Cabinet resignee of 1988 / SAT 12-30-23 / Pair of hand drums, in Indian music / Letter of completion, in brief / Part of a turntablist's headgear for short / Dad on "Black-ish" / They work in meters / Relative of a slot canyon / Drogo Jason Momoa's character on "Game of Thrones" / Across a wide expanse of rural land / Coat named for a former Irish province
Constructor: Simeon Seigel
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: PARTY (63A: Event suggested by this puzzle's circled squares, read clockwise from the top) — circled (and unchecked, i.e. uncrossed) squares spell out CONFETTI ... that's ... it?
Word of the Day: "The ERL-King" (50D: Goethe's "The ___-King") —
[The Erlking, Albert Sterner, ca. 1910]
"Erlkönig" is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It depicts the death of a child assailed by a supernatural being, the Erlking, a king of the fairies. It was originally written by Goethe as part of a 1782 Singspiel, Die Fischerin.
"Erlkönig" has been called Goethe's "most famous ballad". The poem has been set to music by several composers, most notably by Franz Schubert. // An anxious young boy is being carried at night by his father on horseback. To where is not spelled out; GermanHofhas a rather broad meaning of "yard", "courtyard", "farm", or (royal) "court". The opening line tells that the time is late and that it is windy.
As the poem unfolds, the son claims to see and hear the "Erlkönig" (Erl-King). His father claims to not see or hear the creature, and he attempts to comfort his son, asserting natural explanations for what the child sees – a wisp of fog, rustling leaves, shimmering willows.
The Erl-King attempts to lure the child into joining him, promising amusement, rich clothes, and the attentions of his daughters. Finally, the Erl-King declares that he will take the child by force. The boy shrieks that he has been attacked, spurring the father to ride faster to the Hof. Upon reaching the destination, the child is already dead. [HappyHolidays!] (wikipedia)
• • •
You took my hard Saturday puzzle away for this? It's not even New Year's Eve yet. If you're gonna take away my hard Saturday puzzle, there better be good reason, and New Year's Eve Eve isn't it. Further, I don't really get it. Hard to think of a revealer more anticlimactic than PARTY [insert lone, sad, half-hearted party maker sound here]. Just ... PARTY? Are you or are you not a New Year's Eve-themed puzzle? Do the circled squares represent the earth orbiting the sun? Do they form the shape of a clock dial, or the famed ball that drops at midnight in Times Square? Because I know they Sure As Hell do not represent the CONFETTI that they spell out. CONFETTI does not fall in a perfect circle. There is nothing about those circles that evokes CONFETTI beyond the letters they contain. My best guess is that the black squares (!?!) represent the confetti. There are no contiguous black squares, so they kinda look like individual pieces of ... well, CONFETTI? Maybe? But then why doesn't the revealer say that: "... suggested by the black square pattern in this grid"? You see, I'm just guessing at this point. There are imaginative and unusual elements of this puzzle, particularly the unchecked squares that actually Do end up being checked by the broader theme (for newer solvers: one of the "rules" of crosswords is that all squares have to be involved in an Across and a Down, so you have two ways of getting at it—this puzzle takes away the cross, but gives it back to you, in a way by having those uncrossed letters be involved in an overarching, theme-defining answer, so ... the "rule" was broken, technically, but not substantively). There's just not enough thematic material here, and (the big problem), what is here is not particularly evocative of CONFETTI, or of any PARTY in particular. I hope that app solvers at least got some kind of confetti-animation explosion at the end. Some bit of visual entertainment for your troubles. [Well, look at that ... I was correct on all counts]
[Enjoy your not-solving-related decorative elements, I guess!]
This puzzle didn't just deprive me of a themeless puzzle, it also deprived me of any struggle. At all. This played like, what, a Tuesday? Wednesday? The hardest thing about it was all the old crosswordese and the odd congregation of proper nouns (these categories overlap). The fill started out cringily old-fashioned and it did not improve until I got into the longer stuff. I mean, you don't see "I, TINA" or "The ERL-King" around much any more, you really don't. I took some screenshots of the moments I went "ugh," then stopped as I worried I'd be going at it all day.
IRABU CERT EFREM EBAN MEESE and KHAL, LOL KHAL, (61A: ___ Drogo, Jason Momoa's character on "Game of Thrones"), man, constructors, you are letting "GOT" turn you lazy as hell. How many characters deep are you gonna go on the show? (apparently "KHAL" is a title (for a warlord)). At least KHAL is, uh, "fresh," whereas those others I just listed, hoo boy, no. As for the marquee answers, those six 15s, they're mostly fine, but they're a bit on the dull side, with OVER HILL AND DALE being borderline archaic. Quaint, for sure. Your marquees on a Saturday would normally (probably) be much better, as those answers wouldn't be restricted by a theme, as they are here. For a themed puzzle, the six 15s today are kind of impressive, though there is a significant point penalty for not using Talking Heads in the clue for 36-Across:
No real mistakes today, except TABOR (?) for TABLA at first (33A: Pair of hand drums, in Indian music) and then GULLY before GULCH (45D: Relative of a slot canyon). I don't think there's much that needs explaining today, but just in case ...
Explainers:
12A: Bucket of Bolts (JUNKER) — both slang terms for a beat-up and poor-functioning automobile
35A: Speakers in many classrooms, for short (PAS) — Public Address systems
22A: Letter of completion, in brief (CERT) — short for "certificate"
11D: "Dear" man (SIR) — because you might open a letter or archaically address any dude as "Dear SIR..."
32A: Boot (CAN) — I assume these are verbs meaning "fire" or "expel" and not nouns meaning "ass"
39D: Gig components (MEGS) — abbrs. for gigabytes, megabytes
47D: "The Faerie Queene" woman whose name means "peace" (IRENA) — I would tell you who she is but she Doesn't Even Show Up On The Extensive List of "Major Characters" at the Wikipedia Entry For "The Fairie Queene" ... there are like 30 characters on that list, no IRENA. How in the world are we still getting this clue / answer? I've actually read huge chunks of "The Fairie Queene"—taught it, even. But oof, no, this is bottom-of-the-barrel crosswordese.
["West-ERN Spur"]
More Holiday Pet Pics!
First, three cats from Matt: Ronda, Earl Grey, and Scarlet (again, not sure what the "Holiday" connection is here, but these cats are too cute to exclude on a technicality)
[Dear lord, those eyes]
[Earl looks worried. Somebody pet Earl]
[sometimes you want to smush your cat but you don't want to wake her and it's honestly a dilemma]
Here's Jeeves, frolicking by the fireside:
[Thanks, Peggy]
[Maggie is 16. She has learned to roll with this reindeer horns nonsense (thanks, Katherine!)]
This is Tuna, the tiniest Christmas kitty. Tuna is a sad baby who has to wear sweaters because it's oh so cold. Won't you help Tuna this holiday season (scritches and treats gratefully accepted).
[Thanks, Robin]
And lastly today ... a deer
["Hey ... hello! ... anyone home!? Hey, hi. So ... they left me, Santa and them. I was late, I guess, technically, but now I'm just stuck here by myself ... anyway, you got any snacks?" (thanks, Angela)]
4D: REfS (References) before RECS 15D: This Yankees fan realized that Hideki Matsui wouldn't fit and then remembered Hideki IRABU, at first misspelled IRABi 39D: sEtS before MEGS (thinking about club performances, not data) 45D: @Rex GULly before GULCH 47D: IRENe before IRENA, fixed by ELAINE 50D: Elf before ERL for Goethe's king
KHAL Drago (and all the other GoT characters) was a WOE
I agree , a VERY easy puzzle. One question I have never seen a whole Seinfeld episode but know Elaine because she is almost inescapable. Just wondering if those who successfully avoided any knowledge of the show would have trouble with the name pile up in the SE. Giving a hint with “peace “ doesn’t tell you whether it is a or e. There is also Efrem to consider. it seemed like a poor way to up the difficulty of an easy puzzle. Especially Irena! (This is one rant I agree with Rex about. )
I don’t agree with his rant about themes on Saturday. Fine with me either way even though I did the puzzle on paper.
This felt insanely hard. Tons of trivia that I had absolutely no idea of. If you think this played like a Tuesday or Wednesday, you’re out of your doggone mind.
I agree, although I’d probably say medium-challenging because I made steady progress, didn’t have to cheat and mostly got hampered by the trivia. So much of it was just beyond me with the exceptions of ELAINE and ATARI (genX, wuddupp).
You have to remember the target age for this puzzle. The trivia is trivial if you're in the right, let's say, mature group NYT focuses on generally and especially this corny mess.
This played harder than most Saturdays for me. I thought it was impressive for the interesting grid design and the multiple 15s in a themed puzzle. And I was delighted when the black squares became colorful confetti upon completion in the NYT app. All in all a totally different solving experience from @RP’s.
Webwinger Anonymous 7:26 AM To be fair to Rex , after his rant about the theme, he did relent a little after he saw the online version AFTER he wrote most of his post.
No doubt a slickly easy puzzle but I got a kick out of it. The PARTY - CONFETTI - XII trio works and the grid distributes the CONFETTI in a neat - random pattern. First glance gives you a wtf moment - something different - maybe a harbinger of more Saturday tricks to come in 2024?
The grid is loaded with trivia - but nothing obscure. I liked OVER HILL AND DALE. PAWS AT is apt for all of Rex’s holiday pet pics. Always happy to see AQUILA. Since Broad St. is all pedestrian now - I love the early morning walks past the tree in front of the NYSE this time of year.
Pleasant solve for me - Matt Sewell provides the traditional Saturday test for those who need the fix.
I’m 50 years old and I have only the faintest childhood memories of Ed MEESE. I wonder when he will be considered too obscure for crosswords. Then MEESE can be clued as it ought to be: the proper plural for moose.
I’ve coasted through crosswords for years on an encyclopedic knowledge of early Simpsons. Wondering if I ought to finally watch GOT, just for the crossword boost.
I woul disagree that Ed Meese is too obscure for a Saturday. Remember, he is almost a gimme for boomers and older. For me it made the puzzle easier.! Also as noted earlier this week, the demographic here skews older.
Sadly, I have a feeling that his one was all about the app and the “rush” u r supposed to get when all of the black squares turn to confetti. Blech! I get my rush from solving a Saturday puzzle with no help. I could have solved this while UNDER anesthesia. Either the NYT needs to ame a New Year’s resolution for no more GoT refs. Or I am going to have to resolve to watch it. And I ain’t going to watch it. For spite. Holy cow. OVERHILLANDDALE? Went with Terra Firma as my only early goof but quickly recovered.
Enjoyed the puzzle on the app, with a PARTY surprise at the end! Slight letdown from yesterday's RW high, but really nicely done. Same stumbles as Rex/Conrad, but never felt outcome was in doubt. Kind of felt like a Sunday overall
100% agree with Rex. I'm frankly annoyed by how easy this was. I look forward all week to a Saturday struggle and this was a total letdown. I'm going to need to dig into the NYT archives to find a proper Saturday to do, now. Gripe, moan...
This played like a relatively easy Friday for me, definitely not like a Saturday. The grid was novel,which was nice, but using the NYT app ruined it for me since some of the edge entries with the circles appeared unclued. I had to guess at the circled letters (like the T in PARTY) and since the clue for that word literally looked like < >, I had no idea what the theme was. It turns out if you keep tapping different letters in the grid eventually an actual clue is revealed, but how ridiculous is their app programming? I will also add that one reason it was pretty easy was the significant amount of short crosswordese that could be guessed and helped with the longer fill. That’s not a good reason for an easy puzzle.
Took quite a while to put anything in the grid - my entry was REHAB confirmed by ERITREAN.
Took forever to see JUNKER and DJ MIC (not knowing DRE). Kept thinking clUNKER either as a turning entry or a rebus. Theme really helped as I could fill in the I in DJ MIC.
But only one overwrite today: GULly before GULch.
I don't know the count, but during the solve this puzzle felt like it was drowning in proper names and obscurities (EFREM, MEESE, DRE, ITINA, IRABU, IRENA, ERL, KHAL, etc.), and did certainly not play easy for me.
Oh, gorgeous grid design, with a floaty feel. It reminds me of one of my favorite grid designs of all time, which had, IMO, the same floaty feel, the 06/18/16 grid by Todd Gross – ( https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2016/06/18 ) -- worth a look…
Those confetti squares in today’s puzzle may seem randomly placed, but they’re not – this is a symmetrical grid!
I loved running across some sweet devilish cluing, such as the clues for PLOT, CANOE, AQUA, POETS, and the terrific double-punny [Strips in a club] for BACON. I loved the parade of schwa enders: TABLA, AQUA, IRENA, I TINA, ERRATA, AQUILA, and COTTA (for which I initially entered FIRMA). And I loved the festive explosion of confetti at the end, in the app.
Wishing all here a buoyant New Year’s Eve, and especially, a year ahead that you can look back on with a smile.
And thank you, Simeon, for your out-of-the box party-in-a-box, which set me bounding into the day!
Bad luck for Simeon and the NYT that New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday this year. I’m sure it would be impossible to expand the single-black-squares layout to a Sunday size. I would have liked this puzzle much better on a Thursday - agree with feeling cheated out of my Saturday challenge.
But some really nice cluing upped the difficulty level a bit and made me smile. “Strips in a club” for BACON is so good that I suspect it’s not original. (@Lewis?) If it is a first, it’s brilliant. When I read that clue, I knew it wouldn’t be a strip-tease kind of answer, but I was completely fooled by “Craft at camp” (CANOE) and “Gig components” (MEGS). I confidently put in sEtS there (hi, @Conrad). I also liked “What may come before further notice” for UNTIL.
Never heard of IRABU and misspelled EBAN and EFREM as EBeN and EFRaM at first They helpfully cleared their throats and prompted me to switch their final vowels. Did not know the fun fact about PELE. Wonder if he played for both sides *at the same time*. That would be fun.
Did any other app solvers have a strange issue where the clues for some of the answers with circled letters just disappeared at some point? It happened for me with RECON and MEESE. I touched on them and got blanks, then when I came back to them, the clues were there. Strange.
Yes! The clues-disappearing issue happened to me (solving in NYTimes games app), and only on the clues with a circle in the answer. When I went to look at the clues in “list” view, they were all there. Very weird!
I think it was the app getting confused by the lack of "down" answer on the circled squares. When I clicked on a different letter it went back to "across" and showed up
As I was working my way through the grid, I thought to myself “This has a Rex Rant written all over it”. I’ll be generous during the holiday season and say that they at least they deserve credit for the unusual but not overly cryptic gimmick and the technology-play on the app actually impressed for once. I can’t speak to what the solve was like on paper, although I’ll guess that it would be difficult to create some real pizzazz in newsprint.
I thought it was an interesting contrast that yesterday we shot out of the gate at 1A with a witty clue for OWES, and today we get the name of a character from a TV show; so we jump right off the cliff from clever and creative to boring and trivial. I’m older than dirt, so I suspect that Shortz’s tenure at the Times shall exceed my length of stay in this little corner of our universe, but boy it would be interesting to see what things might evolve to after a changing of the guard. Personally, I’d like to see them give it to Rex’s friend Rachel. See creates good puzzles herself and in collaboration with others, offers insightful commentary and is certainly familiar with the nitty gritty of the Shortz era. What an adventure that would be for about the first year after she takes over.
@wanderlust -- "Strips" has been often punned on in BACON clues, but this is the first time the pun on club has entered the equation, not just in the NYT but in all the major venues. IMO, because of that, this his an original clue.
Having to cheat and Google at least three proper names I've never heard of kind of ruins it, but I was almost 17 minutes faster than my average Saturday time. Which shocked me. Having to Google makes me want to flip tables and puts it in my head that it's hard or challenging. But the time doesn't lie. It wasn't hard so much as obnoxious.
Hey All ! Puz was thorny, here. Ended up with a relatively quick time for me, though. Weird how that happens. When I first looked at the grid, I said "Holy moly! This is gonna take forever!" But my Saturday Scaries unded up unwarranted.
Got the CONFETTI pieces in the Blockers upon puz completion. They are just there, no animation. C'mon NYT, I want them spinning, or something! 😁 At least they're multi-colored.
My mini-streak was at 13 puzs in a row, trying to keep it chugging. When done, got the infamous "Close, but at least one thing is wrong!" message (or whatever nice way it says you messed up). Went back through, and again found my wrongness. Man, I'm on a roll with this! Had TeRRAGON/eQUILA. Had a suspicion when I put that E in there that it was wrong. Streak now at 14, tying my previous streak record. #Humblebrag.
So, Happy Eve Eve. 2024 is a-comin! Good lord, how is it 2024 already... And where are the flying cars?
About ULSTER. The word was applied to the coat when the whole island was a colony of the UK. The area around Belfast, then majority Protestant (descendants of Scottish immigrants) was called Ulster by the British . When the Irish independent state was created, that area was carved out of Ireland and referred to as Northern Ireland and sometimes Ulster and remained with the UK. The Irish always seem to refer to subdivisions of their country as counties as in County Mayo. My understanding is that the Irish consider the North East of the Island as also divided into counties (Some of these counties were split by the new border created in the 1920’s.) The clue uses the word “province “ to refer to the majority Protestant are of Ulster , which the Catholic Irish never believed rightfully existed at all! But in terms of political reality, there is nothing wrong with the clue. BTW shortly, there will be more Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland. That will make the Protestants very angry.
Sir, respectfully, you have no idea what you are talking about. Ulster previously and currently refers to nine specific counties of Ireland. Regardless of any politically defined geographies, Ulster is a modern-usage term that includes these counties. Your opining here is off the mark, and your discussions of how "the Irish always seem to refer to subdivisions" is just plain offensive. Please feel free to not engage on this topic in the future if it is not one that you are well read on.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. Played harder for me than Rex, due to some obscure names (EBAN, IRABU, EFREM) and some mistakes (NED for TED, IMpressionistic for EXpressionistic, etc.). The grid with the full length/width answers was cute. The symmetrical grid and careful placement of the CONFETTI letters is a nice feat. I agree that the ultimate PARTY payoff was a bit of a letdown. All in all a fun Saturday (that wasn't too easy for me).
This was a challenge to me that was doable with Googling DRE and IRABU. Impressed by XII and BACON, lost time with Gorge and GULch before GULLY and Radar instead of RECON (leaving me with rED as an Edward, supposedly a redheaded one. Why are NED and tED nicknames anyway).
Thought BASIE would be in Jazz, not Blues, HOF but overall, consider it a fun, fair challenge with a little seasonal visual pop at the end.
Many thanks to @kitshef for explantion of how to access past Universal Crosswords including Thursday’s @Nancy’s. You can find it on Friday’s blog at 7:57 pm.
Solved it after a long struggle. I had "exhibitionistic"instead of EXPRESSIONISTIC, which obviously caused a huge problem. I didn[t know DRE, so the NW caused trouble. And I knew the name "Irene" meant "peace," but took a while (too long) to figure out IRENA.
This oyezle was easy to lovers of popular culture. I'm not in that category, so I found it hard.
This might have played easier if it didn't rely on some really obscure as hell trivia in a few tight spots.
MEESE? Anyone under 50 won't even have a vague recollection of this clown anymore. Oh, he resigned during the Wedtech scandal? Well since the Wedtech scandal we've had at least sixty fifty hundred nine GOP scandals, who can even keep them straight anymore.
EBAN? EFREM? Another couple of people whose major accomplishments now lie well in the past, and weren't exactly household names to begin with.
IRABU? Ah yes, with a 34-35 lifetime record over a span of a whopping 5 years in MLB, who isn't having daily conversations about him 20 years after he left the major league game.
But hey, I guess it's a Saturday, so make the puzzle harder by not bothering to polish the fill, and just leave random strings in here and saying "I guess I'm stuck with MEESE/EBAN/EFREM/IRABU, maybe I can just look these 'words' up and see if anything works for a clue!" Again we're back to "who are various people who have never been in my kitchen."
@Nancy: I really enjoyed your excellent Universal puzzle. Lots of fun, great theme and cluing . Thanks to @kitshef for informing how to do past day’s puzzles.
After a long holiday break that included a non-CoVid virus of some kind, I’m back to working the puzzle early enough to comment. I KNEW @Rex wouldn’t like this puzzle much and, for once, I guessed some of the reasons why. I had every do-over that he did and a few more. I disagree with his assessment of difficulty, because for me, it was a mixture of very hard and extremely easy. Some clever clueing, with BACON being top of the griddle.
I HAVE watched Blackish and enjoyed it, but I don’t watch anything religiously anymore, or I tire of the particular shtick in the show. Anyway, I thought the dad’s name was Trey and not DRE, like our usual xword doctor of rap.
Thank goodness I’ve been doing the Worldle puzzle for a while. I basically start out honest, then cheat like hell referring to a world map. Point is, I use it to hammer into my brain world countries and their position next to and near others. What’s my point? Eritrea was featured not long ago so ERITREAN was a huge help to me in puzzle. I call this the “cheat and learn” method of puzzling.
Barbara S - thanks for Spelling out the Bee terms yesterday.
“QB=Queen Bee, also sometimes designated as "0" by the people who post scores here. Yup, that's getting every word. Never thought of Spelling Bee QBs sounding like NFL QBs. (Might have to start cheering for the Vikings from now on although it sounds pretty hopeless.)
-1, -2, etc. indicates how many words away from QB you were when you packed it in.
pg = I got the pangram(s) and I got to Genius
yd = yesterday dbyd = day before yesterday
(@puzzlehoarder has used several of these abbreviations in his comment at 10:21.)”
Such cryptic initialisms! Why not say Th or F For dbyd or yd? Pan for pg? -1 or -2 again reminds me of Vikings football - the “yd”s every predictable first down rush loses.
And how much time per puzzle does it take for the QBs on here? Can’t IMAGINE getting all the words - I’m typically a Great, Amazing or Genius but other times a Nice. Like today (td - another football term!). Stuck on 15 words, probably -60 from a KB (masc) completion).
I typically give it 10 minutes and consistently miss a lot of obvious short words but so many of the terms are well beyond my knowledge. So all you QBs, what are your time ranges in achieving perfection? Do you use OED?
Hey, is there a Spelling Bee solver app where you just dump the letters in and out come the possibilities? No, I have a sliding scale of Googling a crossword PPP now and again, but that would REALLY be CHEATING! :)
So breezy I thought I had gotten smarter. I didn't solve in any order, just kept filling in what I knew and by the time I hit bottom the crosses made words and phrases appear to me above.
A barrel of bolts is a BUNKER? DUNKER? HUNKER? JUNKER? SUNKER? For me this clue was a clunker.
And of course I didn't know the TV "Dad".
Also, I knew it was some kind of MIC, but what kind?
Needless to say I did not finish the NW corner.
Other than that, finishable, but odd. Even I, visually oblivious as I tend to be, couldn't help noticing that something seemed Very, Very Wrong about the grid. When you've been looking at crossword grids for all those decades and then you see one that Doesn't Fit At All, you tend to wonder why.
Oh, I see. Unchecked squares. This breaks all the rules of puzzledom, so the explanation better be good.
I didn't think it was all that good. Did you?
The one bonus is that for some reason I can't explain, the grid design tends to make the 15-letter answers look unusually long. I suppose someone who dabbles in Optics and Optical Art could explain it.
I input the last answer, started reading the circled letters left-to-right, top-to-bottom, no dice. Reread the revealer, started reading clockwise and… confetti? It may as well have been “Drink your Ovaltine.”
What is the point of a themed puzzle on a Saturday right before New Years Eve? Sunday is the actual eve and is the natural day for a theme like this. It makes me wonder what they'll follow this up with tomorrow.
As for today's solve it was less than a minute more than yesterday's push over. It may have been the easiest Saturday I've ever done.
yd -0, @okanaganer and @ Barbara S good luck with the coming year's SB
Can we use some of that nice confetti to celebrate Sandy Koufax's 88th birthday today? Happy Birthday SK!
Sandy gained renown in the Jewish community for refusing to pitch the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. He also skipped games for a Passover Seder one year, three times for the Jewish New Year, and he once left the mound mid-game when his mother reminded him it was his cousin Lenny's bar-mitzvah, which he raced to attend while still in uniform. Alright, I made that last part up, but the rest is true.
Koufax's first wife was Anne Widmark, daughter of actor Richard. He married three times but has no children. He has a step-daughter via his current wife and two step-grandchildren, who, I'm guessing, throw pretty wicked curveballs.
Thanks to @Rex for suggesting that the black squares, rather than the circled letters, represent the scattering of CONFETTI - and for the colorful representation in his post. Makes a lot more sense to me. Also thanks to @Simon Siegel for the only PARTY I'll have this weekend, as I'm in a "Why would anyone stay up until midnight and then feel terrible the next day?" household.
PARTY-time for me, grid-wise: writing in OVER HILL AND DALE, ULSTER, and TARRAGON and smiling at the misdirects for BACON and MEGS. Do-overs: Jalopy, Gorge, bENT. No idea: DRE, IRABU, KHAL, FOUR ACES.
Can't remember if I've ever been to a PARTY that included CONFETTI. I associate CONFETTI with sporting events or political rallies or parades. I do remember the little poppers shaped like champagne bottles that made a loud pop and shot out a colorful bit of paper streamer when you pulled their strings.
Puzzle played more Medium here, mostly for the proper names cited by others. A steady solve in roughly average time.
Thanks so much, @kitshef, for helping @ccredux track down my puzzle of the previous day. I certainly couldn't have done it! All those mysterious icons -- which you, btw, went to all the trouble of typing out-- and then pinpointing the mystery icon that takes you to my puzzle. And that's the trouble with all things computer-related and everything in cyberspace: WHO COULD POSSIBLY KNOW SUCH A THING UNLESS SOMEONE TOLD YOU IN ADVANCE??? It's certainly not guessable.
I've always said about computers: They can perform 257,953 different functions and they don't do any two of them the same way.
Rant over. Thanks again, @kitshef. And happy you enjoyed the puzzle @ccredux.
I thought the puzzle was fun, but what was most evocative to me, was the mention of the Fairie Queen. I thought immediately of A. Bartlett Giamatti. I was an English major at Yale, and the course I remember best, and most fondly was Bart Giamatti teaching the fairy queen. Sansjoy, Sansfoy and Sansloy, but Irena?. Bart was only a few years older than those of us in the class, but he was brilliant. One of many people at Yale who quickly convinced me that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. And later commissioner of baseball! Wow. Gone far too soon!!
Hello from Oxford! We took an overnight flight; I was able to sleep, but my wife couldn't -- so now she's taking an afternoon nap while I'm staying up in an attempt to get over jet lag. So I did the puzzle on the Times website, as I have neither printer not a way to get the paper. As a result, I have no idea how hard it was, since anything is harder on the computer.
I guess we can add TERRA COTTA/firma to our growing list of kealoas, at least when it is clued as a fill-in-the-blank. I guessed wrong
I don't know anything about Game of Thrones, except what I have learned from crosswords. However, Drogo Baggins was the father of Frodo, hero of Lord of the Rings, so there's some bleeding between the two. (Actually, it's a medieval French name). Drogo never appears in person, but we hear how he and his wife drowned because they went out in a boat but Drogo's weight sank it.
I've got a spider solitaire app from Jacquie Lawson where solving the puzzle makes a rain of confetti fall down the screen -- so just changing the colors of the squares seemed a bit lame.
EFREM Zimbalist died in 1985, way before Ed MEESE resigned. I think I remember him only because his actor son of the same name was a big character in 77 Sunset Strip, which was also a long time ago.
I may be back Monday, who knows? Happy New Year, everyone!
Didn't we have EBAN for Abba just this week, or maybe that was in the NYer?
@Andrew - there are several online Anagram solvers that can help you out, although they give you way more words than are accepted. The word list is apparently culled from the crossword dictionary to help you have an idea of what is and isn't accepted. Also, there are grids that tell you how many words of which length and starting letter are used.
I thought this was different enough to be fun as a holiday-themed puzzle. Thanks Lewis for the balance of perspective today. I had a tougher time in the north, but managed to finish where I started and abandoned in the NE.
I wholeheartedly agree that this shouldn't have been a Saturday puzzle, but aside from that, I really enjoyed this one. A lot of the crosswordese and proper names were solved with lots and lots of crosses (such an interesting design!) and some of those difficult ones were solved only when I saw "confetti".
Efrem Zimbalist is definitely worth the trip to Wikipedia, and very crossworthy, if obscure to a general audience. Director of the Curtis Institute; both children famous actors, etc.
btw - it looks like there is some effort to keep Wikipedia from being bought and commercialized. Anyone have info about this?
I had no idea that NED was a nickname for Edward. I thought NED stood for Ned. Why add an extra letter to the beginning that isn't even part of your name when you can just be Ed? I'm gonna be Djoe for the new year. The D is silent. Or better yet, D'joe. That looks cool.
The POETS squeaked into the Top 10 on New York's WMCA with this groove in 1966.
Joe Dipinto Funny rant about Ted and Ned. Nicknames are no more logical than English in general. Like Nan for Ann , when these nicknames were created, people either found them easier to say or they just sounded better Jack comes from Jacques (French James) yet we use it for John. And Ted is also used for Theodore. It did confuse me as a child when Edward Kennedy was called Ted. The French actually use dj to represent our j sound, as in Django Reinhardt because their j is like our z in azure. That is why a lot of Arab names are spelled Dj because of the French colonial influence
There I was praising myself for finishing a Saturday puzzle (It happens less than I care to acknoweledge), and Rex savages the puzzle as "easy." Well, he is, of course, correct. Way too easy for a Saturday. BUt, I'll take it.
Confetti Party! Woo hoo. Cute graphic in the app. This puzzle dropped together just fine. Couple of random-letter starlets stood in the way (KHAL, IRABU, EFREM), but the long not-so-exciting phrases "wooshed" right in.
Hand up for IMPRESSIONISTIC.
Uniclues:
1 The Doctor's junior rappers. 2 Jazz-hater's reluctant phrase when asked to Count aloud. 3 Making Chakapuli. 4 When skirts go tilting. 5 Really?! That's how Grantorto steals her land?
1 DRE RECON POETS 2 BASIE? I GUESS SO... 3 USING TARRAGON (~) 4 KILTS ERRATA T 5 O! PAWS AT IRENA!
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Breakfast food schmeared with schmaltz. ELTON JOHN BAGEL.
Definitely not your usual Saturday difficulty-wise. That's not to say I didn't have my problems with it like ERL, CERT & DJ MIC (which should've been a gimme). BASIE has been hanging out here a lot here lately. But all in all, I enjoyed the respite from the usual Saturday.
OVER HILL AND DALE....Aren't you just cute. My source of intelligence is hoping that brain cells that popped during my youth were still floating around. They were. So I had a couple of lookie loo's. IRABU, you were my first. DJ MIC you placed second and my finale was IRENA. Three for a Saturday ain't bad for me. I arrived at my PARTY and wondered what event was going to happen. HMMM. I have to do some clock work thingie here to figure this out. The circles actually helped me get CONFETTI . So what? you say.....I needed to dance with the C in RECON and the N in TONED. Good gravy, I stared at those two clues so long that I finally went looking for a margarita. Of course it's CONFETTI. I GUESS my FOUR ACES paid off. My ONCE IN A LIFETIME journey is to be able to sky dive with someone who looks like Jason Momoa. Imagine him holding on to you while you drop down to earth. I once saw this picture of an 80 year old woman doing it and her dentures flew out.... Happily, I'm not yet 80 nor should I worry if any teeth might disappear. I'm not OVER the HILL yet!.
I wonder what the Vegas Crossword betting books had as the over/under on OVERHILLANDDALE crossing UNDER in today's puzzle.
The colorful reveal in the app gave me an uncontrolled sudden repetitive muscle movement, but I couldn't think of what such a phenomenon is called. Mrs. EGS came to the rescue by reminding me that the EXPRESSIONISTIC. Speaking of Mrs. EGS, she and I are going to an Indian supper and drumming club for New Years Eve. We've reserved a TABLA for two. Not sure if it's the kind of place where USING Auld Lang Syne, but it should be funner than last year, when we just PAWSAT our son's dog.
I'll be brief: fun puzzle. That's ITINA nutshell. Thanks, Simeon Seigel.
Hi Avi. I was born in and lived in Summit! ( SHS ‘64.) Now in California, but I miss NJ. Thanks for your comment re Prof Giamatti. Will check out the Icelandic noir. Regards, Richard
I looked at my printout of this and thought "Wow, all those little black squares look just like CONFETTI! I wonder if that will show up in the puzzle anywhere?"
Actually, no, no I didn't, but looking at OFL's colorful picture of the app version is one of the few times that made me wish I'd solved it that way. As it was, I kept running into a little black square in an annoying place. But it turned out to be pretty easy, except for the names, and I actually needed the CONFETTI gimmick to change TED to NED. Ditto for finally seeing good old ELAINE who got me to IRENA and EFREM. I am old enough to remember Ed MEESE, who even looked like a crook. KHAL, though... I did try reading GOT but even the book was too violent for me.
Favorite thing was the triple S in IGUESSSO. Cool.
So-so Saturday, SS. Some fun clues but a tad too easy for a Saturday. Thanks for a fair amount of fun, and on to the Stumper.
Finished a Saturday puzzle in record time and felt almost as good as I did this past Thursday when the NYTimes published another of my letters. Until I read Rex’s write up and was sadly deflated.
Trying to nail down a tricky NE corner. Also, not quite grokking the circled cells, I'm at sea wrt 63A, PAR_Y.
One other issue is wanting IRENE at 49D, but 62A wants to be EL NINO, so I'm left with IRENN for the name?? Also, not sure of KHAL at 61A, but the downs seem solid.
Attempting to come up with some rationale for the circled cells, I get P_INTF_E.
Seems most unusual to have a gimmick on a Sat puz! Will give it some more thot before checking the crosses. 🤔
Thx @Rex for the link yd to Robyn's interview. It was very enlightening! :) ___ Finally nailed the Thurs NYT puz (downs-o at just over 5 1/2 hrs) with absolutely no idea of what the theme might be.
Michael Lieberman's NYT PandA was relatively easy, but plenty of 'punny' fun! :)
On to Matthew Sewell's Sat. Stumper. 🤞, with Balton & Stewart's NYT acrostic in the wings for tm. ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
CONFETTI from the NYT app was the highlight today: colorful and creative use of the technology for online solvers. Paper solvers like my wife missed the one explosion of delight. Agreed that the publication date should have been the 31st, but still fun.
Had ONCEINABLUEMOON before Once in a lifetime, since the former is literally an expression for a very rare occurrence and the latter is not. Also had IMPRESSIONISTIC before Expressionistic. But what really got me was CANOE for "Craft at camp." How is Canoe a craft? Canoeing might make sense, at a stretch, but just Canoe? How is that a craft? Is it a really bad play on C-raft? There are so many better ways to clue Canoe. I can clue canoe, can you?
Photomatte Once in a lifetime is very much an expression. As in innumerable ads : once in a lifetime experience! Etc. I thought of your answer first but I suppose once in a lifetime is rarer still. I also thought of Etsy type craft until I saw they meant boat.
The grid construction is quite impressive, with bonus CONFETTI, so I appreciated the puzzle. Helped to know crosswordese: RUE, EFRAM, MEESE. One more day of pet pics... ALAS!
As near as some Googling and life experience tell me, a DJ MIC as "headgear" isn't a thing.
Lots of folks do wear hands-free headset mics, like Penny* from Time/Life books. A DJ's headgear is pretty exclusively headphones.
Anyway, this was an impressive feat of construction. And it was fun to see the blocks change to confetti. But why not publish this Thursday? Especially since this week's Thursday was probably a Wednesday. It wasn't hard except for the silly PPP, which mostly showed up in the "uncrossed" squares.
*This reference is almost as current as the PPP answers in today's grid
If you told me that one of this week’s puzzles would get a “too easy” rant, I would have bet on it being Friday’s resistance-free offering.
For today, I did myself no favours by filling in tED and imPRESSIONISTIC. The latter sank me in the northeast corner for a long time and also made it hard to see the confetti theme answer. Others have already mentioned the fact that two of the uncrossed letters were proper nouns (and not exactly current references), which also made cracking the theme the trickiest part of the puzzle for me.
Back in the 1990s I had a screen saver called Shotgun. Every few seconds it would blow more holes in your screen, with or without sound. That is what I thought of when I opened the puzzle. And that must have scared me, so I found the puzzle very challenging for a few minutes, then it got easier and in the end it was only 20 minutes though it seemed a lot longer!
Terra FIRMA before COTTA. And I wanted CLUNKER instead of JUNKER but too long. (Here in Canada we also use BEATER which is short for "winter beater"; some people drive a different car in winter to save their "good" car.)
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0; 7 day streak. @Andrew: I play on the computer and use a Javascript hack which tells me how many words there are and sorts them by length; it's a minor cheat which makes it more enjoyable and getting to QB easier. (The NYT kindly lists all the answers in their Javascript which you can view if you enable Developer Tools.) To get to Genius takes me from 2 to 10 minutes depending on the number of words. Then I typically come back a couple of times later in the day until I get to QB or get tired.]
Confetti-style black squares! Themed SatPuz! Different. Like different. thUmbswaaaayUp.
PARTY was a kinda so-so semi-revealer, I'd grant. But The Circles were the true revealer, here.
I thought it was a tough Wed/ThursPuz level solvequest, due to some pretty frisky clues. Exsample: {Twists can thicken it} = PLOT. Exsample II: {Exhausting} = USING. And a few no-knows, headed up by whoever the djmic KHAL is. M&A proposes a future xword KHAL CAN policy, for that dude. OTOH: Some clues were quite neighborly. Moocowsample: {Attire for many bagpipe players} = KILTS.
Nice ITINA rememberance, as she was cool and just recently passed on.
I'da got here to comment sooner, but that Ronda cat's eyes plumb hypnotized the snot outta m&e for about an hour.
staff weeject pick: XII. Nice New Year's clue.
some fave confetti-infested moments: DJMIC [har. A debut entry, not too surprisinly]. EXPRESSIONIST(IC). ONCEINALIFETIME. OVEHILLANDDALE. IGUESSSO. JUNKER [wanted BEATER, for my first guessso].
Thanx for throwin the PARTY all over the puzgrid, Mr. Seigel dude. Always envious of folks who get to have a rare themed SatPuz.
Fairly flowy until I got to the DRAPES/DALE section. I couldn't decide if the expression was vALE or DALE and originally had EeL king, because wtf is an ERL king? IRiNA before IRENA didn't help. Little resistance anywhere else. Didn't really get the CONFETTI visual at all.
like @southside i expected a bitter tirade today and instead it was a very generous rant. i rarely agree with the harsh rants and it is notable that i found this to be one of the two puzzles that i hated doing this year. i think we know what the other recent one was. its not even a "crossword" puzzle because the words dont feel like they are crossing each other while solving. everywhere you turn there is another 3 letter word, and the long answers arent fun when they are so disjointed - like a really bad combover. im glad it was so easy so that i didnt have to deal with it as long as i usually do on saturday. and i also feel robbed of my favorite day of the week.
@kitshef -- Good catch! I missed it my first pass through my references, but at this go-around I found "Strips in a club?", but it was New York Sun on 10/25/06. Where did you get the Washington Post clue? It might be from a reference I don't have, and should get!
For me, between Wed-Thurs in terms of difficulty. Hadn't seen EFREM in a puzzle in a long time, if ever, so that was a little tough. I remember Hideki Irabu from when he played (RIP), which was a big help. Needed all four crossers to get KHAL.
Themed Saturdays should be outlawed by Congress, though there are a number of other things Congress should do first, e.g. Medicare for all, universal parental leave and pre-K, strengthening rather than sabotaging the Voting Rights act, strengthening rather than eviscerating the separation of church and state, convicting after impeachment aspiring fascists when they are egregiously guilty of plotting coups against the U.S. and thus banning them from public office for life, to name a few. It was also, except for a couple of near-naticks, ("ERL, "KHAL"; I've never watched GOT and never plan to), very easy for a Saturday. And the theme/revealer was (were?), as Rex says, anticlimactic and ill-timed. That said, I disagree with Rex about a few things. Yes, it's been many years since our nonpareil queen of song Tina Turner (still mourning her passing, which happened early this year) published her memoir, but Tina and her book are timeless and immortal, and here her memoir is crossed with another nonpareil immortal legend of American music (not just Black American music; ALL American music- to a large extent all or most American music that is memorable has Black roots or at least connections), the incomparable kid from Red Bank, NJ, Count Basie, so I'm fully OK with that part of the fill. Could have done without Edwin Meese, the proto-Bill Barr who furthered the extremist agenda of HIS right-wing president (Reagan), but you can't have everything, I guess. I know it's a bit early, but I usually don't complete the Sunday puzzle (in print) until about Wednesday, so Happy (and, let's hope, fascism-free) 2024 to Rex and everyone.
I was wowed by the six grid spanners with the three Downs intersecting with the three Acrosses. Or vice versa. Either way, that means that three letters of each potential grid spanner are predetermined and that's a major construcioneering (M&A™) hurdle to clear. So yeah, just wow!
I also thought 36A "Rarer than rare" would be ONCE IN A BLUE NOON. It fit, at least in letter count. Maybe that would be just "Rare" and ONCE IN A LIFETIME up that to "Rarer than rare".
I remember Ed Meese from that political scandal-ridden era. (Aren't they all?!) After his resignation he proudly proclaimed that "I remain unindicted". Bet there are a few contemporary pols who wish that they could say that.
@Lewis - crosswordtracker.com is where I saw the WaPo use. It also has three other uses: - the New York Sun puzzle you found - The Pat Sajak Letter Code crossword of 3/14/2012 - USA Today on 2/11/2010.
I didn't know if you would consider any of those as 'major venues', but I was pretty sure the Washington Post qualified.
USA Today would qualify now, I'd guess. But 2010 was during the plagiarism era at USA Today.
Definite two-way Kealoa: 32D: could have been FIRMA or COTTA....and when you tried to verify your choice with 43A -- you could have had TARRAGON or MARJORAM! (29D -- ITINA confirmed which was which.)
@Son Volt – I never found much info on the Poets. The record label was in New York so I assume they were a local group. It looks like another single or two may have been released that went nowhere. I don't remember "She Blew A Good Thing" from when it charted since I rarely listened to WMCA; I only heard it much later on Felix Hernandez's Rhythm Revue show on WBGO.
@JC66 – I started the acrostic late and didn't get very far – only three answers I'm sure of, plus I see possibilities for others. I'll finish it tomorrow. (Actually, it's "today" at this hour.)
While this did actually play fast, it didn't feel like it because of the slog of the old crosswordese and proper nouns. I'm not as down on the theme as Rex -- my big complaint is the fill!
This was SO difficult for me! I ended up having to use autocheck and still it took me forever. I’m so surprised that everyone found it easy - I thought it was clunky and difficult. Everything else lately has been pretty easy so this was a shock to my system. However, I will say that I might be speaking from a different perspective as everyone else…I’m a late millennial/older gen-z cusp, so the older references really weren’t doing it for me. Either way, definitely not my favorite and not much fun, even with the app giving me confetti at the end.
Big inkblot in the NW: nigeRiAN, and a six-letter word for bucket of bolts starting with J...why, JALOPY, of course! That was a huge fooler. But for those, this was indeed an out-of-place Saturday, themed (OK, it was 12/30) and too easy.
Some weird names--KHAL, IRENA--but fairly crossed. All the grid-spanners plunked down whooshingly, which helped a lot. Birdie.
Wordle par.
Congrats to Wyndham Clark, who came out of the woodwork to fire a 60 at Pebble. That's some shootin', cowboy.
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ReplyDeleteJust about the easiest Saturday I can remember.
4D: REfS (References) before RECS
15D: This Yankees fan realized that Hideki Matsui wouldn't fit and then remembered Hideki IRABU, at first misspelled IRABi
39D: sEtS before MEGS (thinking about club performances, not data)
45D: @Rex GULly before GULCH
47D: IRENe before IRENA, fixed by ELAINE
50D: Elf before ERL for Goethe's king
KHAL Drago (and all the other GoT characters) was a WOE
I agree , a VERY easy puzzle.
DeleteOne question
I have never seen a whole Seinfeld episode but know Elaine because she is almost inescapable. Just wondering if those who successfully avoided any knowledge of the show would have trouble with the name pile up in the SE. Giving a hint with “peace “ doesn’t tell you whether it is a or e. There is also Efrem to consider. it seemed like a poor way to up the difficulty of an easy puzzle. Especially Irena! (This is one rant I agree with Rex about. )
I don’t agree with his rant about themes on Saturday. Fine with me either way even though I did the puzzle on paper.
This felt insanely hard. Tons of trivia that I had absolutely no idea of. If you think this played like a Tuesday or Wednesday, you’re out of your doggone mind.
ReplyDeleteI agree, although I’d probably say medium-challenging because I made steady progress, didn’t have to cheat and mostly got hampered by the trivia. So much of it was just beyond me with the exceptions of ELAINE and ATARI (genX, wuddupp).
DeleteYou have to remember the target age for this puzzle. The trivia is trivial if you're in the right, let's say, mature group NYT focuses on generally and especially this corny mess.
DeleteJeeves is absolutely adorable and so is Tuna. How did Robin get that sweater on him without ending up in the emergency room?
ReplyDelete@rez -- Shoutout to your animal captions through the holiday season. Endearing and often very funny. Bravo, sir!
ReplyDeleteAgree with Lewis about the Holiday dog and cat sh ( and deer) show!
DeleteThis played harder than most Saturdays for me. I thought it was impressive for the interesting grid design and the multiple 15s in a themed puzzle. And I was delighted when the black squares became colorful confetti upon completion in the NYT app. All in all a totally different solving experience from @RP’s.
ReplyDeletewebwinger
Webwinger Anonymous 7:26 AM
DeleteTo be fair to Rex , after his rant about the theme, he did relent a little after he saw the online version AFTER he wrote most of his post.
No doubt a slickly easy puzzle but I got a kick out of it. The PARTY - CONFETTI - XII trio works and the grid distributes the CONFETTI in a neat - random pattern. First glance gives you a wtf moment - something different - maybe a harbinger of more Saturday tricks to come in 2024?
ReplyDeleteSince the content did trend musty there’s always one of my parent’s favorites
The grid is loaded with trivia - but nothing obscure. I liked OVER HILL AND DALE. PAWS AT is apt for all of Rex’s holiday pet pics. Always happy to see AQUILA. Since Broad St. is all pedestrian now - I love the early morning walks past the tree in front of the NYSE this time of year.
Pleasant solve for me - Matt Sewell provides the traditional Saturday test for those who need the fix.
NED’s
I’m 50 years old and I have only the faintest childhood memories of Ed MEESE. I wonder when he will be considered too obscure for crosswords. Then MEESE can be clued as it ought to be: the proper plural for moose.
ReplyDeleteI’ve coasted through crosswords for years on an encyclopedic knowledge of early Simpsons. Wondering if I ought to finally watch GOT, just for the crossword boost.
I woul disagree that Ed Meese is too obscure for a Saturday. Remember, he is almost a gimme for boomers and older. For me it made the puzzle easier.!
DeleteAlso as noted earlier this week, the demographic here skews older.
Sadly, I have a feeling that his one was all about the app and the “rush” u r supposed to get when all of the black squares turn to confetti. Blech! I get my rush from solving a Saturday puzzle with no help. I could have solved this while UNDER anesthesia. Either the NYT needs to ame a New Year’s resolution for no more GoT refs. Or I am going to have to resolve to watch it. And I ain’t going to watch it. For spite. Holy cow. OVERHILLANDDALE? Went with Terra Firma as my only early goof but quickly recovered.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the puzzle on the app, with a PARTY surprise at the end! Slight letdown from yesterday's RW high, but really nicely done. Same stumbles as Rex/Conrad, but never felt outcome was in doubt. Kind of felt like a Sunday overall
ReplyDelete100% agree with Rex. I'm frankly annoyed by how easy this was. I look forward all week to a Saturday struggle and this was a total letdown. I'm going to need to dig into the NYT archives to find a proper Saturday to do, now. Gripe, moan...
ReplyDelete20A- Coat named for an Irish Province. FIFY
ReplyDeleteThis played like a relatively easy Friday for me, definitely not like a Saturday. The grid was novel,which was nice, but using the NYT app ruined it for me since some of the edge entries with the circles appeared unclued. I had to guess at the circled letters (like the T in PARTY) and since the clue for that word literally looked like < >, I had no idea what the theme was. It turns out if you keep tapping different letters in the grid eventually an actual clue is revealed, but how ridiculous is their app programming? I will also add that one reason it was pretty easy was the significant amount of short crosswordese that could be guessed and helped with the longer fill. That’s not a good reason for an easy puzzle.
ReplyDeleteTook quite a while to put anything in the grid - my entry was REHAB confirmed by ERITREAN.
ReplyDeleteTook forever to see JUNKER and DJ MIC (not knowing DRE). Kept thinking clUNKER either as a turning entry or a rebus. Theme really helped as I could fill in the I in DJ MIC.
But only one overwrite today: GULly before GULch.
I don't know the count, but during the solve this puzzle felt like it was drowning in proper names and obscurities (EFREM, MEESE, DRE, ITINA, IRABU, IRENA, ERL, KHAL, etc.), and did certainly not play easy for me.
Oh, gorgeous grid design, with a floaty feel. It reminds me of one of my favorite grid designs of all time, which had, IMO, the same floaty feel, the 06/18/16 grid by Todd Gross – ( https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2016/06/18 ) -- worth a look…
ReplyDeleteThose confetti squares in today’s puzzle may seem randomly placed, but they’re not – this is a symmetrical grid!
I loved running across some sweet devilish cluing, such as the clues for PLOT, CANOE, AQUA, POETS, and the terrific double-punny [Strips in a club] for BACON. I loved the parade of schwa enders: TABLA, AQUA, IRENA, I TINA, ERRATA, AQUILA, and COTTA (for which I initially entered FIRMA). And I loved the festive explosion of confetti at the end, in the app.
Wishing all here a buoyant New Year’s Eve, and especially, a year ahead that you can look back on with a smile.
And thank you, Simeon, for your out-of-the box party-in-a-box, which set me bounding into the day!
Bad luck for Simeon and the NYT that New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday this year. I’m sure it would be impossible to expand the single-black-squares layout to a Sunday size. I would have liked this puzzle much better on a Thursday - agree with feeling cheated out of my Saturday challenge.
ReplyDeleteBut some really nice cluing upped the difficulty level a bit and made me smile. “Strips in a club” for BACON is so good that I suspect it’s not original. (@Lewis?) If it is a first, it’s brilliant. When I read that clue, I knew it wouldn’t be a strip-tease kind of answer, but I was completely fooled by “Craft at camp” (CANOE) and “Gig components” (MEGS). I confidently put in sEtS there (hi, @Conrad). I also liked “What may come before further notice” for UNTIL.
Never heard of IRABU and misspelled EBAN and EFREM as EBeN and EFRaM at first They helpfully cleared their throats and prompted me to switch their final vowels. Did not know the fun fact about PELE. Wonder if he played for both sides *at the same time*. That would be fun.
Did any other app solvers have a strange issue where the clues for some of the answers with circled letters just disappeared at some point? It happened for me with RECON and MEESE. I touched on them and got blanks, then when I came back to them, the clues were there. Strange.
Yes! The clues-disappearing issue happened to me (solving in NYTimes games app), and only on the clues with a circle in the answer. When I went to look at the clues in “list” view, they were all there. Very weird!
DeleteI think it was the app getting confused by the lack of "down" answer on the circled squares. When I clicked on a different letter it went back to "across" and showed up
DeleteExpressionist is a term.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've ever seen expressionistic.
Lots of chances to get caught on the proper names in this puzzle - I think the last one for me was Efram/Efrem.
Clunker AND hard for me, almost double my average Saturday and triple my best. Easily my least favorite of the year.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as I opened it, I knew it was not going to be good. Oh well. CUTE pics. Let’s just do this all year!!
ReplyDeleteAs I was working my way through the grid, I thought to myself “This has a Rex Rant written all over it”. I’ll be generous during the holiday season and say that they at least they deserve credit for the unusual but not overly cryptic gimmick and the technology-play on the app actually impressed for once. I can’t speak to what the solve was like on paper, although I’ll guess that it would be difficult to create some real pizzazz in newsprint.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was an interesting contrast that yesterday we shot out of the gate at 1A with a witty clue for OWES, and today we get the name of a character from a TV show; so we jump right off the cliff from clever and creative to boring and trivial. I’m older than dirt, so I suspect that Shortz’s tenure at the Times shall exceed my length of stay in this little corner of our universe, but boy it would be interesting to see what things might evolve to after a changing of the guard. Personally, I’d like to see them give it to Rex’s friend Rachel. See creates good puzzles herself and in collaboration with others, offers insightful commentary and is certainly familiar with the nitty gritty of the Shortz era. What an adventure that would be for about the first year after she takes over.
I agree with Southside Johnny that Rachel makes good puzzles.
DeleteI did it on paper but I liked Simeon Seigel’s puzzle anyway.
What an utter delight! The online solving experience was colorful and amusing and I can’t say I minded an easier Saturday solve.
ReplyDelete@wanderlust -- "Strips" has been often punned on in BACON clues, but this is the first time the pun on club has entered the equation, not just in the NYT but in all the major venues. IMO, because of that, this his an original clue.
ReplyDeleteThank you, SIR! It’s a delightful clue.
DeleteHaving to cheat and Google at least three proper names I've never heard of kind of ruins it, but I was almost 17 minutes faster than my average Saturday time. Which shocked me. Having to Google makes me want to flip tables and puts it in my head that it's hard or challenging. But the time doesn't lie. It wasn't hard so much as obnoxious.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeletePuz was thorny, here. Ended up with a relatively quick time for me, though. Weird how that happens. When I first looked at the grid, I said "Holy moly! This is gonna take forever!" But my Saturday Scaries unded up unwarranted.
Got the CONFETTI pieces in the Blockers upon puz completion. They are just there, no animation. C'mon NYT, I want them spinning, or something! 😁 At least they're multi-colored.
My mini-streak was at 13 puzs in a row, trying to keep it chugging. When done, got the infamous "Close, but at least one thing is wrong!" message (or whatever nice way it says you messed up). Went back through, and again found my wrongness. Man, I'm on a roll with this! Had TeRRAGON/eQUILA. Had a suspicion when I put that E in there that it was wrong. Streak now at 14, tying my previous streak record. #Humblebrag.
So, Happy Eve Eve. 2024 is a-comin! Good lord, how is it 2024 already... And where are the flying cars?
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Sorry but is Ulster no longer a province lol? Or is the distinction between being part of Ireland vs. the UK?
ReplyDeleteIncredible mistake to let in and one that will certainly anger many solvers
DeleteAbout ULSTER.
DeleteThe word was applied to the coat when the whole island was a colony of the UK. The area around Belfast, then majority Protestant (descendants of Scottish immigrants) was called Ulster by the British . When the Irish independent state was created, that area was carved out of Ireland and referred to as Northern Ireland and sometimes Ulster and remained with the UK.
The Irish always seem to refer to subdivisions of their country as counties as in County Mayo. My understanding is that the Irish consider the North East of the Island as also divided into counties (Some of these counties were split by the new border created in the 1920’s.) The clue uses the word “province “ to refer to the majority Protestant are of Ulster , which the Catholic Irish never believed rightfully existed at all! But in terms of political reality, there is nothing wrong with the clue.
BTW shortly, there will be more Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland. That will make the Protestants very angry.
Sir, respectfully, you have no idea what you are talking about. Ulster previously and currently refers to nine specific counties of Ireland. Regardless of any politically defined geographies, Ulster is a modern-usage term that includes these counties. Your opining here is off the mark, and your discussions of how "the Irish always seem to refer to subdivisions" is just plain offensive. Please feel free to not engage on this topic in the future if it is not one that you are well read on.
DeleteFOUR ACES is not a "very good hand to be dealt." It's a fantastic hand to be dealt.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this quite a bit. Played harder for me than Rex, due to some obscure names (EBAN, IRABU, EFREM) and some mistakes (NED for TED, IMpressionistic for EXpressionistic, etc.). The grid with the full length/width answers was cute. The symmetrical grid and careful placement of the CONFETTI letters is a nice feat. I agree that the ultimate PARTY payoff was a bit of a letdown. All in all a fun Saturday (that wasn't too easy for me).
ReplyDeleteVery easy but no whoosh
ReplyDeleteThis was a challenge to me that was doable with Googling DRE and IRABU. Impressed by XII and BACON, lost time with Gorge and GULch before GULLY and Radar instead of RECON (leaving me with rED as an Edward, supposedly a redheaded one. Why are NED and tED nicknames anyway).
ReplyDeleteThought BASIE would be in Jazz, not Blues, HOF but overall, consider it a fun, fair challenge with a little seasonal visual pop at the end.
Many thanks to @kitshef for explantion of how to access past Universal Crosswords including Thursday’s @Nancy’s. You can find it on Friday’s blog at 7:57 pm.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Solved it after a long struggle. I had "exhibitionistic"instead of EXPRESSIONISTIC, which obviously caused a huge problem. I didn[t know DRE, so the NW caused trouble. And I knew the name "Irene" meant "peace," but took a while (too long) to figure out IRENA.
ReplyDeleteThis oyezle was easy to lovers of popular culture. I'm not in that category, so I found it hard.
This might have played easier if it didn't rely on some really obscure as hell trivia in a few tight spots.
ReplyDeleteMEESE? Anyone under 50 won't even have a vague recollection of this clown anymore. Oh, he resigned during the Wedtech scandal? Well since the Wedtech scandal we've had at least sixty fifty hundred nine GOP scandals, who can even keep them straight anymore.
EBAN? EFREM? Another couple of people whose major accomplishments now lie well in the past, and weren't exactly household names to begin with.
IRABU? Ah yes, with a 34-35 lifetime record over a span of a whopping 5 years in MLB, who isn't having daily conversations about him 20 years after he left the major league game.
But hey, I guess it's a Saturday, so make the puzzle harder by not bothering to polish the fill, and just leave random strings in here and saying "I guess I'm stuck with MEESE/EBAN/EFREM/IRABU, maybe I can just look these 'words' up and see if anything works for a clue!" Again we're back to "who are various people who have never been in my kitchen."
Disappointing.
@Nancy: I really enjoyed your excellent Universal puzzle. Lots of fun, great theme and cluing . Thanks to @kitshef for informing how to do past day’s puzzles.
ReplyDeleteIt's not your puzzle. It's for ALL of us.
ReplyDeleteAfter a long holiday break that included a non-CoVid virus of some kind, I’m back to working the puzzle early enough to comment. I KNEW @Rex wouldn’t like this puzzle much and, for once, I guessed some of the reasons why. I had every do-over that he did and a few more. I disagree with his assessment of difficulty, because for me, it was a mixture of very hard and extremely easy. Some clever clueing, with BACON being top of the griddle.
ReplyDeleteI HAVE watched Blackish and enjoyed it, but I don’t watch anything religiously anymore, or I tire of the particular shtick in the show. Anyway, I thought the dad’s name was Trey and not DRE, like our usual xword doctor of rap.
Thank goodness I’ve been doing the Worldle puzzle for a while. I basically start out honest, then cheat like hell referring to a world map. Point is, I use it to hammer into my brain world countries and their position next to and near others. What’s my point? Eritrea was featured not long ago so ERITREAN was a huge help to me in puzzle. I call this the “cheat and learn” method of puzzling.
Barbara S - thanks for Spelling out the Bee terms yesterday.
ReplyDelete“QB=Queen Bee, also sometimes designated as "0" by the people who post scores here. Yup, that's getting every word. Never thought of Spelling Bee QBs sounding like NFL QBs. (Might have to start cheering for the Vikings from now on although it sounds pretty hopeless.)
-1, -2, etc. indicates how many words away from QB you were when you packed it in.
pg = I got the pangram(s) and I got to Genius
yd = yesterday
dbyd = day before yesterday
(@puzzlehoarder has used several of these abbreviations in his comment at 10:21.)”
Such cryptic initialisms! Why not say Th or F For dbyd or yd? Pan for pg? -1 or -2 again reminds me of Vikings football - the “yd”s every predictable first down rush loses.
And how much time per puzzle does it take for the QBs on here? Can’t IMAGINE getting all the words - I’m typically a Great, Amazing or Genius but other times a Nice. Like today (td - another football term!). Stuck on 15 words, probably -60 from a KB (masc) completion).
I typically give it 10 minutes and consistently miss a lot of obvious short words but so many of the terms are well beyond my knowledge. So all you QBs, what are your time ranges in achieving perfection? Do you use OED?
Hey, is there a Spelling Bee solver app where you just dump the letters in and out come the possibilities? No, I have a sliding scale of Googling a crossword PPP now and again, but that would REALLY be CHEATING! :)
So breezy I thought I had gotten smarter. I didn't solve in any order, just kept filling in what I knew and by the time I hit bottom the crosses made words and phrases appear to me above.
ReplyDeleteA barrel of bolts is a BUNKER? DUNKER? HUNKER? JUNKER? SUNKER? For me this clue was a clunker.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course I didn't know the TV "Dad".
Also, I knew it was some kind of MIC, but what kind?
Needless to say I did not finish the NW corner.
Other than that, finishable, but odd. Even I, visually oblivious as I tend to be, couldn't help noticing that something seemed Very, Very Wrong about the grid. When you've been looking at crossword grids for all those decades and then you see one that Doesn't Fit At All, you tend to wonder why.
Oh, I see. Unchecked squares. This breaks all the rules of puzzledom, so the explanation better be good.
I didn't think it was all that good. Did you?
The one bonus is that for some reason I can't explain, the grid design tends to make the 15-letter answers look unusually long. I suppose someone who dabbles in Optics and Optical Art could explain it.
I input the last answer, started reading the circled letters left-to-right, top-to-bottom, no dice. Reread the revealer, started reading clockwise and… confetti? It may as well have been “Drink your Ovaltine.”
ReplyDeleteWhat is the point of a themed puzzle on a Saturday right before New Years Eve? Sunday is the actual eve and is the natural day for a theme like this. It makes me wonder what they'll follow this up with tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteAs for today's solve it was less than a minute more than yesterday's push over. It may have been the easiest Saturday I've ever done.
yd -0, @okanaganer and @ Barbara S good luck with the coming year's SB
Can we use some of that nice confetti to celebrate Sandy Koufax's 88th birthday today? Happy Birthday SK!
ReplyDeleteSandy gained renown in the Jewish community for refusing to pitch the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. He also skipped games for a Passover Seder one year, three times for the Jewish New Year, and he once left the mound mid-game when his mother reminded him it was his cousin Lenny's bar-mitzvah, which he raced to attend while still in uniform. Alright, I made that last part up, but the rest is true.
Koufax's first wife was Anne Widmark, daughter of actor Richard. He married three times but has no children. He has a step-daughter via his current wife and two step-grandchildren, who, I'm guessing, throw pretty wicked curveballs.
Thanks to @Rex for suggesting that the black squares, rather than the circled letters, represent the scattering of CONFETTI - and for the colorful representation in his post. Makes a lot more sense to me. Also thanks to @Simon Siegel for the only PARTY I'll have this weekend, as I'm in a "Why would anyone stay up until midnight and then feel terrible the next day?" household.
ReplyDeletePARTY-time for me, grid-wise: writing in OVER HILL AND DALE, ULSTER, and TARRAGON and smiling at the misdirects for BACON and MEGS. Do-overs: Jalopy, Gorge, bENT. No idea: DRE, IRABU, KHAL, FOUR ACES.
Can't remember if I've ever been to a PARTY that included CONFETTI. I associate CONFETTI with sporting events or political rallies or parades. I do remember the little poppers shaped like champagne bottles that made a loud pop and shot out a colorful bit of paper streamer when you pulled their strings.
ReplyDeletePuzzle played more Medium here, mostly for the proper names cited by others. A steady solve in roughly average time.
Thanks so much, @kitshef, for helping @ccredux track down my puzzle of the previous day. I certainly couldn't have done it! All those mysterious icons -- which you, btw, went to all the trouble of typing out-- and then pinpointing the mystery icon that takes you to my puzzle. And that's the trouble with all things computer-related and everything in cyberspace: WHO COULD POSSIBLY KNOW SUCH A THING UNLESS SOMEONE TOLD YOU IN ADVANCE??? It's certainly not guessable.
ReplyDeleteI've always said about computers: They can perform 257,953 different functions and they don't do any two of them the same way.
Rant over. Thanks again, @kitshef. And happy you enjoyed the puzzle @ccredux.
I thought the puzzle was fun, but what was most evocative to me, was the mention of the Fairie Queen. I thought immediately of A. Bartlett Giamatti. I was an English major at Yale, and the course I remember best, and most fondly was Bart Giamatti teaching the fairy queen. Sansjoy, Sansfoy and Sansloy, but Irena?. Bart was only a few years older than those of us in the class, but he was brilliant. One of many people at Yale who quickly convinced me that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. And later commissioner of baseball! Wow. Gone far too soon!!
ReplyDeleteHello from Oxford! We took an overnight flight; I was able to sleep, but my wife couldn't -- so now she's taking an afternoon nap while I'm staying up in an attempt to get over jet lag. So I did the puzzle on the Times website, as I have neither printer not a way to get the paper. As a result, I have no idea how hard it was, since anything is harder on the computer.
ReplyDeleteI guess we can add TERRA COTTA/firma to our growing list of kealoas, at least when it is clued as a fill-in-the-blank. I guessed wrong
I don't know anything about Game of Thrones, except what I have learned from crosswords. However, Drogo Baggins was the father of Frodo, hero of Lord of the Rings, so there's some bleeding between the two. (Actually, it's a medieval French name). Drogo never appears in person, but we hear how he and his wife drowned because they went out in a boat but Drogo's weight sank it.
I've got a spider solitaire app from Jacquie Lawson where solving the puzzle makes a rain of confetti fall down the screen -- so just changing the colors of the squares seemed a bit lame.
EFREM Zimbalist died in 1985, way before Ed MEESE resigned. I think I remember him only because his actor son of the same name was a big character in 77 Sunset Strip, which was also a long time ago.
I may be back Monday, who knows? Happy New Year, everyone!
@Wanderlust, @Lewis - "Strips in a Club?" was used in the Washington Post puzzle 6/27/2012 by Randall Hartman.
ReplyDeleteDidn't we have EBAN for Abba just this week, or maybe that was in the NYer?
ReplyDelete@Andrew - there are several online Anagram solvers that can help you out, although they give you way more words than are accepted. The word list is apparently culled from the crossword dictionary to help you have an idea of what is and isn't accepted. Also, there are grids that tell you how many words of which length and starting letter are used.
I thought this was different enough to be fun as a holiday-themed puzzle. Thanks Lewis for the balance of perspective today. I had a tougher time in the north, but managed to finish where I started and abandoned in the NE.
I wholeheartedly agree that this shouldn't have been a Saturday puzzle, but aside from that, I really enjoyed this one. A lot of the crosswordese and proper names were solved with lots and lots of crosses (such an interesting design!) and some of those difficult ones were solved only when I saw "confetti".
ReplyDeleteEfrem Zimbalist is definitely worth the trip to Wikipedia, and very crossworthy, if obscure to a general audience. Director of the Curtis Institute; both children famous actors, etc.
ReplyDeletebtw - it looks like there is some effort to keep Wikipedia from being bought and commercialized. Anyone have info about this?
I had no idea that NED was a nickname for Edward. I thought NED stood for Ned. Why add an extra letter to the beginning that isn't even part of your name when you can just be Ed? I'm gonna be Djoe for the new year. The D is silent. Or better yet, D'joe. That looks cool.
ReplyDeleteThe POETS squeaked into the Top 10 on New York's WMCA with this groove in 1966.
Joe Dipinto
DeleteFunny rant about Ted and Ned.
Nicknames are no more logical than English in general.
Like Nan for Ann , when these nicknames were created, people either found them easier to say or they just sounded better
Jack comes from Jacques (French James) yet we use it for John. And Ted is also used for Theodore. It did confuse me as a child when Edward Kennedy was called Ted.
The French actually use dj to represent our j sound, as in Django Reinhardt because their j is like our z in azure. That is why a lot of Arab names are spelled Dj because of the French colonial influence
There I was praising myself for finishing a Saturday puzzle (It happens less than I care to acknoweledge), and Rex savages the puzzle as "easy." Well, he is, of course, correct. Way too easy for a Saturday. BUt, I'll take it.
ReplyDeleteConfetti Party! Woo hoo. Cute graphic in the app. This puzzle dropped together just fine. Couple of random-letter starlets stood in the way (KHAL, IRABU, EFREM), but the long not-so-exciting phrases "wooshed" right in.
ReplyDeleteHand up for IMPRESSIONISTIC.
Uniclues:
1 The Doctor's junior rappers.
2 Jazz-hater's reluctant phrase when asked to Count aloud.
3 Making Chakapuli.
4 When skirts go tilting.
5 Really?! That's how Grantorto steals her land?
1 DRE RECON POETS
2 BASIE? I GUESS SO...
3 USING TARRAGON (~)
4 KILTS ERRATA T
5 O! PAWS AT IRENA!
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Breakfast food schmeared with schmaltz. ELTON JOHN BAGEL.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Definitely not your usual Saturday difficulty-wise. That's not to say I didn't have my problems with it like ERL, CERT & DJ MIC (which should've been a gimme). BASIE has been hanging out here a lot here
ReplyDeletelately. But all in all, I enjoyed the respite from the usual Saturday.
Thanks, Simeon!
OVER HILL AND DALE....Aren't you just cute.
ReplyDeleteMy source of intelligence is hoping that brain cells that popped during my youth were still floating around. They were.
So I had a couple of lookie loo's. IRABU, you were my first. DJ MIC you placed second and my finale was IRENA. Three for a Saturday ain't bad for me.
I arrived at my PARTY and wondered what event was going to happen. HMMM. I have to do some clock work thingie here to figure this out. The circles actually helped me get CONFETTI . So what? you say.....I needed to dance with the C in RECON and the N in TONED. Good gravy, I stared at those two clues so long that I finally went looking for a margarita.
Of course it's CONFETTI. I GUESS my FOUR ACES paid off.
My ONCE IN A LIFETIME journey is to be able to sky dive with someone who looks like Jason Momoa. Imagine him holding on to you while you drop down to earth. I once saw this picture of an 80 year old woman doing it and her dentures flew out.... Happily, I'm not yet 80 nor should I worry if any teeth might disappear. I'm not OVER the HILL yet!.
@Hartley 8:51. Nice to see you back again!
I wonder what the Vegas Crossword betting books had as the over/under on OVERHILLANDDALE crossing UNDER in today's puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThe colorful reveal in the app gave me an uncontrolled sudden repetitive muscle movement, but I couldn't think of what such a phenomenon is called. Mrs. EGS came to the rescue by reminding me that the EXPRESSIONISTIC. Speaking of Mrs. EGS, she and I are going to an Indian supper and drumming club for New Years Eve. We've reserved a TABLA for two. Not sure if it's the kind of place where USING Auld Lang Syne, but it should be funner than last year, when we just PAWSAT our son's dog.
I'll be brief: fun puzzle. That's ITINA nutshell. Thanks, Simeon Seigel.
Thanks for the Giamatti note, @Richard.
ReplyDeleteIf you've never heard him read his beautiful paean to baseball, you're in for a treat.
here
Hi Avi. I was born in and lived in Summit! ( SHS ‘64.) Now in California, but I miss NJ. Thanks for your comment re Prof Giamatti. Will check out the Icelandic noir. Regards, Richard
DeleteI looked at my printout of this and thought "Wow, all those little black squares look just like CONFETTI! I wonder if that will show up in the puzzle anywhere?"
ReplyDeleteActually, no, no I didn't, but looking at OFL's colorful picture of the app version is one of the few times that made me wish I'd solved it that way. As it was, I kept running into a little black square in an annoying place. But it turned out to be pretty easy, except for the names, and I actually needed the CONFETTI gimmick to change TED to NED. Ditto for finally seeing good old ELAINE who got me to IRENA and EFREM. I am old enough to remember Ed MEESE, who even looked like a crook. KHAL, though... I did try reading GOT but even the book was too violent for me.
Favorite thing was the triple S in IGUESSSO. Cool.
So-so Saturday, SS. Some fun clues but a tad too easy for a Saturday. Thanks for a fair amount of fun, and on to the Stumper.
Finished a Saturday puzzle in record time and felt almost as good as I did this past Thursday when the NYTimes published another of my letters. Until I read Rex’s write up and was sadly deflated.
ReplyDeleteThx Simeon; enjoying the challenge, so far! 😊
ReplyDeleteDowns-o in progress (1 hr in).
Trying to nail down a tricky NE corner. Also, not quite grokking the circled cells, I'm at sea wrt 63A, PAR_Y.
One other issue is wanting IRENE at 49D, but 62A wants to be EL NINO, so I'm left with IRENN for the name?? Also, not sure of KHAL at 61A, but the downs seem solid.
Attempting to come up with some rationale for the circled cells, I get P_INTF_E.
Seems most unusual to have a gimmick on a Sat puz! Will give it some more thot before checking the crosses. 🤔
Thx @Rex for the link yd to Robyn's interview. It was very enlightening! :)
___
Finally nailed the Thurs NYT puz (downs-o at just over 5 1/2 hrs) with absolutely no idea of what the theme might be.
Michael Lieberman's NYT PandA was relatively easy, but plenty of 'punny' fun! :)
On to Matthew Sewell's Sat. Stumper. 🤞, with Balton & Stewart's NYT acrostic in the wings for tm.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
CONFETTI from the NYT app was the highlight today: colorful and creative use of the technology for online solvers. Paper solvers like my wife missed the one explosion of delight. Agreed that the publication date should have been the 31st, but still fun.
ReplyDeleteI only check Rex's blog now and then, especially when I think he'll slam the puzzle. Not disappointed today. This one deserved it!
ReplyDeleteHad ONCEINABLUEMOON before Once in a lifetime, since the former is literally an expression for a very rare occurrence and the latter is not. Also had IMPRESSIONISTIC before Expressionistic. But what really got me was CANOE for "Craft at camp." How is Canoe a craft? Canoeing might make sense, at a stretch, but just Canoe? How is that a craft? Is it a really bad play on C-raft? There are so many better ways to clue Canoe. I can clue canoe, can you?
ReplyDeletecanoe is a water-craft
DeleteCraft as in boat.
DeletePhotomatte
DeleteOnce in a lifetime is very much an expression. As in innumerable ads : once in a lifetime experience! Etc.
I thought of your answer first but I suppose once in a lifetime is rarer still.
I also thought of Etsy type craft until I saw they meant boat.
Definitely mid-week easy. The CONFETTI grid was worth the difficulty trade off for me. Liked it more than @Rex did.
ReplyDeleteMajor erasure - Gorge>Gully>GULCH
Minor erasure - tAs before PAS
Major WOE - KHAL - I too will never watch GOT.
The grid construction is quite impressive, with bonus CONFETTI, so I appreciated the puzzle. Helped to know crosswordese: RUE, EFRAM, MEESE. One more day of pet pics... ALAS!
ReplyDelete@Photomatte
ReplyDeleteSee definition #5.
Might be easy if one is a long time solver, incredibly hard if not up on proper noun crosswordese (especially with naticks abound - eg, E*an / *asie)
DeleteGreat puzzle. Maybe you'll find joy in 2024, Rex.
ReplyDeleteRex is a total party pooper.
DeleteAs near as some Googling and life experience tell me, a DJ MIC as "headgear" isn't a thing.
ReplyDeleteLots of folks do wear hands-free headset mics, like Penny* from Time/Life books. A DJ's headgear is pretty exclusively headphones.
Anyway, this was an impressive feat of construction. And it was fun to see the blocks change to confetti. But why not publish this Thursday? Especially since this week's Thursday was probably a Wednesday. It wasn't hard except for the silly PPP, which mostly showed up in the "uncrossed" squares.
*This reference is almost as current as the PPP answers in today's grid
If you told me that one of this week’s puzzles would get a “too easy” rant, I would have bet on it being Friday’s resistance-free offering.
ReplyDeleteFor today, I did myself no favours by filling in tED and imPRESSIONISTIC. The latter sank me in the northeast corner for a long time and also made it hard to see the confetti theme answer. Others have already mentioned the fact that two of the uncrossed letters were proper nouns (and not exactly current references), which also made cracking the theme the trickiest part of the puzzle for me.
@JoeD 11:22a - if we stick with the recent puzzle loving GOT we get another variant with NED Stark whose given name is Eddard.
ReplyDeleteBtw - that Poets cut is fantastic. I don’t think I know anything else from them?
Back in the 1990s I had a screen saver called Shotgun. Every few seconds it would blow more holes in your screen, with or without sound. That is what I thought of when I opened the puzzle. And that must have scared me, so I found the puzzle very challenging for a few minutes, then it got easier and in the end it was only 20 minutes though it seemed a lot longer!
ReplyDeleteTerra FIRMA before COTTA. And I wanted CLUNKER instead of JUNKER but too long. (Here in Canada we also use BEATER which is short for "winter beater"; some people drive a different car in winter to save their "good" car.)
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0; 7 day streak.
@Andrew: I play on the computer and use a Javascript hack which tells me how many words there are and sorts them by length; it's a minor cheat which makes it more enjoyable and getting to QB easier. (The NYT kindly lists all the answers in their Javascript which you can view if you enable Developer Tools.) To get to Genius takes me from 2 to 10 minutes depending on the number of words. Then I typically come back a couple of times later in the day until I get to QB or get tired.]
Confetti-style black squares! Themed SatPuz! Different. Like different. thUmbswaaaayUp.
ReplyDeletePARTY was a kinda so-so semi-revealer, I'd grant. But The Circles were the true revealer, here.
I thought it was a tough Wed/ThursPuz level solvequest, due to some pretty frisky clues. Exsample: {Twists can thicken it} = PLOT. Exsample II: {Exhausting} = USING.
And a few no-knows, headed up by whoever the djmic KHAL is. M&A proposes a future xword KHAL CAN policy, for that dude.
OTOH: Some clues were quite neighborly. Moocowsample: {Attire for many bagpipe players} = KILTS.
Nice ITINA rememberance, as she was cool and just recently passed on.
I'da got here to comment sooner, but that Ronda cat's eyes plumb hypnotized the snot outta m&e for about an hour.
staff weeject pick: XII. Nice New Year's clue.
some fave confetti-infested moments: DJMIC [har. A debut entry, not too surprisinly]. EXPRESSIONIST(IC). ONCEINALIFETIME. OVEHILLANDDALE. IGUESSSO. JUNKER [wanted BEATER, for my first guessso].
Thanx for throwin the PARTY all over the puzgrid, Mr. Seigel dude. Always envious of folks who get to have a rare themed SatPuz.
Masked & Anonym007Us
**gruntz**
And, yep -- Happy New Year's Eve Eve!
Fairly flowy until I got to the DRAPES/DALE section. I couldn't decide if the expression was vALE or DALE and originally had EeL king, because wtf is an ERL king? IRiNA before IRENA didn't help. Little resistance anywhere else. Didn't really get the CONFETTI visual at all.
ReplyDeletelike @southside i expected a bitter tirade today and instead it was a very generous rant. i rarely agree with the harsh rants and it is notable that i found this to be one of the two puzzles that i hated doing this year. i think we know what the other recent one was. its not even a "crossword" puzzle because the words dont feel like they are crossing each other while solving. everywhere you turn there is another 3 letter word, and the long answers arent fun when they are so disjointed - like a really bad combover. im glad it was so easy so that i didnt have to deal with it as long as i usually do on saturday. and i also feel robbed of my favorite day of the week.
ReplyDeleteMy app didn’t give me the colorful confetti, just the plain old black squares. Accordingly, the puzzle was just a bit of a slog.
ReplyDelete@kitshef -- Good catch! I missed it my first pass through my references, but at this go-around I found "Strips in a club?", but it was New York Sun on 10/25/06. Where did you get the Washington Post clue? It might be from a reference I don't have, and should get!
ReplyDeleteFor me, between Wed-Thurs in terms of difficulty. Hadn't seen EFREM in a puzzle in a long time, if ever, so that was a little tough. I remember Hideki Irabu from when he played (RIP), which was a big help. Needed all four crossers to get KHAL.
ReplyDeleteThemed Saturdays should be outlawed by Congress, though there are a number of other things Congress should do first, e.g. Medicare for all, universal parental leave and pre-K, strengthening rather than sabotaging the Voting Rights act, strengthening rather than eviscerating the separation of church and state, convicting after impeachment aspiring fascists when they are egregiously guilty of plotting coups against the U.S. and thus banning them from public office for life, to name a few. It was also, except for a couple of near-naticks, ("ERL, "KHAL"; I've never watched GOT and never plan to), very easy for a Saturday. And the theme/revealer was (were?), as Rex says, anticlimactic and ill-timed. That said, I disagree with Rex about a few things. Yes, it's been many years since our nonpareil queen of song Tina Turner (still mourning her passing, which happened early this year) published her memoir, but Tina and her book are timeless and immortal, and here her memoir is crossed with another nonpareil immortal legend of American music (not just Black American music; ALL American music- to a large extent all or most American music that is memorable has Black roots or at least connections), the incomparable kid from Red Bank, NJ, Count Basie, so I'm fully OK with that part of the fill. Could have done without Edwin Meese, the proto-Bill Barr who furthered the extremist agenda of HIS right-wing president (Reagan), but you can't have everything, I guess. I know it's a bit early, but I usually don't complete the Sunday puzzle (in print) until about Wednesday, so Happy (and, let's hope, fascism-free) 2024 to Rex and everyone.
ReplyDeleteI was wowed by the six grid spanners with the three Downs intersecting with the three Acrosses. Or vice versa. Either way, that means that three letters of each potential grid spanner are predetermined and that's a major construcioneering (M&A™) hurdle to clear. So yeah, just wow!
ReplyDeleteI also thought 36A "Rarer than rare" would be ONCE IN A BLUE NOON. It fit, at least in letter count. Maybe that would be just "Rare" and ONCE IN A LIFETIME up that to "Rarer than rare".
I remember Ed Meese from that political scandal-ridden era. (Aren't they all?!) After his resignation he proudly proclaimed that "I remain unindicted". Bet there are a few contemporary pols who wish that they could say that.
43A TARRAGON reminded me of an ending to a "Seinfeld" episode. Here's a 2:11 YouTube clip of that "Is it TARRAGON or is it dill?" scene.
@Anoa 3:41...Thanks for THAT "Seinfeld" episode. Tarragon vs Dill..... Sorta like Ketchup vs mustard....
ReplyDelete@Lewis - crosswordtracker.com is where I saw the WaPo use. It also has three other uses:
ReplyDelete- the New York Sun puzzle you found
- The Pat Sajak Letter Code crossword of 3/14/2012
- USA Today on 2/11/2010.
I didn't know if you would consider any of those as 'major venues', but I was pretty sure the Washington Post qualified.
USA Today would qualify now, I'd guess. But 2010 was during the plagiarism era at USA Today.
Definite two-way Kealoa: 32D: could have been FIRMA or COTTA....and when you tried to verify your choice with 43A -- you could have had TARRAGON or MARJORAM! (29D -- ITINA confirmed which was which.)
ReplyDelete@kitshef -- thank you!
ReplyDelete@Son Volt – I never found much info on the Poets. The record label was in New York so I assume they were a local group. It looks like another single or two may have been released that went nowhere. I don't remember "She Blew A Good Thing" from when it charted since I rarely listened to WMCA; I only heard it much later on Felix Hernandez's Rhythm Revue show on WBGO.
ReplyDelete@D'Joe
ReplyDeleteI found the Acrostic easy. You?
@JC66 – I started the acrostic late and didn't get very far – only three answers I'm sure of, plus I see possibilities for others. I'll finish it tomorrow. (Actually, it's "today" at this hour.)
DeleteWhy is bacon strips at a club? I get the strips part, but what club? Cause it looks like wood? I don’t get that clue.
ReplyDeleteClub sandwich
DeleteOoohhhh right duh. Thank you
DeleteEnjoyed the puzz.
ReplyDeleteRex, thanks for the continuing Christmas pet gallery and the cute/clever captions …
The elderly Brittany tolerating the antler headgear is our lovely Maggie. She never would have put up with that in her youth :)
While this did actually play fast, it didn't feel like it because of the slog of the old crosswordese and proper nouns. I'm not as down on the theme as Rex -- my big complaint is the fill!
ReplyDeleteThis was SO difficult for me! I ended up having to use autocheck and still it took me forever. I’m so surprised that everyone found it easy - I thought it was clunky and difficult. Everything else lately has been pretty easy so this was a shock to my system. However, I will say that I might be speaking from a different perspective as everyone else…I’m a late millennial/older gen-z cusp, so the older references really weren’t doing it for me. Either way, definitely not my favorite and not much fun, even with the app giving me confetti at the end.
ReplyDeleteShocker! An impossible trivia fest packed with proper nouns and obscure idioms, and Rex of course calls it easy.
ReplyDeleteName, name, name, brand name, brand name, name, name, name. . . UGH.
ReplyDeleteYet another mediocre offering. Does anyone remember when the NYT crossword was good?
ReplyDeleteI wanted DJ something for one down, let it go, and finally let it back in to finish the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteLove it when I get those long answers.
Anon 10:13 - you do better. I'm in awe of all constructors.
Diana, LIW
FOUR RUNNER
ReplyDeleteIGUESS EFREM PAWSAT IRENA,
with TARRAGON, he WENT AND seen her,
AND he is USING ELAINE
OVER AND OVER AGAIN,
but he'll DROPPER to PARTY with TINA.
--- SIR DALE HILL
Der ErlKonig is a fantastic song (leider) by Franz Schubert. Check it out. And Basie is not a blues guy.
ReplyDeleteBig inkblot in the NW: nigeRiAN, and a six-letter word for bucket of bolts starting with J...why, JALOPY, of course! That was a huge fooler. But for those, this was indeed an out-of-place Saturday, themed (OK, it was 12/30) and too easy.
ReplyDeleteSome weird names--KHAL, IRENA--but fairly crossed. All the grid-spanners plunked down whooshingly, which helped a lot. Birdie.
Wordle par.
Congrats to Wyndham Clark, who came out of the woodwork to fire a 60 at Pebble. That's some shootin', cowboy.
I am in awe of good constructors. Bad costructors, not so much. They have no business being published in the NYT.
ReplyDeleteFirst comment vaporized. Constuction feat, too easy.
ReplyDeleteWordle birdie, but a prefix not a word.