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Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: ARHAT (2D: Enlightened Buddhist) —
In Buddhism, an arhat (Sanskrit: अर्हत्) or arahant (Pali: अरहन्त्, 𑀅𑀭𑀳𑀦𑁆𑀢𑁆) is one who has gained insight into the true nature of existence and has achieved Nirvana and liberated from the endless cycle of rebirth. [...] Mahayana Buddhism regarded a group of Eighteen Arhats (with names and personalities) as awaiting the return of the Buddha as Maitreya, while other groupings of 6, 8, 16, 100, and 500 also appear in tradition and Buddhist art, especially in East Asia called luohan or lohan. They may be seen as the Buddhist equivalents of the Christian saint, apostles or early disciples and leaders of the faith. (wikipedia)
• • •
Judging from where the blue ink is on my printed-out puzzle (I really need to get new green felt-tips...), looks like the bottom of the puzzle was much easier for me than the rest of it, but overall, and even down below, I had lots and lots (and lots) of initially wrong answers. WHIM before WANT (48D: Fancy). WAVED TO and WAVED AT before (ugh) WAVED HI (35D: Greeted someone across the room). The aforementioned ASAP before STAT (3D: "Don't delay!") and NONET before OCTET (18A: Large combo). HYPOS before KILOS (26D: Contents of a drug shipment). TIED UP before TOSS-UP (15D: Anyone's game)*. BARK AT before TALK AT (?!) (15A: Lecture). Hardest thing to parse, by far, was FELT UP TO (12D: Was ready for). "Was ready for" gets nowhere near the context implied by a phrase by FELT UP TO, which suggests you've been ailing in one way or another. It's not an inaccurate clue, but it's vague in the extreme. FELT UP TO was always going to be hard to parse, and the overly general clue just made it harder. The CANNIBALS joke didn't land because of the "you" (me?) part of it (13D: Ones who might roast you). None of us, literally zero solvers, will ever be roasted by CANNIBALS, so please stop. I get that you're trying to be funny, and that you wanted me to think of a comedy roast (mission accomplished), but the "you" takes this into preposterous territory. The cluing today ... sometimes it lands (KENS!) but too often you can feel the *effort*, which rarely leads to anything genuinely funny.
I don't even know what [Drag racer?] is getting at. Because you ... drag your SLED up the hill? [I’m told this is supposed to refer to dog sledding. As with most things, this clue needs more dog-specific content] And [Place for bucks at the bar?]?? I understand the answer (a MECHANICAL BULL bucks and you might find one at some (Texas?) bar), but I don't know what the surface meaning of the clue was supposed to refer to. What wordplay or pun is that? Are "bucks" one dollar bills. Am I supposed to think of a cash register till? The "?" clue on SUN, on the other hand, makes sense (4D: High light?). It's playing on the term "highlight," but it's giving you a light that is actually high (in the sky). [Hunks of plastic?] also works, in that I know what actual "hunks of plastic" are ... but then "hunks" ends up having a different / unexpected meaning. Real hit-and-miss "?" action today.
ONLSD is somehow worse than ONPOT, largely because if you absolutely have to use the prepositional phrase, the only one that seems standalone valid is ONACID (20D: Tripping). Otherwise, you just open up the floodgate for any drug phrase: ONUPPERS, ONLUDES, ONSPEED, ONBENZOS, ONCOKE (can you tell I only know about drugs from '70s crime films?) ONSHROOMS, ONMDMA etc. ON ACID at least has some standalone currency. Unlike ONLSD. Or GON. I have nothing to say ONGON except I wish it were gone. In short, the thin stacks of long answers up top and down below work just fine (52A: Question asked while tapping ("IS THIS THING ON?"), in particular, is excellent), but there needs to be like twice this much marquee fill, and the rest of the grid, while mostly very reasonably filled, was clued in a way that too frequently felt off (off my wavelength or just off the mark).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*I feel like the phrase "anyone's game" is mostly used adjectivally, roughly synonymous with "too close to call," so the noun "TOSS-UP" didn't quite track for me, though I see how it's defensible.
P.S. how in the world is this the top result when I search "STEVE" on Google???
P.P.S. OMG if you google [STEVE] (I can't believe this is my life, googling [STEVE]), almost all of the "Images" are Minecraft STEVE!? Just a wall of Minecraft STEVEs, with a smattering of Jobs and Harvey.
*a SKULL 💀 emoji signifies that your joke was so funny that the listener has (figuratively, hopefully) died
ReplyDeleteMedium for me too. What I liked about the puzzle is that most of the difficulty came from misdirects rather than obscure names. Minecraft STEVE (43A) is an exception, although I'm grateful that Mr. Bunch used that and not, say, STEVE Nash or STEVE Aoki.
Rex, I had S—VE for the Minecraft answer and I thought, “A SlaVE is a protagonist in Minecraft?!? That can’t be right.” Thank Jupiter (brother and husband of Juno) it wasn’t.
ReplyDeleteI loved this puzzle. Challenging for me but doable with a real feeling of satisfaction at the end. Great long answers and way too many great clues to mention them all. Yes to the KENS clue, though I saw it right away. But the CANNIBALS clue fooled me, and I LOLed when I got it. And you’re wrong, I have been roasted by cannibals - or at least they tried before a wise ARHAT put a stop to it. (Really, you got annoyed by the “you” in such a great clue?) It reminded me of poor Jackie in my favorite current show, “Yellowjackets” about a teenage girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes in the wilderness.
My reaction to ARHAT was also different from yours. I learned what it was yesterday, so I was thankful for it giving me a toehold in the very difficult top portion.
Like Rex, I had a lot of wrong answers sprinkled through the grid (ado for DIN held me up the longest). I think getting SHIA opened everything for me. I knew Azeris are Muslim but they can’t be Arab, right? Ah, SHIA! That got me the SW corner, including those two wonderful long acrosses, and I worked my way back up from there, finishing, appropriately, on SHUT.
More like a good Saturday than a Friday for me, but really loved it.
ARHAT was a Jeopardy answer earlier this week- so glad I watched!
ReplyDeleteIt’s also inexplicably a popular NYT Spelling Bee word, despite being pretty spectacularly obscure.
DeleteToday was tough for me, because I started last night when I was tired. CANNIBALS really got me laughing. So did KENS. I really liked this puzzle. I disliked GONS but it was also the first answer I wrote in. Alas!
ReplyDeletei agree. overall it was fun. it didn’t drive me crazy. last thing i filled in was the M in assam + melds. i don’t know melds as card game lingo.
DeleteThink Pinochle for the card game
DeleteFun for the most part - took a bit to figure out the cluing voice but according to the app ended up below my average Friday time. The big guy highlights the goofy stuff - ON LSD is terrible and ARHAT again?
ReplyDeleteWELD
CANNIBALS reminds me of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood - and brings CHET Baker full circle from earlier in the week. FORTUNE COOKIE, CATCH RED HANDED and FEEL UP TO are all wonderful longs. There’s not a lot of ugly stuff here. Depending on where you are - MACH ONE is not always the speed of sound but close enough for crosswords.
Enjoyable Friday morning solve.
FYC
By definition, Mach one (of whatever fluid flow you're measuring (often the flow of air past an airplane's wing)) is the speed of sound in that fluid.
DeleteHave a listen to “They Call Me Steve” by Teenage Bottlerocket.
ReplyDeletePlayed Hard for me. For many of the things @Rex mentioned (STEVE, good lord), and yes the cluing tried too hard, but it was the answers that just didn’t click for me. For example - UNTWIST. The clue is “screw off”. Good clue - could be a.) hijinks/horseplay b.) some sort of insult or aspersion or c.) the very literal “open” something. Ok, so c.) it is. great, we’re opening something. Um, it’s just TWIST. TWISToff would work too, but obviously the clue prevented that. But UNTWIST, nope. Not to open a TWIST off bottle. Just multiple answers were a stretch for me to accept or get to. I guess similar to Rex’s comment on FELTUPTOIT.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it was a good debut and overall fine puzzle. but man, just slow getting to commit to anything really.
As one of the billion STEVEs in the world, and one who knows from nothing of Minecraft, I was amused to find my name in today's puzzle and am delighted with all the STEVE content of today's writeup. Ha!
ReplyDeleteI’ll get you Eh Steve, if it’s the last thing I doooooo
DeleteHuge helping of loveliness. To wit:
ReplyDelete• Gorgeous WIDE OPEN grid with its pair of photo album corners, and rather than scattershot black squares in the middle, a calming collection of diagonals.
• Also calming: No mini-puzzle islands in any corner.
• Pleasing answers – FORTUNE COOKIE, MORTALS, CATCH RED HANDED, IS THIS THING ON, ENIGMAS, CHASM, WIDE OPEN, and NYT debuts BLOW IT, FELT UP TO, and MECHANICAL BULL.
• Clever clues, my three favorites being those for PASSER, MECHANICAL BULL, and the world-class [Hunks of plastic?] for KENS.
• Plenty of clue vagueness to satisfy my brain’s work ethic.
• MESS over MOOSE. Say those two words over and over fast as you can. Then do the same with WELD and MELD.
All this in a NYT debut puzzle from one who only started submitting puzzles to the Times a year ago. Evidence that the instincts and talent are there for more heaps of loveliness ahead. Lucky us!
Congratulations, Jake, and thank you for a most splendid outing today!
Loved this one way more than Rex. I understand the annoyance at "Steve" and "Arhat" but I don't get what's confusing/unfair about the mechanical bull and sled clues. Yes, some bars have an area with a mechanical bull (or used to anyway--it was a bit of a fad in the 80s). They buck. You 'drag' a sled. Then they 'race' downhill.
ReplyDeleteAs Rex clearly stated, the issue was with how well those clues were written, not with whether they were fair or not. The clue’s surface meaning should work. The clue has to be PLAYING on some familiar phrase. He explained this in detail. You don’t have to AGREE but he’s not unclear about his reasoning.
DeleteI did read Rex carefully.
DeleteI agree with CyC 7:51 AM
Drag racer IS an expression, RuPaul or stock cars? Neither. You drag a sled uphill and then race with it. Nothing wrong with it.
Etc. Probably slowed Rex down.
Thought getting started but then moved quickly for a Friday. 2nd arhat in a week--won't forget it now. Surprised that as a Steve I did not know the answer Steve. Went with carnivor first- which threw me a bit - but with cannibal was able to finish quickly-
ReplyDeleteAbout 10 years ago I painted a Steve costume for my son for Halloween, so I knew that answer. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of my solving experience. : /
ReplyDeleteMedium is a fair assessment. It was about the same time as an average Saturday but 15 minutes less than yesterday's puzzle.
ReplyDeleteWith back to back appearances everyone can now see why ARHAT is old hat. Xwordinfo shows that this is the 9th appearance of this exact clue for it. Yes prior to these two times it's had a 6 year hiatus but the SB has used it a number of times.
I started with ENIGMAS supported by GON and finished with the A of ASCII and ACK. After solving I finally looked up what that computer initialism stands for and it's of course dry as dust and in the Shortz era it just won't go away.
Today's offering is light on debuts but it is a debut itself. Maybe that's the reason for two UPs in the same section. They're both downs so maybe that makes it ok.
After yesterday's struggle this felt like a fun Friday.
yd -0. QB20
The big outlier for me today is the clue for KILOS (“Contents of a drug shipment“). What the hell are KILOS and what affliction do you take them for - or due you smoke, snort or ingest them in an attempt to get high? I looked it up and the only definition I found was basically a decimal unit prefix in the metric system, possibly associated with weight or mass. Please don’t tell me that the “contents of a cargo ship” are TONS, or the contents of a bag of flour are POUNDS (it would usually be flour, btw). I get the loose connection to the drug-culture slang/lingo from the ‘70s B-movies that Rex mentioned, but I vote thumbs down on that one. Not a felony, so only a misdemeanor citation today.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed seeing ARHAT again - the “Eat your peas!” word for today. They are going to make us learn it whether we like it or not.
OFL was unhappy with SLED as a drag racer - isn’t there some big race in ALASKA where sleds are pulled around by a bunch of dogs (or whatever the arctic equivalent of a dog is) ? That might be the angle.
I also think it’s a touch ironic that today’s obligatory GoT clue is literally GOT ! Love that it is right above the abominable MORDOR as well - it’s so “in your face” that it’s humorous (in the same “shut up and eat your peas” vein).
Kilo. Like a kilo of cocaine, etc.
DeleteComin' into Los Angeles
DeleteBringin' in a couple of keys
Don't touch my bags if you please, mister customs man
- Arlo Guthrie
I agree with Johnny. There is no reason for poor clueing. Kilo is slang for drugs, otherwise it is a measure, not a thing. So, indicate slang.
DeleteI also agree with fun_Cfo that you can untwist something that has been twisted like a rope, but a screw off cap is twisted off, not untwisted. One twists on and twists off.
There seem to be a few of these each day. So umnecessary if they would just do a good job editing.
Generally liked the puzzle. Felt a little vindicated after ARHAT totally stymied me yesterday and was the reason I couldn’t finish Thursday without help. Made me smile and grit my teeth all at the same time. I guess I found Nirvana today and I am some kind of ARHAT. Which I guess is better than being an asshat. But we should be good on the ARHAT thing for a while, no ? Kids were Minecrafters so STEVE actually made me chuckle, But a SKULL emoji for a funny text. Whatever. And 1980 something called they want their MECHANICAL BULL back. Hadn’t seen a GOT reference in at least a month so thanks. Beyond that I enjoyed the Friday puzzle being a Friday puzzle. It is one of my favorite PASTIMEs.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this puzzle except for CANNIBALS. I think reading the The Road by Corman McCarthy ruined my life because I now believe this could actually happen any day now!
ReplyDeleteHowever I liked the way the clues are obscure but the answers are actually pretty easy. And @rex, I hate to tell you this but I knew STEVE immediately! Once again, your disdain for video games is not universal and Minecraft is one of the best. Here is just one of many studies showing its benefits and Minecraft also has an education format that is used in schools and has also been shown to improved mathematics scores. I only know all this because my daughter used to love it and I wanted to make sure it was not rotting her brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8287053/ Seriously get over this whole anti video game mentality if you want to enter this century!!! It’s not all Fortnite.
I need a youth culture lesson. Why a SKULL emoji? Rex had an asterisk there like he was gonna explain it but it got overruled by the TOSSUP footnote. TIA.
ReplyDeleteCommon answer to a joke: “Dead.” Or skull emoji. Meaning, you just killed me with that joke. Or in older-person/comedian parlance, that joke killed.
Delete"You don't eat PEOPLE? What are you... chicken?" - cannibal roasting you
ReplyDeleteAlso reminds me of The Far Side.
It amused me to see a Minecraft reference in the NYT. Nobody needs to know anything about Minecraft, other than it's the best-selling video game of all time.
As @Wanderlust said, too many great clues to mention. Very fun puzzle. Thanks Jake, and congrats on the debut!
If nothing else, it was worth it to see mange for the first time in 20 years.
ReplyDeleteI loved this one! And as a mom of Minecraft-lovers I immediately knew and appreciated STEVE. What I liked about this puzzle was that so many of the clues had multiple possible answers, and the correct answer always made sense. None of them (to me) felt like they were kludged together to make them work in the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteRex reliably ranting about popular culture and things that a billion other people know and he is furious to have forced upon him, like Steve. :D
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to play Minecraft and become a super expert gamer to be vaguely aware of the phenomenon.
I also enjoyed CANNIBALS as clued. A tricky puzzle, perfectly tuned for a Friday.
I assumed "a place for bucks at the bar" wanted you to think of a tip jar, not a cash register.
ReplyDeleteLoren Muse Smith…..please come out….come out….wherever you are.
ReplyDeleteWe miss you.
I really liked it. Even had some whoosh whoosh
ReplyDeleteI loved this puzzle! KEN clue wins, hands down. But I’ll even take STEVE, which I had to guess at, because Rex’s comments were so hilarious. How refreshing to have no architectural marvels, word searches or circles—just lighthearted wordplay! Thanks, Jake and more, please! (Joel, I hope you are reading today’s comments and take note.)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anonymous 8:28am, I had no idea about the SKULL emoji meaning. I will look for my next chance to seem cool texting my grandchildren.
I enjoyed Rex’s write-up, though I liked the puzzle much more than he did. I enjoyed working through the tough/vague clueing, even when it was off a bit it felt close enough. Loved the marquee answers — for a while they were impenetrable. Not an easy puzzle but solvable and fun.
ReplyDeleteI’ve heard of Minecraft but have absolutely no idea what it is. Now I know it’s about Steve.
My favorite clue was the one for KENS. It was also the most helpful for me in changing my "contents of a drug shipment" from PILLS to KILOS.
ReplyDeleteMy least favorite and least understood answer was SKULL for the emoji that might be used in response to a funny text.
I have a word for you if you're thinking of sending me a SKULL in response to my funny text:
DON'T.
Well, actually it won't really matter anyway. I'm visually incapable of distinguishing one teensy little emoji from another: they all look identical to me. But I never have the heart to tell anyone -- not even my own brother to whom I have never been anything but completely honest about everything else. He recently seems to have developed this strange predilection for sending one single emoji instead of actually writing something in response to many of my emails and I don't know what he's trying to say. Are they smiling or grimacing? Is it always the same emoji? Could one of them possibly have been a... SKULL???
Talk to me, Jimmy!!!
Now back to the puzzle: My biggest problem was getting to Juno the SISTER when I wanted either WAVED AT or WAVED TO and never thought of WAVED HI. When I finally got that, the puzzle was finished. It was a nice Goldilocks Friday: Not too easy, not too hard, just right.
I've never played Minecraft in my life, but I still knew STEVE because I'm into Lego and there are several variations of Steve available.
ReplyDeleteAlso had ASAP before STAT and PAIRS before MELDS, which made the top half harder than it should've been.
Easier than yesterday. Hunk of plastic was clear to me.
ReplyDeleteDid not understand PASSER even after I wrote in the last letter, a guess on A (thinking I was, um, unlikely), and completed the puzzle. After reading the comments, and folks thinking it was clever, it dawned on me that it's *another* sports reference. Good grief, earlier this week I did the NYT Acrostic. Isn't that enough sports for one puzzleweek??
ReplyDelete@Rex, when I Google Steve, I get Steve Earle as my second (the shoe guy is first). Maybe Google knows what music I listen to? Nah, couldn't be.
Hard to get a foothold. On my first run through, all I got was ARHAT, a word I learned yesterday. But that enabled me to get a lot on top. And then I worked my way down to completion.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite. ISTHISTHINGON.
Urban Cowboy had Travolta riding a mechanical bull at Gilley's. One of the casino bars in Reno used to have one.
Maybe that’s why Rex posted a video showing this very thing 🤷🏻
Delete@Fun__CFO: Here's my take on the great TWIST/UNTWIST debate.
ReplyDeleteIf someone hands you an unopened twist-off bottle, you TWIST off the cap. You drink some of it.
You then TWIST it to close it again.
Ten minutes later you want another sip. Since you just TWISTED it to close it, you now have to UNTWIST it to open it.
QED. You're welcome, everyone.
Haha. Poor ReTwist gets no love.
DeleteIs this the monkey's paw of wishing we had a new editor? I think you should stick to the mini's joe.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteWell, tough one for me today. I can always finish a puz before I have to get ready and go to work, but not today. Dang. I even got the tough Connections today, but this puz has me stymied.
I'll tackle it after work again.
I did get to -1 in the SB yesterday! Closest in a while.
Made it to Friday. Have a good one!
? F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Wow! Just a superb Friday and hard to believe this is a debut. So often new constructors resort to trivia, to the point that I can guess before I finish that it was put together by a rookie. Nothing remotely like that here, very little of it and even fewer proper names. Terrific job, Jake! Looking forward to more from you.
ReplyDeleteIn the what-are-the-chances department, ARHAT for the second day in a row plus someone said it was on Jeopardy this week. Also yesterday we had IM DEAD, and today I learned that’s what a SKULL emoji expresses. Fascinating stuff!
Loved the clue for KEN but if you want to see a hunk, don’t watch Barbie. Get yourself a nice cold beer - or several - and enjoy the glory days of a young John Travolta DIALING up that MECHANICAL BULL. IS THIS THING ON?
Shocked is perhaps a bit of an overreach, so let's just say I was very, very surprised to type in the final letters of ASSAM and get the Happy Music. It felt like that would be one of a handful of wrong answers scattered across the grid.
ReplyDeleteSo, yeah, this one played hard for me.
As for, "Place for bucks at a bar," I spent too long trying to come up with a 14 letter version of TIP JAR.
As a young millennial, this was one of my favorite puzzles in a while. Steve, the skull emoji, and GOT were wonderful surprises that I knew immediately. So nice to have some clues for a younger audience.
ReplyDeleteNow see, is that so hard? Great, challenging puzzle.
ReplyDeleteUniclues:
1 Playing Chubby Checker record backward.
2 What you did during the dash on your tombstone.
3 Arrived optimistically in Basseterre.
4 Those weirdos across the street acknowledged you exist.
5 Fat people.
6 Why the orcs built a Disneyland.
7 Result of my mind being blown.
1 UNTWIST PASTIME
2 MORTAL'S MESS
3 FELT UP TO KITTS
4 ENIGMAS WAVED HI
5 CANNIBALS' WANT
6 SOBS GOT MORDOR
7 SKULL WIDE OPEN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Food service items suitable for long distance travel. UFO TACO HOLDERS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Loved it.
ReplyDeleteAlso missing LMS.
Solid Friday puzzle for me. 19:08.
ReplyDeleteAnyone have Eileen before PEOPLE? Couldn't remember if the song had an exclamation point in the title.
gmen before KENS
rabbiT before POCKET
pairS before MELDS
Ahno before AINT
pills before KILOS
Tried can you hear me before IS THIS THING ON, but short a letter
Never heard of ARHAT before in my life until yesterday, and now today
Bumper sticker seen on Frodo's backpack: MORDOR Bust!
ReplyDeleteOne wrong answer that made sense to me only because I was ONLSD was 52A (Question while tapping), which I briefly had as ISTHISTARAGON? After that, I went from LSD to LDS and have sworn off all but AMINO acids. Now, when I see people across the room, I just wave, whereas in the past I WAVEDHI.
To add to @Nancy's enlightening lesson on twisting and untwisting, you should remember LEFTYLOOSEY and you'll UNTWIST until that bottle is WIDEOPEN.
I liked this puzzle and didn't think many of the clues were clunkers. Thanks and congrats, Jake Bunch.
Loved the solving experience today. Initially resembled a minecraft screen of low resolution half answers and guesses, that gradually became clear as answers filled in begetting more in an accelerando to the happy music.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading that clues from 50 years ago included things like "woman's name". Steve is today's "man's name". I've played minecraft, but apparently not enough to know the cast of characters. Totally fair, though, as Rex's PPS proves.
ARHAT has to be in the editing, and not a coincidence, no? GOT it by the crosses yesterday, and prayed today that I remembered how to spell it today. Tip of the (non-R)hat to Mr Fagliano.
We do need LMS back to balance out the general negative vibe here. Someone is actually asking how KILOS relates to the drug trade as if that's a puzzle flaw?? Twist-off caps are everywhere, UNTWIST not quite as in the language, but fine.
FELT UP TO seems fine to me. It doesn't necessarily mean that one is no longer AILing. It just as readily implies a matter of working up ones resolve to accomplish a task or feat. Day after day brings complaints of puzzles being so 20th century, then a completely now answer like SKULL emoji brings more complaints.
I got a DNF because of the MECHANICALBULL/SKULL cross, and still don't understand how SKULL is a response to a funny joke. I had "mechanical bill" (to pay the tab?)
ReplyDeleteRex Parker and Whatsename loved the clue for KENS, but I can't fathom how men with a physique relate to plastic (would someone be willing to clarify this?).
I enjoyed the puzzle more than many of you, and I loved MECHANICAL BULL. Where I come from there are many bars that have antlers mounted on the wall as testimony to the host's hunting prowess, so I was looking for something like that. the Bull was a pleasant surprise.
ReplyDelete36-A violated a longstanding (if unwritten) rule that any 3-letter commotion is an ado (hi, @wanderlust!), so that held me up. And for some reason I went with oid instead of GON. OTOH, the suffix game helped out at 18-A, where I filled in the final ET and waited for crosses.
I know of Minecraft, my grandsons play or have played it, but no idea about STEVE. Somehow I thought a game protagonist should have a more esoteric name.
I wanted Turk before SHIA, but the clue was plural so I waited. Then I saw the S and worried that the NYT might think Azeris were Slavs--but it's always best to trust the puzzle on things like that, and SHIA soon filled itslef in.
But what's up with ENE? Is that how the Spanish spell the letter N? But with a tilde it's a different letter, spelled enya. I hope one of you Spanish speakers can enlighten me!
I agree! That is, with the "medium" rating, the range of great answers, and the witty clues, especially the one for KEN - which was my last answer. Talk about the icing on the cake and the cherry on top! It was the ARHAT, though, that welcomed me into the grid and helped me make short work of the first two rows. So, I was thinking "easy Friday," until bad guesses at "Fore...something" ("Was ready for"), bArK AT, and ComedianS (for CANNIBALS) put on the brakes. But then, all the more time to enjoy the MECHANICAL BULL, PEOPLE + MORTALS, BLOW IT x I MISSED, WIDE OPEN, CATCH RED-HANDED.
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: bArK AT, ComedianS, eeK, WAVED at, WIpE... before WIDE OPEN. No idea: SKULL, STEVE, ENE.
@Jake Bunch - A debut?! I can't wait to see what else you'll have for us. Thanks for the fun.
Medium. Me too for not knowing STEVE or why a SKULL is an emoji response. Also ado before DIN.
ReplyDeleteSmooth and solid with not a lot of trivia and more than a modicum of sparkle, liked it, a fine debut!
I liked this one a lot, especially now that I know it was this constructor's NYT debut. Nice job, Jake! As a practitioner of Buddhist meditation (and there are a lot of us out there) I had no trouble with ARHAT yesterday or today. Especially loved KENS and IS THIS THING ON. I put in some wrong answers (like WAVED AT instead of WAVED HI), but was able to correct them fairly easily when I filled in the crosses, which always feels good. Hope to see more from Jake in the future!
ReplyDeleteFor me it was spot easy, but I try not to lie a lot on this spot when I'm not so hot.
ReplyDeleteThe worst error in this puzzle was the implication that CANNIBALS might roast you. As everyone who has ever seen a cartoon should know, CANNIBALS always put you in a big pot and boil you. Always. I know this is a crossword clue and not a definition, but come on.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise a lot of cool stuff that folks have mentioned already. I did this online again (no printer) and that always takes me longer, but today it had the advantage of being able to find out that ICK should have been ACK, and I fixed that and was able to hear the fabled "happy music" of song and story, which is sorely lacking when you solve the print version.
@jberg-You got it exactly right. Two letters, one with a tilde, one without, two pronunciations.
@Gary Jugert-Closing today, movers arrive, and the endless unpacking begins at the new place. Thanks for the commiseration, and best of luck to you.
Very nice Friday indeed, JB. Slow start for me and I stuck to it Just Because that's what I do but very rewarding at last. Thanks for all the fun.
My college boyfriend was a mech. engineering major. In a design class, his project group decided to design a MECHANICAL BULL. I had heard, probably from him, that the holy grail of design aspirations was not a better mousetrap but instead a better window cranking system (this was the late 70s). But hey, mechanical bull, why not? I can’t remember if they got a good grade or not.
ReplyDeleteAlong with the KENS clue, I also liked 35A's clue for WELD.
Nice Friday puzzle, Jake Bunch.
There's nothing wrong with ARHAT. It's a common word for anyone with a passing acquaintance with Buddhism.
ReplyDeleteADO before DIN, but the crosses quickly fixed that.
ReplyDeleteMy only complaint today is about KILOS. It needed a clue like "Short amounts of drug shipments", i.e., "Short" because KILO is short for kilogram, and "amounts" because the contents are the drugs, not the weights.
We're all prepared for Nirvana this week. Namaste!
@CDilly52 from last night-Just saw your comment and appreciate the kind thoughts. We've been downsizing now for a while--two moves in three years--and we're only going about five hundred yards from one condo to another, but it still necessitates getting everything you own from one place to another. Our new place will be one-floor living with a much more open floor plan, and that was reason enough to go through all this again. Hope your new place is a good fit and will lead to lots of pleasant memories.
ReplyDeleteRe the repetition of ARHAT, I seem to remember in the dim recesses of my dimming mind, that there was a period in the NYT crossword series that very often a word from one day would be repeated in the next day’s puzzle, as if the editor(s) were deliberately arranging it that way. Maybe @Lewis might have some insight on that. Given the lead time usually associated with editing and publishing a puzzle it’s hard to believe these are coincidences.
ReplyDeleteI stumbled at the start in the NE. ASAP before STAT, and RABBIT at 1D which later turned into... a PORTAL (?). I started with GON (...yep) AMINO RECOIL ENIGMAS and picked up speed from there. Finished in an Easy-level time by my standards.
ReplyDeleteKENS was the first thing that came to mind but I didn't type it in right away, only after I saw the AIN'T clue and got the N. Still a great clue with that wordplay on "hunks". My favorite clue though (one that actually misled me) was [Sweet message bearer]. It was a nice aha moment,seeing that the bearer is what's sweet here and not the message.
I put in EILEEN at 34A, and then with the E from MACHONE, I changed it to... BEAPAL. I guess that would still be better fill than BEA clued as a partial?
Loved the long acrosses.
ReplyDelete@escalator 845: I too miss the musing of LMS. It’s my highlight of the Rex column!
"WAVED AT" or "WAVED TO" would fit if the clue was "Greeted across the room". Since the clue was "Greeted someone across the room", these answers no longer fit.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great puzzle. So many ahas!
ReplyDeleteI believe there was a scene in a Cheech and Chong movie where Chong says "Man, I'm super TENSED up. Been ON LSD for three days. You got any weed left from those KILOS I sent you? I need a few hits to UNTWIST." Something like that.
ReplyDeleteThe POC (plural of convenience) Committee has been dang near moribund here of late because of a dearth of those letter count boosting terminal Ss. Today a glimmer of hope showed up with some KILOS and DESERTERS here and TENETS and SOBS there and a couple of the super helpful two for one POCs where two longer answers, ENIGMAS and CANNIBALS share their grid fill friendly terminal Ss with KENS and MORTALS.
Speaking of CANNIBALS, an opportunity was missed to clue it with a reference to the British rock group Fine Young CANNIBALS. Here's a YouTube video of their "Suspicious Minds".
And why not cross clue 27A BLOW IT with 28D WIDE OPEN?
Enjoyed the blog almost as much as the puzzle!
ReplyDelete@EasyEd -- I don't have any facts and figures about that, but I do remember instances where it seemed too great to be a coincidence. I remember people commenting that it was something WS liked to do, but I have no idea if they knew what they were talking about!
ReplyDelete@Bob Mills: My boyfriend-doll KEN is made of plastic, as am I.
ReplyDeleteI really liked today. Really felt like the age demo was wide (I work with enough kids to get skull and Steve) but also worked with ASCII, and genuinely laughed at Ken. And OMG NO proper names, that's an A for me
ReplyDeleteThanks, Barbie. What an irony! I recently submitted a 21 x 21 puzzle with a Barbie and Ken theme (not acknowledged by the editors to date). And now I get stumped because I didn't connect "Hunks of plastic" to Ken, the doll. I still can't connect them, Barbie...i'm surprised so many solvers did.
ReplyDelete@Easy Ed and @Lewis -- I really, really doubt that the ARHAT repeat was deliberate.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many other, far more important things a puzzle editor has to consider in planning out any given week or two. In addition to all the parsing of the difficulty level -- and puzzle editors are always getting second-guessed on THAT, aren't they? -- the main concern would have to be theme genre which is far more noticeable than any single answer in the grid. Imagine if you have (please, no!!!) two tiny little circles puzzles in a row. Or two back-to-back connections-type puzzles in the second word of a two-word phrase, like the baseball puzzle this week. Or two rebuses the same week. Or a puzzle based on MR POTATO HEAD the same week you have a puzzle based on that unknown-to-me arcade game the Times had not too long ago.
I did some research on the average number of answers in a week's worth of puzzles. 68 for every 15x15. 127 in a Sunday grid. That's 517 answers per week. Would you want to keep track of them all -- and do that every single week -- when you have all that other stuff to keep track of?
I'm sure that the ARHAT thing is a coincidence.
Read Rex, haven’t read the comments yet.
ReplyDeleteA crossword blog would be expected to be picky I guess. And of course Rex is famously picky. But for some reason, his post today seemed way beyond picky.
Large combo implies music especially jazz. Immediately thought of octet, which is often associated with jazz. Nonet autocorrect didn’t even like! Actually a rarely used word. He clearly made a small error and got mad at the puzzle. Most of his other nits were similar. E.g. what’s wrong with the clue for PASSER? Standard misdirection toward a wedding.
I am vastly slower than Rex, but in my terms it was an easy and likable puzzle
Maybe I am in a cranky mood, but this is a rare occasion when his post annoyed me. .
Grateful to learn about ASSAM; it sounds familiar but I was ignorant of where it is.
ReplyDeleteI filled the last two empty squares with K's, my middle initial: KENS/KILOS, and ACK/KITTS.
Would it be funny or maddening if Arhat also appeared tomorrow?
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should switch to Duckduckgo. I stopped using Google search years ago, and when I searched STEVE the first entries were for Jobs - with and without parentheses.
ReplyDeleteI really wanted the answer to 20D: Tripping to be ONTOE.
ReplyDeleteLoved this puzzle. Perfect level of difficulty and a nice restart after last weekends and yesterday’s horror shows.
ReplyDeleteI learned a few very interesting things in today’s offering, my favorite being that ASSAM, home of some of the world’s very best teas, but of the world’s most Indian Rhinos. ARHAT would have gotten me but I learned that yesterday so yay me!
ReplyDeleteHigh point today was no arcane or just way too, too yesterday’s pop culture for me. In terms of “no idea” answers, only one: Minecraft STEVE. I have never even seen a screen of Minecraft so that was going to be tough, and was.
Mistakes that slowed me down abounded though. Every one @Rex had in addition to FORTUNE TELLER for way too long. I just skimmed over the “sweet” part of the clue. MORTALS clue reminded me of “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Puck’s famous quip “What fools these mortals be.” Several times during the solve I felt very foolish for taking so long to grok the clever clues.
‘Twas a very slow Friday solve but I finally got it
Minecraft debuted in 2011 and was/is absolutely huge for a large portion of younger millennials/older zoomers. How many obscure golfers must I see in the puzzles, or bands from the 60s or 70s, or tennis pros. It's giving the outrage over Lisa Frank. Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it's arcane knowledge that isn't fair game for a crossword puzzle. Stale, tired fill is a bummer, but these clues that are hugely relevant to the next generation of solvers is also off-putting?
ReplyDeleteI LOVED this puzzle!! What a contrast to Thursday. Wooshed all over the place, not a 50s-tv- show in sight - best puzzle of the year imo. Surprised Rex didn't rave...
ReplyDeleteBoo to Minecraft and emoji clues. That is all.
ReplyDelete