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Things that scratch a scratching post / TUE 1-16-24 / Nonstick cookware brand / If this is exhausted, all is lost / Bit of equipment for a skier or trekker / Movie theater eponym / First pope in a line of 13
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Constructor: Marshal Herrmann
Relative difficulty: Hard
THEME: ONE L — Every answer in the grid has the letter L appear in it exactly one time.
Word of the Day: SEA GLASS (28A: Material for some jewelry at a surf shop) —
Sea glass are naturally weathered pieces of glass, which often have the appearance of tumbled stones. Sea glass is physically and chemically weathered glass found on beaches along bodies of salt water. These weathering processes produce natural frosted glass.[1] Sea glass is used for decoration, most commonly in jewellery. "Beach glass" comes from fresh water and is often less frosted in appearance than sea glass. Sea glass takes 20–40 years, and sometimes as much as 100–200 years, to acquire its characteristic texture and shape.[2] It is also colloquially referred to as drift glass from the longshore drift process that forms the smooth edges. In practice, the two terms are used interchangeably.
• • •
Theme answers:
- ONE L (62A: First-year law student ... or what every answer in this puzzle has exactly)
Onto the puzzle! I expect this one to be pretty polarizing. I've seen a lot of "stunt" puzzles before ... only using one vowel, being limited to only some letters of the alphabet, every clue starts with some letter, etc., etc. The issue is that while these can be hard to construct, they are often not very fun to solve! And why do we make crosswords if not for them to be fun to solve? This one wasn't particularly egregious to me, but I did notice something was amiss in the fill before getting to the revealer. OLAF / LOEW / LEO I in one corner is a pileup of hard-ish propers for a Tuesday, as well as things like TFAL (especially crossing LIFE as clued!), BALT, ELEV strewn around. Nothing terrible, individually ... but it adds up.
 |
| Some sneaky avocado in these BLTS! |
It was cool to hit the revealer, though, and finally see it. I was pretty impressed by the construction. Did it make me enjoy the solve overall in hindsight? I think so! But I'm genuinely not sure. It would have been amazing if the clues had also had one L each. That would have blown my mind.
 |
| Pretty OPAL |
Because of the constraints of this theme, the grid has a lot of 4s and 5s and not too many long answers. But a lot of the 8s were really great. I really like RED FLAGS (as fill, and, I guess, in people I date, given my track record), GOLF CART, CULT HERO, FIELD DAY, BOOTLEGS. I'd never heard of SELF FIVE but that's a funny concept and answer.
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| Look at that suburban SPRAWL. Bad! |
Bullets:
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
- BLOG (1A: Publication that usually has only one contributor) — Funny that the puzzle opened with this clue on a day I was guest blogging!
- ELEV (56A: About 5,280 ft., for Denver) — I wonder how they measure elevation for a city. Is it an average of the elevation over every point within city limits? Is it the elevation at the geographic center of the city? Is there some special location where the official elevation is measured? I could certainly look this up very easily, but it's more fun to just ask on here!
- GOLF CART (4D: Green vehicle?) — Fun clue! Good misdirect to green-as-in-eco instead of green-as-in-golf.
- OLAF (46D: German chancellor Scholz) — Who will be the first to put French prime minister ATTAL in a grid?
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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93 comments:
Medium. I started out with oped before BLOG and then read the down clues. That was it for erasures and there were no WOEs.
Clever and pretty smooth given the theme. I’m pretty sure I would not have figured out what was going on my own. Liked it.
Hi Rafa! I like your picture illustrating SPRAWL. I would like to add a link to Arcade Fire's brilliant song Sprawl II. "Sometimes, I wonder if the world's so small, that we can never get away from the sprawl".
I tried to do this down clues only, but not having FOWL in place was hung up looking at SELF-IVE at 20 across and not having a clue what it could be. SELF: DIVE, GIVE, JIVE, LIVE? Nothing worked and of course I too have never heard the term SELF FIVE. And of course without looking at the across clues, I had not the slightest idea what the theme was, and thought the revealer would be LAST HOPE. Impossible to get the theme this way, as I assumed there were 4 theme answers but there were actually 78 of them! (is that a record?) But as I say: no one forced me to solve downs only.
Yes there were a lot of names; fortunately mostly familiar. Proud of myself for getting SELES, CEELO Green, BALT, OLAF, LEO I, ELO, OLIN, EVEL.
[Spelling Bee: Mon 0; crazy fast 48 seconds to pG, and got directly to QB in 10 minutes without having any words rejected. That is for sure a record!]
I was amazed at the constructor’s ingenuity in coming up with this theme. It was unique and very fun! How hard it must have been to put one part of the series of 26 in every answer! How many of us could do that? Not many, I’d guess. You should be very proud!
No Ls there.
My actual take, including Ls: Well, until I got to the revealer, I was just motoring along, not noticing the Ls nor thinking it was odd that there was no theme. Then, of course, I looked at all the words I had filled in and thought, “OK, that’s interesting.” Almost wonder if it would have been better to not tip us off in the revealer (or do it more obliquely) and see how many got it. I probably wouldn’t have.
In Denver, the elevation is defined as that of the 15th step of the State Capitol… chosen no doubt to match the desired 5280.
I came here to witness Rex seething in white-hot rage at the stunt. Imagine my disappointment.
Hard? I think not.
The clues were Monday-esque and there were few snags. This "theme," as executed here, should get the L out of here.
I should have anticipated this theme seeing it was constructed by someone named MARSHAL - how many times in his life has he had to add (ONE L) when saying his name?
> No Ls there.
“Could”? “Should”?
I agree with Wanderlust at 1:13 am. Bravo! —SoCal Craig
According to my Google search, “The elevation of a city is typically determined by finding the highest point within the city limits. This is usually done using surveying techniques and modern technology such as GPS. While it's true that a city is not uniformly at the same elevation, the highest point is considered the official elevation of the city.”
@DavidP: Me too, although I liked it a lot more than we think @Rex would have.
Easy-Medium for me. @Wanderlust, add me to the list of solvers who wouldn't have noticed without the revealer.
26D: CEELi before CEELO. I was thinking of Celie from The Color Purple
29D: AP eng before AP LIT
53A: Misspelled LOEW as LOwe
Allow me to join the SELF FIVE WOE club.
Medium for me. I wanted Slav instead of BALT, but I knew BUILD was right and eventually I got it. Nothing too difficult and I got to the theme clue before finishing the puzzle--it helped a lot, actually, and I was impressed with the construction.
Kept looking for a theme, but never found it until reading Rex Parker's column. Finished it without cheating, even though I'd never heard of TFAL or CEELO. SELFFIVE makes sense, but I've never heard nor seen it anywhere.
Didn't understand the clue for BOOTLEGS, but got it from the crosses. I found most of the puzzle easy, but the West and Northwest were harder.
SELF FIVE ? As opposed to a JOINT FIVE, or perhaps a COMMUNAL FIVE ? Yuk.
I haven't heard of SELFFIVE but have heard of Mel Robbins High 5 Habit! Same thing. I love her but can't bring myself to high 5 the mirror in the morning. I think that would force me back to bed.
Haha, great catch, Katie!
Theme helped once I finally hit the revealer. I thought the puzzle held up surprisingly well given the theme restraints. LEO I and SELF FIVE are probably the worst things in the grid (giving ONE L a pass as the revealer). We get tons of puzzles with much worse glue. Thumbs up from me.
Vacation catchup:
Croce Freestyle 874 was mostly very easy, with the NE section raising it up to easy-medium overall.
Croce Freestyle 876 was medium, with the SW being toughest for me.
As a law student, I got a nice chuckle out of the 1L theme
You said everything I would’ve said but much more kindly 😀 Thanks @rafa ~RP
Really enjoyed this theme. I could tell something was "off" with the answers, so I hopped down to the SE corner to look for the revealer and then facepalmed (a variant of a SELF FIVE, I supposed) when saw it. A fun way to start off the holiday-shortened work week.
Lovely to see WELD appearing on a Tuesday.
Upon uncovering ONEL – my last answer – my reaction, broken down:
• “Really?”
• “Really!”
• [Jaw drop], [Forehead slap]
• “Never saw that coming. Well played, sir!”
• “Oh, clever, clever idea!”
• “Tough to construct!”
• “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”
Hats off to you, Marshal, on a stellar puzzle, no less a debut! You had me at the cross of BILGE and BULGE, then conquered me at ONEL with your simple knock-me-over-with-a-feather theme.
Congratulations on your debut, and thank you for a wow puzzle!
Still don’t understand the BOOTLEGS clue; came here to see what Rex had to say about it. Fun to solve.
Bootlegs are illegal / unauthorized recordings
“an illegal musical recording, especially one made at a concert.”
Albums/recordings taken from the original and sold illegally=bootlegs...get it criminal records(albums)--blargh bad pun
Played easy for me. Started to get suspicious when I hit BILGE, BULGE, BUILD, BALT. But never really picked up on it until the revealer which if it hadn’t been the last answer would have been disappointing. I think leaving it for last made me feel pretty good about the cleverness of it. SELFFIVE was a stretch and made me frown.
BOOTLEGS = Criminal Records as in pirated music. For anaonymous.
Totally agree — clever construction tricks rarely make for a good puzzle or a pleasant solve, but this one succeeded. Nice!
Since I really enjoyed the puzzle then I will say if you can’t really detect “the stunt” while you are solving, then it’s Aok with me!
My biggest hang up was SELFFIVE. When I FINALLY figured out FOWL I did a big D’OH…I’d been looking for a particular bird name.
Every time I see Zora NEALE Thurston I feel compelled to say that the audiobook of Their Eyes Were Watching God is narrated by the late great Ruby Dee and it is…fabulous. I also have to say that seeing CEELO Green has made me want to listen to him sing Crazy (as Gnarls Barkley). Happy puzzle multi-tasking thoughts!
A TUESDAY WELDone!
(Shoot, just saw Lewis beat me to the punchline…)
“One L” by Scott Turow (https://www.amazon.com/One-Turbulent-Story-Harvard-School/dp/0143119028). Inspired the 1970s TV series “The Paper Chase.”
Hey All !
Well, the construction of getting every word in the puz to have one, and only ONE, L, and still come up with almost complete clean fill is mind blowing. Wondering how many iterations Marshal went through, and also if he has any hair left! @Lewis, any insights?
The fill is outstanding, considering the constraints. It's on par with any TuesPuz you run across in the NYT. No BULL. (Har, get it? That had two L's)
SELFFIVE got a chuckle. It's like a physical "Yay me!"
Too bad @LMS is still in the wind, she'd get a kick out of this puz construction.
GOLF CART clue will more than likely made @Lewis' list. Fun clue!
Don't be HOSTEL towards the puz. Har.
Six F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Relatively easy except in a couple places. Notably I had CULTHEad before CULTHERO, and having never heard of the OLIN people, I had a_LE and d_EL there at the bottom. That held me up a long time before I realized ONEL and had a big AHA moment that was pretty satisfying. But then, a “keep trying” appeared! I had mELD instead of WELD, and somehow SLEW just hadn’t come to mind with the clue. So had to finally check puzzle to see where my error was.
Like @Lewis, I never saw it coming -- or going, either, until I read the revealer. Very nice feat. I don't know how construction software works, so I don't know how hard this was in practice, but the effect is satisfying. I also enjoyed the little touches, like BULGE/BILGE/BILKS, and having both ROIL and RILE.
I'm not so sure about having two birthstones in one puzzle; and those trains are not ELS by the time they get to O'Hare, if they ever were. The answer is fine, just clue it with the Loop.
As for difficulty: easy if you're old enough to remember Tuesday WELD, and therefore LIFE, LOOK, and LEO I (well, maybe not that old). I do like cluing the Pope in a way that specifies the Roman numberal.
What a wonderful Tuesday -- clued with the cleverness, wit and imagination you usually don't find until later in the week. I loved the clues for BLTS (not, hard, but funny!); BOOTLEGS (clever and fiendish); RULE (requires the solver to think); FOWL (nice pun, and I was looking for a species of bird); and LAST HOPE (also requires the solver to think).
Make the clues fun and interesting and I'm always a happy camper. As for the theme: very clever and hard to pull off, I'm quite sure, but if ONE L had gone awoL, I wouldn't have even known the theme was there.
And wouldn't have missed it since I found the puzzle an early-week delight even without it.
Easy, whooshed along thinking it was themeless. LifelinE (given the initial and final letters) before LASTHOPE the only writeover. Got a good chuckle out of the revealer but by then the puzzle was done.
Isn't it THE Golden Rule and not "A" Golden Rule???
Please all, do NOT drive your GOLF CART onto the green. Really bad form.
A once-popular joke in a once-popular style that seems to have died out:
If Tuesday Weld married Fredric March's grandson, she'd be Tuesday March the third.
Fun puzzle to do, except for the TFAL/LIFE cross that messed me up in the NW. Also got BOOTLEGS from the crosses, but mentally was unable to relate it to anything other than illegal booze. Ossified brain there. There was almost a rhythm to filling in cascading words with L’s in the middle of the puzzle.
Talk about a coincidence. My brother, BOOTLEGSforbreakfast, is visiting this week.
As soon as I put in BLOG at 1A, I noticed that it had one"L". Odd, I thought. Why would this have only one "L"? From there on, it was whoosh, whoosh!
Here's a deeply hidden mini theme. The natural log of "e" is one. So 23D LOGE and ONEL are close cousins. Perhaps one of our math commenters could explain more clearly. Or perhaps this is a REDFLAG screaming "stay away from this whack job."
Kind of a weird notion to build a puzzle on a difficult to construct concept that no one would have noticed without the last answer. Congratulations, I guess, Marshall Herrmann.
Nicely done stuntpuz. But, but -- there are *two* black-square L's. Just sayin.
Didn't see the puz mcguffin comin, ahead of fillin in the revealer. Neat ahar moment, at our house.
Only 4 weejects! staff pick: ELO. Altho, technically speakin, eLectric Light Orchestra does have yer 2 L's. Just sayin.
SELF-FIVE. har. Only reference I could find for that pup was in Urban Dictionary. The start of a new era in valid references for puzfillins? Cool.
BILGE/BULGE was quite nice. Also very fond of BOOTLEGS & its clue.
Thanx for the El-Train ride, Mr. Herrmann dude. And congratz on a unique debut.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
On early week puzzles, I do all the acrosses, then all the downs, then fill in the rest. Probably not the best for time, but I get to think about all the clues. Today, this led to doing half the puzzle without knowing the reveal, and half with. Some wrong across answers became obvious. Puts the kibosh on really cries out for NIXES, and a C-SPAN interviewee would most likely be a SENator.
As others have noted, surprisingly good fill and well-clued!
A SELF FIVE is usually depicted as a comedy gag where a person goes up for a high five and is unreciprocated. Not to be deterred, they enthusiastically slap their own hand.
L's bells! What the L? I could go on, but the L with it.
Very easy. A very elevating puzzle.
BTW, there is no L in Tuesday, or any other day of the week, unless it's a holiday.
For me this was in the more fun to build than solve category. Further I'd argue that everyone who has commented here is a contributor to this blog.
I liked the puzzle a lot, very creative.
In addition to OneL, it might have also included:
Noel - Christmas in Caen, and
Tool - epithet for George Santos
I agree! I always save the theme explainer until last and expect to figure it out before I get there. When I couldn’t, I assumed it would be something lame, but instead I was happily astounded with the feat I hadn’t even noticed.
Delightful puzzle and what a shocker to stumble across the revealer and look back at all those Ls hiding in plain sight. Plenty of humor mixed in with overly simple clues.
SELF FIVE is funny. You get in trouble if you drive a GOLF CART on the green.
I live in Denver on the 11th floor so maybe 5380 ELEV. They measure our mile-highness to the steps of the capitol, and there's a plaque, but of course over time measuring has gotten more accurate and the plaque isn't accurate by Type-A standards anymore. Still a decent place to yodel.
BALT is the only thing feeling forced and I would've swapped it for GILT.
Uniclues:
1 Arrests Seinfeld with videocamera at the cinema.
2 Zeus's system of government.
3 Jeez, a hail Mary.
4 Attorney wanna-be sings poorly in Switzerland.
5 Smudge a chicken.
6 When it flew from the window onto a passing cartoon character.
7 B-n-B with a gimpy rapacious inn-keeper, REDRUM written on the mirror, and sheets with blood stains.
8 Proliferation of those who know their comets.
1 HALTS BOOTLEGS (~)
2 VOLT RULE (~)
3 OH LORD ... LAST HOPE
4 ONE-L YODEL FAIL (~)
5 BLUR FOWL (~)
6 ANVIL'S FIELD DAY
7 RED FLAGS HOSTEL
8 CULT HERO SPRAWL (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Sit straight. JACK UP SLOUCH.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I flew through this until BALTS because I had Hexes for HALTS.
Nice debut, Marshal & thank you.
Smith here, that was also me @9:36 appearing as anon. Anyone know why I'm getting this msg:
"Unable to sign in to comment. Please check your browser configurations to allow sign-in. Learn more. You can still comment anonymously, or with name and URL."
I did not learn anything from Learn More.
Since it’s late I wasn’t even going to comment today, but then saw it was a debut and didn’t want to let this terrific puzzle pass without giving props to the constructor. An excellent grid with exceptionally good clues and then to get down to that last answer and realize what you just did - well as Lewis said, a big slap on the forehead when I saw that ONE. And then I looked back and thought what? No way but yes, way, that’s exactly what I just did. And I could hardly believe that I had done the entire puzzle without noticing that every single entry had an L . . . even with that subtle little ELS hint at 3A.
Can’t remember when I’ve had a bigger smile on my face after finishing a crossword on any day. Thank you Marshal. It was fun and even challenging in places, like where I misspelled HOSTEL and YODEL. I’m looking forward to a future with more from you.
Surprised at how easy / medium people felt this one was. Even knowing the gimmick early on, I still felt it was pretty challenging
Heh, the exact same thing happened to me, I’d never heard of Look, and slew just didn’t pop.
Add me to the "never saw it coming" group. Instead of noticing all of the ONE-L words, I wondered for a while if it was a puzzle brought to us by the letter B (BLOG, BLTS, BULGE, BILGE, BILKS, BLUR, BUILD, BALT, BOOTLEGS). Considering the theme constraint, I thought that the constructor offered us a fine array of not-your-everyday entries - RED FLAGS, FIELD DAY, SEA GLASS, ANVILS, SPRAWL - as well as the dynamite clue for BOOTLEGS.
Help from previous puzzles: CEELO. No idea: SELFFiVE.
@Lewis, thanks for noticing Tuesday WELD.
Que briliant....This was cLever, cLever, cLever.
Did you catch on to the ONE L theme anytime during your solve? NO. I kept sniffing around, though. There was a B BUILD up around the BULGE BILGE BILKS area, so that got my mind wandering a bit. Hmmm. Nothing there was making sense.
So the end comes near and I look. ONE L. Wow. And I say wow out loud because I hadn't yet finished. Could it be BOOT LEGS? It is! And my finale was FIELD DAY. The end.
First off, I thought the cluing was really good; it gave me smiles galore. This is not going to be the red-headed Tuesday step child after all. No, it was a welcome fresh breath of air (compared to dullsville Monday!)... I give this an A+ and then some more.
So this is a debut? WOW. I think Jeff would've given this a POW!
Like merging sudoku with crosswords.
People from Baltic countries are called BALTs? I have literally never heard of this in my fairly-long-at-this-point life.
As soon as I parsed out "SELFFIVE" I hear Rex screaming.
Thought this was a fun and easy one
@Roo -- From Marshal's notes on WordPlay:
"Apart from one four-letter entry (ONE L), the grid started as a blank canvas, so constructing it was similar to doing so for a themeless puzzle — just without 70 percent of my word list. Not having an obvious starting point proved overwhelming, but after many iterations, I found a flexible grid pattern and kept iterating until I was excited by all of the longer answers. One of the hardest challenges was avoiding dupes: At one point, I had a version with “Olav” and OLAF; NEALE, “Neal” and “Neil”; and “Alan” and “Alain.” Another challenge was deciding which corner to use ALOE in, as it was a hot commodity in filling this grid."
Sounds to me like Marshal went through quite a few iterations!
Balts are Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians.
Baltis are a Tibetic ethnic group.
Baltimoreans are from Maryland.
BALT is BULSHIT. Likewise, BILGE. The bilge is a part of a boat, what accumulates there then gets pumped overboard is bilge-water. Yes, I know dictionaries let you know that sometimes people say bilge when they mean bilge-water, but that's just for you to understand what a person might mean when they say they dumped the bilge, lest you worry they dumped the bottom of your boat. Never, ever, call the crap in your bilge the bilge.
Oh, I self-five almost every day.
I didn't see the gimmick until the last clue, and up to that point, thought it was very easy. Flew through it in no time. But I was wowed when I saw the revealer... Well done, Marshal. Very clever!
HA! Like me!
Thx Marshal; fun challenge! 😊
Downs-o (success in 3 x NYT Sat).
Haven't read the blog yet, nor looked at the crosses. Want to try to suss out a possible theme, and esp grok what SELF FIVE might be. Maybe an offshoot of 'take FIVE' or give yourSELF FIVE to sort something out?? 🤔
An invigorating trip, so far! :)
@okanaganer
Great time to G yd; that's lightning quick, mentally and execution-wise! ⚡️
___
Croce's 876 nearly broke the bank (10 x NYT Sat). Up there with the toughest and most satisfying solves ever! :) Totally unknown fill: 'Literature place' and 'Delivery alternative'. Bless the crosses! 🙏
Wyna Lui's Mon. New Yorker was med-tough (4 x NYT Sat.). Finally grokked the grid-spanner, and broke open the whole lower left quad, which was causing fits.
On to Lily Geller's New Yorker cryptic. 🤞
At last! (whew & phew) finished Fri's downs-o; was very pleased to finally twig on the 'buyer's remorse' long down! Had one error at 'Erykah'; the crosses I had were solid, so no way of intuiting this one. Learned about Erykah, tho. :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Yay! :)
Looking for clues to what might be a theme; couldn't find anything, so chanced to look in the lower right corner – where occasionally one finds something of importance, and voila!, sure enuf, ONE L in every answer! ⚡️
Mission accomplished! Thx, again, Marshal; give yourSELF FIVE for a wonderful puz! :)
Now to read @Rex and the blog.
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Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Anyone know where to find the winner's list for the NYT's Super Mega crossword. I have not seen it on Wordplay, where it was supposed to be, on 1/15/2024?
That was one L of a puzzle!
Bootleg records. Illegally produced LP’s
Anonymous 7:54 AM
Interesting. I liked the criminal records/bootleg records misdirect. . It is not really a pun. It is a play on 2 meanings of the word records.
Hey, egs, Marshal has just one L. Just sayin'
Hi Rafa, good to see you again; thx for your write-up, and for explaining eco 'green' for GOLF CART. That one flew over my head, as I knew they're not allowed on the greens! 😊
Very much enjoyed Scott Turow's 'ONE L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School'.
Mental SELF FIVE - Barney Stinson. 👋
@okanaganer
Another outstanding SB performance; you're on a roll! ⚡️
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Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
@jberg: I'm old enough to remember Tuesday WELD and think of DOBIE GILLIS whenever I see Rodin's THINKER.
Saw the revealer halfway through and that made the solve more fun. It might have been a little harder than usual for a Tuesday, but the revealer helped a lot.
Interesting about LOOK for MarkV
11:50 AM
I think it died in the early 70’s.
Generational thing. I remembered it right away. Look was less well known than Life even when it was around. So a bit obscure for a Tuesday for younger generations but the constructor needed an L!
Jberg 9:21 AM
Thanks for confirming what I thought. The El doesn’t go to O’Hare.
@mbr - I try to think of my CULTHERO Thalia Menninger (Tuesday Weld, for you non-APLIT TV-illiterates) back in her Dobie days whenever I “SELFFIVE”.
The definition of a HOTTIE before the term ever existed!
Strong amen to Beezer: "Every time I see Zora NEALE Thurston I feel compelled to say that the audiobook of Their Eyes Were Watching God is narrated by the late great Ruby Dee and it is…fabulous." If anything, that is an understatement... and I'm grateful crosswords finally spurred me to listen to it!!
Queenoid 12:15 PM
About BALTS
They are not Slavs.
Lithuanians and Latvians speak languages related to but distinct from the various Slavic languages. Estonians speak an utterly different language related to Finnish.
The result is a geographic expression is used to refer to all 3, hence Balts and the Baltic countries.
Anonymous 12:59 PM
I looked up BALT
It is a word used to describe the people in the area, originally referring to just Latvians and Lithuanians and then extended to Estonians. Not sure why such a word that has been in use in English since at least the 19th Century is BS. It is a convenient word, as no other word refers to all 3 countries. It is also convenient because they have repeatedly been conquered at the same time and are now threatened again.
Brilliant.
Said my favorite golfer, Ernie ELS.
You're welcome
Some weird tech things going on. Disney randomly charged my cc, I have nothing to do with Disney, have never used their streaming service or visited one of their lands. Fraud from the mouse, per cc. They found others. And said someone had set up Google wallet for us, but it was not us or anyone in our fam so the cc deleted it. During various investigations I found that 3rd party cookies were disabled in Google, which is why Blogger wouldn't let me post as myself. But um I didn't change that. Well, good thing I check cc charges every week.
Actually thought it was pretty easy. Made some early mistakes (eg, STOPS for HALTS) but once I got ONEL was easy to go back and fix. Seven minutes, little slow for a Tuesday but nothing was a real head scratcher. Liked the oun in GOLFCART, since it IS also eco-friendly
Is this a good spot to add that third highest mountain in Florida is Space Mountain?
I really loved this puzzle! As a solver who goes through all the clues & answer all I can before properly working on the fill, getting the ONE L pretty early on (relatively) made my fill experience way more fun. It felt like a crossword sudoku crossover where I checked the rows & columns to see if there was an L. Very fun!
I really can’t believe no one has posted a link to NBA player Josh Hart, the king of the the self-five. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1NMRTo-UYMo&pp=ygUhTmJhIHBsYXllciBnaXZpbmcgc2VsZiBoaWdoIGZpdmVz
Same! It was a fun moment
I noticed that too! What an interesting naming choice, given the 2 R’s and 2 N’s in the last name.
I was gobsmacked. It seems hard enough just to construct a crossword in the first place, but doing it with that constraint seems very difficult. I didn't know what a first year law student was called, so skipped the revealer the first time through. When I came back to finish that column and saw that ANEL was a possibility, it was like the end of The Sixth Sense when you suddenly realize the spoiler. Well done, Marshal Herrmann!
The constructor is showing off like the kid riding a bike who says:”Look ma! No hands!” In this case it’s “Look ma! ONEL.” So what? Just not worth the effort. Remember when the NYT used to publish good puzzles?
I kind of spoiled it for myself. Whenever I see a big long clue my eyes are drawn to it, and so my giveaway came at the beginning. I thought, OHLORD, another stunt puzzle.
But it wasn't terrible. SELFFIVE and BALT were total unknowns, and probably don't belong in a Tuesday grid, but you do what you can do. Strange, I never made the connection between BALT and Baltic. Too hung up on [OH]LORD Baltimore.
Writeover: aLot before SLEW. Having referenced OHLORD twice already, here's the hat trick:
OHLORD, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?
Par.
Wordle par as well.
VALID CLUE
AS A RULE, PEARL doesn't FAIL
to BUILD A LIFE well made.
If you HOPE ONE DAY for TALE,
LOOK ALIVE, you'll get LAID.
--- LEO "CEELO" LOEW
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