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Home of the prehistoric Ggantija temples / FRI 2-23-24 / Early number? / Windy location of myth? / Queer identity whose flag is green, white, gray and black, for short / Defunct health technology company that once had a $10 billion valuation / Longtime TV news colleague of Pelley, Cooper and Whitaker / Prestigious award established after its founder purportedly read his premature obituary
Friday, February 23, 2024
Constructor: Larry Snyder
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: ARO (23A: Queer identity whose flag is green, white, gray and black, for short) —
Aromanticism is a romantic orientation characterized by experiencing little to no romantic attraction. The term "aromantic", colloquially shortened to "aro", refers to a person whose romantic orientation is aromanticism. // Aromanticism is defined as "having little or no romantic feeling towards others: experiencing little or no romantic desire or attraction". The term aromantic was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018. [...] In the initialism LGBTQIA+, the A stands for aromanticism, alongside asexuality and agender. (wikipedia)
• • •
There were a lot of quaint (old) cluing tricks in the puzzle today. Using "windy" to mean "winding" instead of "blustery" (I think we saw this "trick" very recently, actually) (10D: Windy location of myth? = LABYRINTH). Then there's the use of "number" to mean not a mathematical figure but something that numbs you (2D: Early number? = ETHER). Then there's the TILDE trick, which is a variation on the "letteral" clue (the kind of self-referential clue that is trying to point you to a letter, i.e. [Figure head?] for EFF or [America first?] for CAPITAL A—wow, that clue is cursed, I don't know what came over me, never use that clue, please, thank you). Today, we get [Baño feature], which is not a feature of a Spanish bathroom, but a feature of the word "baño"—specifically the TILDE. Again, an old trick.
I was recently editing a puzzle and wondering to myself, "Is ARO a widely known abbreviation?" Well, it is now. Don't say you haven't seen it. It's been in the NYTXW twice before with this clue (i.e. as an abbr. for "aromantic") (2022, 2023). Before 2022, the only time it had been seen in the NYTXW in *thirty years* was once during the Great Twilight Plague of the 2010s ([Michael Sheen's character in "Twilight"] (!?!?!)). In the Maleska Era, you'd apparently see ARO not infrequently, but clued as stuff like [Orinoco tributary] or [Nigerian native] (seriously, those were the only two clues he used, and he used them a lot: twenty times in total!). If you want to know what Maleska was like as an editor, *that* is what Maleska was like as an editor. Obscure three-letter geographical place names—paradigmatic Maleskanism! Happy to be present for the ARO-naissance. Not so happy to be present for the SRO-naissance, but then SRO never really went anywhere, did it?
Didn't know ITT but inferred ITT from the clue (Wednesday ... Addams Family ... ITT) (50D: Ignatius ___, figure on Netflix's "Wednesday"). Had ARE YOU ASLEEP? before ARE YOU DECENT? and EMMY NOM before EMMY NOD (30A: One of more than 300 for "S.N.L."). Actually, if I'm being honest, I tried to make EMCEES work before either of those answers. EMCEEES!!! (obviously I had the "EM-" in place first). Left the "T" blank during my first pass at MODEL T'S since I don't know my early car models that well and thought it might be MODEL A'S (7D: Tin lizzies). I should add that one to the "quaint" list, above. Oh, and I had RAT before RAG (26A: Unreliable news source). The DECENT / ASLEEP slip-up was probably the biggest obstacle today, but it wasn't that big. I threw down ASLEEP, then immediately tried to cross that with 45A: Singer Marie, but the only [Singer Marie] I could think of (in five letters) was TEENA Marie, so it didn't take me long to pull ASLEEP and (tentatively) write in TEENA. Problem solved. So this one was breezy, but just not as sparkly as I'd like my themeless grids to be.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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85 comments:
Easy-Medium for me, with several of the same overwrites as @Rex.
6D: ARE YOU aslEep before ARE YOU DECENT
43A: Dear john before Dear abby before Dear SIRS
44D: yoke (crossing the y in the incorrect abby) before SIDE for Team, because you yoke a Team of oxen
52A: TATTooed before TATTED UP
WOEs:
24D, TANKINI
31A, RILKE
Had to cheat once, to get BRET Michaels. That gave me STEPS. A typical tough Friday puzzle, with some questionable cluing. The clue for BEGUN ("kicked off") would apply to "began," but not BEGUN. "Has kicked off" would work better.
I agree with Rex Parker that THERANOS is bad fill, especially if you owned the stock.
Hi Bob 👋 the clue on BEGUN is just fine. In your own example, “kicked off” swaps out for BEGUN perfectly. ~RP
Beautiful pinwheel grid. Worked around the circle for while and filled in the NE and SW corners last. Things slowed down up top with Labyrinth, and for some reason, everything in the SW.
Wanted the Premature Obituary to have something to do with Mark Twain, but I guess there were just rumors of his death that were greatly exaggerated.
Read Rilke's Duino Elegies for a German lit class. More education that couldn't be monetized and don't remember a single word of any of it, but Rilke's been handy for crosswords every few years.
Yes Maam, melted Cheese Dip product is not Haute Cusine. It's Bleh
OK, Rex. But I hope you'll agree that there's a meaningful difference between PAST TENSE and PAST PERFECT TENSE. Thanks for the reply.
@rex, in your write up about letteral clues you could’ve referenced this puzzle’s clue for TEE [Beethoven’s fourth?]
Ahh good point! ~RP
It’s referring to the state of being “kicked off” rather than the act.
I would include UTTER ROT and TANKINI to Rex’s list of answers that seem “quaint” or slightly off-kilter. Hopefully a bunch of people are familiar with the RILKE dude, as that was just a Black Hole in the grid for me.
The section with MALTA, STAHL, NOBEL and THERANOS is pretty PPP-laden. I wish they would only go that route on the weekends, but alas, that is not always the case.
Kind of an acceptable Friday as Rex pointed out. I enjoyed his sidebar commentary today about the cluing conventions and other tricks that constructors use all the time , like WINDY for LABYRINTH - I enjoy wrestling with those types of clue/answer combinations - so the more the merrier in my book.
Out of date? Bygone? Must be so: my first stab at THERANOS was Thanatos.
no fan of this one..........
I started with the downs and was quite pleased to write in both ARE YOU DECENT and SLUMBER PARTY (though I questioned the latter later, as I wanted HAUTE COUTURE). I very rarely get long answers with no crosses.
Has to be my best Friday time at 10:11, 10:34 faster than my average.
On my first pass I tried ALUMNUS and EPISODE before EMMYNOD.
Just on the easier side of my average Friday. Kind of zipped until I struggled in the SW and that tough ARO/ETHER cross. Had BURKINI before TANKINI.
12 seconds of a my record time for a Friday..... so yes, relatively very easy. Missed the word of the day entirely having not needed to look at the clue.
Having grown up in a large family, I SO wanted ARE YOU DONE YET for 6D but was a letter short, and RILKE put it out of contention anyway. Consolation: one of my favorite poets, though maybe just a little overrepresented in the NYTXW. Worth a read if you only know him from crosslandia.
Off to a flying start today as the NW played easy for, and then led nowhere, so off to the SE, which wasn't bad, mostly thanks to PYTHONS. Checked to see if LABYRINTH would fit, it would, and then proceeded to ignore the NE because RASSLER gave me a good foothold and finally finished with the unknown MSN because MALTA had to be right, so easy-medium for a Friday.
OFL may find a lot of this "quaint" but I prefer to think of it more as "things I heard when I was much younger". Of course that is applying to more and more things as life goes on.
Hello to TEENA and BRET. Surprised I haven't met you before, as you both have crossword-friendly names.
I had a good time with your Friday offering, LS. Lotta Smiles as I filled things in, and thanks for all the fun.
Well, Larry had me at the gorgeous blank grid, which made my Libra BENT toward balance sing paeans. This grid, by the way, has both 90- and 180-degree symmetry, that is, you can turn it upside down and the black squares will be in the same places AND you can spin it a quarter turn, and it will do the same. This dual symmetry happens about three times a year.
Me, all I see is beauty there.
This puzzle also has a scant 66 words, very difficult to fill without junk, and with spark. And here, on a debut – a Friday debut! – Larry succeeded on both fronts. Bravo, sir!
I started out by running into a long series of dead ends, until I arrived at [Windy location of myth?], which immediately triggered [Windy part of a kite?] from Sunday (for REEL), and out, with a ping, came LABYRINTH. Then the dominoes fell; the entire grid, it seemed, filled with a splat. What a rush!
The origin of THERANOS, which strikes me as a beautiful word, turns out to be rather mundane, a combination of “therapy” and “diagnosis”. So, it’s a phoenix word, beauty rising from ashes. Other lovely answers today were ARE YOU DECENT, EMMY NOD, and the musical TANKINI.
Congratulations on your debut, Larry and thank you for this combination of beauty and thrill!
Fridays whip saw in difficulty more than any other day of the week. We've had some lately that have been as challenging as any Saturday. Today's offering felt like you could solve it in your sleep. Yes the cluing tricks were threadbare but so were most of the answers.
The SBs have been easy also.
yd -0, QB26
Wow. You're in a bad mood today.
Perfectly enjoyable, if easy, Friday puzzle.
Each to their own but, man, I ate up the Theranos story when it was in the news. So infuriating, and so delicious to see the downfall of the arrogant and corrupt.
Thanks for helping me with Early Number. Got ETHER on the crosses but was left scratching my head. Was my last answer in the puzzle in a guess.
Rest of it pretty vanilla for a Friday. Brett Michaels a little too obscure if we wanted to summon up that era and genre. Can’t think of many other Brett’s except for Brett Sommer. Not sure what she did before Match Game to earn a permanent spot on Match Game. Also George Brett. I guess.
Whew. Tough for me, but lots of fun, with some very nasty and clever misdirects, such as number and windy. Liked this a lot more than Rex.
“ARE YOU DECENT?” is a gag line from Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl.” In the film version (1977), the Marsha Mason character asks it outside the Richard Dreyfus character’s door. He’s completely naked, but answers yes, of course. Then they argue about it. Ha ha ha ! The joke wasn’t as stale 47 years ago.
Hey All !
Puz was not UTTER ROT. Nicely done FriPuz, it had me stuck (in the good way) throughout the solve. Got NW first (hardly ever happens like that), then SE, SW, NE, with filling in Center areas off and on. Last letter in was the H of STAHL/THERANOS. Surprised when the Happy Music played, as I thought I'd have a mistake or two.
Complete Rotational Symmetry, as in, turn puz any way, and the Blockers retain the same pattern. Not advised to turn the puz if you're doing it on a desk top!
Thought about AREYOUcoming for the bedroom clue. Ooh! Wicked, eh? Nudge Nudge Wink Wink.
BENdS or BENTS? BEGaN or BEGUN? Didn't stress on the MODELaS or MODELTS, as know the Tin Lizzie's are the T's. For WHEAT, I had _HE__, and thought for a minute that the Ukraine might export sHEep. Har.
Good puz. Happy Friday.
No F's (SACRILEGE!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
I got bogged down in the SW corner (can't remember "RASSLER" for the life of me).
Feel like ASS in the sense of "butt" is a little vulgar for a NYT crossword, probably a sign of impending old age.
Weight lifters objective while strengthening shoulder muscles: MODELTS
ARS as the answer to "_______ nova" seems a little obscure. How about "Pirate's utterances" instead?
Being a RATTLER RASSLER is a lot more risky than being a rabble rouser.
I wasn't familiar with ARO (Queer identity whose flag is green, white, gray and black, for short), though I've apparently seen it before in the NYTXW. Gotta say I'm slightly surprised that the AROs have an identifying flag. "We experience little or no romantic attraction and we're proud of it!" I guess that explains the banner that Mrs. Egs has taken to flying in our bedroom.
Pretty easy for a Friday, but lots of good whooshing! Thanks, Larry Snyder.
I wrote in FOX for "unreliable news source" and I will die on that hill.
Hear, hear!!' Another Jim from Canada watching lies being told to our fine Southern neighbour's!!
I have not seen comments recently by Loren Muse Smith. I miss here witticism. I hope she (and her mother) are OK.
Mr. Michaels only has one T, actually, so he’s pretty unique in that regard. Mr. Favre would be another two-T Brett to look out for though
Such a beautiful blank grid that it seemed a shame to clutter it up with letters, but of course I did. Very smooth sailing today. I even wore my TANKINI. Yes, I have one but it’s way more tank than bikini, a necessary fashion choice due to the fact that I’m not as IN SHAPE as I once was. And if you ever see me at the beach, you’ll be thankful.
Pretty slick pulling off this nifty debut on a Friday, Larry. Congrats and thanks for a pleasant start to the weekend!
I was thinking OAN for unreliable news source but FOX also works.
I was breezing through the puzzle, throwing in UTTER ROT and ETHER and HAUTE CUISINE and ARE YOU DECENT without a moment's hesitation. Nor was there a moment's hesitation when I threw in TATTOOED for "covered in ink". that's when all hell broke loose, because I wrote it in without checking crosses.
TATTOOED didn't work with CBS. It didn't work with the liturgical chant, whatever that was. It didn't work with BEGaN or BEGAT. It didn't work with PYTHONS. And what was -LOH, btw?
Something DAP? Something AP? I'd written in CBS and CREDO and my last three letters were DAP. What on earth?
Finally I changed BEGAN to BEGUN and saw UP. TATTED UP. Is that a Thing?
I ended up solving this, Larry -- no thanks to 52A. But I ask you: Was that nice? Was that sportsmanlike? :)
If you do a lot of different crosswords, particularly The New Yorker, you come across ARO frequently. It's a good one to remember as I suspect that it will probably show up more and more in the future. I just never knew that the aromantics had a flag and why on earth would they need or want one.
Am agonizingly slow at these puzzles and had to look up both BRET and TEENA, but enjoyed the breadth of slangy references ranging from real old-timer stuff to more recent news. Learned to drive on a Model A, so Tin Lizzie was just around the corner.
Also miss the commentary from LMS…
Seem to recall the “windy” and “number” tricks being used recently. As well as the EMMYNOD/nom debate
Agree easy Friday. 4 to 5 longer answers went in with no crosses on first pass and several others with only 1 or 2 letters. Well below avg. and likely a PB if not helping my teenage daughter get out the door. Enjoyed it, if not spectacular.
"I know it was you Credo. You broke my heart." Oh wait, that was Fredo. Or maybe it was Play-Doh... Laredo...? Never mind.
The Maltese Tenor
As a (mostly) ARO person, I was pleased today to learn what my pride flag looks like!
This was a day of incorrectly second-guessing myself: had HAUTECUISINE and changed it to HAUTECOUTURE when something made me doubt it. Had TATTEDUP then changed it to TATTOOED before coming back to TATTEDUP.
Then just some wrong stuff: EPISODES before EMMYNODS (wow, that was bad math I did...) and I fell into the AREYOUASLEEP trap as well.
I liked it! For me, played more med/challenging for a Friday. Enough bite to slow me down and make for a satisfying solve.
So here is where my crosswording journey becomes challenging. I woke up this morning and zipped through this one like a Tuesday except for the sloggy chanteuses. I usually start the puzzle in the evening sitting in the comfy chair with the local news playing. They put the murders on during the first five minutes and that's a great time to dig into the puzzle since I am neither the murderer nor the murderee and I figure that's news I don't need. Afterward the bad homeowners associations and the weather and sports and some dude making portraits of vets out of reclaimed beetle-kill pine capture my interest. The crossword timer is ticking the whole time and I couldn't care less. I like to read every clue since sometimes (not often enough) a constructor and editor have a sense of humor, and in this troubled end-of-the-Boomers era, wry comedy is surprisingly hard to find and plenty of humorless folks have been allowed to walk the streets unsupervised. Sometimes I fall asleep in this process because I feel at least 20 years older than I am. My phone keeps ticking away while I nap and sometimes I have 8 hour solves when the sunrise finds me happily snoring in the La-Z-Boy. It's my SLUMBER PARTY. With 🦖 occasionally posting cartoonishly fast times (while claiming he doesn't time himself 😉), wouldn't it be nice to log our slowest solves too? For those of us fortunate to lead such leisurely lives, we can celebrate reeeeeally long excursions in our favorite activity. Let's have an award for the final contestant at crossword conventions... the one sitting alone in a chair in an empty hotel ballroom with two proctors left grousing in the corner whispering to themselves, "Just give up bro." Finishing a puzzle shackled by the fourth dimension goes two-ways -- the fleet and the lolligaggified. I've got one foot in the grave anyway, so why not savor every possible moment of wasting my final days on Earth doing a puzzle?
My studio is in the mezzanine of an old church and the PIPE ORGAN pipes are bolted against the back wall of my office. It's an exhilarating experience when a performer is playing a tune and the entire room rattles like the apocalypse has arrived.
BURKINI before TANKINI. So many -kinis. Nobody has ever asked me, "ARE YOU DECENT?" because everyone knows the answer is "no."
Tee-Hee: Putting on the butt-turbo with [Tuchuses]. Way to go you ASSES of the NYTXW.
Uniclues:
1 Nickname given unenthusiastically as a result of Leslie doing her job.
2 Celebrates a dismal TV performance by postponing accolades.
3 Pretend percolation.
4 What goes on between my ears now that I am too old to use my body for anything amusing.
5 Dude accustomed to being needled in a non-acupuncture setting like maybe rolling around on a mesa.
6 "You're going nowhere."
1 UTTER ROT STAHL
2 PENDS EMMY NOD
3 REPLICA LEACH
4 LEGIT SACRILEGE
5 YUCCA RASSLER
6 LABYRINTH CREDO
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The French sequel to Smurfs.. BLEU SONS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Easy for me, and I thought it was a good puzzle. I find UTTER ROT charming, and there are plenty of children (and adults) who still use YES MA’AM on the regular. THERANOS isnt current events but it’s also not archaic - the Netflix show based on the whole thing was released in 2022. All in all, not my favorite Friday but a solid offering.
Easy. Knowing YUCCA was helpful. Me too for TATTooed before TATTED UP and also no lie before LEGIT.
Fun whooshy Friday with plenty of sparkle, liked it.
The Hulu series “The Dropout” about THERANOS is worth watching.
Bravo Larry. Any debut is impressive, but getting a Friday is doubly so. That pinwheel grid wasn’t child’s play for me TRUTH be told.
Others breezed through your LABYRINTH it seems, but I seemed to hit all the cul-de-sacs. Took forever to see EMMYNOD instead of some variation on EMcee??.
Thanks @Joe for the brief visit to MALTA. Following links to places/events I didn’t know existed is a great extension of many grids and the responses they engender; opera and Ggantija were today’s side trip.
“Has kicked off” (your suggested clue) doesn’t mean “begun”.
“Has kicked off” means “has begun”.
Thus “kicked off” means “begun” (or “began”, both equally valid).
I've never seen RASSLER spelled out before and always assumed it'd be spelled with a W (Wrassler), since it's slang for wrestler. Thought there must be a rebus somewhere, which is unusual for a Friday. Also got stuck on the answer for tuchuses (ASSES), since I've heard of tush (and, therefore, tushes) as a synonym for ass. Apparently it's a Yiddish word. Must be where tush came from, I guess, much like the word skosh - meaning a little bit - comes from the Japanese word Sukoshi (少し), where the U is elided.
Pretty easy for a Friday. I didn't mind the old-timey phrases.
Medium, enjoyed it. Agree on the "we've seen it before" remarks on "windy" and "number," but still LABYRINTH is a lovely answer to write in. I also liked seeing my favorite instrument, the PIPE ORGAN, as its grid partner. HAUTE CUISINE is nicely paired with ATE ONE'S WORDS, which probably didn't go down as easily.
Do-overs: asleep before DECENT, abby before SIRS, pBS, psalm before CREDO, BEGaN, and pilferaGE before SACRILEGE (and I thought I'd been so brilliant). No idea: ARO, TEENA (I thought it was "Tina"), BRET.
My first stab at "Comment outside the bedroom" was "Are we doing it?" :)
Great to see those zaftig tuchuses today. I think it comes from the Hebrew word Ta-chat which means under.
"Gilda, are you decent?" is a classic line of dialogue from one of the best films noirs, "Gilda," from 1946, directed by Charles Vidor (no relation to the legendary film director King Vidor) and starring Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth, and George Macready. MacReady is Mundson, a shady businessman with organized crime ties, who hires drifter/gambler "Johnny" (Ford) as his new right-hand man. Mundson proudly introduces Johnny to his new wife Gilda (Hayworth). He knocks on the door of Gilda's boudoir as Gilda is dressing, saying that classic line. Gilda stands up, beautiful in her dressing gown, tossing her head and her lovely hair, and smiling suggestively as she answers. It turns that (naturally, this being a noir), Gilda and Johnny have a history long preceding her becoming Mundson's wife. This film also has Hayworth as Gilda doing a knock-'em-dead rendition, singing and dancing, of "Put the Blame on Mame."
Me too! Put Fox in immediately! Kathy from NYC.
I thought it was a fine Friday, but just that.. fine. I was hit with the dreaded one off note at the end and realized I had put in Pope Organ, which sounds absolutely inappropriate.
Sorry to say I didn't get the gimmick with EARLY NUMBER=ETHER right away, but looking at it, it is fun. I never heard of THERANOS, but now I have (if I remember it). LABRYRINTH?
And Rex's reference to Maleska - what would he have thought of BLEH in a NYT puzzle?
Wouldn't have guessed it, but it was doable & I liked it.
Congrats on your debut, Larry :)
Did feel sense of deja vu while doing this one; many of the answers would have been common in puzzles from 1959 and since.
In fairness there were some new answers and clever clues. Pretty easy, cuz I had below average time for Friday while hungover and solving in the (noisy) vets waiting room
The blog comments today are even funnier than usual. Keep it up crew!
@Gary J (10:45) -- I'm taking it upon myself to award you a four-minute handicap for every future puzzle you do. Just subtract four minutes from whatever your time was.
You write: "I usually start the puzzle in the evening sitting in the comfy chair with the local news playing. They put the murders on during the first five minutes and that's a great time to dig into the puzzle."
No it's not, Gary. There are words coming from your TV -- words that are different from the words that are in the crossword puzzle. Words vs. words. So confusing! Listen to music instead. Or choose silence --as I do.
I can't even do a puzzle when a song is playing that has words. Or even when just an instrumental of the song is playing -- only I already know the words. Words vs. words. A ridiculous way to try and do a puzzle.
In fact, I may have been chintzy in giving you a handicap of only four minutes. Please take six, Gary.
Puzgrid with 4 Jaws of Themelessness and rotational symmetry. Nice LABYRINTH of Themelessness.
staff weeject pick (of a mere 8 choices): ARO. A no-know flag id, at our house.
some faves: TATTEDUP. SLUMBERPARTY. & clue. AREYOUDECENT. LABYRINTH. REPLICA. TANKINI.
no-remember-know: THERANOS.
Thanx, Mr. Snyder dude. And congratz on a solid debut.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
East Side was a bit of a debacle here. Haute couture before HAUTE CUISINE, which was obviously wrong. Ditto CNN before RAG and Emmy win before EMMY NOD. Still took less time than average Fri. Liked it.
Tatted up!? Bleh.
You know what else fits in the "Bano feature"? BIDET. When I was living in Spain every single bathroom had one. In that era, toilet paper was ripped up newspaper or some sort of brown wrapping paper. A cold squirt in the ASSES would at least clean you up. Speaking of ASSES...."Tuchuses"????? Ye gads woman, how do you even pronounce that?
In other news: Ay Dios mío. THERANOS? Where was I when that went down! I know my abode wasn't a cave. I do read and try to listen to the news , but this one was new to me. I'm dumb.
Further: RILKE, TEENA and BRET are strangers to me. I'm happy for them, though, they got their names in a puzzle.
TATTED UP? I had @Bob Mills BEGAN instead of the correct? BEGUN. I like TATTE DAP.
The rest of the fill was pretty easy. Hit or miss - mostly hit. I learned that Ukraine exports WHEAT and not Water. I spelled SACRILEGE and LABYRINTH correctly and that that "Dear___clue wasn't Abby. Does anybody say Dear SIRS? How about To Whom It May Concern?
Ok, so I finished. I had to cheat 3 times for the strangers mentioned above. I liked the puzzle but I especially like @Rex's ARO-naissance....
Regular contributors often note that they miss certain regular writers, such as Loren Muse Smith, and wonder how they are doing. Lewis always lets us know when he will be away. I hope other daily writers, like Nancy, Gary Jugert, RooMonster, Joe di Pinto, etc. will do the same.
Like many friends my age, I have written instructions to my chlldren with information and expectations for when I die or become incapacitated. I have asked them to notify certain friends. If I were a regular blogger here, I would include this address. Since I started coming here over 12 years ago, many regular writers have just disappeared. I would have liked to know what happened -- and maybe even read an obituary about them.
Just wanted to add my name to the list of appreciators. A worthy debut that I quite enjoyed rolling through from the SE clockwise.
@Nancy 12:11 PM
Haha! You are absolutely right. It never occurred to me that words would be competing with different words. I don't listen to a lot of music, because I'm usually writing it. And I think that's the same cognitive dissonance you're describing. (However, I will take your 6 minute handicap. I definitely need it.)
For "unreliable news source" it was just way too facile to write down FOX without thinking twice.
MSNBC didn’t fit …
Anyone have news they can share about LMS? She is missed.
I gazed at it for ages before dimly remembering THERA-something; so I cheated right off, and then did pretty well till encountering an entirely blank SE. Which stayed that way. Ah me, I've never paid any attention to any pop singers.
And as for SB this week, I had two QBs in a row, and then the one word I missed left me feeling sheepish.
I've said it before that I think Eugene Maleska's puzzles should be compared to other pre-computer, pre-internet editors' puzzles and not to contemporary ones. Yeah, "Nigerian native" and "Orinoco tributary" were used to clue ARO in puzzles under his editorship as they also were under his predecessors at the NYTXW, Will Weng and Margaret Farrar. But this was back when puzzles were constructed by hand on graph paper and were clued while sitting in the reference section of a large library.
I'm not sure that a text-speak minimum key stroke three-letter shortening of the full "aromantic" is that much better. And since having it cross the oldy moldy STENO kind of cancels out any ARO "freshness" factor, why not EVADE that issue by changing the O to T which would give 3D STENT crossing 23A ART?
There were two places that messed me up today. I quickly filled the whole West 2/3 of the grid. Then, I penned in HAUTE COUTURE due to not reading the clue. That, and not remembering MALTA right away, messed up my NE. Then, I ended up with TATTADAP until I BEGUN instead of my original BEGAN. Still, I finished without looking anything up.
BLEH! ETHER does not numb. It puts one to sleep, to put it simply. When you're anesthetized, you don't feel pain. But that's not because you are numb. It's because you're unconscious. Ignorant clue.
Cheesh! Queso must be a term in use by the unschooled to mean a Mexican-style CHEESE DIP instead of "queso dip". Anyone here knows that queso means cheese en español, whether or not it's used in a dip.
Back to BLEH: rather blah. Never heard or seen this "word", although it comes up when you google it.
Lewis, I’m trying to make sense of your remark that THERANOS is “a phoenix word, beauty rising from ashes.” It seems to me that your view requires not only overselling the “beauty” of that word (which to my mind tellingly recalls the name of Marvel supervillain THANOS) but also discounting the human and social cost of the so-called ashes. Am I misinterpreting your remark?
Anonymous 12:37 PM
Tatted up is common expression and has been in the Times before
This crossword allows slang answers every day. Nothing out of the ordinary about it
I can’t help referring to yesterday’s puzzle so if you haven’t done it be warned. I do the puzzle late
I was again reminded I am old as several people said they never heard neat as a PIN. Some were irate about it Never heard it. How dare they put in that clue etc.
I was stunned.
However, I am sure the 40 year old has heard or seen it but it just didn’t register
Just because you don’t know something or THINK you never heard of or read an expression ( or word) doesn’t mean it’s obscure! ARO today I totally forgot about about until Rex explained it, despite the fact I am gay.
I thought today’s puzzle was harder than almost everyone here. To me it was very hard. But I liked it I did finish it
This puzzle was just awful. Worst Friday I’ve encountered. “Dear SIRS”? Who says that? One of many anachronistic clues. Skip.
@G Weissman -- I was just looking at it very simply, something beautiful spawned from something mundane. I'm not well versed in myth, so my analogy may be off the mark!
For those asking about LMS, she recently told me that she has "been swamped with work and other stuff", but otherwise"fine".
@Lewis, thanks for replying. Perhaps you don’t know what THERANOS was. In what way was/is it something mundane?
Tried mankini before tankini. That's a million dollar idea right here in the comments
I guess it's an acceptable puzzle, but lacking in zest. The longs are mostly good (ignoring ATE ONES WORDS), but the next level down is dull stuff like CHEESE DIP and PIPE ORGAN.
Unfortunately, I guess mankini very early and that one letter proved to be frustrating for a bit. Haute cuisine is just... Well given that haute couture also fits and is something people said after I was born that middle just want happening until everything else was done. Ended up on the day side overall but that's because there was so much blah on the outside . Not terrible but not much better.
Anon, thanks for passing on news of LMS. Let her know we miss her!
Sad that burkini didn't stand. But thrilled that pyre/labyrinth held up! I enjoyed this one
Too many smarmy clues like 2D. Obscure stuff like RILKE and STAHL is just BLEH !!! TATTEDUP? WTF? Boo!
Hand up for missing our Muse. Hope you are well, m'dear. You are my DOD today.
Not easy by far. Never in my life heard of 11d; needed every single cross. HAUTE CouturE before CUISINE had me all screwed up in the NE. Never knew about NOBEL's premature obituary; I was thinking Twain ("The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated!!")
Also "covered in ink" was my SE, where TATTooed went in right away. And BLEH?? Really? I can believe BLECH, but not BLEH. That one is nastily bad.
I eventually got it all straightened out, but my grid looks like a Rorschach test. Not really a pleasant solve. Bogey.
Wordle birdie.
CBS MODEL
"That TANKINI is HAUTE,
AREYOUDECENT MS. STAHL?"
"SACRILEGE ITT is not,
I'm INSHAPE to show ITT ALL."
--- SIR BRET LEACH
BLEH! Not-so-good Good Friday for this puzzle solver. Especially tough NW where TOTAL instead of UTTER STAHLed me for the longest time. And agree fully with @spacey that 52A should be TATTOOED.
So I learned, too, about NOBEL's premature obit!! whoa!
I'll admit I looked up some of the PPP early on, but then the solve was a joy.
Diana, LIW
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