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Annual mecca for sci-fi and fantasy fans / SAT 2-10-24 / Pentagon figures / Like some brains and pool balls / Sister brand of Miracle-Gro / Grilled corn-on-the-cob dish, in Mexican cuisine / "Game of Thrones" character whose name means "noble" in Sanskrit / Red-and-green headwear / Banking annoyance associated with the 20s?
Saturday, February 10, 2024
Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel
Relative difficulty: Easy (but themed, so I'm not sure it counts as a real Saturday)
Theme answers:
- 16A: 2024, e.g. (YEAR OF THE DRAGON)
- 51A: Celebratory greeting for 16-Across ("GONG XI FA CAI!")
- 24D: Common gift during Chinese Spring Festival (ORANGE)
MegaCon, short for Mega Convention, is a large speculative fiction convention that caters to the comic book, sci-fi, anime, fantasy, RPG, and gaming communities, often occurring in spring at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. The convention is the largest fan convention event in the Southern United States and second largest in North America with an attendance of 160,000 recorded in 2023. (wikipedia)
• • •
The hard part of this puzzle for me was GONG XI FA CAI, every letter. I know I've seen it before, but that didn't help at all. Thank god I know CATE is a CATE and not a KATE. Seems like that crossing might kneecap some people today. All the other crosses seem quite fair. Only other part of the puzzle where I encountered resistance was the west, which actually wasn't hard once I got in there and got WARSAW, but trying to back in, from the back ends of WORE and (esp.) AREAS (31A: Pentagon figures) and RACKED (35A: Like some brains and pool balls) was not easy. And then coming up from below, I wasn't sure what kind of LEAGUES I was dealing with. But I had LEAGUES, at least, which got me SNL and then I finally looked at the WARSAW clue and things fell from there. This mini-struggle is only really noteworthy because the rest of the puzzle was so easy. The difficulty involved was nowhere near typical Saturday levels.
Assorted thoughts, baked and half-baked:
- 15A: Sara who wrote the "Pretty Little Liars" books (SHEPARD) — no idea, not my thing. Top of this grid felt pretty damn name-y (SHEPARD, ARYA, KERRI, EDNA), but at least they were women's names. And back-to-back solo woman constructors now! That's 29 men, 2 women this year. Progress!
- 31A: Pentagon figures (AREAS) — lots of forced cluing today. Pentagons have AREAS ... because they are closed two-dimensional figures? All of which have AREAS? And not even a "?" on the clue to make it sassy. Boo to this. Boo also to the ATM FEE clue, since ATMs dispense other denominations than 20s (1A: Banking annoyances associated with the 20s?), and to [Personal number?] for AGE (is "personal number" supposed to be a phone number misdirection?), and [House speaker's place]—again, not even a "?" on this one. The speaker's "place" is not the STEREO; the speaker *is* the stereo—part of it, anyway. It's like the editors were scrambling to make the clues harder, but only made them ... off-er.
- 39A: Annual mecca for sci-fi and fantasy fans (MEGACON) — LOL that we're supposed to be familiar the *second*-largest US fancon. In Orlando. If you say so!
- 56A: Apple Pay, e.g. (E-WALLET) — definitely had I-WALLET here for a bit (the "Apple" made me think of all the i- prefixes. Pad, Pod, Mac, Tunes, what not. Did Wall-E have an E-WALLET? I bet he did.
- 40D: One born between the mid-1960s and 1980 (GEN X'ER) — Present!
- 22D: "Canvas" for digital art? (NAIL) — sigh, what are these quotation marks doing? You don't need them when you have the "?" already doing "play on words!" work for you. If you use the quotation marks, then you absolutely do not need the "?". NAIL art is literally digital (i.e. related to the fingers), so the "?" is unnecessary, esp. if you've got the quotation marks around "canvas."
- 43A: Setting for a Twins or White Sox game: Abbr. (CDT) — Central Daylight Time. Should've specified "home game," probably, but no biggie.
- 54A: Bull-like (TAURINE) — probably the most "obscure" word in the puzzle, in that it's the one you're least likely to encounter irl, but for me it was a blessed gimme, giving me entree to that SW and thus the west, where I made my last stand. Speaking of lasting, and standing, I bid you good day (and Happy New Year to all who celebrate)
P.S. is the grid supposed to look like a dragon? Because ... I could almost buy that.
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103 comments:
Easy-Medium for me.
amOr before EROS at 11D
All before A NO at 55D
ROTELLi before ROTELLE at 60A
WOEs:
ARYA (1D - I need to brush up on GoT)
ELOTE (5D - I need to brush up on street food)
MEGACON (39A - I need to brush up on nerd fests)
GOGN XI FA CAI (51A - I need to brush up on Chinese culture)
Easy-Medium for a Sat. Mainly in the west that Rex mentioned, but w/o TAURINE as a given, played harder for me. Finished with the WARSAW, ORANGE downs. Tip of the cap to the cluing in that area. Most Saturdayish section.
Was never going to get the Chinese HNY, so yea, glad the crosses were mostly gettable, but I did have CONvEy (ty wagon wheel pasta), at first, and if it was, I wouldn’t have know any different.
Apple Pay isn’t an EWALLET,, but whatever.
Xer here.
Chalk up one fail to OhISEE and the regrettable hERRI.
The scary cross for me on GONG XI FA CAI was not CATE, whom I know and adore but GEN XER. I always get confused on anything after Baby Boomer. Who is Gen X, Y, Z, Millenial? Luckily, after mid-60s seemed like it had to be the first in the letter series.
I also had trouble in the West. I couldn’t remember where Chopin was from, so I had beRlin at first (the only across I had was RACKED). When that didn’t hold up, my mind skipped around Central and North European capitals, completely missing WARSAW. SNL to the rescue.
Lots of great clues today, including some of the ones Rex complained about. I got GONE AWOL with just the G for “badly off-base,” but I still loved it. The clues for STEREO, THEATER and NAILS, on the other hand, totally fooled me. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten any bill out of an ATM other than a 20. I’ve heard 20s called ATM salad.
Yesterday, Rex, I commented that I wished you would stop posting your times because it made me feel slow, and today you didn’t! I was actually kidding so feel free to go back to taunting me with your six-minute Fridays. :-)
Oh, and not sure how I feel about the new-look App. Fine I guess, but was funky to see.
Finished it without cheating, but I have no idea how. GONGXIFICAI is the weirdest correct answer I've ever experienced. The cluing was very difficult, especially "House speaker's place" and "Badly off base."
I'm very eager to hear the comments from others.
Lively, colorful and fun. I think it was about 30 years ago or more that the NYT puzz had Gong Hei Fat Choy as an answer. I retained that bit of info because Dear Abby or Ann Landers also wished it for their Chinese readers that year. But it was marginally helpful because I kept trying out various phonetic versions. And the only gift I know of for Chinese New Year is the Red Envelope, obviously not helpful today.
The SW killed me today. Rocked. Mixed feelings. A lot of things can be Rocked.
lol timing myself this morning. Hard enough just to get computer open 🙂 ~RP
I had always thought one WRACKed ones brain, perhaps in a nerve-wracking situation. Is the W now optional?
Feel your pain on the sleep deprivation. Had no ontention of soing this puzzle at 4:45 and so far, even a Saturday Xword and the new ritual I’msqueezy (nice game, Jeff Chen!) has made me sufficiently sleepy. Maybe tapping this comment will.
Like HERARCHAL yesterday the fatal flaw in this is GONGXIFACAI. How does the average Joseph (upscale, being a NYT reader and all) know THESE random letters. Since both were constructed by Women (YAAAAAY), could one say they were FEMME FATAL FLAWS?
And really, Rex, making allowances for the number of obscure PPP answers because they were Women’s names is a bit over the top in your apparent anti-anti-feminism bean counting (BEAN being TETE, MELON - terms very close to being offensive words to anti-anti-anti feminist chauvinist pigs! Whose RACKED brains think of, well, RACKs!
Got the puzzle faster than usual so it was doable but 51 A put a damper on the otherwise fair and mostly fine puzzle…
Wonderful stuff - approaching my fastest Saturday time according to the app stats. I lean towards an acclamation puzzle rather than a themed. It’s temporal and covers just enough bases. I celebrated on Thursday with some crab soup dumplings from You Garden in Bayside - delicious.
The LILAC Time
Didn’t know SHEPARD either. BLACK HILLS, TAURINE etc are neat longs. I know it’s cute for some but I can do without CAT or dog DAD. SETTOS x OTS is an ugly plural cross. Seems like everyone in Washington has GONE AWOL - is there an adult in the room anywhere?
Highly enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Matt Sewell’s Stumper brings the heat today.
The great one
Rex mentioned how PPP-heavy the north is, which amps up the difficulty on a Saturday when the crosses aren’t available to bail you out. I would definitely prefer that they don’t go heavy on the trivia to boost up the difficulty level on the weekend.
Saw the GONG XI FA CAI coming into focus, but stuck it out - one can forgive an answer that looks like gibberish if the crosses are fair and the phrase might at least be recognizable to some, and it’s even more forgivable if it’s part of the theme (all are true today). The downer for me is that when there is gibberish in the grid on a daily basis the “here we go again” karma kicks in, and we (or I at least, speaking for myself) can’t enjoy it. Taken in small doses like today, an answer like that can really sparkle, so congrats to the constructor for pulling off something that I wish were closer to the rule rather than the exception.
I visited the Crazy Horse Memorial years ago and still struggled with that one - if I recall correctly, it’s in one of the Dakotas, not too far from Rushmore (I may be mistaken on that). I think that’s where Wall Drug is as well (don’t ask).
For the House speaker clue to work, one may need to be a crotchety old dude like myself - did anyone else have one of those self-contained pieces of furniture with the turntable and speakers all enclosed - I believe they were called Hi-fi sets or something like that (keep in mind we are talking pre color TV days here). Good luck with that one Gen X-ers !
Crossing the author of a book I haven’t read with an athlete I’ve never heard of. Oof. What a way to start the year of the dragon!
Had to think about CATE/kATE, but ultimately guessed right. Like Rex, I had trouble in the west, but more of my own doing. I thought the “personal number” was old reliable SSN, so couldn’t see WARSAW (I even questioned if GDAŃSK had somehow become the capital).
I would have loved this puzzle had it included an entry for the translation of gong xi fa cai
Enjoyed today, but didn’t get/like the clue for TSK. Had RELIC before LILAC, but otherwise pretty smooth sailing.
wrack = destroy; rack = strain or torture, but there does seem to be overlap. your nerves are wracked but your brains are racked?
I mostly enjoyed the puzzle but GONGXIFACAI was a complete unknown to me. However, I got it from crosses. But CATDAD crossing CDT was a Natick - I was assuming some sports organization letters (which I didn’t know) not time zone setting. And sorry, but I think CATDAD is just INANE. Humans can love cats and dogs but they are not their parents for god’s sake. I suppose it could be a DAD who loves CATs. Either way, I couldn’t get it.
@Anon 6:42 - I'm with you on thinking wRACKED was correct.
M-W dictionary says, however:
Rack and wrack in phrases such as “(w)rack one’s brain” have been used interchangeably so frequently that either spelling is fine to use. However, some usage commentators suggest using rack in the phrases “rack one’s brain” and “nerve-racking” and save wrack for boat- and storm-related imagery, such as “storm-wracked” and “wrack and ruin”.
Random thoughts:
• Just a reminder, that English is not Zhouqin’s native language.
• When I looked at CAT DAD and ELF HAT, my brain shouted, “Seuss!”
• Speaking of the brain, I never cease to be amazed at how it works behind the scenes, at how it is initially stymied by a clue, then, later, when I look at the clue again, the answer pops out. This happened maybe five times in this puzzle.
• Some lovely sounding answers: LILAC, GELATO, ROTELLE, TAURINE.
• ELOTE is a relatively new crossword answer. As best as I can tell, among all the major venues, it first appeared in 2021.
• GONGXIFACAI was a supreme challenge for me, a long no-know in which I needed crosses for every letter. That it filled in correctly is a testament to the constructor and Times team. Bravo, all!
CC, your puzzles are always so junk-free, smart, fresh, and have the stamp of high quality, no matter what day of the week they appear. I am so grateful for you, and for today’s splendid solve!
My nitpick: an earned PhD isn’t really an honor, and plenty of US presidents have received honorary doctorates at graduation ceremonies
After staying up past midnight to ring in the New Year in our Vietnamese-Cuban household, it was fun to wake up and see references to the YEAR OF THE DRAGON.
In our house, it’s “Chúc mừng năm mới” so it took me awhile to remember the Chinese greeting, but it’s a nice thought in any language.
Here’s hoping the new year brings health, prosperity, happiness - and good puzzles! - to Rex and all fellow solvers. Keeping our brains strong for many years to come!
I gave up on HERRI and OHISEE. The OH/DEAR dupe should have been a dead giveaway but there's also an ACAI dupe. I don't parse Chinese and either way in a puzzle it's still an ACAI dupe. When I saw the answer I was once again amazed at my own blindness to the obvious.
yd -0. QB13
So when they rack up Frankensteins brain, do they put up the "irregular" sign? I guess when the did 27 across they skipped the W
It’s weird, I spend most of my time in China (I work there), but I’ve never heard or read gongxi facai anywhere. Everybody seems to say xin nian kuaile, which means Happy New Years. But the phrase in the puzzle is clearly a real thing. So I learned something today.
This puzzle could have been constructed by Natan Last, and that is not a compliment.
Ugh, not easy for me, didn’t know the Chinese, thought it was spelled wracked, wrote in Comicon, think cat dad is not a thing.
Thanks to those who clarified the rack/wrack distinction (or tried to). I too thought one wracked one’s brain so RACKED couldn’t have been right. Oops.
Much of this gave me a lot of trouble. I couldn’t get TORE from Rocked, had SSN for personal number, so couldn’t see WARSAW, etc., so that whole section was a mess. (Though WARSAW makes perfect sense in retrospect). And as for GONG XI FA CAI,, no way.
I guess it’s good to be totally humbled by a puzzle now and then, especially on a Saturday.
In the case of Young Frankenstein, it was labeled “Abnormal” ;)
I personally would WRACK my brain and RACK pool balls, but M-W cheerfully offers that
Rack and wrack in phrases such as “(w)rack one’s brain” have been used interchangeably so frequently that either spelling is fine to use.
A second conundrum is broached with ROTELLE vs. ROTINI? But the puzzle gets that one right: Rotelle are correctly wheel-shaped, while Rotini are corkscrew-shaped, similar to fusilli.
I liked that the puzzle sort-of had a theme and sort-of didn't. GONG XI FA CAI was easy enough to get from crosses (ACAI dupe alert!) I first put TAUREAN for the bull-like adjective (remember actor Taurean Blacque of "Hill Street Blues"?) but that was quickly fixed. In the NW I had to adjust ANYA and MSAT.
An enjoyable Saturday. Smokey agrees.
Thanks for this theme today. Living in rural Midwest, not much New Year celebration going on around here Once I learn to pronounce this phrase, I can spread it around here
Easy puzzle today, few stumbles with LIGHT before LILAC and ETAILER before EWALLET, but otherwise cruised in a non-Saturday way.
Hey All !
Nice to see CC back in action. And on a Saturday! Dang, she used to be featured quite a bit on Mondays.
Welp, my 7 day streak has ended. After getting that Chinese spelling of "Congratulations" (I looked it up) in on crosses I thought were correct, I got the Almost There! message. Dang. Went over the puz, but couldn't find the mistake, so reluctantly hit Check Puzzle, to find I had a G in gHEPARD/gETTOS. ARGH! Changed it to the S, Happy Music ensued.
I can buy the "grid is a dragon face" analogy.
Amazingly never heard of MEGACON. I had comiCON in there, unsure if it doesn't include the doubled C (I'll look it up...) Nope, it's Comic-Con. Why haven't I've seen memes or whatnot from MEGACON? Odd.
Speaking of DRAGONS, back in my GEN X days, circa 1986?7?, my dad had a 1978 F150 pick-em up truck, it was in really good condition, it was green and white, had nice chrome wheels, and a chrome rollbar, plus it was a 4 speed manual. He put a bug shield on it, and had "Green Dragon" painted on it, with two Dragons on opposite ends. They took a trip to Hawaii, and it was my truck for two weeks! I felt like King Shit. (I was 17. *Just* a few years ago, har.)
Happy Saturday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Way easier than Friday. Didn't know if it was a C or a K, so K/CATE stumped me.
I don't view a PH.D. as an "honor" -- it's a degree. Cum laude is an honor.
But that was my only real nit.
And while I had no idea what the Chinese greeting was, I take that as part of the joy of Saturday.
Excellent way to start the day, and I for one, don't care about the gender of the constructor as long as the puz is good. Soetimes I wish rex would just focus on the quality of the fill and not spout his politics. We get it, he's a feminist. Let's move on.
For an interesting take on Kerri Strug, read Lauren Fleishmans "Good for a Girl."
Zipped through the top, ditto for the West Side (same story) and slogged through the SE. mostly thanks to ROTELLE as I thought the plural would be ROTELLI and EWALLET, since I use credit cards and cash only. And of course the mysterious and scrabbly GONGXIFACAI, which I thought was right but gave me pause because of the duped ACAI, which is not a dupe you get every day.
Two yucks for me today--ELFHAT! (guess I'll go put on my ELFHAT? uh-just no) and CATDAD, which produces the same reaction in me as the phrase "furbabies". Please don't.
I was still teaching high school when kids ROCKED an article of clothing so that was helpful, and any puzzle that includes TENOR is aces with me.
Nice Zippy Bouncy Saturday ZB. and thanks for all the fun.
And now on to the Stumper.
Stuart
I don’t care whether it was themed or not themed. It was fun.
Thx C.C.! 😊
Downs-only in progress. 🤞
Still working on Fri.'s downs-o, as well.
___
Up next: Matthew Sewell's Sat. Stumper.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a dap to all 👊 🙏
@Max W 8:56
Long before the wring-neck routine of Homer on Bart and WAY before Larry David on Elmo, there was this Wild(er) Gene on Marty violence.
”Abby someone””Abby WHO.” “Abby Normal!”
Rumored to have a twin sister newspaper columnist, Ann Slanders.
Got completely stuck in the W and SW and had to Google “Chopin Airport” then it fell quickly. Oh well. I’m a novice so one Google on a Saturday isn’t too bad for me!
Main areas of struggle - originally guessed TorsINE. After deleting and seeing RECLEAGUES, I somehow fat fingered it to RECLEAugES. I had that so firmly locked in that it took a while to see the error…especially with no clue of the Chinese phrase. Should’ve finished my coffee first!
Weird, weird puzzle day for me. Woke up with a migraine, waited for the meds to take the edge off, tried Spelling Bee, realized my head was too fuzzy and I just couldn’t see any words. So: “I still need to do the Saturday crossword, usually pretty slow on that, so maybe it’s the right pace for my migraine brain.”
And then … got it in 7:50, beating my all-time Saturday record by a couple of minutes. Guess my migraine brain hadn’t GONE [as] AWOL as I thought.
Several missteps along the way: TEAR trAIL instead of STAIN, comiCON, and GONEAWry (nice misdirection on that one.) Had forgotten the cultural fact about ORANGEs and enjoyed being reminded. Relieved like @Rex to remember the C in CATE. I thought the lack of some question marks at the end of clues felt appropriate for the day of the week. Nerdy mathlete in me enjoyed the pentagon misdirection.
Can someone please explain ANO to me? To echo one of my favorites from yesterday: IS “is THAT an o” A THING?
Oh wow, my migraine brain just realized it mid-parsed ANO as AN O instead of A NO. Ha!
Super easy today but I appreciate CC's holiday tribute.
Easy because I just saw KERRI Strug in a different puzzle last week, otherwise a no-know. And I used @Wanderlust's logic in determining which GEN the clue was referring to.
Other than that, only fAdES before PALES caused any hold-up.
I do wonder how often anyone calculates the AREA of a pentagon.
Thanks, Zhouqin, and GONG XI FA CAI!
This is what CoPilot’s Dall-E drew based on this grid:
https://copilot.microsoft.com/images/create/a-dragon-face-that-looks-like-the-grid-in-todaye28099s-/1-65c78fe7290b4cbab8cdd0a299b61890?id=9OIpex28T5zMMFS7ibe%2fZA%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&idpclose=1&thId=OIG2.t0tFvvtq5ZGjIGwGwAn5&ineditshare=1
Don’t know if that will come through …
YEAROFTHEDRAGON: totally legit answer.
GONGXIFACAI: C’mon. I suspect people feel awkward saying so, but let’s all quit pretending that it’s fair to include an 11-letter Chinese phrase as a marquee answer.
No happy music and I thought my error was either with GONGXIFACAI or the CATDAD/CDT cross, because - well, what the heck??
But no, it was OhISEE crossing hERRI.
I also know of a Lily as a symbol of purity, or a Lotus as a symbol of spirituality, but LILAC is unfamiliar to me as a symbol of either.
@beckiwithani – Read it as "Is that a 'no'?" Closely related to "I take that as a 'no'."
Didn’t have too much trouble with this one except of course, for the GONG thing at 51 across. Not too many proper names and trivia otherwise wasn’t bad, so overall a relatively painless Saturday.
Had CAT GUY crossing CGO/Chicago at first, resulting in SCOOTS at the garden center . . . which could be quite embarrassing come to think of it.
@SS Johnny (7:22) I remember the gargantuan TV/STEREO combination that took up half the living room. Pretty sure the TV was color and the screen a tiny window compared to the wood surrounding it. But it was state of the art and boy were we ever proud of our - looking back on it now, hideous - status symbol.
Pretty easy puzzle. I’m a middle school teacher and around half my students celebrate Lunar New Year so I went in wondering if it was going to be acknowledged. Year of the Dragon was the first answer I entered! I don’t time myself but this was probably my fastest Saturday ever.
Why is Manx capitalized in the CATDAD clue? Isn’t that just a type of cat like a lynx, ocelot, etc.?
Okay, so an overabundance of NATICK-y names is fine and dandy, as long as they're of the "correct" gender in a puzzle constructed by someone of the "correct" gender? Glad we're consistent with our standards.
Kung hei fat choi
Zhouqin Burnikel also authored today’s “challenging” Apple News puzzle with long Vietnamese terms.
SSN for age
I also thought brains were WRACKED, not RACKED. For a while I actually thought the answer might be BANKED (e.g., in a cryonics lab, which could conceivably be considered a "brain bank"). Long shot, I know, but RACKED never occurred to me.
I hate to be that guy, but SNL is 49 years old. '40+' suggests a number in the low 40s. OK, yeah, I'm annoyed that I didn't get it.
Yesterday I guess I had a bit of a sign of what the YEAROFTHEDRAGON has in store for me. I was picking up a prescription and there was some sort of mix up, so the pharmacist asked if I could sit down for a minute and wait. While doing so, I naturally whipped out the phone and started reading @Rex's blog. Shortly thereafter, a man walked up and announced, "Michael Sharp, here for a pickup." I resisted the urge to say "Hey @Rex! It's me, @egsforbreakfast" since the man was at least 80 years old and was in Port Townsend, Washington. The pharmacist was very nice to Michael Sharp and had no cross words for him.
Who's ever noticed that Vienna, Prague, Berlin and WARSAW all have six letters? I have ..... now.
MEGACON was probably a gimme if you're on the ORANGE shithead's fundraising list. That's a CONFER the ages.
Isn't 41D (AÇAÍ) just street shorthand for GONGXIFACAI?
I'm a thumbs up for the grid art looking like a dragon and for this puzzle in general. Thanks, Zhouqin Burnikel.
GONGXIFACAI????!!!!
MEGACON???
CATDAD???
"Canvas for digital art" is a NAIL??? Why???
EWALLET???
Much of the bottom right of this puzzle seemed to be written in gibberish. And even when you have a perfectly normal word like LILAC, I had no idea that it was a symbol of "purity or spirituality". Did you?
I could have stared at that one SE section till the cows came home and not gotten it. So I bailed.
Felt tough to me, because although I’ve been around many Chinese people for my whole life (I live in the San Gabriel Valley) apparently they mostly spoke Cantonese (or at least did in my childhood) so I’ve never seen Gong Xi Fa Cai written out - only Gong Hay Fat Choi and its anglicized variations.
The other thing that made it feel tough was the puzzle’s layout (is it supposed to look like a dragon?) The sections were so cut off from each other it felt like starting a whole new puzzle every time I finished a section, since I didn’t have much to build off of.
That said, I said felt tough rather than was tough because my time was well below my average (though well above my best).
REX, as Mark Twain once wrote: "I apologize for the long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one." Get some rest! And Happy New Year!
What's an elf hat doing on this holiday?
vienna before WARSAW (well, it's more musical) but RACKED fixed that.
I know I'm old now because I recall the greeting phonetically as Gong Hay Fat Choy, which at least gave me the first, um, word, and because I was sure one Wracked one's brain...
Anyway to celebrate the day we visited El Drago Milenario, supposed to be a thousand year old dragon tree, and the Mariposario del Drago (prompting thoughts on mariposa-schmetterling-butterfly). The tree is OK, pretty big. Not sure it's really 1,000 yo tho.
Easy for a Saturday I guess.
OK, so this was a snap if you happened to know Mandarin and Sanskrit. For me, not so much. A year or so I memorized the Chinese New Year greeting, so that I could say it to people, but it didn't stick -- and the part I could remember was the Cantonese version, ending in "fat choy," so it didn't help much. Fortunately my confusion with Ms. Blanchett is CATE/CAit, not CATE/kATE, so all the crosses were relatively easy. (I did hesitate for a moment at BLACK HILLS because Boise, Idaho would have fit--but that was really too far west for Crazy Horse.
Philosophical question for the day: does the fact that you earned a PhD mean that it's not an honor?
A DNF though, because of the hERRI thing. Really kicking myself because I put in Oh I SEE thinking it might be OK instead, but forgot all about that by the time I got to the 8-D clue.
A Wednesday puzzle slumming on the weekend with GONG XI FA CAI. I think I had eight of the crosses and realized it was alphabet soup and rather than waste more time I Go-ogle-d. The juice was not worth that particular squeeze.
Overall engaging despite a weird cluing voice. I assume an editor did a hatchet job when clues feel like a robot was trying to be cutesy ... mainly because my attempts at being cutesy sound like a robot is giving me comedy advice.
Uniclues:
1 Statement bill payers make when wondering where all the money went.
2 Filled fridge (or belly) with disappointing ice cream substitute.
3 End tenure for coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs professors.
4 Bacon is bad.
5 Fancifier of frozen coiffures.
6 We started by calling it a "ghetto blaster," because in those days we'd yet to learn words matter, and then we called it a "boom box," and worried Tipper Gore would get us locked up for listening to child-endangering rap lyrics by {ehem} you know ... and those contraptions hung around for five minutes until we had to re-buy our entire "music" collection on CD, and now these kids these days get it all for free because of this internet thingy, and sixty different Best Buy devices later, I mainly listen to recordings of rain water hoping to get some sleep.
7 Aha, your girlfriend left you.
8 How to fall off a bar stool surrounded by people with terrible taste buds.
9 Spoiler Alert: This long story doesn't go well for the indigenous people.
1 OK I SEE ATM FEE (~)
2 RACKED GELATO
3 WEAN INANE PHDS
4 KOSHER LESSON
5 ELF HAT DESIGNER
6 GEN-XER STEREO
7 OH ... DEAR GONE AWOL
8 NAIL IPA PALES (~)
9 BLACK HILLS SAGA (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Crossworder who dropped his phone in the toilet. WORD SALAD EXILE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Digital art...art on a digit (finger) I.e. nailpolish..
She never reads the write up 🤷🏻
This puzzle proves that the NYTX doesn't hold women constructors to a higher standard. (I had zero fun, thanks for asking.)
Easy, I suppose, for a Chinese-speaking GENXYZER. I dislike the current "GEN_" nonsense and will never memorize which is what. That, crossing a Chinese phrase that I (and numerous other commenters) don't know. Then there's the WOKE/WORE AREA. How is WORE "Rocked, so to speak"? Someone might be rocked awake, but that's also a stretch. OH I SEE AREAS now after reading the explanation, but OH DEAR, I hate the clue.
Well, @Rex is blogging tired (but good-humoredly!) and I'm commenting just plain grouchy. So, disgruntlement alert. I thought the puzzle was both way too easy (TEEN, MCAT, SAGA, EROS and many more) and too hard (GONG XI FA CAI - I know, a deficit on my part, not the puzzle's). Three plus-points: the dragon shape twisting its way across the grid, RACK (I'm a die-hard anti-wracker when it comes to brains), and TEAR STAIN.
Always luv a themed SatPuz. Theme subject sounds like one heckuva holiday, too … DRAGONS! ELFHATs! ORANGEs! ROTELLEs! GELATO! MEGACON! ELOTEs? Taylor Swift will no doubt be there.
Plus: GONGXIFACAI. Not sure what that means … M&A don't speak Dragon. Woulda helped my nanoseconds out a wee bit, if its clue had kicked in an extra hint like "anagram of Gaga coin fix", or somesuch.
Also U gotta luv a SatPuz with the E/W symmetric(al) puzgrid.
And a 71-worder puzgrid, too boot … how "odd".
staff weeject pick: KAT. M&A is awaitin the eventual inevitable Year of the Krazy Kat. Big George Herriman fan. 13 weejects … how "odd".
@RP: Soooo … Bein a CATDAD means U hafta get up for the day in the 3-3:45am range, due to hungry catcalls? Your kats have trained U all too well.
Thanx CC darlin. Luved celebratin with U. Wish U enlarge yer wealth.
Masked & Anonymo1U
**gruntz**
This was very easy but add me to those who had trouble in the West. 51a of course was a major WOE and I also had All before ANO plus brass before AREAS. NORAH, TSK, and NIKE helped me sort it out and it still was an easy solve. Easier than yesterday’s for me.
Delightful celebratory theme. Liked it.
Thanks, @Jim mc: I never thought of that. I do know that some women put "artwork" -- of a sort -- on their nails. I just don't know any such women.
I'm gobsmacked by the huge numbers of people who found this easy. Maybe in the Western half it was easy -- though ELOTE is not in my vocabulary -- but OMG, the East!
Oh good gravy.....Easy, then not, easy, then not...follow my bouncing ball.
When I got to the name fest in the west, I wondered why Strug and Walsh were HERRI. I even had them as HERRP. TEAR drops instead of STAIN. Got YEAR OF THE DRAGON..Yay me! Erased drops and replace with a STAIN. Wondered why Scrapes are SETTOS. Leave the West.
Tackle the middle. Damn, a product name. I thought SCOTTS was toilet paper...LILAC? Are you really a sign of purity?....I guess so.
I'm not up on my annual meccas of anything unless its a Hadj trek or something. I stared at that one for a while. I got to 40D and my face fell. I don't know any of the generation name dates. Someone once told me I'm a BOOMER (which was my initial answer) but I was born before 1960. It's gotta be some GEN or another. So...can it be of an unheard of MEGACON? I guess so.
Get to the celebratory greeting for YEAR OF THE DRAGON. clue. Que mess. I know "fat choi" is a lucky food and I think it's part of some greeting in Chinese. I had the back end of the greeting as FAkAI. I spelled CATE with a. K.
OK so it's GEN EXER not BOOMER. Can GONGXI be a word? It's coming back to me now! I've seen GONGXIFACAI somewhere in the wild. Did I get this right?
TAURINE? Isn't that what you put your soups in? NIKE? Another product name....ROTELLE? I misspelled rottini. ....My bouncing ball was out in left field somewhere and my RACKED brain couldn't compute.
Oh look! ARYA is sitting on top of the dragon's head. You've gotta squint to see it.
As much as I like CC's crosswords, this one had me all over the place. There were AHA's to be sure (I like CONFER ad GONE AWOL) but I had trouble wondering why PHDS were honors, why AGE is a personal number, what CDT is and why a bull is a TAURINE.
Happy New Year.
Seriously, what is SETTOS?
Me too, for a long while. But good on the for not duping the "oh" with the OH DEAR so I finally got Kerri.
At 51 across, with the initial G in place I screamed "Oh I know this!" -- I had a bunch of Chinese friends at university 40 years ago -- and typed in GONG HAY FAT C and ran out of room. When I finally got all the letters from crosses, I thought oh this is probably the Pinyin version. But no it's Mandarin, and my Chinese schoolmates were Cantonese from Hong Kong. At least the GONG wasn't wrong.
Nice to see a puzzle from CC again; it's been a while. Yes there were too many names up there in the northeast, but the rest of it wasn't too bad that way. Hands up for GONE AWRY and unfortunately KATE Blanchett. When the grid was full but no happy pencil, I was pretty sure KATE was the culprit and she was.
For "One of two in a tournament" I thought TEAM but no, that's a match not a tournament. Took a while to get SEMI.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0, and yd I got the missing 9er from Thurs so I'm declaring my QB streak alive and well at 16 which is my new record!]
We had one of those. The piece of furniture was called a console. Specifically a stereo console. We had a television console as well. They also were quite large. I believe these came out in the late 60s. Prior to that, in the 50s, we had a hi-fi set.
@Mark: That greeting may be more frequent in its Cantonese incarnation 'Kung hei fat choy' as it appeared in an email I recd from a friend in HK this morning. The normal response is 'Lay see dao loy' [give us the little red packets with money inside]
Seemed like much of this one was 27A ABCS easy (for example 62A "Learning opportunity" = LESSON or 58D "Half a score" = TEN) to balance out the marquee 51 Across Chinese New Year greeting that apparently no one knew, even one commenter who lives and works in China! 7D OH DEAR, "This can't be good" kind of sums up my take on that.
@GILL – a SET-TO is a small argument or fight— but now that you brought it up, I think the clue is off. A SCRAP is a small argument or fight; a SCRAPE is more of an unfortunate circumstance one must extricate oneself from. The clue should really be "Scraps".
I couldn't give up BRASS for Pentagon figures .... teak made me do it.
+1 for trouble in the west, which ate up several extra minutes after mostly breezing through the rest of the grid
@Joe D 3:11. As soon as I posted, I saw it was SET TO. Even then, it didn't seem right. I agree with you, "Scraps" would've made more sense.
@Gary J 11:27....."The juice was not worth that particular squeeze!"...Can I borrow that? Love your #6...Hah!
Actually the grid looks more like a rabbit to me. Alas, wrong year for that.
I’ve never heard the word SETTOS before in my life. Is it an Italian term or something?
I had the same question. Thanks for re-parsing it for me!
I had an alternate interpretation for AREAS (pentagon figures): numbered army “areas” e.g. Area .51
Happy Year of the Dragon!
Xin nian kuaile literally means "Happy New Year". Gong Xi Fa Cai (or Gong hay fat choy, if Cantonese) means "prosperity," and I trained my son and his friends to shout it before I gave them their lixi's (red envelopes stuffed with money). Man, I love this holiday.
The puzzle was fast fast fast (got the whole upper section completed before I realized it)until it halted to a dead stop in the center-left portion. Never heard of REC LEAGUE forgot where Chopin was born, and thought I was being clever by putting in "ICE" for "Personal number" (you see, ice makes you numb...) when actually I was being too clever. Luckily, the ORANGE saved me (luckily it wasn't rolling out from under my bed, à la True Detective) with the G melting my ICE and AGE getting me going again.
I enjoyed this, except for the intersection of 17D and 33A. I quickly put O there -- doesn't HAS No kids, parents, ability, tact, shame etc sound a lot less stiff and less stuffy than HASNT??? -- and then forgot about it until after (the poorly defined) STEREO, whereupon I racked my brain for what OoS might stand for. Obedient observers? On-line opiners? On-call orderlies? Outboard operators? Operatic overtures? Obsessive overeaters? Many many situations can call for regulation. Sure, OTS looks better in hindsight, but I think placing an O in that square is quite defensible...
Andrew
You do find a way to bring up your own anti anti male chauvinism criticism of Rex more and more often lately. Although , I think this one is a real stretch in that he routinely criticizes women constructors as harshly as the men. Thisconstructor is universally considered an expert and has been doing them for a long time, Actually she has been making fewer puzzles for the Times in the past few years, than she used to. I can’t remember when the one previous was. I do remember he was quite capable of criticizing her when she was a frequent contributor.
She is of course Chinese- American (born in Taiwan) and Shortz decided to place her puzzle with a small theme on the day of its subject. Don’t see anything wrong with the answer with the Chinese greeting. The crosses in that section were particularly easy after all. (Rex actually criticized her for the Cate cross which you overlooked, but I thought Blanchett is famous enough).
I think it was unfair to assume he was going easy on her because she is a woman. He might be going easy because he likes her puzzles in general, as he does with others.
JJK
Natick is Rex’s word. He defines it on this site.
A cross of two obscure NAMES at an uninferable letter. It is assumed you got all the other letters.
An early 20th illustrator crossing a small town on the Boston Marathon route at the N of N.C. Wyeth and Natick. CAT_AD crossing at C_T. I don’t think is the same level of difficulty. What else could it be but a D after a run of the alphabet?
Re earned PHD. Anonymous 8:18 AM
PhD is close enough for crosswords. Clues are hints not definitions.
Joe Dipinto
I confidently put in a mix of the 2 types of pasta you mentioned
ROTELLi. Fortunately, TiN doesn’t = score.
Anonymous 10:10 AM
But the crosses were easy.
Not that awkward.
R Duke
Saturday has a lot of clues like Man with a Manx > man with a cat > CATDAD. Shortz likes word play like that.
As with Andrew
Metronome
you are missing the fact that Rex has criticized women frequently. You might not have noticed because there are so few of them
This constructor used to make a lot of puzzles for the Times, but rarely does now. When she was a frequent contributor, he was quite able to criticize hers.
Even here he criticized the puzzle for being name heavy and wondered if Cate crossing the greeting might be a natick.
One puzzle about which you and Rex disagree doesn’t = evidence of his pro female bias, any more than your criticizing one puzzle by a woman is evidence of bias against woman!
@Anonymous 7:45 pm, here is Ms Burnikel (aka "CC")'s author page on xwordinfo.com. Looks like she peaked at 13 puzzles in 2017 then down to only 2 last year; last one Oct. 6.
I thought picture in the center looked a bit like Abraham Lincoln who has a birthday soon — I’m, tomorrow.
Struggled for many reasons. Never heard of SHEPARD. Never heard LILAC used as a symbol of purity. Stupid clue for AREAS. Whatever 51A is - no idea where the spaces would go - I've never heard it in my life. Never heard of ELOTE. HASNT is not 'informally'. CAT DAD sounds made up just for this puzzle.
And I agree with Rex that a lot of the clues are just a bit off.
Disagree with Rex. This puzzle is neither themed nor “easy”. Having only three elements that are common is not enough to constitute a theme, IMO. You have to have another one. CATDAD has nothing to do with Chinese New Year as far as I know so this puzzle needed a rework. Yet another sub-par offering.
DNF because I had OhISEE and hERRi instead of OKISEE and KERRI. Not a fair crossing since the Olynpians are not exactly household names. And let’s not be kidding. This is only a partial or unfinished themed puzzle.
TEEN AGE SAGA
OH,DEAR, I RECALL CATE,
for A LESSON SNEAKER out back,
HASN’T A SECOND TO wait,
NORAH SET that ain’t RACKED.
--- SCOTT S. SHEPARD, PHD
Sure. As I always say, "GONGXIFACAI." Who doesn't?
But, surprising me, I did get the rest, and the "phrase of the day" was almost - almost - completely filled in. Almost. (Didn't think that was really KOSHER of the usually wonderful constructor.)
Diana, LIW for Crosswords
C.C.'s puzzles usually show up on Mondays or Tuesdays and this one wasn't that much tougher, maybe the clues. But for a person whose first language is not English, pretty darn good. And she's really nice in person.
Wordle bogey.
I will never forget KERRI Strug, who landed her medal-winning vault OA A BROKEN ABKLE--and STUCK IT! That had to be a level of pain that I hope I never explore. DOD.
Of course, 51a was a total WHA???. After working all the crosses, I was SURE something was woefully amiss, but what could I change? This conglomeration was recognized by ones of people, and ought to be beneath this constructor. TSK!
Also, what is MCAT? And does it dupe with CATDAD? OHDEAR! Bogey.
Wordle bogey.
Someone asked why is the M in Manx capitalized? This particular breed of cat is named for the Isle of Man, and Man has a capital M. It wasn't a misdirect. If you're a big time cat lover that made cat being part of the answer a dead give-away. Also he thought it was a feral cat. It's a house cat.
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