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Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: None
Word of the Day: LANOLIN (15A: Source of a foul odor when wool is washed) —
Lanolin (from Latin lฤna 'wool', and oleum 'oil'), also called wool fat, wool yolk, wool wax, sheep grease, or wool grease, is a wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of wool-bearing animals.[1] Lanolin used by humans comes from domestic sheep breeds that are raised specifically for their wool. Historically, many pharmacopoeias have referred to lanolin as wool fat (adeps lanae); however, as lanolin lacks glycerides (glycerol esters), it is not a true fat.[2][3] Lanolin primarily consists of sterol esters instead.[4] Lanolin's waterproofing property aids sheep in shedding water from their coats. Certain breeds of sheep produce large amounts of lanolin.
• • •
Hello friends and enemies! It's Rafa here with one last guest blog before Rex is back. Today we have a really scrabbly Saturday. A double pangram, meaning that every letter features at least twice. There tends to be no free crossword lunch, so puzzles like this tend to either have some questionable fill holding things together, or be blockier and have fewer long entries (or, god forbid, both!). Here the fill is nice and clean (HEP is maybe a bit eh? DID SO?), so it's a bit more of the latter type, but it's overall really nicely executed. |
| A flag-raising at IWO JIMA |
I started in the top right, with the (outstanding) POKEBALL / BOBA TEA crossing, and worked my way clockwise from there. I'm nitpicking here because the constraints of this grid are tremendous, but I did wish EERINESS had been something flashier. There's nothing wrong with it as an entry, really. Just as a frequent solver and constructor I feel very EERIEd out. Those letters sure are amazing though, so it'll keep showing up. (Sidenote the other day my friend texted me that something was "eery" and I gasped and learned that apparently it is listed as a valid variant spelling??!? Have people seen this before? I am very much an EERIE purist and am not open to other spellings at this time.)
 |
| You always have to flip it twice for the USB to work |
Anyhoo ... is SUSHI PIZZA a thing? Seems like it's a Canadian thing (?!). Never seen it before, but I'm sure it's good. It seems like it's just a sushi roll but without rolling it. Sushi is great so it should be a winner. Fun debut entry in DONEZO. And surprising one in DOJA -- I'd have expected her to have debuted already! (By the way, is she canceled? I feel like there was some drama but I don't really remember and instead of looking it up I will just ask strangers on the internet.)
 |
| It's LEX avenue in Manhattan |
I'm a *huge* Swiftie, but don't personally use T SWIZZLE. It's absolutely a thing though, just not my preferred moniker. I find it hilarious when her fans call her "The Music Industry" (are we wrong though?). How excited are you for her new album in 2 months? (Correct answer: very!) I am actually deep in my Kacey Musgraves era, so I'm currently anticipating her new album in just one month! I'll be well-fed for quite a while.
Okay I'm being chaotic, sorry. DON'T JINX IT was really fun! My favorite entry in the grid. Colloquial, cute, something I say all the time, love to see it. VR HEADSETS, STEADY GIG, GEE WHIZ, ON TOP OF IT, etc., just loads to love on my clockwise journey around this grid. More like this, please!
Bullets:
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- IN HEAT (16A: Going after the big bucks, say) — Funny clue! Big bucks as in big male animals. (Took me a while to get it)
- TOYS (57D: Barbie and Ken, e.g.)—I had a SNEEZE typo and then I had TOES here. And I spent *so* long trying to make TOES happen. What sort of Saturday trickery was at play here to make TOES work?!?!
- SLANG (43D: Head for the toilet, say) — Another really clever clue here. "Head" is slang for "toilet," in case that needed an explanation.
- PONE (56D: Southern side dish) — I'm starting this thing where I do things that I see frequently in crosswords. I read JANE EYRE a few months ago. I need to watch Frozen (for ELSA!) (no I've never seen it) (don't drag me). And I think I also need to eat PONE. Sounds delicious.
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Easy but not as easy as yesterday’s. It took me three tries to get DOJA Cat and I sorta knew her. I did not know POKE BALL, OLAV, DIAZ, and DONEZO??, but I did know TSWIZZLE from a previous puzzle…I too am a fan!
ReplyDeleteA fair amount of ZZZZIP, liked it.
Wow this was quite hard for me, after yesterday's breeze. Would you believe 35 minutes (!!) vs 9.5 minutes yesterday. Like trying to hike up a talus slope.
ReplyDeleteSeveral typeovers. DONT BLOW IT before DONT JINX IT. SUSHI PASTA before SUSHI PIZZA. ARE SO before DID SO. REAMED before BAWLED out. And for "Move laterally" SLIDE which is an anagram of SIDLE! (KeaLoa?) For "Going after the big bucks" I was on to the "bucks" as wildlife, but was wanting something like HUNTING rather than IN HEAT. I actually tried ON HUNT which is not a thing.
WOEs: POKEBALL? TSWIZZLE? DONEZO? On Saturday these are fair game, I guess.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0, and td got Thurs's last word, so QB streak is... 2. (That's a 2 with no zero after it.) Good luck puzzlehoarder!]
ReamED before BAWLED. Capital as in CAPITAL was about my third guess for the meaning of the clue. Fix before JAM. Areso? DIDSO? Dunno.
ReplyDeleteHad most of the northeast pretty well filled in quickly, but only tendrils from there. Rooted around, SPRIT and DOJA turned up. Figured 62A was a dwarf, but which one?
I'd call it easy-medium, leaning toward medium. Or maybe medium in the recent run of Saturday puzzles.
It is comforting that others make the same mistakes as I did. I just couldn’t get my rhythm…
DeleteLotsa Z’s
ReplyDeleteI had FLY crossing YSS, and I spent several minutes puzzling over what was wrong. (It didn't help that I'd never heard of a SPRIT, so I ended up trying the whole alphabet to find a substitute for the S. USS on a [ship's] bow makes sense, but frankly so did YSL on a bow [tie].
ReplyDeleteYup. Me too.
DeleteHear hear! Except it took me about 15 minutes and I had to scour Rex’s solution to get to FLU
DeleteSame here - “YSL bow” made sense, confirmed by FLY. Got shaky when PHONES showed up.
DeleteIt was an enjoyable puzzle. It took a while, but fun. But donezo, really? TTYL
ReplyDeleteTotes! Everyone knows that it’s spelled DUNZO
DeleteI very much like the clue “Drinks are on me!” and very much disliked the exclamation mark. What is exciting about a bar menu? Maybe I don’t get out enough.
ReplyDeleteThe exclamation point indicates that the answer will literally be whatever “it” is, in this case the BARMENU, as opposed to MYTREAT.
DeleteThe purpose of the exclamation point is solely to misdirect the solver- since “Drinks are on me!” Is a common phrase, the intention was that solvers would fail to notice the lack of quotation marks
Delete@Rafa your USB pic reminded me that my millennial (34 yo) son used to say that *all the time*. I've also noticed that, on streaming shows as irl, when someone takes their phone out of their back pocket it is *always* upside down.
ReplyDeleteYour comment hit all the highlights.
I had stAr before LEAD, which led me to tenure___, wanting GIG but thinking no one would say that...
VRHEADSETS finally got me ADVIL though I was thinking that was oddly specific. And I liked the misdirect on "capital" once it clicked! Capital I (but not in this font).
Best wishes for a great weekend to all!
I suppose you could consider “head” to be slang when used to mean “toilet,” but as we (former, in my case) Navy guys know it’s a common and legitimate nautical term.
ReplyDeleteSlEEpY before SNEEZY and figured kale would cross the L in SlEEpY, since by then I knew the constructors were going for a pangram, but I eventually saw the error of my ways. I'm not a sports guy and so had cAVS for a long time (ONE cAN band, ONE cAN show, probably slang I never heard of). Other than that the puzzle didn't give me too much resistance. I started with LANOLIN, SNL and POKEBALL and moved around the grid mostly clockwise, but the SW corner the last to fall. Knowing that it was a pangram helped with BBQ/QB SACKS as well. Considering the pangram and the fact that it was Saturday I agree with @Rafa--well constructed and a fun, breezy puzzle.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete@Rafa: You've hit on one of the great Mysteries of the Universe. Why isn't at most one flip of the USB connector sufficient every time?
Easy-Medium overall, Easy after I got out of the NW. And most of that was on me. I never know whether a headache remedy is going to be Aleve or, in this case, ADVIL (1A). I had stAr before LEAD at 5D. I had a picture in my mind of the palate cleanser at 13A but it took me a long time to fetch SORBET from memory. I was thinking of a hunter, not a doe, for the "big bucks" seeker at 16A, and I was thinking of something along the lines of rent-a-cop (which didn't fit) for the security position at 18A. Ultimately, IBEAMS (4D) got me ADVIL, and IBEAMS plus AS IS (1D) got me SORBET and those conspired to gift me with the long downs, DON'T JINX IT and VR HEADSET and it was whoosh-whoosh from there.
Non-NW overwrites included are SO before DID SO at 24A, HiP before HEP at 52A and SlEEpY before SNEEZY at 62A.
Stunt puzzles typically not my fave, but I liked this one. Definitely trended a bit younger, but I thought overall a fairly clued/crossed Saturday.
ReplyDeleteGot SORBET early, but that was pretty much it in the NW, so basically solved like Rafa - clockwise from a solid footing in the NE with BOOBOOS/BOBATEA. By the time I got down to SNEEZY, had a sense going for a pangram (I didn’t read cons. notes til post solve), with X and Q already making appearances (PIXEL, and AQUA). Had a feeling Aero wasn’t going to cut it for the plane lead-in on a Sat. and apartment units confirmed with SQUAREFEET.
No real problem in the SW corner. But the middle left-side took some work. I think mainly due to the dreaded 5 letter playground comeback. It’s pretty automatic that I place an A and an O at beginning and end of those and wait for crosses to tell me which retort version we’re going to get. Didnt know the author DIAZ, so keeping the A placeholder just mucked it for me. VRHEADSETS, sorted it out.
Time ended up faster than Sat average, and no real WoEs except for DIAZ, so might go on the easier side of medium for me.
Not a Swiftie, never heard of Doja, was Naticked with ONESEC instead of INASEC. Alas.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 6:46 AM
DeleteFortunately I remembered DOJA Cat once I got the J. Fortunate because I had never seen that nickname and didn’t know Swift was Person of the Year. Agree it is a very tough cross if you have no idea about either one.
But it is a valid cross because Doja isn’t that obscure. A lot less so than in the original natick, ( from the small town of Natick MA btw)one N.C. Wyeth, an illustrator from 100 years ago.
Pretty tough Saturday, to the point where I thought I might not finish. POKEBALL? TSWIZZLE? DONEZO? (Hmm … same list as okanaganer.) Fortunately, SUSHI PIZZA, which I've never heard of, was clued very straightforwardly.
ReplyDeleteKitshef
DeleteSame reaction. Got pizza and that saved me ! I also had no idea about poke ball until I got -okeball and finally thought of Pokรฉmon.
Very tough puzzle for me.
Random thoughts:
ReplyDelete• Never used DONEZO in my life, but I fell in love with it immediately and will try to get it in my rotation.
• This puzzle is popping with freshness, especially that SW corner with NYT debuts DOJA, BRUISING, QB SACKS, T SWIZZLE, and only-once-used-before BAR MENU.
• Funny how a clue eludes me, laughs at me, torments me actually as I struggle, until I finally get it. Then, at puzzle’s end, I look at it again, and it seems so obvious.
• BOOBOOS echoed yesterday’s answers-with-pairs-of-double-O’s fest.
• Sparkling long answers: ON TOP OF IT, STEADY GIG, DON’T JINX IT, SUSHI PIZZA, VR HEADSETS.
• This being a double pangram, remarkably difficult to pull off, makes the Wednesday, 8/10/16, offering by David C. Duncan Dekker, a NYT-record *quintuple* pangram – deeply-bow-down worthy.
• A faith-solve for me, where I knew that if I just stuck with it, it would fall. A most satisfying fill-in from blank to donezo.
Top-tier experience for me, Spencer and Jem. Thank you for a scintillating Saturday!
A lot to like about this puzzle. Jugs at about right for a Saturday maybe a little on the easy side. Who cannot love the crossing of SUSHIPIZZA with AHI. Sometimes not so HEP and some times as HEP as DOJACAT and TSWIZZLE. Spun my wheels in the NE and eventually finished there. Well done this week Raif. TTYL.
ReplyDeleteUgh. Confidently put AERO instead of AQUA. That left me to ONLY instead of A BIT and the. EEL instead of AHI. That killed the entire southeast for me. SLEEPY for SNEEZY didn’t help either.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what pulled me out of that mess I made for myself.
Fun fact: you can’t eat eel raw! Even sea eels! They have certain proteins in their bodies that can cause serious damage if they’re not cooked first. So even if you have eel at a sushi restaurant, it’s been cooked.
DeleteLearned a bunch of new stuff today - LANOLIN smells funny when wet, SUSHI PIZZA is a thing, it’s BOBA TEA, not BOBATEA (which was driving me nuts). I can’t discern what a POKE BALL is from the clue, but I’ll go out on a limb and assume it is somehow related to the Pokรฉmon game.
ReplyDeleteTSWIZZLE ? Time’s person of the year and still I had no clue - boy do I suck at trivia.
Apparently this was exactly my wavelength, as it was my fastest Saturday ever.
ReplyDeleteIt’s fun when you apparently think exactly like the creator and clues that are supposed to be tricky just feel obvious.
Be unperturbed by USB plugs: they always go in symbol side up.
ReplyDeletePOKEBALL? DOJA? The incomparable DONEZO?
ReplyDeleteWhat other SACKS are there than of QBs? Punters? Why didn’t they go with FOOTBALLQBSACKSTHATLOSEYARDS?
TTYL! SMH! TSWIZZLE!
To quote the great but sadly ailing Brian Wilson, I just wasn't made for these times. Or the EERINESS of this HEP Times slog. GEEWHIZ this one as awful.
But hey, they made the ever exciting double pangram - what FUN! DONESEZ no one EVER!
@Prefab: Ditto for FLy / ySL. Took a while to untangle that mess.
ReplyDeleteAs an old, I have to admit that I enjoyed the freshness of this puzzle’s youthful tilt (though I balked a bit at the pangrammy stuntitude). But here’s my codger rant for the day: Why aren’t USB plugs designed to show clearly which side is up? Yeah, I know there’s that little raised pattern on the top, but who can see that, black on black? Something like a red dot would make it perfectly clear.
End of rant. As you were.
I get the fascination about building a double pangram - but halfway through this my internal solver was saying “they couldn’t want that could they?”. There is some good stuff - DONT JINX IT, ON TOP OF IT and others are top notch. But there is a lot of SLANG - QB SACKS, VR HEADSETS - the list goes on. SUSHI PIZZA is a far reach and TSWIZZLE and DONEZO are an apt pair I want no part of.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt a gimmick but I applaud the effort. Lester Ruff’s Stumper brings a more traditional challenge today.
The fill here is definitely of the modern world
Took me a while before I could triumphantly shout DONEZO! so medium BRUISING for me. My first pass got me random answers all over the grid, but no real swooshable areas. As is often the case for me (but not for many of you), PPP helped me because when you know things like Junot DIAZ, DOJA Cat, MAVS and IWO JIMA, they are rock-solid platforms to build on - there can’t be any other answer. I didn’t know T SWIZZLE off the bat, but it came to me with a couple of crosses.
ReplyDeleteLotsa clues to love, such as “Drinks are on me!” For BAR MENU (mistyped that as “Drinks are in me!” which is frequently true), “Head for the toilet, say” for SLANG, and “Construction materials named for a capital” for I BEAMS. I really struggled with making sense of that one after it went in, trying to think of capital cities or capital currencies that fit. Nice Aha! moment when I realized it was a capital letter.
I wanted to like “Going after the big bucks, say” for IN HEAT, but it implies that horny does are aggressively seeking out the big-racked boys, but it’s the other way around, I think.
Glad to hear SUSHI PIZZA is like an unrolled sushi roll rather than a regular pizza with sushi on it. I am an adventurous eater but that sounded pretty gross.
My exact reaction on the INHEAT clue
DeleteLots to enjoy today, but I have to object to HEAD as "slang" for toilet. It's nautical jargon. And nautical jargon exists for a very good reason: precision of communication and elimination of ambiguity in what can be life-or-death circumstances. Likewise "Port" and "Starboard" aren't slang, and neither is "head."
ReplyDeleteAll of your points are valid, but Head certainly has entered SLANG vernacular. Many's the time even I have excused myself from a (casual) table, saying "Gotta hit the head."
DeleteRafa, did you watch the Grammy’s? Doja cat was literally naked with a see through “dress” and her nips were literally not even in the see through sheath. I don’t know if that’s why, because for me it was not a “cancellation” worthy issue. She did her own thing and made other people uncomfortable but that may have upset others? Certainly was a little hard to explain to my daughter who was watching with me. Speaking of the daughter, thank goodness she is a gamer and loved all things Pokรฉmon because that helps me a lot with puzzles. A new Pokรฉmon series is coming out March 7th wtih a boy and a girl, neither of whom is Ash. Big news. If anyone wants something totally awesome to listen to while waiting for Taylor’s album, I highly recommend everything by Jon Batiste. Cheers! good write up!
ReplyDeleteThis was a satisfying Saturday solve thanks exclusively to the NW. I spent as much time there as I did on the rest of the puzzle. The rest of it wasn't quite as easy as yesterday's romp but still very breezy. West of TTYL and IWO all I had for a long time was IBEAMS. A better solver would have just put in the rest of JAM and DONTJINXIT would have popped right up but in the NW I wasn't that solver.
ReplyDeleteThe playground phrase went from ARESO to IAMSO and finally DIDSO.
Did you know that a RADISH can be used as a palate cleanser and it has the same number of letters as SORBET?
It's too bad DUNCECAPS is a letter short of VRHEADSETS. That would make a great kealoa for the clue "Things idiots put on their heads."
With all the ZITI I've eaten and as many times as I've put it into puzzles you'd think I'd know it meant something. I didn't.
The fog cleared eventually but it was a nice struggle along the way.
BOOBOO and LANOLIN are SB classics. Speaking of which....
yd -0. QB20
Add me to the list of those victimized by the FLY trap. The U in FLU was the very last letter I entered, once I got the "error" message and thought it through. I knew SPRIT was a nautical term, so that forced me to change YSL and voila.
ReplyDeleteGrumpy old man nominates this one for most annoying puzzle of the year. What a bunch of non-words! I am astounded that this ever saw the light of day -- much less in the NYT. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteGrumpypants
DeleteAbout what are words. Most if not all the “none words “ you refer to are in dictionaries, which these days reflect usage. These are in fact used by people Shortz has for years let slang etc in. I can understand not liking it but he makes the rules.
And most here are not bothered by the use of slang text speak and abbreviations that they know. So Shortz won’t change. Seems like tilting at windmills to complain about it. Ditto pop stars’ nicknames.
I'm afraid this one skews young and I skew old so I had many of the same problems that other members of my age group have pointed out. I didn't bother to see if it was a double pangram, but while solving I had the impression that it was like someone trying to use up all their valuable Scrabble letters.
ReplyDeleteFound the right side pretty easy for a Saturday but almost gave up before VR something, which had to be right, finally lead to VRHEADSETS, which I have never used, which finally gave me the remainder of what I needed. Phew, or sometimes whew.
I would like to declare a moratorium on the use of "playground retort" as a clue. I think twenty years would be about right.
Tough one heree, SL and JB. Suggest Leaving the double pangram alone and not doing it Just Because it's possible. Felt like I had conquered a worthy foe though, so thanks for that.
A thing to be thankful for today: that I had never heard the term TSWIZZLE, and that once heard, I had no idea to what it referred.
ReplyDeleteSomething to regret today: that I learned the term TSWIZZLE and, moreover, learned to what it referred.
Sal I. Eri
DeleteVery funny about TSWIZZLE!
Sushi Pizza is absolutely a Canadian thing.
ReplyDeleteDONEZO??? SMH??? POKEBALLS??? TSWIZZLE???
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the middle name of the skater, the first name of the rapper, and the last name of the author.
If I had to describe the puzzle in one word, my word would be sub-literate. Every category of fill -- from pop culture names to lazy textspeak initialism -- that I most hate to see in a crossword puzzle is gathered together in one place today. Just awful.
Concise, direct, true and funny as hell.
DeleteHey All!
ReplyDeleteDouble Pangram, eh? Got close to a Triple. I count nine letters missed for the Triple, C, F, J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y.
Impressed by the construction. Ya got pretty good entries for going for the Double-Gram. Only one that is made up is DONEZO. If you SAYZO. I DID SO.
Funky Blocker pattern clump, looks like it's doing the Walk Like an Egyptian dance.
Alt clue for BRUISING could've been "What one is cruising for?"
Had FLy/ySS in, and got the Almost There! Took a good 4 minutes to track that down. But found it, changed it, Happy Music ensued.
NW was toughest part of puz for me. Has SentrYGIG in for a bit. Hey, it fit. Trying to figure out the ole playground retort, ARE SO? AM TOO? Tried each one. Finally erased what I had there, put the puz on pause, trying to think of a three-letter word for Predicament. Finally JAM jammed into the ole brain, and was able to get IBEAMS from that, then that corner was slain.
Good workout on a good Double-Gram puz. Nice Saturday start.
Two F's (Mandatory to get yer Dub-Gram)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Tough one. Go-ogle-d like a fiend.
ReplyDeleteTee-Hee: IN HEAT.
Uniclues:
1 Pregnant teen confused birth control pills with headache medicine.
2 Ice cream substitute that'll make your skin soft.
3 Creature catcher hoping to "catch" a creature.
4 When you can't use grown-up words.
5 Memes, sometimes.
1 ADVIL BOOBOOS
2 LANOLIN SORBET (~)
3 POKE BALL IN HEAT (~)
4 GEE WHIZ ONUS
5 PIXEL SLANG
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Best place in Nevada to have your skin crawl. RENO EBOLA PAD.
¯\_(ใ)_/¯
Gotta agree with Andrew on QB SACKS. Pretty painful answer there
ReplyDeleteThe much more common spelling is DUNZO.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else have as much of an issue with USS for "Letters on a bow"? Ships of the United States Navy do not carry the letters USS on their bows; they carry their ship number. The name of the ship appears on the stern, but not preceded by USS.
ReplyDeleteYes! Came to the comments for this. Such a dumb thing to get wrong.
DeleteTough puzzle for me. Made just about every mistake noted so far in this blog. Re the Drinks are on me! Clue, am still uncomfortable with that exclamation point, but in retrospect think that the absence of quotation marks also indicates the answer is not what someone is saying—see the “Golly!” Clue. Frustrating, but there it is. In retrospect (again) a well-done puzzle once you allow for a lot of PPP and specialized slang.
ReplyDelete@pablo – gee I was hoping we could get a whole puzzleful of playground-speak answers soon: AM TOO, IS TOO, AM NOT, ARE NOT, DO TOO, DID SO...from there we can move on to one with pre-natal sounds.
ReplyDelete@puzzlehoarder – I'm pretty sure the constructors didn't know what ZITI means either.
Don’t recall ever seeing a double pangram in all the years I’ve been doing puzzles. Can’t say it did much for me to create an enjoyable solve either. A number of things I never heard of: BOBATEA, POKEBALL, DOJA, DONEZO, TSWIZZLE and I’m a huge Kansas City Chiefs/Travis Kelce fan so I know a thing or two about Ms. Swift.
ReplyDeleteRaised an an eyebrow at 63A. There’s only one defensive football play involving SACKS which “informally” is called . . . a SACK.
SUSHI PIZZA did not pass the breakfast test for me. Or lunch. Or dinner. TTYL. After I am finished gagging.
As a Canadian, I can tell you that even though I've never heard of sushi pizza (I live 3400 km from Toronto in the place where the Caesar cocktail and Ginger Beef were invented), Japanese/Italian fusion cuisine is absolutely a thing here.
ReplyDeleteOne of our fave restaurants is this mashup, and while sushi pizza isn't on the menu, a wonderful thing called "gyozagna" is - it's basically a lasagna made with gyoza in place of the noodles. Absolutely delicious!
No to AS IS. AS OF, yes. But AS IS refers more to a condition, not a place in time.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes criticize Rex for just typing when he has nothing interesting to say. I got that same feeling after reading the comments this morning. He has to fill the space every day, we don't.
ReplyDeleteThree answers into this (OURS crossing DOJA, and then DIAZ) and I knew we were looking at a pangram. I was just surprised that there were extra Zs, Xs, JS, Ks and Qs. Two Fs! The fill wasn't compromised by all of those, in my opinion. But this was far too easy for a Saturday, SMH. POKEBALL and TSWIZZLE were the only things I learned today. Wait, DONEZO was new also. DONEZO?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Spencer and Jem.
Played very easy for me, a 32 year old human. Faster than Weds, Thurs, or Fri this week. Started in the NW and finished in the SE without having to jump around at all. Felt like this skewed young, to my benefit. Only write-over was JOB before GIG. I’d complain that this was too easy for a Saturday but I suspect I was just lucky that many (nearly all) of the clues and answers were right in my wheelhouse.
ReplyDeleteSorry – like some other commenters, I also had a write-over at FLY —> FLU
DeleteThis felt a bit harder and I couldn't really get any traction to get going. I felt slow. FLy for FLU. The HiP HEP question. Wanted an extra e in EERINESS. TSWIftiE for TSWIZZLE. Didn't believe that DONEZO and SUSHIPIZZA were things.
ReplyDeleteBut then half a cup of coffee later, I got happy music well below my average time. So I guess it really wasn't that hard after all.
Maybe I should have had the coffee before starting the puzzle.
Eh Steve
DeleteFor future reference, when bygone slang for cool comes up, it is usually HEP because hip is occasionally still used and HEP isn’t ( and is older to boot)
A lovely Saturday puzzle. Not too much esoteric fill (POKEBALL aside). My only nit was with 56 Down (Southern side dish). Having visited my Arkansas in-laws numerous times, I've never heard them mention PONE nor have I ever seen it on a menu. Yes, I realize it's short for corn pone but has the word PONE (or corn pone) been used in the last 150 years? I think not.
ReplyDeleteSUSHIPIZZA must be an American thing, as I never saw it when I lived in Tokyo, nor when I visited Italy. Unless we're talking anchovies, fish on pizza sounds kinda nasty ๐คข
Thank you all who called my attention to the fact that this is -- wait for it! -- a double pangram, thereby largely explaining the pure awfulness of the fill. Not compensating for it, mind you, but explaining it. Thanks to @andrew, @whatsername, @Andy Freude and @pabloinnh for pointing out in no uncertain terms that the game certainly wasn't worth the candle. I love your coinage of "stuntitude," @Andy Freude. It's so much better a word than DONEZO. And thanks for reminding constructors, @pabloinnh, that just because they CAN pull something off doesn't mean they SHOULD.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't read @andrew (or anyone else) when I wrote my first comment, but I've seldom felt as much on the same page with anyone as I did with @andrew today. It seems like we had the exact same reactions to the exact same words. Or, more precisely, non-words.
nancy, was this the bestest puzzle to make a hole in your kitchen wall?
DeleteI’m having lunch today with @Okanager and @Whatshername
ReplyDeleteapparently as today appropriately for a double pangram took twice the time to struggle to the end. It was very difficult for age related issues in the wheelhouse which is payback for yesterday’s go with the flow solve that caused some headaches for our illustrious guest commentator (Thanks once more Rafia). Luckily, ADVIL was accessible for everyone. Ultimately, karma prevails ๐
For me, medium up top and tough in the lower tier, fun factor somewhere mid-range. More guessing and relying on pattern recognition than usual. I most enjoyed the tricky clues- either because I wasn't tricked or because I was stymied: while I saw through I-BEAMS and IN HEAT right away, I really puzzled over PIXEL and SLANG, I'm impressed at how many of you sniffed out the pangram(s) as you were solving!
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: jEEpers, Pasta, cAVS. No idea: POKEBALL, DOJA, SMH, SUSHI PIZZA, TSWIZZLE, DONEZO.
@Prefab 4:26 et.al. - I also had FLy x ySl, with the same reasoning about the bow tie. Later on, I got SPRIT but neglected REFLECT on that "y," So, a DNF for me at that square.
@Edward 10:14 - Thank you for that USS lore!
Can someone explain Drinks are on me clue? I just don’t understand how requesting a bar menu means that you are paying
ReplyDeleteTina
Deletedrinks on me
Is one of those cute new style answers Shortz likes.
It is not a person talking (note no quotation marks)In effect, the clue is asking where are drinks listed. (on the) BAR MENU
If you don’t like this type of clue, I sympathize.
Intrigued! May I say it? I did. So this is a double pangram? I didn't even know what that word meant until I started doing puzzles and I think it was ACME who mentioned she loved them.
ReplyDeleteOnward...
The puzzle....
So I started with an ADVIL headache and moved over to the BOO BOOS. Stare. Try for all the downs in that northern hemisphere. Not too bad. I had letters half way down and then tried for the middle across clues. Playground retorts! Why are they so polite? What happened to "Get the hell out of my way?" ....
24D...The only Juno I vaguely know (thanks to puzzles) is a CERA. Get to that wedding dish that translates to brides and wondered what starts with an A....I won't go there! Cheat on DIAZ. Oh, it's ZITI. Does that really translate to bride? "I'm about to marry my ZITI....Just look at her face...Isn't she gorgeous?"
So I had GEE WHIZ and I had AMAZE. I'm dealing with two Z's and I'm really wondering who the hell Time's Person of the Year is that has two Z's. I know a few people who I guess earned the kudos but Pope John Paul didn't fit.
TSWIZZLE. Who are you? What are you? Did you bring some kind of world peace?
Move steadily to the south.
DOJA? Is that really your name? I also cheated on you. 2 cheating names.
Oh wait....there's more! DONEZO.... Is that really you? Where have you been all of my life? Would you like some SUSHI on your PIZZA? It might make you SNEEZY or, in my case SLEEPY.
And so it went.
I certainly learned a few things here. Yes, I was intrigued and I enjoyed it. It felt Saturday tough. The cluing was pretty good and I was really happy that I got all of it done with only 3 head slaps.
I've always thought of the USB conundrum in terms of the fact that I get my first try wrong about 75% of the time. Since it's obviously a 50/50 proposition, I'm due for a very long streak of getting it right. I'll probably not ever find out, since iPhone has gone to the USB-C connector, which is indifferent to orientation. I assume the rest of the electronic world is not far behind. Until then, the ONUS is ON US.
ReplyDeleteIs SUSHIPIZZA a Kea/loa for SUSHIPASTA? 'Cuz it was for me.
Gotta point out that the Starship Enterprise had NCC on her bow.
My higher education came from discussing the meaning of life with drink servers. In street lingo, I went to BARMENU.
Did you know that rolling one type of tuna in zigzag papers and smoking it will result in AHI? Really, you gotta try it.
I really liked this pangram x2. Thanks, Spencer Leach and Jem Burch.
SWIZZLE, DONZO, DOJA, POKEBALL?
ReplyDeleteI thought puzzles were supposed to be fun (even on Saturday). Last few haven't been - not for me anyway :(
What's going on at the NYT?
@Tina (11:20) -- "Drinks are on me," said the BAR MENU. In other words, drinks are written ON/to be found ON the BAR MENU.
ReplyDeleteActually, this was one of the few things in the puzzle I liked.
Wonder how many other people will respond to @Tina's question?
Noticed the pangrammer, but didn't catch on to its double status, until I came here.
ReplyDeleteTook em a few oddball/debut entries to achieve the feat, but despite the no-knows BOBATEA/POKEBALL was the only place where I lost extra nanoseconds on an unsure crossin.
staff weeject pick: FLU. Recognized the booby trap FLY possibility, but went with FLU becuz of the "was" word in its clue. Cute clue, btw. Ditto, for the crossin USS's clue.
other fun stuff: STEADYGIG. DONTJINXIT. GEEWHIZ. ONTOPOFIT. Mangled Jaws of Themelessness, top and bottom central. IBEAM clue. Decipherin VRHEADSETS.
DONEZO … har
Thanx for gangin up on us, Leach & Burch dudes. cyall again soon, I hope.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
Didn't particularly like DONEZO or TSWIZZLE, but the solve was well worth it. Quite a double pangram, with some great fill to compensate for those few BOOBOOS. Satisfying to be able to complete a Saturday puzzle with no INK-overs.
ReplyDeleteNice to see Junot DIAZ here. I'm very fond of his work, despite the (questionable) accusations of sexual misconduct.
ReplyDelete@Tina (11:20) It’s not someone saying “drinks are on me” - notice no quotes in the clue. It’s that the drinks are listed on the BAR MENU.
I agree with Nancy who agrees with me (hey, is there an echo in this chamber?)
ReplyDeleteIt was the best of Times.
It was the worst of Times. (Don’t remember who the Dickens wrote that).
Thursday was the best of Times. Brilliantly finding five double letters that if dropped would still work, both across and down, for TEN answers. DIMMED down just enough, with circles indicating the double letter rebuses that matter (as opposed to all the uncircled doubles). Plus adding the seldom heard but ever-graceful word LISSOME.
Today was a Jamaican tangelo (UGLI!)
Texting initialisms, ridiculous phrases (NYTXW, I’m ZODONE with those!), and the other complaints I listed above (plus some new ones):
LEX for an important Manhattan route - is it really a major thoroughfare like the FDR or just an avenue? Why not MAD? FIF?
INS - why do so many people here jump all over the TOMMY/TOY gun clue (or the National Recovery Act) and ignore the evils of the Immigration and Naturalization Service? Not that I get offended by legitimate initialism or even the INS, just the inconsistency in this selective outrage.
And maybe the worst, ACS (if we’re talking “some home installations”, why not IBEAMS? Toilets (aka HEADS)? And in your paint and plumbing, LEAD!). The American College of Surgeons who support the American Cancer Society must be OUTRAGED!
FTR, FWIW, and FTW, hope we see less of this “let’s get all the letters in twice” nonsense and stick with the clever and fun for solvers constructions. With zero BS! (OBS)…
Andrew
DeleteI didn’t see it in your previous posts today, but you finally found a way to get in a rant about alleged pc or wokeness.
You are consistent in that respect.
The LANOLIN clue reminded me of the time I wore a wool sweater to a concert. It started raining as I walked to the venue and I spent the concert wondering how far around me the stench of wet sheep reached. Embarrassing!
ReplyDeleteI am a bar menu. Drinks are on me.
ReplyDeleteWhere I grew up, pone = cornbread, a big whole cornbread shaped like the skillet or pan it was baked in. I never heard anyone say pone for cornbread, though. It was always "a pone of cornbread", meaning the whole finished bread. "What do you have to eat?" "I have a pone of cornbread. Want some?"
ReplyDeleteEvery Southern family makes cornbread their own way. I'll start an argument if I tell you my favorite recipe. Variables include one egg, two eggs, or no eggs? Sugar or no sugar? Buttermilk, sweet milk, or water? Some people add corn niblets. Some add bits of fried fatback. Whatever. Mix it up as you like it, pour the batter into a hot greased skilled, bake until done, tip it out onto a plate, and voilร , you have a pone of cornbread.
Like so many NYT CWs these days 90% easy and 10% hard. The 10% is stuff unknown to folks over a certain age; certainly unknown to seniors. Wind up guessing the hard parts. Today I guessed them right. Now a nap!
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother is 99. She completes the crossword without help almost every day, in large part because she finds it possible to keep up with the world. People don’t fail to know things because they’re seniors. They fail to know things because they choose to ignore them.
DeleteThx Spencer & Jen, I BEAM at your 'Construction'; GEE WHIZ, I'm really liking it! ๐
ReplyDeleteDowns-o in progress.
So far, got all the left side, with the exception of D – – Z; those missing vowels have many possibilities. Also, the Z could be 'c' or? My inclination would be DAIZ, altho, DIAZ looks better, but can't imagine AKE as being a thing.
I shall now SIDLE over to the right side to REFLECT on what ONE MAN's EERINESS may lurk there.
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Lester Ruff's Sat. Stumper is in the wings.
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Peace ๐ ๐บ๐ฆ ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a dap to all ๐ ๐
@Andrew, FWIW, I don’t mind the toy guns, only the real ones.
ReplyDeleteI did a lot of cheating with today’s puz, but last week I was whining that it was too easy, so I guess be careful what you ask for. I was shocked and disappointed in myself to discover Junot Dรญaz. Won every literary prize I ever heard of and some I haven’t, all the way in 2007 or 8 depending on where I searched and I never heard of him. SMH.
I liked it too, but then I’m partial to any Saturday puzzle I can finish without errors. I had to come here, however to find out who TSWIZZLE is. I haven’t subscribed to Time in decades and wouldn’t know who Taylor Swift was if she sat down next to me. Ah, the joys of old age
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the high-for-a-themeless 37 black squares and the resulting chopped up center section that semi isolated the corners, I considered taking an ALEVE. Oh wait, make that an ADVIL.
ReplyDeleteSome nautical stuff today with "Head for a toilet", USS and SPRIT. When a USN sailor is fresh out of basic training (Boot Camp) and first gets assigned to a ship, they are usually given the most menial, least desirable jobs. I can attest that head cleaning is one of those.
Like a couple of other commenters, I gave the side eye to the "Letters on the bow" clue for 38D USS. It's part of a USN ship's official name but I don't recall ever seeing USS written anywhere on a ship.
I'm in the could care less camp when it comes to stunt puzzles like pangrams, double or otherwise. The multiple crisscrossing short AISLES in the central area that were necessary to pull this one off wasn't worth it for me. DRAB stuff like SQUAREFEET, VRHEADSETS, ON TOP OF IT, IN A SEC, DID SO and GEE WHIZ failed to AMAZE me.
I don't pay attention to the person of the year, but I guessed it might be Taylor Swift, and even thought of TSWIZZLE as a possible nickname -- but I gave it up because I was trying to pronounce it as one word, like 'tsar,' and couldn't do it. I looked it up to confirm it, and also to see that it wasn't Junot DIAs. After that I was able to change fix to JAM, and realize that the job with security wasn't a guard GIG (too few letters, but I wanted and couldn't find a synonym.) So DNF for me.
ReplyDeleteNever saw or heard DONEZO, and questioned it's thinginess, but then I realized that if you finished a job and said DONEZO! I'd know exactly what you meant.
I did like AHI crossing SUSHI and SPRIT crossing USS.
I'm pretty sure that while OBS visit patients in maternity wards, the staff of such wards consists of nurses, clerical workers, and the like.
Now excuse me, I gotta look for that DOJA Cat video!
Anonymous@6.46am: You might want to read the definition of a Natick, which appears every single day on Rex's blog. It consists of two words crossing each other, neither of which can be easily inferred. It's a very valuable term in crosswordese, and doesn't deserve to be misused simply to indicate an answer you guessed wrong.
ReplyDeleteHi Rafa; excellent write-up! ๐
ReplyDeleteA valiant downs-o effort, but 'DON'T rIsk IT' just didn't cut the mustard. :(
Had a bit of side-eye for the unknown POKE BALL, DOJA & DONEZO. (3 things learned; actually 4, as I didn't know Junot DIAZ, either)
All-in-all, a wonderful puz, and good mental challenge! :)
On to the Sat. Stumper. ๐ค
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Peace ๐ ๐บ๐ฆ ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all ๐
We had POKE instead of PONE for a while as in “POKE salad (Annie)” https://youtu.be/WrT-TQTLoiw?si=utdfyfyOsV-u7yfV
ReplyDeleteI will forever think of Tom’s DONEZO (Dunzo) list on Parks and Rec. Loved loved loved DONT JINX IT.
ReplyDeleterandom comment doing Robin Stears wash post Friday puzzle this week wow is she a funster!
ReplyDeletethat's all...
No, head is not slang. It's jargon. Toilets were placed in the bow (or the head) of ships, therefore, "I'm going to the head."
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know what words mean, such as "slang" or "head," don't use them.
@ac (5:06 PM)
ReplyDeleteThx for the Robin Stears heads-up. Got it in the queue! :)
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Peace ๐ ๐บ๐ฆ ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all ๐
Try this next time you struggle with the USB: insert with the HOLES UP.
ReplyDeleteWorks on every device I've ever tried except one.
39 A “Port Letters” had “USN” for ages and 34 D “Not that much” “A NIT”. It was eerie!
ReplyDeleteI’m old, and I didn’t have many problems with this puzzle that apparently skewed young. If I had known what a sprit was, I’d have been golden.
ReplyDeleteOK, eery as a spelling is preposterous unless one is paying by the letter and the price is in five figures. Calling something a "valid variant" is another way to say, it's an error but we see it a lot. Know what? It is still plain wrong.
ReplyDeleteHere to complain that SUSHIPIZZA is not a Japanese/Italin fusion dish. There's nothing Italian about it; it's merely flat and round. If it were invented somewhere else they might've named it after any number of flat foods and it would no more be Japanese/Korean fusion if it were called sushi pajeon.
ReplyDelete@rafa I'm late but no one else has answered: doja spent a lot of time on message boards as a kid, some of which were racist apparently. She used the f-word a lot in tweets, too, which tracks with heavy Internet usage as a teen.
ReplyDeleteShe hates her fans (kinda iconic, TBH). The most problematic for me is that she wrote a t-shirt with an alt-right comedian's face pretty recently, which if you've been on the message boards a lot, she would know what that means. I think she probably has some pretty awful opinions, IDK. But her songs are great
Please. No more Taylor swift.
ReplyDelete@Joe Dipinto: quite right, "ziti" is masculine. "Brides" would be "zite" (plural of "zita").
ReplyDeleteDespite being a native Italian speaker, I've never heard of the word ziti (or zito/zita). Nor is the word in my Italian dictionary. I have heard zitella, which is the exact opposite. It translates to spinster.
ReplyDeleteI suspect it may be a dialect, but it is not Italian.
Bad. Bad. Not good! Too many non-word entries like TSWIZZLE, DONEZO, USS, OLAV, TTYL, SMH, DOJA. SNL,ACS, MAVS etc.
ReplyDeleteAero, not AQUA! Aero!
ReplyDeletePut that in your puzzle and smoke it. For ABIT.
dnf, if you didn't guess
Lady Di
BAWLED IN SACKS
ReplyDeleteEERINESS? IN A JAM? Get ONTOP and REFLECT,
SO IT's ONE, ONEMAN, SO INHEAT INASEC?
--- OLAV DIAZ
Obvious stunt puzzle; most of those are headed for the don't like pile. Today was no exception. We say again: just because you CAN do it, does that mean you SHOULD? The answer is almost always no.
ReplyDeleteWhat's with the "capital" in the 4d clue? Threw me off--and in this area I could not afford to be thrown off. To me, TSWIZZLE is utterly ridiculous; how on earth would you even PRONOUNCE such a thing?
I did it but it was tortuous. Full of stupid stuff like EERINESS and SUSHIPIZZA (ugh!). A double bogey for the double panny.
Wordle birdie.