Lead role in 1978's "La Cage aux Folles" / SUN 1-7-24 / Dawn figure, in myth / Athleisure portmanteau / Rap's ___ Chyna / Bird also known as a lapwing / Purchase at a cannabis dispensary / Chuck ___, TV director/producer who's known as the "King of Sitcoms" / Start of a classic request for advice / Internet harvesting tool / Late winter/early spring, weather-wise
Constructor: Michael Schlossberg
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: "Gimme a Second!" — on four occasions, successive Across clues are clued identically, but in each case, the second of the two answers has a "feeling" hidden inside it. So ... you get one clue/answer, and then you get the same clue again, but this time you get an answer with (a) feeling inside it: thus, ONCE MORE WITH FEELING (68A: Bandleader's urging ... or an alternative title for this puzzle):
Theme answers:
POWER SUIT / SNOOZE ALARM (23 and 24A: It might be pressed before work)
SPIDER WEBS / P.R. AGENCIES (42 and 46A: They're home to spinners)
SEA CAPTAIN / AVID READER (91 and 95A: One sailing through long passages)
GENERATION Z / FLU STRAIN (117 and 119A: Target of many a viral marketing campaign)
Word of the Day: CAT'S EAR (92D: Plant that may be mistaken for a dandelion) —
Hypochaeris is a genus of plants in the family Asteraceae. Many species are known as cat's ear. These are annual and perennial herbs generally bearing flower heads with yellow ray florets. These plants may resemble or be confused with dandelions and so some are called false dandelions.
Estimates of the number of species range from about 50 up to about 100. Most species are native to South America, but some are found in Eurasia and North Africa. (wikipedia)
• • •
***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** : Hello from the first properly snowy day of Winter 2024! It's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. So ... 17 years ... not bad. At this time last year, I was recovering from COVID and still dealing with the very fresh grief brought on by the untimely death of my cat, Olive. I was very grateful for the blog at that point, since it grounded me in routine and gave me a place where I could lose myself in a pastime I love, and share that love with others. OK, yes, true, I don't always *love* crosswords. Sometimes it's more hate-love or love-hate or "Why are you being like this, you stupid puzzle!?" It ain't all positive vibes, as you know. But I realized last year that part of what makes this blog so fun for me, and what makes it a solace to many readers, is the sense of commiseration it provides. Sometimes the puzzle thrills you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't; and sometimes it infuriates you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't. But either way, the blog is here; it's *always* here. You get to have your feelings validated, or you get to shake your head at my errant judgment and often breathtaking ignorance, but either way, you get to share an experience that's an important part of your daily life, and maybe you learn something new. Above all, I hope you feel that there is a real person with a real life and real emotions and (very) real human flaws who's telling you what it was *really* like for him to solve the puzzle. I never wanted to be an expert, offering some kind of bloodless know-it-all advice and analysis. I wanted blood. Blood on the page. There will be blood! ... But also, music videos. And Words of the Day. And, if you hang around long enough, cat pictures. Like this one:
This is Ida (she put herself in the bin, I swear). Ida is the happy sequel to last year's grief. At the beginning of January, I was mourning. By the end of January, I was still mourning, but now I had a new companion (as did my other cat, Alfie, who *really* needed one). Why am I talking about my cats? Because they are constant, they give shape and rhythm to my day, and I love them even if they sometimes drive me crazy. Just like crossword puzzles! (See that! Segue! This is why you should pay me the big bucks!)
However much I love writing this blog (and I do, a lot), it is, in fact, a job. This blog has covered the NYTXW every day, without fail, for 17 years, and except for two days a month (when my regular stand-ins Mali and Clare write for me), and an occasional vacation or sick day (when I hire substitutes to write for me), it's me who's doing the writing. Every day. At very ... let's say, inconvenient hours (my alarm goes off most mornings at 3:45am). Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. But that sort of thing has never felt right for me. I like being out here on Main, on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way.
How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage):
Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker"):
Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905
The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)
All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has once again designed my annual thank-you cards, and once again those cards feature (wait for it) cats! My cats: Alfie & Ida. This year, an elegant set of five!
These really capture the combination of beauty and goofiness that I love in cats (and puzzles, frankly). I'd say "Collect All Five!" but every snail-mail contributor will get just one and (hopefully) like it! Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle...
• • •
This may seem a weird place to start, but: is ZEAL a feeling? If I say "I feel rage," you get it. "I feel dread," sure, "I feel lust," hmm, TMI, maybe, but OK. But "I feel zeal." I don't think anyone has ever said or typed those words until I typed them there just now. Of all the feelings in the world, it is Bizarre that ZEAL made the cut. So this theme is 25% questionable, right off the bat. And yet even if ZEAL were the feelingest feeling that ever felt, there's still something off about this theme. My main issue is that I never, ever solve the puzzle in order, i.e. actually reading all the Across clues, one after the next. I get an answer, then I build on it, and I keep going like that, wherever, the puzzle takes me, generally following the path of least resistance. I had a whole bunch of themers done on the east side of the puzzle (well, two, I had two), complete with their feelings, *and* I had the revealer, but still had zero idea what the revealer was supposed to reveal. That's because by the time I got those answers in the east, I'd forgotten I'd seen the identical clues in the west! I could see the "feelings" there in the marked squares, but the ONCE MORE part!?!?! No clue. Literally, I could not see / did not remember the clue that was the First clue, the one that makes the "ONCE MORE" part make sense. There's an assumption about solving progression here that just doesn't hold. Not for me, anyway. So getting my head around the whole concept proved awkward, and in the end, not terribly worth it. No great ahas or anything like that. More of a shrug. My favorite moment was actually a stumble on my part, when I confidently strode out into the middle of the grid with what I thought was the write revealer answer, only to find myself ... a letter short:
But what was really off-putting about the puzzle was the fill, which absolutely reeked of giant, uncurated wordlist. So many answers just felt awkward and strange, like things an ordinary human wouldn't put in a puzzle if the A.I. hadn't encouraged them. OXTEAM!? (114A: The yoke's on them). I stopped and literally said, out loud, "that is *not* an answer!" (turns out I complained about this answer six years ago, when I said OXTEAM sounded like "some kind of weird bovine rivals of The X-Men"). Similar things happened at UPPISH (!?) and, especially, MUD SEASON (59A: Late winter/early spring, weather-wise), where I have to believe at least one solver out there is going to end up with MIDSEASON because they don't know "Aladdin" that well (as I don't), and ABI looks ... plausible? (48D: "Aladdin" sidekick). I know that the clue on MUD SEASON indicates "late" winter and "early" spring, which would seem to explicitly preclude the answer *MID* SEASON, but MIDSEASON has one noteworthy virtue, which is that it is actually a common term. I am looking at the wikipedia page for MUD SEASON, so OK, it's a thing, technically. Looks like it's primarily a New England and northern Great Lakes thing. You don't want to take your OXTEAM out in MUD SEASON. Not in Maine, anyway. Things could get very messy, and the UPPISH might look down on you.
Other WTF answers: SFMOMA. CAT'S EYE. LORRE (as clued) (116A: Chuck ___, TV director/producer who's known as the "King of Sitcoms"). And ARIKARA— I generally think any tribe name is fair game, and everyone including me can just deal, but there were only 792 members of the ARIKARA tribe as of 2010, and their territory is dang tiny, so that one was very hard for me. Only the second time it's been in the grid since I started blogging (the other appearance was on a *Tuesday*, yikes). Seems like VELLUM and TACITUS and PEWIT might've proved hard for some solvers as well. I was lucky enough to know all those; grad school rarely comes in handy, but for those first two, grad school really came through today—as for PEWIT, I feel like we just had that. Also, I'm currently reading Tove Jansson's Finn Family Moomintroll, and I'm almost certain there's a PEWIT reference in there, somewhere. Yes, here we go. The Moomin family and various hangers-on are discussing the naming of a new boat:
"It must have a name!" cried the Snork Maiden. "Wouldn't The Pee-wit be rather sweet"?
"Pee-wit yourself," said the Snork rudely. "I prefer The Sea-Eagle."
"No, it must be Latin," cried the Hemulen. "Moominates Maritima."
"I saw it first!" squeaked Sniff. "I must choose a name for it. Wouldn't it be fun to call it SNIFF? That's so short and sweet."
"Just like you—I don't think!" said Moomintroll, jeeringly. (FSG/Sunburst, 1990, p. 62)
I was just thinking that TOVE has only ever been in the puzzle as a Lewis Carrolism (from "Jabberwocky": "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves" etc.). And JANSSON has been in the puzzle never. Moomins are certainly internationally famous, and Tove Jansson is a significant enough artist/writer that her name should be considered crossworthy. More crossworthy than UPPISH or OXTEAM or whoever this KRYSTEN person is, that's for sure.
AMAHL and AGER and REA and ENYA were giving off big-time 20th-century crosswordese vibes. I did appreciate DASHCAM (which somehow hasn't been seen in the NYTXW for well over six years). Also LUCKY NUMBER and THE CURSE (though that last one really means less and less as time goes on—no team has won more World Series in the 21st century than the Boston Red Sox (4)). SWIMSHIRT is also a nice one. Can't remember seeing that before (sure enough, it's a debut). "WE'RE SAVED!" isn't bad. So the puzzle had its merits, fill-wise. And now I worry I'm being too hard on the OX TEAM. There were definitely OX TEAMs ... you know, in OX TEAM Days.
But come on, RENATO? I'm supposed to RENA-know that? RENA-no! Crossing the absolutely mystifying CAT'S EAR, RENATO nearly killed me (Lead role in 1978's "La Cage aux Folles"). And it was the last square! But the "A" was totally inferrable, so that was that. All done, no errors. What needs explaining? The ANN in "DEAR ANN..." is Ann Landers (I assume) (14D: Start of a classic request for advice) (We just had a whole theme built around her and her sister). Nothing else seems potentially confusing. Anything else that warrants explaining is just trivia you can look up if you're so inclined. I wish the theme had done more for me. It does ... what it says it does. But kind of awkwardly and drearily. And even though there are eight answers involved in the theme, only four really seem like they're involved (the ones with the "feelings"), and since those have their "feelings" marked out so clearly by shaded (or in my case circled) squares, the theme really felt slight. The toughest thing was, as I say, figuring out that I was supposed to read those themer clues in order.
Time for the last of the Holiday Pet Pics. I ended up having more than I can get to, so I'm sorry if you sent in a picture and your beloved pet never appeared. Maybe I'll do another photo dump next week, just 'cause I love your pets so much. At any rate, if your pet hasn't appeared and you haven't heard from me yet, expect an apologetic email from me soon. Aw ... who am I kidding, I'm gonna keep doing this til all the photos are out of my Inbox (hopefully by Memorial Day). OK. Here we go:
["Silly humans, your cones cannot stop me. These ornaments are mine, Mine!" You tell 'em, Coco (thanks, Carol)]
[This is Frieda. Doesn't look like a "Holiday" pic, but Elizabeth says that it's a "Christmas miracle" that Frieda is seen here actually using the bed that was purchased specifically for her]
[Holiday kitties! I don't know their names! (thanks, Susan)]
[Sorry, this isn't a holiday pet pic; this is me and Ida, just days after we rescued her (bloody face and all); I accidentally uploaded it with all the other pet pics, and now I can't bring myself to delete it]
[Paczki! Pronounced "Poonch-key!" Look how happy! (thanks, Nick)]
[Penelope! That's my wife's name! Good girl! (that's for the dog, not you, honey ... though you are also good) (thanks, Philippa)]
[Pumpernickel says "Isn't it enough you named me after bread, must I suffer the further indignity of your constant photographic intrusion?" (yes, Pumpernickel, you must) (thanks, Martin)]
[It's Remy! Also pictured, hindquarters of some mystery dog (thanks, Sarah)]
[I would write a caption, but I'm dying due to the absurdly high levels of cuteness here. I don't even know how my fingers are managing to hit the keyboard, as I am dead from the cuteness, as described above. Post-mortemically I say to you that this little guy's name is ALFIE! Just like my kitty! I have now redied, good day to you all (and thanks, Kristen, with an "i" as god intended!]
Way too filled with PPP to be considered a fun puzzle, and it led to my naticky incorrect answers of SpORk for the portmanteau, and though I had never heard of a kBAR, ARIpARA is every bit as plausible as ARIKARA. Way, way WAY too much PPP, and for whatever reason there were no circles in my print version, so I missed out on the "fun" there.
A tad easier than medium for me. UPPIty before UPPISH (which was the last thing I fixed and I suspect I’m not alone) ate quite a few nanoseconds (@M&A - thanks for making PEWIT a gimme). Cute and a fun solve, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
Some of the stuff I did not know - CATS EAR, TACITUS, ARIKARA
jae 12:18 AM I laughed about your pewit comment because M & A’s posts helped me get the answer I first put in uppity but that is a very different word and with a nasty usage history in the US. Happy it wasn’t. I did guess Tacitus because the title is a Latin 101 word ( and I had the s)and I had Latin inhigh school. The others you mentioned did cause trouble. Cat sear? Thought it was unfair for Rex to criticize the puzzle because you had to do the acrosses in order to get the full effect of the theme. Anyway, I put PRAGENCIES in the first theme answer spot. So doing it that way didn’t necessarily help!
Liked the theme more than Rex, but agree about the weakness of the fill. “New ______” can be filled any number of ways, but I knew without any crosses it would be the set-my-teeth-on-edge AGER.
Theme wise, the repeating of the clue for consecutive acrosses is actually the best thing about it. Very clever, and not that easy! The FEELINGs themselves, well, MEH.
Typeovers: for "Up and down, as a relationship" SHAKY before ROCKY, "Apple variety" GALA before IMAC; for "Snooty" UPPITY before UPPISH (that can't possibly be wrong!); for "Lift type" UBER before TBAR (I mean, cmon that's perfect!); but definitely not so perfect, for "Target of a viral marketing campaign" EYE STRAIN (uhhmm..).
Fun fact: ALBERTA and Saskatchewan are the only landlocked provinces / territories in Canada.
I think the issue with the theme is that it relates to 8 clues, but only 4 answers. So depending on the order of solving (I got the right before the left), it's possible for the theme to be useless for all the remaining theme clues.
Silly puzzle. Also, I’m surprised Tove Jansson hasn’t made it into the grid yet - she was a radical and creative person and everyone should get to know the Moomins (Muumit)!
Delay before DOORS for the subway announcement at 11D Several wrong spellings of KRYSTEN Ritter (20D), who was a WOE uni before tri before REM for the cycle at 47D and ice SEASON (off the i in tri) before MUD at 59A Knew AMAHL and the Night Visitors (63A) but went through at least three spellings ONCE MORE WITH passion (oops!) before FEELING at 68A Had @jae UPPIty at 83A, asking "Can they really do that in a NYT crossword?" Happily, they didn't. It was UPPISH CATSEye before CATSEAR at 92D (CAT'S EAR was a WOE) I didn't know the author Min Jin LEE at 120D so I guessed LEI, giving DiNT for the impact at 128A, which seemed kinda okay to me. That square was what was muting the happy music.
UPPISH??!! WTF? It's UPPIty, which is what I had in the grid for a long time. But I know Chuck LORRE and threw that in with no crosses, so some if it--as always--is your frame of reference.
I had the same issues @Rex did--UPPISH, OX TEAM, KRYSTal before KRYSTEN (I have no idea who she is and KRYSTal seemed plausible).
I generally read all the Across clues in order and throw in the words I know, then go back and work the rest of the puzzle, so I saw the theme from the beginning. SNOOZE ALARM revealed ZEAL so I had the theme early, but it didn't help as much as I hoped it would. And for the life of me I couldn't parse "FLUST RAIN" or "FLUS TRAIN" for an embarrassingly long time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But it's done and another Sunday is upon us. In NYC the snow mostly turned to rain and it's just wet and cold. Definitely not MUD SEASON (which I've definitely heard of and filled in fairly quickly)--too cold.
Mud season seems to be a regional term. I went to college in Maine so I definitely heard it. I guess it could be confusing if you never heard it. Thought people in Upstate New York would use it but apparently not If you have a layer of snow that sticks around but finally melts quickly you get A LOT of mud. With global warming, we don’t see it in Southern New England.
I originally learned the mud season concept from a friend who lived in upstate New York for a number of years. He would tell me not to plan a visit during mud season, which was a term I’d never heard before. I think mud season exists in places where there’s regularly a lot of snow that melts all at once in early spring.
I see I am not alone in my scorn for UPPISH. If that is even a word, it is surely an idiotic one, but I suspect the Times is, once again, just making (stuff) up.
Sometimes a really elegant - dense theme justifies poor overall fill - this isn’t one of those times. The MEH quality of the fill is accentuated by the sheer volume in the Sunday sized grid. Oddball trivia and things like IN IDLE glom this one up.
We'd just finished watching "Love and Death" on Max (née HBO Max), featuring KRYSTEN Ritter, so that was a gimme.
I hate UPPISH. Hate it. Don't care that it's actually a word (I checked).
Yup: I had MiDSEASON for quite a while, but didn't like it.
This felt like a slog while solving, but I actually finished about two and a half minutes under my Sunday average time. Go figure. (Now, go Bucs and clinch the NFC South today!)
One of those puzzles where I got the theme early but simply didn’t think it had much payoff. Fill was a slog and I got annoyed by a pet peeve: ERIES. You can’t just make everything plural by adding an “s”; it’s ERIE PEOPLE, ferghodsake! Grumble, gripe…time for pancakes.
I agree with other early commenters that the theme was clever and fun. Revealer was perfect in meaning, length, and position. I think you can feel ZEAL, if you are a zealot…
Numerous sticky spots in the fill made this a considerably slower than average Sunday, even with help from the themers. I can hardly imagine anyone not starting with UPPIty at 83A. Knew AMAHL, got TACITUS with a few crosses, but needed much A.I. help at other points. Chuck LORRE? Maybe if you are under 40 and have never watched a B&W movie. REturns before RESULTS at 90D. Also took way longer than it should have to parse FLUSTRAIN—largely because the clue was trying way too hard to be CUTE.
This solve was, for me, part whoosh, part trek, and part rote, and I like all three.
Yes, I even like rote – the normal, usual filling in of the grid that constitutes most solving time, that sets the scene for the exciting, funny, and knotty parts. It’s so much of the special feel of being in crossword time.
Michael has an affinity for Sundays – this is his fourth in less than a year – and today he laid out a course with varying terrain, including what to me is a very impressive theme. I love how he played on the different meanings of “press”, of “spin”, of “passages”, and of “viral”, and that he found such good answers that met the length requirements of symmetry, not to mention have those “feelings” embedded, well, wow!
A couple of lovely serendipities: SNOOZE ALARM abutting HEAR ME, and four A-bookends (AROMA, ACELA, ALBERTA, AGRA) in the space of five columns (I felt for poor ARIKARA on the other side of the grid).
Thank you, Michael, for a splendid solve. You’ve got the chops, and I eagerly await your next!
Generally enjoyable, but in addition to the examples you mention I found DISS to be clued very oddly: as much as we'd like to think otherwise, there's nothing necessarily false or slanderous about being "diss"ed!
Regarding enjoyment of the rote, I'd like to share this from Andy Rooney:
"For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don't enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are you're not going to be very happy.
"If someone bases his [or her] happiness on major events like a great job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn't going to be happy much of the time.
"If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness."
The theme just isn’t worth the effort, and unfortunately the NYT gave us another one of those grids where you can’t swing a proverbial cat without hitting some type of arcane nonsense or just something really trivial like the tribe with 500 members. Rex pointed out most of the warts, so I won’t bother repeating. Yuk.
Got about 3/4s through, and started Googling PPP. But Googling PPP isn't that fun, so eventually I came here to justify my feelings about throwing in the towel. I wasn't disappointed. Well, I AM disappointed I DNFed the puzzle, but, anyway.
I join the chorus: "Down with UPPISH!!" MUD SEASON was a gimme, dropped in with no crosses. It's hard for me to believe that's not common usage in Binghamton, but they don't make winters like they used to, so maybe it's lost its currency.
Horrible fill. Stupid theme [is it even merits that name]. My first nominee for Worst Puzzle of the Year. I'm sure there will be more, but this one has set the bar so low that it will be hard to be more annoying.
Re understand vs. hear in reference capeesh. Hear me is a colloquial expression that means understand me? They put in a colloquial answer for a colloquial clue. So the answer is fine
ARIKARA didn’t seem that esoteric to me, but I’m more familiar with the history of the western fur trade than the average bear. Speaking of which, the ARIKARA were the justifiably, angry antagonists in the Academy-Award-Winning film The Revanant.
As a native Texan transplanted to Vermont, I first encountered MUD SEASON fairly late in life. When I saw it in the puzzle I thought it likely to throw a lot of solvers. And boy, did I try to fit Arapaho in the ARIKARA space.
Like Rex, I tend to solve by starting with 1A, or 1D if necessary, then working off filled-in squares. But since taking up downs-only Mondays (and occasionally Tuesdays), I’ve begun to run strings of downs on other days now and then. But never consecutive acrosses. So the theme today was lost on me till late in the game.
Also stared a long time at FLUS TRAIN. Who rides that, and where does it go? Maybe to Manitoba’s coastline (which I just looked at a map to verify — thanks, okanaganer!).
And thanks, Lewis, for the Andy Rooney quote. A life filled with small pleasures is a life well lived.
I echo many of the same (MEH) feelings about this puzzle. UPPISH, ugh. ARIKARA, ugh. OXTEAM, ugh. On and on. The theme was interesting, but at 46A, I was stuck trying to figure out what word starts with PRAGEN-... Just as at 119A, I was almost FLUSTRATED 'cuz I kept seeing FLUST-... What's FLUST? What's FLUS? I guess I needed the 30,000-foot view glasses to see these.
ANORAK has always puzzled me, only because when I lived in the UK oh-so-many years ago, an anorak was a light windbreaker. So, this is the way I think of it, not as a heavier, brave-the-elements parka.
@Lewis: Thank you for Andy Rooney's quote. My wife and I adhere to such a philosophy, and we wish and hope others would, too. Words to live by... Would reduce a lot of angst and anxiety out there.
Colin Interesting comment about ANORAK. It is an Inuit word I think, so obviously windbreaker wouldn’t be practical there! I spent some time in England during college and learned some of the differences in our word usage, but over 50 years later I am still learning new ones! Liked the puzzle more than you did, maybe because I immediately thought of PRAGENCIES although I put it in the left one at first.
I had a pleasant time with this, but OXTEAM was ridiculous and of course UPPISH meant to be UPPIty. MUD SEASON is a totaly normal real thing, one I eagerly await as I sit looking at 10" of snow with more coming down. And I really like KRYSTEN Ritter. Not a super hero fan but Jessica Jones is cool.
Then after completing all the rest of the puzzle, the extreme SE was a total brick wall. Eventually there was FLUSTRAIN but it Would Not Parse. FLUST RAIN?? FLUS TRAIN?? It took me forever to make sense of it.
Biggest holdups for me were GOoDEgg before GODDESS; Hot (which is such a great answer to “cool, back in the day, and way better than…) before HEP (??? Seriously what is this word? Never heard it before. Hip? Sure. HEP??); and smell and scent before AROMA. That held me up in the NW for a long time, cause I couldn’t figure out any of the other clues.
Also took me way too embarrassingly long to suss out “what’s a FLUS TRAIN??”
Anonymous 9:39 AM About HEP When the clue signaled something in the past the implication is it is no longer used So it couldn’t be hot or hip which most definitely are still in use HEP has been in the Times puzzle fairly often. It is not that obscure though it goes back at least to the’30’s. Arose among Black musicians and then spread. As in “hep cat” = cool guy.
Surprised more people don’t know Chuck Lorre. If you watched sitcoms in the 1990s his was the first name to pop up in the credits of most of them as Created By.
Took me forever to parse PRAGENCIES as I had PRAGE and kept trying to make into a word or at least the start of a word. And for some reason EDIBLE didn't occur to me until way late in the game. Come on, man.
OTOH, MUDSEASON in this part of NH is very real and much dreaded, as there are miles of dirt roads and parts of them in spring become virtually impassable. With freezing and thawing and rain we've already had at least two MUDSEASONS here and the real one still awaits. If this is all unfamiliar to you, I urge you to count your blessings.
Liked your theme and your execution, MS. Not a Middling Sunday, Might Sweet. Thanks for all the fun.
Pabloinnh I knew mud season would be a layup for you! I spent college in Waterville ME so that was pretty easy for me to get. We had 142 inches of snow my freshman year so I had an epic introduction to the concept! (BTW last week you inferred that I like you do not know how to create accent marks on phones. You are absolutely right)
Hey All ! I think it took me as long to read Rex's write-up as it did to do the puz! 🤣
I theorized that the FEELINGs were related to the first part of the two-part Themers. But no, even though ZEAL and DREAD could possibly be lawyered into explanations. (Hi @Z, he used to use "lawyering" in that sense.) Unless all of GEN Z is LUSTful...
Pretty neat idea. Was having a tough time with PRAGENCIES, as couldn't parse it, and was reading it as one word. I was like "What in tarhooties are PRAGENCIES??" (pray-gen-cees) Good stuff. Finally grokked it, which helped me with the final Themer I was stuck on, F_USTRAIN. Wanted to change the last letter to a T, and write in FrUSTRAIt, as I was at that point, but RUST wasn't a feeling. Couldn't see anything for a while that wasn't (something)S TRAIN. Finally the lightbulb, AHA! STRAIN! FLU STRAIN. My goodness.
TACITUS was a Holy Moly answer. Who's that? Said this non AVID READER. Had _PPISH, and put in an A, for some reason, got the Almost There message, and with my Streak in jeopardy, I went back and saw it was probably a U, put it in, and ... Happy Music! Streak alive at 22.
DNFed at MUDSEASON/REM (I had BUDSEASON AND REB). Never heard of "Mud Season," and I don't think of "cycle" when I think of "REM". Dunno if there's a "REB Cycle", but it seemed as plausible as anything else...
Overall, way too much arcana in this to make it pleasurable, and I'm generally a big fan of arcana.
If you want to learn about a neuroscience-based catalog of basic feelings/emotions, I refer you to Jack Panksepp, an Estonian-born neuroscientist who after extensive study of brains and their basic functions, came up with “seven biologically inherited primary affective systems called SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy).” Two of them made it verbatim into this puzzle.
Crossword-solvers commonly experience SEEKING, RAGE, and PLAY. Rex you may often experience CARE through creating and maintaining this blog!
If you’re a serious neuroscience nerd like me then also look up Mark Solms, who used the above to generate a well-supported theory of human consciousness based on Panksepp’s work. Basically we are self-aware because we have these emotions (read “The Hidden Spring” by Solms for more…).
In my case, started OK in the northeast and surprisingly got ONCEMOREWITHFEELING fairly quickly, then really bogged down everywhere over PPP and some of the more exotic vocabulary. As usual there was nothing I did not recognize in hindsight, just could not follow the clues except by painstakingly slow incremental fill. Am thankful @Rex has stayed the course over so many years, and for the sharpness (pun totally unintended) of all his blog contributors.
Eventually, packing it in and looking at the crosses got the job done except for wanting GOoDESt (d'oh!!), ending up with UPPIty / yERON (another d'oh!!). Oh well, the fun is in the tryin' (and the cryin')! lol
Now to look up 'bittern'. 🤔
Peas before CORN & lIme before RIND.
Nevertheless, what a jewel of construction; imo, one of the best I've seen! :) ; a bit of the side-eye for ZEST being a feeling, altho I guess I could say, 'I'm 'feeling' ZESTy for the next xword test'.
Quite the adventure; a great mental workout! :)
@Anonymous (10:29 AM)
Same here! lol ___ Still working on the Fri. downs (probably just too tough to crack, and would be my worst beatdown on downs-only). Sat.'s was a bust. :(, but a successful ending after checking the crosses. Likely would've been an easy-med solve. ___ Stella Zawistowski's Sat. Stumper is another work in progress. 🤞 ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
I guess Rex doesn't get out of town much. MUD SEASON is very much a thing in upstate New York. But of course you need to have unpaved roads to have the mud.
Living in New England, l enjoyed seeing MUD SEASON. I grew up in northern New York, and now that you mention it, I never heard it growing up. I love how this blog often reveals regionalisms.
This puzzle was so wonky that it made me find your blog for the first time. So at least there is that! The clues were lacking and did not have the type of imagination I prefer. More of a stretch of the dictionary than the mind…
Very clever and enjoyable idea for a puzzle. I was hooked on the quite interesting double clues. But to finish, I had to cheat on STP; had to "check" the A of ARIKARA, a tribe I never heard of; and I still ended up with a 1-letter DNF: MIDSEASON/ABI instead of MUDSEASON/ABU. I don't know from "Aladdin" and in New York, we don't have a MUD SEASON. Not even those of us, like me, who spend a lot of time in Central Park have a MUD SEASON. It's a term that's never used because we're a city of sidewalks.
Yes, ABU sounds more Aladdin-y than ABI, but I still never thought of MUD.
I expect that, when I go back to read the blog, lots of other solvers will have mud all over their faces too.
So what's an UPPISH person? Someone who's a little bit UPPIty? (Which is what I had for, like, forever.)
I also give the side eye to SWIM SHIRT. Some people do swim in a shirt to avoid sunburn, but there's no such thing as a designated SWIM SHIRT. One person may wear a Polo, one person may wear an Aloha and the rich guy paddling next to you may be wearing Armani.
Kealoa of the day: REW/REC/REV for the remote button.
Despite my various side eyes and 1-letter DNF, I found this an addictive puzzle to solve.
Nancy I have fair skin and the last time I went into a pool I wore a shirt that was specifically designed for that purpose The material is designed to protect the skin against the sun’s rays better than a regular shirt and in lasts longer when subjected to chlorine or salt. Makes sense to call it a swim shirt. BTW men wear bathing “suits” because they once always had shorts and shirts, till the 1920’s So an old concept revived for health reasons.
Swim shirts are absolutely a thing! I wear one anytime I go swimming. It’s made of swimsuit-type material and specifically designed to be worn in the water, to protect from the sun.
I sure hope that anyone out there has a POWERSUIT also owns a steamer and does NOT press the dang suit with an iron! Just add that to my list with OXTEAM, UPPISH, and the like. Either I don’t really GET the theme or I don’t really see the point of the theme, “alternative” or otherwise. There were a few good offerings in this puzzle but rarely do I feel like I did today…which was I just wanted the puzzle to be over.
MUDSEASON eh? I guess I learned a new “regional” term today. I guess I’m the only one who saw UDSEASON and put in a B! Hey…crocus, daffodils, serviceberry trees, etc all BUD in late winter/early spring in my part of the world.
I went from DIRT to DISH to DISS for the 'bit of slander', so it was amusing to stumble into a KEALOA that I hadn't experienced before. I enjoyed the repeated clues part of the construction, though the emotions in the second answers were kind of useless... so the 'once more with feeling' theme didn't really land. MEDIUM was my experience as well.
LOL, just discovered another of the naticks, I had oVIDREADER, because no way to tell oRUM from ARUM. No idea why oVID occurred to me whereas AVID didn't, but it "works" all the same, sadly...
This was a slog for me. DNF with SFMOyA crossing yAW because yaw felt like it could be a mouth (it isn't) and Moya sounded like an artist (he is) so that made me think it could be the name of a gallery and there you go. DISS isn't necessarily slander. Never heard of UPPISH so assumed UPPIty like many others, even though I felt vaguely racist thinking so. It seems like DATA fill in the blank could be lots of things, SCRAPER not one that I'd heard of. MUDSEASON is legit, especially in upstate NY, so not sure the issue with that answer.
THECURSE is a current Showtime show by Nathan Fielder. It reaches new heights of awkwardness. I highly recommend it.
I'm kinda grossed out by a Petal Pusher with Fragrant Bloomers.
When I got to 95A, I begged, I prayed, Please don't let the answer start with AVI. You see, I'm an AVIDREADER.
Hear me, Snooty? Capische, Uppish? Hey, bad guys ....over here. C'mon,Harry, let's get him. Hold it, Marv. That's just what that little jerk wants us to do.
Good theme idea today. Like Rex, I never followed the themers across, so I didn't get the big picture until late. Still a fun theme in average Sunday time. Thanks, Michael Schlossberg.
One of those Sundays when I had to put it down and come back to it with renewed inspiration in order to finish. Which I did with a couple of minor cheats. I’m a New York guy ( and yes Nancy, Central Park can get muddy on occasion as I’m sure you know) but have spent lots of time in the Berkshires of western Mass and, yes Virginia, there is a mud season.
Challenging and somehow also boring. Unpleasant. Not fun. Full of questionable fill and awkward cluing. Agreed, ZEAL doesn’t strike me as a “feeling,” nor does LUST. Barely finished without cheating. Yuck!
I was fine with SFMOMA, LORRE, TACITUS, and KRYSTEN -- all known-enough names to me. (Krysten Ritter starred in a popular Marvel superhero show in the 2010s. She's famous.) But I sadly have to agree with the weakness of the theme set. And the "feelings" are just sitting there in the second answer, no extra layer of meaning? Like 69D said, MEH.
Ugh. So clunky. I almost went back to bed and hit the snooze button, not the SNOOZE ALARM, which isn't a thing. At all. Then I thought maybe I was being too uppity; turns out I was being too UPPISH. Again, not a thing. If we're just gonna start inventing words and phrases (without doing so intentionally, to be punny), why not just use A.I. for all future puzzles? How did these two answers make the grade?
"The word "uppity," which means haughty, or arrogant, made its first appearance in the 1880s in the "Uncle Remus" stories, a series of black songs and folk tales written in slave dialect. By the 1950s, the word had adopted a virulent racial element..." ABC News Website
DREAD followed by RAGE describes what I experience lately with regards to the Sunday NYT crossword and this one was no different. Does anyone remember the days of LUST and ZEAL?
The theme concept seemed a little random to me, but whatever - I enjoyed doing the puzzle. The "feelings" definitely helped me get the last two "once more's", especially FLUSTRAIN, which I found almost as hard to parse as CATSEAR ("Grab those T-bones and give 'em a good CAT SEAR").
Do-overs: Like others, Delay, lime, and UPPIty. Help from previous puzzles: PEWIT! (Hi, @M&A and @jae). PPP tally: knew TACITUS and LETO; no idea about KRYSTEN, CHRIS, LORRE, RENATO, ARIKARA.
@Beezer, I love your bUD SEASON! Sunshine and springtime beauty. Around here, it would follow MUD SEASON by some weeks.
Taken from a 2008 ABC news story: “ The word "uppity," which means haughty, or arrogant, made its first appearance in the 1880s in the "Uncle Remus" stories, a series of black songs and folk tales written in slave dialect. By the 1950s, the word had adopted a virulent racial element, Tamasi said.” For reference I was born in the 60’s. TBH I had UPPITY before I had UPPISH until the crossfill dictated a change. This correction made sense because I kinda cringed at the first answer I had. I don’t want to be lumped into the hyper-woke camp (I find much of the indignation exasperating). Fortunately, however, the word in question today is actually waning rather than waxing in terms of popular use, and still doesn’t rise to the level of many other words which I don’t need to mention. Nevertheless UPPITY is probably best left alone and in the annals of history. As for the rest of the puzzle, too much esoteric trivia for sure. As for the MUDSEASON, mid season would make no sense since it is the de facto bridge between two seasons we are talking about. And it is absolutely a thing anywhere there are hills and snow.
My rating scale for a Sunday puzzle is how far I get through the grid before I quit. I sailed through this one with nary a thought of abandoning ship. That happens maybe once every ten Sundays so, ipso facto, I liked it. Didn't get the "Congratulations" happy music because of MID rather than MUD SEASON but no biggie there.
I thought the "with feeling" in the second answers was a nice touch but that having very disparate pairs of answers with identical clues was the real star of the show. Imagine how many people you would have to ask what POWER SUIT and SNOOZE ALARM have in common before someone came up with "[They] might be pressed before work". I thought all four pairs really stuck the landing.
One minor quibble about 47D "___ cycle" for REM. Sleep is divided into REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM (non REM) stages. Sleep itself is a stage of the 24 hour circadian sleep-wake cycle or rhythm. Another cycle becomes evident within sleep called the infradian cycle. This cycle is around 90 minutes long so we go into REM (and dreaming) about every hour and a half during a night's sleep.
Pshaw pretty problematic. Turns out you must know your lilies from lilacs cuz one smells just right and the other is stinky.
More actresses, writers and singers clogging things up. It's our ZEN. And the ACNE RAGE over PEWIT. Today's theme casualty: So many junky downs.
I don't know what kind of orchestras the NYTXW team has played in, but no band leader has ever said ONCE MORE WITH FEELING except maybe in the movies written by non-musical authors. If you would need to tell your band that, those musicians would have already been fired.
UBER for TBAR worked forever until the bloody end of ERRATA. You'd think of all people I would've been the first to see a nice SKORT.
Tee-Hee: EDIBLE. No wonder they can't tell Friday from Saturday at NYTXW headquarters.
Uniclues:
1 Shocked reaction to gramps switching to Flintstones chewables. 2 The off-button in my head every time I hear someone discussing business fashion. 3 My belief the Broncos will do it this year. 4 Those committed to welcoming you into the attic. 5 Expensive burkini. 6 The disease of looking up from a iPhone and attempting altogether awkwardly to hold a conversation with another human being. 7 Professor of Ancient History's jacket with suede elbow pads. 8 Cigar box decorated with flower decoupage with a dead goldfish inside. 9 Landers describes her sushi experience.
1 EGAD PAPA! EDIBLE MEDS? (~) 2 POWER SUIT SNOOZE ALARM 3 THE CURSE IN IDLE 4 SPIDER WEBS' PR AGENCIES 5 UPPISH ARAB SWIM SHIRT (~) 6 GENERATION Z FLU STRAIN 7 TACITUS MISER'S BLAZER (~) 8 ZEN GODDESS DIY URN 9 DEAR ANN EELS RESULTS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Where one wallows alone after a promising evening gone wrong. GOSH DARN IT BED.
I had to solve carefully in a few areas with the potential for a dnf looming. Particularly the ones around FLUSTRAIN and PRAGENCIES. Today's fill had enough range and obscurity to make the solve interesting especially when the themers they crossed were difficult to parse.
MUDSEASON is familiar to me. UPPITY wasn't a serious alternative due to its derogatory meaning. It's never appeared in the Shortz era. It's probably the same reason that the SB doesn't allow "nappy" in its word lists. Then again it could just be how random Sam Ezersky is in his choices. Speaking of the SB....
I don't understand the dissing of" oxteam". Seemed a perfectly good word to me.
Took me a surprisingly long time to come up with "mudseason" since that is what we have rather than spring in Anchorage. Just as I type this, realizing that we call it "breakup". Since that's what the snow berms, the ice in the streams and lakes, and the asphalt in the streets does ( and the axles of cars falling into resulting potholes.)
The big bang theory is one of the most overrated pieces of garbage ever created, and I am proud to not know who Chuck Lorre is. Speaking of pieces of garbage: this entire puzzle. Hated it.
I have lived in upstate NY my entire life and never once heard the phrase "Mud season". That was hardly the worst answer in this atrocious AI-created trivia fest, though.
"PR Agencies" was the last to fall for me. I got "The Curse" but have only heard of it as the Curse of the Bambino. FYI, the Baltimore Orioles first hired the Babe as a pitcher before selling him to the Red Sox. We'd had our share of baseball curses, too. (Smile emoji).
I liked the puzzle and had a nice little "aha" with the "once more with feeling" revealer. I never did parse FLU STRAIN until I got here - was convinced something was wrong. And maybe it's just me but I call it a "snooze button" and not a SNOOZE ALARM
Finally fixed it but was very surprised for a while they’d put UPPITY in the puzzle and that messed up the middle for quite a while. Still don’t believe UPPISH is a word.
I was going to say my face was red from not noticing the duplicate clues and thus not understanding the theme. But Rex's explanation gave me an aha moment and the puzzle took on a much better vibe in my brain. ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, har. A nice phrase and a cute interpretation of it.
I'm with @Carola on having trouble parsing FLUS TRAIN into FLU STRAIN. I tried mightily to imagine how 119D could be pWD so it would be pLUS TRAIN, as if that improved anything. What a relief to get the FLU, an odd concept indeed.
I entered UPPISH, seeing "Amazing woman" and assuming the --ESS suffix. But I immediately caught myself ("No - can't be. UPPISH isn't a word.") and corrected myself. But HERON took me back to my original guess. My FEELING is that the constructer might have been off his MEDS, or dropped an EDIBLE.
Re UPPITY vs UPPISH: here they are compared in Google Ngram from 1800 to 2019.
It's interesting that, notwithstanding the above claims from ABC News that it first appeared in the 1880s, Google shows UPPITY appearing in print by about 1819.
According to Webster, UPPISH has been around in English since 1677. Surely that’s enough to make it a word? UPPIty since 1880 only (someone here mentioned Uncle Remus, published that year), and Websters says in a usage note: “The adjective uppity is an informal, somewhat old-fashioned word. When used to mean "arrogant" or "presumptuous," it is no more offensive than either of these synonyms. In its meaning of "aspiring to a rank or position higher than one deserves or is entitled to" it is decidedly disparaging, the implication of the word being that the one described does not deserve or is not entitled to rise in standing. Beyond this denotation, however, uppity has a long history of being applied to members of racial minorities and especially to Black people. Its association with such uses, and the bigotry they represent, means that when it is used to describe a member of a racial minority it is likely to be considered especially offensive.”
I agree with @Lewis: “It’s so much of the special feel of being in crossword time.” I was really glad to have done it, and then spent some time contemplating the feeling(s). It took me a while, thinking of it it all, to come to this conclusion. Speaking as a long-time AVID READER myself (the feeling that startled me most), I have to say that an AVID READER might well feel DREAD when contemplating the English language in the mirror of many commenters' comments here.
Thanks @Anoa Bob for “I thought all four pairs really stuck the landing.” Amen. And see Vermonter Robert Frost’s "Two Tramps in Mud Time."
And thanks, Michael Schlossberg. A good way to start this year.
Someone mentioned spending an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out 'flus train', well, I spent an embarrassing amount of time on "pragencies". I actually googled it to find out what in the heck this was. smh
Definitely not my demographic, but KRYSTEN Ritter was terrific in Jessica Jones! I didn't even see the clue, guess the acrosses took care of it. Only write over was REtUrnS before RESULTS and I think my answer is more on point, since *anything* can have RESULTS but only elections have returns...
Mud season was totally legible to me, but I never heard about it before living in rural Vermont for a bit (where it was less a common turn of phrase and more the only reasonable way to describe the time of year when the snow melted). So seeing it in the puzzle brought warm recognition but also a lot of confusion about why it would be in the puzzle as if it's universal when a lot of places don't get mud like that.
"But what was really off-putting about the puzzle was the fill, which absolutely reeked of giant, uncurated wordlist" made me literally clap. What a miserable slog.
I read somewhere recently that the key to good trivia is providing someone a challenge that makes the journey seem worth it once you arrive at the answer. And what a bunch of worthless wasted time with the journeys today.
Life is too short for a puzzle full of filler fill. This is the kind of deal where, if this was the first Sunday I ever solved, I'm not entirely sure I'd be inspired to ever solve another Sunday ever again. This wasn't fun, and when I finished, I wasn't interested in what I'd done.
A reasonably good theme built on garbage fill. Sad.
Did not love the puzzle but my day is brighter for the Tove Jansson / Moomin shout out! The Summer Book is one of my favorites. And The Moomins are so delightfully weird.
DNF. The east side just wouldn't fall. Had no idea what the superfund E_A was, and couldn't make sense of _RAGENC___. So it was a 2-initial acronym, PR. That one was too deep to dig out. Plus, UPPI__ = UPPITY, of course and forever. UPPISH? Not in the language, rejected. That -TY was etched there and unmovable.
Wordle eagle. A total surprise when my second guess was right: BYBBB, GGGGG.
Tough in places where my original answers seemed better - UPPIty before UPPISH; REtUrnS before RESULTS. You know the routine. If you're not familiar with CHRIS Stapleton, you should become so. The missus likes 'Tennessee Whiskey' while I prefer his earlier work with the Steeldrivers. Wordle eagle!!! Third in a week or so.
"Gimme a second" what, exactly? Zeal, rage, dread, lust? Nonsensical fake theme for four human emotions buried in four entries. How was this considered clever or meaningful?? Extremely lame "theme".
I may be in the minority on this one, but I thought it was a very clever and fun puzzle. What I liked about the themes is that the second answer in each pair not only was embedded with a feeling (except for zeal, where I agree with Rex), but has more feeling/connotation than the first answer. Example: a spider literally spins a web but a PR agency figuratively spins a story. OK it doesn’t work as well with the press cluing, but in general the second answers really do have more feeling.
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However much I love writing this blog (and I do, a lot), it is, in fact, a job. This blog has covered the NYTXW every day, without fail, for 17 years, and except for two days a month (when my regular stand-ins Mali and Clare write for me), and an occasional vacation or sick day (when I hire substitutes to write for me), it's me who's doing the writing. Every day. At very ... let's say, inconvenient hours (my alarm goes off most mornings at 3:45am). Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. But that sort of thing has never felt right for me. I like being out here on Main, on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way. 
This may seem a weird place to start, but: is ZEAL a feeling? If I say "I feel rage," you get it. "I feel dread," sure, "I feel lust," hmm, TMI, maybe, but OK. But "I feel zeal." I don't think anyone has ever said or typed those words until I typed them there just now. Of all the feelings in the world, it is Bizarre that ZEAL made the cut. So this theme is 25% questionable, right off the bat. And yet even if ZEAL were the feelingest feeling that ever felt, there's still something off about this theme. My main issue is that I never, ever solve the puzzle in order, i.e. actually reading all the Across clues, one after the next. I get an answer, then I build on it, and I keep going like that, wherever, the puzzle takes me, generally following the path of least resistance. I had a whole bunch of themers done on the east side of the puzzle (well, two, I had two), complete with their feelings, *and* I had the revealer, but still had zero idea what the revealer was supposed to reveal. That's because by the time I got those answers in the east, I'd forgotten I'd seen the identical clues in the west! I could see the "feelings" there in the marked squares, but the ONCE MORE part!?!?! No clue. Literally, I could not see / did not remember the clue that was the First clue, the one that makes the "ONCE MORE" part make sense. There's an assumption about solving progression here that just doesn't hold. Not for me, anyway. So getting my head around the whole concept proved awkward, and in the end, not terribly worth it. No great ahas or anything like that. More of a shrug. My favorite moment was actually a stumble on my part, when I confidently strode out into the middle of the grid with what I thought was the write revealer answer, only to find myself ... a letter short:
***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** : Hello from the first properly snowy day of Winter 2024! It's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. So ... 17 years ... not bad. At this time last year, I was recovering from COVID and still dealing with the very fresh grief brought on by the untimely death of my cat, Olive. I was very grateful for the blog at that point, since it grounded me in routine and gave me a place where I could lose myself in a pastime I love, and share that love with others. OK, yes, true, I don't always *love* crosswords. Sometimes it's more hate-love or love-hate or "Why are you being like this, you stupid puzzle!?" It ain't all positive vibes, as you know. But I realized last year that part of what makes this blog so fun for me, and what makes it a solace to many readers, is the sense of commiseration it provides. Sometimes the puzzle thrills you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't; and sometimes it infuriates you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't. But either way, the blog is here; it's *always* here. You get to have your feelings validated, or you get to shake your head at my errant judgment and often breathtaking ignorance, but either way, you get to share an experience that's an important part of your daily life, and maybe you learn something new. Above all, I hope you feel that there is a real person with a real life and real emotions and (very) real human flaws who's telling you what it was *really* like for him to solve the puzzle. I never wanted to be an expert, offering some kind of bloodless know-it-all advice and analysis. I wanted blood. Blood on the page. There will be blood! ... But also, music videos. And Words of the Day. And, if you hang around long enough, cat pictures. Like this one:
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Way too filled with PPP to be considered a fun puzzle, and it led to my naticky incorrect answers of SpORk for the portmanteau, and though I had never heard of a kBAR, ARIpARA is every bit as plausible as ARIKARA. Way, way WAY too much PPP, and for whatever reason there were no circles in my print version, so I missed out on the "fun" there.
ReplyDeleteA tad easier than medium for me. UPPIty before UPPISH (which was the last thing I fixed and I suspect I’m not alone) ate quite a few nanoseconds (@M&A - thanks for making PEWIT a gimme). Cute and a fun solve, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
ReplyDeleteSome of the stuff I did not know - CATS EAR, TACITUS, ARIKARA
jae 12:18 AM
DeleteI laughed about your pewit comment because M & A’s posts helped me get the answer
I first put in uppity but that is a very different word and with a nasty usage history in the US.
Happy it wasn’t. I did guess Tacitus because the title is a Latin 101 word ( and I had the s)and I had Latin inhigh school. The others you mentioned did cause trouble. Cat sear?
Thought it was unfair for Rex to criticize the puzzle because you had to do the acrosses in order to get the full effect of the theme.
Anyway, I put PRAGENCIES in the first theme answer spot. So doing it that way didn’t necessarily help!
The puzzle grew on me. Liked it more than Rex
Liked the theme more than Rex, but agree about the weakness of the fill. “New ______” can be filled any number of ways, but I knew without any crosses it would be the set-my-teeth-on-edge AGER.
ReplyDeleteTheme wise, the repeating of the clue for consecutive acrosses is actually the best thing about it. Very clever, and not that easy! The FEELINGs themselves, well, MEH.
ReplyDeleteTypeovers: for "Up and down, as a relationship" SHAKY before ROCKY, "Apple variety" GALA before IMAC; for "Snooty" UPPITY before UPPISH (that can't possibly be wrong!); for "Lift type" UBER before TBAR (I mean, cmon that's perfect!); but definitely not so perfect, for "Target of a viral marketing campaign" EYE STRAIN (uhhmm..).
Fun fact: ALBERTA and Saskatchewan are the only landlocked provinces / territories in Canada.
[Spelling Bee: Sat 0; 6 day streak.]
I think the issue with the theme is that it relates to 8 clues, but only 4 answers. So depending on the order of solving (I got the right before the left), it's possible for the theme to be useless for all the remaining theme clues.
DeleteSilly puzzle. Also, I’m surprised Tove Jansson hasn’t made it into the grid yet - she was a radical and creative person and everyone should get to know the Moomins (Muumit)!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI agree with @jae: "A tad easier than medium."
Delay before DOORS for the subway announcement at 11D
Several wrong spellings of KRYSTEN Ritter (20D), who was a WOE
uni before tri before REM for the cycle at 47D and ice SEASON (off the i in tri) before MUD at 59A
Knew AMAHL and the Night Visitors (63A) but went through at least three spellings
ONCE MORE WITH passion (oops!) before FEELING at 68A
Had @jae UPPIty at 83A, asking "Can they really do that in a NYT crossword?" Happily, they didn't. It was UPPISH
CATSEye before CATSEAR at 92D (CAT'S EAR was a WOE)
I didn't know the author Min Jin LEE at 120D so I guessed LEI, giving DiNT for the impact at 128A, which seemed kinda okay to me. That square was what was muting the happy music.
UPPISH??!! WTF? It's UPPIty, which is what I had in the grid for a long time. But I know Chuck LORRE and threw that in with no crosses, so some if it--as always--is your frame of reference.
ReplyDeleteI had the same issues @Rex did--UPPISH, OX TEAM, KRYSTal before KRYSTEN (I have no idea who she is and KRYSTal seemed plausible).
I generally read all the Across clues in order and throw in the words I know, then go back and work the rest of the puzzle, so I saw the theme from the beginning. SNOOZE ALARM revealed ZEAL so I had the theme early, but it didn't help as much as I hoped it would. And for the life of me I couldn't parse "FLUST RAIN" or "FLUS TRAIN" for an embarrassingly long time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But it's done and another Sunday is upon us. In NYC the snow mostly turned to rain and it's just wet and cold. Definitely not MUD SEASON (which I've definitely heard of and filled in fairly quickly)--too cold.
Happy Sunday!
I was also on the FLUS TRAIN…train. You aren’t alone!
DeleteSame! 😄
DeleteMud season seems to be a regional term. I went to college in Maine so I definitely heard it. I guess it could be confusing if you never heard it. Thought people in Upstate New York would use it but apparently not If you have a layer of snow that sticks around but finally melts quickly you get A LOT of mud. With global warming, we don’t see it in Southern New England.
DeleteI originally learned the mud season concept from a friend who lived in upstate New York for a number of years. He would tell me not to plan a visit during mud season, which was a term I’d never heard before. I think mud season exists in places where there’s regularly a lot of snow that melts all at once in early spring.
DeleteWe use “mud season” here in Colorado too!
DeleteMe thinks thou dost protest too much. This puzzle was kinda (really) fun!
ReplyDeleteSome really tough clues, but most (except MiDSEASON), everything was inferable by
crosses.
Admit it, you enjoyed this puzzle. I did.
tc
Is that you, Michael Schlossberg? Lol
DeleteI see I am not alone in my scorn for UPPISH. If that is even a word, it is surely an idiotic one, but I suspect the Times is, once again, just making (stuff) up.
ReplyDeleteSometimes a really elegant - dense theme justifies poor overall fill - this isn’t one of those times. The MEH quality of the fill is accentuated by the sheer volume in the Sunday sized grid. Oddball trivia and things like IN IDLE glom this one up.
ReplyDeleteTHE CURSE
I did like PEWIT and CATS EAR and the SEA CAPTAIN - AVID READER is a cool pair. Keep your FLU STRAIN, MUD SEASON etc and all the obscure trivia.
Perhaps scaled down to a midweek might have helped? Just too much for a Sunday.
ALBERTA Bound
Thank you for posting The Curse. One of the most beautiful songs and video I've ever experienced. Great hearing it again!
DeleteWe'd just finished watching "Love and Death" on Max (née HBO Max), featuring KRYSTEN Ritter, so that was a gimme.
ReplyDeleteI hate UPPISH. Hate it. Don't care that it's actually a word (I checked).
Yup: I had MiDSEASON for quite a while, but didn't like it.
This felt like a slog while solving, but I actually finished about two and a half minutes under my Sunday average time. Go figure. (Now, go Bucs and clinch the NFC South today!)
One of those puzzles where I got the theme early but simply didn’t think it had much payoff. Fill was a slog and I got annoyed by a pet peeve: ERIES. You can’t just make everything plural by adding an “s”; it’s ERIE PEOPLE, ferghodsake! Grumble, gripe…time for pancakes.
ReplyDeleteI agree with other early commenters that the theme was clever and fun. Revealer was perfect in meaning, length, and position. I think you can feel ZEAL, if you are a zealot…
ReplyDeleteNumerous sticky spots in the fill made this a considerably slower than average Sunday, even with help from the themers. I can hardly imagine anyone not starting with UPPIty at 83A. Knew AMAHL, got TACITUS with a few crosses, but needed much A.I. help at other points. Chuck LORRE? Maybe if you are under 40 and have never watched a B&W movie. REturns before RESULTS at 90D. Also took way longer than it should have to parse FLUSTRAIN—largely because the clue was trying way too hard to be CUTE.
This solve was, for me, part whoosh, part trek, and part rote, and I like all three.
ReplyDeleteYes, I even like rote – the normal, usual filling in of the grid that constitutes most solving time, that sets the scene for the exciting, funny, and knotty parts. It’s so much of the special feel of being in crossword time.
Michael has an affinity for Sundays – this is his fourth in less than a year – and today he laid out a course with varying terrain, including what to me is a very impressive theme. I love how he played on the different meanings of “press”, of “spin”, of “passages”, and of “viral”, and that he found such good answers that met the length requirements of symmetry, not to mention have those “feelings” embedded, well, wow!
A couple of lovely serendipities: SNOOZE ALARM abutting HEAR ME, and four A-bookends (AROMA, ACELA, ALBERTA, AGRA) in the space of five columns (I felt for poor ARIKARA on the other side of the grid).
Thank you, Michael, for a splendid solve. You’ve got the chops, and I eagerly await your next!
Generally enjoyable, but in addition to the examples you mention I found DISS to be clued very oddly: as much as we'd like to think otherwise, there's nothing necessarily false or slanderous about being "diss"ed!
ReplyDeleteThat’s what I thought, too.
DeleteRegarding enjoyment of the rote, I'd like to share this from Andy Rooney:
ReplyDelete"For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don't enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are you're not going to be very happy.
"If someone bases his [or her] happiness on major events like a great job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn't going to be happy much of the time.
"If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness."
The theme just isn’t worth the effort, and unfortunately the NYT gave us another one of those grids where you can’t swing a proverbial cat without hitting some type of arcane nonsense or just something really trivial like the tribe with 500 members. Rex pointed out most of the warts, so I won’t bother repeating. Yuk.
ReplyDeleteWell said!!
DeleteGot about 3/4s through, and started Googling PPP. But Googling PPP isn't that fun, so eventually I came here to justify my feelings about throwing in the towel. I wasn't disappointed. Well, I AM disappointed I DNFed the puzzle, but, anyway.
ReplyDeleteYours in T BONES, T BAR, and TAI BO
Almost did the same and almost wish I had...
DeleteKrossword Karen takes OXTEAM to the woodshed for a spa day.
ReplyDeleteI join the chorus: "Down with UPPISH!!" MUD SEASON was a gimme, dropped in with no crosses. It's hard for me to believe that's not common usage in Binghamton, but they don't make winters like they used to, so maybe it's lost its currency.
ReplyDeleteHorrible fill. Stupid theme [is it even merits that name]. My first nominee for Worst Puzzle of the Year. I'm sure there will be more, but this one has set the bar so low that it will be hard to be more annoying.
ReplyDeleteAre there no Breaking Bad fans here? Krysten Ritter had a big part in that show.
ReplyDeleteBtw Capeesh is do you understand not hear. Plenty of people hear and certainly don’t capeesh
ReplyDeleteRe understand vs. hear in reference capeesh.
DeleteHear me is a colloquial expression that means understand me? They put in a colloquial answer for a colloquial clue. So the answer is fine
There’s ANOTHER famous Lorre?!?
ReplyDeleteARIKARA didn’t seem that esoteric to me, but I’m more familiar with the history of the western fur trade than the average bear. Speaking of which, the ARIKARA were the justifiably, angry antagonists in the Academy-Award-Winning film The Revanant.
ReplyDeleteUpping? Inside? Catsear? Arikara? Oxteam? These answers were terrible bordering on nonsensical. And I so look forward to the Sunday puzzle (sigh).
ReplyDeleteAs a native Texan transplanted to Vermont, I first encountered MUD SEASON fairly late in life. When I saw it in the puzzle I thought it likely to throw a lot of solvers. And boy, did I try to fit Arapaho in the ARIKARA space.
ReplyDeleteLike Rex, I tend to solve by starting with 1A, or 1D if necessary, then working off filled-in squares. But since taking up downs-only Mondays (and occasionally Tuesdays), I’ve begun to run strings of downs on other days now and then. But never consecutive acrosses. So the theme today was lost on me till late in the game.
Also stared a long time at FLUS TRAIN. Who rides that, and where does it go? Maybe to Manitoba’s coastline (which I just looked at a map to verify — thanks, okanaganer!).
And thanks, Lewis, for the Andy Rooney quote. A life filled with small pleasures is a life well lived.
I echo many of the same (MEH) feelings about this puzzle. UPPISH, ugh. ARIKARA, ugh. OXTEAM, ugh. On and on. The theme was interesting, but at 46A, I was stuck trying to figure out what word starts with PRAGEN-... Just as at 119A, I was almost FLUSTRATED 'cuz I kept seeing FLUST-... What's FLUST? What's FLUS? I guess I needed the 30,000-foot view glasses to see these.
ReplyDeleteANORAK has always puzzled me, only because when I lived in the UK oh-so-many years ago, an anorak was a light windbreaker. So, this is the way I think of it, not as a heavier, brave-the-elements parka.
@Lewis: Thank you for Andy Rooney's quote. My wife and I adhere to such a philosophy, and we wish and hope others would, too. Words to live by... Would reduce a lot of angst and anxiety out there.
Colin
DeleteInteresting comment about ANORAK. It is an Inuit word I think, so obviously windbreaker wouldn’t be practical there!
I spent some time in England during college and learned some of the differences in our word usage, but over 50 years later I am still learning new ones!
Liked the puzzle more than you did, maybe because I immediately thought of PRAGENCIES although I put it in the left one at first.
@Megafrim, 9:01 AM: Chuck Lorre co-created Big Bang Theory, among many others.
ReplyDeleteI had a pleasant time with this, but OXTEAM was ridiculous and of course UPPISH meant to be UPPIty. MUD SEASON is a totaly normal real thing, one I eagerly await as I sit looking at 10" of snow with more coming down. And I really like KRYSTEN Ritter. Not a super hero fan but Jessica Jones is cool.
ReplyDeleteThen after completing all the rest of the puzzle, the extreme SE was a total brick wall. Eventually there was FLUSTRAIN but it Would Not Parse. FLUST RAIN?? FLUS TRAIN?? It took me forever to make sense of it.
I spent like 10 humiliating minutes wondering what a FLUS TRAIN or FLUST RAIN was! Solidarity!
DeleteWhat no credit card for donations?
ReplyDeleteYou can use your credit card by clicking on the PayPal option... you don't need a PayPal account.
DeleteBiggest holdups for me were GOoDEgg before GODDESS; Hot (which is such a great answer to “cool, back in the day, and way better than…) before HEP (??? Seriously what is this word? Never heard it before. Hip? Sure. HEP??); and smell and scent before AROMA. That held me up in the NW for a long time, cause I couldn’t figure out any of the other clues.
ReplyDeleteAlso took me way too embarrassingly long to suss out “what’s a FLUS TRAIN??”
Not a fun solve for me.
Anonymous 9:39 AM
DeleteAbout HEP
When the clue signaled something in the past the implication is it is no longer used
So it couldn’t be hot or hip which most definitely are still in use HEP has been in the Times puzzle fairly often. It is not that obscure though it goes back at least to the’30’s. Arose among Black musicians and then spread. As in “hep cat” = cool guy.
Surprised more people don’t know Chuck Lorre. If you watched sitcoms in the 1990s his was the first name to pop up in the credits of most of them as Created By.
ReplyDeleteWanted to put in "mud" season but mud is not weather wise it's condition wise..Grrr!!
ReplyDeleteTook me forever to parse PRAGENCIES as I had PRAGE and kept trying to make into a word or at least the start of a word. And for some reason EDIBLE didn't occur to me until way late in the game. Come on, man.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, MUDSEASON in this part of NH is very real and much dreaded, as there are miles of dirt roads and parts of them in spring become virtually impassable. With freezing and thawing and rain we've already had at least two MUDSEASONS here and the real one still awaits. If this is all unfamiliar to you, I urge you to count your blessings.
Liked your theme and your execution, MS. Not a Middling Sunday, Might Sweet. Thanks for all the fun.
Pabloinnh
DeleteI knew mud season would be a layup for you!
I spent college in Waterville ME so that was pretty easy for me to get.
We had 142 inches of snow my freshman year so I had an epic introduction to the concept!
(BTW last week you inferred that I like you do not know how to create accent marks on phones. You are absolutely right)
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteI think it took me as long to read Rex's write-up as it did to do the puz! 🤣
I theorized that the FEELINGs were related to the first part of the two-part Themers. But no, even though ZEAL and DREAD could possibly be lawyered into explanations. (Hi @Z, he used to use "lawyering" in that sense.) Unless all of GEN Z is LUSTful...
Pretty neat idea. Was having a tough time with PRAGENCIES, as couldn't parse it, and was reading it as one word. I was like "What in tarhooties are PRAGENCIES??" (pray-gen-cees) Good stuff. Finally grokked it, which helped me with the final Themer I was stuck on, F_USTRAIN. Wanted to change the last letter to a T, and write in FrUSTRAIt, as I was at that point, but RUST wasn't a feeling. Couldn't see anything for a while that wasn't (something)S TRAIN. Finally the lightbulb, AHA! STRAIN! FLU STRAIN. My goodness.
TACITUS was a Holy Moly answer. Who's that? Said this non AVID READER. Had _PPISH, and put in an A, for some reason, got the Almost There message, and with my Streak in jeopardy, I went back and saw it was probably a U, put it in, and ... Happy Music! Streak alive at 22.
Happy Sunday all. Go (insert sports team here)!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
DNFed at MUDSEASON/REM (I had BUDSEASON AND REB). Never heard of "Mud Season," and I don't think of "cycle" when I think of "REM". Dunno if there's a "REB Cycle", but it seemed as plausible as anything else...
ReplyDeleteOverall, way too much arcana in this to make it pleasurable, and I'm generally a big fan of arcana.
Yep, mid/MUD got me. Whole puzzle seemed awkward and contrived. So many weirdo answers starting Indeed with UPPISH
ReplyDeleteIf you want to learn about a neuroscience-based catalog of basic feelings/emotions, I refer you to Jack Panksepp, an Estonian-born neuroscientist who after extensive study of brains and their basic functions, came up with “seven biologically inherited primary affective systems called SEEKING (expectancy), FEAR (anxiety), RAGE (anger), LUST (sexual excitement), CARE (nurturance), PANIC/GRIEF (sadness), and PLAY (social joy).” Two of them made it verbatim into this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteCrossword-solvers commonly experience SEEKING, RAGE, and PLAY. Rex you may often experience CARE through creating and maintaining this blog!
If you’re a serious neuroscience nerd like me then also look up Mark Solms, who used the above to generate a well-supported theory of human consciousness based on Panksepp’s work. Basically we are self-aware because we have these emotions (read “The Hidden Spring” by Solms for more…).
In my case, started OK in the northeast and surprisingly got ONCEMOREWITHFEELING fairly quickly, then really bogged down everywhere over PPP and some of the more exotic vocabulary. As usual there was nothing I did not recognize in hindsight, just could not follow the clues except by painstakingly slow incremental fill. Am thankful @Rex has stayed the course over so many years, and for the sharpness (pun totally unintended) of all his blog contributors.
ReplyDeleteI got caught by the mid/mud abu/abi thing. “mud season” isn’t really a Montana thing …
ReplyDeleteThx Michael; a really fine piece of work! 😊
ReplyDeleteDowns-o td was bleak!
Eventually, packing it in and looking at the crosses got the job done except for wanting GOoDESt (d'oh!!), ending up with UPPIty / yERON (another d'oh!!). Oh well, the fun is in the tryin' (and the cryin')! lol
Now to look up 'bittern'. 🤔
Peas before CORN & lIme before RIND.
Nevertheless, what a jewel of construction; imo, one of the best I've seen! :) ; a bit of the side-eye for ZEST being a feeling, altho I guess I could say, 'I'm 'feeling' ZESTy for the next xword test'.
Quite the adventure; a great mental workout! :)
@Anonymous (10:29 AM)
Same here! lol
___
Still working on the Fri. downs (probably just too tough to crack, and would be my worst beatdown on downs-only). Sat.'s was a bust. :(, but a successful ending after checking the crosses. Likely would've been an easy-med solve.
___
Stella Zawistowski's Sat. Stumper is another work in progress. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
UPPISH pissed me off.
ReplyDeleteI guess Rex doesn't get out of town much. MUD SEASON is very much a thing in upstate New York. But of course you need to have unpaved roads to have the mud.
ReplyDeleteVillager
Never hear it here in Syracuse.
DeleteLiving in New England, l enjoyed seeing MUD SEASON. I grew up in northern New York, and now that you mention it, I never heard it growing up. I love how this blog often reveals regionalisms.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle was so wonky that it made me find your blog for the first time. So at least there is that! The clues were lacking and did not have the type of imagination I prefer. More of a stretch of the dictionary than the mind…
ReplyDeleteVery clever and enjoyable idea for a puzzle. I was hooked on the quite interesting double clues. But to finish, I had to cheat on STP; had to "check" the A of ARIKARA, a tribe I never heard of; and I still ended up with a 1-letter DNF: MIDSEASON/ABI instead of MUDSEASON/ABU. I don't know from "Aladdin" and in New York, we don't have a MUD SEASON. Not even those of us, like me, who spend a lot of time in Central Park have a MUD SEASON. It's a term that's never used because we're a city of sidewalks.
ReplyDeleteYes, ABU sounds more Aladdin-y than ABI, but I still never thought of MUD.
I expect that, when I go back to read the blog, lots of other solvers will have mud all over their faces too.
So what's an UPPISH person? Someone who's a little bit UPPIty? (Which is what I had for, like, forever.)
I also give the side eye to SWIM SHIRT. Some people do swim in a shirt to avoid sunburn, but there's no such thing as a designated SWIM SHIRT. One person may wear a Polo, one person may wear an Aloha and the rich guy paddling next to you may be wearing Armani.
Kealoa of the day: REW/REC/REV for the remote button.
Despite my various side eyes and 1-letter DNF, I found this an addictive puzzle to solve.
DeleteNancy
I have fair skin and the last time I went into a pool I wore a shirt that was specifically designed for that purpose The material is designed to protect the skin against the sun’s rays better than a regular shirt and in lasts longer when subjected to chlorine or salt.
Makes sense to call it a swim shirt. BTW men wear bathing “suits” because they once always had shorts and shirts, till the 1920’s So an old concept revived for health reasons.
Swim shirts are absolutely a thing! I wear one anytime I go swimming. It’s made of swimsuit-type material and specifically designed to be worn in the water, to protect from the sun.
DeleteI sure hope that anyone out there has a POWERSUIT also owns a steamer and does NOT press the dang suit with an iron! Just add that to my list with OXTEAM, UPPISH, and the like. Either I don’t really GET the theme or I don’t really see the point of the theme, “alternative” or otherwise. There were a few good offerings in this puzzle but rarely do I feel like I did today…which was I just wanted the puzzle to be over.
ReplyDeleteMUDSEASON eh? I guess I learned a new “regional” term today. I guess I’m the only one who saw UDSEASON and put in a B! Hey…crocus, daffodils, serviceberry trees, etc all BUD in late winter/early spring in my part of the world.
I went from DIRT to DISH to DISS for the 'bit of slander', so it was amusing to stumble into a KEALOA that I hadn't experienced before. I enjoyed the repeated clues part of the construction, though the emotions in the second answers were kind of useless... so the 'once more with feeling' theme didn't really land. MEDIUM was my experience as well.
ReplyDeleteLOL, just discovered another of the naticks, I had oVIDREADER, because no way to tell oRUM from ARUM. No idea why oVID occurred to me whereas AVID didn't, but it "works" all the same, sadly...
ReplyDeleteThis was a slog for me. DNF with SFMOyA crossing yAW because yaw felt like it could be a mouth (it isn't) and Moya sounded like an artist (he is) so that made me think it could be the name of a gallery and there you go. DISS isn't necessarily slander. Never heard of UPPISH so assumed UPPIty like many others, even though I felt vaguely racist thinking so. It seems like DATA fill in the blank could be lots of things, SCRAPER not one that I'd heard of. MUDSEASON is legit, especially in upstate NY, so not sure the issue with that answer.
ReplyDeleteTHECURSE is a current Showtime show by Nathan Fielder. It reaches new heights of awkwardness. I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteI'm kinda grossed out by a Petal Pusher with Fragrant Bloomers.
When I got to 95A, I begged, I prayed, Please don't let the answer start with AVI. You see, I'm an AVIDREADER.
Hear me, Snooty? Capische, Uppish? Hey, bad guys ....over here. C'mon,Harry, let's get him. Hold it, Marv. That's just what that little jerk wants us to do.
Good theme idea today. Like Rex, I never followed the themers across, so I didn't get the big picture until late. Still a fun theme in average Sunday time. Thanks, Michael Schlossberg.
One of those Sundays when I had to put it down and come back to it with renewed inspiration in order to finish. Which I did with a couple of minor cheats.
ReplyDeleteI’m a New York guy ( and yes Nancy, Central Park can get muddy on occasion as I’m sure you know) but have spent lots of time in the Berkshires of western Mass and, yes Virginia, there is a mud season.
Challenging and somehow also boring. Unpleasant. Not fun. Full of questionable fill and awkward cluing. Agreed, ZEAL doesn’t strike me as a “feeling,” nor does LUST. Barely finished without cheating. Yuck!
ReplyDeleteI was fine with SFMOMA, LORRE, TACITUS, and KRYSTEN -- all known-enough names to me. (Krysten Ritter starred in a popular Marvel superhero show in the 2010s. She's famous.) But I sadly have to agree with the weakness of the theme set. And the "feelings" are just sitting there in the second answer, no extra layer of meaning? Like 69D said, MEH.
ReplyDeleteUgh. So clunky. I almost went back to bed and hit the snooze button, not the SNOOZE ALARM, which isn't a thing. At all. Then I thought maybe I was being too uppity; turns out I was being too UPPISH. Again, not a thing. If we're just gonna start inventing words and phrases (without doing so intentionally, to be punny), why not just use A.I. for all future puzzles? How did these two answers make the grade?
ReplyDeleteAgree about snooze button. Sorry, I hadn't read your comment until after I wrote the same opinion in mine
Delete"The word "uppity," which means haughty, or arrogant, made its first appearance in the 1880s in the "Uncle Remus" stories, a series of black songs and folk tales written in slave dialect. By the 1950s, the word had adopted a virulent racial element..." ABC News Website
ReplyDeleteFast for me but not fun. Too much obscure trivia that had to be inferred from the crossings.
ReplyDeleteDREAD followed by RAGE describes what I experience lately with regards to the Sunday NYT crossword and this one was no different. Does anyone remember the days of LUST and ZEAL?
ReplyDeleteThe theme concept seemed a little random to me, but whatever - I enjoyed doing the puzzle. The "feelings" definitely helped me get the last two "once more's", especially FLUSTRAIN, which I found almost as hard to parse as CATSEAR ("Grab those T-bones and give 'em a good CAT SEAR").
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: Like others, Delay, lime, and UPPIty. Help from previous puzzles: PEWIT! (Hi, @M&A and @jae). PPP tally: knew TACITUS and LETO; no idea about KRYSTEN, CHRIS, LORRE, RENATO, ARIKARA.
@Beezer, I love your bUD SEASON! Sunshine and springtime beauty. Around here, it would follow MUD SEASON by some weeks.
Taken from a 2008 ABC news story: “ The word "uppity," which means haughty, or arrogant, made its first appearance in the 1880s in the "Uncle Remus" stories, a series of black songs and folk tales written in slave dialect. By the 1950s, the word had adopted a virulent racial element, Tamasi said.” For reference I was born in the 60’s.
ReplyDeleteTBH I had UPPITY before I had UPPISH until the crossfill dictated a change. This correction made sense because I kinda cringed at the first answer I had.
I don’t want to be lumped into the hyper-woke camp (I find much of the indignation exasperating). Fortunately, however, the word in question today is actually waning rather than waxing in terms of popular use, and still doesn’t rise to the level of many other words which I don’t need to mention. Nevertheless UPPITY is probably best left alone and in the annals of history.
As for the rest of the puzzle, too much esoteric trivia for sure. As for the MUDSEASON, mid season would make no sense since it is the de facto bridge between two seasons we are talking about. And it is absolutely a thing anywhere there are hills and snow.
It should have been UPPITY - never heard of UPPISH.
ReplyDeleteYes, that was my first entry.
DeleteMy rating scale for a Sunday puzzle is how far I get through the grid before I quit. I sailed through this one with nary a thought of abandoning ship. That happens maybe once every ten Sundays so, ipso facto, I liked it. Didn't get the "Congratulations" happy music because of MID rather than MUD SEASON but no biggie there.
ReplyDeleteI thought the "with feeling" in the second answers was a nice touch but that having very disparate pairs of answers with identical clues was the real star of the show. Imagine how many people you would have to ask what POWER SUIT and SNOOZE ALARM have in common before someone came up with "[They] might be pressed before work". I thought all four pairs really stuck the landing.
One minor quibble about 47D "___ cycle" for REM. Sleep is divided into REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM (non REM) stages. Sleep itself is a stage of the 24 hour circadian sleep-wake cycle or rhythm. Another cycle becomes evident within sleep called the infradian cycle. This cycle is around 90 minutes long so we go into REM (and dreaming) about every hour and a half during a night's sleep.
Pshaw pretty problematic. Turns out you must know your lilies from lilacs cuz one smells just right and the other is stinky.
ReplyDeleteMore actresses, writers and singers clogging things up. It's our ZEN. And the ACNE RAGE over PEWIT. Today's theme casualty: So many junky downs.
I don't know what kind of orchestras the NYTXW team has played in, but no band leader has ever said ONCE MORE WITH FEELING except maybe in the movies written by non-musical authors. If you would need to tell your band that, those musicians would have already been fired.
UBER for TBAR worked forever until the bloody end of ERRATA. You'd think of all people I would've been the first to see a nice SKORT.
Tee-Hee: EDIBLE. No wonder they can't tell Friday from Saturday at NYTXW headquarters.
Uniclues:
1 Shocked reaction to gramps switching to Flintstones chewables.
2 The off-button in my head every time I hear someone discussing business fashion.
3 My belief the Broncos will do it this year.
4 Those committed to welcoming you into the attic.
5 Expensive burkini.
6 The disease of looking up from a iPhone and attempting altogether awkwardly to hold a conversation with another human being.
7 Professor of Ancient History's jacket with suede elbow pads.
8 Cigar box decorated with flower decoupage with a dead goldfish inside.
9 Landers describes her sushi experience.
1 EGAD PAPA! EDIBLE MEDS? (~)
2 POWER SUIT SNOOZE ALARM
3 THE CURSE IN IDLE
4 SPIDER WEBS' PR AGENCIES
5 UPPISH ARAB SWIM SHIRT (~)
6 GENERATION Z FLU STRAIN
7 TACITUS MISER'S BLAZER (~)
8 ZEN GODDESS DIY URN
9 DEAR ANN EELS RESULTS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Where one wallows alone after a promising evening gone wrong. GOSH DARN IT BED.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Gary 1:38
DeleteHope you check back to see this! Laugh out loud collection of uniclues today, thx!
I had to solve carefully in a few areas with the potential for a dnf looming. Particularly the ones around FLUSTRAIN and PRAGENCIES. Today's fill had enough range and obscurity to make the solve interesting especially when the themers they crossed were difficult to parse.
ReplyDeleteMUDSEASON is familiar to me. UPPITY wasn't a serious alternative due to its derogatory meaning. It's never appeared in the Shortz era. It's probably the same reason that the SB doesn't allow "nappy" in its word lists. Then again it could just be how random Sam Ezersky is in his choices. Speaking of the SB....
yd -0, 11
I don't understand the dissing of" oxteam". Seemed a perfectly good word to me.
ReplyDeleteTook me a surprisingly long time to come up with "mudseason" since that is what we have rather than spring in Anchorage. Just as I type this, realizing that we call it "breakup". Since that's what the snow berms, the ice in the streams and lakes, and the asphalt in the streets does ( and the axles of cars falling into resulting potholes.)
The big bang theory is one of the most overrated pieces of garbage ever created, and I am proud to not know who Chuck Lorre is. Speaking of pieces of garbage: this entire puzzle. Hated it.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful pics of Ida Mae, Rex. Especially how she was when you rescued her. How gratifying ❤️
ReplyDeleteI have lived in upstate NY my entire life and never once heard the phrase "Mud season". That was hardly the worst answer in this atrocious AI-created trivia fest, though.
ReplyDelete"PR Agencies" was the last to fall for me. I got "The Curse" but have only heard of it as the Curse of the Bambino. FYI, the Baltimore Orioles first hired the Babe as a pitcher before selling him to the Red Sox. We'd had our share of baseball curses, too. (Smile emoji).
ReplyDeleteClue 1 – Musical genre: HEAVY METAL
ReplyDeleteClue 2 – Musical genre: GANGSTA RAP
I liked the puzzle and had a nice little "aha" with the "once more with feeling" revealer. I never did parse FLU STRAIN until I got here - was convinced something was wrong. And maybe it's just me but I call it a "snooze button" and not a SNOOZE ALARM
ReplyDeleteFinally fixed it but was very surprised for a while they’d put UPPITY in the puzzle and that messed up the middle for quite a while. Still don’t believe UPPISH is a word.
ReplyDeleteMUD SEASON is absolutely, positively a thing in Chicago, where I'm from. Lasts way too long, most years.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise concur with most who found this a slog with some very odd fill.
I was going to say my face was red from not noticing the duplicate clues and thus not understanding the theme. But Rex's explanation gave me an aha moment and the puzzle took on a much better vibe in my brain. ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, har. A nice phrase and a cute interpretation of it.
ReplyDeleteI'm with @Carola on having trouble parsing FLUS TRAIN into FLU STRAIN. I tried mightily to imagine how 119D could be pWD so it would be pLUS TRAIN, as if that improved anything. What a relief to get the FLU, an odd concept indeed.
Thanks, Michael Schlossberg!
I entered UPPISH, seeing "Amazing woman" and assuming the --ESS suffix. But I immediately caught myself ("No - can't be. UPPISH isn't a word.") and corrected myself. But HERON took me back to my original guess.
ReplyDeleteMy FEELING is that the constructer might have been off his MEDS, or dropped an EDIBLE.
Wow I HATED this, for all the weird-ass words Rex mentioned plus snooze alarm and the rest of the dreck. It was painful and unpleasant to get through.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see others agree with UPPISH. I enjoyed the puzzle overall, but please … uppish?
ReplyDeleteRe UPPITY vs UPPISH: here they are compared in Google Ngram from 1800 to 2019.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that, notwithstanding the above claims from ABC News that it first appeared in the 1880s, Google shows UPPITY appearing in print by about 1819.
According to Webster, UPPISH has been around in English since 1677. Surely that’s enough to make it a word? UPPIty since 1880 only (someone here mentioned Uncle Remus, published that year), and Websters says in a usage note: “The adjective uppity is an informal, somewhat old-fashioned word. When used to mean "arrogant" or "presumptuous," it is no more offensive than either of these synonyms. In its meaning of "aspiring to a rank or position higher than one deserves or is entitled to" it is decidedly disparaging, the implication of the word being that the one described does not deserve or is not entitled to rise in standing. Beyond this denotation, however, uppity has a long history of being applied to members of racial minorities and especially to Black people. Its association with such uses, and the bigotry they represent, means that when it is used to describe a member of a racial minority it is likely to be considered especially offensive.”
ReplyDeleteI agree with @Lewis: “It’s so much of the special feel of being in crossword time.” I was really glad to have done it, and then spent some time contemplating the feeling(s). It took me a while, thinking of it it all, to come to this conclusion. Speaking as a long-time AVID READER myself (the feeling that startled me most), I have to say that an AVID READER might well feel DREAD when contemplating the English language in the mirror of many commenters' comments here.
Thanks @Anoa Bob for “I thought all four pairs really stuck the landing.” Amen.
And see Vermonter Robert Frost’s "Two Tramps in Mud Time."
And thanks, Michael Schlossberg. A good way to start this year.
Someone mentioned spending an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out 'flus train', well, I spent an embarrassing amount of time on "pragencies". I actually googled it to find out what in the heck this was. smh
ReplyDeleteSince I get the puzzle 2 weeks late, few will see this comment. However, I was stuck forever (red face) on “gene rationz”.
DeleteDefinitely not my demographic, but KRYSTEN Ritter was terrific in Jessica Jones! I didn't even see the clue, guess the acrosses took care of it. Only write over was REtUrnS before RESULTS and I think my answer is more on point, since *anything* can have RESULTS but only elections have returns...
ReplyDeleteMud season was totally legible to me, but I never heard about it before living in rural Vermont for a bit (where it was less a common turn of phrase and more the only reasonable way to describe the time of year when the snow melted). So seeing it in the puzzle brought warm recognition but also a lot of confusion about why it would be in the puzzle as if it's universal when a lot of places don't get mud like that.
ReplyDeleteare we not going to talk about SNOOZE ALARM as a noun? i have heard of snooze buttons, and snoozing an alarm, but never a “snooze alarm.”
ReplyDeleteHang on, I just gotta put my car IN IDLE, definitely a real phrase that’s been used, before I complain about this very poor effort.
ReplyDelete"But what was really off-putting about the puzzle was the fill, which absolutely reeked of giant, uncurated wordlist" made me literally clap. What a miserable slog.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere recently that the key to good trivia is providing someone a challenge that makes the journey seem worth it once you arrive at the answer. And what a bunch of worthless wasted time with the journeys today.
CATSEAR, AMAHL, PEWIT, KRYSTEN, ARIKARA, ARUM, VELLUM.
Life is too short for a puzzle full of filler fill. This is the kind of deal where, if this was the first Sunday I ever solved, I'm not entirely sure I'd be inspired to ever solve another Sunday ever again. This wasn't fun, and when I finished, I wasn't interested in what I'd done.
A reasonably good theme built on garbage fill. Sad.
That second pic of you is giving some serious Michael Stipe!
ReplyDelete'in idle' wasn't hard to figure out, but it is wrong .... you can 'idle' when you are in neutral or you are 'idling' -- but you are never 'in idle'
ReplyDeleteDid not love the puzzle but my day is brighter for the Tove Jansson / Moomin shout out! The Summer Book is one of my favorites. And The Moomins are so delightfully weird.
ReplyDeleteAhhh...PR AGENCIES...
ReplyDeleteGot stuck on AD AGENCIES, and couldn't think of PR
REM was not obvious to me, obviously
Not my cup of tea. Much too much ARIKARARENATOCATSEARAMAHL for me.
ReplyDeleteDidn't read this until the 15th. Didn't care for this one. Agreed...too many awkward feeling answers.
ReplyDeleteLUCKY ME
ReplyDeleteWHEN THE GODDESS' SWIMSHIRT and SUIT
STOKE my LUST AS A CURSE,
IRECKON with ZEAL that WE do it
ONCEMOREWITHFEELING for HERS.
--- CAPTAIN RENATO "ROCKY" ARMANI
DNF. The east side just wouldn't fall. Had no idea what the superfund E_A was, and couldn't make sense of _RAGENC___. So it was a 2-initial acronym, PR. That one was too deep to dig out. Plus, UPPI__ = UPPITY, of course and forever. UPPISH? Not in the language, rejected. That -TY was etched there and unmovable.
ReplyDeleteWordle eagle. A total surprise when my second guess was right: BYBBB, GGGGG.
Tough in places where my original answers seemed better - UPPIty before UPPISH; REtUrnS before RESULTS. You know the routine.
ReplyDeleteIf you're not familiar with CHRIS Stapleton, you should become so. The missus likes 'Tennessee Whiskey' while I prefer his earlier work with the Steeldrivers.
Wordle eagle!!! Third in a week or so.
BTW, APES and PEAS in the corners.
ReplyDelete"Gimme a second" what, exactly? Zeal, rage, dread, lust? Nonsensical fake theme for four human emotions buried in four entries. How was this considered clever or meaningful?? Extremely lame "theme".
ReplyDeleteYeah - UPPISH. It's in the dictionary, but no one uses it.
ReplyDeleteLike @Rondo said, hard some places, easy in others. A few too many PPP names for my taste. I never know anyone's name - couldn't make it at Cheers.
Diana, LIW
I may be in the minority on this one, but I thought it was a very clever and fun puzzle. What I liked about the themes is that the second answer in each pair not only was embedded with a feeling (except for zeal, where I agree with Rex), but has more feeling/connotation than the first answer. Example: a spider literally spins a web but a PR agency figuratively spins a story. OK it doesn’t work as well with the press cluing, but in general the second answers really do have more feeling.
ReplyDelete