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Honeydew producer / SAT 9-30-23 / W.W. II combat inits. / Rock band with the 2023 album "This Stupid World" / Modern coinage for someone turned successful through their celebrity parents / Republicans in the 1850s, typically
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Constructor: Ahmed Bayoumi
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: Carrie MAE Weems (20A: Contemporary artist Carrie ___ Weems) —
Carrie Mae Weems (born April 20, 1953) is an American artist working in text, fabric, audio, digital images and installation video, and is best known for her photography. She achieved prominence through her early 1990s photographic project The Kitchen Table Series. Her photographs, films and videos focus on serious issues facing African Americans today, including racism, sexism, politics and personal identity.She once said, "Let me say that my primary concern in art, as in politics, is with the status and place of Afro-Americans in the country." More recently, however, she expressed the view that "Black experience is not really the main point; rather, complex, dimensional, human experience and social inclusion ... is the real point." She continues to produce art that provides social commentary on the experiences of people of color, especially black women, in America.
Her talents have been recognized by Harvard University and Wellesley College, with fellowships, artist-in-residence and visiting professor positions. She taught photography at Hampshire College in the late 1980s and shot the "Kitchen Table" series in her home in Western Massachusetts. Weems is one of six artist-curators who made selections for Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2019/20. She is Artist in residence at Syracuse University. (wikipedia)
• • •
Overall, though, this puzzle fell somewhat flat for me, largely because the fill really creaked and groaned in places. AFLOW? ANOTE? OCOME? MII? URE? CRESC? ETO? SEEST? To say nothing of the rather gruesome SEA dupe at the bottom of the grid (AIRSEA + ASEA) (41D: Kind of rescue search + 53D: In the Red, say). I also didn't think the marquee answers were terribly marquee. I really thought the puzzle was trying to pull off some kind of theme with those first three long answers. Something about the legacy of slavery in America? I turned to the calendar at one point to see if there was some holiday I was unaware of. But then the next long answer was MARINE BIOLOGIST, and I thought, "oh ... guess there's no theme after all." The main issue is nothing feels particularly sparkly. And the shape of the grid means that while there are a decent number of longer answers, there are A Lot of short ones too. So many 3-4-5's. Kinda takes the life out of the grid a little. I should also say that I truly madly deeply hate the term NEPOBABY (15D: Modern coinage for someone turned successful through their celebrity parents). I hate the prefix NEPO-, I hate the infantilizing BABY (since no one's ever talking about an actual baby). It just reeks, the whole (relatively recent) concept. The only good thing to come of the whole NEPOBABY discourse is Megan Amram's "Shouts & Murmurs" column in this week's New Yorker. It's about the ultimate NEPOBABY: Jesus. I laughed so much that I actually stopped midway through so I would have more to laugh at later. And it's not even that long. I only read three paragraphs, is what I'm saying. Don't tell me how it ends!
I'm sitting here trying to understand how an APHID produces a honeydew (44D: Honeydew producer). Is it like how someone "produces" a movie, i.e. no one really knows? No! Turns out that in addition to being the name of a melon (which is what I was picturing), honeydew is also "a sweet, sticky substance excreted by aphids and often deposited on leaves and stems." Just what the crossword needs—excrement! Nobody wants to hear your music at the beach, throw your WIRELESS SPEAKER into the sea (sea ... sea ...) (58A: What you might use to play music on a beach).
What else? "Gram" is a name one might call one's grandma. Ditto "Nana" (12D: Grams = NANAS). An ALIBI is a story you might tell a detective, I suppose (24A: Detective story?). DRAKE is a very famous rapper (I had no idea about the Aubrey Graham business) (3D: Rapper Aubrey Graham, who's known professionally by his middle name). SPUMONI is a molded gelato, usually with three flavors arranged in layers (7A: Dessert with layers). CADDIEs carry golf bags (1A: One who's left holding the bag?)A WIN is a [Good thing to have on the record] because, well, you (probably?) want more wins than losses in your win/loss record. That should do it.I'm gonna go read and/or harass my fluffy white cat now. Happy last day of September! See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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90 comments:
This was a solid MEDIUM difficulty for me. If the half dozen 15-letter fills not fallen quickly into place for me (prior to 2/3 of the rest of the grid), I might have suffered a DNF on the balance. My fill was sparse until I turned my eye to the long fills.
I struggled at the end in the East with _E_ME and YOLA_E_GO. The latter was a lost cause and with the missing letters, the crosses weren't coming either. I finally flailed randomly through alphabet pairs for close to 10 minutes until NEWME came to the rescue and victory music ensued soon thereafter.
YO LA TENGO by This Stupid World....I'd rather it grab me by an Oye Como Va....Stay for dinner and have some fresh CRESC PELLETS. Dessert is AMERICAN SPUMONI served by NEW ME. NERO BABY will take care of the clean up.
What a strange Saturday. Not a bad one...just old, new, old, new.
Old: Remembering Esther of Good Times ROLLE....New: NERO BABY NEW ME. Old: All the long answers.
CADDIE didn't fool me..but I wanted grocer. AFRICAN AMERICAN standing over SLAVE REBELLIONS crossing ABOLITIONISTS was a bit of a CHOKE. I mean there's stuff all over the place. Is the ROSETTA STONE that one crucial key to understanding ancient history? I thought it was a Neanderthal.
I'm beginning to SEEST an URE here, a REP there, an APP and an OAT going into Bar. I'd name it SPUMONI and the barkeep would be named MII.
I have this strange urge to get TOKED....
Crosswording breaks one’s brain in startling ways. All of the grid filled but one square: NE_ME. I literally was looking for a word starting with NE that would convey NEWness and came up with…NEo-ME. Ay caramba!
Had to look up the musical group. I was pretty sure of YO at the front and GO at the back, but had a whole lot of uncertainty in between.
Medium. MAE was the only WOE. I had few costly erasures, HRH before HMS, NEPObrat before NEPOBABY, earbuds before SPEAKERS. Spelling problems also ate up nanoseconds. A solid Saturday challenge, liked it, but I agree with @Rex about nothing particularly sparkly.
@Rex - I did know YO LA TENGO but I couldn’t tell you anything about their music. Kinda like I know the characters from the TV show Dallas but I’ve never seen an episode.
Thanks for the link to Megan Amram's New Yorker piece. Hilarious!
I felt really weird about having AFRICAN AMERICAN right above the word SLAVE. I dunno. I’m not from America but it just feels off.
I appreciated the mini-theme we had going with "African-American", "Slave Rebellion", and "Abolitionists" (and even "Caste"). Guessed "Rosetta Stone" early for 55A, but then stumbled when I didn't realize they wanted the article at the beginning.
I liked the Yo La Tengo answer, but I hated how they clued it, with a 2023 album that only the diehard fans who'd stuck with the band for the past 30 years would recognize. (Couldn't they clue it as "From a Motel 6" band?)
The only part I really hated (and the last answers to fall) were the clues for "Housecats" and "Asians." We have plenty of tabbies on the streets of Yerevan, where I live, and they are decidedly NOT housecats. And "sherpas" seems like such a random clue for "Asians"; you might have just as well clued it with "ninjas" or "Tuvan throat singers."
As an historian, I feel compelled to note that Republicans in the 1850s were NOT "typically" abolitionists. They were antislavery and opposed to slavery's expansion westward, but few of them before the Civil War had the desire to, or thought the federal government had the power to, end slavery immediately.
Really nicely done puzzle. Only nit is “STAY alert”, which seems very green paintish to me.
Because someone makes this mistake every single time, here is a preventative note: ISIAH Thomas is the Detroit Piston’s great. Isaiah Thomas is a different player, and is not the one referred to in the clue.
There are ants that farm aphids. they keep them in special rooms in their nests, shepherd them out to feed on plants, protect them from harm, and in return they get eat the honeydew.
I have to disagree with OFL (I know — alert the media) on NEPOBABY. I find the phrase as offensive and demeaning as @Rex does, but it is in current usage and therefore crossword-eligible.
My bit of farm food (29D) was hAy. My 51A Lug was an oaf before he was an APE. My DC title was sEn before it was REP (56D).
Happily, I’m old enough to know Esther ROLLE (22A) and ISIAH Thomas (46A), but too old to know YO LA TENGO.
I shouted, “I have it!” when I got YO LA TENGO. (Spanish speakers will get it.) I know and love the band but never knew why they gave themselves that name, so I checked Wikipedia. The hilarious story is too long to repeat in full here, but it involves NY Mets outfielders, one Venezuelan, in the 60s who used the phrase to avoid colliding when going for a ball. (So “la” refers to “pelota.”) But one guy missed the memo and, post-collision, asked, “What the hell is a yellow tango?”
I also looked up the Aponte Conspiracy, which I’d never heard of. It was a SLAVE REBELLION in Cuba, named for its leader. But unlike the earlier Haitian one led by Toussaint Louverture, it was not successful.
I liked it more than Rex did. Good mix of fun and tough, with some nice cluing, especially “detective story?” for ALIBI.
Wordle is a FAD? Doesn’t that imply that it will die out soon? How did the NYT approve that clue? Along with Thursday’s black rectangle debacle, it makes me wonder if someone is sleeping on the job.
A proper Saturday for me. Wit and bite in cluing. Tough-but-fair vagueness. Where fill-ins were victories. Where one-answer-leads-to-another moments were rare and wonderful. Long entries that provided thrills when, after one more cross, the answer was finally seen. The patina of quality in clue and answer, in adept touches, resonating throughout.
And wait… this is a NYT crossword debut? Oh, okay, this is a name to watch.
Freshness from five NYT answer debuts: ABOLITIONISTS, HOUSECATS, NEPOBABY, SLAVE REBELLIONS, and WIRELESS SPEAKERS. Sweet little sash of three double-ells in the NE. The second-word-of-an-answer anagrams of ACTS and CATS. The fauna presence of CATS, APE, COLT, DRAKE, APHID, and wannabe DEER. Lovely PuzzPair© of HMS and MARINE. And I love how the word SPUMONI just ROLLEs off the tongue.
But the big thing today was in the splendid getting through this, which for me required the level of riddle-cracking work my brain adores. Where I finished with a “Whew!” and a “Wow!” And a “Thank you!” Much gratitude, Ahmed, for a remarkable debut that X-ed my happy boxes!
“Weave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes in holy dread
For he on honeydew had fed
And driunk the milk of paradise.”
I suppose the milk of paradise would be Coleridge’s beverage of choice to wash down aphid excrement.
If Emma STONE ever has a NEPOBABY, I hope she names it ROSETTA.
I don’t know that ISIAH Thomas is a “legend” - Bird, Magic, Michael, (even Kareem) were legends of that era. Thomas would be included in the same category as someone like Clyde Drexler (or perhaps Reggie Miller) in my opinion.
The clue for RICE (Hot bed?) just hasn’t registered for me - hopefully there is more to it than a bed of rice under one’s shrimp scampi. Hopefully there is a nice subtlety there that is escaping me - any ideas?
“Michael Jordan called Thomas the second greatest point guard ever, only behind Magic Johnson.”
In the print version, 30D and 48D are right next to each other, one providing the answer for the other. Seems sloppy to have these two clues in the same puzzle.
"Nobody wants to hear your music at the beach"
Absolutely! Or on the trail, or in the park, or at the swimming hole!
Maybe too much trivia for a Saturday and some ugly stuff - but the longs provide balance. Like Rex YO LA TENGO went in cold as did SLAVE REBELLIONS and THE ROSETTA STONE - lots of easy grid real estate. Liked to see SPUMONI.
MARINE BIOLOGIST
SEEST, URLS, O COME, AFLOW and ASEA - all unfortunate and all drag this thing down.
50-50 on this one. Not my type of Saturday but pleasant enough I guess. The center of the Stumper today will give a little more pushback.
Prodigious over the years - but I always go back to the beginning
Same experience being rescued, eventually, by NEWME!
@wanderlust - Cool story on the origin of YO LA TENGO, and in that scenario, is short for I Got It, which baseball players shout to call off another player, and still very much used.
@GILL. - THEROSETTASTONE provides a deciphering “key” for ancient Egyptian scripts.
Overall, an avg Sat time, but felt a little longer. Medium for me. Didn’t mind the slavery mini theme at the top, but agree to many 3/4/5s and not a ton of zing. Still a very solid debut.
Easier than most Saturdays, I guess, because I solved it without cheating. I liked the historical entries, especially the reference to 1850's Republicans as ABOLITIONISTS, and the SLAVEREBELLIONS.
Following up on that, it's remarkable how the two major parties have shifted 180 degrees from the 1850s. Yesterday's Democrats are today's Republicans, and vice versa.
Great catch!
As a millennial, I similarly rejoiced at seeing YOLATENGO. I've seen them live about 15 times since the mid 2000s, and it's always an eclectic mix of 20-somethings to 70-somethings in the crowd – definitely not just Gen Xers! I saw them on my 25th birthday and managed to request "My Heart's Reflection", which is still one of my favorites.
Speaking of which, I also saw YOLATENGO during the tour where they had a "spin the wheel" gimmick to decide what they would play during their first set. It landed on "spinner's choice", and the crowd member who spun the wheel chose the cryptic "Sitcom Theater" (the only non-music option). What followed was a full reading of the "Chinese Restaurant" episode of Seinfeld by the band. All of which is to say, I have personal reasons for enjoying the Seinfeld-tinged MARINEBIOLOGIST sitting above YOLATENGO.
I was totally stumped by the ROLLE / RICE cross. I didn't know the actress, and both "bed of rice" and "rice bed" mean nothing to me. I tried V, M, and D before getting to R.
I was happy to see Yo La Tengo as well! Did not specifically know the name of this album but I saw them in the “aughts” in SF and they put on a great show! Beautiful. So yeah, this puzzle was meh. I finished it, so that’s good I guess.
Child favored by nepotism… what better put-down than NEPO BABY? Offensive without being crude. And, OMG (G for “Gosh” not “G-d” or “D-d”). What a great article in the New Yorker! Classic!
@Wanderlust: It's not that long (IMO) and is worth seeing:
Yo La Tengo, Spanish for "I have it" came from a baseball anecdote that occurred during the 1962 season, when Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, a Venezuelan who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!" instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the hell is a yellow tango?"
****
I'm old enough to have gone to some of those early Mets games in the Polo Grounds with Casey Stengel managing. In one, the Mets were up by about six runs going into the ninth, but the opposing team started blasting away. Stengel was calling in every arm he had but they all got slammed. Finally, with the lead down to one and the tying run at third, he called in another pitcher. The first pitch was drilled to deep center, but Rod Kanehl (I think) flew after it and made a great leaping catch. Game over. Mets win. As Stengel passed the pitcher coming off the mound he said "Good pitch, kid."
Love Yo La Tengo!
Thx, Ahmed; Wonderful Sat. puz! 😊
Easy-med; except for…
Wanted ETO (which is very familiar), but the fingers input the crosswordese ETa. Couldn't find the error. D'oh! :(
Also, I know the word TENGO, so that makes the gaff even more perplexing.
Oh well, these things happen from time to time, so best to move on and be more careful next time.
Otherwise, a fairly smooth non-solve, and a most enjoyable trip! :)
___
On to Lester Ruff's Sat. Stumper. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness, Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Medium for me. It started great but I hit a wall where I struggled to get another foothold. I even got ABOLITIONISTS without any crosses and it still didn't help much.
Not my favorite puzzle ever, but not too offensive. A bunch of fill-in-the-black clues, two of which had terrible answers. Take A NOTE? Stay ALERT? Such awful clueing.
Never heard of NEPOBABY. Why does ROSETTA STONE have THE in front? I haven't heard anyone use the term WIRELESS SPEAKER since the mid 2000s. The common terms are "portable speaker" and "Bluetooth speaker."
Another missed music opportunity: Rosetta Stoned
(Warning: it may contain some potty words.)
NEPOBABY is mocking and infantilizing on purpose. It’s scornful. And in most cases rightfully so. It’s time we stopped granting any kind of polite legitimacy to rich kids who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.
Not bad but a technical DNF as I had exactly the same experience as @Kent with NE_ME. I was running the alphabet mentally but for some reason stopped before I got to the W and just left it blank. If this is the worst thing that happens today, I'm in pretty good shape.
Had the W from EWE and kept entertaining the devout wish that the cross would not be AFLOW, but there it was. Eww.
Roger Angell relates the story of the Mets outfielders, one of whom (let's say the center fielder) had to learn YOLATENGO so that his Spanish speaking left fielder would not interfere with his attempts to catch a fly ball. He mastered that and was using his newfound knowledge in a game, yelling YOLATENGO, YOLATENGO, ineffectually, as it turned out, as he was run over by the right fielder. Glory days of the Mets.
NFL before NSA and it took me forever to parse ADEPTAT; Learned MII and remembered Ms. ROLLE.
Our HOUSECAT is either 19 or will be soon, we're not sure. Cause for celebration anyway.
Impressive debut, AB. Absolutely Bodacious. Congrats and thanks for all the fun.
Honestly I think I’m most upset by the clueing for CRU. The Editors always seem to make “French word in vineyards” mean “find a French word in the word ‘vineyards’”, which is VIN. Otherwise this means what? “Give me a 3-letter French word that might be used by any person in any vineyard?” Ugh.
I think that's all there is to RICE, and I also thought that one felt off. Or a little weak. Or something. For what it's worth, I know very little about basketball and I know of ISIAH just as I know of Jordan, Kareem, Magic, etc.. so legend felt fine to me. But I know very little, so that could be wrong!
I can never remember if the band is Yo La Tengo ("I have it") or Ya Lo Tengo ("I already have it"). I've been more or less aware of them since they first existed but I couldn't have told you what they sound like. As for their latest album: No lo tengo.
I forgot all about spumoni. I never see it anywhere anymore. Now I want some.
This was pretty dry for a Saturday puzzle, but as we don't need any more water in NYC today, that's quite alright.
And any excuse to rewatch this is fine with me.
Got it, with the help of two Google cheats (DRAKE & YOLOTENGO).
But not a lot of MARKLESPARKLE (to cite a NEPOinlaw now known by millions as Me-Again).
Like Rex, with three long answers, thought this had to a Black History Month themer but that just fizzled out.
Even if I were AFLOW in ASEA, this one could not SEEST to keep my interest afloat.
Just had a sense of the Saturday Sloggies.
As someone who's seen Yo La Tengo play live 4 times and have 10 of their albums, I was giddy to see them here. Most of my interests feel too obscure to be NYT-worthy, but I look forward to future clues involving Husker Du, Guided By Voices and Mission of Burma.
For whatever reason, found this one easy. Lost a little time with trying to cram spumante where SPUMONI was meant to be. Fridays and Saturdays I generally start with the downs, which sometimes helps populate the upper grid-spanners - it did today. A little longer than half my average time for a Saturday.
Knew of the origin of the band's name (as @wanderlust mentioned0, so got that one quickly. WIRELESS SPEAKER - I probably read the clue, but pretty much all the letters came from crosses.
Nice puzzle, tho a little on the quick side for a Saturday.
YO no LA TENGO en mi cabeza
Hey All !
Bottom half kicked my CRESC. That one was an answer I needed to Goog. Thoroughly stuck in bottom part. Had AS_ANS forever, really wanting ASWANS, but that W wouldn't play nice with the Across. Thought about ASSANS, finally saw ASIANS, which quickly led to MARINE BIOLOGISTS. Finished up the middle/bottom section from that, but stalled again in the last third.
Looked up the Romeo clue (had SpEak), and for some wild reason, had to look up COLT (had the C, and the ole brain said, "Nope, you're not getting nothing from me!"). Couldn't get mare put of my silly brain.
But, three cheats to the wind 😁 and I was able to wrestle this to the floor for the three count.
FATWA is a neat word, so why can't I ever remember it? Will melon be the newest substitute word? "My stomach hurts, I think I need to take a melon." Har.
Why does THE ROSETTA STONE look weird? It seems it doesn't need the THE, but people say the THE when they talk about it. "Have you seen ROSETTA STONE?" vs "Have you seen THE ROSETTA STONE?"
Find MII? Yikes, not a gamer, but dang. Maybe Find WII, ala their gaming platform.
Enough blather out of me. Have a good weekend.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Nice to see crescendo correctly abbreviated for a change.
NOT crec.
What RP said. Some really solid long answers that gave me the short ones (usually the other way around). Secessionist has the same number of letters as ABOLITIONIST, ask me how I know...(@anon 6:01am, thanks for confirming I was onto something).
I flailed around mostly in the East. Yo La Tengo is a name I've seen, but it didn't come into focus for quite a while. I made Amess of it, will have to make ANOTE of that. Lordes(sp?) and Ladies populated my Feudal area before LIEGES.
Sounding old, but right, warning: While I'd prefer to hear surf and birds, I don't usually mind a small speaker and the sounds of people having "fun", but people now own huge amplification systems you can't escape - and manage to aim them at you rather than their own party. I curse Bose for selling that gigantic battery powered amp to the masses. In my city park, every single group of 3 or more people must blast their own niche music, leading to a cacophony that would drive Charles Ives mad.
inre NEPOPBABY: an offensive practice deserves an offensive term. In a supposedly meritocratic system, seeing children of wealth way ahead SMELLS. Nothing against them in particular, but knowing Lady Gaga, Nick Kroll or Taylor Swift came from immense wealth (which pays for promotion, studio time, industry professionals, etc. and gives them more time since they don't spend it on something so pedestrian as a job), takes some bloom off the rose.
The non-standard spelling Thomas is the hall of fame one from the Pistons. The other one had a nice run for the Boston Celtics one year in the playoffs, then got traded for Kyrie Irving, was injured, and never really came back. @Southside, I'd say the hall of fame deserves legend status. Certainly those other names you cited are more on the Mt. Rushmore of basketball, but give Drexler, Miller, Thomas their due. (and no question mark for Kareem, please!)
@Wonderlust - that was my thought on Wordle. They spent a lot of money, presumably, on something they think won't last??
NYer spoiler from yesterday:
"Sub's key holder, perhaps?" is the clue
DOM is the answer.
I have a theory for how this works, but it feels obscure. Any explanation?
Pretty easy Saturday for me. I got my start with APHID - don't ants milk them for their honeydew?
I had a few stumbles on the way, for instance, missing seeing the third S at 58A which led me to put in PlAyER in there for a bit before CHOKE made me look again.
I thought the 1850s Republicans might have been isOLATIONISTS and OCOME was a while in coming to me.
NEPO BABY - I don’t remember hearing the term although it made sense after filling in, but I opened my most recent “New Yorker” and saw the Shouts and Murmurs piece Rex mentioned and said wow, there it is again. And then read Rex, hah!
I got YO LA TENGO which after studying Spanish for 154 days (my streak) on Duolingo, I know means “I HAVE HER” (or a female “I have it”). I also know the band so that filled in off the OLA though the album name in the clue was of no help.
Thanks, Ahmed Bayoumi!
Yow. Another "bet you don't know this person" Saturday. Rough few days for the NYTXW. Oh well, looking forward to grumbling about the Sunday puzzle.
Tee-Hees: So nice to see our fifth-grade slush pile editor back in the saddle. We had several weeks where it seemed like grownups were picking the puzzles, but yesterday made up for time with an epic juvenalia compendium, and today, we proudly put our [Butts (in)] and TOKED away. Yay.
NEW ME is straight up privilege. Ugh.
Uniclues:
1 Apology treat for one forced to spend the day swinging with you.
2 How billionaires get that way.
3 Watch Prince Harry try to stay famous.
4 Best nasal aid in avoiding open mic night.
1 CADDIE SPUMONI
2 ADEPT AT PAYEES
3 SEEST NEPOBABY
4 SMELL SOLO ACTS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The street most of us live on. SCOFF AVENUE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Watch Netflix’s “Bonding” and you’ll figure it out fast. Lead character is a dominatrix.
I liked the puzzle more than Rex did, but I really enjoyed his write-up. I’ve heard *of* both DRAKE and YO LA TENGO, but not their actual music, but both answers fell easily from crosses. If you’re using (to me) obscure pop culture stuff, I can’t complain if the crosses are fair. This is the kind of Saturday that looks quite challenging at first glance but falls in a doable, pleasant way.
@Liveprof-Good on you for remembering names and more details. Never heard the "yellow tango" part of this one. This must be memorable if we both can come up with it after all these years.
Medium for me, and I liked it a lot. Perhaps the longer entries lacked sparkle (see @Rex), but I found them all satisfying to write in, from the three-part "theme" at the top to the stacked communication-related ROSETTA STONE and WIRELESS SPEAKER at the bottom..
Thanks to those who pointed out that this puzzle is a debut: I'll go with ADEPT AT for my word of the day for the constructor.
Do-over: tortONI. No idea: YO LA TENGO. Help from previous puzzles: DRAKE. Help from having a film maker in the family: a recent chat about the NEPOBABY phenomenon in that industry. Malapop: APPS where FADS belongs.
Thanks whirlwind, sub as in submissive. Even with relaxing standards, not sure when that passes the breakfast test of the New York times
@burtonkd (10:02). Re: yesterday's NYer spoiler:
That threw me too, but now I think it's a dominatrix whose "sub" is in handcuffs. Thus, the key. Those New Yorker folks can get pretty kinky I guess.
Wait a minute - not a fan of ANY sports, but isn't the name of the famous basketball player "Isaiah" not "Isiah"?!
A worthy, educational puzzle of impressive density and with grown-up fill. The long stacks were lovely.
But I nearly crashed and burned in the YOLATENGO section. The "post-op persona" I was looking for was some kind of recovery room nurse or physical therapist and I never once thought of a NEW ME. If surgery is required, I'd much rather stick with the OLD ME, thank you very much. I kept staring at ?E?ME and felt I was losing my mind. Only when that came in, did I feel I was going to solve the great mystery of the "Stupid World" band with the stupid name.
Today's Solving Tip: If you're looking for the title of a pop Billboard-type song, go for the most obvious title you can think of. Don't be sophisticated, for heaven's sake -- these songs were not written by Stephen Sondheim or Cole Porter. OTOH, if you're looking for the name of a rock band in the 2000s, expect it to be either a totally ridiculous phrase or a totally ridiculous combination of letters. (Oh, dear, I only hope that YOLA TENGO isn't [gasp!] a person!)
But everything else here was the sort of important info an educated person should know. Good puzzle overall.
Better to have a WIRELESSSPEAKER on the beach than a clueless Speaker of the House of REPs.
As my NANA might have said, “A stream, it AFLOW to ASEA.”
I was hoping that Aubrey Graham’s middle name was The Weeknd, but I guess not.
Nice debut. Thanks, Ahmed Bayoumi.
Thanks liveprof too: I was thinking musically of the subdominant chord in a key, which didn't quite make sense. Or the submarine vehicle or sandwich. NYer also features many more obscure PPP clues.
@pablo -- don't give me too much credit -- I unearthed the details from wikipedia. It is a funny story though.
I had honeydew on my hands from gardening yesterday. So sticky ! Took forever so was off!
@Liveprof & @pablo
Not to pick nits, but @Wanderlust posted an abbreviated version at 6:40 AM. Like @Liveprof, after reading it, I went to Wikipedia to read the full version and planned to post it, but @Liveprof beat me to it.
The African-American mini-theme in the North continues elsewhere in the grid. Persons are all African-American with the exception of DEERE: Carrie MAE Weems, Esther ROLLE, ISIAH Thomas, and DRAKE.
Today was a super easy and fun puzzle except for the middle East. I had to cheat by looking up This Stupid, as NEW ME lost me completely and I couldn't recall the standard crosswordese ETO.
My son, who lives 10 minutes away by foot, and whom I haven't seen since August, tells me that all four of them will be home for one hour this afternoon, so we should come by! I'm not gonna miss that, so I'm posting without reading the comments -- I'll be back later.
Thi was really tough for me to get started, because of lots of vague and/or tricky cluing, and because I misremembered the name as Carrie leE Weems. But I remembered that Italian ice cream that comes in layers -- back in my youth if you went to an Italian restaurant and wanted ice cream, there were only two choices: tortoni or SPUMONI. I couldn't remember which was which, but the ONI was good, and I checked a few crosses and saw UrlS, so I was off. Then there was 17A: SLAVE REvolts? Too short. REvolutions? Too long, plus in the crew. I actually had to get ABOLITIONISTS before REBELLIONS occurred to me-- but once I did I had a pretty good foothold, and things got easier.
Speakingof ABOLITIONISTS, it's wrong -- most Republicans in the 1950s were not that. Many were free-soilers (i.e., against adding any more slave states), some wanted to send the slaves back to Africa, only a minority were abolitionists. I heard someone talking about this on NPS a couple hours ago. But it had to be the answer.
Anyone else put Hrh at 28-D? I was thinking of the Queen, rather than the ship.
Hot Tip: Do not make a habit of parking your car under a tree infested with aphids. The honeydew drips collect dirt and harden.
@JC66-Right you are, and my apologies to @Wanderlust for the omission. I'm sure the Wiki had the details right, but I would always rather read Roger Angell when it comes to baseball.
A lot I didn't know here - Fatwa, Yo La Tengo & I wouldn't give up Crack for Choke 48D. So for me it was a struggle. But I did like NEW ME for 32A New Post Op persona.
On to Sunday.
And like the NYT crossword (& some games), Wordle isn't a fad. They've all become an obsession.
Solved the puzzle today with my wife while eating the omelet from The Bear, and — as happenstance would have it — listening to WFMU, at the exact time slot that Ira Kaplan (singer and guitarist of YO LA TENGO) was on the air DJing.
I don’t believe he has a regularly scheduled show at the moment, but he was filling in for the usual Saturday noon-ish DJ Michael Shelley. Several folks on the WFMU comments board mentioned the crossword. Not sure if Ira addressed it during mic breaks between songs, but if you check back in about 24 hours the audio of his show today will be at this link (look for the September 30th episode): https://wfmu.org/playlists/IK
Another synchronicity: it is on our “To Do” list for today to pick a night and buy tickets to see Yo La Tengo during their annual “eight nights of Hanukkah” show series at the Bowery Ballroom this December.
What strange indie-cred stars have aligned to have YO LA TENGO make their third appearance in the NYTXW the same day their singer is live on the air DJing? And for that to be playing in the kitchen at the very same time my wife and I solve?
don't forget their "sounds of the sounds of science" score for the Jean Painlevé films. saw them perform it once with the films, and again at a "spin the wheel" show.
The mini theme was intriguing but didn't seem to go anywhere. Moreover, Republicans in the 1850s were antislavery, not abolitionists. The two words are not synonymous and the difference between them goes to the heart of the debate over slavery in the North.
YO LA TENGO verdad, knew Bongo Bongo from son’s back room “noise.” OLD memories are not always the best. Congrats to Ahmed on the debut.
Rice pilaf served under other hot food.
The enduring indie darling status of the band Yo La Tengo was never better captured than in this classic Onion headline from 2002: https://www.theonion.com/37-record-store-clerks-feared-dead-in-yo-la-tengo-conce-1819566399
I used to work at a small indie club in Tempe Arizona in the early 90s, the Sun Club. YLT played there on a weeknight with a $5 cover and a handful of attendees. Before the show, they got a few dollars to go get dinner with as part of their performance agreement. I'll never forget that they, unprompted, brought back the change (!) – change they could have no doubt used for gum or gasoline or whatever. In hindsight, I like to think they believed the Sun Club needed those few dollars, as much or more than they did, to remain open and host underground touring bands on a budget (which was accurate as they club only managed to stay open a few more years).
Joe DiPinto,
if you really have a yen, check out LB Spumoni Gardens. Not sure where you are in King’s county exactly, but LB is at least in your borough.
Can’t vouch for the eponymous spumoni, but their square pizza is the best I’ve ever had ( of that ilk). And I see plenty of people enjoying the ice cream.🤷
Rex,
Thank you. Just read the New Yorker piece. It confirmed many things I’ve long thought about you, your understanding of the world, and what you hold In pectorae.
@Nancy YO LA TENGO (three words) is not a "nonsense phrase." It's Spanish. As has been explained here.
The answer to @Anonymous 8:53 question is that ROSETTA STONE is three letters short of that 55A grid spanning slot. Adding a gratuitous definite or indefinite article to a noun, here THE, is a common form of letter count inflation (LCI). Here are the relevant remarks from the LCI post: "Another letter count, grid fill boosting method is adding an article in front of a noun in the grid . In standard English discourse, single, countable nouns must be preceded by a definite or indefinite article. In crossword puzzles, however, the convention has been to use just the noun alone. If a noun entry in a puzzle grid is arbitrarily preceded by an article while all other nouns in the grid stand alone then it has all the earmarks of an LCI, here an article of convenience."
The most common form of LCI is the plural of convenience or POC that also makes several appearances in today's grid. It helps another grid spanner wanna be, SLAVE REBELLION, boost its letter count to do its job. The ultra helpful two for one POC, where a Down and an Across both get a letter count bump by sharing a single, final S, shows up at the ends of URL/POLL, LIEGE/NOSE, ASIAN/FAD and USER/PAYEE. An argument could be made for ABOLITIONIST and SOLO ACT being POCs. Throw in some NANAS here and some HOUSECATS and ASHES there and the Committee unanimously gave the grid a POC Marked rating.
@Anon 3:39 – Thanks for the tip. I saw that place earlier when I googled "spumoni near me". It's not actually near me, but it looks to be close to an N train stop. Weirdly, the website doesn't include a dessert menu so there's no mention of spumoni anywhere, just a single photo of it at the very end. But the other stuff including the pizza looks pretty good, so it might be worth an excursion.
Apparently WADDIE is an obscure term for thief, which I googled and said "ok sure, a thief is left holding the bag" so I DNFed.
Didn't get to this rodeo until real late. It was a pretty easy-ish SatPuz solvequest, at our house.
staff weeject pick: MII. Had no idea, but the crossers helped m&e out.
Hardest stretch: no-knows YOLATENGO/NEPOBABY/ROLLE.
fave answer: THEROSETTASTONE.
fave clue: CADDIE = {One who's left holding the bag?}.
Weirdier-than-average entry: AFLOW.
Themeless Thanx, Mr. Bayoumi dude. [Woulda been kinda suspicious, if U spelled it BayouMII.] And congratz on yer fine debut.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
Joe D—
What?! You’re nowhere near Gravesend? 😜
More important, yeah, that website gives me pause. Don’t know what to say.
When I knew the place, not thaaaaat long ago, it was just a neighborhood joint that served two kinds of pie—round and square— and spumoni. If they had food it came from the Siemens semi twice a week.
Their current website looks like they have ambition. And though I don’t know, I’m guessing thtat the enemy of pizza pie and spumoni both….
Puzzled by Rex’s comments about NEPO BABY. It is intended as an insult after all, a newer version of born with a silver spoon in his or her mouth. (Or my favorite from the late great Ann Richards- born on third and thought he hit a triple). I never heard anyone say cry baby is an annoying use of an infantile term. I like the expression. Sometimes his rants make no sense at all.
I do agree the parallel “seas” were a bit over the top. Sara was my last entry also.
I think I learned from crosswords the connection between aphids and honeydew. Surprised Rex was surprised.
Easy medium for me also.
FWIW the clue is Make a——-
Different players. Isiah is older and more successful than the younger Isaiah.
New Yorker article?
Good catch about the names.
Same here @Harry! Totally out of my wheelhouse.
Technically you could say it was a themed puzzle because African American,Abolitionists,and Slave Rebellion are long answers. But opinions may vary.
Let me add I agree with Wanderlust about FADS. That was the only clue I needed to look up. Is Worlde a fad? Had SMUMOTI instead of SPUMONI,ADEPTIN instead of ADEPTAT,and MAI instead of JAI. Have done better on Saturday Puzzles.
USERS NOTE
O, it's A NEWME, SMELL THE ASHES, don't CHOKE,
STAY STONEd, COME and SEA, LEND an EAR, have A TOKE.
--- REP. RENEE MAE ROLLE
I, too, thought there may be more theme coming after 14a 17a and 16d, but not so much. Short write-overs with Hrh before HMS and Nfl before NSA; seem like intentional misdirects. I always thought that ISIAH Thomas' parents left an A out of his name, maybe. Wanna DIVE into ASEA? I have into the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian, not the Red. Pick a RENEE, yeah BABY.
Wordle par.
A good solid Saturday challenge for me. Took a while to get traction but after I did it was smooth sailing.
A Saturday puzzle that, after a while, just fell into place once I got going.
Lady Di
There are few subjects in this stupid world I know better than rock bands. Conversely, I am almost completely in the dark about 2023 album titles, by anyone. So it took me longer than I would have liked to fill that one in.
Note to Anon. up there about half way: I'm fairly certain I've seen a Husker Du reference in a previous NYT crossword. GBV would be treat. And I'm happy to report that Robyn Hitchcock (who played some shows in 2017 with YO LA TENGO as his backing band) has shown up a couple of times too.
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