THEME: recorded music: a history — last words of theme answers take you through a timeline of musical media, from RECORD and TAPE to CD and finally STREAMING [with corresponding timeframe in brackets at the end of each theme answer clue]:
Theme answers:
PERMANENT RECORD (17A: Listing of disciplinary infractions [1950s to early 1980s]
MASKING TAPE (26A: Tan adhesive [1970s to early 1990s])
HIGH-YIELD CD (45A: Fixed-term bank offering that pays well [1990s to 2000s])
SINGLE STREAMING (57A: Recycling option that collects paper, plastics and metals together [2010s to present])
Word of the Day: SINGLE STREAMING (57A) —
Single-stream (also known as “fully commingled” or "single-sort") recycling refers to a system in which all paper fibers, plastics, metals, and other containers are mixed in a collection truck, instead of being sorted by the depositor into separate commodities (newspaper, paperboard, corrugated fiberboard, plastic, glass, etc.) and handled separately throughout the collection process. In single-stream, both the collection and processing systems are designed to handle this fully commingled mixture of recyclables, with materials being separated for reuse at a materials recovery facility.
The single-stream option replaces the dual-stream option, which is where people separate certain recyclable materials and place them in separate containers for collection. Typically, dual-stream has partial commingled materials such as glass, plastic and metals in one stream separated from paper products in the other stream. From an end consumer perspective, single-stream is easier to participate in. However, single-stream recycling has disadvantages, including the output of lower quality plastics and paper to recyclers. This lower quality material has to be processed more downstream. The increased flow of decreased quality recyclables from Europe and North America in part due to single-stream recycling was part of China's motivation for launching its Operation National Sword policy. (wikipedia)
• • •
[this RECORD, by a guy with a very cool name, is streaming on YouTube]
This is a very cute theme idea that gets marred a bit in the execution. The worst marring is totally self-inflicted—that is, it's entirely a question of the cluing, specifically those brackets at the end indicating recording medium relevance. At least I think that's what those dates are. I don't actually know. Because they're not... what's the word ... accurate. I guess they're supposed to be very broad, very general time frames in which the recording medium in question had its heyday. But ... I mean, let's start with RECORD. You've got [1950s to early 1980s] there in the brackets, but that's wrong at the back end by several years, and it's wrong at the front end by [... counts on fingers ... runs out of fingers ...] half a century? Something like that. RECORDs have been around since the late 19th century. I think the puzzle means specifically "LP RECORD"s, which come into prominence starting in the late '40s, but, well, it doesn't say "LP"; it says RECORD, so ... taking the puzzle at its word, "1950s" is way, way off. Further: CDs went mainstream in the mid-80s. When I got to college in '87, I was one of the few people on my dorm hall with a CD player, but within a year, they were Everywhere, so "1990s" is a few years late for the CD. People still bought CDs in the 2010s. And of course all of these media are still around, some of them weirdly resurgent (ask me about my growing *new* cassette collection). I don't really truly deeply care that the brackets are off, but I do care that they're off and I'm not sure exactly what they're supposed to indicate. The brackety bits all feel just a little too fast and loose and ... off. Slightly awonk.
The other thing that mars the otherwise well-conceived theme is SINGLE STREAMING. This is a ... terminology / phrasing issue. I solved this Downs-only and I can tell you that I just stared at SINGLE STREAMING, and then stared some more, and still had no idea what it could mean. None. I was mildly surprised when I completed the grid to find that it was all correct. SINGLE ...STREAMING? So of course I then looked at the clue, and learned that it has something to do with recycling. OK, fine, but ... even when I looked it up, the phrase SINGLE STREAMING did not appear to be what people were calling this particular "recycling option." As you can see from the "Word of the Day" entry (above), seems like "single-stream" is typically an adjective used to modify "recycling." "Single streaming" redirects to "Single-stream recycling" at wikipedia, and when I google ["single streaming"] I mainly get (musical) singles that are (musically) streaming. So I didn't know a word, and then learned a word, but then it seems it's not really the word that's commonly used? Weird. "Our city has SINGLE STREAMING..." I dunno, I guess I can hear that. Maybe it's a colloquialism that just hasn't hit me yet. We must have SINGLE STREAMING where I live, as we definitely don't sort our recyclables. Hmm. Anyway, the basic music medium time-lapse theme, I like a lot–it's a solid early-week concept. And the grid is pretty clean. Except ESTAB., that's awful in a not-terribly-demanding Monday grid (32A: Abbr. before a year on a business sign). Both otherwise, clean. The spelled-out OH EM GEE is even original and funny (41D: Texter's astonishment, spelled cutesily). So it's a qualified thumbs-up, I think.
As for the specifics of the Downs-only solving experience, no real problems to speak of. Pretty straightforward. PARTIAL TO was by far (far far) the hardest answer to parse (3D: Having a liking for), but even that one just took a little extra time, a little extra pressure from surrounding fill. Slowed me, but didn't stop my forward progress at all. I made exactly two errors, one of them entirely stupid, i.e. I had the ice cream as TOM & Jerry's (35D: ___ & Jerry's => BEN). Since "ice cream" is not in the clue, I don't feel as bad as I might, but I still feel pretty bad. TOM & Jerry are an iconic duo, but the apostrophe ess should've told me BEN. In fact, I know that as I was writing in TOM, I was definitely thinking "ice cream," so my brain wires just got crossed. And then TOM showed up, mockingly, just two columns over! (33D: Star of the "Mission: Impossible" films => TOM CRUISE). The other mistake I made was a little more understandable—I wrote in PILL where ITCH was supposed to go (52D: Wool sweater annoyance). I currently have a beloved sweater that is pilling in annoying ways, so ... that's where that answer came from. I hope it's nice sweater weather where you live, and that your day is both pill-less and ITCH-less. See you tomorrow.
OBAMA, MAYA, DANA, ALDA, TOMEI, TOM, BEN and SPIRO were headed to the OHEMGEE bar. They were HIGH on DSL and happy as LARKS....The door was always OPEN for them.
The OHEMGEE was ESTAB back in the GLORY days where SINGLES would ITCH to POSE on MTV as an ALOOF IDOL. People wanted to become COTES in the PERMANENT ARTE SCENE and this was a NOTCH above the rest.
OPAL was the bar singer. She'd be sitting on her ELM TREE stool and sing a LALA SOLO while GENEVA played a MARACA from ALASKA. MONA and LISA, MASKING in a VEGA POSE, would ring the BELL so that all the SINGLES could start STREAMING in and dance the AGRA ADO. It was quite a SCENE. People would CREE in AWE because they were PARTIAL TO all the LALA SOLO songs that OPAL sang....They loved her RECORD!
There was always the APE that would CRUISE in through the OHEMGEE DOOR. He was a SEEDLESS RAT named ASAP that had no CENTS...He had VICES that would make any TSAR make a MEAL out of the SINGLES STREAMING through the DOOR HIGH on DSL. ITLL make you ITCH to ELOPE to the APE of MAN.
OPAL AROSE to the ADO. She prepared a VEGA MEAL for ASAP and both shared a COPA of A ROSE. He was in AWE of her and would YIELD to her good CENTS. Plus, the MEAL was a NOTCH above the VEGA food he'd SNAG at the ANT Motel. They came to a FINAL CREE and the DOOR would be open for ASAP.
The GLORY days became a PERMANENT fixture at OHEMGEE. SINGLES continued to ITCH to POSE for MTV. GENEVA got better with her MARACA and ELOPED with ASAP to the ORAL sea. The bar was back to being a PERMANENT ARTS SCENE full of LARKS and OPAL could be seen on her ELM TREE stool singing her LALA SOLO.
Loved the GENEVA Conventions clue and answer. I can almost hear the social climbing wife of a rent-a-cop who works at the Convention Centre saying, "Oh, my husband is responsible for the enforcement of the Geneva Conventions." Unfortunately, there is too little honoring of them right now, and I fear a lot less in the next week or so.
Solving this downs only, I came to the Mission Impossible clue with only a T and a C to consider. Thought it strange that TosCanini would have played even a supporting role, much less starred. But it sure did fit.
Does a PARTIALTO fall between a Partisoprano and a Partitenor?
Easyish except for the OHEMGEE/SINGLE STREAMING (which @Rex was a WOE for me also) cross which need staring to sort out and which killed any whoosh I had going.
Let’s see...I still have a lot of vinyl but the turntable is in a box in the attic next to the VHS video TAPE player. I hooked up my CD player to a Bluetooth transmitter so we still listen to CDs. I cut the cord a while back so everything we watch is via STREAMING.
Liked it, smooth and tight!
Croce Solvers - The top 2/3s of Croce’s Freestyle #852 was NYT Friday easy. The bottom third was a medium Croce for me. YYMV because I had to fix multiple incorrect down entries on the bottom which hopefully you all will avoid. Good luck!
Rex, also solving down clues only, ditto for finishing correctly and staring at SINGLE STREAMING thinking: whaaa? Never ever heard of that. I guess we do actually have it here; everything goes loose in the blue bin, end of story. But not the zingiest final themer. And actually HIGH YIELD CD is not great either.
I remember shopping for a stereo system in 1982, and telling the store owner I didn't want a turntable, just a cassette deck. He just stared at me slack-jawed. And now LPs are cool again, just like skateboards (although motorized) and paddle boards (although standup).
OH EM GEE looked like it was OH MY GOD even though that isn't spelled cutesily, and didn't fit with the crosses.
OH EM GEE, where’s the eight-track player? Its parenthetical years-of-service clue would have been (August - November 1978). No, it was popular much longer than that. I remember listening to Bread and Seals & Crofts on the eight-track. (I had an embarrassing addiction to syrupy schlock as a kid.) That clunk when it changed tracks! Sometimes they couldn’t make it work so the clunk happened between songs, and it clunked right in the middle of a song. “Summer breeze makes me feel fine CLUNK blowin’ through the jasmine of my miiiiiiind…” I just looked it up and learned that some bands still release music on eight-track just for kicks.
My downs-only solve didn’t go as easily as Rex’s. I couldn’t get PARTIAL TO or OH EM GEE so I had to look at a couple of crosses. After finishing I looked at the themers and had no idea what was up. I figured that SINGLE STREAMING must be a revealer but when I read the across clues, it was just another themer and I still had no idea what the theme was. Had to come here.
I agree with @egsforbreakfast on the delightful GENEVA clue. And who else was fooled by the “one of a pair of shakers” clue? I immediately thought “pepper” but I already had the other downs in that section and I was sure it wasn’t MODEp and OBAMe. I smiled when I saw MARACA. I guess no one ever plays a single maraca?
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance)
1. It clearly divides people (10) 2. One with bright and dark sides (4)(6) 3. Trading off? (7) 4. Greyhound's competition (3)(4) 5. Shares one's bunk? (4)
"Kitty" and "pot" are both slang for the stakes in a hand of poker -- the pile of chips in the middle of the table. I assume that applies to other games as well.
The OH EM GEE flirts with trying too hard but actually seems to work, and thus far has been reasonably well-received. There’s plenty here for us old timers as well - with LOLA at the COPA perhaps leading the way. I wonder what percentage of the solvers today won’t know who SPIRO Agnew was.
Speaking of yesterday’s puzzle: "NITERS"? No, just…no. Niter is just an old-fashioned term for potassium nitrate, especially when mined in its natural state. You can no more justify expressing niter in the plural as you could justify "hematites", "calcites", "gypsums" or other plural of a chemical compound. I cry "fool’s golds".
My partner and I are both recalling the tyranny of the permanent record during our school years. We were hoping the dates meant that it ended in the 1980s.
This reminds me of a bit in The Simpsons where Bart and Mulhouse are reading Mad magazine and one of them says, “they’re really socking it to that Spiro Agnew guy again. He must work there or something.”
Jeez even that reference is a quarter century old.
Such a simple and elegant theme, popular ways to listen to music, in order of appearance. Stella does this often in her early week puzzles – base a theme on a list of words that are hidden in phrases, words that comprise a category. She’s made one based on book genres (11/22/21), for instance, and another based on one-named-Broadway shows.
The thing is, while these are themes other constructors could easily have come up with, none had. Stella has a first-rate talent for spotting low-hanging theme fruit.
But she doesn’t stop there. Her grids are fresh. They sparkle. In her 19 years of NYT puzzles, she’s debuted 92 NYT answers, including today’s HIGH YIELD CD and SINGLE STREAMING. Her grids are smart – even today, the easiest puzzle of the week, I never felt talked-down-to in the cluing. And her grids have hardly a whiff of junky answers.
One lovely serendipity in today’s puzzle – 11 proper name schwa-ending answers, the highest I ever remember seeing in a 15 x 15: OBAMA, MAYA, ALASKA, VEGA, COPA, GENEVA, MONA LISA, DANA, LOLA, ALDA, AGRA!
Thank you, Stella, for another high-quality offering. You do Crosslandia proud, and I thoroughly enjoyed this outing!
Finally, my first downs-only success. Probably would have happened earlier but sometimes I accidentally hit Tab key and see an across clue by mistake. I was very disciplined today, even with a thirteen-pound cat draped over my wrists as I navigate the keyboard. Not sure I'll do it again, I miss out on half of the clue/answer pairs doing it that way.
Another vote against SINGLESTREAMING here.
Saw Agnew across the dining room at a hotel breakfast on the morning of my older brother's college graduation. Seemed like an ill omen but everything turned out fine.
My granddaughter Lianna (14) turned to me in the car this morning on the way to school and said: "What's Obama's last name?" "Good one!," I said, but she said it was an old meme from years ago. I explained to her that I live under a rock and anything not appearing in a crossword puzzle is foreign to me and that I barely even know what a meme is.
I found this to be an interesting theme and cleverly done. Being old enough to go all the way back to the beginning, it evoked a good bit of nostalgia for me too. I recall my pink teenage bedroom, listening to those early Beatles singles on my state-of-the-art RECORD player. Most likely my very first purchase would have been “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” or “She Loves You.” Funny, I can remember every word without the slightest bit of effort but I couldn’t tell you what I was actually planning to do when I walked in this room a few minutes ago. Nice puzzle today Stella, and thank you for the fond memories.
This was a maximum-whoosh Monday, as the theme whooshed right over my head. Flew on through with only minor hangups, PARTIALTO and the phonetic OHEMGEE took some nanoseconds, but most of this was a read the clue and fill in the answer exercise. SINGLESTREAMING? In these parts we say "no sort", so that was news to me.
My vinyl LP's are all gone, sold off in the downsize. My audio tapes stopped working years ago. Still have some CD's and I don't STREAM music, and that's why I missed the theme. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Top-NOTCH construction, SZ. Sure Zipped right past me, but that's my own fault darn it. Thanks for a fair amount of fun, which could have been more.
On to the Croce and the Monday NYer. An embarrassment of riches.
Rex, you cannot be serious! OH EM GEE is one of the worst clues ever. Is ESS OH ESS fine with you? How about PEE EM? CEE DEE CEE? Come on. Stupid and juvenile.
Complete gibberish, as so much textspeak is, -- and anyway, I had OHEMGaE because I thought the Spanish for art was ARTa.
Moving right along to SINGLE STREAMING: I never heard of it.
Once I filled in the RECORD of PERMANENT RECORD to go with MASKING TAPE, I knew that there would be a CD coming. I just didn't know what kind of CD. But I never thought of STREAMING as the last themer. You can hold a RECORD, a TAPE and a CD in your hand, but you can't hold a STREAMING. So to me, it doesn't really fit with the others.
COopS before COTES. Everything else went in lickety-split.
Not a hard puzzle, once the solver figured out OHEMGEE is the same as OMG (Oh my God).
I stupidly had "locales" instead of LOCATES for a long time, because I interpreted the clue to suggest a noun instead of a verb. My bad. The theme never occurred to me.
Agree the dates are a bit off. In 1983, my college roommate got a CD player for Christmas. Though they came out in late 1982 in the US, very few people had them, and this was the first one I ever saw. The players were expensive, and so were the discs. We were all amazed - no hiss, no pops, no scratches.
I read that cassette players were still being installed in cars for the US market as late as 2010. Surprised me, as I abandoned cassette tapes in the 80s.
Really? “Until I looked at the clue”? Can’t you please look at the clues before you have a half-page of criticism made up for your column?
‘Single streaming’ is a perfectly acceptable way of referred to a recycling method where I’m from. Not in your wheelhouse? Too bad! Please accept that your wheelhouse is not the universal wheelhouse!! People from all over the country read your blog. Not only people with your exact history and experience.
"She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah/she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" -- not all that hard to remember, is it? :)
I'm just teasing you of course, @Whatsername.
What you describe is not only not unusual -- it's generally the norm. Things we learned when we were young are more likely to be remembered than things we learned when we were old. I can remember -- and sing -- virtually every single song including every single lyric from every single Rodgers and Hammerstein show ever written. (Well, maybe not Allegro or Sweet Thursday.) Every lyric from West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Camelot, Brigadoon, and Annie Get Your Gun. And, like you, I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night or where I stored the wrapping paper. Do I walk into rooms not knowing why I'm there? All the time.
I'm sure this has been covered in past Monday posts, but could someone suggest a resource that provides a down-only solving option for a NYT puzzle? Surely there is a better way than printing it out and covering up half the clues.
I don't get the dateline parameters either. Records were invented in 1950? You can tell the formats progress from oldest to most modern; the clues didn't need an arbitrary dating system.
I linked this before, maybe two Halloweens ago, but I can't find it – anyway: Saxophonist Mike Sharpe, née Michael Shapiro, wrote and recorded the original instrumental version of Spooky, which reached #57 on Billboard in January 1967. A year later, lyrics were added for the version by the Classics IV, which became a #3 national hit.
CD sales overtook cassette tape sales in 1991. The clue is not wrong Rex. https://kodakdigitizing.com/blogs/news/when-did-cds-take-a-front-seat-to-the-cassette-tape#:~:text=So%20much%20so%2C%20that%20by,three%20years%20later%20in%201991.
I do agree that SINGLE STREAMING is a bad answer though.
This couple in their 90s goes to the doctor and he says they're in good shape for their age and asks if they have any complaints. They tell him memory loss is a problem -- they walk into a room and forget why they went in -- it's depressing. The doc suggests they keep a little memo pad on them and jot down why they are going before they go. If they forget, they can read their note.
Back home, the wife says, "Dear, can you get me some ice cream? -- but before you go, write it down, like the doctor suggested." The husband says, "I can remember ice cream. I'm not that bad." She says "But I'd like a little syrup on it, why ask for trouble? --write it down." He says, "I can remember ice cream and syrup." She says, "But also a little whipped cream -- please, darling, write it down."
He says -- "I can remember ice cream, syrup, and whipped cream, darnit!" and storms out of the room.
He comes back ten minutes later and hands her a plate of scrambled eggs. She looks at it and says "So, where's my toast?"
A perfectly respectable Monday offering and I think we can all agree the dates provided seemed off. After doing a light Google dive I’ve decided to go with this:
I’m going with “hey day” for the media. Yes, records were available a long time before the 50s but the advent of vinyl records at 33 and 45rpm made them WAY more affordable to young people. This coupled with the opening of Sam Goody and Tower Records and their smaller prototypes across the country made record sales explode across the US. Technology affected the hey days for tapes and cds. There. I’ve put it out there.
Anon@11:04 "‘Single streaming’ is a perfectly acceptable way of referred to a recycling method where I’m from."
I dunno where you're from, but the thing is, that doesn't even make sense. There is a stream (noun) of waste material. Nobody streams their recycling. The closest M-W definition is "to emit freely or in a stream." It's not just a wheelhouse thing, the dictionaries seem to agree.
Being unaware of recycling methods at this important time when we're overloaded with trash is ignorance. That's OK, as most of us are ignorant about some areas of knowledge, or we'd all complete each day of crosswords in minutes. But crossword constructors and editors should NOT be thusly ignorant, EYE EM AITCH OH. They are responsible for researching the specific material they use, such as dates. Not that the egregious date-range errors in each of today's theme clues should have interfered with the solve, ELL OH ELL
@jae and any other crocephiles-Top two thirds of the 752 medium tough, bottom third going nowhere until I remembered the archaic wedding announcement term, from where I have no idea. That opened up the bottom and a few minutes later I was done. Fun challenge.
I know text speak involves as few key strokes as possible without completely losing comprehensibility so OMG for "Oh My God" fits this scheme but why the process would reverse and go back to more keystrokes is perplexing. It never occurred to me the "Oh My God" would now be OH EM GEE. Why? Makes no CENTS to me (Good one! @ Gill I.). I parsed that as O HEM (as in HEM and haw) GEE, as three, short exclamations in a row.
I'm an audiophile from way back. In terms of sound fidelity, of coming as close as possible to the real, live sound, the progression would be (reel to reel) TAPE, LP vinyl RECORD, CD and STREAMING. Hardcore audiophiles snub their noses at STREAMING.
I still have my "GENEVA Convention Member" card that I got during my hitch in the Navy. A few years back when we were waterboarding prisoners, a reporter ask Dick Cheney if that wasn't a violation of the GENEVA Convention. He brushed off the question by calling it a "quaint" document.
Our recycling center does single streaming. It single streams the recyclables. It is a single stream recycling center. There are multiple ways of saying it. Why pretend that everyone should use the same phrase when everyone knows they all mean exactly the same thing?
@Nancy (11:44) Thank you, I feel better. I do always try to tell myself it’s perfectly normal but still. I’m thankful to be able to remember my own name most days.
@Liveprof (12:22) Sounds about right. What really annoys me is when I think of something I want to remember and I go to go write it down and have already forgotten what it was. I guess I’ll have to do like the doctor suggested and carry the paper & pencil around with me. 😄
Stuck on OHEMG_ _. If it weren't for the 'E', I might be inclined to go with OH M' G'SH, with the S & H fitting the possible ACTS & POSH. Will let this one incubate. [Got it! OMG!]
Otherwise, not too far off my Mon. avg for a non-downs only.
Loved the melodic trip down memory lane!
Fun challenge, with a happy ending. :)
Thx @jae; on it! ___ Balton & Stewart's NYT acrostic at xwordinfo.com was easy-peasy fun! :) ___ Croce's 852 was relatively easy (1+ NYT Sat.). Natan Last's Mon. New Yorker on tap for tm. ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness, Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Not sure why I started out with a down, but I thought, OK, I'll try one more. This one turned out to be pretty easy, even downs only.
Also not sure what the "theme" was supposed to be, but the long acrosses seemed to go in without problem. DOD Marisa TOMEI runs down, thank you. Birdie.
I didn't know there was a theme today. I just said to myself: hmmm, interesting, some clues have parenthesized dates in them. So I themelessly filled in all the answers. I was clueless. Was there any other hint that it was a themed puzzle, besides the bracketed years?
This theme was easily grasped. And I guess the biggest theme hints were the grid-spanners and other 2 longest answers. Pretty good for Monday, IMO. Wordle par.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
69 comments:
Haven't done today's XWord, but what was up with the 49D clue in yesterday's puzzle? (49D: Kitties)
Why is it POTS? What am I missing?
OBAMA, MAYA, DANA, ALDA, TOMEI, TOM, BEN and SPIRO were headed to the OHEMGEE bar. They were HIGH on DSL and happy as LARKS....The door was always OPEN for them.
The OHEMGEE was ESTAB back in the GLORY days where SINGLES would ITCH to POSE on MTV as an ALOOF IDOL. People wanted to become COTES in the PERMANENT ARTE SCENE and this was a NOTCH above the rest.
OPAL was the bar singer. She'd be sitting on her ELM TREE stool and sing a LALA SOLO while GENEVA played a MARACA from ALASKA. MONA and LISA, MASKING in a VEGA POSE, would ring the BELL so that all the SINGLES could start STREAMING in and dance the AGRA ADO. It was quite a SCENE. People would CREE in AWE because they were PARTIAL TO all the LALA SOLO songs that OPAL sang....They loved her RECORD!
There was always the APE that would CRUISE in through the OHEMGEE DOOR. He was a SEEDLESS RAT named ASAP that had no CENTS...He had VICES that would make any TSAR make a MEAL out of the SINGLES STREAMING through the DOOR HIGH on DSL. ITLL make you ITCH to ELOPE to the APE of MAN.
OPAL AROSE to the ADO. She prepared a VEGA MEAL for ASAP and both shared a COPA of A ROSE. He was in AWE of her and would YIELD to her good CENTS. Plus, the MEAL was a NOTCH above the VEGA food he'd SNAG at the ANT Motel. They came to a FINAL CREE and the DOOR would be open for ASAP.
The GLORY days became a PERMANENT fixture at OHEMGEE. SINGLES continued to ITCH to POSE for MTV. GENEVA got better with her MARACA and ELOPED with ASAP to the ORAL sea. The bar was back to being a PERMANENT ARTS SCENE full of LARKS and OPAL could be seen on her ELM TREE stool singing her LALA SOLO.
Can it get any better?
Loved the GENEVA Conventions clue and answer. I can almost hear the social climbing wife of a rent-a-cop who works at the Convention Centre saying, "Oh, my husband is responsible for the enforcement of the Geneva Conventions." Unfortunately, there is too little honoring of them right now, and I fear a lot less in the next week or so.
Solving this downs only, I came to the Mission Impossible clue with only a T and a C to consider. Thought it strange that TosCanini would have played even a supporting role, much less starred. But it sure did fit.
Does a PARTIALTO fall between a Partisoprano and a Partitenor?
Thanks for a fun Monday, Stella Zawistowski.
Easyish except for the OHEMGEE/SINGLE STREAMING (which @Rex was a WOE for me also) cross which need staring to sort out and which killed any whoosh I had going.
Let’s see...I still have a lot of vinyl but the turntable is in a box in the attic next to the VHS video TAPE player. I hooked up my CD player to a Bluetooth transmitter so we still listen to CDs. I cut the cord a while back so everything we watch is via STREAMING.
Liked it, smooth and tight!
Croce Solvers - The top 2/3s of Croce’s Freestyle #852 was NYT Friday easy. The bottom third was a medium Croce for me. YYMV because I had to fix multiple incorrect down entries on the bottom which hopefully you all will avoid. Good luck!
Rex, also solving down clues only, ditto for finishing correctly and staring at SINGLE STREAMING thinking: whaaa? Never ever heard of that. I guess we do actually have it here; everything goes loose in the blue bin, end of story. But not the zingiest final themer. And actually HIGH YIELD CD is not great either.
I remember shopping for a stereo system in 1982, and telling the store owner I didn't want a turntable, just a cassette deck. He just stared at me slack-jawed. And now LPs are cool again, just like skateboards (although motorized) and paddle boards (although standup).
OH EM GEE looked like it was OH MY GOD even though that isn't spelled cutesily, and didn't fit with the crosses.
[Spelling Bee: Sun 0; several SB regulars in the mix.]
OH EM GEE, where’s the eight-track player? Its parenthetical years-of-service clue would have been (August - November 1978). No, it was popular much longer than that. I remember listening to Bread and Seals & Crofts on the eight-track. (I had an embarrassing addiction to syrupy schlock as a kid.) That clunk when it changed tracks! Sometimes they couldn’t make it work so the clunk happened between songs, and it clunked right in the middle of a song. “Summer breeze makes me feel fine CLUNK blowin’ through the jasmine of my miiiiiiind…” I just looked it up and learned that some bands still release music on eight-track just for kicks.
My downs-only solve didn’t go as easily as Rex’s. I couldn’t get PARTIAL TO or OH EM GEE so I had to look at a couple of crosses. After finishing I looked at the themers and had no idea what was up. I figured that SINGLE STREAMING must be a revealer but when I read the across clues, it was just another themer and I still had no idea what the theme was. Had to come here.
I agree with @egsforbreakfast on the delightful GENEVA clue. And who else was fooled by the “one of a pair of shakers” clue? I immediately thought “pepper” but I already had the other downs in that section and I was sure it wasn’t MODEp and OBAMe. I smiled when I saw MARACA. I guess no one ever plays a single maraca?
My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance)
1. It clearly divides people (10)
2. One with bright and dark sides (4)(6)
3. Trading off? (7)
4. Greyhound's competition (3)(4)
5. Shares one's bunk? (4)
PLEXIGLASS
EVIL GENIUS
EMBARGO
DOG RACE
LIES
Kitty as in the pot of chips or money on the table in a poker game
"Kitty" and "pot" are both slang for the stakes in a hand of poker -- the pile of chips in the middle of the table. I assume that applies to other games as well.
Kitty is another day of describing a pool of money for betting, same as a lot of money, usually in cards, but not always
The OH EM GEE flirts with trying too hard but actually seems to work, and thus far has been reasonably well-received. There’s plenty here for us old timers as well - with LOLA at the COPA perhaps leading the way. I wonder what percentage of the solvers today won’t know who SPIRO Agnew was.
When you are gathering money from a group it goes in a kitty or a pot— ML Astoria
Kitties, as in gambling kitty. Took me a second, too!
@anonymous 12:02: Think poker game.
Speaking of yesterday’s puzzle: "NITERS"? No, just…no. Niter is just an old-fashioned term for potassium nitrate, especially when mined in its natural state. You can no more justify expressing niter in the plural as you could justify "hematites", "calcites", "gypsums" or other plural of a chemical compound. I cry "fool’s golds".
My partner and I are both recalling the tyranny of the permanent record during our school years. We were hoping the dates meant that it ended in the 1980s.
This reminds me of a bit in The Simpsons where Bart and Mulhouse are reading Mad magazine and one of them says, “they’re really socking it to that Spiro Agnew guy again. He must work there or something.”
Jeez even that reference is a quarter century old.
@Gill's story was the best part of the experience. Made me want to dance the Agra Ado.
Easy, fun perky puzzle.
Such a simple and elegant theme, popular ways to listen to music, in order of appearance. Stella does this often in her early week puzzles – base a theme on a list of words that are hidden in phrases, words that comprise a category. She’s made one based on book genres (11/22/21), for instance, and another based on one-named-Broadway shows.
The thing is, while these are themes other constructors could easily have come up with, none had. Stella has a first-rate talent for spotting low-hanging theme fruit.
But she doesn’t stop there. Her grids are fresh. They sparkle. In her 19 years of NYT puzzles, she’s debuted 92 NYT answers, including today’s HIGH YIELD CD and SINGLE STREAMING. Her grids are smart – even today, the easiest puzzle of the week, I never felt talked-down-to in the cluing. And her grids have hardly a whiff of junky answers.
One lovely serendipity in today’s puzzle – 11 proper name schwa-ending answers, the highest I ever remember seeing in a 15 x 15: OBAMA, MAYA, ALASKA, VEGA, COPA, GENEVA, MONA LISA, DANA, LOLA, ALDA, AGRA!
Thank you, Stella, for another high-quality offering. You do Crosslandia proud, and I thoroughly enjoyed this outing!
Finally, my first downs-only success. Probably would have happened earlier but sometimes I accidentally hit Tab key and see an across clue by mistake. I was very disciplined today, even with a thirteen-pound cat draped over my wrists as I navigate the keyboard. Not sure I'll do it again, I miss out on half of the clue/answer pairs doing it that way.
Another vote against SINGLESTREAMING here.
Saw Agnew across the dining room at a hotel breakfast on the morning of my older brother's college graduation. Seemed like an ill omen but everything turned out fine.
Hey All !
RECORDS also made a comeback. They are much thicker than the original ones. I have three tubs of records, but none of the new ones.
Nice MonPuz. Nice to see Stella again. (Stella!) Nice fill. So, I guess I'm saying it's a nice puz. 😁
Nothing really hang-uppy, maybe the OH EM GEE, but crossers easy enough. Neat seeing TOM CRUISE (though I'm not sure why...)
Well, I guess that's it. Have a great week!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
My granddaughter Lianna (14) turned to me in the car this morning on the way to school and said: "What's Obama's last name?" "Good one!," I said, but she said it was an old meme from years ago. I explained to her that I live under a rock and anything not appearing in a crossword puzzle is foreign to me and that I barely even know what a meme is.
I found this to be an interesting theme and cleverly done. Being old enough to go all the way back to the beginning, it evoked a good bit of nostalgia for me too. I recall my pink teenage bedroom, listening to those early Beatles singles on my state-of-the-art RECORD player. Most likely my very first purchase would have been “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” or “She Loves You.” Funny, I can remember every word without the slightest bit of effort but I couldn’t tell you what I was actually planning to do when I walked in this room a few minutes ago. Nice puzzle today Stella, and thank you for the fond memories.
👍
This was a maximum-whoosh Monday, as the theme whooshed right over my head. Flew on through with only minor hangups, PARTIALTO and the phonetic OHEMGEE took some nanoseconds, but most of this was a read the clue and fill in the answer exercise. SINGLESTREAMING? In these parts we say "no sort", so that was news to me.
My vinyl LP's are all gone, sold off in the downsize. My audio tapes stopped working years ago. Still have some CD's and I don't STREAM music, and that's why I missed the theme. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Top-NOTCH construction, SZ. Sure Zipped right past me, but that's my own fault darn it. Thanks for a fair amount of fun, which could have been more.
On to the Croce and the Monday NYer. An embarrassment of riches.
Rex, you cannot be serious! OH EM GEE is one of the worst clues ever. Is ESS OH ESS fine with you? How about PEE EM? CEE DEE CEE? Come on. Stupid and juvenile.
OMG: OHEMGEE! Y didn't IC it?
Complete gibberish, as so much textspeak is, -- and anyway, I had OHEMGaE because I thought the Spanish for art was ARTa.
Moving right along to SINGLE STREAMING: I never heard of it.
Once I filled in the RECORD of PERMANENT RECORD to go with MASKING TAPE, I knew that there would be a CD coming. I just didn't know what kind of CD. But I never thought of STREAMING as the last themer. You can hold a RECORD, a TAPE and a CD in your hand, but you can't hold a STREAMING. So to me, it doesn't really fit with the others.
COopS before COTES. Everything else went in lickety-split.
Singer hired for a birthday celebration: PARTI ALTO
Not a hard puzzle, once the solver figured out OHEMGEE is the same as OMG (Oh my God).
I stupidly had "locales" instead of LOCATES for a long time, because I interpreted the clue to suggest a noun instead of a verb. My bad. The theme never occurred to me.
Agree the dates are a bit off. In 1983, my college roommate got a CD player for Christmas. Though they came out in late 1982 in the US, very few people had them, and this was the first one I ever saw. The players were expensive, and so were the discs. We were all amazed - no hiss, no pops, no scratches.
I read that cassette players were still being installed in cars for the US market as late as 2010. Surprised me, as I abandoned cassette tapes in the 80s.
The high point of the morning for me too is @GILL's delightful STREAMING of consciousness.
I went with "nitros"
Coops too, better answer. Cotes more of a dove thing imo.
Really? “Until I looked at the clue”? Can’t you please look at the clues before you have a half-page of criticism made up for your column?
‘Single streaming’ is a perfectly acceptable way of referred to a recycling method where I’m from. Not in your wheelhouse? Too bad! Please accept that your wheelhouse is not the universal wheelhouse!! People from all over the country read your blog. Not only people with your exact history and experience.
Easy puzzle but I had to look at the whole grid when I finished it to see OHEMGEE. Cute, Stella!
@Whatsername (8:53)--
"She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah/she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" -- not all that hard to remember, is it? :)
I'm just teasing you of course, @Whatsername.
What you describe is not only not unusual -- it's generally the norm. Things we learned when we were young are more likely to be remembered than things we learned when we were old. I can remember -- and sing -- virtually every single song including every single lyric from every single Rodgers and Hammerstein show ever written. (Well, maybe not Allegro or Sweet Thursday.) Every lyric from West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Camelot, Brigadoon, and Annie Get Your Gun. And, like you, I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night or where I stored the wrapping paper. Do I walk into rooms not knowing why I'm there? All the time.
Stella usually beats me to a pulp, then proceeds to humiliate me. I miss the old Stella.
I'm sure this has been covered in past Monday posts, but could someone suggest a resource that provides a down-only solving option for a NYT puzzle? Surely there is a better way than printing it out and covering up half the clues.
I don't get the dateline parameters either. Records were invented in 1950? You can tell the formats progress from oldest to most modern; the clues didn't need an arbitrary dating system.
I linked this before, maybe two Halloweens ago, but I can't find it – anyway:
Saxophonist Mike Sharpe, née Michael Shapiro, wrote and recorded the original instrumental version of Spooky, which reached #57 on Billboard in January 1967. A year later, lyrics were added for the version by the Classics IV, which became a #3 national hit.
CD sales overtook cassette tape sales in 1991. The clue is not wrong Rex. https://kodakdigitizing.com/blogs/news/when-did-cds-take-a-front-seat-to-the-cassette-tape#:~:text=So%20much%20so%2C%20that%20by,three%20years%20later%20in%201991.
I do agree that SINGLE STREAMING is a bad answer though.
@Nancy and @whatsername:
This couple in their 90s goes to the doctor and he says they're in good shape for their age and asks if they have any complaints. They tell him memory loss is a problem -- they walk into a room and forget why they went in -- it's depressing. The doc suggests they keep a little memo pad on them and jot down why they are going before they go. If they forget, they can read their note.
Back home, the wife says, "Dear, can you get me some ice cream? -- but before you go, write it down, like the doctor suggested." The husband says, "I can remember ice cream. I'm not that bad." She says "But I'd like a little syrup on it, why ask for trouble? --write it down." He says, "I can remember ice cream and syrup." She says, "But also a little whipped cream -- please, darling, write it down."
He says -- "I can remember ice cream, syrup, and whipped cream, darnit!" and storms out of the room.
He comes back ten minutes later and hands her a plate of scrambled eggs. She looks at it and says "So, where's my toast?"
Hit my usual downs-only roadblock at about 80% done then gave in and looked at some across clues. And whoosh. Sigh
@Gill — love it, brilliant, brava!
A perfectly respectable Monday offering and I think we can all agree the dates provided seemed off. After doing a light Google dive I’ve decided to go with this:
I’m going with “hey day” for the media. Yes, records were available a long time before the 50s but the advent of vinyl records at 33 and 45rpm made them WAY more affordable to young people. This coupled with the opening of Sam Goody and Tower Records and their smaller prototypes across the country made record sales explode across the US. Technology affected the hey days for tapes and cds. There. I’ve put it out there.
Anon@11:04 "‘Single streaming’ is a perfectly acceptable way of referred to a recycling method where I’m from."
I dunno where you're from, but the thing is, that doesn't even make sense. There is a stream (noun) of waste material. Nobody streams their recycling. The closest M-W definition is "to emit freely or in a stream." It's not just a wheelhouse thing, the dictionaries seem to agree.
@Gil I. Great job! 😂
Being unaware of recycling methods at this important time when we're overloaded with trash is ignorance. That's OK, as most of us are ignorant about some areas of knowledge, or we'd all complete each day of crosswords in minutes.
But crossword constructors and editors should NOT be thusly ignorant, EYE EM AITCH OH. They are responsible for researching the specific material they use, such as dates. Not that the egregious date-range errors in each of today's theme clues should have interfered with the solve, ELL OH ELL
@jae and any other crocephiles-Top two thirds of the 752 medium tough, bottom third going nowhere until I remembered the archaic wedding announcement term, from where I have no idea. That opened up the bottom and a few minutes later I was done. Fun challenge.
I know text speak involves as few key strokes as possible without completely losing comprehensibility so OMG for "Oh My God" fits this scheme but why the process would reverse and go back to more keystrokes is perplexing. It never occurred to me the "Oh My God" would now be OH EM GEE. Why? Makes no CENTS to me (Good one! @ Gill I.). I parsed that as O HEM (as in HEM and haw) GEE, as three, short exclamations in a row.
I'm an audiophile from way back. In terms of sound fidelity, of coming as close as possible to the real, live sound, the progression would be (reel to reel) TAPE, LP vinyl RECORD, CD and STREAMING. Hardcore audiophiles snub their noses at STREAMING.
I still have my "GENEVA Convention Member" card that I got during my hitch in the Navy. A few years back when we were waterboarding prisoners, a reporter ask Dick Cheney if that wasn't a violation of the GENEVA Convention. He brushed off the question by calling it a "quaint" document.
I first put in SNAG for 52D ‘wool sweater annoyance’ — only to see it actually WAS the answer to 55D. Weird.
Our recycling center does single streaming. It single streams the recyclables. It is a single stream recycling center. There are multiple ways of saying it. Why pretend that everyone should use the same phrase when everyone knows they all mean exactly the same thing?
@Anon 4:34 – there's a name for when that happens, like "kealoa". I forget what it is but someone here will know. Lewis? JC66?
I believe the term is “malapop”…
webwinger
@Joe D
Yeah, I forget, too. I do remember that ACME coined it.
@pabloinnh - My misremembering of that term contributed to my difficulties in the bottom third.
@Anon 4:34 & Joe D - the word malapop maybe what you’re thinking of? Coined by ACME?
@webwinger for the win!!!
@Nancy (11:44) Thank you, I feel better. I do always try to tell myself it’s perfectly normal but still. I’m thankful to be able to remember my own name most days.
@Liveprof (12:22) Sounds about right. What really annoys me is when I think of something I want to remember and I go to go write it down and have already forgotten what it was. I guess I’ll have to do like the doctor suggested and carry the paper & pencil around with me. 😄
@joe dipinto -- I do believe that's called a malapop, and JC66 was right in attributing it to Andrea Carla Michaels.
Testing 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness, Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
@webwinger, @jae, @Lewis, @JC66 – Yes, malapop! I knew it was a slight alteration of a real word, but couldn't think of what it was. Thanks!
Agree.
Hated OH EM GEE more than anything I have seen in very long time.
Dumbfounded that Rex was okay with it.
Thx, Stella, for the musical progression! 🎶
Easy-med.
Stuck on OHEMG_ _. If it weren't for the 'E', I might be inclined to go with OH M' G'SH, with the S & H fitting the possible ACTS & POSH. Will let this one incubate. [Got it! OMG!]
Otherwise, not too far off my Mon. avg for a non-downs only.
Loved the melodic trip down memory lane!
Fun challenge, with a happy ending. :)
Thx @jae; on it!
___
Balton & Stewart's NYT acrostic at xwordinfo.com was easy-peasy fun! :)
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Croce's 852 was relatively easy (1+ NYT Sat.). Natan Last's Mon. New Yorker on tap for tm.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness, Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
As one who still uses all four media, I thought the dates seemed very off.
“ I can almost hear the social climbing wife of a rent-a-cop ” yeesh. So much sneering in so few words.
Okay fine. It’s Monday.
LOL, 12, including "Stella"!
Not sure why I started out with a down, but I thought, OK, I'll try one more. This one turned out to be pretty easy, even downs only.
Also not sure what the "theme" was supposed to be, but the long acrosses seemed to go in without problem. DOD Marisa TOMEI runs down, thank you. Birdie.
Wordle birdie.
YIELD ASAP
MONA and LISA were PARTIALTO hope,
SOLO and SINGLE and able TO COPE,
AWED with no MAN,
their FINAL plan:
scratch that PERMANENT ITCH TO ELOPE.
--- DANA BELL
Oh. THAT'S the theme. w o w (doubleyou oh doubleyou)
that's all
Lady Di
I didn't know there was a theme today. I just said to myself: hmmm, interesting, some clues have parenthesized dates in them. So I themelessly filled in all the answers. I was clueless. Was there any other hint that it was a themed puzzle, besides the bracketed years?
This theme was easily grasped. And I guess the biggest theme hints were the grid-spanners and other 2 longest answers. Pretty good for Monday, IMO.
Wordle par.
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