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Footwear with distinctive yellow stitching / FRI 2-2-24 / Party add-ons / Lomé locale / Puppet show locale, for short / Rationale for "throwing good money after bad" / Texting counterpart of "ty" / 1979 hit whose title is stuttered / Medieval Latin for "great" / Lead role of a 1979 Broadway hit
Friday, February 2, 2024
Constructor: Ryan Judge
Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (7:10)
Word of the Day: Isle of ELY (27A: Isle of ___ (historic region of England)) —
The Isle of Ely (/ˈiːli/) is a historic region around the city of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England. Between 1889 and 1965, it formed an administrative county. // Its name has been said to mean "island of eels", a reference to the creatures that were often caught in the local rivers for food. This etymology was first recorded by the Venerable Bede. // Until the 17th century, the area was an island surrounded by a large area of fenland, a type of swamp. [...] The Fens were drained beginning in 1626 using a network of canals designed by Dutch experts. Many Fenlanders were opposed to the draining as it deprived some of them of their traditional livelihood. Acts of vandalism on dykes, ditches, and sluices were common, but the draining was complete by the end of the century. (wikipedia)
• • •
[1979 hit whose title is stuttered]
Stumbling actually continued as I moved out of that section. I got TOTO easily enough, but couldn't remember where Lomé was and (however improbably) wrote in TOMÉ (São TOMÉ and Príncipe is an island nation off the western coast of central Africa) (it's TOGO). I read The Odyssey only just last month, and I still had no idea what Odysseus's dog's name was (?!) (ARGOS) (makes sense, since ARGOS was a hundred-eyed giant who served as a kind of watchdog for Hera—after he died, she placed his eyes in the tail of her sacred bird, the peacock (some mythological etiology for you on a Friday morning!). I think the first place I got real traction in this damn puzzle was in the NE; I sidled over there from NUMBLY and HUMANE and ... couldn't make my way up from the bottom of those Downs to save my life, but jumped up and got ADELE, and then ADO, and then CAMPS and (finally) managed to close a corner out by getting METADATA (hard), PLUSONES (hard) (13D: Party add-ons) and SESAME ST. (spelling!?) (cluing?) (14D: Puppet show locale, for short). With BEAST worked out, I got BELLY OF THE BEAST (33A: Dangerous thing to be inside), and finally felt like I had my footing.
 |
| [43A: Its famous chime consists of the three notes G-E-C] [Its famous logo has no "eyes" in the peacock tail because of a copyright dispute with Hera] |
SW was a breeze (the only truly breezy quadrant for me), but with the whole NE-to-SW swatch solved, I couldn't move into *either* corner. Had to go into the SE corner cold to try to get a new foothold. Luckily Bill HADER was there (49D: Actor Bill of "Barry"). He helped me change LOOT to HAUL (49A: Plunder) and from there I was able to back my way out of the SE and into the yucky center-middle. I say "yucky" because TUPLES is about the ugliest answer I've ever seen in a grid (47A: N-___ (mathematical sets)). TUPLES is, at best, a suffix, and even then—dreadful. A real puzzle-wrecker. I can't imagine having TUPLES in my grid and saying "yes, that's it! I will keep that there!" That's tear-it-all-down stuff. Crossing PUB (hard) (41D: Magazine, e.g., for short) and esp. "HERE LIES" (v. hard) (36D: Grave words), TUPLES was the thing that sank this puzzle from average to below-average for me. It's that bad. Speaking of sinking, really had trouble parsing SUNK-COST FALLACY (8D: Rationale for "throwing good money after bad"). My brain always thinks it's SUNKEN, but that's more for treasure, I guess? Or (according to Google's predictive search) for eyes, or some living rooms. But SUNK did finally click and that was the key to getting the NW, at last. With -TENS in there, I could see the shoes, and the rest of it fell from there.
Missteps:
- SKIPS for OMITS (19A: Jumps over, say)
- TOMÉ for TOGO (24D: Lomé locale)
- OKAYS for YESES (9D: Nods)
- ERG for CAL (10D: Bit of energy, for short)
- CULLS (?) for FELLS (39A: Hews)
- LOOT for HAUL (49A: Plunder)
- CLASSY for CLASS A (45D: Top-tier)
Explanations:
- 28A: Noted cairn terrier of film (TOTO) — ASTA was a wire fox terrier
 |
| [from the Thin Man movies] |
- 51A: Papal issue (BULL) — so, not a topic, but something issued by a pope. A papal bull is a kind of decree or edict.
- 56A: Seattle slew? (RAINY DAYS) — "slew" as in "there are a lot of them." This was probably the cleverest clew of the bunch, today.
- 4D: Things to keep in check (COATS) — you check your coat at the door in some fancy restaurants or clubs (if old movies are to be believed). Or at some museums. There used to be hat checks, but people don't wear hats anymore (or don't check them, at any rate).
- 38A: Thrifty competitor (ALAMO) — Thrifty = rental car company
- 7D: Lose eligibility for, as Little League (AGE OUT) — the puzzle is *weirdly* obsessed with the ages of people in Little League this week ... (see yesterday's TOO OLD clue: [Like 20, for Little League])
- 12D: Some Instagram statistics, fittingly? (METADATA) — Meta is the company that owns Instagram, which is why "fittingly?" is here.
- 33D: One way to make cookie dough? (BAKE SALE) — so, you make dough (i.e. money) from the sale of cookies (and other baked goods). Shrug. That corner was so easy that this answer just sort of filled itself in from crosses and I didn't have to think about it.
- 55D: Texting counterpart of "ty" (PLS) — "ty" = thank you, PLS = please
Happy 83rd birthday to my father, and Happy Groundhog's Day to the rest of you, please celebrate responsibly.
P.S. Are there really earnest, non-parodic, non-punny, non-rhyming "HERE LIES..." gravestones? Google image search suggests ... not.
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132 comments:
Took me 1:20. As in one hour and twenty minutes. Still learning to crack these things. I like “tuple” to be honest. It may not be the prettiest of words but it is a mathematical staple. So, pretty or not, it’s a thing.
My experience was similar to OFL's. I don't check my times, but while it seemed challenging, I was able to finish without cheating. So on the Medium side of Medium-Challenging.
I considered erg for the bit of energy at 10D, but realized that it isn't a "for short."
asTa before TOTO at 28As (shame on me, not knowing my terriers)
iOTaS before MOTES at 32A
ampS UP before KEYS UP at 40A
iss (issue) before PUB at 41D crossing seaL for the papal thing at 51A
@Rex loot before HAUL for the plunder at 49A
I take issue with the TUPLE clue. Tuples and sets are distinct: tuples are ordered, and sets are not. The 3-tuples (2, 3, 5) and (3, 5, 2) are not equal, while the sets {2, 3, 5} and {3, 5, 2} are. Maybe I'm picking nits, though.
For 44D, I had Beatle before BUNYAN
I found this relatively easy in the bottom half but impossible in the top half, so it was a DNF and I ended up cheating mightily in the NW and the NE. I got BELLYOFTHEBEAST with no trouble and with no crosses (my moment of glory in this puzzle?) and then the bottom half of the puzzle became a nice but very doable challenge. Then back to the top and complete disaster. I’ve never heard of this FALLACY, so even though I had ___ COSTFALLACY, I had no idea what the first part was. I thought DocMARTENS was the answer for 17A but of course it didn’t fit, and I didn’t even think of DRMARTENS, although that is apparently the actual name of the shoe.
Many other problems up top, too numerous to name. Oh well.
Here lies Les Moore. Four shots from a 44..No Les. No Moore —-tombstone in tombstone Az
DR. MARTENS is still making me sore. Who says that?
In retrospect, that whole area with PUB vs TUPLES vs the Papal Baloney (oh, wait - it’s Papal BULL) and I would add PURIM in there could well be the toughest mini-section of the year so far.
MY SHARONA absolutely ruled the airwaves during its 15 minutes of fame back in the late ‘70’s, for reasons that scientists (and even some musicians) have never been really able to explain.
I’ll give a thumbs up to the SESAME ST - it’s clued appropriately for a Friday and certainly deserves a shout-out every now and again. Also enjoyed the clues for BAKE SALE, RAINY DAYS and MONOLOGUE.
The trivia was Friday level appropriate (shoe brand, a couple of fictional dogs and the requisite Latin entry for example) but not awful (if there is in fact such a thing as non-awful trivia).
We’ve had much worse lately so enjoy it while it lasts.
Dumb me. I couldn't intuit SESAMEST because I didn't separate SESAME from ST (street). I kept thinking, "A location must include thew word 'nest.'"
Too hard for me had to turn the cheater on. Too many PPPs and terms I'd never heard of.
Many obscure proper names made this totally u enjoyable. I had to look up some of them. The dehli temple in the grid was somewhere like number 15 or 20in lists of temples there.
Wow. I didn't expect that write-up today. I found this to be very easy from start to finish. Every answer Rex mentions as being difficult were no-brainers to me. I'm sure it's a wheelhouse thing, but I knew ARGOS and I've never even read The Odyssey. Also, DR. MARTENS was very hard? What the heck else would it be?
SUNK COST FALLACY was a giveaway just from "SUNK", so that gave an instant foothold to the rest of the puzzle.
To be fair, I did pause for a bit at the very end because I had MY- for the song with the stuttered title and was sure it was MY GENERATION. My brain shorted slightly when it was obviously correct but also clearly didn't fit.
But whatever. Tough for some, easy for others. None of that really matters because the important thing is Rex was completely correct about the most obvious problem here:
TUPLES.
Just look at that thing and wonder what Eldritch horror you have to sell your soul to in order to think that abomination is acceptable.
As a mathematician the tuple clue made me wince. Tuples are not sets.
A tuple is a single object (e.g. the tuple (2, 3, 5) is considered to be a single thing).
A set is a collection of objects.
This one tried - but the rough patches seemed to overwhelm things. I’ll second not liking the formal DR - they’ve always been Docs or even Martens. SESAME ST is for convenience obviously - especially rough adjacent to the ugly PLUS ONES plural.
I’ve been from TUCSON to Tucumcari
Always love to see ARGOS - he was a good boy. Liked the cluing on BAKE SALE and HERE LIES. TUPLES are nice to see although not always sets. ICE ARENAS fell flat but the PURIM x MY SHARONA cross made up for it.
Pleasant enough Friday morning solve.
Half a mile from TUCSON
Challenging here, but the quality was such that I refused to throw in the towel until I slayed the beast. Was unfamiliar with SUNKCOSTFALLACY and papal BULL which didn't help matters. No whoosh whoosh here as each section provided resistance, and that made the solve quite satisfying when I finally got there. I'd call it an excellent puzzle, muchas gracias
A damn near perfect puzzle. Loved it.
“Just over 7 minutes” describes my best Friday time ever, Rex. Today’s solve time was longer—much, much longer. One struggle after another. Hand up for trying to fit “Doc” in there and wondering WOE.
I read the Odyssey just a couple of months ago, in Emily Wilson’s terrific translation, and still I stumbled on ARGOS. Also tripped over that dang ASTA.
Think as the day shapes up here, I'll find I'd struggled with the same things that many other did. But I struggled mightily and cheated with the check function. Ergs, Iotas, Asta, Amps. Oddly couldn't see Sesame St. piling up. NW corner was a brutal start because I've only heard Doc. Martens not seen it in writing.
Fell for John and Paul, Beatle. In the SE corner, my brain could easily pull up Myra Breckinridge from 50 years ago but not remember Bill Hader (who I love). In the NW, could only think of Olympus as a beer or a mountain. How long has it been since I used an actual camera?
No Hear Lies examples, but my favorite tombstone is I Told You I Was Sick. As a cranky retiree now, I'm tempted to go with Get Off My Lawn.
hey, let's hear it from anyone else who had oN ECSTASY at first! Where my people at! Hello? Hello?
Wow they really don’t know the difference between DUH and DOH
Friday level that was just right for me. I didn’t dance through it, nor did I trudge. Smiled at a good number of clues, had several sweet ahas, dredged some answers out of long-unvisited brain areas, and had an area that I couldn’t break open suddenly flash fill.
In a post-solve scan, I liked seeing EDGES on one, and IN ECSTACY flying high (that is, ELEVATED), not to mention the PuzzPair© of I’M DONE and ATE UP. Had a “What’s a “sesamest?” moment..
I liked the serendipity of MOES so close to DOH. Was impressed with the pllethora of double-L’s. I loved BELLY OF THE BEAST in the belly of the grid, and I loved being misdirected by [Some Olympus offerings, say].
Just a grab-bag of lovely on top of satisfying my brain’s work ethic. An outstanding experience, and all this on a NYT debut offering. Do keep at it, Ryan, please – IMO, you’ve got the knack. Thank you so much for this!
In the Python language, TUPLE is a heterogeneous mutable sequence type.
In mathematics, a TUPLE is an ordered collection of objects. F'rinstance, a 2-tuple is used to specify a point in the plane and
a 3-tuple a point in space (coordinates).
I had DOn for some reason instead of DOMz, which messed up SESAMEST for a bitz since all I could see was something ending in 'nest'
I had a very similar solve to Rex, same pattern of which areas got solved when and how, and many similar missteps. Eerie to read his write-up, it could have been mine, had I done one. Well, maybe 85%. But after a super slow start, I was pleased that it all came together.
With BULL below BELLY OF THE BEAST, I wanted some other animal above it.
A ground hog would have been nice. An early spring is coming, we have scientific proof!
HERE LIES Les Moore.
No Les. No Moore.
took 2x my average Friday time (14 min, Moore or Les) to sort through this, but worth it. TUCSON was my first right guess, reminding me of the sexy lady for whom I rerouted my LA to MN road triptik in the ‘70s (oddly, my nickname for her, Belle of the Balls, fits for 33A - “a dangerous thing to be inside” indeed!). All my 8 track tapes were destroyed by the oppressive heat but again, worth it!
A challenge, but ultimately gettable was my preference in women then and puzzles today. Well done, Ry guy (who, to mollify Rex, should identify as a woman for the day).
I really enjoyed this puzzle. The challenge was a bit more reminiscent of the late-2000s than the 2020s, which was refreshing. I do agree that I've never heard a formal reference to "Doctor Martens" (and I spent a lot of the 1990s wearing Doc Martens.) Glad to see that I wasn't the only one who was tricked by years of crossword puzzles into putting ASTA before TOTO. It was great to see SUNKCOSTFALLACY.
Nobody says it aloud, but it’s written all over the box when you buy them.
same it felt hard, but wound up being my usual average time for a Friday. I did look up two things to be fully honest, like "what year was Evita"? and "names of adele's albums" LOL.
Favorite tombstone:
SUFFERED FROM RECTAL ITCHING
Nice!👍 TGIF😊
I haven’t seen comments from Lauren Muse Smith for a while. I hope she is OK.
“Usually in the low sixes” is my Monday score! Got held up in several places: IOTAS for MOTES, ASTA for TOTO (who I thought was a Yorkie). The only stuttering songs I initially thought of were “Bad to the Bone” and “My Generation.” I was so stuck on thinking it should be DOC MARTENS (which were the de rigeur footwear when I was a late-eighties early-nineties punk) that I thought there must be a rebus. Finally finished 24:40.
Yeah, that PURIM/TUPLES/PUB/BULL area as a standalone section was brutal. Only got saved by ICEARENAS (yuk) and MYSHARONA (yay) that closed out HERELIES and SUNKCOSTFALLACY, which then let me complete that awful area.
About an avg Friday time for me, felt harder.
TUPLE is fine. It's not familiar to everyone but today is Friday. I reluctantly agree with the above nit-pickers that the clue is a bit off but not in a way that made it any harder to get. OKED is not fine. "This wine is okay but it's over-OKED." Or is it the Oklahoma English Dictionary?
It's been ages since I've been there, but I'm pretty sure those gravestone pics are from the queue line at the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney.
Since DR MARTENS is actually the name of the company, it seems like there's an awful lot of whining about this answer. What if CHEVROLET appeared in the puzzle. Would lots of people be moaning because everyone uses Chevy in normal-speak?
I hope we get a puzzle soon with "16" as a clue and LITTLELEAGUEAGE as the answer. Also, "Sex ________" might be a more popular clue for TUPLES.
And BTW, no one BAKESALES. You brew them.
I really like this puzzle. Thanks, Ryan Judge.
I don’t understand pub as the answer for Magazine, e.g. for short. Please explain!!
Hey All !
Welp, if my Streak hadn't ended YesterPuz, it definitely would've today. Lordy, the SE corner SUNKed me. MYRA who? BUNYAN wha? And just could not get NAH off __H. Dang. Reveal word (twice!) as time was clicking away.
Who had risKCOST ... first?
Tough FriPuz here. Some days are RAINY DAYS, I guess. (Which, here in Las Vegas, revving up for the Super Bowl, it rained Yesterday, a bit today, and some next week. Rain happens here, not too often, but usually when a big event happens!)
Anyway, Happy Friday.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Also AGE OUT OF and its clue seem an explicit reference to yesterday’s TOO OLD clue, not a coincidence
Tough one here, but hung in and got 'er done, as the good old boys say. Went NW SE, everywhere else, with some wonderful missteps. My "party add-ons" for instance, were ALSORANS at first, which I got from FRA instead of DOM and thought was brilliant at the time. Also fell head first into the BEETLE trap (hi @JD) off the B of NBC. Sinister cluing indeed. NUMBED and NUMBTO before NUMBLY, knew SUNKCOST something but had to work for the FALLACY part. I did know ARGOS though, so take that OFL.
In short, a properly thorny Friday and the payoff was worth the struggle. Congrats on the debut, RJ. Really Jam-packed with good stuff and thanks for all the fun.
@Roo-Good on ya for QB yesterday. Stared at everything forever and still wound up with a -2
Rats.
Excellent puzzle! I had little stumbles and blocks to work through in each area of the puzzle , wound up medium time but admiring the answers, with BELLY in the middle as it should be. Being Catholic saved me in the BULL/TUPLES snarl
More from this guy!
The gender issue continues into February!
DOOKed SESAMEST. The gimme of SUNK COST FALLACY split this thing wide open, though.
FYI, Morocco also uses the dirham
Interesting for me to read @Rex because we were flipped on the easy/hard sections. The NW slipped in very quickly for me. my last section to fall was the NE when I stared blankly for what seemed forever at 14D, S_ _ _MEST. I finally was able to suss out LOTUS from LOT_ _ and then cried D’OH when SESAME ST revealed to my gray matter.
I have to say, I DO get impressed at how quickly some people work the puzzle. Seven minutes is quite possibly a fast Wednesday solve for me but for Friday…whoa! (or woah as some say now). This type of feat would require me to do some ASANAS and OMS prior to the solve, clench up my gut before I start PLUS require me not to pause intermittently a few seconds to sip my coffee!
Haven't been here in ages and come to find the complaints about Dr. Martens. It's the name of the company. You could look it up or complain about it. Rexites prefer to complain.
A little more trivia: in the movies, Skippy played many roles. A male wired haired terrier, he was famous in the Thin Man movies, Topper and Bringing Up Baby. However, ‘Asta’ is a female name. In the Thin Man books, written by Dashiell Hammett, Asta is a female miniature schnauzer.
This puzzle just wasn't enjoyable from the get-go for me to even try to struggle through it .
(Please never show TUPLES again).
Maybe it's because I woke up too early to see if the Groundhog saw his shadow 😊
Had to Google PURIM and LOTUS to get unstuck in the S and NE, respectively, as I hardly had any crosses or content around them to help.
+1 on Docmarten instead of DRMARTENS. Took a good 5-10 minutes to figure out and clean up the NW.
Very challenging puzzle for me today.
PUB, short for publication
Easy-Medium here, grid felt clean, enjoyed it! Helped to know geography (Isle of Man/Skye/ELY) and (Chinese takeout order of) Lome(in), TOGO. Also liked DOH, MOES, and PUB(lication).
Here lies andy: peperony and Chease
TIL: a player wrote that on his tombstone on a copy of the Oregon Trail game, and his copy of the game became widely pirated. People speculate that it's a reference to the 90s Tombstone Pizza ad: "What do you want on your tombstone?" "Pepperoni and cheese."
publication. (weak clue though, maybe since we already had a tavern reference.)
My thoughts exactly. It's like complaining about an answer being FRED ROGERS.
"But everyone calls him Mr. Rogers!"
Yes, but his actual name is Fred.
I worked fruitlessly and suffered mightily and suffered mightily and worked fruitlessly -- until finally I gave up. A very good thing, too, now that I look at the solution -- which was so far out of reach that it might as well have been on Mars.
In fact, some of these answers seemed to come directly from Mars.
SUNK COST FALLACY
SESAMEST
TUPLES
MY SHARONA
And what kind of much-too-cute-for-its-own-good clue is "Seattle slew?" for RAINY DAYS? As if this puzzle weren't already hard enough. Give me/us a break.
Bailing on a puzzle is something I really hate to do and something I almost never do. But every once in a while it's warranted. On this puzzle, which really did seem to have arrived straight from Mars, it was very warranted. In fact, bailing may have saved my sanity.
I have wondered the same thing. Miss her!
PUBlication
Often juat ignore my issues with Rex, but cannot pass over his denigration of TUPLES, which is an absolutely perfect answer for this math-oriented person, but apparently not so for that english-oriented person. Also, the writeup left out OF, from 7D. AGEOUT-.
Q: Why is 1066 famous?
A: The battle of Hastings and the number of foals sired by the great Seattle Slew.
This one was harder for me than it should have been, even if TOGO and ELY were gimmes for me. I started with dozES at 9-D, reasoning wrongly that it and 20-A just had to fit the same clue, not each other. That made 1-A pretty much ungettable. Then fra before DOM, and I came to 49-A with the A in place, so I put in rApe. I finally had to look up the case of "Barry," which I'd never heard of, to see that it was Bill HADER, not rADER.
I feel that having learned the TUPLE--or rather, the set--of 4-letter crossword dogs (ASTA/TOTO/FALA) I had done enough. Having to know their breeds is a step too far; I've had man dogs in my life, but none of them had a breed, and I plan to keep it that way. But I did like the TOTO/TOGO cross.
I don't really to feel the need to know the color of stitching on shoes, either, but that's just me.
@Anon 9:15, PUB - publication. They actually say that in the business.
@9:15 PUB is short for publication. That's all. I had Per there for "periodical" initially.
I had 13 years of Catholic education and have no recollection of hearing about papal BULLs, so that area was a little stumble for me, between PUB and BULLs.
I went ampUP -> rEvUP -> KEYUP
@Sam 8:07 - I think the DOH clue was perfectly fine. When I do something stupid, I say "DOH!" to myself, not DuH. It's a "you idiot" or "oops." DuH is more like "no kidding" or "obviously" and something I would say more to others than to myself. DOH is more to myself than others. Perhaps these meaning vary a bit by generation. This is what they mean to me as an Xer.
MYSHARONA was a banger of a tune! One of my favorite guitar solos ever. That song is said to have ushered out the era of disco much in the way Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ushered out the era of hair bands. I'm not quite convinced by that analogy, as power pop didn't take over the charts right after, but that song did come at a transitional point. Their first album is fantastic. But I have to not listen to the lyrics of My Sharona too closely less I start getting Gary Puckett vibes from it.
Here in Key West and just passed the crypt with that inscription yesterday. My friend Susan’s husband Craig was such a hypochondriac that when he would complain about being sick, she would say “Craig get well or die.” Maybe he did.
No one says "I'm going over to the ICE ARENA"
A lot of Doc vs Dr comments, but isn’t anyone else bothered by the KEYS UP / ATE UP dupe?
Okay, I guess I have a double-natick: Don't know who or what "Olympus" is (5-Down), and have no idea what SLRS stands for. Obviously the PPP virus is taking over the world.
Okay, okay -- I see SESAME ST now! Completely on me (so stupid) -- even though it's probably the DOOKiest answer I've yet seen in the puzzle. But, hey, I'll trade you one SESAMEST for a DRMARTENS -- which I forgot to mention, but which was also a complete WTF for me. I'm with @jberg -- I see no reason why I should know the color of the stitching on shoes.
TUPLES, HERE LIES Newboy.
This seemed hard at the start but then went real smooth. At 33 across had ---OF THE --- and was sure it would be something like EYE OF THE STORM but it wasn't. Hands up for ASTA before TOTO.
TUPLES is just fine. I always want to use the singular in Spelling Bee but no. And ICE CAPADES didn't fit at 59 across.
[Spelling Bee: Thu 0; QB streak 8 days.]
Well, my experience was sorta backwards. Everything went OK *until* the SW, where I hit a wall: ampSUP and revSUP before KEYSUP. noses before EDGES. Just took a while to get everything sorted.
And at least where I' from, and I'm wearing some right now, they're just DOCS.
I flunked out in the SE. Never heard of the SUNK COST FALLACY, I confidently entered BEATLE, never heard of that Bill or Barry (thought it might be NIGHY), forgot what a lutz is, and forgot NAGANO.
Much trouble elsewhere but got BELLY OF THE BEAST right away after completing the NE, which helped.
Nothing to complain about other than my lack of knowledge.
Keep wearing them, they break in.
Slogorama because the short trivia items I didn't know kept clogging up each section. Mean little words. Everything else seemed reasonable, but overall the puzzle left me NUMBLY.
Junk in the trunk:
ELY (a town with a museum featuring a rusty bicycle).
LOTUS (one of at least 20 temples nobody has ever heard of in New Delhi).
Ummmm Ryan... you had to look up what year the NATS were in the Super Bowl, er, World Series too, so why is it in your puzzle?
I bet a mathematician has already commented on how the clue for N-TUPLES is wrong since math, science, and engineering in the crosswords usually goes over poorly with the experts.
DIRHAM is stoooopid. They should use DUCATS. Or DUKATS.
PLS and TY are awful and require crosswords constructor brain to justify.
Ohhhh, and for the love of sweet baby Jesus, please don't post your solve times. You're fast? Here's your award: 🏆 You're slow? Here's your consolation prize: 🏆 You finished without Google: Here's your trophy: 🏆 You're always a winner in my heart. ♥️
Cute:
RAINY DAYS clue. There are a slew of them.
I wrote in MY SHARONA with no crosses because I am an expert on all stuttering in rock and roll, apparently.
Tee-Hee: Rare state of being for a Lonely NYTXW editor living on a gig salary in a 400 square foot apartment in Brooklyn: IN ECSTASY.
Uniclues:
1 RV parks littered with American flags and upside down pineapples.
2 "I'm rich because I can make you cry when I sing."
3 What Santa Anna does every March 6,1836.
4 Stuffed my face with everything in sight in the fog and drizzle.
5 Ones without stolen Zambonis.
6 Phrase guaranteed to evoke our slush pile editor's devious laugh.
7 PTA mom's final day as booster president.
8 My blood pressure in modern times.
9 Why I fail when I think about how much I hate eggplant.
10 African bar for kids.
11 Grow old enough to discover god and religion, like Santa Claus, are fake.
12 Synonym for two bras on the floor.
13 The lumberjack my girlfriend brought along with us to the gala.
1 IN ECSTASY CAMPS
2 ADELE MONOLOGUE (~)
3 FELLS ALAMO (~)
4 ATE UP RAINY DAYS
5 LEGAL ICE ARENAS
6 EDGES MY SHARONA
7 I'M DONE BAKE SALE
8 ELEVATED NORMAL (~)
9 LAY AN EGG ENMITY (~)
10 TOGO TOT PUB (~)
11 AGE OUT OF PURIM
12 HERE LIES YESES (~)
13 PLUS ONE'S BUNYAN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: How one describes the body shapes of buffet loving tourists. DECK CHAIR STOUT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Metro Gnome - "Olympus" is a brand of camera. SLR refers to single-lens-reflex, which is a type of camera. Back in the day, they used to advertise Canon and Nikon and Olympus SLRs quite a lot, using that initialism. Even in the digital world, right now the bulk of cameras is split up mostly between dSLRs and mirrorless cameras, so it still is an initialism in heavy use today (though with the "d" for "digital" prepended.)
Most of this puzzle played like a normal Friday. The upper two corners put it into very challenging Saturday territory.
The NE was tough because I tend to forget the PLUS ONE thing and I couldn't parse the MEST portion of SESAMEST. In retrospect ASA should have been obvious but I drew a complete blank. ADELE and ADO sat all alone until LOTUS joined them and that section finally clicked.
The NW probably took as much time as everything else put together. I don't follow sports so NOMORE at 1D supported by REDS held me up the most. At one point I even tried to make. NEARSPACE work for 1A. ANIMUS would drop into the same slot as ENMITY. SLRS and AGEOUTOF support it too. After much hair pulling I put in IMDONE and NATS and the rest of that section seemed to solve itself but it was a long time coming.
In the SB I'm on a 5 day QB streak. Last Sa was pg -4!
Seems I had many of the same missteps solving this puzzle. I still enjoyed it.
Easy-medium except for the NW which took almost as long as the rest of the puzzle combined. So my solve was similar to @ Rex’s except for the time. I did not know the FALLACY or DR MARTENS (as clued), ENMITY and COATS were elusive as was ECSTASY. Like @Rex the only things I was sure of were SLRS, TOT, and NATS…tough corner for me which made the whole puzzle trend tough. The SE on the other hand was cake with MYRA, MY SHARONA, HADER, NBC, NAGANO, and PURIM all gimmes.
Solid workout with a smooth grid and a smattering of sparkle, liked it.
There oughta be a word for someone whose only reason for posting is to complain that too many other people are complaining.
Me, too!!
Definitely on the challenging side for me, fun to solve, satisfying to finish. I found the grid a mix of the very easy (e.g., I knew a name or immediately saw through a "?" clue) and the impenetrable (the opposite). So I had good long moments of being stymied but then a gift like NBC or MYRA would get me going again. The very hardest: SUNK COST FALLACY, which really did almost sink me. I needed every cross in order to parse it. Besides the invigorating challenge, I enjoyed the witty clues (Seattle slew!) and so many of the entries, from IN ECSTASY to HERE LIES. A great Friday for me.
Do-overs: Doc marten, Beatle, asTa, NUMBed, Aide before ALMS. Help from previous puzzles: MOES, MY SHARONA. Help from having visited its cathedral: ELY. No idea: LOTUS, TUPLES, SUNK COST FALLACY.
I don't time myself but I get why some people do. Hearing their times tells you how hard it was for them. Fine.
But , "for the love of sweet baby Jesus", I find your uniclues to be an annoying waste of space.
I don't understand the goal of constructors when they add this much obscure trivia to a puzzle. Who are you trying to impress? Or is it your goal just to anger and annoy people? TUPLES?? TOGO? MYRA BRECKENRIDGE which is apparently a book & then a movie from almost 60 years ago???!?!?!?!?! Are these puzzles only created by 90 year olds? I've never heard of Purim or "papal bull", and had misspelled MY SHARONA as SHERONA, and obviously had no clue on the stupid Breckenridge clue. Otherwise I finished in 25 minutes, but there was no point at all during that time where I actually enjoyed any of this pretentious trivia fest.
UP used twice. KEYSUP and ATEUP
It's always interesting to see how wildly people's wheelhouses can differ. I thought SUNK COST FALLACY was a common term. The only thing that hung me up about it is that I was remembering it as SUNKen COST FALLACY. I don't know where I would have picked up the term, though. I've heard it used not only in economics, but in terms of relationships, like when you continue a relationship for no reason other than you've already invested so much time into it, i.e. relationship inertia.
Nice to know I'm not the only one who figured 13D was yet another indirection - ALSORANS
Tough in spots, easy in other spots. Like most FriPuzs, at our house.
no-know spots: SUNKCOSTFALLACY/DRMARTEN. Megillah readins. Lome locales. New Delhi temples. ELY isles.
staff weeject pick: PUB. Word turned abbreve for the day.
Some likes: BELLYOFTHEBEAST. LAYANEGG. BAKESALE clue. More Little League age requirement refs., along with AGEOUTOF/TRYOUT.
Thanx for the challengin sunkbellybeast, Mr. Judge dude. And congratz on yer NYTPuz debut. Primo U-count. MJT, tho.
Masked & Anonymo9Us
Test solvers were bitten near to death alert:
**gruntz**
SHARONA was Sharona Alperin, with whom Doug Fieger of The Knacks fell madly in love at first sight. She was only 17 and dating someone else, and he was 25. They eventually dated for 4 years and got engaged, but split up and married others. They stayed close friends, however, and she was often by his side during his losing battle with cancer at age 57.
She went into real estate with the domain name mysharona.com. She said it was overwhelmingly positive being "the" Sharona. She still gets calls often from friends to let her know they just heard the song.
Not know Purim or papal bull is a You Problem. Nothing “old” or trivial about either.
I enjoyed this a lot: Lewis shares my experience often, I'm happy to report. Tough, but fair. I remember a tip about starting near the bottom of a tough puzzle since the constructor possibly ran out of tough clue ideas by then in the construction. Worked like a charm today. I didn't do it on purpose; that is just where I finally got a toehold.
@Sam, D'OH was made famous by Homer Simpson, as someone alluded to earlier with the MOE's tavern closeby. Much more likely to say to yourself than DUH.
@Lauren, google Doc Martens and you get an entire page of Dr. Martens for sale. People tend to say Doc, but this is a written medium to boot.(pun intended). Took me a while to parse that one.
I've been at these for a few years and I got this one in half an hour, after looking a of couple answers up. I definitely had times like yours in the past. I don't think I'll ever breathe in the rarified air of sub-10 min Friday solvers.
@No Parking 12:50 PM
OMG! Thank you so much. I was worried the internet was almost full and we need to worry about how much space remains. I will stop writing uniclues immediately. You're the best.
Got off to a shaky start. I would say that 1A "Sky high" would be ECSTATIC. IN ECSTASY? NAH. I think an earlier commenter's ON ECSTASY (the drug MDMA, aka MollY) works better.
I wear flip-flops most of the time so I'm not up on the latest shoe wear fashion. I had no idea about the DR MARTENS. That's it, just yellow stitching gets them ELEVATED above other brands?
I thought GAMBLER'S FALLACY was the rationale for throwing good money after bad, the belief that because there has been a run of bad luck, a run of good luck is due.
I did enjoy being reminded of that famous papal BULL, the MAGNA CLASSA.
If ever there was a place where nits are welcome
up and up
ice arena? I've been using ice rinks for the past 50+ years, never in my life heard of an ice arena.
Doc Martens, not Doctor
Answer to 15A followed by clue to 16A: very nice; likewise answer to 37D followed by clue to 39A
Lots to like about this one, a bit to make ya say uhh
Please don't stop! I love your uniclues! If No Parking doesn't like them, he can just skip them. Guess that's too easy.
Why is the word “My” such a tongue-twister?
mmmmMy Sharona.
MmmmMy Generation.
Only two stuttering songs I can think of (wait, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet. Bbbbbbaby!)
But a tuple is most certainly not a "set". It is the prototypical example of something that is not a set: it is ordered and allows for duplicates.
TOUGH one as Fridays are often for me. I googled a few... . I even forget what I googled, TOGO was one. SUNKCOSTFALLACY is not a term I've heard before though I was an Economics minor . MYSHARONA!! we rocked to that in the halls of the University of Delaware. Certain songs bring back so many memories and that certainly is one of them. BELLYOFTHEBEAST came semi-quickly and a lot fell after that. TUPLES I never heard of before. And I got an 800 on my Math SATs. Had Beatle before BUNYAB.... filled that in off the B and thought I was brilliant. Never get too cocky on Fridays. The guy above who is looking for his "ecstasy people" made me laugh out loud, whoever you are. I'm not one of them, never tried and never will but that was funny.
It's late afternoon, I've finished the puzzle and am smiling over the comments. This is the one I feel compelled to say Amen to!
Thx Ryan, for this Fri. BEAST of a construction ! 😊
Downs-o was a big BELLY 'flop'.
LAYd AN EGG right off the bat with 'enough' for IM DONE. Should have paid more attn to the clue, as 'Line' likely infers more than one word.
Also had rancor before ENMITY and okayS before YESES (which I'm counting as a partial malapop).
Had 'you only live once' for SUNK COST FALLACY. D'OH!
Did get SESAME ST, TOT, ADO, D'OH, MOES, NUMBLY, TRYOUT, ALMS, BAKE SALE, ELEVATED, LAY AN EGG, PLS, PUB, HERE LIES, NAH, MYRA, but these weren't enuf to get the job done.
So, HERE LIES my down's-only effort, buried in the BELLY OF THE BEAST! :(
Nevertheless, as always an appreciated challenge; just not very well met, tho. :)
@Roo 👍 for QB yd! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
"Oops! All proper nouns and abbreviations."
Also missing LMS.
Any long timers have news they can share?
@other David - Maybe the term is regional or something. Here in the Chicago area, most of the indoor rinks are called "ice arenas" so far as I've experienced (and I'm at one or another every week). An outdoor rink would just be an "ice rink" or, more often, "skating rink." But I wouldn't really casually say "I'm going to the ice arena for a skate." Really, I'd say, "I'm going to the rink for the free skate." But I might say "I'm heading down to 5th Third Ice Arena."
@Andrew 3:34 pm: there are quite a few stuttering songs! Check out this list.
Randy Bachman used to have a podcast called Vinyl Tap and he did an entire episode about stuttering. I did a quick search but couldn't find it.
@ oka…thanks, I don’t know most of those songs but Changes and Benny and the Jets def incorporated the stutter.
@okanaganer-
Nice list, but they left off
K-K-K-Katie, beautiful Katie...etc.
Guess it never made the top 40.
was thinking the same thing…
It's funny seeing so many people riled up about the DRMARTENS answer... I work for the company and although we all say "Doc Martens" when speaking, all internal communications still spell it as Dr. Martens, so I got it right away. I mean, it's written on the heel loop, people!
A slog for me, but one sloppy error doomed me. I had MEGAdata instead of METAdata. That stopped me from getting lotus. And that stopped me from getting Sesamest. So I had 3 bad squares.
Didn't like "PUB" as clued, didn't know Tuples, but got it, Had EVE instead of EVA, fixed it, and was beaten only by SesameST.
About Paul orJohn clue
I also had Beatle until I saw magna.
About keyed up ate up dupe
Anonymous asks if anyone is bothered by it
Me no.
Metrognome
Natick defined by Rex. His word his definition
Two obscure names crossing at an uninferrable letter First occasion:
N.C. Wyeth crossing with Natick at the N. Can’t get more random than the initial of an unknown first name, of the FATHER of a famous painter, or, if you don’t live in Southeast New England the first letter of a small town in Massachusetts.
On the other hand SLR is crosswordese. It has been in the Times puzzle a lot. It is a popular type of camera. It is NOT ppp. It’s a Saturday level clue because it helps to know that Olympus is a camera brand, which sells a lot of SLR’s. It is a major camera brand however, so not natick level obscure. Just because I don’t know something, doesn’t make it a natick.
I, too, thought of "K-k-k Katie", @pabloinnh. It happens to be the only st-st-stuttering song I know. But I was very slow off the mark, and so you beat me to the k-k-k-kitchen door today.
(Actually, the song is SO old that I think it was more my parents' generation than mine.)
Ahem
Anonymous at 1:00 PM
I immediately remembered Myra. And I was born in the 1950’s.
If contemporary pop music is in these puzzles there is a place for a once famous book and movie.
Win some lose some
No need to be insulting
@okanaganer and the stuttering song crew: One song on the shared list does not actually have stuttering, though it is popularly believed to. The BeeGee's Jive Talkin' SOUNDS like it says "J-J-J-Jive Talkin'", but the lyrics are really "It's just your Jive Talkin'". I can remember Casey Kasem saying this ... I think when My Sharona hit #1.
Nice list of Stuttering Songs, @okananager.
What about Ecstatic Songs? In 1967 the Young Rascals had three consecutive Top 10 hits with the word ECSTASY in the lyrics:
Gliding through this world of beauty
Everything I do brings ecstasy
— I've Been Lonely Too Long
I feel it coming closer day by day
Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly*
— Groovin'
Every time I'm holdin' you close to me
Trouble's gone, it's gone, I'm in ecstasy
— A Girl Like You
*Or, if you prefer: ...you and me and Leslie
I miss her comments, hope she is doing well.
Oh mercy! I think I did this twice because I fell into all the traps and had so many possible answers that weren’t really traps, I just didn’t hit on the answer the constructor picked! Had I been solving on newsprint, my grid would have had holes all over it from the erasures.
But I finished it. Finally.
I promise this is my last comment about stuttering songs: my fave is (and The Stuttering Foundation (honest) seems to agree) is BTO's You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.
Amen. Feels like the author looked up the word in their grid without really understanding the meaning.
Thought I was smart thinking the chime was a chord. The computer opening sound of a pc or MAC. Then had no idea they had a recent olympics in MILANO. LOL
Many disappointed mathematicians here, but of course a tuple is a set. In particular, an n-tuple is any set of n elements each element of which includes a distinct identifiable ordinal from one to n. Incidentally, all sets are one-tuples of which the first element is itself the set, but this is a less useful fact.
Doc Martens irritate my bunions
I am very late, and I guess "The Young Ones" is a bit obscure, but this is how I knew "Doctor (Dr) Martens": https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DDhg_QIyMxZw&ved=2ahUKEwiLpKCt4I-EAxV0F1kFHX42BggQwqsBegQIGRAG&usg=AOvVaw1WwsKgw6WxMq0KKVVMx3If
Sets can certainly be ordered, and they can contain duplicates. I'm ok with tuples being used.
For a while there I had enough wrong down answers that the long across answer was looking like BALL OF BEES, and that did seem like a dangerous thing to be inside of. I had no idea what the Megilah was, but it sounded Jewish, so I put in the only five-letter Jewish holiday I knew, and it worked. But in the end, I had to google HADER and MYRA to finish the corner, and never figured out SESAnEST.
Put in Chchanges at 61 across but took a Bowie knife to it when I realized the Jewish holiday had to be Purim.... Loved the comment on mysharona.com. by Liveprof at 1:45. If I ever need a property in L.A. I know who I'm calling...
DNF. Had HEREsIES instead of HERELIES and TiPLES instead of TUPLES. Tough. Not very fair.
HERELIES THEBEAST
EVA BUNYAN so NUMBLY LAY
on CAL's BELLY IN pure ECSTASY,
IN A MONOLOGUE she'd say,
"I'MDONE with MY NORMAL FALLACY."
--- DR. MYRA MOE-MARTEN
Hand up for jumping the gun with Beatle. I should know better on a Friday.
MYSHARONA put the kibosh on that answer as soon as I'd written it (Off just the M of PURIM). NW--again--was the hardest and last to fall. Got IMDONE from the N of NATS, which helped greatly. And so: IMDONE. Agree with the med-to-med-challenging rate. Unfamiliar with SUNKCOSTFALLACY, so getting NW help that way was long coming. Finally hit on MONOLOGUE. Whew.
Plenty of triumph points, and nothing too unfair. Birdie.
Wordle birdie.
Word of the day - TUPLES. No BULL
As close as I usually get for a Friday.
Lady Di
My Sharona brought back memories of my aerobics class. That song was the perfect beat to exercise to. SpiceSea
Had ASTA for TOTO…”sunk” it for me. Yuck…with a capital YUCK. #NotAFan
DNF- not on the wavelength or too involved and distracted by that pesky work that pays the bills. MYRA Breckenridge was the subject of numerous jokes on Laugh-In.
Wordle birdie.
Love me a hard puzzle on Friday! And this definitely was a very hard one for me. But I got-r done. It took me way too long to get Dr. Martens , since the clue was almost a dead give-away for anybody who has owned a pair of their boots, and I own a pair. Yes, I bought them in the 70's, but I still have them, and the box too.
Hard Fridays rock!!!
Syndication coming in late. Why is MAGNA "medieval Latin for great"? It is the classical word as well. In all Latin it means "great"
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