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Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- ROYAL / FLUSH (17A: Best possible hand, in most poker variants)
- FANNY / PACK (25A: Carrying case worn with a strap)
- STARBUCKS / COFFEE (39A: Likely contents of a cup with a green siren logo)
- ANGKOR / WAT (51A: Buddhist temple built in the early 12th century)
Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺, literally "Temple of the Golden Pavilion"), officially named Rokuon-ji (鹿苑寺, lit. 'Deer Garden Temple'), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the most popular buildings in Kyoto, attracting many visitors annually. It is designated as a National Special Historic Site, a National Special Landscape and is one of 17 locations making up the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which are World Heritage Sites.Kinkaku-ji was ranked the No. 85 Most Holy Place on Earth by religious leaders, writers and scholars in the Patheos multi-faith religion project Sacred Spaces: The 100 Most Holy Places on Earth. [ed.: how, and more importantly why, would you RANK holiness? Why would a "religion project" participate in turning holiness into yet another clickbait Top 100 list? Bizarre] [...] On 2 July 1950, at 2:30 am, the pavilion was burned down by a 22-year-old novice monk, Hayashi Yoken, who then attempted suicide on the Daimon-ji hill behind the building. He survived, and was subsequently taken into custody. The monk was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was released because of mental illnesses (persecution complex and schizophrenia) on 29 September 1955; he died of tuberculosis in March 1956. During the fire, the original statue of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was lost to the flames (now restored). A fictionalized version of these events is at the center of Yukio Mishima's 1956 book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and another in the ballet RAkU.
The present pavilion structure dates from 1955, when it was rebuilt. (wikipedia)
• • •
A single COCOA PUFF is ridiculous (11D: Bit of chocolate-flavored cereal), come on, constructors, cull your wordlists. SUGAR SMACK, take it out. FROSTED FLAKE, light it on fire. FRUITY PEBBLE, bury it in your backyard. OREO O, tie a lead weight to it and throw it off a bridge. Make all the singular cereal bits (including ALPHA-BIT) go POOF!
Not sure I have much else to say about this one. TANIA Raymonde was on "Malcolm in the Middle" for only one season (the second) as a recurring character, then two more as a "guest character." That show ran seven seasons. So weird to clue her via that show when she was a regular cast member of "Lost" for three years (and a "guest character" in a few more later episodes). Surely her work on the latter show was way, Way more high-profile. But then any work is more high-profile than "appeared regularly only in season 2 (of 7) of 'Malcolm in the Middle'." Oh ... I see now that her role on "Lost" is actually the standard way of cluing TANIA of late (five times since 2011, last time in 2018 ... TANIA used to be clued primarily as [Patty Hearst's name in the S.L.A.] (!!!)). I'm very curious how many solvers just *knew* TANIA from today's clue. Or would've known her from any clue. No clue would've helped me, but the "Malcolm" clue seems borderline obscure. And it's only Tuesday. But again, the rest of the puzzle is so easy that none of this really matters. This is the kind of stuff I obsess over when a puzzle just doesn't give me that much to obsess over. TANIA Raymonde has had a long career, working consistently in movies and TV, and I hope she's psyched to see her name (again) today. See you all tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Finished in quickly without considering the theme, which I think is quite abstract. From STATELINES we get four random pairs of state abbreviations?
ReplyDeleteBest part of the puzzle, I thought, was having two separate words begin with X. Fortunately, I remembered "In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn, a stately pleasure dome decree."
A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw. That was the highlight of the puzzle for me - I guess I liked SKULK too.
ReplyDeleteNot keen on themes that offer nothing to the solve. This near pangram had the feel of being backed into.
RANKing Full Stop
I’m the official app they had an actual line in the grid to denote the “border” in the answers themselves. Made it a little too easy.
ReplyDelete"In Xanadu," indeed. At 70 it pops up from college. No wonder I can't remember current data, my memory is full.
ReplyDeleteANGKOR WAT was originally constructed as a Hindu temple, not Buddhist, although it was converted to Buddhism a few decades later. So I think the clue is ultimately fair but was slightly misleading at first because it was not "built" as a Buddhist temple.
ReplyDeleteAgree. Threw me off also.
DeleteVery geography-forward puzzle, so really up my alley: STATE LINES (which I only saw post solve), the two temples (both of which I’ve been to), two sports team localities side-by-side (plus NYU), and two mythical paradises crossing each other (both of which I’ve been to 😜).
ReplyDeleteRex makes fun of someone RANKing the 100 holiest places on earth - I immediately go look it up. I am a total and unashamed sucker for listicles, and geography ones even more. Interestingly, it seems like they are right now in the process of releasing the list, with the final top ten holy sites coming in the next week. I will wait breathlessly for it. I’ve tried to guess what they will be but some of the obvious ones are already out, in the 11 to 100 slots. Mecca will definitely be there.
This was definitely a puzzle where I did not use the theme to help me solve. The kinda fun thing about that is trying to figure out what brings these answers together before you look at the revealer. No clue today. Even when I got the revealer, it took me a while to get it. First I was thinking it had something to do with
state as in “nature” - are royal states and flush states things? Not sure, but fanny states and pack states certainly aren’t. Then I noticed NY and PA separated by the line and I got it. Briefly tried to come up with some other possibilities but stopped at EVIL WISH.
You know, maybe it’s because I woke up on the right side of the bed today, maybe it’s because I can take or leave themes and so I basically solve themeless unless I’m forced not to, but I enjoyed this puzzle. It was easy and direct and didn’t pretend to be anything else. The borders in the app made the theme both more cogent and way simpler. In general not a lot of overtly clever cluing, but “stocking stuff” was cute, and I enjoyed XANADU crossing EDENS, even as the Orientalism of that poem means it’s not a personal fave. Genuinely glad it’s a nice appearance for folks though.
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, a fine-to-good for a Tuesday, imo.
I had a devil of a time with the whole SE section - even with the gimmie revealer in place, HEMAN, XENA, XANADU and TANIA are a big ask for someone as trivia-averse as I am. I never heard of the actress, for example, while Rex can basically recite her whole body of work from memory. It gets especially difficult with PPP crossing PPP ala XENA / XANADU.
ReplyDeleteAnyone from the banking industry in the crowd today - I’d wager that BANK GUARDS have very little to do related to keeping an “eye on teller transactions” - the bank will have a ton of internal controls, surveillance et c. to police the tellers and the transactions. The BANK GUARD is probably on the lookout for troublemakers, no ?
Bank Guards do keep an eye on teller transactions. Bank robberies are mostly at the teller windows.
ReplyDelete"Because that's where the money is."
Willie Sutton
Thank you Mr. Fields!
Delete
ReplyDelete@Rex's "a little 'oh' at the end of a very easy themeless" pretty much summed it up for me.
Only overwrite was SneaK before SkulK at 13D.
My favorite answers today were single syllabled: JAPE, SKULK, POOF, CRAW.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite PuzzPair© (despite the misspelling): BROOD and a backward KLUKS.
My favorite mini-theme: Unusual beginnings (two answers starting with X) and endings (four answers ending with U).
My favoriteANGKOR WAT factoids: It is the largest religious structure in the world, and there it sits right in the middle of the Cambodian flag.
A state line memory. When I was very young, our family took a train trip up the East Coast, part of it during the night. In the Florida leg, my dad pointed out the full moon. Then, after we crossed into Georgia, he pointed to the moon and said, “See how different the moon is over Georgia than it was over Florida?” And I believed him! I made myself see the differences!
Haven’t thought about that – and I think about it fondly – in forever. Thank you for pulling that out, Zachary, and for a most entertaining outing today!
Plutarch once mocked those who genuinely believed the Athenian moon to be superior to the Corinthian moon. Perhaps your dad was ribbing Floridians and/or Georgians, in his own way’
DeleteI had no idea who Taina Rayonde was from the clue or from Lost, having never watched either. But looked her up and I loved her in Goliath.
ReplyDeleteThe Seattle (Super)sonics moved to Oklahoma 15 years ago. Probably not being referred to as Sonics much anymore.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle reminded me of Gary Gulman's explanation of how the states each got their abbreviation. Worth watching:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLECCmKnrys&ab_channel=TeamCoco
Long Live the Gul!
Delete@Wanderlust: Maybe Graceland will make the top ten. I’ve made the pilgrimage.
ReplyDelete@Weezie: I’ll respectfully suggest that the charges of Orientalism against Coleridge are not strong. The poem depends on distant places the poet has never seen in actuality, and it steers clear of the usual Orientalist tropes. Plus, he was writing in the 1790s, so let’s cut him some slack. Still, you have every right not to care for it.
@Lewis: Now you’ve got me singing “Moon over Miami.”
Fully agree that there’s far worse in the canon, especially considering the time, but that’s a low bar, and literary critics do generally seem to understand the poem as being Orientalist. To each their own, but I’d much rather read about far away places from the perspective of people who are actually from there.
DeleteI liked it. Before the revealer I was trying to figure out what the theme could be (the borders made it obvious which were theme answers) and I just couldn’t figure it out. So the revealer was actually fun for me.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I like about this blog is that there are often extra components to the theme that I don’t pick up on. So in this case I had no idea that there were no additional four-square spans anywhere in the grid that had two state abbreviations in them. That’s pretty impressive.
STARBUCKS COFFEE took an embarrassing number of crosses to get because in my brain I was imagining something like the old Mr Yuk poison warning on a cup.
“Seattle’s N.B.A. team to fans” is: nonexistent. The SONICS left town in 2008.
ReplyDeleteEDENS crossing XANADU - nice touch
ReplyDeleteI'll try again.
ReplyDeletePrinting problems because of the darker vertical lines separating the states, so I had to solve online, which was OK, and I was thankful it wasn't a Thursday with a rebus feature.
Easy enough that I was ignoring any kind of theme until I got to the revealer, and then I had to go back to see how all that worked, which lead to a big OFL "oh".
Today I met TANIA, as I am totally unfamiliar with her oeuvre, which I am sure is formidable.
Interesting concept and nicely executed, ZDL. Zipped through Doing Less thinking than I like while doing these, but thanks for a fair amount of fun.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteIt seems weird to me that KS and CO share a border. KS, known for being a Great Plains STATE, and CO has the Rocky Mountains.
Nice TuesTheme. Simple, effective, common things.
Thought Rex would have a bigger screed about COCOA PUFF. Got a chuckle thinking he'd devote a large paragraph about the SOC. Kinda let down it was just a small complaint.
Nice fill. No TIT TAT TIC TAC. Har.
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Wondered what the little thick themer dividin lines meant (in the printed out version) … but things were goin fine without knowin, so didn't peek at the theme revealer in advance. Sooo ... nice ahar moment, when I got to it.
ReplyDeletestaff weeject picks: LSU & NYU. More state abbreves. And U's.
another fave thing or three: COCOAPUFF & POOF. XANADU.
Thanx, Mr. Levy dude. Cool theme idea.
Masked & Anonym007Us
**gruntz**
There was no way I was going to figure out what the theme was. Between my general, all-around lack of observational acuity and my lifelong weakness at geography, I was toast as far as that was concerned.
ReplyDeleteLook, you put a map in front of me and I see where everything is located. Then I do my level best, truly I do --staring and staring and staring. Then you whisk the map away from me and, POOF, everything on that map has disappeared completely from my brain. Thus has it always been.
Someone gave me a U.S. map mnemonic once: M,I,M,A,L runs down the center of the map, from top to bottom. Well, I mean do you know how many "M" states there are? How many "I" states? How many "A" states. This mnemonic did exactly nothing for me because I don't know which bleeping states we're talking about. To make it even worse, I can never remember WHERE down the "middle" of the country they run.
So I didn't notice the STATE LINES -- only that there were dark lines in the grid. First I'm thinking: a word ladder, yes? No. Then I played with a combo like ROYAL FANNY STARBUCKS ANGKOR. Nothing. I quickly moved on to a FLUSH PACK COFFEE WAT. Nothing there, either.
Then I came here.
Basically a themeless for me.
ReplyDeleteThx, Zachary; nicely constructed! 😊
ReplyDeleteEasy-med.
Smooth solve, start to finish; no hitches along the way, nor holdups at the 'borders'.
Have lived on both sides of the OR/WA STATE LINE: Portland and Vancouver. Vivid memories of seeing the aftermath of the tragic Vanport flood in '48.
Fond memories of the SONICS; sad day when they left town.
Just yd solved the daily puz on chess.com where the ROOKS teamed up, resulting in one being traded for the opposing queen.
Got lots of E-WASTE that needs to be hauled to the local recycling depot. No car or D.L., but am blessed with good neighbors who've offered help.
Speaking of 'Shepherd Moons', ENYA's 'Marble Halls' is one of the tunes that puts me to sleep every night.
Lovely Tues. romp! :)
___
Croce's 832 was very easy (on par with a med-hard NYT Sat.). On to K.A.C.'s Mon. New Yorker.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude ~ Serendipity ~ & a DAP to all 👊 🙏!
Also in NY’s southern tier - about 20 miles from the NY/PA border @ Erie …
ReplyDeleteGeography lover here, so I enjoyed the theme. Pretty clean to have bordering states separated by bordering words -- i.e., MANY wouldn't work.
ReplyDeleteAside from the theme, like others I enjoyed the temple-fest, but there's not much sparkle in the fill overall. Never been a fan of STARBUCKSCOFFEE.
I had forgotten that LASER was an acronym. I actually considered LASix.
SlinK >> SKULK
Lots of fun trying to find others...PINE CONE, LUNAR LANDING, PROJECT MANAGER, BOOK MOBILE, GIN MILL, YOGA SCRUBS.
I absolutely adore TANIA Raymonde.
ReplyDeleteBut I did not like the puzzle. Weak theme.
In the Wikipedia article excerpt on Kinkaku-ji that Rex posted, there is a note in brackets that says: [ed.: how, and more importantly why, would you RANK holiness?…] To partly answer the editor’s question (maybe Rex?): One of the criteria used for ranking holiness is “the frequency of online searches for each location”. That’s according to the website Wikipedia links to in the citation.
ReplyDelete@Stephanie @SouthsideJohnny
If the “modern” in MOMA means “a departure from traditions of the past in the art world”, why doesn’t MOMA include the “departures from traditions of the past” that were made by Renaissance painters? There must be more to it.
@Will feel free to read the wikipedia article i linked yesterday. it's succinct and easy to understand, but i won't hog up the comment section by copypasting it all here. modern art is a specific era that encapsulates a departure from traditions in the past in the art world, with the period beginning roughly around 1860.
DeleteThis is Rex gold: “A single COCOA PUFF is ridiculous (11D: Bit of chocolate-flavored cereal), come on, constructors, cull your wordlists. SUGAR SMACK, take it out. FROSTED FLAKE, light it on fire. FRUITY PEBBLE, bury it in your backyard. OREO O, tie a lead weight to it and throw it off a bridge. Make all the singular cereal bits (including ALPHA-BIT) go POOF! “
ReplyDeleteI'm in the "Oh" group, as far as the theme goes: I didn't understand it either pre- or post-reveal. Like @Wanderlust 6:51, I tried making the theme words into STATEs (e.g., "He's in a right ROYAL STATE"), but that attempt soon fizzled. So, it's one of the days I thank @Rex not only for the commentary but the explanation. I will take issue, however, with @Rex's objection to a single COCOA PUFF: if he could view the kick space beneath the breakfast staging area of our kitchen counter, he'd be likely to see a singleton of whatever cold cereal my husband is eating that week. Otherwise: I liked the tour of KYOTO, ANGKOR WAT, the ALAMO, and XANADU; agree with others about the fun of SKULK.
ReplyDeletei wouldn't have remembered tania with lost cluing, but using malcolm in the middle is straight garbage construction for a tuesday. also i would kill for a themeless these day
ReplyDeletePOOF vs. PUFF! The one-time slurs do battle in the cage match of the century, er, day. Pundits favor PUFF two-to-one (owing to its Cheeto-y marketing strategy), but don't rule out the long shot POOF as the surging story of Harry Potter's mom's vanishing fish in Professor Slughorn's bowl will tug at your heartstrings.
ReplyDeleteAnd the omitted final wording on the reveal ... "if the map is upside down half the time."
Had ACLU in for LEFT and then it showed up for real in the northeast, you know, 'cause those libs just won't go away, amirite Reddies? Those NYU charcuterie elites living in XANADU.
SKULK HEX: The magic cast upon our grumpiest commentators here at 🦖-Central.
Tee-Hee: BRA
Uniclues:
1 Dear Carry-All: I love you. You prepare me for all eventualities on my trek to the grocery store, but according to the fashionistas of recent decades, you're tacky and unnecessary. But I will promise you this: Their painful mischaracterization will not daunt my devotion, and you and I will move forward in life with our keys, and mints, and nail clippers, and Kleenex, and two KN-95 masks, and a checkbook. That bump on my hip is a symbol of our substance over style, and no one will take away my affection for you. No one, except maybe the TSA.
2 Her grammy-winning Irish "music."
3 "I am fierce," and "I am fabulous."
4 Stops making fun of the Yankee Candle store.
5 Bankers.
6 Terse "I want a divorce" note to Garth.
7 Seltzer.
1 WROTE FANNY PACK
2 ENYA GOOP
3 GLAM-STATE LINES
4 ENDS AROMA SASS
5 LIEN BROOD
6 LEFT YOU, TRISHA
7 ALL FANCY WATER
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Unlikely need for your cousin from Boston. BLUSH WINES LIST.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aww shucks, @Weezie -
ReplyDeleteOrientalism, schmorientalism. If
"Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea"
doesn't make every hair stand up on the back of your neck by virtue of the sheer beauty, the mellifluous gorgeousness of its sonority -- well, all I can say is: read it again. As far as "Orientalism" is concerned: I shudder to think how much richness would have been lost to the world -- in every single one of the arts and over many, many centuries -- if all artists had to stay in one designated lane and write only about their own group.
JCREW vs LLBEAN ??? Doesn’t make sense!
ReplyDeleteEasy except for chasing down a typo. I too solved it like a themeless. Pretty smooth, grade school geography theme with postal codes, not bad for a Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteTANIA as clued was a WOE. Patty Hearst would have worked for me.
Before I got to the revealer, I didn’t have ACLU what the heavy lines were doing.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else remember the episode where the 1990sTV heroine just couldn’t relax while visiting a utopian locale? So XENA took Xanax in XANADU.
Before you constructors make all the singular cereal bits go POOF, consider this:
Mikey: Give me some Cocoa Puffs
Mom: They’re all gone, Mikey. The box is empty.
Mikey: You mean there’s not one single Cocoa Puff left?
Reminder: A ROYALFLUSH ENDS AROMA.
This theme made me wonder where the NYT would draw the lines. Thanks for a fun Tuesday, Zachary David Levy.
So @Rex would like to take out, light a fire, bury it in the back yard and throw all those sweet little nuggets of cereal that is beloved by all children all over the world into the brink. Hah!. I think you have something going there!. How about a movie? We could have yummy looking Manuel García-Rulfo as the swashbuckling hero nicknamed COCOA PUFF. He could be your HEMAN leading star. His riding compadres, SUGAR, FROSTED, FRUITY, OREO-O and APHA-BIT would ride their magnificent steeds throughout the States defending the rights of children starved of their morning sugar rush. If SOUSA played the background music, this could fly.
ReplyDeleteBut I digress
The puzzle.....Cute and different. I finished it and wondered what I was supposed to look for. I stared. Where are the STATE LINES. Oh. There they are...In between dark lines. Hey...I also see SC. It's stuck between STARBUCK SC OFFEE. No? Just my overactive mind.
As Tuesdays go, I thought this had some fun.
PS...Thanks @Rex...A fine movie director in the making....
Last year we drove from our home in Boston to visit a friend in Bend, which involved driving across three of those four state lines. I've never been in Alabama, however, even though it was my grandfather's birthplace. I don't imagine that I ever will. Nevertheless, I needed the revealer to see the theme --it just never occurred to me to look at the neighboring letter pairs. Maybe if I hadn't stumbled onto the revealer by surprise and had some time to mull it over.
ReplyDelete@weezie, you've got me thinking, and maybe you're right, although "woman wailing for her demon lover" sounds more like North European paganism than anything eastern. Anyway, the whole thing was an opium dream. To this day, anytime I'm in the mountains and see a high valley, "But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover..." The fellow had a way with words all right.
L.L. Bean sells, among other things, fly rods, flies, tents, canoes, chest-high waders, outdoor cooking gear, etc. Does J.Crew? I think not. But that seems to have become the standard clue for the latter.
My second son lived in Japan for six years, so I've been to Kyoto a few times, and seen kinkaku-ji. The way I heard it, the guy who burned it down had been wondering whether anything could be more beautiful than that temple, and decided that the only answer was the same temple in flames.
If you send me an email with sensitive content, and secretly bcc: someone else, I'd call that INdiscreet.
I liked the marriage subtheme--ELOPE and then tie the KNOT.
@Will - If counts of google searches is an appropriate rating measure of holiness, then the Kardashians are clearly worthy of HAGIOLATRY in the classic sense, rather than the newish "fan worship sense". They out rank The Vatican and every other holy site (if there is such a thing).
ReplyDelete@Nancy - WTF is a "sunless sea"? Rhyming / Schmyming please make some sense!
Nancy — my thoughts exactly. And remember Coleridge is a POET. Imagination is more important than a political correct point of view when reading a poem, I should think. An enjoyable, clever and thoughtful puzzle.
ReplyDeleteSolved as a themeless then looked it over & saw the theme. Left me wanting more.
ReplyDelete@Nancy 10:52 - I believe you misspelled Alph, the ‘80s TV character to whom you apparently referred. It’s ALF, as in Alien Life Form.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of poetry-schmoetry, does any TVland name make the hair on the back of your neck stand up more than with Happy Days’ Ralph Malph?
Hope the Hollywood strike ends so they can make the surefire hit reboot, When ALF Met Ralph Malph!
@ Lewis and @ Andy Freude: Now you've got me wanting Moon Over My Hammy for breakfast tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteEASY ??? For a Tuesday??
ReplyDeleteWith all the obscure PPP and clues like 33D (what does that mean?
I didn't get he theme until I came here. Liked the theme answers themselves.
an easy puzzle, but, like a couple others, i couldn't make heads or tails of the theme even after giving it my best look-over once finished. once again grateful for the existence of this blog so i could feel a bit foolish, but enlightened.
ReplyDeleteI liked the puzzle, particularly JAPE (because I just binged Great). Theme/themeless didn't make a difference in the solve. It was easy, had x's and u's. Gave some resistance 'cause I am not particularly smart, nor clever, nor versed in Sports Team names.
ReplyDelete@Nancy - thank you! I haven't read Coleridge in a long time - that line is true beauty!
@Pete -really? Have you not seen the sea, light blocked from caverns or dark clouds - still and ominous?
Loved Jape (just binged The Great). Theme/themeless made no difference to the solve. Easy, but with some resistance because I am not smart, nor clever, nor well versed in Sports Team Names.
ReplyDelete@Nancy - Thank you. That line is pure beauty.
@Pete - really? Have you not seen the sea, darkened by heavy cloud cover? Or the sea as you emerge from a mountain pass that shades the water - dark, ominous, sunless.
I would have liked to have seen the Washington Oregon and New York Pennsylvania answers in Downs so that the state line would run east west just like the border on the map. Colorado Kansas would stay an Across. Most of the Alabama Florida state line is east west, but there is also a north south section, so maybe ok to keep as an across.
ReplyDeleteI’ve visited Kinkakuji several times and I’ve never once heard it referred to by its “official name” of Deer Garden. For all intents and purposes, its common name is Kinkakuji which translates to Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
ReplyDeleteOverall pretty easy, but XANADU XENA CINE TANIA and MUSES was a tough combination. If you're going to full XANADU, there's no excuse for not evoking Olivia Newton John! Liked the fact that you had two letter combos on either side of the state line - unusual in a theme and it took me looking at it sideways before the light bulb appeared above my head.
ReplyDeleteSo as to not make our orientalism convo drag into tomorrow, figured I’d chime in now that the endless meetings have been put to bed. I truly don’t begrudge folks who love this poem - I definitely agree he had a way with words, and that XANADU wasn’t so bad, comparatively, as orientalism goes. People can write from whatever perspective they want; I just will have a higher bar for the non-authentic voices. And you can rest assured that I’ve read the classics - I may in fact even have successfully lobbied for the creation of an Advanced Poetry class at Stuyvesant High School, after Intro to Poetry wasn’t enough.
ReplyDeleteBut around age 19, as a counterbalance to all the European men in the canon, in my personal life, I only read books by women for a year, and then only books by women of color for a year after that. Since that reset, my pleasure reading has been a strong majority of writers of color, and that works for me, particularly in getting outside of my own head and comfort zone. All that to say, to each our own!
"I've got a bad feeling about this," I thought as I ran into AROAR and EWASTE before even leaving the NW. By the time I got to TSLOT, I knew it was justified.
ReplyDeleteThe theme was almost nothing; right out of the gate it was easy to see AL/FL. No revealer needed--but boy, we got one anyway: how scintillatingly clever! STATELINES! I was AROAR. Not.
I guess it's TOUGH to keep early-week puzzle quality up. Double-bogey.
Starting off my second 500 Wordles (if I live that long) with a par.
Mediocre stuff because the NYT crossword editors are not being very selective. They receive literally hundreds of submissions a week. Surely something better than this one landed on Will Shortz’s desk.
ReplyDelete@Burma Shave has been away again
ReplyDeleteToday:
HEMAN SASS
TRISHA is a FOX, YOU dope,
LORD, her FANNY is fine,
IT’s TOUGH TO PACK and ELOPE,
when YOU must cross STATELINES.
--- IKE SOUSA, ACLU
From yesterday:
NEON DYNAMO
That DEMON from out WEST,
POISED and TAN, but naughty,
ASKed, “NOONE PASSED the TEST
to OCCUPY my BODY?”
--- SELA ROSE BYRON
From Sunday:
NONHERO PALACE OFFICIAL
ARMENIA had an ODD TSAR
COMMON people could NOT thank;
The DUMA hired A REGISTRAR
whose BESTBUDDY was A YANK.
--- DAWN & JON CAHN
From Saturday:
IDLE ADDLE
IFYOUDARE to TRI IT too,
ONE SCAM that HYPNOTISTS do,
IT’S A DEROGATIVE PLEA
to be OGLED for FREE,
not TRESCHIC there in the STU.
--- LILA KAPPA
Oh oh. I get it! There's a line between the states that are next to each other, right?
ReplyDeleteright
Diana, LIW
There's a STATELINE outside my living room picture window. WI|MN doesn't do much for a xword.
ReplyDeleteWordle par.
And what about distributOR|CAp ?
ReplyDelete