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National park, in Southwest Utah / TUES 2-13-24 / Garment for the Grim Reaper / Uncouth sort / Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music,” e.g.
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
Hola, everyone, it’s Clare for this random Tuesday in February! I’m currently in México celebrating my sister’s 30th birthday (on Valentine’s Day). She was born in México because my parents lived here for a few years when she was born, so we thought this would be a fitting trip for the big milestone. It’s been an absolutely incredible trip so far (not least because of the sunny and warm weather) — the food is to die for, the drinks are delicious and cheap, and the city is beautiful and very walkable. We watched the Super Bowl yesterday in a bar where we split the most mediocre burger imaginable and watched the game in Spanish. So we’ve been plenty busy, but there’s still always time for crosswords!
Anywho, on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: TEAM PLAYERS — (49A: Ones unconcerned with individual achievements ... or what both words in the answers to the starred clues are examples of) — Both words of the answers are the singular form of the name of the team in a professional sports league.
Theme answers:
- BLUE FLAME (3D: *Indication that a gas stove is functioning properly [N.H.L.])
- BROWN BEAR (11D: *Grizzly, for one [N.F.L.])
- SUN KING (33A: *Louis XIV's nickname [N.B.A.])
- GUARDIAN ANGEL (54A: *Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life," e.g. [M.L.B.])
Calypso is the third studio album by recording artist Harry Belafonte, released by RCA Victor (LPM-1248) in 1956. The album became his second consecutive number-one album on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, where it peaked for 31 weeks. Calypso was the first Long Play record album to sell over one million copies. The first track "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)" largely contributed to the success of the album and has long been Belafonte's signature song, the single reaching number five on Billboard's Pop chart. (Wiki)
• • •
That was a clever theme! I liked that it sorta kinda tied to the Super Bowl (not that the BROWNs have ever been to one…) in that all of the clue answers deal with sports. (I feel like I should note: I’m a Steelers fan, not a Commanders fan.) I love how the clue answers can stand alone and are clever in and of themselves — especially SUN KING and GUARDIAN ANGEL. And the revealer was likewise great. This might be my favorite Tuesday theme I’ve written about in a long while. I’d never heard of DOG TV (42A: Streaming channel sometimes shown at grooming salons and veterinarians' offices), but the clue was fair enough and wasn’t too hard to get. Likewise, I hadn’t heard of “Father STU” (45A: (2022 Mark Wahlberg film)), which made that section a bit rough (not ruff). I was able to get DUM DUMS (42D: Branded lollipops), though, which I hadn’t thought about in forever but used to love as a kid. 8D: "That was too close for comfort!" as WHEW rather than “phew” threw me for a bit in that section, especially because all I could think of for 5A was “roe” rather than getting SPAWN. (Yes, we did have sushi today for lunch. It was incredible.)
I still don’t really get LARRY Bird (51D). I know who he is, but I feel like he wasn’t really stuffing the net as much as some other players? Although, I think it’s nice to continue on with the sports theme. Similarly with AROD at 44A: Slugger who ended his career four shy of the 700 home run club. Take those answers, along with KNEE PAD (20A: Piece of volleyball gear), EPEE (41A: Sword with a three-sided blade), and ESPN (65A: "Monday Night Countdown" cable channel), and you’ve got yourselves a veritable sports theme.
The word NETIZEN (9D; Redditor, e.g.) was fun to have in the puzzle. I chuckled at 37D: "All rise" undoer as BE SEATED. ARGO (and “Fargo”) for 30D: Best Picture winner that becomes an earlier Best Picture nominee when an "F" is added to the front was great. And I liked having SHIATSU (5D: Therapy whose name is Japanese for "finger pressure") in there.
There was otherwise some crosswordese that was bland, but I truly didn’t mind given the theme.
Misc.:
Signed, Clare Carroll, una chica muy cansada ahora
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Misc.:
- My sister tells me that UCLA (14A: Sch. near Bel Air) just found its new football head coach. In her words, “Oh, well, I don’t have to care anymore because the Bruins aren't in the Pac-12… Have fun in the Big 10.”
- I was reminded about the cultural phenomenon of “A DINGO ate my baby.” (23D: Wild canine of Australia) I didn’t know this was a real phrase until a few years ago when I looked it up, and it turns out it was this tragic event where a DINGO took a nine-week-old baby from the campsite where she was with her parents. The mom went to prison for several years because people didn’t believe that a DINGO had taken the baby. But when the baby’s jacket was found a few years after the incident right near a DINGO den, the mom was immediately exonerated and released. I just went down a deep hole re-researching this.
- I remember getting a green IPOD (63A: Apple product from 2001 to 2022) mini when I was younger, and I was pretty darn obsessed with that thing.
- Margaret ATWOOD (10D) might be best known for “The Handmaid’s Tale” these days, but I’ll die on the hill that her best book is “The Blind Assassin.”
And that’s it from me! Have a great rest of your February.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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65 comments:
Hi Clare; I too thought the theme was clever and fun. Since I did this looking at down clues only, I couldn't see the stars on the across clues so I didn't know which ones were themers. I knew GUARDIAN ANGEL had to be one but I completely missed SUN KING (I don't watch basketball so I had no idea SUN or KING was such a team). LION KING would be great if the hint was "NFL / NHL". (Or for us Canadians, "CFL / NHL".)
That clue for WIDOWER was bizarrely obscure for a Tuesday, right? I had to guess it without looking at the clue; lucky me!
I have read most of Margaret ATWOOD's books but not The Blind Assassin, so thanks for that recommendation!
With not the slightest idea what the "Branded lollipops" were, DOG TV seemed remotely plausible if completely unknown. And for 3 down, had PILOT LAMP for a while which had several correct letters.
[Spelling Bee: Mon 0; QB streak at 19!]
Medium but it seemed tougher. Did not know STU, DOG TV or DUMDUMS so the D and U were my last squares. I’m with @Clare on this one, smooth grid, tight/ clever theme, liked it.
There's either a typo in the online edition (15 across) and it should be pronoun*s*, or using "he/she" as a pronoun got *way* less derogatory than it used to be.
Great writeup, Clare!
Relatively easy and a likable theme, in other words a typical Tuesday.
Two overwrites:
33A (prior to reading the clue): SUNKIst before SUN KING
39A: Older (off the O) before OFAGE
Same WOEs as @Clare, DOG TV and Father STU.
On the easy side of average, I thought. A nice puzzle with one very questionable clue. LARRY Bird was a great basketball player, but he didn't score a lot of points by stuffing the basket.
One more thing about the dingo meme: Elaine on Seinfeld is imitating Meryl Streep's questionable Australian accent from a movie about the incident called A Cry in the Dark
I haven’t heard anyone use the term stuffing the basketball in ages. It may have gone by the wayside back during the LARRY Bird era, so perhaps it’s ironically appropriate.
I found some of the answers on the tough side for a Tuesday - SPAWN was a tough one for me for example. Knew the sports teams so the theme didn’t gunk everything up, but the rest of the grid looks like it was a bear for the constructor to fill , but at the end it seemed like a fair, if somewhat challenging Tuesday.
Clare, I loved the LARRY Bird clue even if he wasn’t known for stuffing the net. It’s just clever, and it obviously wouldn’t have worked with, say, Shaq.
I also loved the theme, especially that it found a good example from each of the four most popular leagues. Could have been a Sunday by expanding to MLS, WNBA …
I think “a DINGO ate my baby” got into the popular comic lexicon because Elaine from Seinfeld used to say it in a broad Australian accent, mocking Meryl Streep in the movie A Cry in the Dark, a very serious movie about that poor mother.
For Margaret Atwood, add the “Oryx and Crake” trilogy for a spot-on but also bizarrely funny look at our post-climate-change apocalypse of a decade or so from now. I’ll enjoy the ChickyNobs (hens bred to have twenty meaty breasts) until the societal meltdown.
Another vote for “The Blind Assassin.” A brilliant book!
I also got annoyed at the clue for 49D. While a TURBO and a supercharger are both types of forced induction, they are very different types of forced induction. It would be as bad as cluing VEEEIGHT as “4 cylinder” because they’re both types of engine.
Pretty perfect for a Tuesday. Fun theme, a few harder clues but mostly accessible to new solvers. Had the same fixation on ROE and initial placement of PHEW that tripped me up.
I REALLY wanted the “Prince, but not a princess” clue to be a slight misdirect referring to Prince (the singer) but not Prince (the title).
This is Peter’s 127th Times puzzle, and we see several reasons why today.
He is persistent, hanging on to this theme idea for a quarter century (as he outlines in his puzzle notes over at WordPlay). More evidence? Peter once told me that in his experience, nine out of ten theme ideas don’t work out, that constructors get an idea, spend 20 minutes on it, get nowhere, then toss it. (I agree.) And yet – he persists! Amazingly, he continues his output of sparkling themes.
He is skilled at grid-making. Where is the junk in this puzzle? (Crickets.) Then look at that double-stack of theme answers TEAM PLAYERS and GUARDIAN ANGEL, and look at the answers crossing it – smooth as can be, not a hint of desperation.
Other factors contributing to his constructing excellence – he has an amazing memory, and his brain is lightning quick and clever. This became obvious to me after he edited one of my puzzles, which involved real-time online back-and-forth.
Crosslandia is extremely lucky to have Peter.
There was a lovely serendipitous PuzzPair©, by the way, in today’s puzzle, with BEN (as in Affleck), and ARGO.
The sports teams and references were totally lost on me, but I still found this pretty easy with some fresh and lively answers.
Enjoyable low key Tuesday.
Is it possible there is a connection between "stuffing" and Bird in the sense of food? Thought of that because we're still enjoying frozen leftovers from our Christmas turkey.
@Lewis, continue the connection with A ROD, former beau of J Lo, now reunited with BEN...
@Wanderlust, yep. Larry Bird is my all-time favorite athlete, and as you said, not necessarily known for stuffing a ball. He was killer in every other way, but famously known as not being a great jumper or a fast runner. But he was famously known as great Team Player.
Fun. Liked Spawn and Dog TV.
no boring fill here! refreshing
Two oboes in a row. Peter is a fine constructor but his obsession with sports stuff leaves me cold. I'd better go, my cat is patting me on the nose.
Fun theme and they all work, except BLUEFLAME. I can imagine any TEAMPLAYER in the other themers saying "I'm a SUN", or "I'm a KING", or whatever, but I seriously doubt if a St. Lous hockey player has ever referred to himself as a BLUE. This makes me wonder if you're a little bit sad if you have the BLUE.
Otherwise good stuff and I got to write in NETIZEN, which I have seen somewhere but never used. Enjoyed the mini-sports theme and any puzz that has old friends DINGO and OBI is OK by me.
Nice work, PG. Nice to see all these references to pros Playing Games, and thanks for all the fun.
I got a kick out of the clues for USA and BESEATED.
STU was not a problem because the crosses were pretty easy.
HESHE is a singular pronoun referring to an unknown individual. It's not the least bit derogatory, although it is a bit sloppy these days, and most authors and editors would rewrite the sentence to avoid it.
"Stuffed" is used in basketball when someone gets their shot blocked, usually while going in for a dunk. Stuffing for scoring sounds like some foreign language AI translation, or really old slang like Daddy-O.
I love Harry Belafonte, but was reading recently that he felt a little embarrassed to be the face of Calpyso music, since he was a boy from Harlem, not the islands where the music is indigenous.
Hi, @SSJohnny - surprised you stuck around today what with the second clue causing you problems and the first being a foreign language one.
Happy snow day here from NYC - coming down like it hasn't in several years!
Hey All !
Pretty decent TuesPuz. Singular TEAM names, though, with plural Revealer. Left/right symmetry to get 'em the Themers in.
Not much more to say today. Besides never hearing of DOG TV. Is that really a thing?
Anyway, y'all are spared my insanity today. Makes for a great day. Har.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I was completely unaware that there was a theme while I was solving, didn't look for one, didn't miss one. Then I hit the revealer, saw TEAM PLAYER, saw that there were asterisks I hadn't noticed, and thought: "Better go back and see what this was all about."
Who on earth are the MLB "Guardians"? Never heard of them. Must Google.
Cleveland Guardians???!!! Really? Never heard of them. Who's the Cleveland team that I actually know? Think, Nancy, think hard. Oh, yes, the Cleveland Indians. Aha, now I see! One of those names that was culturally insensitive and had to be changed like "Braves" and "Redskins". When did that happen? Beats me.
That may be because my last year of watching MLB was 1969, the year of the "Miracle Mets". After my beloved NY Giants were unceremoniously whisked off to SF in 1957 by the evil and greedy Horace Stoneham, I had tried to switch my allegiance to the Mets, but failed abysmally. Gave up watching baseball entirely. There's no disillusionment to compare with the disillusionment of a young child.
Anyway, while today's theme was a clever bit of construction, it was also completely miss-able while solving. Which means that it didn't do much for me.
Liked the clue on ARGO. It’s another example of a clue most speed solvers won’t read. Hey, whatever floats your boat. Favorite part of the Handmaid’s Tale is when the main character packs her seven kids and husband in a minivan to drive them to her Supreme Court Swearing-In Ceremony.
"Happy snow day here from NYC" says @burtonkd at 9:12.
"Happy???" Oh, good grief, @ burtonkd! You mean you like this wet, white (for the moment), perilously slippery GOOP? You can have all of mine. In fact, you're welcome to come and take it away RIGHT NOW!
Agree with all of Clare and Lewis’ comments. A fine, clever puzzle from a consummate constructor. Enjoyed it a lot.
Clare, your sister won’t have much to worry about with the PAC 12 down to two schools, Oregon State and Washington State. They are essentially playing a Mountain West schedule next year.
Great story years ago in Sports Illustrated (RIP!) about how Larry Bird and Wayne Gretzky could look at a picture of any instant in a game and tell you exactly when it was and that each - like Ted Williams before them - could freeze-frame the action with their eyes which in part accounted for their fabulous uncanny passing and shooting ability.
Thx Peter; lots of good 'stuff' in this one! 😊
Hi Clare; always good to see you and catch your POV. Well done! 👍
Med downs-o.
Fairly steady trip from the NW down south, dropping LARRY in as one of my final entries.
Got the general idea of the theme early on with BLUE FLAME, as I already had BULK, ECON & EATERY, which had provided BE_E, UC_A, LO_T & KN_ for the crosses.
PINOT, LARRY, GOOP & FRI were among the last to fall.
Only SHIATSU remained, as I had SiNKING and H_SHE. Was pretty sure what I wanted was SHIATSU, so had to have faith in SUNKING and HECHE as being things. Parsing SUN KING helped, but failed to apply to concept to HESHE. Nevertheless, they both proved to be correct, much to my delight.
Speaking of 'LARRY' Bird, my coincidence of the day is that after watching a Peter Zeihan vid on YouTube this A.M., it transitioned to a selection of vids of interest, one of which was this: 'Larry Bird's Rookie Spectacle Forces Teammates to Quit And Changed The NBA Forever!'
And, speaking of UCLA: spent many a shore leave in Westwood, as I had a good friend from Beaverton, OR attending school there.
Wore KNEE PADs for both 'volleyball' and basketball.
Got my first IPOD in '02; still have it. Used all my IPOD Touches for phone calls, using a Skype plan that included unlimited calls in North America. Didn't get an iPhone until the Apple Watch came out, which required it for pairing.
MORSE code is one of many things I regret not having learned. May put it on my todo list. Still working on algebra and Spanish.
One of my faves: Harry Belafonte ~ Day-o (Banana Boat Song) Movie: Beetlejuice (1988).
Lots to like in this puz; enjoyed it immensely! :)
___
Croce's 884 was easy-med, with the exception of the 'clicking' / 'private' cross (which I managed to guess right on, for the wrong reason lol). On to Natan Last's New Yorker Mon.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a dap to all 👊 🙏
Widow or WIDOWER typically refers to someone who hasn't (yet) remarried. Captain von Trapp is a widower at the start of "The Sound Of Music", but no longer by the end. (Another film widower who remarries – cue sappy music.)
That LARRY Bird clue is just painful. As is the ARGO clue.
Chris Powell & His Five BLUE FLAMES, with Clifford BROWN on trumpet.
Why would you use volleyball as your example of a sport that used KNEEPADS? Maybe pros wear them, we never did on the beach, or in high school.
Hey Clare! Thanks for the back story on the baby-eating DINGOs. It seems a tragic tale until you weigh how many animal babies are eaten by humans and then you start to root for the DINGOs.
Delightful outing. So much to love. BLUE FLAME. DUM-DUMS. NETIZEN. The clue for LARRY.
I did not know there was a thing called DOG TV and I can't believe I haven't watched one second of it ever. I have my research for the day set in front of me now. I wish there was a CAT TV too. Maybe there is.
I forgot Cleveland changed the name of its baseball team ... finally. Christopher Columbus wept.
I know I am acting as Cnut commanding the tides not to come in when I bring this up, but on an ukulele, or any fretted instrument, the FRET is not actually the ridge or metal bump. The fret is the space between metal bumps. The bump is called a fret wire. There, it's like me trying to explain why most people misuse crescendo, I feel better for having said something all the while knowing it's a tree falling in the forest alone.
I have a TURBO on my Mini Cooper and it's pretty great. Everything else about the car is not so great. Well, parallel parking.
Tee-Hee: KEG, KNEE PAD, ASS, SEXES... favorite ideas of HE/SHES and LOUTS everywhere. It's a party puzzle and welcome back to my favorite slush pile editor. Hope 5th grade is going better the second time.
Uniclues:
1 "Please cover Samuel if he arrives at work naked."
2 Restaurant unfettered by the tyranny of the cute high-school-aged hostesses.
3 One's daily adventure of poking at an iPhone.
4 Performs the high-risk job of staring at a big scary wee-wee.
1 ROBE MORSE MEMO
2 BE SEATED EATERY (~)
3 NETIZEN VOYAGES
4 SEXES BROWN BEAR
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: How I want to be buried ... alive or dead. SPAGHETTIOS URN.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’d like to add that when most people think of “A dingo ate my baby” they hear it in Meryl’s accent!
Very easy even for a Tuesday.
Are the "+" and "-" in the grid are supposed to mean something? I can't connect them with the theme.
Dive bar Patron 1: Whatcha drinkin?
Patron 2: Pastis
Patron 1: What's ANISE drink like that doing in a place like this?
The 26D clue (27, for 3) is yet another blatant example of cubism. Shame on you, NYT.
The occurrence of SEXES and LIMP, hanging down side by side makes me wonder if there's a tie in to the "binary pronoun with a slash" at 15A, which is, of course, HES/HE.
Wished the NHL pairing was WILDSENATOR, but it's unlikely that any of the Minnesota skaters refers to him/her self as a Wild.
The 26D clue (27, for 3) is yet another blatant example of cubism. Shame on you, NYT.
The occurrence of SEXES and LIMP, hanging down side by side makes me wonder if there's a tie in to the "binary pronoun with a slash" at 15A, which is, of course, HES/HE.
Very fun low-junk puzzle (and by low junk, I don't mean LIMP SEXES). Thanks, Peter Gordon.
@gfrpeace -- you wouldn't need kneepads for beach volleyball, I don't think, but for regular volleyball, at our high school, maybe 1/4 of the boys wore them? At our sister high school, looking at pictures of the team now, everybody is wearing them in the team picture and on the court. Same in grammar school. Volleyball is the first sport I think of when I think "knee pads." Then skateboarding, maybe? Roller derby. I think it's a fine clue.
Easy Tuesday. I really enjoyed the theme, and it came in handy for quickly getting through the grid. Normally, I ignore themes this early in the week as they tend to slow me down.
Happy Pączki Day for anyone celebrating!
Well I’m a big sports fan so I had a lot of fun with this one. Very clever to work in LARRY Bird, A-ROD, ESPN, EPEE. And I’d also count UCLA because even though not a sporting clue, it definitely brings to mind PLAYERS on a TEAM. Then there’s the BAR which most people probably hit after the Super Bowl, either to celebrate as I did or mourn the Alexander Hamiltons HE/SHE lost on their bets.
ARGO and Fargo are two of my favorite movies so that was an easy one. I’ve seen them both multiple times but would not hesitate to BE SEATED and watch again.
Clare, good job today and fascinating information about the DINGO. I had no idea. That poor child.
I've long been a big Boston Celtics fan and agree that the "stuffing" clue for LARRY Bird was questionable. He was a great player with the confidence to match. He would tell the defensive player what he was about to do and then tell them right to their face that they couldn't stop him. Then he'd do it.
Maybe the MLB Cleveland Indians had to change their name because of their clownish logo Chief Wahoo. "Indians" itself doesn't seem anymore offensive than "Chiefs" or "Braves" and Kansas City and Atlanta still have those names. The Washington Redskins on the other hand....
We were expecting 12 inches of snow here in Boston, but the temperature went up and we got rain instead -- it's starting to turn to snow now, but there won't be much of it. Meanwhile, the Boston schools announce yesterday that they'd close today. My university (where I am teaching one course this semester) followed suit; but unlike the schoolteachers, I have to teach it anyway, via Zoom. It's a lot harder to get the students involved that way, but there it is.
The puzzle was awfully easy--my only real problem was she/HE before HE/SHE, quickly fixed by SHIATSU. And I thought for a bit there might be a streaming channel called DOGgy.
I could have done without the league designations in the clues, I don't think they were needed, especially given the revealer. As it was, you could pretty much fill in the theme answers without crosses.
I cannot hear the word "Dingo" and NOT immediately flash to the Seinfeld episode. Never saw Cry In the Dark. DINGO = Elaine. Once again, Seinfeld explains all.
Welcome back Clare & thanks for digging up that DINGO den. Be safe with your gal pals and enjoy in moderation.
Easy as expected and more fun than usual for early week grids. As a ripened fan of LARRY in his best years long before ESPNU was a thing, I guarantee he filled the nets with astonishing talent. Sixty points against the Atlanta Hawks was his career high if I recall correctly…..very likely, your parents had not yet been dating? Anyway an enjoyable way to start the week and today’s Erik Agard was tougher but equally entertaining for New Yorker readers. Thanks Peter Gordon for #127! That’s championship level construction talent. Two great TEAM PLAYERs indeed.
Crafty, sporty puztheme. Neat that TEAMPLAYERS fit right above GUARDIANANGEL in this E/W symmetric(al) puzgrid so ultra-cooperatively-like.
What M&A always knows with a Peter Gordon puz, even if it's usually a Mon/TuesPuz, is that I'm about to learn some new stuff. Today, featurin: DOGTV/STU/DUMDUMS. SHIATSU. Interestin stuffins, LARRY.
Luv the E/W symmetry and the MJT, of course.
staff weeject pick: STU. Total no-know flick, at our house. Will have to check it out -- evidently on Netflix. Hopefully not moved on to DOGTV yet. We've been slowed down to a crawl, watchin stream-service flicks, lately. I mostly blame it on True Detective aftershocks.
Also, have been kinda tied up, decoratin a b-day cake for our 10-year-old nephew, who's about to fly in with his fam, from Poland. Delicate
fave stuff included: DOGTV & DINGO. NETIZEN. CALYPSO. FAIRGAME. BESEATED. ARGO clue.
Thanx, Mr. Gordon dude. Had fun, UNRIGgin the sports teams. U got game.
Too bad the HEATPACKERS are in two different rodeo rings.
Masked & Anonymo8Us
p.s. Bueno, Clare darlin.
**gruntz**
Bird was 6' 9", great jump shooter, but plenty of stuffs.
p.p.s.s.
Oops, har … Left my thought about cake decoration kinda hangin.
Got interrupted, by a call from our travelin guests, re: when their flight is due in. We're pickin em all up, soon.
Anyhoo…
Meant to say b-day cake decoratin is a delicate, near-surgical procedure. Especially when doin alligators, all the letterin, and a central pic of Donald Duck in a court jester cap. [It all makes sense, but it's a looong story.]
M&Also
Nicely done! Four solid phrases - or better than solid: GUARDIAN ANGEL! - matched up with four sports leagues. As I don't follow hockey, BLUE FLAME meant nothing to me, but BROWN BEAR was clearly made up of two NFL TEAM PLAYERS and clued me into the theme. @Nancy, thank you for digging into GUARDIAN; I also had missed the name change from the Indians. Lots more to like, too, EATERY, SHIATSU, VOYAGES, FAIR GAME, and Margaret ATWOOD (any other Surfacing fans here? Loved the joke of BE SEATED! A Tuesday that shines.
Happy to read Lewis's praise for Peter Gordon. A brilliant guy. Mathematics degree from MIT.
I've always enjoyed his work. Today's was very sparkly, especially for a Tuesday.
A TURBO (turbocharger) is not a “supercharger,” which itself is different type of component that forces air into a car’s carburetor/intake.
Try doing only the acrosses... Way harder.
He dunked but it wasn't a part of his game, really. Not a great clue.
Liked the write-up, but I'm having a hard time reconciling "food to die for" with a medicore burger. And who goes down to Mexico to order a burger? Asking for a friend.
My first go-around with the top crosses was tyough, but I swithced to the downs, and lo and behod, quickest Tuesday ever.
Liked it all but to be honest, Larry Bird was never known for his dunking. Although apparently he *did* dunk during the course of his career.
https://www.google.com/search?q=larry+bird+dunking&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS1050US1050&oq=larry+bird+dunking&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyCQgAEEUYORiABDIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIICAQQABgWGB4yCAgFEAAYFhgeMg0IBhAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0IBxAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0ICBAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0ICRAAGIYDGIAEGIoF0gEINDQ1NWowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6c25a75b,vid:kXBeOYyfsA8,st:0
Re Larry Bird: “Stuffing” isn’t about scoring points, it’s about blocking an opponent’s shot. The defending player often taunts that opponent by saying“Stuffed ya!” after blocking his shot.
Bird with a long range?
Go Steelers! 🖤💛
HE/SHE…
How mediocre men’s athletes can become stars in the NCAA “Women’s” division.
No slash required! The CALYPSO, so painful! Talk about TEAMPLAYERS!
Fun Tuesday, fun write-up!
@Nancy - paid day off of work to get to sleep until I wake up, plus a silent beautiful park out my window, and a nice walk in good snow boots through said park = Happy Snow Day!:). Plus the feeling that the climate is at least not completely out of whack for a day of winter.
@egs: WILDSENATOR from Minnesota = Larry Craig of "wide stance" fame.
I didn't know until just now that the Cleveland baseball team changed their name to the Cleveland Guardians. That was the right thing to do, fer sure. Clearly, I don't watch baseball on TV.
Eres muy amable, Clare. Más amable que yo. Why are puzzle constructors so obsessed with themes??!! I'm just here for the words. Not the cute.
But I feel like an ogre compared to how cheerfully you wrote about it. Disfruta tu viaje.
‘The Blind Assassin’ is a phenomenal novel.
It’s used in places where the writer wants either pronoun to work, particularly in legal or formal writing. So something like, “If a person witnesses a crime, he/she should call the police.”
Downs only. Definitely felt more like a Monday. DOG TV? Also, terrible clue for LARRY. But ...
The theme is absolutely fantastic. The fact that we get one pair from each of the four major sports, the naturalness of the answers, the unusual mix of across and down themers. Just perfect.
It’s the St. Louis BLUEs and you cant say BLUEs in singular form to describe a single player so this puzzle is flawed.
Good theme, mashing two team names together to form familiar, non-sport phrases. Hats-er, helmets off to PG.
Nice grid symmetry, with a pair of theme "jaws". BTW, GUARDIANANGEL is just plain brilliant. More like this. Birdie.
Wordle birdie.
That was fun. All done but the mid-North, then...crickets. Don't know "Redditor," couldn't think of anything but roe or ova for the eggs..what to do? Get the magic elixir - another cup of coffee.
Miracle. Filled in. Done and done.
Not much into teams, but I certainly knew the names.
Lady Di
The clue for Larry Bird was BRILLIANT!!!
I don't care if he blocked one dunk, or made one dunk, the clue made you think of turkey 🦃 and Thanksgiving 🦃,and not the former Celtic.
Again BRILLIANT!!!
Overall the puzzle was very very easy. In fact, one of the hardest answers to come up with immediately, was spawn, since I can't remember the last time that was the answer to the clue, fish eggs.
ONTO A CURE
My TRUE FLAME is A KING, HE TENDs to BE good,
HE's FAIRGAME, no LIMP thing, HE had me ATWOOD.
--- BAMBI MORSE
I will need to find one of my old rants and send to the NYT editing staff: there is no TAR on your road!!!! AAAAAACK!
I have seen HESHE spelled as hishi when used as a unisex adjective, maybe for sandals, etc.
BEBE will always be Ms. Neuwirth to me. Yeah BEBE.
Wordle par.
> I’ll die on the hill that her best book is “The Blind Assassin.”
And I’ll fight right alongside you on that same hill. How can it not be with that opening line?
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