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Compulsory payments of old / SUN 12-3-23 / Rough fabric with a loose weave / Indian dish of potatoes and cauliflower / Port city in Algeria / Lasting for an immeasurable time span / Prompt from the chronically forgetful / Evergreen tree with fragrant bark / They're seen on the flags of Bhutan and Wales / Acronymic devices in atomic clocks and radio telescopes / Super-sillyous? / Mainstay of a sci-fi defense system / Die-hard fan in modern lingo / Largest of the lagomorphs
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Constructor: Tracy Bennett
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: OSWALD (37A: ___ the Lucky Rabbit, character in early Disney shorts) —
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (also known as Oswald the Rabbit, Oswald Rabbit, or simply Oswald) is an animated cartoon character created in 1927 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks for Universal Pictures. He starred in several animated short films released to theaters from 1927 to 1938. Twenty-seven animated Oswald shorts were produced at the Walt Disney Studio.[8] After the control of Oswald's character was taken in 1928, Disney created a new character similar in appearance to Oswald as a replacement: Mickey Mouse, who went on to become one of the most famous cartoon characters in the world.
In 2003, Buena Vista Games pitched a concept for an Oswald-themed video game to then-Disney President and future-CEO Bob Iger, who became committed to acquiring the rights to Oswald. In 2006, The Walt Disney Company acquired the trademark of Oswald (with NBCUniversal effectively trading Oswald for the services of Al Michaels as play-by-play announcer on NBC Sunday Night Football). [ed: what the!?] (wikipedia)
• • •
You know what's a great phrase: TAKE A POWDER! That and "Take the air!" which now mostly means just "go outdoors," but which used to (ca. 1920s) mean "beat it!" or "leave!" just like TAKE A POWDER. I live for hardboiled slang, old-movie slang, TRUMAN-ERA slang. It's great. My favorite thing in the puzzle by far. Less (far less) enamored with PR TALK (41A: "Media impressions," "influencer marketing," etc., informally). The "TALK" part just felt so arbitrary. And oof the "T" crossed the horrid DETS (which I had as TECS at first) (33D: Investigators, Abbr.). That NE corner was probably the hardest part for me, in that I couldn't make any of the Acrosses work despite having the first first three letters of all of them. One issue was that I had OREN instead of ORAN (16D: Port city in Algeria). And I just watched Casablanca, too! Pretty sure they mention it. Really thought it was OREN. What Is OREN Then!? Gah, looks like it's just a name. ORAN is the place. You'd think I'd know that by now, ORAN being rather old-school crosswordese. Anyway, CLONING / AIRASIA / DRAGONS, none of them would go Across, so I had to come at the corner from below, which is where all the PR TALK and DETS were. The one other part of the puzzle where I really struggled was when I confidently went TITLED / GIGS at 72A: Given the name / 69D: Units of RAM, for short. Doesn't RAM come in GIGS? Yes, yes it does. Anyway, TITLED / GIGS absolutely paralyzed me. Getting from TITLED to the (much worse) TERMED was the big struggle of the day. Thankfully, my knowledge of Truman's presidential term helped me finally dislodge TERMED and get back on my feet again.
I had trouble with the GOBI part of ALOO GOBI (63D: Indian dish of potatoes and cauliflower). RIFFLES is a silly word (92A: Leafs), but it had to be RIFFLES, not RUFFLES, so all the crosses on GOBI felt, ultimately, fair. Had some trouble also with the back ends of the Acrosses in the SE, particularly REMIND ME ___ (87A: Prompt from the chronically forgetful), and FANTASY ___ (93A: Set of books with maps, perhaps). REMIND ME ... LATER? FANTASY ... SPORTS? Wanted some kind of word for "atlas" but couldn't come up with one. SERIES ended up being a real let-down. 91A: Walk in place? feels kind of icky, or at least iffy, as a clue for FRONT ENTRANCE. You're using "Walk in" adjectivally, so it should technically be hyphenated, but ... once again, horseshoes / hand grenades / "?" clues. Close enough. If you just *hear* the clue, instead of read it, it's pretty clever.
Nothing else to say about this one, except I'm pretty pleased that I bothered to explain DLINE *and* OLINE yesterday. I hope that benefitted at least one person out there today (45A: QB-protecting group). See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. It's the last day of Peter Gordon's "B-t-Z Vwllss Crsswrds" Kickstarter, and since I love vowelless crosswords so much, I'm gonna repost my plug from a few weeks ago:
One of the great joys in my puzzle-solving life is when Fireball Crosswords decides (once a year?) to a do a vowelless crossword. These are regular crossword puzzles in every respect but one—no vowels appear in the grid. You just omit them when entering the answers. I find this extra challenge delightful. It also means I get more bang for my puzzling buck, because these puzzles generally take me a little longer to solve. So I am happy to see that Peter Gordon and Frank Longo have a Kickstarter going for "B-t-Z Vwllss Crsswrds"—"Twice a week for 13 weeks you’ll get a 9×11 crossword puzzle in which you enter only the consonants. The letter Y is not part of any answer. Each puzzle will use all 20 consonants." That's 26 puzzles by two of the best puzzlemakers in the country for just $14 (!?). Trust me, I am not steering you wrong here. Go do the sample Vowelless puzzle on their site right now if you're not sure what the no-vowels solving experience is like. If you are even a little bit of a puzzle junkie, I'll be surprised if you aren't hooked. Also makes a very affordable gift for the puzzle-lover in your life.
It's the gift-giving season, so treat yourself. Treat your puzzle-loving partner / kid / grandparent. And you can back Peter's long-running and popular "Fireball Newsflash Crosswords" while you're at it :)
P.P.S. Me to my wife just now: "I don't know how I knew the rabbit." Wife: "You teach comics, you know about animation..." Me: "Yeah, but I looked up the rabbit and I didn't really recognize it. I was picturing something more like Ha- ... oh my god, Harvey! OSWALD! Harvey OSWALD!"
P.P.S. … in which I claim victory! (from my inbox just now!):
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83 comments:
A: Listen punk. Da boss says you ain't been keepin' up wid yer MULCTS.
B: REMINDMEAGAIN, what are MULCTS?
A: They're what's TERMED compulsory payments of old. Youse wanna get MAULED?
B: CRIKEY, iLLBEAN IRANI with an IRONON ESTROGENPATCH before I have that kinda COIN!
A: That'll teach you not to BETSON.
@JoeDipinto's prayer while dutifully solving this Sunday themeless: Please God, free me from this EONIAN HELLSCAPE.
I've got to put in my two cents for EONIAN being the worst strrrrrrettttch for a semi-plausible word to avoid redoing a section of puzzle in the history of the NYTXW. And to have it show up in a themeless, where theme constraints aren't at play? It seems inanian, perhaps absurdian. Yes, I know from Google that it is a word, but it sure as heck isn't one that anybody ever has or will use, outside of dictionary compilers.
On the whole this puzzle was something. And that something was boring. I hope to never see another Sunday themeless. I'm also not favorably impressed that @Rex managed to put LeeHarvey OSWALD front and center of his write up. Given that it didn't relate to the puzzle at all, but rather to a stray synapse firing in his brain, it seems like a cruel thing for such a woke guy to bring up.
Rex you got me at the end of your post with the not so lucky Lee Harvey OSWALD. Slap in the face with a wet fish!
I actually didn't mind the themeless that much; nice looking grid at least. Some juicy 13 letter stacks. Where is Brendan Emmett Quigley these days?
Sometimes a short answer can have a big impact. For 69 down "Units of RAM" I thought MEGS or GIGS?... no contest: it has to be GIGS since this is the year 2023 and not the year 1993. So that led to 72 across being TITLED rather than TERMED. Seriously, MEGS? I remember in about 1992 at work, all our computers were stolen, and when the guy from the computer store was doing a quote for the replacements asked: "How much RAM do you need?" we immediately replied "8 MEGS". His response: "Oh, power users!" My current dirt cheap piece of merde Windows 10 computer has 1000 times as much as that. This clue was evidently written 30 years ago.
[Spelling Bee: Fri -1, Sat -1, yuck. One month ago I was in the middle of a 14 day QB streak.]
LMTR... Hey, it was workable, the PPP was not overwhelming, and there was a good bit of wit in the cluing, which kept it from being a slog. Sure, I prefer a good theme to a themeless, but every now and then a good themeless is a nice change of pace, and this one qualified, IMHO.
Psst! They’re/their typo in the second sentence! Thanks for all that you do.
I like it when puzzles trundle out words like MULCTS and CALUMNY. They're not the kind of words that come to mind just from the clues but with a few crosses you can dredge them up.
What I didn't care for was OOLALA clued with va va voom. That's as winch inducing, lampshade on the head square as it gets.
Did anyone else notice the reappearance of wink and HINT from yesterday's puzzle?
My one dnf was KARL for CARL. I don't think I've ever looked up the dictionary entries for CRIKEY and jeepers. That stuff is right up there with OOLALA.
yd -0
Medium-tough, but there was a lot of space to fill. Also Ent DOCTOR before EAR and MaimED before MAULED at up some nanoseconds. A nice change for a Sunday and a fun workout. Liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
Did not know RATINE.
Believe it or not, a word I had never heard before (MULCTS) also showed up today in the Washington Post crossword! (Punishes with a fine).
I like Sunday themelesses the way they do it at the Times, spreading it out so there are just a handful in a year. They are particular, too, about who makes them. Someone who would know told me a couple of years ago that they were by invitation only. And I’ve adored every one I’ve done. So, I’ve been won over on that score.
And this one, man, so quirky! Areas that filled in quickly. Areas I had to chisel at. Arts answers, science answers, the U-verse area (MULCTS, CALUMNY, JUNTA, TRUMAN, HURON), wackadoodles like CRIKEY and RIFFLES, lovely conversational answers like WHAT ELSE IS NEW, balanced by the more rarefied ones, such as CARL ORFF, HESSE, and TRANSFERRAL.
Plus, skill woven in. The gorgeous Patrick Berry grid design, coming in at 126 words, when the usual Sunday has 140, and yet so cleanly filled in. Clever cluing, such as [Walk in place?] for FRONT ENTRANCE and [Month that goes by fast] for RAMADAN. Freshness from 12 NYT debut answers, including REMIND ME AGAIN, WACKADOODLE, ALOO GOBI, and FIRST DEGREE.
Without a theme to constrain the non-theme squares, the constructor has a larger palette to draw from, and Tracy created a grab bag that certainly grabbed me; it felt to me like a work of crossword art, like I was being led through a secret world of treasures and delights. I’d like to give it a year, then do it again. Then return a year after that.
Thank you, Tracy. More, please. Brava!
Doesn't Tracey edit Wordle? Later... I'm going back to sleep.
relatively easy puzzle that just took time- Wednesday like- but I’ve never heard of crikey and foiled could just as easily been fooled- Riffles- was unusual too, since I always thought it was spelled like the weapon- but the downs made it clear.
Completely agree with the big guy on the shine of a Sunday sized themeless. It may be a fine offering but the scope and magnitude detract from the overall spark. The really fine entries like TAKE A POWDER or REMIND ME AGAIN are normalized by the sheer quantity of fill. The ugly stuff - and there’s plenty here - tend to be highlighted rather than treated as necessary glue.
Have a CIGAR
I liked RIFFLES and HELENA. Love a spicy ALOO GOBI - my wife makes it but her cauliflower ends up too mushy. MULCTS is a stretch but RATINE is classic crosswardese. Most of the crosses in this large grid were fair so unknowns like SNYDER and AIR ASIA were easy to back in to.
There’s nothing technically wrong here - it’s just too much.
Innocence Mission
Wow, I say. Just wow.
I thought Rex would like this, but no-o-o. I rarely come across a themeless, so it was interesting to hear his take.
Random thoughts:
- With _ _R_ _E_ _ _ _D for "Mainstay of a sci-fi defense system," I wanted something with SCREENS....
- No one calls an ENT (or an otolaryngologist) an EARDOCTOR.
- My old Mac SE (an antique!!) has RAM measured in MEGS but I agree, everything nowadays should be GIGS.
- SOGLAD reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in "Roman Holiday" when she was "so happy, so happy" out and about with Gregory Peck.
Getting from TITLED to the (much worse) TERMED was the big struggle of the day.
I had to go by way of DUBBED and DEEMED to get to TERMED. Who knew there were so many synonyms for "named"?
Well, for starters, if EONIAN is a real word - it shouldn’t be.
Rex summed it up pretty well. It’s fine to flirt with alternate usages, quasi-phrases like OOLALA, borderline arcane specificity (like LAGOMORHS for example), but after a while it seems like piling on. This grid had way too much for my taste - there is just so much stuff like ISOGONAL, ARRETS, CRIKEY, ABLEISM, RIFFLES, MASERS . . .
It seems like with that much esoterica, the puzzle basically becomes unsolvable for anyone who is not a pretty hardcore crossword fan - not that there is anything wrong with that. It’s up to Shortz and Company to decide what their target audience is. Anyway, I’ve been doing the Sunday puzzles pretty religiously for about a decade now, and I thought this one was a real BORE.
Didnt care for it. I like a theme to my Sundays, it was a slog for me . And 63D/92A was painful. 44D and 70D were new words for me. I agree, "walk in” should have been hyphenated. Stared at that one for far too long.
This felt mostly doable, except I struggled in the NE. But when I looked at my time at the end it was much longer than usual for a Sunday. So I have to say challenging for me. Mostly liked it--except PRTALK which is not a thing.
eyeteeth before GASTANKS, which, when it started to fall apart, briefly led to having "gasteeth" in there. And if EONIAN should NOT be a word, "gas teeth" absolutely should. Just not sure what they should be. Maybe part of a sci-fi defense system?
Joyless slog. But thanks for oline. All my life I’ve hated football, the brain-damaging game of manifest destiny on the field and horrible junk food in the den, so I always need the crosses on football clues. Oline has entered my crossword vocabulary.
Like Rex, I immediately recognized the themeless grid and was skeptical. MULCTS and EONIAN certainly earned eye-rolls, and I had the exact same GIGS/TITLED problem, but ultimately I liked it ok.
Oh, also, I was surprised to learn that MASERS are used in radio telescopes. I thought, some kind of amplifier? Seems unlikely. And a minute's googling shows hits for radio telescopes being used to *study* astrophysical MASERS but none for their being "a device in radio telescopes." So that clue as far as I can tell is wrong. Anyone know different?
Thx, Tracy; excellent Sun. challenge! 😊
Med.
No theme, no prob.
Lucky guess at RIFFLES / ALOO GOBI for the win.
Fun adventure! :)
___
Stanley Newman's Sat. Stumper was med-hard (just over 7x NYT Sat). Good chance of at least two errors; still working on those areas. Balton & Stewart's NYT acrostic on holding pattern.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
I'm usually too happy with finishing a puzzle to be critical of it but this one wore me out without providing any kick. Names I didn't know, words I didn't know, and none that left me glad that now I do. WHATELSEISNEW and REMINDMEAGAIN were fun, and CRIKEY got a smile, but that was about it. Aside from all already noted, if there's one thing I don't mix up anymore it's billionaires and elites. Almost stopped solving there.
Parts of this were pretty easy for me but some large patches stayed open for quite a while. I was sure that MULCTS had to be wrong -- it sure looked it. Still does. The M-SERS/R-TINE cross was a total Natick for me but somehow I guessed the A correctly. Lucky guess. I was held up by having WALLBERG for a long time -- I kinda know the name but not the actor or how he spells his name. I also had DOuSE for awhile which was another snag. I think I agree with Rex -- a not-great theme on a Sunday is likely to be better than a themeless, but this did have some nice moments.
Thank you, Southside Johnny, for mentioning ISOGONAL, a word that is positively EONIAN.
Vexillology pays off again, as DRAGONS was my entry to the puzzle.
Clue choices for SNYDER and ENOS seemed deliberately obtuse.
Surprisingly free of junk for such a big grid, EONIAN aside.
I often enjoy Sunday themelesses and this was no exception. I do wish occasionally, once a year or so, we’d get a really hard Sunday themeless. Cold winter days were made for a hard Sunday themelesses.
CRIKEY this was bad!
Odd how Rex, so easily triggered by all mentions of NRA, seems amused by Lee Harvey Oswald, the innocent patsy who supposedly defied all physics in blowing off JFK’s head. Never mind the machinations of LBJ, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Military Industrial Complex, mass media and the farcical Warren Commission.
Such a November to remember (PR TALK) THAT was! Good times…
(But please, no more mentions of NRA, Will Shortz - just too disturbing!)
It's cold and rainy here in NH, and no choir this AM, which gave me lots of free time to wrestle with this one. Good thing, because it seemed to take a long time (it really didn't), not because there were lots of unknowns but because my print version always has teeny tiny numbers in the squares, and today for some reason they seemed smaller than ever. Read clue, hold up page to nose to look for number. I really have to break down and do the large print edition and stop whining.
That said, there were some nice surprises, like knowing OSWALD somehow and remembering CARLORFF and guessing SIVA correctly that offered some amusement. Otherwise it was mostly a time-filler.
Impressive amount of fill in this one, TB, but mostly I'll remember it as Too Big. Thanks for a fair amount of fun.
Hey All !
Dazzling diagonal Blockers. Themeless, but hey, it happens.
Had to break down and Goog for CARL ORFF. Was just plumb stuck in my that area. TERMED wanted to get either TitlED or TaggED. MAULED was MAimED. CRIKEY was blImEY. Last section to fill, so angstness set in, and I ran crying to Goog. Dang, shoulda just took out everything and tried again. Wah-wah.
Turned out, I had a wrong letter regardless. Argh! A one-letter DNF. I had lASERS/lANILA. What in tarhooties are MASERS? What a WACKADOODLE answer.
At least I got a decent F count.
Happy Sunday!
Seven F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
This was a perfect Sunday puzzle. Elegant layout, a buncha fun words, hardly any junk fill (well EONIAN is cringey), consistently challenging or whimsical cluing, and a minimum of personal nouns. Lots of guessing and write overs, but that's part of the fun. Learned plenty of things I will forget, but jeepers I wish every Sunday could be like this one.
Favorite part of the 🦖 report: Complaining there's no theme to complain about. I love that guy.
Uniclues:
1 Recent copies of ewe (and maybe you too).
2 Feminine feeling flamers.
3 What you encounter anytime you leave the house.
4 CPAP machine.
5 Bachelor degree in music.
6 Republican leadership decided character doesn't count.
7 Rampless bar to those of us with gimpy knees.
8 What I do with those fat novels prior to deciding I'll wait for the movie.
9 Sniffed best poles.
1 WHAT ELSE IS NEW CLONING
2 ESTROGEN PATCH DRAGONS
3 WACKADOODLE HELLSCAPE
4 SLEEP APNEA FORCE FIELD
5 EAR DOCTOR FIRST DEGREE
6 ELITES MAULED CLASSY
7 ABLEISM FRONT ENTRANCE
8 RIFFLES FANTASY SERIES
9 SMELLED TOP TEN TOTEMS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The happy feeling of knowing your first child isn't on the way. VIRGIN'S JOLLITY.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Quick PSA - for the Robyn fans in the group, she’s subbing in for Evan Birnholz at the WaPo today and as usual, she delivered a pretty darn good one. Enjoy.
An OK puzzle but with no joy, no fun, no thrill of theme discovery. I'm always to disappointed to see that the Sunday is themeless. :-(
About as easy as it gets on Sunday, single digit time first ever
Got EONIAN from crosses - had to look it up- now that I know it's actually a word I'll have to find a place to use
ABLEISM made sense , but another new word for me
Two new words- hey that makes it a worthwhile solve!
46A had TAXING then TIRING then finally TRYING, yeah, DIFFICULT!
Feel like we’ve had a streak of unusually engaging and fun Sunday puzzles the past bunch of weeks but that ended here for me. Found this to be an unpleasant slog, from my first pass to the last answer I entered. Slowest Sunday time in months, or maybe years. Nothing fun about it. This puzzle’s author and I must have brains that work very differently from one another, because I felt like I was banging my head against a wall most of the time.
Ugh, what a slog! MULCT is just a big NO! Everything, boo!!!
Naticked on MASERS / RATINE, both of which sound like made-up words to me. Just entered every vowel until I got the happy music.
CRIKEY! I thought this puzzle was hard! Speaking of that, do people in Australia say “jeepers”? Also…does anyone outside Australia say CRIKEY? Just wondering. I had no real whoosh moments with the puzzle today and was glad to actually know RAINN Wilson, plus, having recently been to Quebec ARRETS fell into place. Otherwise, I likewise struggled mightily for toeholds…especially in the NE. And TIL what MULCT means. It’s funny how you can live a long life, read books, etc. and STILL see something that you feel you are seeing for the first time. Friday’s CORUSCATE was different for me…I’d SEEN the word, but just didn’t know what it meant. Do I have a point about that. Nah.
If you speak of an era EONIAN,
You will meet with a judgment Draconian.
You'll be tossed out of class
On your ear, on your ass,
Like one erudite, rueful Etonian.
Right after finishing the NYT puzzle and struggling with MULCT, I went to do the LA Times puzzle. 36 Down - punishes by fine 6 letters beginning with M. MULCTS went right in.
What are the chances?
Thanks @Southside Johnny - I just finished Robyn's puzzle.
I enjoyed this NYT one too, though I'm partial to themes. There were some amusing clues and WACKADOODLE. How could I not love a puzzle with WACKADOODLE?
As far as FORCEFIELD -I beg to differ about the clue - a mainstay? Any ship that depends on a forcefield is going to be blown to smithereens. Phasers, photons, and get the heck out of there.
FORCEFIELD technology has needed work for EONIA.
Made me appreciate themed Sundays.
And thanks for the Robyn @WAPO heads-up @SouthsideJohnny.
I don’t remember disliking a puzzle this much…. Gave up in the OSWALD section as I couldn’t waste anymore time on this seemingly endless slog. I think I’ll skip themeless Sunday from now on, leave it to the true xword nerds. ;)
I judge a Sunday puzzle by how far I get before I jump ship and call it quits. Today I marched steadily down through the grid, not even pausing to TAKE A POWDER, and stopped numerous times to savor an interesting entry or clever clue. Finished with a sense of time well spent. Nothing but words crossing one another and no half-baked theme stretched way beyond its limited reach to gum up the works. I liked it.
I'm flabbergasted by the hate for 8D EONIAN. Ever see EON in a NYTXW? It has appeared 300 times during the Shortz era. Combine that with the common suffix -IAN, "from, related to, or like", per wikipedia.org, and you get "Lasting for an immeasurable time span". One might see it in a sentence like "The aeolian harp is played by an EONIAN hand, the timeless wind". C'mon people, let's show some love for EONIAN.
There's lots of good stuff all over the place in this one, a SLEEP APNEA induced WACKADOODLE here and a HELLSCAPE FORCEFIELD there. My favorite treat was dropping in 70D CALUMNY with only the initial C in place. This was a fine puzzle of the FIRST DEGREE if you ask me.
Easy Medium?? I don't remember the last Sunday puzzle I couldn't complete.
Funny all the reaction to Harvey Oswald. Rex doesn’t actually mention Lee. And his picture is the movie Harvey. Seems everyone leapt to Lee. Maybe it’s the conspiracies and the 60 yr anniversary of the assasination…
Did Tracy get the employee "get out of jail free" card, or something? "Eonian" has been dealt with, I hope for the last time. But "liras" in the plural, not "lire"? "Dets", said no-one ever. And "winked" for "had forty winks"?
Pretty much all-in agree with @RP's initial "noooooooooooo" reaction. [Yer number of ooo's may vary, of course.] @RP's theory about not enough good SunPuz themes in the hopper also occurred to m&e. Does this mean the Shortzmeister might consider a Sunday M&A runtpuz, as an alternative filler? Be still, my heart ...
Nuthin too interestin here, SunPuz-wise -- where one anticipates a killer mega-theme experience -- except maybe in its stats:
* 5 U's. [well under the acceptable SunPuz average of 8]
* 8 weejects [staff weeject pick: ETS. Plural abbreve meat.
* 0 themers. [WACKADOODLE comes closest, I reckon]
* 126 words & 55 black squares. Good themeless numbers, except for ...
* 0 Jaws of Themelessness. Would shout AI-generated, except its puzgrid had two cheater squares.
M&A's approach: solved everything that was more or less above the big black diagonal divider thingy, then ceased fire. Figured that was about one FriPuz-solvequest's-worth, which is plenty. Passed the rest on to the PuzEatinSpouse, who also let out a where's-my-SunPuz groan, then immediately polished it off and moved on to the Acrostic.
Thanx for the SunPuz filler, Ms. Bennett darlin. If I can make U feel a little smidge better: Two very nice FriPuz's here, btw.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
Possible SunPuz filler-pup [themed] alternative…?
**gruntz**
@Anonymous 1:12 pm: when I posted my comment last night, the last item in Rex's post was a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald. Since then he replaced it with something else.
Georgia @ 1:11 Agree with ? over the rating. I found it very difficult , although sometimes surprisingly easy.
Had to cheat a lot to keep going. but ultimately thought it a good and inserting puzzle. Had occasionally smile getting clueing and such a wide range of references.
Googled a word or two to see if they were real - looking at you ableism. Yuck!
But" arrets" and "crikey" and "what else is new" "remind me again" , some others, went in easily.
Had trouble with clog even with several meters in place, but tiled at the clue when I got it.
Surprised at the hate here.
My first thought was, "Pretty grid." Unlike @Rex, I didn't appreciate that its layout announced "themeless": that didn't occur to me until I was working on the NW corner stack. I don't mind the occasional Sunday themeless, and I enjoyed this one, for the tricky cluing, the many longer entries, and for its DRAGONS and ROBOTA, CLASSY CALUMNY, the wonderful TAKE A POWDER, and the audacity of MULCTS. I challenged myself to see if I could fill it with one seamless pass and managed it with a clockwise sweep, ending at SNYDER.
@Beezer 11:41 - I asked myself, "Does anyone outside of England say 'Crikey'?" :)
Finally, an intelligent puzzle not requiring a Tik-Tok subscription!
This was one of those dreadful puzzles -- most often found in the WaPo -- that is really two puzzles: the top half is straightforward, interesting clue-answer pairs; the bottom is just impossible. ALOOGOBI? Really? On Sunday? Get serious.
@Nancy: Eonian, Draconian, Etonian. Fabulous!
Ditto, prefer themeless with some words I didn’t know to tortured dad jokes.
I'm very surprised that Rex didn't recognize ORAN. He does teach literature and it's the locale of Sartre's The Plague.
Villager
I'm very surprised that Rex didn't recognize ORAN. He does teach literature and it's the locale of Sartre's The Plague.
Villager
I'm surprised Rex didn't know ORAN. He does teach literature, after all, and it's the locale of Sartre's The Plague.
Villager
Sorry for the triple post. Some kind of technical snag, because I was told there was an error the first two times.
Villager
@SouthsideJohnny Thanks for the PSA! Enjoyed it much more than this one.
I thought the puzzle was harder than Rex says, but who am I to judge? A few fun answers, perhaps, but I didn't enjoy this puzzle at all.
Thanks, old actor!!
@Carola…I thought CRIKEY might also be “English” also but @Rex had posted pic with Steve Irwin, PLUS I thought that maybe “Crocodile Dundee” said that. 🤣 At any rate, I think of “jeepers” as uniquely very “old school” U.S. (Maybe Canada?)
Found it both harder and more enjoyable than Rex. Then again I can’t stand 90% of the Sunday themes and appreciated the chance to learn some new words and try my hand at those rows upon rows of eonian (!) answers.
Colin
Ear doctor went right in. I have heard it. I am in my early’70’s and I think of it as old. To my memory, heard it as a kid mostly. ENT came later. I understand “no one says “ is just an expression, but I would bet it is more common than you think. We just don’t hear it.
Hey @Villager, you can Delete your posts by hitting "Delete" under your posts.
I knew 69 down was an abbreviated term for computer storage units. I didn’t put anything in, right away because RAM suggested old so I waited M settled it.
But the area just above was a beast (NOT a compliment! See yesterday) for me. Even simple answers like JERSEY didn’t come until I got crikey.
Forgot I hadn’t finished where ABLEISM is. So was sick of it at the end. Liked it better than Rex though. Theme or themeless doesn’t matter to me in the least.
HA!
Nice!
Pedroinnh About Carlorff. Roo below says that’s CARL ORFF.
And I looked it up to see the origin. I had no idea. All I knew was the title. A Latin name for a song cycle. So I learned something. Thought it was some heroine’s name!
I am at times terrible at remembering the correct name.
So sorry about screwing up your name for a second time.
Upstate George
LIRE would definitely be wrong as the clue refers to Turkey.
@Deleter, I don't think you can delete your posts if you post anonymously as Villager did.
Nice to see a themeless on Sunday. But KRIKEY! Easy until FOILED by that Aussie unknown.
Finally got the bat out of the house, safely deposited outside. The wife sure loves it when the bats come in to play.
I assume everything to be said about the puzzle has been said, and we're all in gentle unanimity about the puzzle. I came to praise the glory of RED CEDARs, or at least Eastern RED CEDARs. There are a lot of them in the park where I frequently walk my dogs, and this fall they were just of berries, except they're not berries, but we'll call them berries because they're technically juniper berries, just not juniper juniper berries, if you know what I mean. Trees full of green leaves looking more teal than green because the berries are as plentiful as the leaves. About half are that way, because most are dioecious, i.e. there are male and female Eastern RED CEDARS. There are also a small percentage of Eastern RED CEDARS that are monoecious, both male and female, because sex is not binary and is confusing as hell so we should all just keep our mouths shut about it and respect each tree for what it is. The production of seeds also takes three years, year one flowers appear on the 'female' trees and are pollinated, year two little bulbs form on the trees, year three they mature to the ripe berries. At the end of year three, they get swarmed by birds, and the seeds get distributed, complete with fertilizer. Such is the circle of life.
See, life is better if you have dogs to walk in the woods.
Camus ;P
Got OLINE in today's puzzle lickety-split from your discussion of DLINE yesterday. Don't love either of those answers though as football terms. Thx Rex!
I have not been enjoying Sunday puzzles lately, and I was part way through this one and loving it when I realized it was because it was themeless. And so many long entries! As opposed to four mini puzzles in the corners connected by a few letters. Lots of love for today's puzzle.
I’m reading this comment as a complicated ear doctor joke.
Oran is where Albert Camus's novel "The Plague" takes place. I've seen "Casablanca" more times than I can count, and I don't recall the city of Oran being mentioned in it.
It’s mentioned. Right up front. There’s a map and everything.
PLAN FIRST
STAN SNYDER: SO, WHAT you DO IS IN the TOPTEN.
HELENA HESSE: WHATELSEISNEW? REMINDMEAGAIN.
STAN SNYDER: OOLALA, I'll SLEEP with you WHEN
you TAKE PLENTY of ESTROGEN.
--- CARL WAHLBERG
A daunting grid to fill, surely. Doesn't it just about HAVE to be themeless?
My only complaint is the natick to the right of 90. Cmon, ABLEISM?? OMG, it's a WORD! (Again, most unfortunately.) Still, it seemed the least unlikely letter. WHATELSEISNEW? Birdie, for the unchopped grid.
Wordle birdie as well.
I'm surprised no one had pointed out that "OO LA LA" is NOT a thing. It's "Ooh la la". Maybe even "Oh La La". But never, ever, "OO LA LA".
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