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Series of steps in Spain / SAT 11-25-2023 / Something often containing a single parenthesis / Qatar left it in 2019 / Ending with hot or honey / Legal checks / Illinois city near St. Louis / To us, in Latin
Saturday, November 25, 2023
Constructor: Jeff Stillman
Relative difficulty: Hard
THEME: None
Word of the Day: CHER (54D: Singer whose likeness was the highest-selling doll of 1976, surpassing Barbie) —
Cher (/ʃɛər/; born Cherilyn Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Often referred to by the media as the "Goddess of Pop", she has been described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. Known for her distinctive contralto singing voice and for having worked in numerous areas of entertainment, as well as adopting a variety of styles and appearances, Cher rose to fame in 1965 as one half of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher before launching a successful, six-decade-long solo career.
• • •
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| The license plate does say TREASURE STATE |
I've always thought that blogging about a puzzle you disliked is a lot harder than blogging about a puzzle you loved. This is going to be a difficult post to write because this puzzle was absolutely not for me in any way! I think the best format here is to just have some bullet points going over some of the aspects here that didn't work for me:
- -ENNE is bad fill to me in three (!) ways. It's a suffix, which is gluey, and way less satisfying to fill in than an actual word. But it's also very rare ... what words even use the -ENNE suffix? Comedienne??? Which is a segue into reason number three ... it's weird to have gendered suffixes like this for things that do not have to be gendered! A comedian who is a woman is just ... a comedian! Really I could not be less into this piece of fill.
- EEEE is also really, really, really not great. It feels so goopy, just a string of four Es in the grid like that, somehow worse than an abbreviation or suffix or prefix in my brain. But also, most importantly, is it even a thing, really? I've bought shoes many times in my life and have never seen EEEE out in the wild. EEE (also bad, don't get me wrong!) has been a bit more of a crossword staple ... but a fourth E? No, no, no.
- WOOERS feels like a really awkward -ER form to me.
- DNAS plural is pretty tortured. "DNA samples" sure. But DNAS? I just don't really buy it as a thing.
- This one is probably on me, but I'd never seen HISSY stand alone like that. "Hissy fit" feels very in-the-language to me, but HISSY felt a bit off and, so, not as satisfying (though it has strong dictionary support, so as I said, probably on me).
- The ALTON / MALONE crossing could have plausibly been any vowel to me. ALTON is a city of 25,000 in Illinois ... okay. I know Cheers is a well-known show, but I've never watched it.
- The entire NOBIS / ASTRA / ABEL / SCOTTS / HAUER situation was just a laugh-out-loud Natick-fest to me. Never heard of any of these the way they were clued! ASTRA was inferable, but tough when so many crossings were unknown ... it's pretty rare that I have to look things up but there was just absolutely no way this section (particularly the NOBIS crossings with ABEL and SCOTTS) was going to come together.
- MIS and RES are both super gluey use-only-if-very-desperate pieces of fill, and the clue echo didn't really rescue it as much as make it more visible.
- KOTO was new to me, and I couldn't quite remember BLUTO, so that crossing was also a complete guess. I think KOTO is totally fine fill ... good even! It's fun to learn a new instrument from a puzzle! But it's important to make sure all the crosses are rock-solid.
- This is really the least of our worries here, but ISM and GEO are two more suffix/prefix type entries. (Though I loved the angle on GEO! Have you guys seen the TikTok-famous guy who always knows exactly where he is after seeing a blurry, pixelated, upside-down photo for 0.1 seconds? He's iconic!)
- I get that it's Saturday, and again I love learning things from puzzles, but LAI felt like gluey fill that I didn't find particularly interesting.
- I see it has pretty good dictionary/Google support, but E-CRIMEs do not feel like a thing to me. Some e- things are things! Like e-bike, that's a thing! e-commerce, that's a thing! e-file, becoming less and less of a thing, I think (who *doesn't* e-file their taxes these days? do we really need to specify anymore?) but still, yes, a thing. But some e- things are not things. e-money: not a thing! E-CRIME (IMO): not a thing, etc.
- BAD ONE doesn't really stand alone as a crossword answer. Would [any adjective] ONE work as fill? It just came across as a bit made up.
- X-ray SPEX only really Googles as an English rock band. There is a Wikipedia page for "X-ray Specs" ... but SPEX doesn't really feel super in-the-language to me. (I might be wrong ... does anyone actually use "spex" when referring to glasses? Maybe!)
- ICBMS: don't love nuclear weaponry in my puzzle, but also this acronym is pretty much impossible to infer to someone who might (understandably, I'd say) not have brushed up on their nuclear weapon acronyms recently.
- UGHS is a really weird plural. It doesn't really feel natural to say or write "ughs." Something like "ahas" is way better in my book, because "aha" can be used colloquially as a noun ... something like "what a satisfying aha at the end of that puzzle!" ... but not really with UGHS.
- MILLION MOM MARCH is a wonderful answer, but I think it would have been a stronger marquee closer to when it actually happened, 23 years ago. I really wanted MARCH FOR OUR LIVES here, which feels a lot more recent and relevant, and I was sad when that didn't quite fit!
- CIS labeled as a "modern" descriptor felt a bit weird ... I understand that "cis man" and "cis woman" were a lot less widespread terms in the past but cis men and cis women have been a thing for all of recorded history! Not a super huge deal, but the modifier didn't really work for me.
- And, finally, RECTI: yet another 5-letter (!) uncommon prefix.
Soooooo, with all that out of the way ... there were some very nice longer entries! IMAGE AWARDS, YES I SUPPOSE, THE PLOT THICKENS are all fantastic! But it just really was not worth it for me today.
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| Neptune is, indeed, an ORB |
Oh, and there were two outstanding clues in this puzzle: SIMON (22D: Says who?) and CHER (54D: Singer whose likeness was the highest-selling doll of 1976, surpassing Barbie). Good wordplay! A fun fact! That's what I come to crosswords for.
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| This is a KOTO |
I'm afraid I don't really have much else nice to say about this one, so I'll stop here. I hope you were able to ENJOY this one a lot more than I did!
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115 comments:
Easy-medium. It’s helps when you can put in 1d, 1a and 14a without reading any other clues. TNN before TBS was the only major speed bump. The long downs were excellent but the fill was a tad rough in places…EEEE, WOOER….or pretty much a good chunk of @Rafa’s bullet points…. That said, liked it, probably because I knew a lot of stuff that @Rafa had problems with.
Slightly on the easy side of medium - but mostly forgettable. As mentioned, EEEE, ENNE.
Staring at the filled grid as my eyes start to glaze over (oh, "Hotel California" just started on the radio), I'm enjoying the misread answers. Flamin' co-dance. Experiments. The plot, chickens.
Wanted Dupo for the city near St. Louis, but a letter short.
Rafa pretty well summed it up. Thanks!
Agree completely! Although this didn’t take horribly long, 40 minutes is pretty long. The fill was so obscure! With even more obscure clues! Not enjoyable for me. Even SCRAMBLE THE JETS felt forced from the clue.
I’ve heard of the Fields Medal but not the IMAGE AWARD for math.
I put GODS for ORBS and got Naticked on NOBIS, ABEL, and ASTRA. There are so many better clues for ABEL when you are crossing Latin words with proper names.
CAUGHT is not really “Saw, informally.” It’s not informal at all. It’s more like “Spied in the act.”
DNAS and EEEE, Ugh!
BAD ONE should have been clued “Chiffons song.” Or as “A mean Grinch”
And “around two o’clock” is “ENE”? Really? Com’on!
Well, it’s over.
Yeah this was a very disappointing puzzle, couldn't agree more with the write-up - "plan on" is clumsy, "ecrimes" is completely made-up, and most of all: if you get "EEEE" in your puzzle then surely you need to rip it up and start again. Hope this guy's second can be better!!!
Riddles inspired by 11D:
What do jets and eggs have in common?
A. They can both be scrambled.
B. They are both NFL teams except for eggs.
Or, What can be scrambled, but never with onions?
Jets.
Medium-Challenging for me, with a lot of the same issues and hang-ups as @Rafa
@Voyajer: I think the clue was referring to CAUGHT in the sense of "We CAUGHT both halves of Barbieheimer"
Overwrites:
Wanted spirit AWARDS at 1A but it didn't fit (different organization anyway)
EttE before ENNE at 5D
My 11D was Slap somETHing on before it was SCRAMBLE THE JETS (long before)
25A was @Voyajer godS before it was ORBS, giving me soS at 26D
RECTo before RECTI at 49D, SPEc before SPEX at 51D and ISt before ISM at 58D made EXIT PERMITS hard to see
WOES:
It was easy enough to figure out what an E-CRIME (13D) is, but I've never heard the term used.
HISSY without the fit at 15D
ALTON Illinois at 16A
The ABEL awards at 31A
Aerospace company ASTRA at 31D
The Japanese zither KOTO at 43A
The French poem LAI at 57D
Absolute trash. Have to echo everything you said, the natick-fest around astra/scotts/abel/nobis ended up killing my streak. Very frustrating staring at the Astra clue for a while, as it felt like it should be something i would know, and would have allowed me to infer the rest of that knot… only to find it’s a failing launch company that’s fired a total of 2 weather sats for NASA! There’s probably actual NASA employees that wouldn’t get that clue.
Pretty dull overall but I liked SCRAMBLETHEJETS. I was at a Strategic Air Command base in the sixties when they had a scramble drill. An alarm sounded and there was a mad rush to the airfield. I think the goal was to get all the designated jets off the ground in three minutes or so.
I had gEeISUPPOSE for a while, which slowed me down in a Naticky portion of the grid.
Koto is more a zither than a root.
A real slog, especially in Natick Central
I stared and stared until suddenly it all whooshed together! Which is what I look for in a Saturday. Agree that some of the fill was poor (EEEE, ENNE) but Rutger Hauer and koto are fair references and the Naticks (ALTON/MALONE) could be inferred. In the end, finished in the 20-25 minute range: smack dab my average, so I suppose it did the trick.
A daunting - wide open grid with stacks and spanners. I agree with some of Rafa’s nits - but most of this was stuff I knew. ENNE, EEEE, and WOOERS especially should have been edited out. Never heard of ECRIMES or the MILLION MOM MARCH. Agree that most of the cluing tried too hard or is just plain obtuse.
Catholic school Latin and “Dona NOBIS Pacem” gave me an easy one there. MALONE and the Staples went right in. Liked that bottom three stack - TREASURE STATE and THE PLOT THICKENS are top notch. Stand-alone HISSY is new to me also.
Not a bad Saturday solve - but should have been cleaner. I had more trouble with the Stumper this morning.
The Staples and Levon
Not for me either - just way too much that was completely indiscernible without enough crosses to parse anything together that even looked reasonable. It was either go toe-to-toe with this one and get bludgeoned, or look things up liberally (which I did, as I didn’t want to end my holiday getting battered and bruised). On a positive note, I enjoyed the clue for FLAMENCO DANCE !
"Did you see Cats?" "Yes, we CAUGHT it last week." is, I guess, the sense of "Saw, informally."
MALONE from Cheers was harder, in a way, if you did watch it, because CLAVIN also fits.
My 29 year old daughter is visiting and is solving NYT crosswords in amazingly short times...in front of me. She did this week's Tuesday in 4 minutes (I asked, last time I will ask). It's especially galling because she is too young to know a lot of the references. I would like to feel like my thinking is still as sharp as ever but today's crossword did not help with that. Of course I shouldn't be competing with my own child. Especially since she will win in most arenas.
Hard not to take pleasure in a puzzle containing LIKE, ENJOY, and SMILEY!
This one, for me, however, started brutally – a near-blank slate after the first run-through due to no-knows and tough vague clues. It felt like the trudge of going up that big slow climb on a towering rollercoaster hill. But then, right at the top of that climb, during that brief moment of zen, a critical answer popped.
That initiated a begat-fest, where the crosses from that one word opened a couple more, which opened more – and what followed was a remarkable “was blind, but now I see” scramble, where what previously mystified me was suddenly obvious – an exhilarating splat-fill, that rollercoaster’s thrilling hurtle down to the end, punctuated by a “What just happened?” mixed with the “Whee!” of doing a FLAMENCO DANCE.
Crosswords as adventure.
Meanwhile, EXIT PERMITS makes for a suitable last answer, ACME on top is apt as well, I love the feel of those photo album corners, eight NYT debut answers added spark, [Says who?] for SIMON was precious, and the easiest-to-spot palindrome ever – EEEE.
Jeff, you indicated in the puzzle that you would, and indeed you did – you took me there – to crossword nirvana. Thank you for a most splendid outing!
If it’s not the Fields Medal, then I’m out of guesses on math awards. H/t to Good Will Hunting for all of my math medal knowledge.
Huh, I felt certain the X-RAY SPEX spelling ust have been used in the classic novelty ad that appeared in so many comic books, but on investigating samples on the internet, I see that was not the case. I guess it was popularized by the classic British punk rock band.
Pretty tough overall and I agree with Rafa on everything. Naticked on Abel and nobis, but I got the b on my second guess.
I know hardly any French or Latin, which I accept is a weakness, but can I ask that a single puzzle not TWO instances of each?
Anders, you are correct! X-RAY SPEX was indeed an ad in old comic books.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7d/dc/8b/7ddc8bf94af5a7d9d966943f4559ba6b--x-rays--s.jpg
Got everything except the BLUTO/TOON cross. I thought "Olive lover" should be "Popeye," but it didn't fit.
This is one of the rare times I didn't find it quite as difficult as the consensus, but agree with Rafa and most of the commenters with their complaints.
I live in St. Louis and as I was filling in ALTON, my thought was: there's no way that can be the right answer. Who outside of here has ever heard of ALTON? (I'm also not fully sure what constitutes "near", but it's a good half-hour to forty-five minutes drive from St. Louis City. The best answer for this clue would be simply East St. Louis. Or perhaps Sauget. You know what Missouri city ALTON is near? West ALTON.)
I didn't have to look anything up, which is shocking for a grid this difficult, and then my last square...
A_EL & NO_IS
Didn't even bother guessing every letter. Tried a T. Was wrong. Solved for letter to be done with it.
Oops, that one had SPECS. It was spelled SPEX at times also. See here:
https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/img/museum/toys/x-ray-spex-2.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c8/8c/b9/c88cb9165f8e7b43232d396daf84a4eb.jpg
I think everyone knows that people who don’t suffer from gender dysphoria have been around for all recorded history but the term cisgender was coined in 1994. The clue for CIS : “modern description for man or woman “ is perfectly accurate.
Considerably faster than normal Saturday for me. I have an interest in musical instruments of the world, so KOTO was a gimme. And I'd think anyone who was a child (or older) in the sixties, like me, would find ICBMS to be a gimme. Agree about some of the fill, especially DNAS, but I did enjoy most of the long answers. Really wanted "quasi" instead of RECTI but wasn't foolish enough to actually enter it. "Gyro" before SARI, had to wonder if HoSSY was a thing. Also suspicious about HISSY as a noun, but it's probably a thing so I won't throw a HISSY about it.
What the actual heck was that??!!?!
I mentioned I’ve been doing puzzles from 1994. I swear this one was submitted back then and has been in the queue for almost thirty years. [Clearly, the clue for OPEC must have been changed.]
ICBMS and BLUTO and Blade Runner and FRIEDA from Peanuts and SMILEY … all things no one has thought about for a few decades.
The 1994 vibe extended right down to the final Natick-y cross of ABEL with NOBIS – that type of cross is common in older puzzles.
Bluto was more of an "Olive stalker" than an "Olive lover".
I found this much easier than Friday but for me both were good, tough, interesting puzzles.
Felt pretty much the same as Rafa! In that there were too many crossings of things that could not just be parsed. The whole ABEL BLUTO, NOBIS area was not cool and just held me up forever. I watched Popeye like 40 years ago? Anyhoo, good write up, thanks again Rafa. Although being older than you are, Million Mom March definitely came right into my head! Thank goodness or I have no idea what would have happened here, LOL.
You stopped writing too late.
I'm going to add to the pile - Rafa said it as did Conrad, etc. A slog for me, particularly with enne, able, lai. I rely on the downs for these long acrosses, but not a lot of help this time. DNAs was the worst.
Hey All !
One-letter silly DNF. Had an E for the second A of ASTRA. Dang! Forehead slapped myself for that one.
Found puz sticky in spots, but didn't panic, and what seemed like a methodical solve that took me a bit of time in each section, came in at 25 minutes. Quick time, here. I like how a puz gives some resistance without being impossible to solve. Very ENJOYable.
cHeer-SHOUT, nukeS-ICBMS, ______THInKing- ______THICKENS, went between ISt and ISM, went between wAM-bAM-RAM.
@pablo
Two streets today, MAPLE and ROO ST. Har. 😁
Pretty neat grid layout. Long tops and bottoms bisected by 15's. Liked it. SHOUT crossing OUT. SHOUT OUT! Stair step of OUTs down there, SHOUT, OUT, (YOUTH).
Happy Saturday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
46 Across: Spanish is to 'son'.......english is to ARE??? Help an older dummy out with an explanation please.
Easy-medium for me as for a few others. I enjoyed it, EEEEs, REs, MIs, and ENNE’s notwithstanding! (I also believe that that was the second WOOER(S) in recent puzzles, which I’m sure elicited many UGHS! Hopefully, today is the last we’ll see of it.)
I knew about Alton, IL because of the big fire there years ago that destroyed the military service records of hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans, mine included, unfortunately.
I feel better now that I bombed on the Astra, Haugh,Abel, etc section as well. I had the rest of the puzzle, but sometimes you know that is never going to come together.
I won't give up on a phrase or actual words. This was a complete natick.
39A “Network descended from the first national superstation”—anyone else think this should have been TNT or TCM? TBS was the first national superstation, so how can it be descended from itself?
Agree with everything Rafa said about the awful fill in this one, though I did enjoy seeing the Staple Singers’ I’LL TAKE YOU THERE early on in the puz. Rafa’s Friday puzzle was a perfect example of a puzzle with no bad fill.
Growing up in the 70s, I never heard the term CIS man or CIS woman, though they may have been used then. I first learned what the prefixes trans and CIS meant through Roman history, from the way the Romans referred to Cisalpine (this side of the Alps) and Transalpine (the other side) Gaul. Of course there are a slew of bigots today who claim the term CIS is some kind of slur, which would be funny if they weren’t so heavily armed and dangerous.
Rafa you are spot on with your critique.
The best thing about this puzzle was that it put the wonderful “I’ll Take You There” into my head. Otherwise, super-easy time-wise, but agree with almost everything Rafa said. I knew SCOTTS and liked the subtle misdirection on that clue (from eco to lawn care, and I’m guessing its products are anything but green in the eco sense). But the ABEL / NOBIS cross was absurd. I did guess correctly because of “pro nobis” but as someone else said, there are many better ways to clue ABEL than a prize very few will have ever heard of. My older brother actually apologized to me on Thanksgiving for being such a bad brother when we were kids. He almost killed me so many times I felt like ABEL. Good to hear him admit it.
I guess I concur with Rafa that “says who?” Is a good clue for SIMON, but the other thing I didn’t like about this was the almost total lack of wordplay in the cluing (SCOTTS also excepted). Kinda hope Jeff doesn’t read the blog because it looks like we are all pretty much in agreement. It was a BAD ONE.
Well this one took me almost an hour, but I was watching Man City/Liverpool at the same time which probably explains it.
Had many of the same nits as Rafa, but not so many of the same unknowns. Anyone with a lawn has probably heard of SCOTTS, ASTRA is inferable, ABEL is not, but I'm with @Son Volt on Dona NOBIS Pacem, which is a famous round that we should all be singing right now. Grant us peace indeed.
I guess SMILEY and HISSY are both nouns now. OK. Those of you too young to remember ICBM's should count your blessings, as that took me right back to the "duck and cover drills" of school days. Hello again to old friend KOTO, who has been MIA for a very long time.
Slight slow down at the ORB/GOD thing and a much longer one at ILLMEETYOUTHERE, a major oops. And I was so proud of myself for remembering it too. At least Sam MALONE was right, but don't ask me to come up with any other last name from Cheers.
I thought the good stuff outweighed the glue problems in this one, JS. Just Sayin'. Thanks for all the fun.
Hard for me, but I fought my way through in 27 minutes (15 is my usual Sat. time). Mixed results on enjoyably tricky cluing vs Naticks, worst of the later being ALTON MALONE. Stuck on PRIDE AWARDS for a while, knowing it was wrong but couldn't get it out of the way until I'd cleared the rest of the puzzle and came back up to the NE and realized the 1D song was ILLTAKEYOUTHERE, giving me the "I" and that broke my mental block.
Things that bugged me:
FLAMENCODANCE is one of those redundancies no one actually says.
E-anything (13D, ECRIME)
20D NOBIS as " To us, in Latin." I mean, technically yeah, dative case, but coudntcha be just a little nicer and clue it " for us," which is gonna be at least a teeny bit more familiar to those of us whose Latin is buried in the dim past (" ore pro nobis ")
X-ray SPEX is not only wrongly clued (novelty purchase) but thereby misses a terrific reference the inimitable Poly Styrene and her band.
Things I liked:
SCRAMBLETHEJETS (as an expression, probably better as SCRAMBLE [YOUR] JETS, though it wouldn't fit. Still...
ABEL prize. Trivia I didn't know, also PPP, but I appreciate it when one of those ends up revealing something significant and interesting not just a soap opera actor or some other bit of "Meh."
I got physically ill and nearly cancelled my NYT subscription at MILLIONMOMMARCH. I just do not need Moms in my puzzle ENNE-more now that they have lent their title to "Mom's for Liberty". In case you've been vacationing in a cave, Google Moms for Liberty to see how much cruelty and hatred can be packed into the word "Liberty." Constructors, please drop MOMS from your wordlists.
I'm always amazed that people see interesting things in Rorschach Test ink blots. When I look, ICBMS. Butt then again, maybe that says a lot about me. SARI.
If CIS is modern, could we say it applies to ADMEN? And, if so, what were BC men?
Maybe DNAS would have been better clued as "What covers a southern hemisphere beach?"
I'm about halfway between @Rafa and great on this one. But I certainly wouldn't call it a BADONE. Thanks, Jeff Stillman.
Generally agree that there was way too much gunk here. ASTRA could easily have been ASTRO - that was my only real Natick, where the A/O forms another valid word that has a foreign-language answer.
I was 110% in agreement with the entire review. The only difference was on ICBMs . . . because I grew up during the Cold War. I found this a slog. And the Abel Prize?! Going to have to look that one up!
I believe the correct spelling of the toon is Olyve, not Olive
I had the same reaction. I'm an aerospace engineer and never heard of these guys. According to Wikipedia, they have 100 employees and only 9 launches, 7 of which were failures.
Also with ABEL. I doubt anyone not currently holding a PhD in math is familiar. It annoys me when people complain on here about basic STEM concepts being "unfair" clues/answers. But these 2 entries are beyond niche. A niche within a niche
Had D_A_ and thought “there’s no way this can be DNAs.” Then I got the N from FLAMENCO DANCE and could not believe it. Possibly the worst crossword answer I’ve ever seen, and many of the other contenders were also in this puzzle.
I liked it. Good Saturday workout.
Thanks, Rafa. I agree with your critique, although this turned out to be a relatively easy Saturday for me. In order to get the happy music, however, I did have to look up the cast of "Blade Runner" to get HAUER in the "laugh-out-loud Natick section."
Unpleasant. With so many better puzzles available, voluntary dnf.
Thought Bluto had two “t”’s
@I. R. Dumb – "son" is the present-tense third person plural of the verb "ser", which means "to be" in Spanish. "they are" / "ellos (or ellas) son"
I was pretty much natiked in the north at first, I had -STER for the female suffix similar to -TRIX, which to me fit the clue and history a lot better than ENNE. A Bake-ster (became Baxter) is a female baker, a Webster is a female weaver, a spinster is just that or archaic legal usage, an unmarried woman (yes as late as 1987 in IL when I went to buy a house I had to sign as a SPINSTER!) etc. If the female usage is historical then it’s nothing to complain about.
For I. R. Dumb: The Spanish word “son” is the 3rd-person plural of “ser” ‘to be’. The English equivalent is “are”, as in
THE NATICKS ARE IN BLOOM.
My nomination for the worst POC (plural of convenience) of all time? While it does have some stiff competition, DNAS is definitely the clear winner.
EEEE. Forget thinking about plastic surgery on your face or your boobs. Honey, you need foot-reduction surgery, ASAP. Don't wait.
Is there such a thing as a stand-alone "SMILEY"? Doesn't it need FACE to complete it?
This was very hard for me and not much fun. It asked me to dredge up small bits of factual info I either didn't have or didn't remember and even though not all of the trivia was pop culture -- I didn't know the mathematical Award any more than I knew the 1972 hit song -- it's nevertheless not the kind of puzzle I most enjoy.
And btw, it would never occur to me to SCRAMBLE THE JETS when I'm getting ready in a hurry, but I have often heard and do occasionally use the phrase THE PLOT THICKENS. That was by far my favorite clue/answer in the puzzle.
A hell of a lot more people would be familiar with ALTON Brown than some “City” (google says population 25k lol) in Illinois, can’t imagine why the cluer preferred random geographic obscurity over someone that’s a public enough figure to merit a crossword entry
Speaking of SPEX:
My nephew in San Diego owns a company that makes glasses frames out of old vinyl records (and glasses cases for the glasses out of old record album jackets). Check it out: https://www.spexwax.com/
Thx, Jeff; you definitely had me in a SCRAMBLE today! 😊
Hi Rafa; welcome back! 😊
Tough!
Last fills were guesses at A(B)EL and ASTR(A); my Spanish studies haven't covered 'son' yet, but ARE seemed more likely than oRE.
Also, had major problems in the SE.
In spite of all the challenges, a most satisfying solve.
Enjoyed the battle! :)
___
On to Lester Ruff's Sat. Stumper 🤞, with Miriam Estrin and John Ewbank's NYT cryptic on tap for tm.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
@Anonymous (10:22) You’re thinking of Olive’s surname - Oyl.
The Too Easy Week is over, as of yesterday.
Beginning at the bottom, I confidently entered BIG SKY COUNTRY for Montana. Then I quickly saw that ETRE wouldn't cross. Practically nothing but UGHS as I crept North from there.
But not much to actually gripe about other than my denseness. But SMILEY without FACE? No way! "le Carré character" would have been a good clue. And I'd be happy never to see any more E-words. Otherwise, a very well-constructed puzzle that hit me on the wrong day.
The 3-stacks and long downs were lovely, but the center needed to be torn out by the roots.
Puzzles at the end of the week I allow myself to google proper nouns that I have no clue what they are. When I googled Peanuts Characters I found that Frieda is the 17th listed one, between "Kite Eating Tree" (???) and "555 95472" (???). An absurd clue and answer. DNAs, while yes being a horrendous answer, is at least inferable.
Agree with @Mr. Benson. ASTRo/oRE was my only error. I thought the long stacks top & bottom provided solid footholds and my advanced age (!) meant the Maleska-era clues didn’t bother me. I did waste a few seconds at the start eliminating a Petula Clark song on one down.
The only thing good I can say about this puzzle is that CHER was in it.
A rare in my wheelhouse Saturday. The short stuff suffers next to pretty nice longer stuff. ENE left me baffled. ABEL/ASTRA cross was poor form. E-CRIME was sadness. Do love me a good HISSY from time to time.
Uniclues:
1 Temp discovered swiping the coffee bar quarters.
2 The very terrifying or totally terrific life you're not leading without the products proffered 30-seconds at a time with background music.
3 Dude in his basement.
1 FILL-IN CAUGHT
2 ADMEN SPOOFISM
3 E-CRIME BAD ONE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Denizens of the gutter. GO BAD WINE SNOBS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s Olive Oyl.
@bocamp-I bet you'll run into "son" pretty soon as it's used for telling time, as in (pardon the lack of diacritics and the upside down question mark)--
Que hora es? What time is it?
Son las tres. They are three.
Nothing to it.
Rafa, I agree with all your objections, and your yesterday puzzle was much better.
MIS, RES, EEEE, DNAS... yuck! Plus the Natick at ABEL crossing NOBIS.
But somehow this was very easy for me! 16 minutes, and I am not a fast solver. Probably my age was an asset as things like ICBMS were gimmes.
SCRAMBLE THE JETS was really great.
[Spelling Bee: -1 again Fri; in a bit of a rut.]
Interesting example of how idiosyncratic our reactions to these things are. To me, this was pleasantly challenging at a medium level. Good one to finish while watching Buckeyes vs. Wolverines with one eye. Almost everything that Rex found obscure or tortured was easy and/or okay by me. Different strokes.....
I agree with every critique of this puzzle. How in the world did it get accepted???
As soon as I saw (CAUGHT) the "hard" rating I knew this had to be a guest host review. As long as you know your crosswordese and have a little age there was nothing hard about this one. Speaking of crosswordese everything the review pointed out was true. When today's offering was bad it was truly bad. The marquee answers were good which helped to compensate but with any puzzle that stresses grid spanners the fill tends to suffer.
yd -0, dbyd -0
I believe the main issue that has generated so much unhappiness among the Commentariat is that the puzzle was too ambitious.
I think we can all agree that the top and bottom three stacks are fine crossword fare. Then the complexity of getting those to fit is upped by dropping two lovely grid spanners down where the first and last three-letter sequences must mesh with the top and bottom three stacks.
Throw in YES I SUPPOSE in the middle crossing the grid spanner Downs and the die is cast. There's precious little room left to maneuver. The degrees of freedom are greatly curtailed. Fill options have been painted into a corner, so to speak.
So, yeah, there's a parade of suboptimal fill to hold it all together, but I see that as the price to be paid for the good stuff. Overall it was not a BAD ONE for me, just a combination of SMILEY faces and UGHS.
I always like to see Latin words and phrases in the grid and today it was 20D NOBIS. A chance was missed to double up with a Latin clue for its next door neighbor 26D RES which is Latin for "things" as in In medias res(wiki). It's the nominative form from which the ablative rebus derives, meaning "with or by way of things". And the reason why I always give a stink-eye, frowny face to how rebus is use in crosswords for "multiple letters in single grid square". That should be litteris, "with or by way of letters". I make my case for this at The Rebus Principle.
Very much a puzzle where what I didn't know was thankfully helped what what I did know.
Really like your write up by the way!
I didn't hate it but I also don't disagree with your criticisms.
What I did enjoy though was your write up!
Interestin mix. All the puzgrid entries were either at least 11 letters long, or 6 or less. The longballs were pretty darn good. The shorties sported quite a few no-knows or Ow de Speration goodies.
staff weeject pick: MIS and RES. Both clued up as {Scale notes}. Noteworthy cluein variety.
M&A did instantly get ILLTAKEYOUTHERE [Staple Singers] and HAUER. Saved valuable nanoseconds.
SIMON clue was primo-est.
Thanx, Mr. Stillman dude. Nice picture album corners, in yer 68-worded puzgrid.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
p.s.
Last night's classic schlock flickfest line-up: "The Mummy" followed by "Creature from the Black Lagoon". We both drifted/napped real briefly, during "the Mummy" -- and we both blamed the pumpkin pie.
p.p.s.s.
Runtpuz computer program recently broke, and @r.alph is seekin help to fix it. sooo … no gruntz, for a spell.
No, it’s not. It’s Olive Oyl.
“Caught” probably refers to specific contexts, e.g. “caught a movie”
“Two o’clock” is used to indicate a direction roughly equivalent to ENE
Same here haha
We visited Alton while it was slightly flooded, sandbags abounding; took a drive up that way to see some bird life while our son was living in St. Louis.
I wanted "nukes" before ICBMS. Not my only write-over1
Wasn’t Popeye’s rival for Olive named Brutus?
Agreed. This one was a real stinkeroo.
Could I just have one puzzle where the constructor understands that most Americans aren't fluent in French, Latin, German, Spanish, etc?
Bluto isn't a "toon". The toon was called Popeye. Bluto was a character on the cartoon called Popeye.
I've never heard of a zither, and somehow I should know what a koto is? Like many of the clues on this horrible puzzle, that is way too obscure for me. RUTGER HAUER??????? A quick glance at Rutger's filmography reveals that I've CAUGHT exactly 1 of his movies (Batman Begins) and his role was exceedingly minor. Sometimes I wonder if crossword constructors google search the most obscure names they can find just to ruin my day. Better luck next Saturday, I guess. UGHS!!!!!
UGHS. Worst saturday puzzle in a very long time.
Me too!
Google sez Bluto was changed to Brutus when the comics went to TV cartoons for trademark reasons. Who knew?
@Susan 2:47 - Popeye's foe was originally BLUTO. For a brief period in the early sixties, he was replaced by Brutus. Sometimes they are portrayed as brothers.
0@Anonymous 3:09 - It is not "'toon'", it's just "toon":
Toon (n) a character in a cartoon.
Too much downright nastiness in the comments today, not to mention displays of ignorance.
Okay I have to stick up for Rutger Hauer. He may not have starred in a bunch of other hits, but his role in Blade Runner was the most unforgettable character in one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. His death scene was brilliant: he was the villain, but it was the most touching scene in the movie.
Also KOTO is not that obscure... Sam may have banned it from Spelling Bee, but that's a pretty low bar.
Voyajer Your answers crossed in your post Abel is the math award. Image Awards refers to NAACP.
I think they had GOD recently. So I left it open got the o and knew it was ORBS.
I happened to know NOBIS but that combo you mentioned is very tough.
For me I almost dnf ‘d at ASTRA/are(for all I knew, could be ASTRo!)
There is a music genre called son
Only at the last minute I remembered the Spanish verb.
I've known about KOTOs since about 1976 - - Angel records had an album of Mozart played on KOTOs; it irks me that the NYT Spelling Bee always refuses to accept it.
Don’t see PLAN ON as clumsy at all. Boring maybe. But normal English. Hear it all the time in this context.
Alton, IL is the birthplace of Miles Davis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davis
About ABEL. I took zero math courses in college. Know nothing about ABEL level math but I have seen the term before. Math people are interviewed in the Times and obits of math greats appear so Abel does get mentioned.
It is not known only by mathematics people.
I agree about Malone. Never watched Cheers but Malone is a very common Irish name.
Oddly, this was a personal best Saturday time for me. I hardly can ever finish one without some google help, but solved in about 30 minutes with no look-ups.
It helped that I had actually been to ALTON, Illinois…
And I saw the SCOTTS misdirect fairly early.
Others were just in my wheelhouse or easily inferrable based on said wheelhouse.
As to CIS, yes it is a fairly recent descriptor. Why do people need to get so frickin’ defensive that common sense goes out the window?
That seems odd. I never saw the comics, know Popeye only from TV, and have never heard Brutus, only Bluto
Although eeee was my first fill and is easily deduced from numerous puzzles using a similar clue for eee, I too found the answer both grating and lazy. However, for those of us who wear New Balance athletic shoes, 4e widths abound (and 3e does not exist)
@Voyajer, CyC, Kitshef, Dr A, Wanderlust, DrBB, and okanaganer:
I sang this in the Dalton School chorus, but you don't have to. Just listen to this hymn even once and you'll never Natick on NOBIS again.
Toon has been used to refer to the characters (at least since “Who Killed Roger Rabbit “?). In other words, toon means more than cartoon. So the answer is valid.
And you don’t have to be fluent in a language to know some of the common words. Etre has appeared many times in the Times puzzle and quite I would guess a majority here know the word even if they couldn’t translate a sentence. Son is stretching things but it was the clue not the answer.
Hauer may be an age issue. Many older people who do the puzzle would know him. Not as obscure as you might think
I didn’t like this puzzle, and I agree with a lot of the bullet points about the fill (though Rutger Hauer was a legend who is worth knowing).
One that I will add is FRIEDA, who apparently was last featured in Peanuts in 1985!!! That was really one of the low points for me, along with EEEE.
I can handle an obscure crossing - and I think that the "O" in ALTON/MALONE is the most likely option, even if you've never watched Cheers - but A(?)EL crossing NO(?)IS is pretty evil.
I literally thought that if ABEL/NOBIS were right, and the constructor is stuck with obscure Latin, that they'd have gone with something Biblical for ABEL... yes, even on Saturday.
AXEL/NOXIS? Nope!
AVEL/NOVIS? Nope!
From there, it could've been anything!
Saying this as a gay man... outside of a small cohort of fanatics, "CIS" is considered a slur. It's derogatory and intentionally denigrating and has no place here.
And I only gagged on that after seeing two other divisive concepts celebrated as marquee answers right at the top.
Either the constructor understands the NYT audience really well, or we should expect a PROUDBOYS theme - and maybe a celebration of CONVERSIONTHERAPY - later this week for balance.
I print the Saturday puzzle for later in the week so when I comment, most of the world has already moved on. But wanted to say how much I enjoyed this puzzle! Not one area that felt like a slog. Fun clues and could always keep moving. Thanks Jeff!
Only did Saturday’s today. Busy weekend seeing family and friends and celebrating my birthday and saw my name as a clue I hit easily for Illinois city. Otherwise pretty boring puzzle. Agree on EEEE
This one nearly made me retire my pencil! ;-) Very difficult. I consider myself successful when I don't have to look up a single answer... which is the case most days. But this one...yikes!
Oh my gosh! Easy-medium?! You're awesome!
I'm late because I generally print crosswords in batches but my main snag was putting GEE I SUPPOSE which made me wonder what band had the audacity to release a song called I'LL TAKE GOUT HERE
Crappy fill. NOBIS, ABEL (as clued) LAI RNS, EEEE etc. Not worth solving or publishing.
PLANON THE DANCE
YES,ISUPPOSE I will SHOUT,
"YOU ARE ONE IN a MILLION!"
ENJOY when I'LLTAKEYOU OUT,
YOU'll LIKE WHAT makes THEPLOTTHICKEN.
--- FRIEDA HAUER
...Christopher@8:53...
All constructors understand the NYT audience well. It's a pre-requisite for getting published.
No write-overs and I found this rather easy for a Sat-puz even considering the FILL issues as mentioned above. HAUER and BLUTO were gimmes. Hard to imagine the number of folks that have never seen Cheers; hard to miss over the last 40 or so years.
I've been to ALTON, IL; there is/was a Museum of Torture there. And a bar where the waitresses apparently had a hard time keeping their shirts on. Strange place, but I'd go again.
Wordle par.
Having been a math major 50 years ago, prior to its existence, I only know of the Abel Prize from xword puzzles. However, having been a Catholic altar boy in both the Latin and the change over to English eras, nobis was a gimme. One of my biggest surprises when I was in my twenties, was when a very good friend got married in an Episcopal Church, and their Mass still had a good amount of Latin in it. I felt like I had been thrown back in time. He is now a married Catholic priest. I forget which religious order he belongs to, but he went to a seminary in New York, and had to learn Old Church Slavonic.
Totally undoable, here. Big fat DNF. Didn't know about 90% of it.
Wordle par. Happy New Year!!
I hear ya! Awful puzzle
Couldn’t agree more, Rafa…ugly fill (EEEE?) combined with obscure answers and difficult clueing made this one of the least enjoyable NYTs I’ve ever done. #OOF
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