy dose of trivia.
@Roo: I wish you Festive Felicitations and Fabulous Favor on your birthday! And don’t worry about getting grumpy - it’s one of the perks of aging.
Hang on Sloopy is a regular part of the Ohio State University marching band’s repertoire, which is likely how this came to be.
Obscure? Yes.
Absurd? No.
It’s a perfectly cromulent State song and clue.
This was a joy....A joyous joy...Not only did I get everything right, I don't know how I got everything right.
CROMULENT: A word I learned here. Our friend @Z used it often (Hi @pablito)...I miss him. Maybe he's sitting on a stool at his Placebo and Tentacle.
OUROBOROS: You were spelled incorrectly since I don't know you and I had that arrow all NECKED up. Don't you pull a taut arrow up to your neck? Damnation...My one disaster
And last but not least....LABNEH: I couldn't get TSATZIKI out of my head which is fine since I don't know how to spell you either.
I practically live in the kitchen and I've never seen LABNEH grace my pita bread. I got you, though....you can thank me knowing all the across answers attached to you.
I kinda laughed seeing PONY saddled next to ANNE. She is quite the horsey lady. I have a picture of me somewhere riding a pony and I look like Annie Oakley on steroids
An enjoyable romp today....I learned a few more things that I hope I'll remember.
@mathget 5:09...Need a ride? HAH!
Very nice Saturday puzzle that kind of whooshed for me until I got to my “left it blank” square which was the last A in COPYPASTA. HOW can I work an entire Saturday puzzle and NOT think of AWL!? Good grief and “my bad” is all I can say!
I knew OUROBOROS (don’t know why) and CROMULENT but I always forget that the latter was made up on The Simpsons. Makes me wonder if I’ve ever actually used the word seriously. Nah.
Also good grief…I just looked up WHY Hang on Sloopy is “kind of” Ohio’s official rock song. Apparently after the songs’ release it was always sung at Ohio State games. No wonder OSU seems to have the “big-head” calling itself THE Ohio State University!
I will echo the sentiment that DATELINE ceased to be a “current affairs” program a LONG time ago. Pretty sure that 60 Minutes was both the first AND the last man standing in that genre.
Gak. The perils of solving late at night. Began after work and after a glass of wine, while watching live in same time zone as Montreal the Rybakina/Kasatkina match (that ended at 2:54a). Puzzle seemed slightly on the easy side - except for the NW. Spent about the same time there as on the rest of the puzzle, and then gave up for the night. That was after having Google feed me OUROBOROS.
Came back a few minutes ago and finished that section in a couple minutes. Finally saw that 3D (where I'd stopped at _UL___LAW) was RULEOFLAW. Then YEN went it. Oh, I'd had yeOW at 23D when I stopped for the night.
Nice puzzle. Thanks to the constructors.
Cool wonk-eye puzgrid symmetry.
The longball no-knows abounded in this puppy, at our house:
CROMULENT.
OUROBOROS.
PLATERACK.
COPYPASTA.
NOCKED.
LABNEH.
[DRDEATH was a near no-know, but I think it was somewhere in there, brain-wise.]
All in the upper puzgrid half, btw. Lower half was much easier for M&A to solvequest.
staff weeject pick [only 8 choices]: PAK. Sorta tough, since don't follow cricket real close.
fave was BALLETSLIPPER. But had HIHEELSLIPPER, for far too many nanoseconds.
PASTESIN woulda been questionably repetitious fill, if it had been PASTASIN. Just sayin.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Fabi & Iverson darlins.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
p.s. Happy B-Day, @Roo dude.
**gruntz**
Aside from CROMULENT, OUROBOROS, COPYPASTA & LEBNAH (gotta admit I came here to get the answers so I cheated), this wasn't the hardest Saturday ever & kinda enjoyed (I guess that makes it a DNF?? ) Well, I enjoyed it anyway -
Hey, I didn't know everything in the puzzle off the top of my head! This was unfair!
Some real doozies today, for sure. OUROBOROS and CROMULENT sharing a bunk bed? Yikes. Not sure who fought for the top bunk on that one; both were challenging.
How is ERASER the answer for 7-Down (Rubber)? Yes, I realize erasers are made from rubber but how's the clue relevant in any way? That's like having Metal as a clue and having TRASH CAN as the answer.
Speaking of Cromulent, I can't imagine anyone in Springfield, Oregon (where The Simpsons is set, and where a friend of mine owns a tavern across from Moe's) using that word in a sentence 😂
Dateline…current news? Not lately…
And yet, it was my fastest Saturday of all-time: 8:51.
I must be in tune with the constructors, because this took me less than nine minutes - a record low for a Saturday.
If you've ever used Goo Gone, you've used a product with orange oil in it. Any citrus smelling wood polish.
Never a Simpsons fan, never will be. I'M SO DONE with clues that pull from network TV shows in general. The NW was completely GLOPPY to me.
I knew CROMULENT originated from "The Simpsons" but I also seem to remember it being used in a "Seinfeld" episode. Was it an Elaine Benes quote? Probably misremembering that.
I do a lot of COPY/PASTe but don't know why there's a need for COPY/PASTA? Funny? Cute? Clever? I think not. Maybe the E to A switcheroo was to avoid a duplication at 29D PASTE IN.
Speaking of PASTE IN, it was one of a bunch of entries that needed some convenient help to fill their slots, especially of the [does a COPY/PASTE] two for one POC variety, where a Down and an Across both get a letter count, grid fill boost by sharing a final S. See ADD/VENUE, REAM/SALT, KEY/STYE and ALAMO(!)/NET. And one PONY RIDE didn't get the job done either.
Is it damnation by faint praise if one says that the high point of a crossword puzzle is the grid shape?
amazed i spelled ouroboros correctly on the first try, and that i even knew a long saturday answer without any crosses to begin with. easy for a saturday, although if i had solved on paper it would have been a DNF since i chose "cOCKED" for the arrow clue (vs the correct NOCKED, which i had not heard of) which also left CROMULECT which seemed just as plausible as what ended up being the correct answer. but it still looked funny to me so i found my mistake. asAMI before SOAMI was the only other thing that gummed up the works for bit. (although i did have the answer for "Tang" blank for awhile, as i couldn't figure out if they meant the powdered orange drink or the taste sensation. turns out, it was neither! very funny, saturday.)
i laughed seeing COPYPASTA in the grid today. copypasta was so big on twitch for awhile that there was a global emote for it (i think most of you know what emojis are by now; emotes are the twitch version of those). and then, at one of the twitchcons from years past, they even made it into one of their collectable enamel pins. it's actually a two part pin - one part is the copypasta machine (it looks like a regular copy machine) and the other part is the copypasta it shoots out (which looks like spaghetti). my partner was able to get it for me for christmas that year. (a picture of it on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/294238493707)
The key is the clue “Slang” is a warning it can’t be copy paste, which is too easy for a Saturday anyway. I did resist it initially but had awl and slang settled it. Like most my age (Boomer) I have never heard the expression.
I see that the rather arcane NOCKED knocked a lot of people out of the "Solved!" column. Including me -- though I didn't know it for a while.
@GILL had NECKED -- for drawing the arrow up to your neck.
I had NICKED. I sort of thought I remembered a nick in the arrow where the string of the bow went? Something like that, but I don't really remember. It's been more than 65 years since archery at Camp Pinecliffe -- and to tell the truth, I didn't have the makings of a great archer back then. Or ever, actually.
I've always been good at "aim" sports. Hand-eye coordination -- that's my thing, athletically speaking. But archery never seemed to be about aim. It seemed to be more about the release.
You can aim with the eagle eye of Annie Oakley, but if the arrow slips from your fingers and falls down straight to the ground beneath you, you won't get the arrow anywhere near the target.
Lucky Annie. She got to use a rifle. She never had to take archery at Camp Pinecliffe. She might not have done all that well.
I shot a rifle once when I was in my 40s. One shot is what I mean. I had some cursory but helpful instruction from my date who was a deer and pheasant hunter. I was given something to rest the rifle on other than holding it against my shoulder. The rifle had a microscopic lens. The target was a small tin can, on its side, in a tree, maybe 50 yards away! Without the lens, I wouldn't have been able to see it at all. Obeying Dick's instructions, I took my own sweet time to fire (if it had been a pheasant, it would have been long gone.) I shot. The can flew straight up in the air before crashing down again.
"Do you know what you just did?" Dick asked, somewhat incredulous. "For a can to go straight up before it comes down means you've hit it in the absolute dead center!!!!"
"Can't do better than that," I said, handing him back the rifle. "Think I'll quit while I'm ahead."
I'm so glad he never saw me shoot an arrow though -- NICKED, NECKED or NOCKED. That is SO much harder!!! (Which is almost certainly why the Native Americans lost, don't you think?)
Your second paragraph fascinated me. I had no idea on any of your three instant fills, but totally agreed with your reaction to PLATERACK/spiceRACK. After checking your next paragraph, it appears that my never watching a complete episode of The Simpsons continues to haunt me here.
Matter of opinion of course. But these puzzles often use a lot of foreign word answers. I don’t see how this Saturday one is so unusually “bad”
Alamos is another Spanish word (ploplar trees , plural of convenience!) Current because of Oppenheimer. Wonder ii people think another foreign word answer would have been better than the ugly plural (and brand name). I prefer the foreign word!
Best clue for a while : "...current affairs .. " for "Dateline"" Yeah! many/most of the episodes are love-triangles gone very, very wrong
“Goin’ to the fair, goin’ to the fair, goin’ to the Northwest Michigan fair!”
Dear fans of CROMULENT, NOCKED, COPYPASTA, etc., no more whining about the "Maleska era." At least he used real words.
Are you suggesting NOCKED isn't a real word? Even though it has been in continuous use for the last, oh ...
*checks notes
...700 years?
Some people call an eraser a rubber. England? Anyway I was aware of that fact so I got it right away. In any event it is a correct answer.
Apparently nocked is a real word. Sounded vaguely familiar to me.
Thought the NW was bullshit. Otherwise, easy.
@Anonymous (9:04 a.m.) - Eh -- I'd consider LABNEH (or any of its variant spellings) more a yogurt than a cheese. I eat a LOT of that stuff (especially with olive oil and za'atar). I'm not sure why many recipe writers call it a cheese. It's just a strained yogurt, like Greek yogurt. Usually a bit saltier, depending on the brand, and definitely a bit denser. If you consider labneh a cheese, I'd think you'd have to consider yogurt a cheese (which is not an unreasonable position.) But it's all a continuum, and it depends on where you draw the lines. I'd describe it as a kind of thick yogurt to someone wholly unfamiliar with the stuff.
Easy for a Saturday, except the NW, which was nonsense crossed with nonsense. For the downs you have (un- inferable slang PASTe v. PASTA, French MOT, German UBER, proper name LORI, British ERASER, un-inferable cOCKED v. NOCKED, and the lovely noise, TSK. For the acrosses you have the famous/not-famous word/not-word CROMULENT, the Greek bodypart-scratcher OUROBOROS and the almost real PLATERACK (see dishrack).
This is all gettable if you've come across a few of those in previous crosswords or have mastered the PPP trivia, otherwise you're knee-deep in LABNEH (which actually was a gimme for me).
Yeah, we call it “who killed the lady”
"CROMULENT" is a term from "The Simpsons." Are there any other TV shows or pop culture references that you've encountered in crossword puzzles that stood out to you? Tel U
I think its not easy
I thought it was a perfectly fine Saturday NYT puzzle until I tried to finish in the NW corner. CROMULENT crossing NOCKED crossing OUTOBOROS killed me. Had teRI instead of LORI because I have little knowledge of past big-city mayors and cOCKED instead of NOCKED because I don’t go around wearing a codpiece.
ALI GATO
LORI NOCKED AT his door,
LES HASANIDEA what for,
"I'MSODONE with AMORE,
I'MEASY SOAMI A whore?"
--- DR. ANNE KEYS
Don't know why so many people knocked NOCKED; it was one of my first gimme entries. I guess the populus has become so urban and urbane that few have any experience with bow and arrow. Noticed: IMSODONE SOAMI, PASTESIN INSUM.
Wordle birdie.
For a NYT Saturday Xword, this definitely was easy. The only answer that I was 100% unfamiliar with was copypasta. This blog is as social as I ever get online. I am not saying the puzzle was easy, just this venue/day of the week easy.
Cromulent I knew from its frequent use on this blog and The Simpsons, which I was a devotee of since its inception on the Tracey Ullman show.
Labneh: I watch a lot of cooking shows.
Ouroboros: Rex used it as his word of the day once, and I said to myself, that symbol looks familiar, and so I delved into it online, plus I found it fascinating that the word had 5 vowels, and 4 of them were O.
I did know NOCKED, tho wasn't sure of the spelling. Had very, very vague memories of hearing CROMULENT, only after seeing it written.
But OUROBOROS. I really hate it when an answer finally appears and it looks like a language I've never heard of before.
Ah well - thatsa Saturday for ya.
Diana, LIW for Crosswords
DNF: never got untracked. Knew two things: ORSON & ANNE. That's it.
Wordle birdie.
I'm surprised no one objected to the 43A clue for BALLET SLIPPERS. If a ballerina wants to keep on her toes, she uses Pointe shoes, not slippers.
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